Part 1

Prince Cadmus slew the Dragon and sowed its teeth. Could this latter-day Cadmus smash Akal-jor's atomic monster? Could he halt the devouring Gray God before--

Doomsday 257 A.G.!

_Novelet by_ BRYCE WALTON

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Cadmus trembled now as he waited. He had been waiting too long. Sweat was heavy on his clean-muscled body. A bright eagerness blazed from his gray eyes. And beyond the small pressure dome of the combination lab and living quarters, the frigid night pounded at the translucent teflonite--gnawed hungrily at that small dot of life and warmth on the barren asteroid.

Now that he was almost ready to step into the matter transmitter, each moment had become an eternity as he waited to be transported almost instantly to Mars. To the city of Akal-jor. To his final destiny.

He cursed softly at the cloud of amnesia aching in his skull. Johlan the Venusian scientist had had him in various states of hypnosis for some time, educating him for this task, and had placed a protective veneering of amnesia across his mind to protect his purpose from the Silver Guard's mental probers in case he were captured.

Since birth, Johlan had raised Zaleel and Cadmus on the asteroid. The three of them were unconditionally dedicated to the great "plan." Because of his fogged memory, Cadmus now knew but little concerning the details of the plan. He only knew that he would die to carry it through. That if he failed, Tri-Planet civilization would go on down to final decay and ruin.

The three of them, three frail motes of intelligent life, must save the vast System. Old Johlan the Venusian. Zaleel of the golden hair and generous red lips. And Cadmus the fighter. To fight the Silver Guards, and the gigantic mechanical intelligence of the Great Gray God, Cadmus had only the sword at his side and the crude energy gun Johlan had made. The energy gun was too small for efficiency but it had to be small in order to be carried unnoticed beneath his tunic.

Zaleel was gone. She had stepped into the transmat months before to carry out her part of the plan. Cadmus remembered only the shiny richness of her hair, the warm promise of her lips.

A signal light blinked. A glow crackled round the electronic power rim of the transmat. Cadmus shot one last glance through the pressure dome where he had spent most of his lifetime in preparation.

A thin hard smile parted his space-burned face as he stepped into the transmat and melted into a blurred vortex of coloration.

Pain beyond thought shattered his consciousness to shreds. The blackness was absolute. The cold was ineffable.

* * * * *

It was the year of the Gray God, 257 A.G.

Tomorrow was the day of Worship at the Gray God's shrine. Beyond the city of Akal-jor was the vast valley where the Gray God was born, and where it lived on, eternally, beneath its impregnable gray metal dome, five miles in diameter, and a mile high. Shielded by half a mile of deadly radioactive field, a teeming moat of gamma rays through which no living thing could pass.

On three worlds, hopeless, futile, static beings of a dying civilization prepared for the big exodus to Mars and to the Gray God's altars. Then they would return to their dull cycle of meaningless existence to dream in some drugged escapeasy, or to die horribly in one of Consar III's atomic power plants, mine shafts, or his isotope factories.

Consar III had arrived in Akal-jor for the worship. With him were five thousand slaves. Bathing in countless hedonistic luxuries, he awaited the worship to begin at tomorrow's dawn. Meanwhile he looked for new and interesting female slaves.

Next to sensual pleasure, Consar enjoyed most the contemplation of his great power over the masses of three worlds. He could never lose that power. Unless the Gray God died, and that was impossible of course. Or unless he died. He would die certainly, sometime. Then he wouldn't worry about pleasures or power.

From the windows of his Martian mansion, the Palace of Pearl, he looked to the east into the valley of the Gray God. It towered, a massive gray metal skull. Consar III laughed. The Gray God was a machine. Therefore its position as governmental dictator of the System remained absolutely stable. Nothing could ever change again. His position as sole exploiter of the resources of the System, under the title of Consar Exploitations Interplanetary, was to remain unchanged forever. It was a perfect setup.

The System was Consar's really, despite the fact that the Gray God ruled through mechanical dictates. All the dictates favored Consar. Consar and his hedonistic rituals, sycophants, courtiers and concubines.

There was always the rumor of an underground seeking to overthrow the status quo. The Cadmeans, who had tried once before to destroy the Great Machine, had been wiped out of existence. Or at least most of them. If any did remain alive, they were ineffectual. They would be discovered and killed or enslaved by the Silver Guards. The Guards didn't really work for Consar, not directly. They were conditioned in the council tower to obey the dictates of the Great Machine. But those dictates all favored Consar's position of royalty, so it amounted to the same thing.

He moved the animated throne across the room to the edge of his roseate pleasure pool that shimmered in the middle of the jeweled floor. Above him, joylamps spun their songs of colored sensuality. His three hundred pounds of white flabby flesh settled into depths of luxuriance.

A small spidery man entered and bowed. "There is a girl here in Akal-jor, Illustrious Consar."

"Ah. Go on, Gaston." Consar's voice bubbled with soft power like lava. "You have acted rapidly and with customary clarity."

"She is a dancer in an escapeasy called the Maenad on the Street of Shadows. She is alive and vital and desirable as no woman among your women, My Ruler. She--"

"Bring her, Gaston, before dawn. After the worship, I'll take her back to Terra. Is she Martian?"

"Terro. Her name is Zaleel."

"Good. You can obtain the services of Silver Guards, as usual, under the Gray God's labor conscription edict fifty-seven."

The spidery little man bowed out. Consar III pressed a button. Soft durolite arms lowered him into the swirling waters of his pleasure pool. He sank slowly as the crystaline waters washed him gently in its bath of a thousand dreams.

* * * * *

Spiraling patterns fused, disassociated atomic rejoined. Cadmus stumbled from the transmat receiver. As he lurched through dusty damp shadows, a familiar, non-terrestrial voice called. The Venusian padded toward him on webbed feet, green scales shining in the cold luciferin light of a trunjbug lamp.

Cadmus' voice was still shaky, rattling through the subterranean gloom somewhere below Akal-jor. He couldn't remember where. He could remember very little. "I've got to know more about the plan," he said quickly. "More about myself. This fog is driving me crazy!"

The ancient Venusian said, "You'll know more, a lot more, if you succeed in destroying the Great Machine. It wouldn't be safe to know very much--at least until just before you're ready to strike. And you must strike the final blow at dawn."

"Was it necessary to wipe practically everything out of my mind," growled Cadmus. "I seem to be desperately groping for some memory, some facts that I should remember now! Do you--?"

"Forget everything but the immediate task before you," said Johlan tensely. "You strike just as dawn strikes. Just as millions of worshippers emerge from those transmats in the valley, the Great Gray God which they worship will die--before their eyes. They must see it die so they can carry eyewitness accounts back to their own worlds. We must succeed this time. Another solar year and the System will be too sunken in the disease of unchange and futility and defeat ever to change."

Cadmus breathed hoarsely. "Let me get on with it. Give me the necessary information!"

"Very well," sighed Johlan. "You have only one advantage. You realize what it is. Having been born in the asteroids, you don't have the disciplinary band in your head. The Guards, by using their coercion rays, can slay or paralyze any living inhabitant of the three worlds through the disciplinary band. That will allow you great advantage. Now--first you go to the Maenad on the Street of Shadows. Zaleel is a dancing girl there. She'll give you the equipment to destroy the Machine."

Cadmus gripped Johlan's boneless cold fingers. "I'll get the job done," said Cadmus with a certainty he was far from feeling.

Johlan nodded. "Straight ahead and up the first stairway. It will lead you directly onto the Street of Shadows."

Later, Cadmus gripped the sword hilt as he hugged the mouldy green wall of aged dhroon-stone. His eyes shifted up and down the crooked alley through filthy pools of splashing light from Phobos. Down its scrofulous length were a number of nameless dens and dives where defeated hopeless beings found solace in deadly drugs and deadlier dreams. He sucked in his breath. Yes--he had heard the jackboots on the stone street. Coming toward him from the direction of the Maenad, cutting off his advance. Part of a labor recruiting drive no doubt. Phobos' pale light glowed on silver uniforms and an array of deadly weapons. They were fine looking soldiers though they were nothing really but slaves.

He slid the sword free. The energy weapon beneath his tunic must be saved for an extreme emergency. Swords had been in use when the Machine had been constructed. Anyone could still carry one. Few bothered. Few cared. They were past the hope of fighting.

Cadmus turned. He had to run away, away from the Maenad as well as the Guards. He might not get back and time was getting too precious. The city swarmed everywhere with Guards because of the great worship at dawn.

He snarled like a trapped animal as hunched shapes spilled from the dark before him. Huge shaggy Bluemarts from the desert caves. Anthropoid mutations of a savage intelligence at the end of an evolutionary blind alley. They mimicked the Guards, killed for them, captured labor conscripts for them. Sometimes they died, too, thought Cadmus as he ran among them, striking desperately in an attempt to cut his way through to escape the Guards.

Blood ran black. Bluemarts bellowed pain. Two sprawled out to writhe and die on the ancient stones. Long heavy leather whips studded with brass spikes crashed around Cadmus as he dodged and fought and danced away.

He saw the Guards, close now. They were confused. Their coercion rays were being used, Cadmus knew, but he had no disciplinary band. A policejet came down and hovered overhead. A brilliant search beam slithered over the walls. A whiplash crashed against his shoulder, stunning him. Another scraped cloth and flesh from his side.

Dazed, he reached for his energy gun. But that whiplash had ripped away his harness, holster, gun and all. He staggered along the wall. A dull roaring pounded in his temples. Then he heard the unreal, whining voice of the old woman from the thick shadows of the wall. He heard but he could see nothing of her.

There was a dismal creaking of stone on stone.

"This way, my dear boy. Quickly, or you're a dead one!"

II

Her hand was hard and dry, running down his torn arm like a deadly scorpion. The aperture in the wall opened further and a hot, stinking wind belched out. He dropped as paws gripped his booted ankles from behind. He twisted, thrust his sword into a shaggy throat. His hand felt the harness he had lost. He dragged it inside with him, into a black, forgotten hole.

The opening closed. There was an invisible stench of stale bodies and drug vapor. He could hear the old woman's hoarse breathing. He hooked the broken harness about his waist.

"Light," he gasped. "What's this, a tomb?"

"It will be, dear boy," she said. "We must move quickly down into the catacombs. I wear the receiver band. I feel them groping, but it's you they want. They don't know I'm helping you, and they don't want an old bag of bones like me. But hurry. They'll blast in the wall."

Flame glowed. She lighted a smoky taper. He saw a bent ragged packet of animated bones, a mop of gray hair and a narrow hawked beak. In niches along the winding cavern, shapes stirred. Moisture dripped. Turgid Lethean vapors from escapist drugs curled sluggishly. Skeletal faces stared, glazed and unseeing, dying.

Cadmus swore. Three worlds were dying like this. A vast social system that had stopped moving, evolving, so it was dying. Fast! A yellow Martian girl's luminous eyes stared vacantly into shadows, buried in some dream far from the hopeless, meaningless reality.

Cadmus studied the old woman with growing suspicion. The amnesia was a throbbing ache of unknowing. If he only knew more. There was so much he felt he had to know, right now, but he couldn't remember! Who was this sudden benefactress? Not from the Asteroids, for she wore the disciplinary band. Yet she had saved him, preserved him a little longer to carry out an impossible task.

She turned, anticipating his suspicion. "Zaleel sent me. You can trust me, Cadmus. I know these catacombs. I'm old Pirri who sells her Lethean drugs along the forgotten places of Akal-jor. You Cadmeans have a few sympathizers. Some still have hope. The Cadmean society is that hope."

A wave of fear blew through Cadmus' fogged brain. "Cadmeans. My--memory! Johlan erased almost everything. I remember nothing--yet--there's something--something I've got to remember!"

She didn't answer. They walked on. A Martian half-breed ogled them from a niche in the stone, jaws chewing the mind-shattering pulp of the Venusian thiln-flower. Wrecks of three worlds. They believed in nothing but their dreams--and the Gray God in the valley. The former they believed in as an only escape from a hopeless reality. The latter, because they had been conditioned to regard it as a god, as omnipotent.

You may fear a god, and hate a god, Cadmus mused, but you cannot desert a faith with impunity.

"You know a lot of Cadmus and the Cadmeans," he said as they walked deeper into the gloom. "I know nothing. Nothing! Listen, who is Cadmus?" He frowned. A ridiculous question.

"You are he," said Old Pirri. "Gods and heroes will never die."

"Who am I?"

"Cadmus."

He swore. His head ached more with doubts and hidden fears. A desperate yearning to _know_ clawed frantically in his skull.

Old Pirri said, "There is a myth, centuries old, dear boy." Her voice softened. "But myths repeat themselves. They're rooted in the soul. In this myth, that was born on Terra when it was young and fresh and when blood was hot with early flames, there was a prince. He was tall and strong, and his skin was gold over muscles of steel."

She peered over her shoulder. "His name was Cadmus."

"Yes."

"Prince Cadmus slew a dragon and sowed its teeth. From these sprang armed men who fought and founded a great city--"

"Teeth--dragon--armed men, what are the symbols here?" A strange thrill trembled in him as the words took hold.

"You are the son of a much more recent Cadmus who was named from that ancient myth. Only he knew why he called himself Cadmus. He kept that secret to himself. But you are his son. If anyone knows your father's great secret of why he called himself Cadmus, it is you. You are Cadmus, now."

"But Johlan--he stifled my brain so the Guards couldn't probe my secrets--"

Old Pirri's eyes glowed, became red pools. "Zaleel told me. She, too, is ignorant of many things other than her assigned duties. Beware, lovely boy. Beware of friends and patriots who are out to achieve selfish ends. Beware even Zaleel, and Johlan, and Old Pirri. Remember history, and recall that when the Great Machine God was spawned and stopped all progress, wars were brewing between the worlds. Remember that was the reason the Machine was made--to halt progress and social evolution that might lead to another atom war. If the Machine is destroyed, remember that the old hates will return. For the ancient hates between peoples and planets and ideas still smolder."

Cadmus shivered. The sword hilt was ice in his grasp.

* * * * *

They turned. Several corridors branched into black mouths. Bats darted from hollows. Nothing must deter him from his objective. Yet--Old Pirri spoke wisdom. When the Machine quit, the three worlds would be plunged into chaotic anarchy. No government would exist until some kind of governmental agency was established. Who, then, or what group, would aspire to power? Consar III of course, if he lived. Others if there were others who still knew how to think.

They came into a subterranean street illuminated with cold luciferin light. Escapeasies lined its length. A forgotten river flowing from ennui to forgetfulness, and death. Archways crumbled overhead. Purple spider webs shimmered.

"We're directly under the Street of Shadows," said Old Pirri. Sense-drunkening music floated from dark maws. "Just inside that escapeasy, Cadmus. A door just inside leads up into the Street of Shadows, and into the Maenad." She gripped his arm. Tears shone in her eyes.

She took a chain from about her neck. A square of metal dangled heavily from the chain as she put it over Cadmus' head.

"Dear boy," she said, "this is a small force-shield device. I got it from a Cadmean who was killed in the last revolt. Press this small lever." She demonstrated. The unit hummed with power. It glowed with a strong effulgence. "This will nullify the vibro-guns of the Guards, for a while anyway."

Footsteps pounded. Old Pirri screeched, horribly, then went down on her knees. "Run--dear boy. Guards--" her voice shattered with pain. Her flesh jerked with the agony of a vibro-beam.

But he was safe, thought Cadmus quickly, while a sad rage wrenched his heart. She had sacrificed herself for him. She had given him the little force-shield unit.

He dropped down behind a crumbling column near the old woman as three Guards edged along the street. "Back--into the wall--find Maenad." Red froth specked her lips. "Beware all who might get power--when you slay--the Gray God--dear boy--"

She died. A blind rage burned up, flamed in Cadmus' brain. He yelled wildly as he raked the energy gun from his tunic and fired point blank at the approaching Guards.

Part of the street, with the Guards in it, erupted in a sheet of white flame. Shattered bodies, bits of uniform spread out through blazing columns like an unfolding flower. He dropped the burned-out gun and leaped backward, into the wall.

He ran blindly. Many-legged rats spilled out into the dark, ran with glowing eyes beside him. Pink, fleshy scorpions scurried before the vibrations of the blast. Later he found a wandering Venusian drug-peddlar who guided him to the trap-door leading up into the Maenad. It was only a few minutes now, until dawn.

There were no Guards in the escapeasy. Dancing girls from three worlds danced with a bored lifelessness. All except one. Zaleel. A flood of red-gold hair, flashing rust-flecked eyes, and smooth agile limbs. Her vitality failed to stir the sluggish futility clouding the Maenad. Her eyes flashed recognition as Cadmus edged along the wall and sat down in a shadowed booth. As the climax of her dance ended she walked to his booth and sat across from him. There was no applause. Apathetic eyes failed to follow the lithe swing of her gleaming body.

He held her hands, felt the animal warmth sparkle and tingle in his arms. "You made it, Cadmus," she breathed, eyes glowing. "I knew you would. I've got the microtape here. It's all you need to destroy the Machine--if you can reach it."

She handed him a small role of microtape. "Listen, Zaleel," he said, "I'm going crazy because of this amnesia Johlan threw over my brain. I tell you there's something vital to the plan I should know."

"You've got to keep blind faith. We can't hesitate now."

He told her about Old Pirri. She blinked at tears.

"Poor Old Pirri. She was in the first revolt. She was captured, had a disciplinary band put in her head, and slaved five years in one of Consar's mines. She lived only to see the Machine's end."

"She died too soon," said Cadmus.

"Your memory will return if you succeed, Cadmus. Johlan planted a threshold-response word in your subconscious mind. When you hear that word your full memory will come back. I heard him make the posthypnotic suggestion. But I can't tell you what it is. If you were captured--"

"I know. How and when will I receive this word?"

"It will be on millions of lips--if you succeed."

* * * * *

Cadmus said quickly, "All right. Give me the details, and let me get at it! Now what's the microtape for?"

She leaned forward. The fragrance of her hair was a promise.

"You know how the Machine's mechanical brain operates. But because of your amnesia, maybe I'd better refresh your memory. Now--any question, social, economic, individual, is submitted to the supreme council in the council tower. On the top of the tower is the question submission chamber. There are big digital panel-boards with facilities to receive the questions and problems which are submitted on microtapes.

"These microtapes are placed before the photoelectric analyzing eyes of the digital panels. From there, the problems or questions are carried by electron beam tubes directly into the Machine for solving. The Machine's answer comes back through the electron beam tubes and is recorded on answer tapes. Audio tapes are recorded and broadcast from the tower. Also the broadcast is received in every Martian city and is conveyed to Venus and Earth by ethero-magnum. You remember all this?"

"Some of it," said Cadmus, frowning. "Go on."

"The Machine's doom is in that microtape I've given you, Cadmus. It contains a highly complex problem which Johlan has worked out during all these years of isolation on our asteroid. You have only to get inside that question submission chamber in the council tower. Get that tape in front of those analyzing eyes. That's all. Get the problem on that tape into the brain of the Machine."

He looked at her steadily. "And then--is that the end of the plan?"

Her hand trembled. "There's you and I, after that."

"I remember that, Zaleel. If I succeed, it's you and me together, in a new System of progress and change and hope. If I fail--"

"If we fail, Cadmus, there'll be nothing for you and me. Nothing for anyone, ever again."

He got to his feet quickly. "Zaleel, what's your part in it? Why are you dancing here?"

Red flushed her face. "I knew that one of Consar's scouts would find me during the worship. One has already found me. They'll be here to pick me up before dawn."

He gripped her shoulders, hard. His face worked with unvoiced emotion.

"I've got to do it, Cadmus. My father died in one of Consar's Lunarian mines. He died--horribly. I'll settle with Consar myself. I have an explosive lithium capsule which...." It would be easier to do it than to talk about it.

She finished. "Everything will be dead then that threatens our System. The Machine, Consar, the Guards--they'll die when the Machine goes. The council tower will be the next center of governmental operations, no matter who handles it. The people have grown accustomed to receiving all their commands from the Tower."

"I'll see you then," said Cadmus. "If we succeed." He went quickly out into the Street of Shadows.

* * * * *