Part 3

Once out in the diluted scarlet of Ganymede's morning, he saw that the temple was ringed with guards. Most of them lounged in the careless sense of security that comes with routine. Julian, the pupils of his eyes dilating, slid along the side of one wall, there was only one guard there--beyond was a wide avenue somewhere along which the Paradisiac was located. He moved as quietly as a _Felirene_, as implacable as death. The guard never even felt the blow that felled him. Then Julian was sprinting madly as shouts rose behind him in the roseate gloom.

"Damn this pink fog!" he exclaimed through clenched teeth.

Behind him the muffled stamp of scurrying feet and the metallic scraping of power-rapiers became distinct; oaths and imprecations in various dialects grew loud.

* * * * *

He swerved aside into a half-concealed doorway to hide his progress, for it wouldn't do to have his pursuers see him. A badly aimed power-beam from an old-fashioned heat-ray gun splashed off a wall not a block distant, in incandescent fury. "The fools!" he thought contemptuously. But his eyes scanned the buildings for a sign of the "Paradisiac." He was beyond fear--beyond emotion even. But what bothered him in a sort of dazed wonderment was that the word "Paradisiac" should have been frozen in the neutralized telesolidograph. For his assignment as part of the "Plan" was to meet another member of the Dekka, a Techno-Star, at the "rendezvous!" How Fermin, the Arch-Mutant had managed to obtain that information was incredible! It was an index to plans and forces he had not previously conceived.

But the problem now was to find the Paradisiac, he had merely a matter of minutes in which to seek concealment. And in this world of tortuous cabals not to speak of instant death, no blatant signs advertised pleasure, shelter or concealment. The latter was an art that was subtly applied to itself. One either did, or did not, know where to go. Sanctuary was there for the asking--at a price. But the signs were only for the initiate to recognize.

Desperately Julian tuned in the secret wave-length of the _Dekka_, and turning his wrist-transmitter to full force, sent out in code a streamlined account of what had transpired since his landing, as a last detail he told briefly of his encounter with Fermin, and of taking the curious vial from the Arch-Mutant. It was then that out of the soft, roseate haze, a brilliant, vari-colored pinwheel flashed briefly, then vanished as if it had never been, not fifty paces from where he stood. And Julian without hesitation was at the blank, beryloid wall in a few strides.

With his rapier-scabbard, he tapped a series of sounds, and the wall seemed to part, just wide enough for him to squeeze through the aperture. Behind him, the incredibly resistant plastic wall had closed.

In silence he waited, trying to control his labored breathing. Knowing that he was being inspected, and that the translucent barrier before him would or would not open--as _they_ willed. The thought flashed through his mind that perhaps this _sub-rosa_ stronghold of the Dekka, kept ostensibly as a pleasure-den, might have become tainted--a trap instead of a refuge. And in that brief instant of harrowing suspense, Julian became conscious of a presence, something cold and weirdly impersonal, that pervaded the cubicle with its aura. He shifted uneasily, poised with a grim determination. The blood-stained fabric moulded to his superb torso gleamed with the sheen of wet metal under the soporific illumination. There was no sound save his audible breathing.

After what seemed eternity--in reality seconds--the wall before him slid silently aside. A long corridor stretched before him. It led to the public rooms. The sudden shock of overwhelming relief had the quality of vertigo. The quadrangle walls seemed to lose solidity and become curved. He shut his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, the wall on the left side of the quadrangle bore a message in brilliant letters as if they'd emerged glowing from the plastic substance itself. It was a message and a question:

"PUBLIC ROOMS NOT NEUTRAL. DISGUISE DESIRED?"

Julian stared. Behind the silver-grey brilliance of his eyes, a mind trained to irrevocable decisions worked at the level of maximum awareness. His judgment balanced factors and variables. True, his instructions had been to seek sanctuary here, at this place, and on this street that for all its seemingly deserted obscurity was honeycombed with palaces fabulous for luxury and unlimited pleasures. Even the exotic tastes of jaded minds whose more esoteric interests could only be aroused by pain--the wild suffering of crucified flesh--were catered to.

Fugitives from half a dozen worlds lost their identity in the opulent warrens where "life" so often could be bought and sold with oblique indifference. But he had to visit the Public Rooms--his only contact with what he had come to seek _was there_! Someone who had devoted a lifetime to the Dekka, in Ganymede. Imperturbably he re-read the fading words, and with a mental squaring of his shoulders, he replied:

"Yes. Nothing _organic_, of course. But it must be more than merely skillful!"

Instantly the wall glowed again:

"THE SIXTH PANEL TO YOUR LEFT AWAITS YOUR PLEASURE."

* * * * *

Julian strode down the hall and paused before the sixth panel, it opened inwardly with the same silent precision that characterized everything in the place. Thus far he had seen no one. The maximum anonymity was, of course, essential. Still, there was something eerie in the atmosphere of complete detachment. He entered and found himself in a circular room with curving, almost translucent walls. The floor was firm, yet resilient under foot. He felt like a fop at a rejuvenation center, and laughed suddenly at the thought. His whole countenance was lit by that rare smile. From somewhere a slim, completely masked creature glided silently into the room.

Julian judged its height at slightly less than five feet; however, beyond the fact that its body was undeniably human, and exquisitely proportioned, Julian was unable to go, for the being's skin-tight garment left not an inch of surface exposed--except its hands. These were long, and marvelously sensitive, with a nervous life of their own as if they acted independently of the Ganymedean's guiding brain.

They were measuring him now, taking in the magnificent breadth of shoulder, the long, flat thighs and narrow waist, above which rose the inverted pyramid that was Julian's torso. At last they carefully removed his helmet and paused as if appraising the great shock of golden hair. With a swift motion that took in Julian's entire body, the designer indicated that Julian strip. Again the exquisite hands repeated the gesture--impatiently this time--but Julian, his face set, still hesitated.

The designer was a native Ganymedean, beyond doubt--Julian knew that much. But, was it a man or a woman? Julian was well aware that the exquisite beings of fabulous Ganymede, who even when confronted with the outrage that was _The Dynasty_, foisted upon them by the Terran Mutants had disdained arming themselves to the teeth as the rest of the Moons had done, had some very strange ideas about things. And the "Control-Facet" had no intention of disrobing before a woman--even as alien and anonymous a being as the Ganymedeans. His face was beginning to flush with sheer annoyance.

As if reading Julian's thoughts, the masked designer shook its head and made an expressive gesture with its hands, as if Julian's nudity would be a thing of such utter unimportance, that it would scarcely be noticed, except as a foundation upon which to achieve a superlative disguise. And Julian had no alternative. It was either disrobe or enter the Public Rooms as he was. Mentally he consigned the stubborn race of Ganymede to the most sulphuric region he could think of, and palming his electro-beam, undressed. The coldly unemotional designer was unable to suppress a gasp! Its ancient, long-forgotten Gods must have been like this; theirs was a cult of beauty, and in Julian it was witnessing a masterpiece. Almost, reverently, the fluttering hands began their work.

The Ganymedean's artistry was very great. "_Part of their accursed stubbornness!_" Julian thought. For the Ganymedeans had an exasperating tenacity of purpose which brooked no obstacles until they achieved their ends--it bordered on genius, or madness, or both. Had they devoted it to the art of War, Seville-Lorca's "_Jovian Annals_" would have been a vastly different story.

The space-tanned face with its slightly flaring nostrils, and large silver-grey eyes, crowned by the shock of golden mane, began to change subtly under the magical hands of the designer. Slowly the shoulder long hair took on a dull, ruddy sheen, while the coppered complexion paled and a temporary irritant brought a deep flush to his cheeks. With deft movements, the winged brows were darkened and narrowed, and the generous, full lips were pulled slightly inwards and taped with invisi-plastic, until only a thin, cruel curve remained. The Ganymedean stepped back and scrutinized the effect. Quickly it crossed to a part of the circular chamber and then pressed a stud. A great section of the wall sank downward, revealing tier after tier of dazzling costumes already composed. There were gossamer silks from Venus, lustrous as moonlight pools; the opulent gleam of stiff brocades from Mars, as unyielding as the character of that supercilious race. Velvets like crushed petals, embroidered in _Starlimans_, the priceless green diamonds of Mercury; vivid fabrics from distant Neptune, which were not woven at all, but secret plastics worth a small fortune each. And, they were all green--in an infinite gradation of shades, nuances, hues. The artist's hands reached and drew forth a single garment open at the back. And then the real work began.

* * * * *

Julian's eyes were inscrutable. He had not been asked what effect was to be achieved, or indeed how he wished to be changed. True, nothing of an _organic_ nature had been attempted. But he was not used to this.

The Ganymedean designer, whatever it was, was a great artist. Great enough to take liberties, or else possessed of the effrontery of genius. But then, Julian meditated, Ganymedeans were like that. There were times when one didn't know whether to slay them or leave them. Then it occurred to Julian that perhaps the instructions of the _Dekka_ had been specific. But dismissed the thought with a wry smile. Even the Dekka's instructions as to the actual disguise would have been quietly ignored by this creature. It was a work of art, and in that realm, Ganymedeans listened to no one. But his meditation was cut short by the gestures of the artist, which clearly indicated that Julian tilt his head. In his hands he held a tiny bottle, and something like an eye-dropper.

"I said _nothing organic_!" Julian reminded him coldly.

"A tint, nothing more," the Ganymedean spoke for the first time in soft, slurred accents. "It will only last a few days, then disappear. And, without it, the work is incomplete." Julian submitted reluctantly.

The artist was at last finished. One graceful hand motioned toward a huge moon of a mirror suspended by anti-gravitic means, and Julian turned curiously to see what the creature had transformed him into.

His astounded gasp was audible in the silent alcove. For he saw a tall, disdainful Martian whose violet eyes looked coldly out a face he couldn't recognize as his own; a mane of ruddy, curling ringlets fell to the neck-line, while thin, cruel lips curving slightly expressed unutterable boredom. For the rest, his body was sheathed in palest silver-green, of a texture like human epidermis--satiny, rippling with his every movement, while a great belt of _Panagrans_ circled his narrow waist.

The Ganymedean held up an expressive finger, then flew to a drawer hidden beneath the folds of the costumes. He extracted something and came swiftly back. Julian felt a sharp pain in his left ear-lobe, then the icy sensation of a cauterizer stanching the capillary flow, and something was fastened to his ear. When he gazed into the reflecting moon, he saw a huge, solitary _Starliman_ swirling green fire from his left ear-lobe. The picture of a ruthless, interplanetary fop was superbly complete. Only a Neuro-Graph machine could possibly have revealed his identity now.

Julian went over to where his former garments lay on the floor, and fastened his Power-rapier to the jeweled belt, then extracted the vial he had taken from Fermin, taking care that the designer didn't see it, and secreted it on his person. When he straightened up again, the Ganymedean was holding a cloak of rich _ocelandian_ fur which Julian threw about his shoulders. The artist gazed at him for a brief instant, with something like a smile in its brilliant eyes--all that could be seen of his masked face. Then as silently as he had come, he literally walked into a section of the panelling which gave way before him and disappeared in the endless labyrinth that was the Paradisiac. The door of the circular room opened soundlessly. Julian's hand flew to the electro-beam under his arm-pit, but no one came. It was a mute invitation to depart.

The long corridor led him to the balcony overhanging the Public Rooms. Below him was a hall so vast, built on a scale so great, that it imparted a feeling of limitless distances, yet he knew this was an illusion. To his right, a crysto-plast conveyor spiralled down in a swirl of imprisoned waters, foaming like a rushing stream, while at the bottom, freed by the deliberately lessened gravity, the worst and best from all the inhabited worlds sat at individual platforms or revolved lazily in the upper levels. The enchantment of fantastic harmonies wove a subtle spell of desire and nameless longings. But although he felt the magic of the extravagantly honeyed chords, Julian reminded himself that was not there to propitiate the eternal caprice of the flesh.

IV

_"Within my heart, all ecstasy, Within my eyes, all visions dwell. Life--Death, I turn to rhapsody-- I am the deathless Philomel."_

TERRA--20th Century.

He swept the assemblage with a glance. Purposely he had stood for seconds in full view. A perfect fop--as frivolous, as dangerous as anything the Paradisiac harbored. The ultimate in elegance.

Julian stepped on the conveyor and had the illusion of being borne along on a cataract of foam to where an immaculately garbed Ganymedean bowed and led the way to a secluded platform embowered in the geometrical interlacings of frost crystals. The panel in the table's center instantly suffused with softest light as he sat down, and a note like the echo of a forgotten song rang subdued.

"Venusin ... undiluted!" Julian ordered laconically.

Mentally he enjoyed in anticipation the exhilarating power of the treacherous drink. It was precisely what a successful adventurer would have ordered there.

He waited calmly, conscious that he was the cynosure of many eyes. He knew a thousand dramas were being enacted in the sumptuous den, under the masking surface of convention and social intercourse.

The place was like a gigantic cup abrim with beauty--so much of it--in the decors, in the music, in the _flesh_, left him cold. A glowing core of contempt burned within him at the overwhelmingly seductive weakness it induced. Julian knew he had to be as invulnerable as berylo-plast--deaf to all the mellower dictums of the heart. He was here for one single, solitary purpose that was the all-embracing, the tremendous _now_. To meet a bearer of information so secret, so profoundly vital, that its possessor had not dared even transmit it in the highly complicated secret code of the _Dekka_. For that he had braved what he now realized was certain death. It was his task to receive it, and pass it through channels that would reach the ten Dekkan patriarchs.

Once more, as he had done when he'd paused at the top of the conveyor, Julian raised his arm and almost imperceptibly made the secret, immemorable gesture of the Dekka. He was impatient. There was no time. Disguise or no disguise, he knew that any minute now, the Paradisiac might erupt like a long-seething volcano. _Why wasn't the person he was to meet here yet?_ Mechanically his fingers groped for the vial he had taken from Fermin, and paused startled as he felt the unmistakable outline of something hard beside the shape of the miniature vial. He drew it out slowly, palmed so that no observer could discern it from even a short distance. It was a tiny plastic disc bearing the words: SUB ROHAN SQUARE. As Julian raised the glass of Venusin to his lips, he swallowed the disc, which he knew would dissolve. _He already had met the informant!_ The thought was almost shocking in its intensity. It could only have been the Ganymedean designer! And yet, the message in itself was disappointing. What could there be beneath Rohan Square, the central plaza before the Temple where he'd met Fermin?

Already amidst the perfect glamour, the seductive illusions of the Paradisiac, forces were gathering that no Ganymedean art could dispel, and which were far from being illusory.

Neighboring platforms had drawn increasingly near; implacable eyes, devoid of languor or of drugs, gazed with cold intensity at the frost-trellised bower and its solitary occupant. The lighting effects of the Paradisiac had changed, dimmed to an idyllic, translucent twilight, while the music sank to undulations of the B flat tonality that were magical--plucking at the emotions with unerring skill.

A draft of fragrance--the heady _florestan_ of Ganymede--made Julian turn his head. Up the brief stairs of his platform a woman was ascending calmly. Julian rose, a tiny frown between his eyes. He had not sent for a companion; then he remembered his brief flash of passion on the conveyor and wondered with startled dismay if these Ganymedeans went so far as to read the most intimate thoughts of their guests! But no, it could not be.

He shot a clear violet glance of keen appraisal at the girl. She was a _true_ Mutant. Her utter refinement of features, the classical loveliness stamped with intolerable pride were beyond doubt Ganymedean, as was the hair, almost crystalline, that fell in shining waves to her shoulders. The eyes, an enchanting shade of silvered blue, were smiling with a secret amusement.

"Shall one intrude?" The ghost of a smile parted her lips as she sat down, her priceless gown sweeping the platform with the crystal sheen of water. She threw back a shawl as sheer and fantastic as the Veil of Tanit must have been, with a gesture that only a very beautiful woman can achieve.

"Enchanted," Julian answered conventionally, but entirely without warmth. He offered her a drink. Maliciously he suggested _Venusin_, certain it would be refused.

* * * * *

The girl let her glance rove over the wondrous spectacle on the stage that had emerged from the floor in the center of the hall, and, her smile was an adventure as she replied:

"Venusin ... weaver of chimeras ... like all this," she waved an alabaster hand, "illusion ... dreams. But even our greatest dreams _betrays_ us sometimes. Yes, let it be Venusin!"

Julian wondered, straining all his faculties, whether the veiled warning were a prophecy of things to come, or the ironical skating on thin ice of the enemy itself! And was aware that part of his mind kept harping on the loveliness of this cryptic stranger. _What was her purpose? Had she penetrated his disguise? Was she there to make sure that under the miracle of art there was some one far more dangerous than a dissipated Martian fop?_ His answer came from her slender, fragile hands. _They were twining and untwining like lilies bending before the wind!_

"Let's dance," Julian said suddenly with an emotion he would not analyze. He rose and caught her roughly up to him. He saw her eyes go expressionless with surprise, she was stunned a little. And before she could recover, the irresistible power of Julian's arms had borne her to the greater anonymity of the dance floor in seconds. One moment the lyric quality of the atmosphere was part of them, and then the illusion was shattered as the frost-trellised bower vanished almost simultaneously with their leaving it. Lurid pencils of unleashed power impinged on the crysto-plast table charring it, while the fragile walls disappeared under the barrage. Julian saw a burly Mutant searching for him, atom-blast in hand, while beside him another Dynast, his face stamped with the excesses of Vanadol slipped into the pandemonium the dance-floor had become.

With cold ruthlessness Julian aimed his electro-beam and saw the upper part of the Mutant's torso disappear. He saw the other one near the conveyor and the "electro" flashed again. The beam went through the creature and struck the great conveyor releasing the imprisoned waters. An icy geyser of liquid shot upward, and pandemonium broke loose. All the lights went out and madness stalked the swirling humanity that desperately sought to escape. He was in a maelstrom of fighting, shrieking beings and a chaos of noise as tables and chairs crashed.

"Let me lead ... my eyes are conditioned to darkness!" Julian felt a tiny hand grasp his arm.

"So are mine ... but who...." He could see dimly a tiny, slender figure, scarcely five feet in height, completely masked. Then he remembered the slurred accents of the artist who had achieved his disguise. The Ganymedean already was scurrying toward the same direction in which Julian wanted to go, to the right of where the conveyor had been. Icy water already swirled around his ankles, and the babel of sounds had risen to a crescendo of unleashed fear, when Julian reached the plastic wall. The Ganymedean was ahead of him, and Julian saw him press a spot in the smooth barrier. A draft of icy air struck his face as an aperture appeared. He dived in.

* * * * *

They must have traveled miles before Julian's Ganymedean guide began to falter, then stopped. The being had silently ignored every question thus far, and twice had asked for silence. Now he turned on a tiny pencil beam and surveyed their surroundings. It was a cavern, musty and icy in temperature; great festoons of dust held together by age-old cobwebs hung from the curved ceiling.

The Ganymedean went directly to a section of the rocky wall on the left, and searched the crumbling surface minutely with the pencil-beam until he found what he sought; he made an odd twisting motion with fingers pressed to the wall, and a circular section slid inward; beyond was another tunnel ending in a seemingly blank wall.

"You will find a metal disk in the exact center of the wall," the Ganymedean explained hurriedly. "Blast it with your electro-beam. It is the mechanism of a door, the combination to which we do not possess. Be prepared to _destroy instantly everything that meets your eyes_--everything!" He motioned for Julian to enter the tunnel. "You will have only seconds to achieve your purpose. And remember, your life's already forfeit, so do not hesitate now!"

"But what _is_ behind that door?" Julian asked, exasperated. "I have a right to know!" He laid a detaining hand on the Ganymedean's shoulder. "_I must know!_"