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."