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.