It did not matter. Chthon was the prison of the damned, and the man incarcerated here was damned, whether there was justice in it or no. Legally damned and legally dead: no one escaped from Chthon.

The prison was deep, a natural cavity far beneath the surface of a secret planet and hidden forever from the stars. No cells were there, no guards; only the living refuse of man’s empire, dying in unthought wealth. For Chthon was a garnet mine, the moderate value of its individual stones complemented by their enormous number. The manner of its enterprise was this: every twenty-four hours the single elevator went down, loaded with food. It came up again with several hundred garnets. If the value of the stones was not enough, the next shipment of food was reduced.

•  •  •

Aton understood this much of Chthon, and it was as much as any free man could know. Now he was to learn the other side of it, the underside. The close cage shuddered, grinding on down into the fevered bowels, and Aton rocked with its motion. He felt the heat increase; smelled his own reek.

Am I dreaming of the impossible? he thought. Is it foolish to believe in a physical escape, simply because of a rumor I overheard in space? Return from death. Freedom. Perhaps even...completion?

The motion stopped. The door opened to roaring darkness. Heat blasted in, oppressive, suffocating. Sweat drenched his light uniform.

Knowing that he had no choice, Aton stepped into the gloom.

“One side!” a voice bellowed in his ear. Rough hands shoved him away. He stumbled into the center of the room, his book clamped under one arm, barely making out the shapes of men as they moved between him and the lighted interior of the lift.

They worked silently, three of them, hauling out crates and stacking them against the nearest wall. When the elevator was empty they carried smaller metal caskets carefully inside. The garnets, Aton realized. The men were husky, bearded, long-haired, and naked, and each had a sloshing bag of some sort strapped to his back. The effect, in the poor light, was grotesque; they reminded Aton of hunchbacked trolls.

One of them slammed the door, cutting off the light. The noise in the room was so great that Aton could not hear the elevator ascending, but he knew that his only link to the outside world was gone. He was now at the mercy of Chthon.

There was light after all—a sputtering glow, green and strange, given off by the walls and ceiling, as though they were smoldering. His eyes adjusted. He would be able to navigate.

Now the men came at him. “New man, eh. Name.”

“Aton Five.”

“Five?”

“Take it or leave it.”