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.