The Great White Space (13 page)

We debated earnestly within the tractor that evening and many were the theories that Van Damm and Scarsdale argued; it was, from my point of view, one of the most stimulating and interesting evenings we had yet spent, the burden of the earlier nights having given way to a light-hearted optimism on the part of the three junior members. Even Holden was more like his normal self, though I noticed, that, even when off watch, he cast occasional glances through the windscreen, as if to assure himself that all was well outside.

Van Damm had taken the first of the two-hour watches and was, thus, the first to observe the sheer monotony of the atmosphere here, the light never varying by the slightest degree from the overall twilight. But even this mundane fact was written up in the voluminous notebooks which the Professor and his companions were beginning to fill with columns of figures and other statistics. I took my own watch at four in the morning and though the slight breeze from the north still blew, the atmosphere was not damp as might have been supposed from the nearby presence of water; neither did I hear or see anything untoward.

Ever since the strange flapping noise I had first heard at the great portico entrance several days ago, which might now almost be measured in years so long did we seem to have been beneath the surface, my nerves had been playing me strange tricks. The horrifying and quite unexplainable death of Zalor had completed the stealthy undermining of my morale and so I faced my first turn of sentry-duty, my companions all being asleep, with rather more tension that I would have liked.

But all passed without incident as did the subsequent spells of watching over the next two days. We fired the various weapons, with differing degrees of success, the dull explosions seeming to start weird echoes from far off across the water. We hauled the rubber boats down to the edge of the brackish lake and embarked, paddling a few hundred yards out into the mist by compass, and then turning again, making our way back to the beach without mishap. The rubber lifebelts were duly inflated and each of us — not without forebodings, though the water had been already declared non-injurious to health — plunged into the cold tide until their buoyancy had been duly tested.

These, and other equally strenuous enterprises occupied us for the allotted time, until Scarsdale had professed himself satisfied with our efficiency. On the third morning, after a substantial breakfast, shortly after seven a.m. the five of us, in two rubber boats attached one to the other by the painters, slipped into the cold tide, leaving the two locked tractors shrouded under their tarpaulins, and splashed out somewhat hesitantly into the misty unknown.

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Scarsdale, Van Damm and Holden embarked in the first rubber boat, while Prescott and I followed. The noise of the paddles, the dripping of water, seemingly magnified by the mist and the curious pallor of the light from above made an unforgettable scene as we thrust out from the shore and were soon undulating on the choppy surface, our horizons limited by the faint mist which clung to the surface.

The rubber boats were dangerously low, we had packed so much equipment in with us and I hoped that the current would not get any stronger farther out; if we had to paddle for our lives Prescott and I were singularly ill-equipped for the task. Scarsdale's boat carried the compass and we were attached by the rope in any case so we had no navigation to do. Even so, we were hard put to it to keep up and every so often Scarsdale's sharp injunction would come across to us as the line went taut, due to our inability to match their speed.

But after half an hour Prescott and I had settled down to stroke and our thoughts wandered in a pleasant form of euphoria, our responsibilities surrendered to those on the main craft, our minds as well at ease in this place as they would ever be. We needed both hands for the paddles, but even so our rifles were hardly at our feet, wedged against crates, cases and bundles of camping equipment. My main concern had been the safety of my cameras and my supply of photographic plates; to this end I had secured them in the middle of the mound, well wrapped in waterproof material. My companions had regarded my possibly excessive precautions as faintly ludicrous and even Van Damm was tempted to remark, on embarkation, 'We aren't going to America, Plowright.'

'Who knows where we are going?' Scarsdale had put in unexpectedly and, on reflection, he was, of course, right. The lake might be of enormous extent, if it were on the scale of the works we had already seen. My reflections were interrupted at this point by a sudden lurching movement of the craft, and its tipping at one end, accompanied by a slight ingress of water. My smothered exclamation was followed by a curt shout from the Professor and a muttered apology from Prescott, who had caught his paddle in the securing line.

The interruption was timely, however, and I looked more sharply about me, noting that the phosphorescence of the water remained unabated; that the slight tidal movement continued; and that the surface vapour had receded a little so that our two craft floated in a clear circular area about half a mile in extent. The illumination from above continued steadily so that we seemed to be sailing beneath the dim sky of earth and the warm breeze which had blown steadily from the north appeared, to my imagination at least, to be a little stronger.

With it, I fancied a faint vibration as of some great machine a long way off, giving out a pulsation like a heart-beat. I glanced at Prescott but saw that he had already heard it and looking ahead, I could see that the other party had stopped their vigorous paddling and were all poised, water running off their paddle blades in fiery particles, as they listened intently.

I was amused to see that almost immediately Van Damm bent to his knees and I then made out that he was scribbling furiously in his notebook; he glanced at his wristwatch and continued his entry as he recorded a log observation of the phenomena. After this slight pause the three paddles of our companions dipped as one and Prescott and I measured our own strokes to theirs and so the two ungainly rubber craft went bobbing and nodding into the mist.

Some fairly stiff paddling followed and from various indications, verified by Prescott, we estimated that we might be about halfway across the lake; the current strength was increasing here and it seemed to run roughly from east to west, bearing out Scarsdale's earlier theory. However, nowhere was it really troublesome and by allowing for it by heading off from true north on the compass Scarsdale and his companions ahead of us continued travelling almost due north over the ground.

It was slow work though, and we had no means of estimating our progress as we had on the tractors; without benefit of the compass and because of the encircling mist Prescott and I would have been completely lost but for the guidance of the lead craft and one could go round for hours in those conditions without navigational aids. The strangeness of the light also, both from the water as well as from what we called the sky, resulted in a peculiar sense of disorientation, and we were both glad to hear Scarsdale's hail from the lead craft about two hours later, that we were approaching the opposite shore.

At a conservative estimate we must have been covering something like three miles an hour over the ground so the extent of the lake width might be somewhere in the region of five miles; a prodigious area for an underground feature of this sort. The Scarsdale See was living up to its newly given name. Prescott and I slackened our paddling and as we drifted farther towards Scarsdale's boat, which had also paused in front of us, we could distinctly hear the faint susurrance of water on the shore before us.

As we rocked slowly inwards, parallel with the first rubber boat, I could see, from the first glimpse, that the shore was almost an exact replica of the one we had left. Here were the same black rocks, the water lapping at the dark sand and tumbling phosphorescent round the base of the rocks; the mist low down on the shoreline; the dim light coming downwards through the vaporous haze; and the sand receding into rocky distance.

I noticed that Scarsdale and our companions had their revolvers drawn and we all waited in that uneasy surge until a gesture from our leader set us all to paddling again, so that the two boats grated and foamed their way ashore. We jumped on to the wet, yielding sand and dragged the frail craft up way beyond the water line. As before, Scarsdale was in no hurry to proceed; exploration could wait while he established another camp and we unloaded the supplies. We chose a spot in the rear of a heaped tumble of boulders and there set up the tents, unpacked what equipment we would need for a night's stay and dragged up the two boats, which the Professor insisted should be tethered to stakes driven into the sand, though what purpose that served I did not quite see.

This was named Camp Three and the boats and the heavier stores would remain here while the five of us, reduced to a walking party, went on with the packs, tents and more portable supplies. But the day's activities would include a preliminary exploration inwards by three of the party; the remaining two would prepare the camp's midday meal and make an effort to investigate this far shoreline if there were time. Once again machine-guns were dragged out and mounted on their tripods. Their line of fire commanded both approaches to the beach, that is from west to east, but again I could not possibly see what lay behind the Professor's reasoning.

Apart from the flapping of what I took to be wings, we had heard or seen nothing of any living creature since we went underground, though I could not deny that the dwarfs mysterious and sinister end was enough to ensure the most stringent precautions. We drew lots for the parties and it fell to Van Damm and Holden to remain in camp while Prescott and I under Scarsdale's guidance would press on to see what lay beyond the beach.

In addition to weapons we took with us a portable radio with which the Professor hoped to keep in contact with Camp Three and he also had with him a Very pistol; we were, of course, armed and at our leader's insistence we donned the headgear with the lamps, in case we had to explore any passages or tunnels away from the dim luminescence of the main caverns. Normally we would mount sentries on all our camps from now on but Scarsdale felt that as long as Van Damm and Holden kept together, they could leave camp for a trip along the beach if they wished.

Van Damm and Holden carried on unloading the remaining stores from the boats and we waited a few minutes to test the radio link before Scarsdale gave the order to start out. In single file the three of us marched up the beach; I looked back only once to see the figures of our companions already swallowed up in the haze. After a few hundred yards the noise of water ceased and the air became dry and arid; the wind blew, as it always had, from the north, that is directly in front of us and with it, for the first time, tiny particles of grit blew past our faces and lodged in our clothing.

The faint pulsations I had earlier heard were also stronger though indefinable as to source and obviously far away; we paused while the Professor noted the temperature and other atmospheric conditions in the notebook he habitually carried and I then tested the radio link again, being reassured on hearing Van Damm's squeaky voice. He also took a note of my brief report and reported in his turn that he and Holden were proceeding eastwards along the beach. They had seen and heard nothing of note. Scarsdale and Prescott had gone ahead a little by this time, but when I caught them up I passed on Van Damm's remarks, as the Professor had instructed me.

I fancied he had more confidence in me than I deserved; perhaps I gave him the appearance of being steady and reliable but my facade belied my interior. Unlike all the other expeditions on which 1 had engaged, the Great Northern was special in many ways, and I had rarely faced the days before me with greater foreboding. I knew that Holden had realised this also and it was my fancy that Scarsdale, for all his bluff exterior, guessed the power of the unknown forces with which we might be faced. It was true we had physically seen nothing since the expedition began but apart from Zalor there was a dreadful atmosphere emanating from this terrible twilight world that a man would have to be made of stone not to sense.

As we came up from the beach the mist had now thinned away and we were on a broad, stony gulley which stretched out in all directions before us; but our view was limited by the dimness of the light so that there was always a rim of darkness about half a mile ahead which made a natural horizon. Until we had advanced toward it we were never sure whether our way was blocked by a cliff of the black basaltic rock or the darkness was merely composed of vast space.

We had told Van Damm we would be back in two hours, unless anything untoward occurred, which gave us an hour each way; in any case we could report any delay on the radio link. I glanced at my wristwatch and saw that we had already been walking across the plain for a little over twenty minutes. I had one of my smaller cameras slung round my neck and I stopped to set up my tripod to take a vista of the desolate scene with the minute figures of Scarsdale and Prescott now some distance ahead. I saw them quicken their steps as I was dismantling my equipment and I hurried after them just as they began to disappear into the rim of darkness. Scarsdale, however, paused as soon as he saw that I had fallen behind and the two men waited for me to catch up; 1 then saw what had caused them to hurry on. There, across the plain before us, loomed a blank wall, broken by another of the gigantic portals we had already seen at the entrance to the mountain. At Scarsdale's nodded instruction I radioed Van Damm; his voice came through, after a minute or so, distorted by static. I gave him Scarsdale's message and told him to stand by.

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The three of us then walked forward across to the great portico which loured across the plain at us. As I had surmised, there was another plinth in front of it, which bore the same strange hieroglyphs we had already noted outside the mountain range and which, according to Scarsdale, bore so sinister an inscription. I took some photographs while Prescott stood looking round in the dim light; Scarsdale had gone over to the plinth and was laboriously copying out the inscription. It seemed to correspond to some passage in the Professor's copy of The Ethics of Ygor, for I saw him excitedly comparing extracts as he scribbled. When I had finished my photographic work, I put the camera back in its case and waited with Prescott. Neither of us spoke to the other.