CHTHON

Dread world-the home of unremitting convict labor deep in its cavernous belly-ruby-dark mines from which there was no escape-lightless, loveless, its only code, survival.

ATON

Child of the sun-why was he here? His very name was love-in an ancient civilization on the Nile, on a world long dead. Aton, child of the sun, a rebel because he worshiped love-why was he here?

But few on Chthon spoke of why they had come there. Fewer still dared talk of how to get away. Death lay in such talk-and the first law was survival.

So Aton dreamed, and worked, and wondered, and thought only to himself of his terrible crime. He did not know why it held such terror. Nor would he know until he discovered the secret of

CHTHON