Children of the Void

by William Dexter

  This time, though, there was a significant difference.

  The hall contained what were at once apparent as furnishings of some kind.

  We recognised seating benches, and tables of a kind, all wrought in what appeared to be varying grades and colours of stone, some highly polished, others with a satiny surface. But as for the rest of the equipment of this gigantic chamber, we could form no idea as to its purpose.

  In alcoves at regular intervals we saw heavy plinths, carrying blocks of polished mineral shaped into incomprehensible forms; intricate and complex whorls and gravity-defying projections challenged our analysis and our imaginations.

  Our first thoughts, naturally, were of escape from the great hall, and all four of us made a rapid circuit of the walls in search of some egress. It was only after some long period of searching that we gave up the prospect of leaving the hall— except by the way we had come in—and turned our thoughts to the reasons for the vast constructions we found around us.

  For vast they were; if this hall had been built for the use of living creatures, they must have been Titans indeed. The benches stood a good four feet high, and what we took to be tables ranged from five to seven feet in height.

  After our first thorough search for a way out, we rested, climbing on to one of the benches that had its back against a wall. Then we had a chance to survey this weird temple-like chamber.

  We agreed among ourselves that its construction and furnishing appeared to be more in keeping with a temple than a living room. The vast, arched ceiling (“They knew about the arch, then,” said Arabin thoughtfully), the degree of craftsmanship shown in the construction and finish of the furnishings, the carefully-tended look of the whole place, all spoke for the temple theory.

  After some long time spent in discussion and thought, we met another problem. “What about food?” said Karim.

  The hours we had spent in climbing the long incline of the tunnel, and in searching round the great temple for an exit, had exhausted our energies, and now that we had rested, we realised that we were hungry. This prompted another search of the vast hall.

  From end to end we scoured the place closely, but not a trace of evidence could we find that there would ever be, or had ever been, the intention of eating there. There wa& certainly nothing edible to be found, and the added knowledge that there was no source of any liquid at once made us all madly thirsty.

  “The hermit crabs knew we had to eat,” pondered Arabin. ‘They saw to it that we were fed . . . The question is: what, or who, are we up against now? If they—the creatures who made this place and apparently opened the way to it for us— if they don’t eat and drink, they may not realise that we do.” It wasn’t a cheering thought

  Our experience of alien life forms when we fought the invading Vulcanids on our own world had taught us that some forms of life do not need food and water as humans need them. If our new captors were beings who extracted nourishment from the atmosphere, for instance, we would starve to death.

  Experimentally, Karim chipped at some of the grotesque statuary with a small boulder that he had been carrying around with him.

  The boulder broke before the massive monolith showed even so much as a scratch.

  “No use trying a mineral diet, Casimir,” I said. “We should need stainless steel teeth to make an impression on these things.”

  By the time the food problem was solved, we were ravenously hungry. But solved it was, after we had slept four times. On awakening, we found a small bunch of the hermit crabs clustered round the door by which we had entered. I should mention here that the door had been closed by our own carelessness many hours before. In experimenting with it, we had closed it, and been unable to open it from the inside.

  Now it stood open, and inside it was a line of platters, brought there, obviously, by the hermit crabs. We rushed towards the food, and thp round, horny globes of the hermit crabs recoiled a little from us.

  It was the same dreary, unappetising mineral-like granules on which we had lived in the caves, but we were thankful to have it. We knew, by now, that, miserable though the food was, it sustained life and staved off thirst and hunger.

  “So something here knows that we must eat,” said Arabin.

  “We are watched,” replied Karim, solemnly. “Something there is that knows all about us. Something different, something not like us...”

  “You’re right, Casimir,” answered Arabin. “They’ve got us here; they’re feeding us. What is their object?”

  It was a hypothetical question. None of us could answer it. But would we ever be able to answer it?

  “There seems enough of this horrible diet for a week or more,” calculated Leo. “I’m wondering whether we ought to try for the tunnel again. Somewhere we may find a way out of it”

  He walked across to the door, where a tight semi-circle of the hermit crabs barred his way. Behind them stood more of the odd creatures, obviously there to prevent our exit.

  Many times we had attempted to pick up one of the creatures while we were in their caves, but each time they had rolled out of reach. We knew next to nothing about them, of course, and it could have been, for all we knew, that a touch from one would have been fatal. They may have been venomous, for all we could tell. But we had been prepared to run that risk. Now, again, as Leo stooped to try to catch one of them, they rolled deftly out of his reach.

  But even supposing that we had secured one—what could we have learned from it?

  Any plans we may have had for escaping through the door were thwarted quickly. A group of the hermit crabs rolled towards the door while we were some distance away, a little later, and seemed to fill the space by rolling one on top of the other. Then they progressively rolled away again, and. . .

  The web was stretched tightly across the doorway.

  Once more we were captives.

  It may be wondered why we had not attempted to open the door when it was closed earlier, or why, once the hermit crabs had opened it for us, we had not rushed it together, making our way back into the tunnel.

  In explanation, I must state that we each had a definite feeling that the temple—as we had come to call it—offered a better chance to escape than the rock passages. We had found from experience that the tunnels had the incredible property of changing their conformation. The temple, on the other hand, had remained static all the time we were in it.

  We were confident that there must be other entrances, as well as the one we had come through. It would have been completely illogical to construct such an enormous place with but the one insignificant entrance, and we were sure that, given time, we could break the secret of the other entrances.

  And so, for the short time the door to the tunnels had been opened again to us, we had been more occupied with carrying the food to a place well inside our temple, than in getting out.

  Karim, who had been a builder in Alexandria, guided us in our search for the main entrance, or any other entrances there may have been. Logically, he explained, by Terrestrial standards, the main door of the temple should have been in the wall opposite to that by which we had entered. This would give the necessary imposing perspective to anyone entering by either door, and was, indeed, the natural place to site an entrance.

  But—that was by Terrestrial standards. Would the beings who had built this place necessarily conform to such standards? Nevertheless, look as we would, we could see no other reasonable place for a main entrance.

  Down each long side of the great chamber were alcoves, six to each wall, containing the great incomprehensible statues. Between them were wide expanses of worked surface bearing panels of closely carved inscriptions. We were sure that the panels did contain inscriptions, because long study of them showed no regularity or symmetry in the characters carved thereon.

  Each end of the hundred-foot-long chamber narrowed in a great curve to a wall no wider than ten feet, although the main width of the hall was at least sixty feet. Opposite the door by which we had entered w
as another alcove, of greater size, and containing a strange group of statuary on a large plinth.

  We explored each of these monuments thoroughly, and at last came to the conclusion that they portrayed not concrete images, but abstract thought. And as that thought was the product of an alien intelligence, there was small hope of our ever translating it into familiar ideas.

  And so we lingered in the great sculptured hall, with its waxing and waning light from the unseen source, for many more days. Thrice the hermit crabs replenished our food supplies, leaving, incidentally, the stone platters which they brought each time.

  Day by day Karim spent in fruitless search for some clue to an exit. At last he gave up the search, for, he said, he no longer believed that we should find a way out. The stone-work showed no signs of joints, and the whole chamber seemed to have been hewn from the solid rock.

  “I think,” he said slowly, when he told of his despair, “that nobody is meant to come into or go out of this place. It might be a tomb, or such a thing as a museum showcase, where people do not enter.”

  “And yet,” Arabin challenged, “the only living creatures we’ve seen on this world know we’re here, and they make no effort to move us. In fact, they’ve made doubly sure that we don’t get out at all!”

  “But still, it is not a place for life, this. It is such a place where might be djinns . . and Karim shuddered “. . . and maybe the hermit crabs think that we are djinns. Maybe they have imprisoned us, as Suleiman (peace on his name!) imprisoned the djinns in the old time.”

  Yes, we were very near to despair. There was something appallingly weird and chilling about our prison that took away our spirit. Looking back, I cannot understand how we retained any shred of sanity at that time. The grim surroundings, the uncanny unpredictable variations in space and time, the awful thought that we were to die here on an unknown world—all these things should have long ago destroyed us. Even now, none of us can imagine what kept us not only alive, but hopeful of return to the surface and eventually to our own world.

  Day by day (as we judged time by the waxing and waning of the light that permeated the place) we sank lower in spirit. Day by day we gave less time to thoughts of escape and plans for the future. Even Arabin, who had been playing an interminable series of chess games from memory with Karinga Varga, became dispirited.

  And then one night (we referred to the periods of darkness as night) came a sudden shock that sent the superstitious Karim nearly crazy with fear.

  Out of the darkness, a voice spoke to us.

  VII

  We had been sleeping heavily, crowded into one of the alcoves, when a sudden sharp sound woke us all. Whether it was a report, or the sound of a door slamming, we did not know. Some heard it as one thing, some as another.

  Then there was silence for some time—probably only a matter of seconds, though it seemed like minutes.

  But the sound had awakened us thoroughly, and we huddled there holding our breath, still not quite sure whether there had been a sound. At last we heard something else.

  It could have been metal drawn across stone; it could have been the soft “pad, pad” of heavy, unshod feet; it could have been a dry rustling. Indeed, what we heard sounded like all of these things together.

  And then we thought we heard a low sound of breathing— long, deep breaths—from out of the inky blackness away across the hall.

  We were terrified.

  Here was a sound caused, almost certainly, by a living creature, a creature of some size, judging by the slow rate of the heavy breathing and by the deliberate pacing we thought we heard. What—we could not think of it as who—was it?

  Then came the voice.

  The first words were unintelligible, but they were, we felt, positive attempts at speech.

  It was, then, a living creature, and a living creature with the powers of speech, that confronted us in the darkness.

  Then came a second shock.

  The voice spoke to us in English.

  Slowly, as though not sure of itself, the creature in the darkness whispered hoarsely: “Men . . . you are men.”

  We held a breathless silence, and the words came again. We realised that they were a question, rather than a statement, and Arabin answered—in a firmer voice than I could have commanded—“Yes. We are men.”

  Again a silence.

  And then: “Why . . . are . . . you . . . here . . . men?” “We are here because we thought you needed help,” replied Arabin, after an interval for thought This time there was a longer pause, as though our questioner was trying to understand.

  “You . . . thought. . . we . .. needed . . . help?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is hard ... for me to understand ... at first. It is also hard ... for me to talk ... to you,” the voice answered. “I ... do not talk ... as you do.”

  Again there was a long pause.

  We gained courage. This did not look like an attack upon us. There was here every indication of reasoned thinking by some creature, and an effort to understand us.

  Arabin said gently: “Slowly. Think slowly. We do not understand you. We wish to understand you. Who are you?”

  “I have no name. We do not have names. You are not ready ... to know about me. That will come later.”

  “As you wish,” replied Arabin. “But tell us—why are we kept here?”

  “Later . . . later.”

  And there was a long interval during which we heard the creature’s slow breathing.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of a small detonation, and we no longer heard the breathing.

  We knew that the creature had gone.

  Almost at once, the light came—slowly, at first, as it normally came. We stayed in our alcove until the dimness had cleared and we could see all round the great chamber. There was, of course, nothing to be seen that had not been there when we went to sleep.

  For the whole of that “day” we searched for a clue as to how the creature had entered the hall, but we found none.

  We debated the purpose of its visit, and its significance to ourselves.

  “There is hope,” Arabin declared. “It seemed a logical kind of being. It was positively trying to understand what we said.” “It was one of the djinn,” sighed Karim dolefully. “Only a djinn could enter this place.”

  The question of its point of entry was one we could not solve. The voice, the breathing, all the sequence of sounds, had come from a point in the chamber far from the only door. We knew so much, but could not place the location of the sounds any more accurately. It had seemed to us that the sounds had been confined to one spot; there had been no suggestion of any change in their direction.

  “It’ll come back,” said Arabin. “And we must be ready for it. If we can find how that thing gets in here, we might get out by the same route.”

  We would have given everything, short of our chances of escape, for a light. With an electric torch we could have seen the thing at its first sound.

  But we did not have a torch, or indeed, any sort of artificial light. Not even a match was there to be found in our pockets.

  After much argument, we agreed to spread out through the chamber that “night.” It was only after considerable discussion that we decided upon this, for each of us was fearful of being left alone in the presence of this unknown who questioned us so slowly and deliberately.

  We finally took up our positions in alcoves so that each commanded a segment of the hall. Later, if the creature came, we could compare notes as to the direction of the sounds it made.

  But it did not come that night, nor for several nights. And again the hermit crabs brought us food which they trundled through the one-way web spun across the door.

  Each night we occupied our solitary positions round the hall, and at last the creature came again.

  Again there was the sound of the muffled report, but this time the sound we had thought of as footsteps was absent. Instead, there was a continuous scraping flapping noise—and it cam
e from above us.

  There was no doubt about it. The creature was overhead.

  This time, when it spoke, it did so more readily and with greater fluency.

  “Men—you hear me?”

  “We hear you,” whispered Arabin, from his alcove across the hall.

  “You. . . see. . . me?”

  “No. We cannot see you.”

  There was the sound of rustling again, and the position of the voice changed slightly, as though it moved from one end of the roof to the other.

  Then, surprisingly, the voice asked: “What do you wish to understand?”

  We all spoke at once, and there was confusion. The voice of Casimir Karim was the loudest, and the most insistent. “Are you one of the ... one of the djinn?” he asked.

  “I do not understand... djinn.”

  Arabin called softly across the hall. “One at a time,” he whispered. Then he spoke louder.

  “We want to know many things,” he said. “Why are we kept here? Who—or what—are you? Are we to be allowed to return to our own people?” And then, as a hurried afterthought: “What do you wish to know about us?”

  The voice answered. “I can only answer one of those questions . . . yet. Later, perhaps, you will be ready to learn more from me ... I will tell you who I am.”

  We waited, and at last the voice resumed. “I am one of those who dwell in this world. I have no name. None of us has any name. You could not understand . . .”

  “How many of you . . . ?” asked Arabin, but before he could complete the question, the creature answered.

  “I do not know how you number such things. Two hands ... I do not know your names for all the numbers. Do you understand when I tell you “Two hands’?”

  It was doubtful whether we understood. ‘Two hands” could mean two, or it could mean ten—if the creature speaking had five fingers to a hand.

  But Arabin replied: “Yes. We understand. Our word for that number is ‘ten’.”

  He thought for a moment, and added: “How do you know any of our words? Have you spoken with men before?”