by Basil Copper
I reached for my camera and as Scarsdale grimly concentrated on his steering, I briefly put on all the lighting equipment we possessed; the effect was startling and I busied myself in taking several photographs, both front and rear, before switching down again to the main searchlight only. I had noticed something however, that raised a number of startling conjectures in my mind. Firstly, the roof did not, as is usual in cave formations, come down fairly close to the ground at any point.
The second detail which struck me was that the corridor of stone stretched monotonously ahead for perhaps half a mile and did not vary greatly in its width. The floor also was no longer composed of sand but seemed to be made of rock. This heightened the noise levels within the tunnel considerably, though it made little difference to the comfort and stability of our ride within the tractor. The thing which impressed me most of all, however, was the regularity of the cave walls; before an hour had gone by I had become convinced that the tunnel was not a natural formation at all but had been engineered at some distance remote in time. This raised in its turn a number of fascinating conjectures because I had formed the impression that the inscriptions on the obelisk and the portals of the great doorway were of great antiquity. The engineering problems involved in the vast tunnel along which we were now travelling so smoothly and with as much facility as one would in a modern city's underground system, would have been incredibly complex and difficult without modern machinery and tools. There was a stupefying engineering talent at work here greater than that of the Incas and the Mayans and incomparably older, if what Scarsdale had said was true, and an excitement similar to that which must have animated the Professor in his long years of research and study on the project, began also to animate my own mind.
This must have occurred to Van Damm at almost the precise moment because his high fluting voice came through the loudspeaker, asking to speak to Scarsdale. I told him that was impossible for the moment, as the Professor was at the controls. There was a brief lull, broken only by the crackle of the instrument.
'You have noticed, I take it, the regular conformation of the walls of the tunnel, Plowright,' he began.
'The implications had not escaped me, doctor,' I said.
Scarsdale smiled quietly to himself at the controls.
'Would you please ask the Doctor to maintain radio silence except in emergency,' he said. 'There will be time for discussion and examination of the tunnels when we stop for lunch.'
I conveyed the Professor's message to Van Damm in a more diplomatic manner and with that he had to be content. We drove along the seemingly endless tunnel for several miles; once I went to the rear of the tractor and read off the mileage indicator. Already it registered fifteen. I told Scarsdale and he merely nodded in a satisfied manner; it was obvious that he knew our destination. His confidence at the controls was masterly and it was uncanny to see the way he almost foresaw any slight shift in our direction; the wind continued to blow steadily and warmly, as I regularly noted by opening the vents. Although the compass needle swung quite broadly on the shallow curves we were sometimes encountering, we were steadily heading almost due north. Eventually, if the Professor's scale models in the far-off study in Surrey were accurate, we should be at an enormous distance beneath the earth. There had been no calls from Van Damm's machine during the remainder of the morning, though the radio switches remained open, but I could see that they were keeping pace with us effortlessly; both tractors were doing a steady ten miles an hour and there was little or no dust beneath the treads to obliterate the view. I was keeping the log this morning and I entered all these details at fifteen minute intervals, to Scarsdale's evident satisfaction. I asked if I might take over the tractor and give him a rest but he shook his head.
'After lunch will be time enough,' he said. 'Compared with the desert this is an extremely comfortable morning's drive.'
We exchanged no further words and I packed up my photographic equipment, my mind completely at rest for the first time since we began our field operations. We were going slightly uphill, I indicated in my last log entry of the morning, made just before our first breaK at 12.15 p.m. The mileage indicator, allowing for a pace that varied between five and ten miles an hour, indicated an awesome fifty-five miles beneath the surface of the mountains.
2
We did not spend much time within the tractors at lunchtime; the two machines were set up side by side and with the main searchlights illuminating the camping area and the tunnel ahead of us. It was a bare, antiseptic atmosphere; the floor, of hard whitish rock was dry and free of insect or any other type of life that we could see. The walls bore the marks of ancient cutting tools of a type I had never seen before; Van Damm and the others were somewhat excitedly conferring with Scarsdale and I wandered at will, taking pictures and thinking of the people who could have built upon this terrifying scale. I had tilted one of the searchlights upwards toward the roof but despite its power I could not find its limits; there was nothing but inky darkness above and no sign of any bat or bird-life. There would have been an awesome silence that I would have found personally hard to bear, had it not been for the warm and steady breeze that blew from somewhere far off down the tunnel. Altogether, it was a strange, and fascinating place in which we found ourselves.
Geoffrey Prescott and Norman Holden both had an air of barely suppressed excitement, a sort of bubbling effervescence just below the surface, that came through even from under the facade of strictly impersonal scientific materialism which they carried about with them. Like the rest of us, they had now donned light overalls and the alloy helmets which Scarsdale had developed and which were meant to guard us against falling rocks.
This headgear, which bore stencilled numbers, from Scarsdale's appropriate One down to my humble Five, also incorporated powerful flashlights which we found extremely useful, as the light in such a position left our hands free to carry tools and equipment. Both Holden and Prescott carried notebooks and jotted down data, conferring among themselves, as they hurried here and there along the tunnel.
'It conforms fairly closely to your sketches and models, Scarsdale,' Van Damm told the Professor as I wandered close to them. 'Are there any places where the tunnel splits up into tributaries?'
'Only just this side of the water,' Scarsdale said shortly. 'We'll have to leave the machines there and take to the boats. * don't, of course, know what formations we shall find on the other shore. It is perhaps fortunate that there aren't many choices; we could spend years exploring blind alleys, otherwise.'
Van Damm cleared his throat. 'I have noted the marker posts of which you spoke. They would appear to correspond to measurements of ten of our miles.'
The Professor smiled, his face enigmatic in the yellow incandescence of the searchlights.
'I had cause to note them on foot,' he said. 'An experience, I can assure you.'
'How long did it take, Professor?' I asked.
Scarsdale turned his great bearded head toward me in the harsh glare of the lamps.
'I calculated afterwards, over a fortnight,' he said sombrely. 'The worst part was the darkness. I had only a couple of electric torches and some candles, and these had to be conserved. In the end I navigated by using my walking stick against the tunnel wall, much as a blind man might do. I calculated I wore nearly a quarter of an inch off the metal ferrule.'
I could not resist a shudder at the Professor's words and I thought again of the fantastic will inside the hard exterior which had kept him going along these miles of sinister corridors when lesser men might well have been reduced to gibbering idiocy by the darkness and the loneliness.
'You had a compass, I take it?' said Van Damm softly, after a long silence.
'Thank God,' said Scarsdale. 'One becomes completely disorientated. It might be thought a simple matter; right-hand wall going in, say; left-hand going out. But right is left and left is right in the darkness, if you see what I mean. North going in and south going out was the only way, allowing for slight deviations
where the tunnel curves.'
I walked on down the tunnel, the faint throbbing of the searchlight generators from the tractors coming over the faint sighing of the wind; the black walls stretched on without a fleck of discoloration or a glimmer of any variation to break their monotony. It was an artery of darkness leading to utter stygian blackness; a man on his own could quickly degenerate to madness in a place like this. I felt for one moment that even without lighting one would still be able to discern the blackness of the tunnel walls. That was the impression the place had on one.
I halted abruptly in my perambulations and came quickly back at this point. There came the tapping of a hammer up ahead; Holden was taking a sample of the rock floor. He swore mildly as I joined him; I looked down and saw that the head of the hammer had snapped from its stout wooden handle. Scarsdale smiled grimly.
'You won't have much luck there, Holden,' he said. 'This material's harder than granite.'
'That's what worries me, Professor,' said Geoffrey Prescott. 'How the hell did these people work such material? And, for all that we're talking about thousands of years remote in time, they must have had more sophisticated tools than we've been able to develop.'
'I have my theories about that also,' said Scarsdale cryptically.
I noticed then that he kept his hand near the revolver strapped to his belt. And I noticed also that a light machine- gun on its stand had been brought out from Number 1 Command tractor, presumably by the Professor while we were finishing lunch. Its workmanlike barrel pointed straight down the tunnel ahead of us.
Ten
1
We were rumbling slowly ahead again in the inky darkness, our speed reduced to a mere crawl, the searchlight probing the monotonous miles before us. I was steering now, while the Professor sat brooding at the chart-table, every once in a while pausing to stare out of the windscreen; he remained fixed in his attitude for perhaps a quarter of an hour on these occasions and I wondered again what calculations were being evolved within that massive cranium.
Scarsdale had told us we would conserve power in the reduction of speed and though we remained in constant radio contact this first day, I myself thought that Scarsdale hoped to alleviate the monotony of the journey; in truth the somewhat boring and fatiguing routine involved in making the long preliminary approach to the object of our search left one inordinately tired and debilitated. But I noted that Scarsdale's concentration did not relax for one moment and I realised also something of the reasons for the change of driver in Number 1 vehicle and the slackening of speed.
The Professor sat in his padded leather seat behind the chart-table and occasionally would interrupt his calculations to pick up the night-glasses which stood at his elbow and scan the tunnel ahead as though by this he would bring our destination nearer. We had been travelling for more than two hours in this way; the warm air blowing steadily through the vents; the whine of the motors making a repetitive fugue in one's ears; the compass needle swinging ever so slightly with the minute variations in the direction of the tunnel, so accurate were these ancient engineers; and the high falsetto of Van Damm occasionally piercing the static from the radio monitor on the bulkhead.
Occasionally too, there were strange variations in the rhythm of our motors and several times I had let the head of the tractor lurch round a little as I struck curious areas of shadow against the rocky wall of the tunnel; Scarsdale's muttered comments were hardly needed but the effect was annoying and made steering more difficult. I glanced in the rear mirror more than once and realised that a malicious corner of my soul was pleased to note that whoever was driving Van Damm's vehicle was not finding things any easier.
And then there came to me in detail the model in Scarsdale's far-off study among the misty hills of Surrey and I found many questions blurting to my tongue. The Professor heard me out in amused silence.
'I was wondering when you would notice,' he said at length. 'The patches of shadow you see are arcades leading to what other caverns and labyrinths God knows. It would take a lifetime to explore them all.'
I was silent for a moment while I absorbed this information.
'You explored some on foot?' I ventured at length.
Scarsdale nodded, his eyes scanning the tunnel ahead.
'I reeled off twine and took a torch but it was hopeless. They were terrifying places. I had a thousand yards of twine and gave up when that ran out. One could wander for years out there, if the hundreds of side tunnels I came across were as extensive.'
I found the implications of the Professor's remarks difficult to take in.
'Then this may be considered a city, with the tunnel its main artery,' I said.
Scarsdale nodded. 'Excellent, Plowright,' he said. 'I had come to much the same conclusion myself.'
He turned to face me in the bluish gloom of the control chamber.
'We have not, of course, had an opportunity thus far to make detailed observations on foot, but there were curious symbols placed at intersections and cross-over points in the tunnels. These, which were strangely incised and high upon the walls, combined with the lack of any observable arrangements for lighting the tunnels — such as torches or brazier fires — led me to believe that the former inhabitants of this place were blind and crept about the passages by feel.'
The Professor's words and the circumstances under which they were uttered had such unpleasant connotations that I fear Number 1 vehicle gave a great lurch which, however, I had started to correct before the Professor's admonition. Such a supposition had not occurred to me and gave rise to such a vivid range of images that I later came to regret the Professor's uncalled-for confidence. I was even, in rather a cowardly fashion, glad that Van Damm's vehicle was to lead the following day, when we hoped to be approaching the underground lake of which Scarsdale had spoken.
We had not planned a very long run that afternoon as we wished to make rather more elaborate arrangements for camping that night. We could not, of course, have fires, even if there had been any driftwood and there was no point in being 'outside' the tractors, when we had their security for sleeping arrangements. I had saved a sandwich from the lunch-break, as I had eaten little due to the excitement engendered by our surroundings, and I juggled the controls precariously as I munched at the tinned ham, occasionally fortifying myself from the thermos-flask of hot tea with which we always provided ourselves each morning at breakfast.
The Professor, when he was not studying the tunnel ahead, was busy on the chart-table with some of his more cryptic books and documents. I noticed once again his typed copy of the ancient and blasphemous Ethics of Ygor and the highly abstruse calculations which Van Damm had referred to as the Trone-Tables. His use of these ciphers and the other media with which the chart-table was strewn were far beyond my knowledge of such things but possibly the Professor had chosen me as his companion in the tractor precisely because I had the layman's mind and he could occasionally put his thoughts into words and test my sometimes banal reactions. With Van Damm he would, more often as not, have engaged in verbal battle in which these two highly trained minds were fairly evenly matched.
Now he sat with his leather-padded sleeves firmly resting on the table, his great shoulders hunched as he studied the figures before him, occasionally shaking as though exasperated beyond measure. Finally, he put his pencil from him and sat up in his chair, swivelling it to face me.
‘I think we might as well call it a day, Plowright,' he said. 'You must find this tiring, and after all, you have done most of the donkey work so far.'
I cast a quick look at the mileage indicator; I shook my head wonderingly as I saw that the day's total - even allowing for our snail's progress this afternoon - registered no less than seventy-one miles. I mentally calculated that the longest street in the world - reputedly in Russia - could have been put down in our tunnel nine or ten times over before it would make an equivalent distance. I simply could not imagine the sophisticated engineering and equipment which would be needed to create su
ch artefacts in the dawn of time and I put further banal self-questioning from me, as Scarsdale spoke again.
'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.
