A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  “Now what am I going to do?” he said aloud in a normal speaking voice. He was talking to himself now in a normal voice because he no longer expected anybody to hear anything he said. Then he wondered if maybe he was being too pessimistic and if he was surrendering too quickly to his worst fears.

  Slowly getting up off the floor and looking around, he shook his head and said again, “Now what am I going to do?” He wondered if he should scream the words. He thought, Maybe someone or something is here after all.

  Chapter 5: First Corridor

  Even as he asked himself the question ‘what am I going to do’ the second time, the answer to the question jumped into his mind and so he thought, ‘Of course, I know what I am going to do. I am going to try to locate and communicate with astronaut Ridgeway or, if not her, anybody or anything that might be within hearing distance.’

  Armed with new hope and renewed courage, he reached into one of the pockets of his space suit where a certain tool he thought could be useful to him now was stored. He found the tool. It was a collapsible tool bar. Once he got it out of its pouch, he extended it, locked it in place, and began tapping it against different parts of the walls on either side of him.

  He tapped it also against different parts of the floor. Because the ceiling was a little too high for him to reach even if he held onto the bar at one end poked it upward and stood on his toes, he climbed up on the little projection he had found and banged on the ceiling just above the projection.

  He got no response. He was hoping the tapping of his tool would reveal, by the sound, that a hollow space existed where perhaps a room might be. But everything seemed solid. He also called out, “Astronaut Ridgeway, can you hear me? If so, make a sound of any kind. Does anyone else hear me? If so, tap on any nearby surface or better yet call out to me.”

  He got no reply of any kind, not even any random sound that he might interpret as a reply. “What do I do now?” he asked himself. It occurred to him that the space suit might be muffling the sound of his voice. Because he heard sounds that he interpreted as meaning that an atmosphere had entered the little room, he wondered if an atmosphere might be here too and, if so, if the atmosphere was breathable by a human being.

  To find out if there was an atmosphere and what it was like, he pressed the button on the outside of the suit that would test for any atmosphere and display at the bottom of his face plate what it found. Up came a round green light followed by a list of gases and their relative percentages. Oxygen and carbon dioxide were the top two gases as on Earth. Nitrogen came third, again as on Earth. A temperature display showed that the air that surrounded him measured sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

  The green light flashed three times and then went out. In its place was a message in green that said, “Atmosphere supports human life. Temperature is good. Provided that conditions do not drastically change, the space suit can be removed.”

  He proceeded to undo the zipper that bound the helmet of the suit to the rest of it. When the zipper was only partially undone, he took a couple of shallow breaths because he did not trust the data projected onto his faceplate entirely. He was worried that the monitoring instruments might be defective. But, when the few shallow breaths he took did not seem to damage him in any way, he decided the monitoring instruments had worked after all.

  He proceeded, therefore, to separate the helmet from the suit entirely. Looking for a place to put the helmet, he spotted the projection he had used as a bench and platform. He put the helmet underneath that. Then he pushed the suit minus helmet down around him and stepped out of the suit.

  He spent the next hour or so taking off the space suit, removing the duffel bag from its pouch and opening it up so that he could remove everything else that had been stowed away in pouches and put it all in his duffel bag. Thus, he took out the bags of water and freeze-dried food, the pistol and its ammunition, the explosive charges, the collapsible crowbar, the notebook, and the diamond-tipped inscribing tool.

  At the bottom of the pocket holding the collapsible crowbar was a second pocket holding a portable camera, but, in his rush to empty the space suit and fill his duffel bag, he neglected to reach into the pocket with the camera. Much to his regret afterwards, he left the camera in the suit.

  After putting everything (except for the camera) that was stuffed into pouches in the space suit into pouches and pockets built into the duffel bag, he carefully folded up his space suit and put it next to the helmet beneath the overhanging shelf.

  Picking up the duffel bag by one hand, he looked down the corridor that surrounded him. Because recessed lights lined both edges of the narrow ceiling, he was able to see quite clearly.

  He saw a gray steel door at the very end of the corridor and walked to it. He examined the door, banged on it, and called to see if anyone answered before even attempting to open it.

  This door, like the door that led into the small room that was an elevator car, had a knob on it. This knob was halfway between the right and left edges and about midway between the top and bottom edges.

  He turned the knob, not assuming it would open. But, to his surprise and dismay, it did open. Carrying his duffel bag in his right hand, he walked inside. The second corridor seemed to be made of cut stone that looked like granite. The stone was gray with streaks of white and blue in it. Again, recessed lights lined the ceiling.

  The second corridor, however, was wider and higher than the first. It was level. He started walking to the second door. On the way, deciding the duffel bag was too heavy and cumbersome to carry in his hand, he set it down and pulled out the straps that turned it into a knapsack. He put on the knapsack and walked, more easily now, to the second door.

  On the way to the second door, he heard the door behind him slam shut. The sound of its closing was very loud. There were echoes. Maybe it was the sound of the closing door that led to his remembering that he forgot to take a camera with him.

  To retrieve the camera and also out of panic induced by the number of barriers that now separated him from the surface, his space ship, and his way home, he turned around and ran back to the first door and tried to open it. He was unable to do it. There was not even a handle of any kind on his side. He even went back to his duffel bag, pulled out the crowbar, extended it, and tried pushing the end into the space between the door and its frame, but the seal was so tight the crowbar did not help.

  He regretted not having put something in the way of the door so it could not close but, now, looking around, he saw nothing loose that he could have put there. He certainly did not want to risk losing his duffel bag or crowbar; besides, in light of what happened to him in the little room when it was at ground level, he doubted if anything he might have done along those lines would have made any difference.

  He just went to the next door which was at the end of this second corridor, turned the knob, and pushed the second door open.

  He saw in front of him a corridor narrower and lower than the one he had just walked through that ended at a stone stairway going downwards.

  Before going through the doorway, he pulled out his crowbar, set it up, locked the pieces together, and banged against the walls, ceiling and floor. He screamed as loud as he could, asking, “Is anyone here? Astronaut Ridgeway, can you hear me?” There was no reply.

  He gave vent to his usual lament, asking pathetically, “What do I do now?” Despite asking the question, he knew what he had to do. There was really no option. He stepped through the doorway, walked to the stairway, and stared down into it. While he was doing that, he heard a loud bang. Turning around he saw that the second door had closed behind him. Worried that he was going deeper and deeper into a trap from which he could not escape, regardless of how deep into it he was, he ran back to the door and banged on it, crying “Help me, please. I’m trapped.” But there was no reply so he returned to the stairway which was very dark. The light on the ceiling stopped abruptly at the stairs. Light also shone down below but the stairway itself was quite dark.
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  Walking next to the wall on his left, he slowly moved downwards, stair by stair. He figured there were approximately thirty stairs altogether that he could see and then only barely. Going slowly, he reached a landing that opened up into a little room that was about ten feet square and with a ceiling about ten feet high. Round illuminated globes hung from the ceiling at intervals of about every two feet.

  The walls were all made of cut stone. Cut into the wall on his right, however, was a door with a knob. He tried turning the knob but could not get it to move either to the right or the left. He tried pushing and pulling on the door but it did not budge. He decided that this one, unlike all the previous ones he had encountered, was locked even on his side. He looked for notes or incised marks that astronaut Ridgeway might have made, assuming she had come this way. But he found nothing like that.

  “What do I do now,” he yelled, possibly deriving by this time some comfort from repeating the refrain which had turned into something like a mantra for him. Of course, he knew what he had to do. His choice was either to camp out at a landing, make a home for himself, somewhere on the stairway, or keep descending until he found a door that would open or a corridor that presumably would enable him to get somewhere.

  Because all of the options save one were unpalatable, he decided his only real option was to keep descending. He was descending through region after region of mystery while breathing an atmosphere of pure uncertainty. In other words, he did not know what anything was, where anything would lead, why anything existed, or who was behind any of it.

  He went down another flight. Again, there was a landing that opened out into a room. Again there was a door. Again the door was locked on his side. After banging on the door and calling for help and yelling astronaut Ridgeway’s name a few times and looking for notes or scratches signed by her, he went down another flight. Again he found a door but found also it was locked.

  He kept going downwards. He walked down and down, from one section of stairs that opened out into a landing into another. Each time he found a door but found also that it was locked. After encountering the fourth of the locked doors, two possibilities occurred to him. One possibility was that the locks of these locked doors might be on timers and that, if he just plunked himself down in front of one of the doors and waited, the timer might kick in and undo the lock.

  But actually to wait for a door to unlock seemed stupid to him in retrospect for two reasons: (1) he would have to keep checking the lock every few seconds (what if a timer, assuming there was one) undid the lock for just a few seconds at random intervals?); (2) he might have to wait endlessly (what if a timer, assuming there was one, unlocked a door once a century?).

  He kept wondering too if the time might have come to try out the explosive charges he carried in his backpack. These were solid moldable plastic cylinders that he could wrap around a door handle or put at the foot of a door or even try to squeeze into the narrow crevice that existed between a door and its frame.

  But he decided against using the explosives for the time being for a number of reasons: they might not work; their use might elicit some sort of retaliatory action against him or Ridgeway by whoever ran this place; and finally their use would let whoever monitored this place know exactly where he was (assuming they did not know that already). He figured he would be better off descending stairs until he found an open door or corridor or sizeable room.

  When he got to the next landing and the next locked door, he was pretty desperate. So he pounded with extra force on the door and then, after exhausting himself with the pounding, he shouted ‘help, help,’ and then ‘help me,’ ‘help me.’ But no help of any kind came from the other side. When he finished venting his rage and anxiety, he decided to stay where he was for a while and eat and rest. He took out of his knapsack some food and water, made a little meal for himself, and then lay on the stone floor using his knapsack as a pillow and slept for a little while.

  He knew he was taking a chance sleeping because, while he slept, anyone or anything could creep up on him and attack or molest him. So he was relieved to find that he was intact as well as slightly refreshed when he awoke. He stood up, put his knapsack back on, and resumed the descent, going deeper and deeper into the bowels of whatever this structure was, not sure if he was getting closer to astronaut Ridgeway or farther away with each step.

  He lost count of the number of sections of stairs he had passed through (he estimated that he had traversed between fifteen and twenty sections) when he came to a door, a gray steel door exactly like all of the others that did open. He opened it and went through the doorway into a dingy, dusty basement-like room lit by a single dangling lightbulb. “Hello,” he yelled as loud as he could. “Is anyone here?” But, instead of an answer, he heard only his own voice, time and again, loudly echoing.

  Chapter 6: A Door with Inscriptions

  By the aid of the single dangling bulb, he was able barely to make out the dimensions of the space. He figured it was about twenty feet by sixty feet. The walls seemed to be made out of concrete. The floor seemed to be made of fine-grained dirt or sand though he reckoned it was possible that the dirt or sand had been spread across something more solid.

  The ceiling was slightly vaulted and made of brick neatly lined up and separated by a greenish grout. All the walls were bare except for the one behind him, which had the door in it he had used when entering this place and the wall in front of him which also had set into it a large door (about ten feet high and six feet wide) made of what looked like very dark wood).

  He ran to the door at the far wall. Before attempting to bang on it or try to open it, he looked at markings that he found neatly cut into it. The markings were as unintelligible to him as the markings on the buttons set into the panel of one wall of the little room he first entered. He tried turning the knob of the door and, after finding that it turned, he pushed it slightly open. Now that he was sure it would open, he wanted to do something before going through the doorway. There were actually a couple of things he felt he had to do before going through the doorway—both very important.

  One thing he felt he had to do was to copy the inscription. Had he remembered to bring the camera with him, he could just take some pictures of the inscription; but, since he had forgotten and now could no longer retrieve the camera, he decided to copy the inscription by making a drawing of it.

  He figured that, if he ever returned to the space ship or to Earth, copies of this and any other inscriptions (even if drawn by hand) might help experts back there decipher the language and therefore better understand whoever might have constructed this elaborate maze in the interior of this asteroid. This was, after all, almost as important a part of his mission as the finding and rescuing of Sylvia Ridgeway was. Besides, being a curious person, he wanted to learn as much as he could about this odd place.

  So he pulled out his notebook and pen and began copying the inscriptions. There were symbols inside of geometric shapes of various kinds, the surrounding geometric shapes undoubtedly being symbols too or a part of a symbol that encompassed what was inside as well as what comprised the border.

  The symbols or hieroglyphs were in rows and columns. There were twelve of them altogether—three going across and four down. He decided to draw them as exactly as he was able, starting at the top left and continuing to the bottom right. There was a star with scattered points inside of a circle. Then there was a double circle inside of a star with points along the outside edge of the star. Then there was a spiral with points along the open space on either side of the curved line; this was inside of a square with rounded corners (points at the corners where the lines of the square would be if the corners weren’t rounded. There were two zigzag lines like lightning streaks that crossed one another at a point on each about a third of the way from the bottom; this was inside of a triangle made of zigzag lines.

  He copied everything as exactly as he was able. When he was finished and satisfied that he had done a pretty good job, he began
working on what was primary for his mission—reaching out to astronaut Ridgeway.

  To do that, he turned to the next page of his notebook following his rendering of the inscriptions and wrote, “Sylvia Ridgeway. My name is Peter, Peter Philby. I am looking for you and I’ll keep looking for as long as it takes. I’ll stay here for years if need be, always looking for you, though I might be exaggerating my powers with regard to this—truth be told, I seem to be as much of a prisoner of this place as you—still, to the extent I can, I will look for you. If we meet up, we can collaborate in trying to get out of here—two minds might come up with something that one mind alone cannot.” He signed his name at the bottom of his note. He then turned to the next page and wrote a second note exactly the same as the first. Then he removed both notes from his notebook.

  After studying the design and size of the handle on the door he was about to try to open, he figured he could tear a round hole in the note and tear a straight line at the bottom of the hole and slip the note over the handle. He did that. It worked.

  Then he turned the handle, pushed open the door, went through the opening and looked to see if there was a handle on the other side. There was not. He wished he had some pins or nails or glue but none of that was supplied. So he folded the second note and put it below the door at the place where the wall met the door.

  Because the fold was not too tight and because the paper had some spring to it, the note straightened out enough to open up with the crease remaining at the base of the wall. He figured that, now, if she ever came this way, regardless from which direction, there would be a good chance that she would find the note. He could not think of anything more to do at that door so he turned around and looked around the new space he had entered.