The alien intelligence

by Jack Williamson

She drew me fiercely toward her, as if to use me for a shield against the awful truth. It was some time before she was able to talk; but presently she told me how Naro had seen the smoke, and how she had thought of seeking shelter from the fire in the rocket-ship. They had run down the trail we had made as they left the ship. The fire had overtaken them just as they reached it. The boy had carried her the last few yards, had put her through the door, and then had been unable to enter himself. But, a hero to the last, a worthy warrior of old Astran, he had swung the door shut with his dying motion.

Presently I turned my attention to the ship. The marvelous periscope still gave the illusion that the bow was transparent. When I moved the little control lever, the jets of purple gas rushed out again. After a time I had the vessel worked loose from its place in the earth. Then, once again, I pulled up the little metal knob and pushed it forward.

The blackened terrain was colored by the purple mist. It was dimmed, blurred, blotted out. We shot through the purple cloud and abruptly plunged into clear air and blessed sunshine. Melvar stood by me, with her arm upon my shoulder. She cried out gladly as we came into the light. It was not quite noon and the sun was shining very brightly into the crater. The crescent Silver Lake was still gleaming with the same argent luster, and Astran shone like a great gem set in the dark red upland beyond.

Suddenly the clouds of purple mist below were thrown up and scattered in a thousand ragged streamers. A great blaze of opalescence burst out where it had been. A flood of fire ran over the Silver Sea. It was a white, milky light like that we had seen between the blue crystal globes of the great machine in the chasm. In a moment the whole crater was a torn and angry ocean of iridescent flame. The red upland was blotted out, and Astran vanished forever. White flames that were like the tongues of burning hydrogen that burst from exploding suns, flared up behind us.

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. We had been hurled out of the atmosphere and into interplanetary space!

Austen had struck! The world of the Krimlu was no more! The whole Silver Sea had gone off in a great explosion. From our ever-rising craft we could see the desert spread out around the mountain like a vast yellow sea, rimmed on the south by a steely blue line that was the ocean. The white fire dulled, faded, and was gone as quickly as it had flashed up. The crater of the Mountain of the Moon was left a wild black ruin of jagged, scattered masses of smoking stone. Of the Silver Lake, of the red vegetation upon the upland, of brilliant Astran, not a trace was left!

The crater was left far behind in the long arching flight of the rocket. The white frozen brilliance of the stars faded out, the untold glories of the solar corona were dimmed, and blue was restored to the midnight sky. We were plunging toward the desert in the direction of Kanowna. I pulled back the lever and used the full force of the rockets to check our meteor-like flight until the fuel was exhausted. A moment afterward we struck the earth.

We climbed out and left the vessel there on the sand. Just as the stars were coming out that night we arrived at the headquarters of a great sheep ranch. People were very much excited over the earthquake. (The shock of the explosion of the Silver Lake had been registered at every seismographic station in the world.)

The rancher and his wife cared for us with great hospitality, if ill-controlled curiosity. After we had had a week of rest, they took us by automobile to Kanowna. There I astounded them by rewarding their generosity with a magnificent emerald—I still had in my pack a half pound or so of jewels that Naro had brought me from Astran.

Melvar ever surprised me with her innocent beauty, her grace and poise, with the ease with which she learned to face new situations, and to meet people. I believe that no one ever suspected that she had not had a lifetime of training in the best of society. We were married at Kanowna, and reached Perth a few days later.