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 have
_me_! 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!