The Great White Space (11 page)

'Please give the signal.'

The electric klaxon on top of the tractor blared with heart- stopping raucousness within the tunnel as I pressed the button; Scarsdale would insist on its use as the halt signal either on the surface or under the earth and I myself felt it was something we could do without as the radio link would have been just as effective. But it was Scarsdale's expedition and he made the procedure a rule so we said nothing. Holden's voice came over the radio monitor a few seconds later.

'Executive signal received. What are your instructions?'

'We shall be camping for the night in five minutes,'

Scarsdale replied. 'Please make all necessary preparations.'

The black walls of the tunnel, with an occasional mouth debouching from it, continued to slide by in the yellow glare of our searchlights; already, it seemed as though we had been travelling due north for days. Scarsdale smiled wryly as I observed to him that the Expedition's title was perhaps a little more apposite than hitherto. The warm wind blew as strongly as ever, though fortunately it was still nothing more than a breeze; the air was dry; and the rock grated beneath the rustling tread of the tractors.

Scarsdale was already moving about the cabin, tripping switches which set generators re-charging batteries; testing circuits; and doing the other mundane things on which our survival depended, such as checking levels in the fresh-water tanks and preparing materials for the evening meal, which we would take some time after six o'clock.

2

I throttled back the motors, my forearms trembling slightly as they were wont to do, after some time spent at the levers, my legs aching from the transmission of the tread movements to the accelerator pedals. Sophisticated as these great machines were, and as cunningly as Scarsdale and Van Damm had designed the transmission mechanisms, they were undoubtedly tiring to drive though the going in these tunnels (I persisted in referring to the broad highways along which we were travelling in the plural) was nowhere as difficult as it had been across the desert.

But there we had the sweet sky above us, and not this lunar blackness which seemed to depress one's spirits beyond measure, even though we had been travelling under the mountains for less than a day; and to recall we had thought the desert sky cruel! I jerked out of my reverie at a sudden exclamation from Scarsdale. He was standing in a stiff attitude in front of the windscreen, his actions arrested in process of tripping one of the switches. The incident was so unusual for him that I might have been more startled than I seemed but I had already begun the stopping procedure of the tractor, so I merely continued with my routine.

The treads rotated ever slower and the shrill whine died away to a minuscule ticking; I switched off then and became aware of the faint respiration of the warm breeze which set up a soft susurrance as of distant surf within the tunnel.

The motor of Van Damm's machine impinged itself upon my consciousness and I turned to see Number 2 stopping behind us; the searchlight on the roof blossomed brighter and several secondary lights came on. By this time I had joined Scarsdale at the windscreen.

'Is there anything wrong?' I asked.

Scarsdale relaxed his tense attitude. He turned towards me and concluded his switching movements on the panel.

'I don't know, Plowright,' he said slowly, his face stern in the yellow atmosphere of the searchlights. 'I fancied I saw something white flicker up ahead in the tunnel.'

'A pity you didn't warn me,' I said without thinking. 'We could have run on a few hundred yards.'

'That's just what one doesn't do under these circumstances,' said Scarsdale, as though he were explaining something elementary to a child. 'We don't know what we may meet in these tunnels. One notes; one consolidates; and one then reconnoitres in strength — suitably armed.'

Here he slapped the webbing holster at his belt with significance.

'I'm sorry. Professor,' I said contritely. 'I didn't think.'

'It's all right,' he returned. 'But I've naturally given this a great deal of thought over the years. And I've worked out a routine for every eventuality - I trust.'

Sparks of humour glinted in his eyes as he opened the door of the Command tractor and stepped down on to the iron-hard floor of the tunnel. Van Damm had opened the door of his own machine before it had stopped and, stepping delicately on to the metal casing which protected the treads, dropped to the ground. The two men met midway between the machines and conferred quietly.

Van Damm went back to Number 2. I heard his shouted instructions, distorted between the walls of the tunnel.

'Bring the tractor up level with the other. We want to get maximum illumination ahead. Scarsdale's spotted something down the tunnel.'

I stood aside as Holden manoeuvred the big machine alongside our own; when he had switched off the motors the throb of generators echoed back along the passage and then all the main lighting of the tractor came on. I went to stand with Scarsdale to one side; the grotesque shadows of myself and the Professor sprawled ahead of us along the floor. The beams of both tractors stretched a long way and I fancied I could see something faintly white in the far distance.

When I had indicated this to the Professor he called Van Damm over and the lighting of Number 2 vehicle was switched off. The five of us then conferred briefly; Holden went into Number 1 tractor and turned off everything except the main searchlight. I noticed that Scarsdale had his revolver out and the others appeared to be bristling with weapons. Even Van Damm was waving a dangerous-looking automatic pistol as he conversed with the Professor.

Reluctantly, I got out my own revolver and released the safety catch though I felt that the Professor and his companions were in far greater danger from my own incompetent marksmanship than they might be from anything in front of us.

Scarsdale turned back to me when he had finished talking to the doctor.

'You had better come with me, Plowright,' he said. 'We'll keep abreast. In case of emergency this will obviate anything ricochetting off the tunnel walls and injuring one of us.

I hadn't thought of that and gratefully fell in step with his burly figure as we walked away from the tractors into the encompassing gloom. Both of us had switched on the lamps incorporated in our helmets and the bobbing shadows which flickered and flared on the walls either side the farther we got from the comforting beam of the searchlight, made a weird pattern that formed a fitting accompaniment to my sombre thoughts.

We had now got more than two hundred yards from the tractors and were passing the dark mouths of various archways; these were no doubt the side tunnels to which Scarsdale had already referred and I hoped they were as empty as my companion supposed. We could easily be cut off from the main body if anything in this labyrinth wished us harm. I wondered whether the Professor had thought of this but I hesitated to mention it, in case he might find me over fanciful.

I felt my arm silently gripped and at the same time I saw what the Professor wished to draw to my attention; the flicker of white I had glimpsed from the distance was markedly nearer and with every rasping footstep we took began to resolve itself from the gloom. Presently, in the manner in which the image of a developing photograph composes itself before one in the developing tray, we saw what was undoubtedly a human figure lying on the floor of the tunnel.

Scarsdale steadied his revolver and his face was stern in the light of our head-lamps. He tightened his grip on my arm.

'Stay here,' he said quietly.

'Ought I not to go with you?' I queried. 'In case of danger...'

'In case of danger one alone will be enough,' he said firmly. 'You can do more to help by staying here. In an emergency you would be able to do a great deal more to help me.'

I saw the sense of this and said nothing further. There ensued a long thirty seconds as I stood and watched Scarsdale's lamp bobbing and dwindling up the tunnel before me. The rasping of his footsteps ceased and there was just enough light to see that the Professor was kneeling to examine something. He returned a few moments later, walking backwards down the tunnel towards me, fanning his revolver from side to side.

He stood next to me and took a deep breath.

'It's the dwarf, Zalor,' he said in a rather unsteady voice. 'Though God knows how he could have got here. He's quite dead. We'll bring the machines up and dispose of him.'

The next few minutes were a confusion of tractor motors, dipping lights and anxious questions. Holden went out with Scarsdale to drag Zalor into one of the side tunnels. I could confirm that it was he from this nearer view and I recognised the clothing he had been wearing. He looked curiously deflated as I gazed at his remains from a distance; Scarsdale would not let anyone else approach closer.

He and Holden went out later and while they were away I went back into Number 1 tractor and brewed some much- welcomed tea. When I went outside again Scarsdale gave the order to back the tractors down the tunnel and make camp there. I noticed that one searchlight was kept on; Scarsdale ordered permanent sentries to keep watch throughout the night and one of the light machine-guns was set up on top of the Command tractor and an extension wire to the alarm klaxon run out for the sentry's use should it be needed during the night.

I viewed all these precautions with disquiet which was not alleviated by Holden's behaviour; he had apparently been taken sick, said Van Damm, who had attended him. Holden did indeed have several vomiting attacks and when I offered him tea later he had a face that looked ashen and haggard. He took the tea sullenly, quite unlike his usual self and sipped it with great shuddering gasps between.

Scarsdale also looked more grim than I had yet seen him and often turned his night-glasses down the far curve of the tunnel, towards the side entrance where they had taken the dwarfs body. No-one slept much that night and towards midnight I found myself in conversation with Holden in Number 2 vehicle. He looked better than he had that afternoon but his eyes had a strange, haunted look which I didn't like. As we talked — myself interrogatively, he in brief, disjointed monosyllables - his eyes wandered ever and again back to the windscreen of the tractor and the dark bend of the tunnel in the far distance, cut off where the tractor searchlight beam's power failed to penetrate.

'It wasn't so much the loss of weight,' he told me finally, 'though that was bad enough. The dwarf was like a husk from which all the essence had been drained.'

Holden cast a curious look over his shoulder, at the tunnel beyond the windshield.

'All his face seemed to have been sucked away,' he said, the greyness back in his own features. 'I ask you, what sort of creature can have done that?'

It was a question which made sleep impossible for me also that night.

1

We made an early start next morning. It had been a wretched night, not improved by a false alarm from Holden during the small hours when he fancied he had seen a shadow moving further down the tunnel. Fortunately he had not fired, as he might well have injured himself with the ricochet but the infernal noise of the klaxon which tumbled us from broken sleep, and the equally noisy inquest which followed, made rest for the remaining hours impossible. By five we were moving forward again, myself at the controls of Number 1 which, despite his previous instructions, the Professor had insisted should lead.

It was a position of honour, as Van Damm had said, but I could not help wishing as I juggled with the steering handles, that Number 2 had gone ahead as planned, as the lead under our present conditions was a far from relaxing station. It did not seem to worry Scarsdale who kept his night-glasses rigidly inclined through the windshield and occasionally gave me instructions to reduce or increase speed. Van Damm's voice came through on the radio at ten minute intervals and to outward purposes all was as it had been the previous day; but there had been a subtle change with the finding of Zalor's body and for myself I knew that I could never again regard these tunnels in quite the same way.

They had always been sinister — I was conscious of that the first instant the tractor rumbled beneath the great portico — but the knowledge that we had also now to deal with some force inimical to life charged every foot of the way with unknown terror. It could not be ruled out, however, that Zalor had been the victim of some quite natural disaster; a beast of the order of a mountain Hon, which perhaps inhabited the deepest caverns? But even as Van Damm put forward the supposition my own secret voices were mocking the theory; on what would living creatures of that sort subsist in these arid tunnels? And surely we should have seen some evidence of them long before now?

Beasts leave droppings or some other signs of their passing, but there had been no evidence of life of any sort. And then there was Holden's reaction; given that he might well have a nature particularly sensitive to death but Zalor's end had been so horrible that Holden had, for a time, been almost out of his mind; and even Scarsdale's grim resolve had been shaken. There remained other problems also; not least the puzzle of how the dwarf had managed to cover such a vast distance to arrive at the caves before the expedition. Or had he perhaps companions at Nylstrom who had carried him with them across the desert more swiftly than our tractors could travel?

There were endless possibilities here and my mind revolved them equally endlessly; the truth was that the alternatives were so disquieting that I was determined to find a natural explanation, however bizarre, which could be made to fit. In the meantime my hands automatically carried out their tasks; the wind blew with increasing warmth; and the needle of the compass pointed obstinately almost due north.

But we were not to travel very far today before a major landmark was reached; it was something after seven a.m. and the mileage indicator registered, I think, around eighty-four miles before I began to sense a slight change in the atmosphere. It was nothing immediately definable but I was conscious that Scarsdale had noted it also. I saw that he had his head cocked on one side, as though he were listening. But I noticed, a short while later, that he was not listening but looking at something. It was quite five minutes more, however, before I myself became aware of the phenomena which had arrested his attention.