Chapter 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!_"

By the spectral radiance of the pencil-beam, the artist eyed Julian with a strange expression in his eyes. "As you will, Dekkan," the being shrugged his shoulders. "You will find a laboratory ... if you live to reach it. It is doubly guarded, although even the Dynasty does not suspect the existence of that door, for it is part of the remains of our own subterranean system. Beyond it ..." the Ganymedean paused, "in that laboratory is stored the blood-plasma of Mutants who have voluntarily submitted to _innoculation with a certain disease_. The resulting modified virus is the _Plague_. It's like a vaccine magnified a thousand times--its victims do not die, they merely become _sterile_!" The Ganymedean turned toward where the corridor curving to the right was lost to view. "I go that way," he said simply. "My place is here."

"But ... your message on the disc ... you mentioned Rohan Square!" Julian exclaimed. "If I survive this, how can I...."

"_You are standing beneath Rohan Square, and the Temple, Dekkan!_"

And that was all. Suddenly he was gone like a wraith that melted into the darkness and the silence, his footsteps muted by the velvet carpet of dust. Julian hesitated no longer.

He found the metal disc in the wall, and with the "electro" at low power destroyed the ancient mechanism of the door. As if released from the bond that for so long had held it, the great section rolled back with a crash, carrying away with it a jagged section of plastic covering from its other side. Julian had a vivid glimpse of startled, silver-haired technicians who stared unbelieving at the strange apparition. In that dazed moment of inaction, Julian acted. _He was in!_ The lethal power of the electro-beam in his hand swept like a scythe through the group of Mutants. It was ghastly. The blasted sides of culture vats poured their viscous contents on the floor. There was a livid, billowing flare of incandescence as acids were struck. It was a welter of destruction and supernal fire that roared into the laboratory before any of the Mutants had a chance to act. The acrid smoke, the odor of disintegrated flesh was like a heavy pall. Through it, galvanized figures could be seen descending a winding staircase that led upward from the subterranean lab. The Guards!