The Great White Space

Thirteen

We spent two days on what Scarsdale and Van Damm had christened the embalming gallery. Once the excitement of our discovery had died away we were all kept busy on our various tasks; much to my own personal distaste Van Damm and Scarsdale had insisted on opening more of the sealed jars with their loathsome contents, though I suppose, to the scientific mind their enthusiasm was understandable. The feelings of the remainder of the expedition were more mundane and muted and it was with some reluctance that I was persuaded into photographing more of the abominations from the jars which, like their predecessors, rapidly evaporated into vapoured and gelid putresence.

Of the beings who had embalmed the grasshopper- creatures we had no scrap of knowledge, for. we found nothing within the gallery that would give us an indication; there was no embalming-room, no tools or trepanning equipment, not even a fragment of an inscription. Yet I realised Scarsdale and possibly Van Damm knew a great deal more about this strange race of ancient beings, engineers and fantastic builders who had wrought these mighty underground workings thousands of years before.

We had not yet advanced beyond the embalming gallery; this was no less than 1,000 metres long and at a conservative estimate there must have been over 10,000 of the strange jars within the building. Van Damm and Scarsdale had opened at least a dozen of the containers and every evening conversation continued long and late as the scientists debated the possibilities. The gallery ended with a similar portico to that by which we had entered. Beyond it was another massive flight of stone steps descending to a lower level; the mist hung thickly here and the steps descended into it until they were lost to sight. Strangely enough the wind still blew strongly from the north but though the vapour billowed and eddied, it still re-formed, making an impenetrable cloud, continually in motion.

Holden carried out a chemical test on the steps, the northernmost point of our penetration, and said the result showed a strong concentration of sulphur but nothing poisonous. We pitched our tents at Camp Four, near the plinth with the weird hieroglyphs and were glad of the shelter because of the grit which flew about that dusty plain. It was odd to realise that it was the same grit which was flung here and there across the surface; it had nowhere to go except within the area of that vast cavern — which, however, we had no way of measuring — and so the same tiny chippings must circle and re-circle wearily over the years.

We were unable to penetrate the floor of-the cavern because of the hardness of the rock so the tentpoles were secured by running them through specially designed steel centre-pieces, which Scarsdale had made in the Surrey workshops. The ropes were secured by the heavier pieces of equipment. Specially annoying to those of the milder- mannered members of the party, were the heavy machine-gun, the elephant guns and other solid pieces of ordnance which Scarsdale insisted on bringing along. These were loaded on to a small rubber-tyred trolly, like a perambulator which one or other of us had to wheel behind him wherever he went.

We were dreading mounting the great steps with this load but Scarsdale said it had to be done and no doubt it would be achieved; what our leader set out to do had a way of being accomplished. I must say I was glad he was in charge and not another of Van Damm's nature. A fine scientist but too finely- wrought and argumentative and not a born leader of men like Scarsdale. The Professor had good humour and great mental toughness, which was essential for such an enterprise as that upon which we were engaged.

Holden and Prescott had been working on their own lines of research and Van Damm and the Professor were filling notebooks with their own figures and data about the insect- creatures. As my main function was photographic-historian and my dark-room and other equipment far away with the tractors, I had little practical to do in my own field, apart from maintaining my cameras and taking pictures, so that I often found myself equipment-bearer or note-taker for one of my colleagues.

This was a pleasant task, to tell the truth, for I found our surroundings oppressive in the extreme, though I did not voice my misgivings aloud. Morale can suffer in a small party in this way and I was experienced enough not to let my companions know my true feelings; Holden had already suffered a considerable shock and I knew his nerves were still ragged. The following afternoon we were all in the embalming gallery when Prescott accidentally dropped a hammer; the sound startled me, as the metallic crash went echoing strangely down the vast gallery but the effect on Holden was incredible.

He winced away, his hands over his ears and positively cowered against the tunnel wall. I went over to him and gently took him by the shoulder; he turned to me a face from which all colour had been drained. I did not like it and one had to face the unpleasant possibility that worse may be before us. The Professor was determined to press on to whatever destination these endless and devilish tunnels eventually led.

We could only follow and hope for the best. I must be fair and say that Scarsdale, Van Damm and even Prescott were made of sterner stuff. They alone continued with unabated enthusiasm though, as I have already indicated, there were sometimes occasions when even their zest for this adventure became temporarily eclipsed. On the third day, when the notebooks were filled and masses of data had been accumulated, Scarsdale gave the order to break camp. We left at Camp Four only a box of heavy stores the Professor had marked as being redundant and a small pennant on a metal rod, the symbol of the expedition.

We put all the heavier materials, including the machine- gun into the trolley; Prescott and I were to haul this for the morning march and neither of us were exactly impatient to tackle the long and steep steps leading to the embalming gallery. However, it was easier than we had anticipated, being largely a question of knack and before the morning was over Prescott and I were becoming quite adept at lifting the trolley over each tread of the giant steps. The packs on our backs counterbalanced to a certain extent and while the others strolled in front — a precise term under the circumstances — we heaved and pushed along behind, knowing that it would be our turn to relax in the afternoon.

So we eventually descended the large flight of steps at the other end of the gallery and were soon enveloped in the light mist which everywhere billowed and eddied in the rising wind. It was a heartening thing to leave the chamber of the embalmed creatures behind us, even if we were still heading into the unknown, and Prescott and I were several times in danger of overturning the trolley in our lighthearted descent of the steps.

Van Damm had been — keeping his records still and announced, when we were once again upon level ground that this second set of steps was an exact mathematical replica of the first, there being not a quarter of an inch difference between the two. I could not see the significance of this myself, but once again it emphasised the fantastic precision of the unknown builders of these gloomy edifices. There were exactly forty 'treads' in each staircase. Van Damm announced portentously. The whole of the embalming gallery and its two sets of staircases thus occupied a length of almost 4,000 feet, figures that must create a record in the field, Van Damm felt.

Certainly, to Prescott and I it seemed as if we had traversed those 4,000 feet not once but several times and Scarsdale kindly called a halt at midday so that I and my companion could take a much-needed break. We drank the welcome black coffee and munched our specially produced energy biscuits gratefully, sitting on our packs, our backs against the trolley. We were temporarily camped about a hundred feet beyond the exit steps, seated on a warm, dry stone floor. The light was once again brighter now that we were out of the great stone building but the roof of the cavern, still at some vast height above us, was obscured by the swirling mist which, shredded this way and that by the wind, eddied and shimmered, making everything seem as insubstantial as a dream.

Indeed, it often seemed to me, and I am sure it must have sometimes occurred to our companions, that this was some sort of dream, or even nightmare; an apocryphal vision in which we moved ever onwards through the caverns of darkest night to some awful subterranean destination at an awesome depth beneath the surface of the wholesome earth.

The wind, still warm, blew fitfully from the north but now there seemed the faintest echoing moan from it, which whispered suggestively along the hard walls of the corridors and across the plain towards us. The mist billowed, made strange patterns in the disturbed air and changed the shape in a bewildering kaleidoscope, and had it not been for the compasses carried by the party we should undoubtedly have rapidly become lost.

During the afternoon we walked onwards by compass bearing about a mile due north, up and down an undulating surface, almost gulley-like in its contours but not at all difficult to the Party, though the trolley occasionally proved a little troublesome when the wheels locked while negotiating a twisting slope. The mist continued so that we did not see much of our surroundings, but the terrain was in such marked contrast to that which we had already traversed that it appeared as remarkable to us as the change to Everest explorers who emerge from the tropical vegetation of the foothills eventually to tread the eternal snows.

Visibility was about thirty feet under these conditions and at the two o'clock break, when we consumed quite a substantial meal cooked chemically on one of the stoves, Scarsdale prevailed upon me to take a few photographs, recording some of the more striking rock contours. In the afternoon we walked on for another mile or two, necessarily groping our way, with Van Damm taking frequent compass bearings. Once we seemed to hear water from far off but we were unable to locate the source of the sound, which appeared to shift position, no doubt due to the enveloping fog. Van Damm and Scarsdale were scribbling busily in their notebooks and once or twice Prescott who, like me was relieved of his trolley duties, broke the monotony by chipping at the rocks with his little geologist's hammer but I cannot recall ever seeing him break any particles off, the formations were so hard.

This was possibly the most striking thing about the Great Northern Expedition, always excepting the two great basic absolutes of this enterprise and which we always came back to in our minds at the end of each protracted and tiring day; that the whole thing was taking place miles below the surface of the earth and approaching a hundred miles inwards; and that the scale of the great artefacts, such as the porticoed entrances; the tunnels; and the embalming gallery were on a scale stupefying in comparison with most man-made things on the earth above.

I doubted whether such works, through rock of a hardness none of us had ever before met, could have been achieved by modern engineers using the very latest earth-boring machinery then available. When one cast one's mind back only three thousand years, a comparatively modest span compared with the age of the earth, the degree of sophistication involved was almost frightening. This was not a case where the employment of mass labour would suffice; what we were then talking about was technology — the machinery — for surely no works such as that could be wrought by hand — and the knowledge to first create and then use it.

My head was full of such thoughts as we walked on, through the endless gloom, endlessly dim light, endless mist and the endless breath of the wind on our cheeks. Occasionally my feet would stumble or I would be brought to myself by a sudden sharp remark by Scarsdale or Van Damm and find myself on the brink of diverging from my companion's path and about to be lost in the mist. My mind was close to terror on such occasions and my one great fear, that amounted to a morbid crisis, was to find myself alone in these spaces of underground nightmare. Yet such was the monotony of the place and of our walk that despite my fears, and physical discomfort of the pack straps biting into my shoulders, I would time and again find my mind wandering into strange by-paths and fantasies.

I was ashamed when I caught myself in such digressions or when called to task by a companion as I had noted the seemingly eternal vigilance of the Professor; who always, whether he happened to be assisting with the trolley, which Van Damm and Holden were pushing this afternoon, or checking the compass, had a free hand for his naked revolver which he carried with a lanyard looped round his wrist at all times.

The throbbing noise which we had heard earlier and which had apparently ceased, now began again; but only in snatches, due to a change in the wind? But that could not be so as a compass check by Van Damm revealed that, as always, what wind there was blew lightly but fairly steadily from the north. The sound was like the faintest heartbeat, apparently from many miles away, but accompanied by emanations or vibrations which appeared to pulsate the very rock across which we walked. The party stopped for nearly an hour at one point while Scarsdale and Van Damm made certain instrument tests, but nothing specific could be ascertained from these.

Soon after we commenced walking once more the mist oegan to thin and we began a fairly steep climb uphill. This was so unusual that the exact time, together with latitude and longitude was noted by Scarsdale and Van Damm and more instrument bearings were taken. So far as we could see the slope up which we walked was man-made and this was exciting in itself; traces of the extremely hard and sophisticated tools which had sliced the roadway from the steel-hard rock were noted by my companions with wondering exclamations.

Van Damm and Holden were still hauling the trolley, this time with the aid of the special harness straps Scarsdale had developed, but the slope was not of sustained steepness, levelling off to a more tolerable angle shortly afterwards, so that both men declined the help of Prescott and myself. At one stage I found myself leading the party, though Scarsdale was not far behind, swinging his revolver in his usual vigilant fashion. Before me in the dim light began to range a series of oblong boxes and my excited remarks soon brought the rest of the party up.

We now advanced along a broad highway, past a slabbed obelisk bearing more of the strange inscriptions which we had already observed. Scarsdale quickened his steps, barely pausing to note the inscriptions, in itself a matter of wonder as he and Van Damm had taken up many hours in the past few days in such examinations. The trolley party was hard put to it to keep up as we three unencumbered members pushed on rapidly as the strange rectangles and cubes grew before us in the twilight.

What we were entering was a town or city of vast and unknown size, many miles beneath the surface of the earth and whose use and purposes were obscure to us. As we advanced further along the broad highway the blocks began to tower before us until I realised that the scale upon which the town was built was as vast as anything we had yet encountered. The blocks were windowless and without any break in their smooth grey outlines except for the vast portals of dressed stone, similar to those we had already noted.

Some had smoothly traced lintels upon which were graven strange and baffling hieroglyphs, whose very outlines looked obscene and depraved; the highway along which we walked presently gave upon a vast square, around which the gigantic buildings were grouped in no identifiable order or in no observable pattern. The whole rhythmic structure of the city was complex and puzzling to a stranger and I had trouble with the angles and vistas, some of which, as we passed what would be called alleys and road junctions on the earth above, caused serious optical illusions for the members of our party.

The square, hewn of what appeared to be enormous blocks of stone, also seemed to run away at disturbing angles, with none of the blocks ever quite seeming to join at the proper juncture; instead of the paving thus formed being square or triangular it seemed to obey no observable law or mathematical formulae so that the eye was always being shocked by strange breaks in the formation or ugly or jarring groupings of lines. This was one of the most difficult aspects of the place and one which we were never able to overcome.

For as one advanced towards a given spot the natural law seemed to be restored; all angles met in the correct fashion, square joined to square and curve to curve. But once we had turned about or walked away from a measured point the optical illusions began again so that one began to fear for one's sanity. It was a fascinating and troubling place and one to provide endless discussion between our scientific members. Neither was my photographic work able to resolve the problem for all the studies which survived the expedition yielded nothing but the normal, however long one stared at enlargements of the prints.

We put down our equipment in the middle of the gigantic plaza and rested, sitting on an elaborately sculptured piece of stone; made from one solid slab of black material, it was elaborately incised not only with hieroglyphs but with intricately chased surfaces which broke up its outline and presented a baffling, many-surfaced structure to the viewer. Nowhere on the floor of the plaza could we detect any scratches or markings which might have been caused by the passage of vehicles in the long-distant past.

The Professor was once more consulting his typed notes and his much thumbed transcription of The Ethics of Ygor.

'As you have no doubt observed, Van Damm,' he said with a faint smile of triumph, 'we are now within the ancient city of Croth.'

'Indeed, Professor,' observed Van Damm with a thin smile in return. 'Here is your vindication.'

And he indicated the broad spread of the city with an expressive gesture of his lean arm.

We were not long idle. Scarsdale rapidly designated the area as Camp Five and, as always on the Great Northern Expedition, we first set to erecting the tents, sorting stores testing equipment and preparing our late afternoon meal.

Only then, when we had mounted the first sentry and set up the ugly snout of the inevitable machine-gun commanding the broad spaces of the square, did Scarsdale feel that we were at liberty to explore.

He chose for this first excursion the most massive and curious of the buildings surrounding the square; here again, there were difficulties in gaining the entrance. There was a long series of elaborately engineered ramps and ledges which we had first to surmount and then a short but exhausting flight of steps into the interior. We gained a sort of terrace at the top and turned to look back at Camp Five; the distortion of perspective there, some ten metres above the level of the square, was startling and our tents and stores appeared suspended on a heap of tumbled paving blocks.

Prescott had been left behind and on some members of our party waving, he saluted in reply; it was extraordinary to see what a fragmentary gesture it appeared, with his arm appearing completely disconected from his body. I had some fears under these weird optical conditions, even if we did meet a prospective target, and I voiced them on this occasion to Scarsdale. He said nothing but his eyes looked troubled.

We paused awhile on this balcony, taking in the bizarre and jumbled vista of Croth, its buildings seemingly all awry; from this height the distant throbbing which had long accompanied us was naturally more marked but I could not myself assign any specific direction to it. I had noted however, that the great broad central highway which had led us into the plaza continued out of it at the far side and that it pointed almost directly north. Along this the eternal warm wind blew steadily into our faces.

The outlines of the city seemed to fade into the amber- tinted dusk, now that the mist had disappeared, but none of us could make out any specific horizon or even a limit to the boundaries of Croth and my later photographs were to throw no further light upon this enigma. From first to last the exact geographical bounds of the city were to remain a mystery to us. While I photographed and the others noted, Scarsdale had been busy deciphering the inscription on the great portico of dressed stone towering high above our heads. He announced with surprise that the building appeared to be that of the city library and proposed to investigate further.

The interior of the building was free from dust of any sort and the light filtered down from the roof in the same manner in which the embalming gallery had been illuminated. The library initially was a disappointing experience from my point of view though to my companions the evening was one of the most exciting since we had entered this fantastic underground world. If I had expected papyrus, manuscript or great sheets of vellum, I was sadly disappointed. The place, after we had ascended an interminable series of ramps, appeared to be a series of gigantic chambers, each bearing different inscriptions along the walls.

There were hundreds of great stone benches in each chamber, ranged before a large stone edifice like a lectern; set in front of the lectern parapet was a curious metallic surface, rather like a formal representation of an eye, with incised symbols in its raised contours. It appeared to be hollow and when Scarsdale's lantern flickered into its interior the pale light disclosed what looked like a primitive mechanism of metal. Facing the lectern but hundreds of metres away was a vast pale curved stone surface which projected from the wall. To my mind it resembled nothing more than a pre-historic version of a modern lecture hall in one of our universities but Scarsdale solved the enigma in an accidental and somewhat bizarre fashion.

He disappeared from our sight for a few moments round the plinth of the lectern-structure and the next moment we were blinded as light poured into the building; I am afraid that I cowered down behind one of the stone benches in rather an undignified manner while my companions were almost as much affected. In brilliantly delineated fashion and about a hundred feet high, vast symbols in the strange language burned at us on the far wall of the library. Then the room became dim again and Scarsdale's chuckle of satisfaction changed into a laugh of triumph.

'There is your library, gentlemen,' he beamed. 'This place is nothing more than a modern cinema-theatre. The information was stored something in the manner of a slide and projected on to the stone screen. What price the Lumiere Brothers now?'

There was a moment's stupefied silence and then the air was filled with amazed questions.

Van Damm went round behind the lectern with the professor, who explained that he had accidentally projected the rays of his helmet lantern down into the strange machine.

'My light source was far too strong, of course,' he explained. 'These people would have had something far subtler and less powerful, as befits the general lighting level in the ancient city of Croth. But this was undoubtedly the basis of it. There was a slide, so to speak, left in the machine. What we now have to find is the source of their power and the place where they stored their slides and we shall begin to disentangle something of the enigma of the city.'