Jack Williamson

“ I heard a stone rattling and crashing down into the abyss! Someone—or something—was climbing up out of the pit! I crept forward where I could see, and lay tense and silent, a desperate madman, determined to protect my mine against whatever might find it.
At last a human figure clambered up over the brink, and drew itself erect in the edge of the jungle! It was a Sleeper of Mutron! The emaciated form was bent beneath the weight of the bar of gleaming violet metal clamped upon its back. It was clad in tattered, bloody rags. The flesh was bleeding from the fearful climb. ”

“ Forgetting the intense red sky, the strange, smooth sea, and the damp, hot wind, I went below to meet Sam's wonderful biscuit, with fresh steak and fruit from the refrigerator. A very mild and colorless beginning for adventurers newly fallen into an unknown world, but a very sensible one!
After the meal, each of us took a turn on guard in the conning-tower, while the other slept. Nothing happened. The soft hot wind blew steadily out of the south, the bloody glare of the weird sky was changeless, and the sea lay about in a motionless desert. ”

“ When that misty finger of purple light discovered us, I saw a strange vortex of pale green fire spring up about the globe and reach out in our direction. Suddenly I realized that this ship was of the same appearance as the weird thing that had destroyed our cottage! Small hope, I thought, if that force of atomic disintegration were to be released again!
I heard the rapid crashing of the machine gun, as Sam began to fire, and presently bursts of smoke appeared about the gleaming sphere. But to hit a relatively small and rapidly moving target even a mile away is no mean feat of marksmanship. ”

“ I shouted a warning to Sam through the speaking tube, to stand by his little gun.
Xenora laid a light hand on my shoulder and said, in a tense voice: "It is the Sleepers of Mutron, the slaves of the Lord of Flame! They will fight to death—they know not fear!"
As the silver sphere drifted swiftly and silently down upon us, as though borne by an invisible wind, twice I caught a glimpse of a slender ray of purple flame, that darted out of it and moved searchingly over the bare greensward below. And then a rich purple beam fell suddenly and intensely upon the Omnimobile! ”

“ Then I heard a heavy sigh from Sam, and the scraping of his shoe on the floor. Then a match scratched, and a pitiful little yellow flame lit the veranda, showing Sam's lean, earnest face very clearly against the wall of night.
"Thank God we can see it burn!" he muttered. "If they had exhausted the ether here, the jig would have been up with my electrical machinery."
"They! Lord! Do you think somebody—"
He looked toward me, holding up the blazing splinter. "There is the possibility—even a probability—that we have to deal with a force directed by intelligence!" ”

“ Sam started with a hoarse cry, and went off down the hill toward the north at a stumbling run—toward that abyss of alien horror! A moment more I struggled desperately, but that pitiless power overwhelmed me! I followed in his tracks!
And then, a clear rich voice reached me from beyond the hill—a shout in Xenora's rich and ringing tones. It had a clear human overtone of confidence and courage. "Come back, Melvin Dane! Come back, Sam!"
The old scientist stopped uncertainly, passing his hand dazedly before his brow. Abruptly the terror was gone from my mind! ”

“ The little hill was a bare red waste, gleaming with that terrible scarlet glare. The two purple tentacles of misty flame shot out again, and swept searchingly over the spot. Suddenly the green mist stopped its seething motion. Its fires died out. It grew dim, faded, was gone like a cloud of dissipating steam. The white glow of the silver globe waxed dull, and suddenly it, too, was no more.
Quickly the red glow faded from the weirdly denuded hilltop, and the night fell in a heavy mantle. I stood wrapt in a spell of amazement and terror. ”

“ For a long moment Sam was still. Suddenly he aroused himself as if from a daze of pain, and turned again to the instrument boards.
"The earth is not frozen!" he shouted. "The power in the ether is dead!" I thought of the havoc my cannon fire had wrought with the machines about the flaming brain.
In a moment he had the generators going, and the machine crawling to an upright position. Then he turned on the rocket tubes. The crater was filled with the roaring jets of steam, and we were hurled into the crimson sky! ”

“ As I worked, Xenora went in the galley and fixed a lunch. We ate quickly, under the silent pall of bitter tragedy, thinking of the smiling old man that should have been with us.
Then we climbed into the conning-tower, and I switched on the engines. The humming of the generators rose again, and the great machine lumbered clumsily out of the little wood, where it had been hidden for so many happy days. For many hours we held a north-westward course over the green plateaus and through the purple woodlands, with the light of the crimson day shining through the ports. ”

“ I have seen few more welcome sights than the Omnimobile was then. The heaviness of it, the threatening nose of the little gun, the air of irresistible power about it, and even its clumsy, beast-like appearance were reassuring. Sam gave a cheer, and we made the last hundred yards at a run. At last we stumbled up the metal ladder and stood upon the narrow deck again.
We clambered through the manhole. The white electric light of the interior was in strange contrast to the crimson gloom, and the coolness of the air was very refreshing. Xenora was in the cabin, anxiously on her feet. ”

“ When the Red Roof Fell
Abruptly a green light ran through the rosy haze beneath us, and that dreadful twisting bar of radiance—that living, alien tongue of fire—the serpent-like head of the Lord of Flame, was thrust up out of the flickering violet! With its strange, writhing motion, it swept in a wide arc, as though it saw us! It searched the sky, and then drew back in alarm! The terrible, rhythmic throb of the emerald gleam in it grew faster! ”

“ The unearthly radiance of the sky filtered through the jungle roof in a dull crimson light. In the vague, ominous twilight, huge and monstrous tree-trunks rose all about us, as much like great fungoid growths as like normal trees. We pushed through thickets of weird purples and strange metallic hues, under vast masses of hanging green vines, all hung with gigantic incredible blooms that were so bright they seemed to light the dusky forest with their vivid flames of crimson and yellow and blue! ”

“ My father was the last king of Lothar. His was a troubled reign, and he has been dead many hundred sleeps!"
"Don't grieve so, my princess," I said. "There are still vast cities above the waters, where men are powerful and wise, and where the sky is blue and a white sun shines, and where there is a domain many times larger than all this abyss!"
"Can we go there—ever?" she questioned eagerly.
"No. We can never leave this land, even if the Lord of Flame is killed. The machine cannot break through the roof of water from below. And the power of the Lord of Flame is coming to earth. ”

“ And the swift searching fingers of purple flame reached out of the silver ships, to guide the thick, swirling vortexes of atomic disintegration. Under that terrible force of flowing green, the plant creatures turned red, battled on for a moment as they glowed with an awful scarlet radiance, and fell in a rain of crimson sparks that fast faded into nothingness!
And ever the throbbing emerald column rising above the sea of ruby mist below us—the writhing serpentine bar of green that was the Lord of Flame—moved and twisted, directing its armies! ”

“ At last I went back into the conning-tower. Sam stood alert at the controls, with an odd, exultant light in his eyes, and with a smile of joy and confidence on his lean face. With his hands on the levers, he turned to me and said:
"The little old machine's a wonder, Mel! She runs on sea, land, or air! It's a great feeling to drive her! She'd go anywhere! You know, I wish we had time to make a trial for the moon!" ”

“ In other words, the color of the sky slowly ran through all the colors of the spectrum toward the blue! The sun changed from a vast round blood-ruby to a blazing yellow diamond, flooding the earth with a sodium light! To an emerald, huge and supernally bright, coloring the sea and the sky with a dim and ghastly green radiance! The green melted into a cold and awful blue! The frozen sapphire slowly turned violet! And the violet sun grew soft and dim—and dim—until it went out utterly! ”

“ How often, in the incredible adventure to come, was I to fear that I was never again to see the blue of the sky, or to feel the ancient spell of a limitless surging sea!
I took a last deep breath, and went below. I was a little surprised to see that Sam was closing the ventilators, opening the oxygen apparatus and air purifiers, inspecting the pumps and valves, getting ready to dive.
"Surely we can't start till morning?"
"Why not? At two hundred fathoms night is the same as day." ”

“ A man alone, ragged, without even a pocket-knife, lost in the wilderness of a strange world, and possessing only a modicum of scientific knowledge!
What folly, indeed, for one in such circumstances to pit himself against such a science! But that seemed the only hope for victory. With Sam in my place, the outlook would have been brighter. If I had a fair scientific education, Sam knew enough to raise cities and armies in the wilderness!
For many hours I struggled toward the east—away from the violet glow—over the desert of rocks and craters, through the ruby mist. ”

“ It is an odd truth of nature that there is some form of life adapted for each locality. There are the mosses and reindeer of the frigid north, the cactus and lizards of the burning deserts, the blind creatures of the Mammoth Cave, the stranger things of the deepest seas! May it not be that there are entities living out in space, or in the earth's interior, of which we may never know? Such were my thoughts as we dropped to meet the menace that had risen from under the sea! ”

“ My generator is still keeping up the interference in the ether; but, sooner or later, the force we have come to fight—and it must be that 'Lord of Flame' of Xenora's, and the thing we saw from the hill—will break down the interference! And then the earth—will freeze!"
"But what can we do against—that? And Xenora! Sam, I can't leave her. She's worth more to me than the earth! There's plenty of room in here for us to live our lives out. I've been thinking about it—and I can't go!"
He nodded sympathetically. "I know, Mel. She means a lot to you. But perhaps we will win and save our lives, too." ”

“ The Scarlet Pall
The coming of the terror was slow and gradual enough—and as silent as the tomb! With all the magic of the quiet woodland beauty throbbing in my being, I was strolling up the narrow gravel walk toward the peaceful vine-covered cottage, where Sam was sitting in sleepy content. Gazing idly into the measureless infinity of the liquid azure sky, I saw the beginning come, so slowly that I scarcely marked it! ”

“ It was some time before I got one focused clearly in the glasses and then I gasped in astonishment and terror at the weird creature that seemed to spring at me from the lenses. It was neither bird nor winged reptile! It was not an animal at all!
It was a winged plant!
The great flapping wings were broad and green, braced with white veins like the leaf of a plant. The long body was plated with coarse brown scales, and tapered to a green-fringed tail. Eight long blood-red tentacles dangled in pairs below the body. They were thick, and the coils of each must have measured many yards in length. ”

“ What, indeed, could I, with my puny machine, do against the great science that that city of mystery represented? The men of one once mighty empire were now slaves to it! What hope was there for me? Was not the human race, like the bison or the dodo, about to fall before a superior power?
But there would be no turning back. I saw to it that all the machinery was in order, and returned to the conning-tower. Before me was the instrument board that controlled the electric arc and the rocket tubes, as well as the machinery. ”

“ I forgot in the idyllic happiness of Xenora's companionship—or tried to forget. If the roof of water were changed to ice it would only be more secure! The maiden and I could live out our lives in this strange land, without regard to the fate of the world. One of her matchless smiles, or a note of her golden laughter, was worth more than all the earth!
Meanwhile, Sam was immersed in his laboratory work, in the examination of the prism of blue metal, and in his curious pet. The plant creature still grew with remarkable speed, and always showed most remarkable intelligence. ”

“ The seat of the menace we thought to conquer was a mile below us yet!
As the hours went by, and we still went northward at our crawling pace (we went slowly because Sam thought that the use of the engines at full power would create an etheric disturbance that would reveal our position to our mysterious enemy) . The jagged rim of the abyss rose steadily out of the sea. The cliffs, when I focused my powerful glasses upon them, seemed composed of sheer columns of blue rock, reaching up to meet the red roof of waters like gigantic prisms of blue basalt. ”

“ I had a fleeting glimpse of the metal brain—the vast cylinder of violet—with the green beam still throbbing from it, and with the last of the silver ships battling the victorious army of plants that swarmed about it!
"The roof is lifting!" Sam cried. "The equilibrium was very delicate—the gas that kept issuing from the earth was lifting the waters to the danger point, and your explosion carried them past! The attempt to freeze the earth was probably undertaken because a roof of ice would have been more secure!" ”

“ With such a girl as Xenora, a man might be supremely happy anywhere. We tramped together about the grove, gathered the tiny, bright-red flowers in the green meadows, and bathed in the cool dark pools, where the river flowed beneath the purple trees. Sometimes she sang to me the folk-songs of her people, monuments of the high estate that Lothar had once enjoyed. ”

“ Impulsively she reached her slender hand out to take mine. "You have won, Melvin Dane!" her soft voice said. "The ship of Mutron is fallen! We shall not be slaves of the Lord of Flame! We shall not die the violet death in the pit of Xath!"
"I hope not, my Xenora," I said. "I hope——" and I stopped in a little confusion. I was not really embarrassed, but I could not go on. Really, talking to a princess like Xenora is quite a different thing from making protestations of love to a being of one's dreams. ”

“ I saw that the body, lying under the wing alone, had not been crushed by the fall of the monster.
"We'll be able to tell what manner of mankind we have to deal with here," Sam said, though I scarcely heard him. "If our man was at all civilized, there ought to be ornaments, or remnants of clothing. I hardly expected human life here. But it may be a human science that is threatening our world!"
He stumbled over the end of one of the thick red tentacles. It moved uncertainly, and he stopped in a sort of fascinated horror. ”

“ After we had eaten, and all had helped wash the dishes, all in the same gay spirit, Sam got out the box in which he had put the little creature he had named Alexander. I had quite forgotten all about the diminutive winged plant. With mingled curiosity and repulsion I watched him unfasten the box. I had not yet recovered from my instinctive horror at sight of the flying plants. Xenora seemed to share my antipathy toward them. But Sam has always seemed to care as much for wild life as for men; and he seemed to consider the little creature as natural a pet as a dog. ”

“ It was twenty years ago, when I was just five years old, that the Green Girl first came into my dreams. Sam had rigged up, for my edification, an old fashioned radio set, with headphones. In the long, lonely silences of the warm Florida nights, when a less indulgent guardian would have had me in bed, I sat up with those old phones on my ears, exploring the ether, feeling near the infinite mystery of space. I listened with childish intentness to the odd noises of the static, eagerly dreaming of calls from other planets. ”

“ For a long time we lay there watching that desolate, pitiful scene, and then Xenora touched my arms, and we slipped back down the ridge. She was silent, with grief and despair in her eyes.
"See!" she whispered at last. "See! Lothar is dead! The Lord of Flame has killed it! The men are poor struggling wretches; they could do nothing even if the flame were gone! ”