The Great White Space

Six

Dust obscured the windscreen as I settled Number 1 on course and we passed the other three machines, which fell obediently into line astern. It would be tedious to relate all the incidents of the next days; days of hellish heat and sand; of lurching misery within the tractors. Yet despite all the difficulties — we retired to rest every night at the early hour of nine p.m., completely exhausted after a day spent controlling the bucking, pitching vehicles — we completed the two hundred kilometres of baking desert within four days, a tribute to the design of the machines.

Both Scarsdale and Dr Van Damm were delighted with the performance of the tractors and though one of the spare machines piloted by Prescott had given some trouble necessitating changing the bearings on the main tracks, all four vehicles arrived safely at Nylstrom on the evening of the fourth day. Zalor, though my suspicions of him had hardened if anything, had proved a good guide, navigating unerringly, even in the middle of swirling sandstorms which added to our discomfort.

Every night we camped on the most level terrain we could find, the tractors drawn up in a hollow square to keep off the icy wind which sprang up with the advent of sunset. We could not have fires — there was no fuel with which to ply them — so two large types of Primus stove developed by Scarsdale were brought into use. These served the dual purpose of heating our little party and brewing our tea and other small luxuries, and though we enjoyed the social occasion of this hour after sunset, the gritty sand which flew about took away what small pleasure the picnic had given and after that first evening we took to gathering within Scarsaale's command tractor for the communal meal, before dispersing to our beds for the night.

Zalor, for some reason best known to himself, did not like the tractors when at rest, though he was comfortable enough when they were mobile, and wrapping himself in his cloak slept under the command vehicle, in a sort of nest he scratched for himself in the sand. This suited me perfectly and the first evening I locked the door after him, content in knowing that he would be spending the following day in Van Damm's vehicle. The doctor would be leading and all I need do was follow in his wake.

I had long debated with myself the secret knowledge of the tablet the dwarf bore within his robe; he himself had never so much as referred to it by word or sign after that first moment on the tractor steps. I felt I ought to discuss it with Scarsdale at the earliest opportunity yet at the same time I feared any disruption it might bring to our little band. After all, there might be some perfectly ordinary explanation; perhaps the Professor himself had given him the tablet to assist in his guiding the party.

And yet, as I lay comfortably on my bunk, listening to the gritty sand dashing with low clicks against the windscreen glass, backgrounded by the moaning sigh of the wind as it gusted at the corners of the vehicle, I could not bring myself to broach the subject and during the day there never seemed the opportunity. As though by tacit agreement the Professor himself was now no longer communicative; he lay on his own bunk opposite, a great steaming metal mug of tea at his elbow and pored over voluminous pencilled notes he had made in a tattered exercise book.

Every now and again he would refer to sets of figures he had inked on a small chart he kept pinned during the day to the navigation table and his mumbled calculations sometimes went on into the small hours. The tiny circle of luminosity thrown by the chart-table lamp, which he kept directed on to his bunk for this purpose, outlined his beard with golden light and the long wisps of steam ascending towards the lamp from his untasted tea made a homely touch in the remote spot in which we found ourselves.

This was the image, the last thing usually noted before sleep, which stayed with me and haunts me still in the long reaches of the night in these wretched after-years. As late as his figures kept him, Scarsdale was usually the first abroad in the early morning. We were astir before six a.m., in order to catch the cooler hours of the day — the desert was a furnace by nine o'clock — and the Professor made himself unpopular every morning around six by operating the klaxon on the front of our vehicle, which must have stirred the echoes for miles around.

We usually ate our breakfast — made from tins and packets — while we were under way and the Professor took over the controls from me for half an hour to enable me to eat each morning; this was a blessed relief and I spent the time at the chart-table looking at the strange lunar scenery ahead, which was a unique experience for me, as I usually steered by the compass bearing and had little time to note the more subtle gradations of landscape.

Indeed, this would have been difficult in any case, as I was no longer leading and Scarsdale was at this time swinging the tractor wildly, following Van Damm's dust. All the while we progressed, the rim of the dark mountains on the horizon slowly climbed up the sky.

The desert seemed devoid of life of any sort and the only figures we ever saw were near dusk on the afternoon of the second day; the outlines of three tattered nomads on a distant billow of sand who regarded us as though we were carven images on some distant tomb of ancient Karnak. I know not why such a conception flowed into my mind but this desert, though it is nothing like that of Egypt, ancient or modern, could not help reminding me of that younger civilisation.

I say younger advisedly for the region into which we were penetrating in such an erratic but remorseless manner was infinitely older and more blasphemous. I think we all sensed that after our arrival at Nylstrom, on the evening of the fourth day. I do not know what we had expected; Scarsdale, of course, had been there before and the town was no surprise to him. I am selecting my words imprecisely here because town was hardly the one to describe Nylstrom, which was nothing more than a huddled collection of baked-brick hovels, divided into three or four rectangular streets, with a small brackish lake and a few miserably stunted trees which were, however, such a rarity in this area that they appeared to stand out on the horizon from a long way off. The contrast with the splendours of Zak were so marked that I felt a sinking of the heart as we came within view of this abominable village which seemed to crouch like the refuse flung down at the skirts of the mountains which now loured gigantically in the middle distance before us.

Strangely enough the people, though gaunt and sallow and much given to eye-disease, were far more friendly and forthcoming than those of Zak; paradoxically, they would have greatly appreciated the splendours of the latter city while the Mir and his followers, I reflected, with their mean and withdrawn natures, should have inhabited Nylstrom, which was all they deserved. I was standing at the door of the tractor a few minutes after our arrival, surveying the busy crowd which had gathered in the wretched town square to welcome us, and my thoughts must have been transparently obvious on my features for the dwarf Zalor, squeezing past me in the dusk, turned to give me a look of hatred over his shoulder and hissed something in his unintelligible, broken- tongued language.

Though I detested the fellow, I must admit that he had done his job well and he had brought us here safely and with the least waste of time. Scarsdale, of course, was on familiar ground again and I could see his huge figure bobbing about the crowd and now and again he paused to shake hands with someone he recognised from his earlier expedition. I was still of two minds regarding Zalor's stone tablet but the events of the next few hours and our settling in at Nylstrom temporarily banished the incident from my mind. We had a brief conference over supper in the command tractor that evening; Scarsdale told us we would be in Nylstrom only two days before setting out on the last stage of our journey to the Black Mountains.

This was the first time he had used the correct topographical title for this group and we all looked at him with interest as though we were about to hear major revelations, but he did not let drop any further information that evening. He did say, however, that we would leave Number 4 tractor in reserve at Nylstrom and proceed with the other three, which would make things much easier. There was just time, on our arrival, in the last light of the fading sun, to stroll to the edge of the village to glimpse what we would be facing. The Black Mountains were only a bare fifty miles from us now and the going promised to be easier.

There was merely a flat plain of black volcanic ash and the scouring winds which blew continually from off the mountains raised a low, fog-like cloud which would cause some discomfort. But the compensating factor was that the temperature was lower here and we would not have to endure such heat as we had encountered in the desert. Prescott and Van Damm accompanied me on the walk; our other two companions were with the excited crowds in the square. Zalor had disappeared somewhere on an errand of his own.

The view was both bizarre and magnificent. The wind had temporarily dropped and the shifting storms were subsiding; through the unearthly veil they drew over the Plain of Darkness the sun shone in carmine splendour, staining the distant tops of the blunt-spiked mountains until it seemed as though the whole of the far horizon were a mass of shimmering blood. Across the face of the mountain mass were striated white lines which looked, at that distance, like nothing so much as an intricately traced map or, if one were particularly fanciful, the many-stranded structure of a spider's web.

Even the normally icy-tempered Van Damm seemed affected, for he gave a low, muttered exclamation under his breath, the gist of which I did not catch.

'I wish I had brought along my camera/ I exclaimed involuntarily. 'This would make a splendid subject for the film introduction to the final approach.'

The doctor shook his head.

'You are young, Plowright,' he said slowly. 'I don't like it. I don't like it at all.'

And he turned his back resolutely on that scene of brooding splendour and neither would he enlarge on his remarks at all, though I several times returned to it that evening.

All he would say at a later stage was, 'There is northern blood in my veins, some generations removed, Plowright. The northern races are, as you know, mystics. The Black Mountains as a geographic conception on the map are splendid. Seen as a reality they arouse in me feelings which you, as an extremely young man from my standpoint of years, could hardly be expected to share. I pray that you do not come round to my way of thinking before this trip is over.'

I retired to bed somewhat irritated and puzzled at Van Damm's attitude. The whole idea of the Great Northern Expedition was, from the layman's point of view, extraordinary; when we set off four out of five did not know exactly where we were going, except that it was opposite to north. And until now Scarsdale, though he had given many hints and spoken to me personally of shifting lights and writing on stones, had only spoken practically of rubber boats, tractors and of the importance of having some people of physical strength along.

But my mind thrives on enigmas and if the truth were told most of my adventurings had been along these lines; I neither knew nor cared where my journeyings took me, providing that I could be free to take pictures and that I had agreeable companions with whom to share the journey. And this great enterprise promised abundance of both. Pondering on this and various other things I fell into a broken sleep.

I woke round about three a.m.; though we had the tractor shutters closed I knew that it was before dawn. I lay awake for several minutes before checking the time by my illuminated wristlet watch. What had aroused me was a minute, metallic noise; a noise which was presently, and furtively repeated.

I opened my eyes fully at this point and by slightly turning my head I was able to bring the Professor's bunk into focus; his large bulk was impassive beneath the blankets, the faint respiration of his breathing clearly audible. He was fast asleep. I turned my head slowly away from him when I became aware of a blurred shape sliding across my field of vision. A minute breeze blew into the closely regulated temperature of the tractor interior; someone had opened the outer door of the command tractor. A moment later it shut with a click which was the replica of the one which had originally awakened me.

It sounded once again as someone tested the handle from outside. I was up and groping for my trousers by this time; I swiftly put them on over my pyjamas and put my bare feet into my slippers. I saw a shadow pass across the windscreen of the tractor as I was doing this. It had gone to the left so I waited a few seconds before I myself opened the door and slipped quietly out into the night.

We had parked the machines in a small cul-de-sac by some metal-beaters' workshops just off the main square of the town, so I knew my quarry could only have gone into the square. I felt fairly confident of picking him up again. I was fairly certain also that I knew who he was. None of our colleagues were likely to visit the command tractor at night and leave again in such a furtive manner. I had picked up a strong leather camel whip, a gift from the Mir of Zak to Scarsdale, from the chart-table and I flexed it meaningfully as I crouched for a moment, adjusting my eyes to the light.

When I gained the edge of the square I found I could see some distance ahead and I had no difficulty in making out the hunched figure of the dwarf Zalor which flitted ahead of me over the atrocious surface of the rutted plaza. I knew his destination now and I slackened my pace and skirted round the edge of the square, keeping watch from a sort of arcade of roughly fashioned stone which fronted some craftsmen's stalls.

Earlier that evening Scarsdale had decided to overhaul our equipment before we set out for the last stage of our journey to the Black Mountains. For this purpose he felt it would be an easier proposition if we dismantled as much material as possible that night in preparation for the work the following day. Accordingly, we had taken motor drive units, radio sets and many of the working parts which made the tractors operational out of the machines and placed them in a storeroom which the people of Nylstrom had made available to us.

The headman or whatever he called himself had secured the whole place with a wooden bar and Scarsdale himself had sealed the room with a chain and padlock out of the expedition's stores. I now knew why Zalor had paid us a visit; he was after Scarsdale's keys. The store, which normally housed vegetables and dried herbs grown by the people of Nylstrom was only in a small court giving off the other side of the square, so there was no need for me to hurry, as I was certain of Zalor's destination.

I kept watch, therefore, until he had disappeared in the misty light and followed on at my leisure, giving him a minute or two to release the padlock from the rough wooden door. I wanted to be certain of his malignant intent before apprising Scarsdale of the dwarfs perfidy. I stopped again when I reached the opening through which my quarry had disappeared and waited. It was a fine, dry night, though quite cold and I shivered a little as the wind probed at the thin material of my pyjama jacket. The night invested the humble buildings of Nylstrom with a majesty they notably lacked by day and from far off, though it could not be all that far, owing to the town's geographical compactness, a stray dog howled in a hungry fashion. I could now hear a furtive chinking up ahead and once a small electric torch flashed; I smiled to myself in the gloom. No doubt Zalor had been at the expedition's stores too. He had been carrying on his shoulder what looked like a canvas bag, when I had last sighted him in the square, and I felt certain he contemplated flight after some mischief against us. There was nothing moving in all the night and no-one stirring in any of the dingy buildings in the locality but I felt somewhere out there the brooding presence of the Black Mountains, which were almost a palpable reality, even in the darkness.

There was a grating noise as I still hesitated and then a muffled thump. That would be the lowering of the bar from the door. I crouched low and eased myself round the corner, careful not to make my presence known. I still wanted to give Zalor a last chance to prove his innocence of motive and if I revealed myself beforehand, he would be able to fabricate some quite innocuous reason for his presence in that place and at that time of the morning.

The grating noise continued and then the dim light of the torch disappeared within the vegetable store. I crept noiselessly towards the light and after a few moments found myself in front of the building. Zalor had drawn back only one half of the double portal, no doubt to shield the light from the outside, and I stood behind it to conceal myself. I need not have worried about such precautions; the man inside the store was far too preoccupied with his own affairs to have any time for further concealment.

He was now acting with a reckless disregard for noise and I could hear the swishing sound of straw being raked about; I peered round the edge of the rough timber door. Zalor had placed his torch on one of our generator casings so that its light shone on the floor and walls before him. All our equipment was stacked around in preparation for tomorrow's work; as I watched, Zalor completed piling the straw around it and scuttled to the far corner. He came back with a squat green can, which I recognised. It contained paraffin, of which we had quite a store in case of emergency, or for use in lamps if we were operating away from the tractors.

I did not need to wait any longer. The matchbox fell from Zalor's hand as I sent him sprawling in the fury of my first rush. He was up again quickly though, hissing something in that abominable language of his. I got in two good blows across his shoulders with the leather camel whip I had brought with me, I am glad to say, and the pig-like screams with which he greeted my ministrations were extremely satisfactory to me. He was a powerful fellow, though, despite his small stature and he closed with me fiercely, clutching at a curved-bladed knife he plucked from his belt.

I had dropped the whip in my anxiety to hold his knife- hand off and he got his boot up into my groin while I was doing this; a stabbing pain lanced through me, the room grew dim and I fell back against some boxes. He rushed at me again with the knife but cracked his knees against some low piece of metal equipment chance had left in that spot and collapsed with a howl. By this time I had got to my feet and who knows what would have happened had I not heard Scarsdale's welcome voice shouting from the square.

The dwarf hesitated, thrust his knife back into his belt with a garbled cry of hatred and was then gone through the door and into the night. I got to my feet and half-dragged myself to the door before I collapsed again. I must have presented a sorry sight, panting, covered with dirt and straw and gasping out an incoherent story as the gigantic form of the Professor loomed up in the dim glow of the torch.

He gripped me by the hand, his jaw tightening as he looked around the room. He led me to sit on one of the upturned crates and stopped my broken flow of words.

'On the contrary, my dear Plowright, you did extremely well,' he said. 'If these had been burned the Great Northern Expedition would have been finished. The fault is mine. I should have foreseen something like this and mounted a guard.'

The occasion was so unusual and the friendship between the Professor and myself so close at this moment that I told him about the stone tablet I had seen the dwarf drop. He was silent for a long moment.

'It makes no matter, Plowright,' he said. 'We have both perhaps been a little remiss but the major responsibility must be mine.'

'But what does all this mean?' I asked him.

'I should have mounted a guard,' Scarsdale said softly, as though he had not heard my question. 'Can you walk all right? We must tell the others and make sure there are no further interruptions tonight.'

He had locked up again and we were halfway across the square before I was able to repeat my question.

'There are those who do not wish us to find the resting place of the Old Ones,' Scarsdale said sombrely. 'Zalor was obviously of them or in their employ.'

We were at the tractor by this time and he paused at the door as I prepared to go in.

'I must have words with the Mir about this on our return,' he said grimly.

I went inside and brewed some tea for all of us, waiting for the running footsteps and excited questions Scarsdale's errand would arouse. There was no more sleep for me that night. When I had carried the urn of tea to the vegetable store where my colleagues were already servicing the equipment by the light of portable generating equipment, I went to drink mine by the edge of the town, looking over the Plain of Darkness; there was nothing to see but I knew that the sun would eventually arise from that direction.

I wondered whether Zalor was somewhere out there or if he had fled back in the direction of the ancient City of Zak. I wondered too how he would survive, or whether he had friends among the desert tribes. I smiled grimly to myself in the darkness. People like Zalor always survived. The headman, hastily roused by Scarsdale, had a party searching Nylstrom street by street but I guessed the dwarf would have his plans laid too well and that he would no longer be within the town. And so it proved when dawn eventually came.

Long before that I stirred to find Van Damm by my side. He joined me in my vigil until the distant rays of yellow light harshly illuminated the black plain of ash before us; the dawn wind sent faint whorls of dust moving uneasily on its surface. We looked in vain for any trace of Zalor.

Van Damm glanced at me sombrely. His face was haggard in the strange light of that ancient place.

'A bad business, Plowright,' he said. 'And an ill omen for this enterprise, I fear.'