For I had determined to enter the abyss. I knew that was what Sam would have me do, rather than lose time in an attempt to learn his fate. Xenora was eager to cast her lot with mine, but I would not hear of it.
A choking lump was in my throat as I staggered aboard the Omnimobile, and closed the manhole with a trembling hand. I gave a final heart-breaking glance to the splendid girl, majestic and erect, even in her pain, standing desolate and alone by the tent. Then I turned on the generators, and drove north along the lake shore.
I had the rude map that Sam had drawn from Xenora's knowledge. It showed the pit of the Lord of Flame to be just north of the lake, separated from it only by a surprisingly narrow wall of cliffs which, the girl said, had been a highway of her fathers, though it was now covered with jungle. And the city of Mutron was shown north of me, on the brink of the pit of Xath.
Steadily I drove northward, in a daze of fevered pain. It seems an eternity when I look back upon it, but it could not have been many hours. Automatically I kept in the shelter of the purple trees. At last I emerged on the edge of a great plateau, covered with the green vegetation, many miles across. On the south and west, from whence I had come, it was surrounded by purple trees—by the thick purple wood in which I had halted. On the north the great cliffs towered up to the sharp-edged scarlet roof, four miles above. It was strange to see the blue walls cut off so abruptly by the red. The sky was like a red lake seen inverted in a mirror. Those blue cliffs were hardly a dozen miles away now—I had to bend back my head to see the sharp line where the roof cut them off.
On the east side of that plateau, there was—nothing!
Beyond, lay the pit of Xath, with the faint ruby mist above it, filled as always with the wavering reflections of violet flames. And a half dozen miles before me, on the brink of that pit, stood—Mutron!
The City of the Sleepers!
A strange scene it was! A city of silver metal! Domes and towers and pyramids of argent whiteness! Vast incredible machines! Huge and oddly wrought structures! Titanic cubes and cylinders and cones! All of gleaming silver! The city shone with a cold light. It was as weird, as unearthly, as a dead city of the moon! It had the silent, ghostly gleam of moonlight! It was wrapped in mystery, clad in frozen fear!
And the city was not idle. Those vast amazing machines were moving. Silver globe-ships were drifting in silent haste above it! And ever and anon, one of them dropped over the rim, into the pit of Xath, or one floated unexpectedly up out of that abyss!
As I stood there in the Omnimobile, in the shadow of the last of the purple trees, my heart grew sick again with doubt. 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 started the hydrodyne generators at their full capacity, and then threw the switch. As the half-million horse-power went through the resistance coils, jets of super-heated steam roared out of the nozzles, condensing in white rushing clouds. The terrific force of the jets uprooted the purple trees, and the machine vibrated to the mighty blast. I was hurled into the air. With a speed that swiftly increased to many hundreds of miles per hour, I hurtled the broad plain, and over the ghostly white city of silver—and into the abyss!
The plateau ended abruptly as if cut off with a knife. The crater fell sheer away before me, stretching to the vast blue cliffs in the north, and to the line of living purple and green that marked the beginning of the eastward forests. Only a thin green line separated the abyss from the lake on the south, which, in the reflected light of the scarlet sky, horribly suggested a sea of blood, ready to flow into the pit.
Undoubtedly the crater was of volcanic origin. I could not determine its depth, nor the state of its floor—it was filled with the thick crimson mist. The wavering tongues of violet fire still flickered through it, throbbing strangely, like the reflection of fires below—hinting unpleasantly of alien life.
As the rich green plain vanished beneath me, and I sped high over that busy strange white city and into the haze of the abyss, an odd feeling of the wildness and the unfamiliar terror of the place stole over me again. I was very thankful for the invention of Sam's, for the thin helmet of wire gauze above my head!
Suddenly a great twisting bar of green fire writhed up, like a serpent's head, from the nest of flames. It swung and coiled and twisted through the rosy mists with a slow, deliberate motion, like an incredible reptile of flame, raising its head,looking, searching! Despite the helmet, great fear swept my brain like a hot flame!
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Flaming Brain
Mighty winds whipped about me. The roaring jets of steam drove the throbbing machine on over the rosy mists, and over the flickering violet flames. And I fell—dropped into the hidden pit. Vividly I saw the great writhing head of green rising above the fire-fog ahead, with that in its waving, serpentine motion that told me that its eyes were already upon me! I was certain that it was a living, sentient entity, that it was intelligent!
Could my weapons avail against it?
I fell through the rosy clouds. The green and purple rim of the abyss grew vague, and the blue cliffs in the north assumed a misty indistinctness. The red mist shone until it seemed that I was swimming in a fog of crimson fire.
And all the while the bright beautiful face of Xenora was before me. The light of her clear violet eyes drove the strangeness and the fear from my mind, leaving only my pain at leaving her. I drove the machine mechanically, lost in a daze of grief.
For ages, it seemed, I shot forward through the haze. At last I made out a bare floor of sand and rocks, pitted with circular craters. It was a good thousand feet below, and still dim in the haze. I opened the bow tubes, and the force of my fall was checked. In three minutes more, the machine struck the earth, bow first. It tore a vast hole in the sand, and rolled over twice, coming to rest on its side. Fortunately it had been built to withstand such knocks; fortunately, too, I was strapped in my cushioned seat.
I got the motors started and worked the machine to an upright position. The crater floor was visible for half a mile about in all directions. It was a dead, desolate waste of hard sand and twisted black volcanic rocks. Further vision was cut off by the rosy mist that hung above the floor.
Then I saw, far before me, a bright violet gleam through the crimson mist! Indistinctly I saw a broad green shaft of pulsing fire rise from it, to lose itself in the crimson sky! That intense violet light, from which the flickering reflections came, and from which the green beam reached up, I knew, must be the seat of the Lord of Flame!
I started the engines once more, and the machine rolled mightily forward over the bare rocks, with a great clangor of metal upon stone, forging ahead at last to meet the alien menace. It roared over bare sandy flats, rounded great boulders, crashed into pits, crawled through craters! Then, suddenly, that terrible green flame flared out toward me! I knew that I had been discovered! Like a lance of green flame it flashed through the red gloom above! Its motion was alert, surprised, terrible!
I set the loading mechanism of the little gun to fire high explosive, and put it in action, hurling shells in the direction of that violet light. And still I drove swiftly on. The flashes of the explosions were visible through the mist ahead, but the deep violet light still glowed.
I turned on the reserve power units, and the machine vibrated from their throbbing drone. I threw another switch, and the deep purr of the giant transformers filled the ship. The mighty white tongue of the electric arc reached out ahead of me!
And the Omnimobile plunged on!
Two of the silver spheres—the ships of Mutron—appeared before me, with the green vortexes of the atomic disintegration springing up about them. The great arc brought them down in incandescent wreckage almost as soon as they came in view!
The violet mist grew brighter, more distinct. I knew the shells were bursting near it, and that the arc would reach it soon. The faithful old machine lumbered rapidly on over the wild and twisted rocky desert—a waste as terrible as the mountains of the moon!
In fact, that crater-pitted floor bore a curious resemblance to the typical lunar landscape, and the forces that produced them must have been similar.
Then the mist cleared, and I saw the form of the thing that gave the violet light! It was scores of feet thick, and hundreds tall! It was a vast smooth cylinder of violet fire! It shone like metal, which was white hot and seen through violet glass! The color of it ran and flickered on the surface! Violet sheets and bands crawled and flashed upon it, and violet flame flowed away from it in many little tongues. The thing was perfectly smooth and cylindrical, five hundred feet in height—a Titanic "monolith" of metal!
Still the Omnimobile lumbered irresistibly onward. The little gun crashed regularly, and the shells threw up the earth about that weird cylinder half a mile ahead. And the great white flame of the arc was playing far out toward it like the sword of the angel of death!
I saw a cluster of curious gleaming machines about the base of the great cylinder. One of my shells must have struck them, for they suddenly seemed to collapse and dissolve in a cloud of white smoke.
Abruptly a huge, terrible bar of green fire rose from the top of the cylinder almost like an extension of it—it was like a beam of green light from a vast searchlight. But it bent and twisted, as if it were alive! It moved like a snake, writhed toward me!
And then came the catastrophe!
A great pit in the rocky desert suddenly appeared before me—a hundred-foot chasm! I made a wild attempt to swing the machine around it. But, busy with the arc, the generators, and the gun, I had seen it too late. The brink loomed before me! Desperately I set the brakes. The machine paused jerkily, hesitated, then leaped over the rim! For a breathless second it fell down the sheer crater wall! I had no time to use the rockets! It crashed heavily upon the rocks!
I was torn from my seat and flung cruelly against the side of the conning-tower! My helmet was knocked off! And on the instant, a red storm of fear broke about me! It beat down on my brain like a rain of horror! It throbbed with an archaic rhythm, stirring strange emotions that overruled my reason and volition! Terror swept about me like a fierce wind from a hot desert of death, picking up my soul and sweeping it away to a fate unnamable!
I struggled with it terribly, with all my will. But it beat down my feeble barriers like a resistless tide. It burned away my will like a hot flame in my brain!
That horror came over me in a vast, overwhelming wave! It seized my body! My hand moved unwillingly, and cut off the current of the great arc! And then my body was struggling to its feet, opening the manhole, and clambering out of the machine. But still the thing did not haveme! I was still an independent entity, that sat apart and watched.
I knew that I had succumbed to the hypnotic control of the alien power that dwelt in that vast metal cylinder. I was another of the slaves of the Lord of Flame—of the Sleepers of Mutron!
CHAPTER XXIX
Xenora's Sacrifice
I was moved out of the machine like an automaton by the terrible force that controlled me. My body was no longer my own! It was swept along as if by a mighty wind. That force of horror roared and throbbed in my brain. Red flames of fear flickered before my eyes. I was sick and faint with terror. But my body did not collapse—it was relentlessly moved by that terrible force from the violet cylinder. I was utterly helpless—I felt the hopeless horror of one chained before a loathsome monster!
Suddenly I wished fiercely for death, for only death could bring me freedom from the horror that swept in a throbbing torrent through my brain. But even death was beyond my reach, for my hands were not my own!
For a moment that power left me standing on the side of the overturned machine. The Omnimobile lay on the sandy floor of the crater, which may have been a hundred feet in depth and as many yards across. Against the red sky, above the black cliffs of the pit's farther rim, towered the violet metal cylinder—the flaming metal brain whose hypnotic control ruled my body.
For a moment I was left standing there, and then my body was springing down and running across the rock-strewn sand toward the cliffs. It ran like a machine—beyond my control! In vain I tried even to stumble and fall! In a few moments it reached the rim. It clambered wildly up. I know that in my normal self I could never have surmounted that sheer wall. But the telepathic force from the flaming brain seemed to give my limbs superhuman strength! Soon I was at the top, with bleeding hands and tattered clothing!
And my body ran on toward the violet monostyle!
It was two hundred yards away—a Titanic smooth upright cylinder of metal, the polished surface crawling and flowing with violet flame, with the great incredible serpent-like beam of green rising from the top.
It was astounding—in the strangeness of its aspect, and in its inexplicable suggestion of alien intelligence! But how could there be intelligence in metal?
And then I saw the men about it!
Two of the vast silver spheres were stopped on the ground below the cylinder, oddly dwarfed by its vast height. And about them were men! They were the green slaves—the Sleepers of Mutron! Their bodies were naked but for tattered scraps of cloth. Fastened upon their backs by the cruel metal clamps, they bore the strange prisms!
But those bars of metal were not blue like the one we had taken from the dead man! They shone with the same mysterious violet radiance as the Titanic monostyle. They were parts of it—akin to it!
The men moved like sleepers, or like machines, as I felt that I was moving—as if their wills were dead! They toiled in tireless haste, without confusion. Many were carrying burdens. And it seemed that some were polishing the surface of the cylinder, or applying some luminous substance to it. Near the ground they were quite plainly visible, clinging to its surface like flies, and toiling furiously. Higher up on the colossal cylinder they were but dancing black specks within the violet flame!
The ground about was pitted with shell holes from my bombardment, and at one side I saw the twisted wreck of the great machine I had struck. It is possible that I had hit the great cylinder itself, but it might have received the fire of the biggest gun in Christendom with little injury.
In two minutes more I had been drawn to within fifty yards of that vast shining column of metal. Then the force of fear that had seized my body permitted it to stop, and I stood still. That awful twisting beam of green flame reached out of the top of the thing, and bent down over me! It touched me!
That awful twisting beam of green flame reached out of the top of the thing and bent down over me! It touched me!
That awful twisting beam of green flame reached out of the top of the thing and bent down over me! It touched me!
That awful twisting beam of green flame reached out of the top of the thing and bent down over me! It touched me!
I felt tiny whip-like fingers of it feeling—exploring my body! The green radiance grew denser about me. It enshrouded me in a fog of green light—so painfully intense, blinding and terrible, that I tried to shut my eyes against it. But that horror held them open!
And that green fire came into my body, and into my brain. It was eager, insistent, questioning—and so horrible that my being rocked with pain. It questioned; it commanded! It sought to know of me, and of my companions, of the Omnimobile, and of the world we had left above. I struggled against it, fiercely, terribly, until I felt my limbs chilling with the sweat of the conflict. But it won!
It took my mind as it had taken my body! It beat about my brain like a vast storm; it penetrated my being in a flood of green fire! My brain reeled, was swept by an avalanche of awful power! I sank at last into merciful oblivion that was the counterpart of the death I had so desired!
At last, when I was vaguely conscious again, I had a curious feeling of mental exhaustion. I felt as if I had undergone a fearful ordeal. I felt as if I had toiled as I slept, as if I had answered many questions put to me by that power. It seemed as if the green light had swept the contents from my brain, had searched all my knowledge.
As I awoke, bodily sensation returned, and I felt someone lifting me gently from the bare earth upon which I lay: My limbs were cold and stiff; but the awful force that had controlled them was, for the moment, relaxed.
I opened my eyes, and cried out, first in incredulous joy, and then in utter despair. Xenora—the Green Girl—was lifting my head. There was anxiety and care in her violet eyes, and unutterable fatigue was shown in her body. She had followed me into the pit, to give her life with mine!
"Oh, Xenora, my dream girl, why did you come? There was no need for you to give your life!" I protested in bitter despair as she raised me in her arms and held me against her breath.
"I felt you battle with the Lord of Flame. I felt it conquer you. So I left the camp, to come."
"And how, in all wonders, did you get into this pit, and so soon?"
"My chieftain, it is not so soon! For three sleeps I have come through the forests and rocks, without stopping, while you lay still in the power of the Flame!"
"But why—why—come to throw away your life—"
"See, I bring you the wonderful thing of Barsoni Sam, that shuts out the horror. I give it to you, and you can go on with your battle against the Flame!—No, you can never conquer the Flame! But fly! Go back to your land!"
Even then I felt the horror awakening again, felt that fearful force directed again upon me. With a single quick motion, before I could prevent her, Xenora had whipped the electro-screen helmet from her head and drawn it about my own.
"Fly," she whispered fiercely. "The Sleepers of Mutron! And think not of me! Fly! Even from me!"
The horror relaxed, and I collapsed in a daze of relief. In a moment I had recovered and got to my feet. Xenora was a score of yards away, dashing off. I ran after her, calling for her to take back the precious helmet.
Suddenly she stopped. A convulsion ran through her frame. She turned, with her face a mask of livid horror. She was in the power of the Flame! She was a Sleeper! She bent, seized a rock, and hurled it at my head with superhuman strength. I dodged and it hurtled past my ear. She sprang at me like an animal, drawing the hunting knife I had left her.
I turned and ran wildly, as a score of the Sleepers came running. I passed close by that violet metal monostyle, and it seemed that its crawling violet fires reached out for me. I ran desperately toward the east! I heard the strange cries of the Sleepers of Mutron behind me! I felt the awful green flame writhing above me, but even it could not penetrate the helmet!
I was insane with terror!
I ran on and on, through eternities of heart-breaking effort. At last I stopped exhausted, with pounding temples and bursting lungs, to look behind me. The flaming brain was but a dull violet glow against the red sky. A desolate waste of bare rugged rocks and great round craters lay about me beneath the crimson mist. All was silent! The sounds of pursuit were gone!
CHAPTER XXX
"The Nitrate Plantation"
Should I go on, or return and try to save Xenora, as she had rescued me? That question throbbed in my brain. The answer would have been easy enough if I had had her alone to consider. I might cheerfully have surrendered myself to that dreaded power to save her—any man would have done as much! But what of the menace to the earth? Should I give up the struggle?
For a long time I stood there on the rim of a strange crater, lost in indecision. At last my sense of duty to mankind was victor. I set off wearily toward the east again. The Omnimobile was so near the flaming brain that I dared not attempt to reach it, even if I had been confident of finding it. And upon consideration, I was sure that if the machine was left as it was, it would be only as a trap for me.
A sorry hope, indeed, was I for victory in the struggle with that vast alien power for the safety of earth! 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. And I came unexpectedly upon an explanation for the origin of the crimson haze. Thin clouds of red luminous gas were hissing from some of the craters or fumaroles—escaping from the radium deposits in the core of the earth, to float up and augment the radioactive cloud that held up the waters!
I was half dead with weariness when I reached the mile-high cliffs at the crater's rim, and half insane with grief for Xenora, and with angry doubt of my wisdom in deserting her. I have little memory of how I got up that wall of rocks. I remember climbing until I was worn out, of toiling upward with bleeding hands and feet, of fighting on when I was dizzy for want of food and water, of struggling up when my body screamed in pain for me to surrender and drop to merciful oblivion in the abyss! I remember sleeping many times on ledges or in crevices when I could go no farther.
But at last I reached the rim!
I climbed out upon the flat plateau to the east of the abyss, a strange wilderness of green plains and purple trees, but infinitely welcome after the tortures through which I had been. I stumbled across the meadows until I found a little stream. Eagerly I wet my parched mouth, and presently I slaked my thirst, and ate a few of the date-like fruits of the flowering trees. And then I slept.
For a period of many months thereafter, I led a strange wild life—the life of a beast or a savage. It now seems to me that I must have been more than half insane, yet I had cunning of a sort. Wandering about in the woodland in the first few days, before my strength was fully recovered, I came upon a great lump of native copper. With hammer and anvil of stone I set out to shape some tools of it. First I made a knife, and then a broad blade for a wooden spear. With those weapons I soon had stalked and killed one of the great fat sloths. After several weary efforts, I achieved a fire by friction, and feasted upon roasted meat.
Many were the mad and impossible schemes that my fevered brain formed for making an attack on the flaming brain of metal, only to reject each upon consideration. As I had hurtled through the air above the pit, in my ill-starred attack in the Omnimobile, I had been much impressed by the narrowness of the bridge of cliffs between the great lake and the abyss. Now it occurred to me that I might dig a canal, and let the waters of the lake in to flood the Lord of Flame.
With that in mind, I made an expedition to the isthmus, armed with copper pick and spade. I found that my eyes had curiously deceived me, from the air. The land bridge was a wall of rock, nowhere less than a hundred feet high and four hundred thick, covered with a rank growth of jungle. Along it, even as Xenora had said, was a ruined road. Here and there a crumbling stone monument rose from the jungle like a bleached skull of the dead civilization.
There was no hope of digging a canal. A hundred men, in ten years, might have been able to cut a tunnel through that wall of stone, with modern tools and explosives! Nitroglycerine! That started me on a new line of thought. I had once made chemistry a hobby. It was not impossible. For Sam, it would have been child's play. But, alas! there was no help from my old friend!
I set to work at once. For many months I labored. The task was a tremendous one. The first necessity was an adequate supply of nitrates. I was not fortunate enough to discover a natural deposit, as heroes of fiction usually are; so I set out to make a "nitrate plantation" such as is used for the manufacture of nitrates in a primitive way. I dug a great shallow pit, lined it with waterproof clay, and filled it with alternate layers of wood ashes obtained by burning the purple trees, and everything I could pick up in the way of nitrogenous animal and vegetable refuse. At last it was filled and wet down with water from my clay-bed. I had nothing to do but wait until the nitrogen products of decomposition had united themselves with the potassium bases in the wood ashes.
Then I fell to the mining of iron pyrites, and to the building of a furnace in which I could burn my pottery apparatus. After many disheartening failures I was able to set up apparatus that I thought would suffice for the manufacture of my acids. I burned rude jars, glazed with sand, in which to carry and store my reagents and explosives.
My memory of all that time is a dim dream of terror. Many times for long hours I stood on the brink, gazing into the flickering mist, thinking of Xenora and half determined to give it all up and to seek her. But always I went back to my mad task, toiling in a daze of grief and despair.
Before I did anything more in the way of manufacture, I paid another visit to the isthmus, and selected the site for the mine which was to tear an opening in it. I found a deep crevice in the rocks, and spent many weeks in clearing and enlarging it, until I had ready a chamber deep in the heart of the barrier, below the level of the lake.
During all that time I lived upon the little fruits and upon the flesh of the sloths I killed. I carefully saved the fat from the latter, saponified it with alkalies leached from wood ashes, and removed the soap by "salting down" with evaporated brine from a salt spring. I collected and stored the glycerine until I had many gallons.
At last, judging that my "nitrate plantation" had had time to serve its purpose, I dug it up, leached the product, and crystallized the saltpeter by evaporation in earthen pots. The yield was satisfactory in quantity and fair in quality, but it had cost fearful effort.
Then I set about the manufacture of sulphuric acid by roasting the iron pyrites with nitrate in my crude apparatus, collecting the acid in wet pottery condensers. That took many days, and the next step was making nitric acid by boiling saltpeter in sulphuric acid and condensing the fumes.
At last, when I had the three necessary chemicals—glycerine, and nitric and sulphuric acids—I set out to transport them separately to my mine, to avoid the hazard of the transportation of the finished product. That, again, was a heart-breaking task, for I had materials enough to make several hundred quarts of nitroglycerine, and the distance was half a dozen miles.
But ragged, ill-kept savage that I was, I had collected on the cliffs above my shaft the materials for the manufacture of a good quantity of high explosive. For one in my position, it had been a considerable achievement.
CHAPTER XXXI
The Mine on the Brink
At last, in haste and fear and trembling, I began the task of mixing my chemicals, dumping them into vats of water cooled by evaporation, under a rude shed to cut off the fierce heat of the red sky. Even with all my precautions to prevent a premature explosion, the hazard was fearful. I washed the nitroglycerine, and carried it in earthen jars down into the heart of the cliffs. I meant to die in the final explosion, but I was afraid the stuff would go off before it was in place.
But finally I got the last of the rough jars into position. Then I closed the mouth of the chamber with rocks and rubbish, to be sure that the full force of the explosion would be exerted upon the cliff. I lit the fuse I had prepared—a tall candle of the sloth's fat, which, burning low, would ignite a powder train; and that would set off a charge of gunpowder I had placed by the jars of nitroglycerine.
I knew that, if my terrible months of toil had not been in vain, a few hours more would see a raging torrent of water rushing into the pit. At last I judged my task completed. I walked a few yards north to the rim. I stood on the brink of that sheer precipice, and gazed down into the rosy mist, alight, as always, with the wavering, reflected fires of the metal brain. I made no attempt to get beyond the range of the explosion. Hope was dead. Life meant no more to me. I was ready to be swept into the abyss on the crest of the wave that, if my plans went well, would drown the flaming brain.
For a long time I stood there waiting, lost in dreams of Xenora. I had no doubt that she was dead. My regret was bitter; I stormed vainly and passionately at fate. If my reason had been tottering, now it was almost gone. I wept, and cursed, and then laughed loud and bitterly. A strange figure I must have been, wild and unkempt, red and burned from exposure, half naked, with insanity in my eyes, laughing and waiting to be blown to my doom!
And then I heard a sound that brought me into silent and cunning alertness! I sprang to the mouth of my shaft and crouched like a savage with my great copper-bladed spear at hand. 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.
With the dull, mechanical motions of a sleeping person, or of a walking corpse, galvanized by some weird power, that terrible figure got deliberately to its feet. The bloody hands raised a long, glittering weapon of silver metal. And it plodded dully, lifelessly, toward me. And then a hoarse, wild cry echoed through the silent jungle—my own scream!
The Sleeper was Xenora!
With her old intuition of my thoughts, she had been able to penetrate my helmet! Through her, the Lord of Flame had read my thoughts of victory! She had been sent to prevent the mine's explosion, to snuff out that candle flame!
If she heard my scream, she paid no heed. She walked on toward me, with the same weary, mechanical gait. There was no light, no life in her eyes. They stared straight ahead, dully, unseeing! And the strange silver tube was held ready in her hand. She was more like a moving corpse—a dead avenger—than a living person!
A mad storm of desires arose in my brain. How I longed to spring up, to take that dear body in my arms, to minister to its hurts, to have the Green Girl for my own again! It took all my will to hold me in my hiding place. But this was not Xenora! It was a Sleeper of Mutron, a slave of the Lord of Flame!
It was a fearful choice before me! But my resolution held! I would carry on if it tore out my heart. With a burning pain in my breast, I ran my fingers over the jagged copper blade, and tensed my muscles for a spring!
Perhaps, after all, we would be better dead.
My madness was gone, but cold, grim determination remained. I knew that I would not hesitate. The silent, sleeping figure of the Green Girl was but a dozen yards from me, and I raised my ragged blade!
Then—a shadow upon the crimson sky! A whisper that grew to a mighty roar! The beat of many wings! A strange and ringing cry from the air above! A shouted, imperative, strange-toned command! Sam's well-remembered voice! A rushing sweep of vast green wings before my eyes! A tempest of wind as they beat the air! Xenora snatched up and out of my sight by great red tentacles!
I was petrified in incredulous amazement. It seemed impossible that Sam should be alive. Yet, there had been no definite proof of his death. And, I thought, it must have been Alexander that carried him, and that had swept up Xenora.
In a moment I had aroused myself, and dashed out of my hiding place beneath the purple trees. It was an amazing sight that met my eyes. There were numberless thousands of the flying plants on the wing above! The red sky was flecked with their green wings! In a strange semblance to military order they flew, like fleets of battle-planes. In scores and hundreds they dived and circled, in perfect formation. Many of them, I saw, carried weapons—vast clubs, or huge metal-tipped spears, or heavy stones and masses of metal.
In a strange semblance to military order they flew, like fleets of battle-planes.... Many of them, I saw, carried weapons.... And then a flight of them swept downward again, and I saw Sam, mounted on one....
In a strange semblance to military order they flew, like fleets of battle-planes.... Many of them, I saw, carried weapons.... And then a flight of them swept downward again, and I saw Sam, mounted on one....
In a strange semblance to military order they flew, like fleets of battle-planes.... Many of them, I saw, carried weapons.... And then a flight of them swept downward again, and I saw Sam, mounted on one....
And then a flight of them swept downward again, and I saw Sam, mounted on one that must have been Alexander—though the things all looked alike to me. He was evidently controlling the whole squadron with his shouts and gestures. The old scientist still seemed strong and able.
Then I saw Xenora. She was still in the clutch of the winged steed of Sam's. Even as I looked, the red tentacles tore off the flaming violet prism and hurled it into the abyss.
The weird, amazing creature dived. An incredible thing it was, with its armored brown body as large as a shark's, with the vast flower of the flowing colors about its head, with red tentacles like those of a gigantic scarlet octopus, and with wings like those of a green airplane!
It bore down upon me! A great crimson tentacle reached down and picked me up! I was swept through the air, held lightly in that strange grasp, and lifted until I was face to face with Sam, who sat astride the creature! He reached out his strong brown hand and grasped my own.
"Mel, old man, it's some luck to find you! And what do you think of my army? A couple of the flying dragons captured Alec and me, so I've been making the best of a bad situation. The things are really quite intelligent, and I've been drilling them for months. They're hereditary enemies of the alien civilization, anyhow. There's going to be some fight when we meet the silver ships!" Exultant, joyous triumph rang in his tones. He had not noticed my strange condition.
At last I was sufficiently recovered to speak. "I've got a ton of nitroglycerine in that rock," I stammered. "The lake will be running in the pit in an hour or so." My voice had a curious rusty sound.
"Nitroglycerine! You've been making it, and planting a mine! No wonder you look like a ghost! And how comes Xenora to have that damned metal bar on her?"
Abruptly I broke down into uncontrollable tears of relief and joy. I did not try to answer. In a few minutes the vast army of winged monsters had wheeled about, and was headed north again, over the crimson mists—line after regular line of beating green wings that bore the strangest army of history to the strangest battle ever fought!
But, at the moment, I was paying little attention, for I was mounted on another of those vast flying creatures; and in my arms was Xenora! She was limp, unconscious, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion. But she was free again from the Lord of Flame! With tears of joy streaming down my face, I tried to dress her bleeding hands and feet.
CHAPTER XXXII
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!
And quickly the crimson sky ahead of our flying army of green-winged monsters was filled with fleets of the silver spheres! They rose swiftly, by the hundred, in long, gleaming lines—floating, drifting, darting, as though carried in swift, cyclonic winds. And then in smoothly sailing squadrons they advanced to meet us, with the swirling green mists of the disintegration force reaching out before them!
The aerial battle-lines met! The winged monsters joined in mad conflict with the silver ships! It was a fierce struggle—a terrible scene! The plant-things swept to the attack, scores in number for each great ship. With desperate, incredible energy they wielded their gigantic clubs and spears; or, wheeling high above the silver vessels, dropped their missiles down upon them.
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!
The plants battled with desperate ferocity, with incredible strength! In ones and twos and threes, the silver vessels fell, in twisted, battered wreckage—fell among the showers of sparks from the vanished creatures that had crushed them!
It was a battle of animal strength and courage, of desperate, savage energy—against deliberate, inhuman science! It was the battle of the mad, elemental beast—against silent, pitiless power!
And the plants won!
As the monsters that carried Sam and Xenora and myself swept along high above the line of battle, we saw the silver ships give way, saw them drop into the red mist, with the avenging, victorious plants following close upon them!
And then my mine went off!
A vast white cloud of smoke and shattered rock rose deliberately above the cliffs, spread into a Titanic mushroom shape, and fell in a great rain of débris into the abyss and into the lake. After many seconds the sound of it reached us—a crashing, deafening blast! The great wave of air swept up the green-winged fleet like leaves on a stormy lake!
Below the cloud of smoke, where the black cliffs had been, I saw a vast white sheet of waters—a rushing Niagara multiplied manifold—plunging over the brink in a sheer and gleaming arc!
Even as I gazed at it, in dazed wonder at the thing I had wrought, Sam was suddenly close beside me, shouting something with alarm and urgent command in his voice.
"Mel—the roof! Where is the Omnimobile? For God's sake——"
"In a crater in the abyss, by the metal cylinder," I cried, wondering.
Then I looked up, and saw that the flat roof was cupping up, like a vast inverted basin! The waters above were rising!
With no further word to me, Sam shouted a strange order to the monsters we rode. Their vast green wings were folded! We dropped like plummets into the crimson mist! The violet gleam appeared, and we made out the crater-pitted floor. I shouted directions, and in a few minutes we settled into the same little crater in which I had met disaster.
The Omnimobile was still lying there, just as I had left it!
The creatures that bore us dropped near the ground. Those great red tentacles set us gently down on the rocks by the machine. Sam led the way and I carried Xenora. Desperately we scrambled aboard and screwed down the manhole. Sam's mount, Alexander, slumped into a curious attitude of dejection.
Suddenly one of the silver vessels shot into view above the crater's rim, drifting swiftly towards us! The machine was watched! It had been left as a trap! The thing flashing beams of purple flame reached out eagerly—found the Omnimobile. The whirling spirals of thick green mist extended toward us!
Sam fumbled with the dials and made a hopeless gesture. Then I saw Alexander spring into the air and fly toward the terrible gleaming thing! With mad, desperate speed, the plant creature dashed straight into that fearful swirling mist! It charged on through it! Already glowing red with the disintegration beam, it struck the white machine with terrific force!
The argent globe paused, hung uncertainly, and then fell with swift acceleration until it crashed upon the walls of the pit, with the gleaming, wasting form of the heroic plant still clinging to it in the agony of a fearful doom!
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!
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!"
His voice was drowned in a fresh rushing, whistling burst from the rocket tubes. I carried the inert form of Xenora down to the cabin, and did my best to care for her. In a few moments we were above the haze. I took a last glimpse of the green and purple forests dropping away below us, and turned again to the unconscious girl.
Soon the fierce red glare that poured in the ports told me that we had reached the red roof. And suddenly the Omnimobile was pitching and spinning madly, with wild waters thundering against her sides. A sound reached my ears—a roar, dull, distant and slumberous at first, but rising to a crashing, deafening storm of sound! It seemed an eternity that I held the sleeping girl upon the tossing couch, while the very heavens rocked with thunder!
Abruptly, the bloody glare grew lighter, and was streaked with shafts of bright sunshine—white, precious sunlight of the upper earth! We had followed the vast bubble of gas through the roof of waters! The red mists cleared—drew up into the blue vault above—repelled into outer space!
We were flying in the cold white light, above a mad blue sea!
In fifteen minutes Sam had brought the machine down upon an ocean that was still heaving madly from the cataclysm that had drowned a world. He came into the cabin, and under his skillful ministrations Xenora was soon sleeping quietly, in a normal slumber from which she would wake herself again.
Presently Sam questioned me about my adventures. I gave him the whole account and concluded with the question that, for months, my troubled mind had striven so vainly to answer.
"Sam, how could intelligence exist in metal?"
"Why not in metal, Mel?" the old scientist replied, smiling thoughtfully. "Why not there as well as in lumps of impure carbon and water, as one of the early savants called us? But do you remember the radioactivity of the metal bar, and the little cells of helium gas in it? I think the radium had somehow set up neuronic circuits between the cells, like the circuits between the neurone cells in our brains. It is not impossible. That was a helium brain—but it was formed as naturally as yours or mine!"
On May 4, 2000 A.D., just a year after the beginning of my story, our leisurely homeward cruise was ended. The green coast of Florida rose out of the clear blue sea before us. Xenora and I stood on the deck, happy in the cool salty air and the bright sunlight. The girl was lost in vast delight at the new wonders of azure sea and sapphire sky. At last the dream of my life was come true!
The wonderful girl of my fancy was by my side, to be mine forever!
But she was the Green Girl no longer! A week of the sun and wind of the sea had erased the soft green tint of her clear skin, and replaced it with a light, smooth tan!
The End