Jack Williamson

“ Simple as it seemed, that camp of Austen's was perhaps the most remarkable thing I came across in the crater. Austen was a wonderful man. Having not only an exhaustive knowledge of a half dozen fields of science—and he had not mere theories, but a practical, working knowledge—he had also courage and determination, patience and manual skill, and a great deal of resourcefulness and invention. While the average man would hardly have been able to keep alive in the jungle, Austen was able to do such things as smelt and refine ore, and set up complicated and workable electrical machinery. ”

“ The lake lay flat and argent white, clad in all the ominous mystery of that strange world, calling, beckoning us on, challenging us to learn the secret of the fartherest bank of purple fog, with a grim warning of the doom that might await us. The red fern-like sprays waved gently in the breeze, and the vivid, tiny white flowers seemed to sparkle with a million glancing rays, like frost in the sunshine; but the deep intensity of the red color lent a weird and unpleasant suggestion of blood. Beyond the Silver Lake, low hills rose, faint and mysterious in the purple haze. ”

“ At last we passed between vast ruby columns and stood beneath the huge red dome. Before us lay a great space, fairly lit with a rosy light from the crystal walls. Around the farther side were seated tier upon tier, thousands of the brilliantly clad people of Astran. In the center of the great floor, resting upon a pedestal, was a globe of shining purple—a sphere of coruscating flame—itself immense, perhaps forty feet in diameter, but insignificant in that colossal hall. ”

“ Austen had his drawing board set up in a convenient place behind our shelter, and he alternately peered through the telescope at the spectrum, and turned to make intricate calculation in the light of a shaded flashlight. We sat up all night at the work.
All night long the white flame played between the spinning blue crystal spheres above the vast green cylinder, filling the air with its ghostly crackle and whisper. All night long the tireless purple human machines toiled in the pit, carrying the great green blocks, and evidently stacking them in the vast cannon-like tube at the side. ”

“ Then, with a sickening sensation of terror, I remembered the horrible, half-human purple corpse that I had seen the soldiers bringing into Astran. "Are the Purple Ones men?"
"In form, they are men and women," Melvar said, "but they dwell alone in the thickets like beasts. All of them are old and hideous. They are savage, and they have the strength each of many men. Our soldiers must always hunt them, and fight them to the death. A single man, even though armed, could do nothing against one of them, for they are terribly strong, and they fight like demons. ”

“ The gem-capped mountain rose before me until I saw that the gaunt black sides rose a full thousand feet to the crown of blazing crystal. And as I drew nearer, I saw that indeed the gems were buildings, of a massive, fantastic architecture. A city of crystal! Prismatic fires of emerald-green, and ruby-red, and sapphire-blue, poured out in a mingled flood of iridescence from its slender spires and great towers, its central ruby dome and the circling battlements of a hundred flashing hues. ”

“ I leaned against the base of the metal ladder and looked about, I had fallen into a thicket of low red bushes. All about grew low thick brush, covering the slightly rolling plain. The plants were scarcely knee-high, bearing narrow, feathered leaves of red. The delicate, fern-like sprays of crimson rippled in the breeze like waves on a sea of blood. The leaves had a peculiar bright and greasy appearance and a strange pungent odor. The shrubs bore innumerable tiny snow-white flowers that gleamed like stars against the deep red background. ”

“ Then we heard the sound of the cataclysm—a crashing roar like the thunder of a thousand falling mountains, as deep, as vast, as awful, as the crash of colliding worlds. At the same instant we felt the force of the greatest explosion that has ever occurred on earth. The rocket shot upward as though shot out of a mighty cannon. The blue sky darkened about us, and the stars flamed out like a million scintillating gems, in incredible myriads, gleaming cold and hard against the infinite empty blackness. ”

“ Astran, with the scintillating fires kindled again in its jeweled towers by the rising sun, lay far behind and above us. When we had finished eating, Melvar stood looking for a long moment at its glorious sparkling light. She murmured a few words beneath her breath, in the Astranian tongue, and turned again toward the Silver Lake.
In two hours we came to the shore of the great lake. The red scrub grew up to the brink of a bluff a dozen feet high. Below was a broad, bare sandy beach, with the gleaming waves, quicksilver white, rolling on it two hundred yards away. ”

“ Standing at rigid attention, in regular rows about the pedestal were a few score bright-armed soldiers, and as many other erect men in long purple robes. All eyes were fixed on a point in front of the gigantic globe, and hence hidden from where we stood.
We hurried silently across the smooth metal floor, our footsteps drowned in the rushing sounds of the flying things above. We ran around the great purple sun-sphere of crystal, and came abruptly upon a dramatically terrible scene. Beneath the sphere was an altar of glowing red, with the priests and soldiery all grouped about it. ”

“ Such Austen told me, but the elders say that the ladder is the path to the Purple Sun, and beyond is nothing. Is it true that there is a great nation of the men of your race, a nation of men who know the art of fire that Austen showed us, and greater arts, who can travel in ships over water and through the air like the Krimlu? ”

“ It occurred to me that it was the control lever. I took hold of it and gingerly pushed it back. Great jets of purple gas rushed past the transparent walls about us, and the ship slid backward on the ground. The sensation of motion was most alarming. The illusion of the transparency of the bow of the ship was so perfect that it seemed almost as if we were hanging in space a few feet in front of the mouth of an open tube. It was impossible for me to realize that I was surrounded by solid walls of metal, until I touched them. ”

“ She looked up at me, smiled, looked off to the side, then let her eyes return to mine with curious speculation in them. "What is the Silver Lake," she went on, "you know as well as I, though Austen tried to find its secret. The touch of its water is death—a death that is terrible. And the Purple Ones—you will see them soon enough! They are strange beings who come, no one knows whence, into the land of Astran. The priests tell us that they are 'The Avengers of the Purple Sun.'—but did you come down the ladder as Austen did?" ”

“ Austen insisted that we leave Melvar and Naro behind. There was no use, he said, to expose them to the hardships and dangers of the journey, and it seemed that no harm would be likely to come to them at the cabin. Then, without them, we could travel faster and with less danger of detection. I did not like to leave Melvar, but she was very courageous about it, smiling through her tears. It always takes more courage in those who stay behind and wait than for those who have the lure of mystery and adventure to beckon them on. ”

“ At each end of the colossal cylinder rose a metal tower. At the top of each tower was a fifty-foot globe of blue crystal, slowly turning. Between and above the spheres arched a high-flung span of white fire—a great pulsing sheet of milky opalescent light—that roared and crackled like a powerful electric discharge, and lit the chasm with an unearthly radiance.
Toward the farther side of the floor was a second enormous machine, apparently unconnected with the first, resembling a vast telescope. The white metal tube was a full two hundred feet in length, mounted on massive metal supports. ”

“ It was after noon, and the red sun blazed down on the bare, undulating sandy waste with fearful intensity. The air was still and intolerably hot. Heat waves danced ceaselessly over the uneven sand. I felt the utter loneliness, the wild mystery, and the overwhelming power of the desert. The black cliffs rose cold and solid in the east—a barrier of dark menace. Pillars of black basalt, of dark hornblende, and of black obsidian rose in a precipitous wall of sharp and jagged peaks that curved back to meet the horizon. ”

“ Naro jerked my arm and in a moment we had tumbled into a copse of the red brush. For a moment the bloody radiance was thrown upon us in an intense flood, and the screaming roar was deafening. A few minutes more, and the thing had flashed up and away. A breath of hot purple mist passed over us. When we got to our feet and crept out of the thicket the soldiers were gone.
Swiftly, Naro led me on, keeping in the shadows of the building, on in the cover of the thickets. Once a man sprang suddenly at us from behind a sapphire pillar, diamond sword drawn. ”

“ The flames rushed forward faster, by far, than a human being could force a way through the jungle. With the knowledge that I had just lost the only two beings that in all the world of men ever mattered to me, it hardly seemed worth while to try to save my own life. For a moment I stood there, about to cast myself into the flames. But it is not the nature of an animal to die willingly, no matter how slight the promise of life may be. ”

“ Any attempt to find Austen and induce him to give up his plan of self-sacrifice would be terribly uncertain. Melvar was in immediate danger, and I knew that Austen valued her life above his own. But even then, I knew in my heart that it was too late, though I would not let myself believe it. Fire is a pitiless and remorseless enemy.
At a dead run I started up the trail by which we had entered the clearing. Ever the smoke became thicker and more acrid, while the crackling roar of the fire rang ever louder in my ears. ”

“ I told him. "You don't think—"
"There is no need for you to risk your life," he said in a voice purposely brusque to hide his emotion. "I can do as much by myself. Then there is Melvar. We must get her out of here if we can. I think a great deal of her. If we both should go—and not come back—. No, I want you to stay on top. I know I can trust you to treat her fairly. If I can blast down the earth on their underground world, we might be able to make it back around the Silver Sea, and eventually to the outside." ”

“ I believe the thing had been nourished by the sparkling green vapor, which must have circulated like blood through the protecting crystal sphere.
It seems incredible to find great intelligence in any form of life other than human; but science thinks that life and intelligence must rise and fall in recurring cycles, and that the earth has probably been ruled by many different forms of life, each of which has been blotted out by some cataclysm. The Krimlu were a surviving remnant of archaic ages. ”

“ By that time it was light, and soon, by the brightening of the purple haze above, we knew that the sun was rising. I saw that Austen was looking into the pit. Melvar and I walked to the edge. The great metal tube, which the purple beings had been all night in loading with the green bars, was being swung slowly about upon its mounting, until presently it was pointing at the sky above the Silver Sea. ”

“ At any rate, when I got up, I felt a new man. Austen had set up the apparatus we brought. He had a test tube full of the silver liquid set up in a beam of X-rays, and the spectroscope in position to examine the dense purple gas that was rising from the stuff.
"How is it coming?" I asked him.
He shook his head sadly. "I don't know," he said. "I have a theory, but it doesn't seem to work out right. The key is in sight but it always eludes me. There is energy stored in the silver liquid. It may be that that amazing thing in the sky stores the energy of sunlight in the stuff. ”

“ Here and there were paved courts of the silvery metal, which must have been an aluminum bronze, but the open ground was for the most part grown up in rank thickets of the red brush. The great building showed the wear and breakage of ages. Here and there were great heaps of gleaming crystal, where wonderful edifices had fallen, with the brush grown up around them. Incredible as it may seem, I think the old civilization of Astran had possessed a science that was able to synthetize diamonds and other precious stones, in quantities sufficient even for use as building stone. ”

“ Just two of the ponies were left, and they were near death (I have passed over the hardships of my trip) . I hobbled them on a little patch of grass and brush that grew where water had run from the cliff; pitched my little tent, and found brush to start a tiny fire. I ate supper, with but a scanty cup of water; then, oppressed by the vast mysterious peaks that loomed portentously in the east, shutting out the starlight, I went in the tent and sought my blanket. Then came the first of those terrible and inexplicable occurrences that led up to the great adventure. ”

“ But later I was to meet a far more terrible ray weapon than that slender blue beam.
"With that," said Melvar, "our people fight off the Krimlu at night. But the Krimlu are so many that sometimes they are able to land and take our people. If only we had more of the beams! But there is no man in all Astran who knows how the light is made, or anything save that the blue light shines out to destroy when rock of a certain kind is put into the tube. Austen wished to examine it, and spoke of something he called 'radium ore' but the priests forbade. ”