The Alien Intelligence
By Jack Williamson
[Illustration: JACK WILLIAMSON]
_Not since the famous "Moon Pool" by A. Merritt, have we read such
a remarkable story as the present one, by the well-known author._
_We are quite certain that this story will be one of the
outstanding science fiction achievements of the year. It will be
discussed and re-discussed time and again. In a way it is a little
classic and stands in a place by itself._
_The author has a knack, not only to arouse your curiosity, but
to keep it at a high pitch throughout the entire story, but best
of all, his science while fantastic is always within the realms
of possibility and there is no reason why the astounding things
which he paints so vividly, could not be true, either now or in the
future._
_Do not, by any means, fail to read this outstanding story._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Wonder Stories July, August 1929.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: I fired on the instant and had the luck to shatter the
vessel, splashing the liquid over his person. His purple robe was eaten
away; his flesh was dyed a deep purple and partially consumed.]
CHAPTER I
The Mountain of the Moon
Before me, not half a mile away, rose the nearest ramparts of the
Mountain of the Moon. 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. Needle-like
spires rose a thousand feet, and nowhere was the escarpment less than
half that high. It was with mingled awe and incipient fear that I first
looked upon the Mountain of the Moon.
It was a year since I had left medical college in America to begin
practise in Perth, Australia. There I had an uncle who was my sole
surviving relative. My companion on the voyage had been Dr. Horace
Austen, the well-known radiologist, archeologist, and explorer. He had
been my dearest friend. That he was thirty years my senior, had never
interfered with our comradeship. It was he who had paid most of my
expenses in school. He had left me at Perth, and went on to investigate
some curious ruined columns that a traveler had reported in the western
part of the Great Victoria Desert. There Austen had simply vanished. He
had left Kanowna, and the desert had swallowed him up. But it was his
way, when working on a problem, to go into utter seclusion for months
at a time.
My uncle was an ardent radio enthusiast, and it was over one of his
experimental short wave sets that we picked up the remarkable message
from my lost friend that led me to abandon my practise, and, heeding
the call of adventure that has always been strong in those of my blood,
to seek the half mythical Mountain of the Moon, in the heart of the
unexplored region of the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia.
The message was tantalizingly brief and hard to interpret. We picked it
up five times, over a period of two weeks, always just after sunset.
Evidently it was sent by one who had not recently practised his
knowledge of code, and it seemed that the sender was always in a great
hurry, or under a considerable nervous tension, for minor errors and
omissions were frequent. The words were invariably the same. I copy
them from an old notebook.
"To Winfield Fowler, physician, Perth, Australia: I, Horace Austen,
am lost in an unknown new world, where alien terrors reign, that lies
in a crater in the Mountain of the Moon. I implore you to come to my
aid, for the sake of mankind. Bring arms, and my equipment--the Rontgen
tubes and coils, and the spectrometer. Ascend ladder at west pinnacle.
Find my friend Melvar, maiden of the crystal city, whom I left beyond
the Silver Lake. Come, for the sake of civilization, and may whoever
hears this forward it with all dispatch."
My uncle was inclined to suspect a hoax. But after the message had
come over twice I received telegrams from several other radio amateurs
who had heard it, and were forwarding it to me. We took the direction
of the third call and had amateurs in Adelaide do the same. The lines
intersected in the Great Victoria Desert, at a point very near that at
which Wellington located the Mountain of the Moon, when he sighted it
and named it in 1887.
Knowing Austen, as I did, to be intensely human as a man, but grave and
serious as a scientist, it was impossible for me to take the message as
a practical joke, as my uncle, deriding the possibility of my friend's
being imprisoned in "an unknown new world," insisted it was. It was
equally impossible for one of my impetuous and adventurous disposition
to devote himself to any prosaic business when so attractive a mystery
was beckoning him away. Then I would never, in any case, have hesitated
to go to Austen's aid, if I knew him to be in need.
I got together the apparatus he had mentioned--it was some equipment he
happened to have left with me as he went on--as well as my emergency
medicine kit, a heavy rifle, two .45 Colt automatics, and a good supply
of ammunition; and waited for more explicit signals. But the calls had
never come regularly, and after the fifth no more were heard. Having
waited another irksome week, I bade my uncle farewell and got on the
train. I left the railway at Kanowna, and bought three ponies. I rode
one and packed provisions, equipment, and water bottles on the other
two. Nothing need be said of the perils of the journey. Three weeks
later I came in sight of the mountain.
Wellington had christened it as he did because of an apparent
similarity to the strange cliff-rimmed craters of the moon, and the
appellation was an apt one. The crags rose almost perpendicularly
from the sand to the jagged rim. To climb them was clearly out of
the question. The rock was polished slick by wind-blown sands for
many feet, but rough and sharp above. To my left, at the extreme west
point of the great curve, was a dark needle spire that towered three
hundred feet above its fellows. I knew that it must be Austen's "west
pinnacle." What sort of ladder I was to ascend, I had little idea.
As the sun sank back of the rolling sea of sand, dark purple shadows
rose about the barrier, and I was struck with deep forebodings of the
evil mystery that lay beyond it. The gold of the desert changed to
silver gray, and the gray faded swiftly, while the deep purple mantle
swept up the peaks, displacing even the deep red crowns that lay like
splashes of blood upon the summits. Still I felt, or fancied, a strange
spirit of terror that lurked behind the mountain, even in the night.
Quickly I made camp. 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.