The Great White Space

by Basil Copper

  Against this I had to weigh the possible dangers to the other, less knowing members of the party and whether Scarsdale, as leader, was entitled to risk the lives of his companions in this way; I maintained in the end that he was. i After all, he had made the same proposition to each one of us in the great study back in Surrey, and had emphasised the I dangers. After weighing things up each had made the identical decision; which implied absolute trust in Scarsdale as head of the party; in his integrity; and in his judgement as a I leader of men.

  I had also to remember his great hardships and bitter disappointments in penetrating so far on his previous journey; and then being forced to return - at great risk to his own life. I put all these questions, arguments and counter arguments to myself as we walked onwards through the twilight for the rest of that day and I came ever to the same conclusion. That we 5 had trusted Scarsdale this far - in my own case quite blindly - I and we were, on balance, correct to continue to trust him right up to the edge of what many people would call, under those circumstances, folly.

  Having come to this conclusion I marched with an easier mind; we saw nothing and heard nothing on this stretch, save that the wind now blew stronger, freshening to a fairly stiff I breeze at times and that the slow rhythmic thump, like a pile driver, was more audible and quite distinct. Van Damm and I were manoeuvring the trolley over fairly easy ground; there was a very slight gradient, leading uphill which was not, I however, at all fatiguing. I did most of the pushing while Van Damm walked at the front, occasionally steadying the equipment with his hand.

  Scarsdale was leading, naked revolver drawn, while Prescott brought up the rear, also with a cocked and loaded weapon at the ready. Both Scarsdale and Prescott had the lamps in their helments switched on, in case of emergency, and in order to augment the existing light which still shone duskily from some unimaginable roof far above our heads. But the terrain was gradually changing; from a level plain such as that which we had crossed to reach the embalming gallery, the sides were gradually closing in to form a large tunnel about forty feet across. Here Scarsdale decided to halt for the night so that in case of any alarm we should have plenty of open space across which any intruder would have to advance.

  We passed an undisturbed night, each of us taking two-hour turns at sentry; this time we did not pitch the tents but simply slept in the open. Van Damm had found an oil lamp from somewhere and by its reassuring pool of golden light he sat long into the night hours — we still measured time by earth's days and nights — and made his endless algebraic calculations in his series of notebooks. One of the most astonishing things about the expedition to my mind was the fact that the leaders obviously knew so much more about its purpose than the rank-and-file.

  Yet we three were quite content to follow, each using his own specialised skills none of us really knowing anything of the big questions that were taxing the complex minds of Scarsdale and Van Damm. I knew that they would, of course, tell us everything when they were ready but it argued a high degree of trust on the part of such highly qualified specialists as Holden and Prescott. With these and other such thoughts I passed an hour after coming off the midnight duty and my last vision was of Van Damm polishing his glasses in the cheerful aura of the lamp before sleep found me.

  2

  We were breakfasted and packed by six the next morning and on the move shortly after. There had been nothing to report during the night from any of the sentries but despite this Scarsdale insisted that Holden and Prescott, who were wheeling the trolley on tnis occasion, should mount the machine-gun on its tripod, ready for instant use. He also ordered that each of us should carry a Very pistol in addition to side arms. This was not only for signalling purposes - after all we had the radio link for that - but to illuminate anything which we wanted to investigate. We had already tried firing the pistols some days earlier to see if they would reveal the height and extent of the roofs of the gigantic cave system. While spectacularly illuminating the cloudy distances, they had been remarkably unsuccessful for that purpose.

  Fired at the 'sky' they curved upwards for hundreds of feet and on exploding burned as a faint glow beneath the layers of misty vapour which hid the roof from us and which gave the illusion of the sky. But as they came closer to the ground they gave a brilliant and blinding light compared to the low intensity illumination we had been used to. To detect ground targets they would be incomparably useful. I for one, though secretly grumbling at the bulkiness and weight of the pistol I was forced to carry, later came to realise their usefulness in our situation and on at least one occasion the Very lights saved my life.

  Soon after we started the day's march the tunnel became narrower — it was now down to about thirty feet wide and then started splitting up into branching tunnels and diversions; when we first came upon a tributary, something most unusual in our exploration so far, Scarsdale dealt with the matter quite simply. He chose the largest tunnel which still pointed to the north and down which the warm wind blew. There was a purpose behind the master tunnel as Van Damm called it and this remained the principle of selection throughout.

  Scarsdale had also organised elaborate precautions for finding our way back from the labyrinth in which we were now picking our way. In addition to simple chalked arrows on walls and the tunnel floor, which reminded me of childhood games, small metal discs were fastened by suction pads at particularly difficult and elaborate junctions. These were miniature beacons which Holden and Prescott had developed and the radio equipment we carried could be tuned in to them to guide us back.

  'Unless anything realises their purpose and removes them while we are gone,' said Van Damm grimly. I was impressed by the fact that he did not say 'anyone' and it was a thought which did not bear dwelling on. I queried in my mind yet again whether in fact the strange creature Holden had spotted was responsible for the unique and horrible manner in which the dwarf Zalor had met his end. And leading on from that, whether such creatures — I could not imagine that one only would be unique in such a vast underground complex and presupposed there must be others — had something to do with the people who had carried out the ancient embalming processes on the weird insect-like beings in the jars.

  We walked slightly uphill for an hour without seeing or hearing anything untoward; the pulsations were becoming much clearer now and seemed to vibrate the very ground over which we advanced. Unmistakably also, and this represented a fantastic change in our conditions, it was becoming lighter. Van Damm was the first person to notice this I believe, though typically he kept it to himself for almost half an hour until he was absolutely certain. And indeed the process was so subtle and delicate that the floor, walls and the distant vista along the corridor we were traversing etched itself fraction by fraction on our retinas, so imperceptible that it took minutes to realise that the scene around us was 'developing' itself, much as a photographic plate creates an image in the photographer's dish.

  I saw Holden's face change to a mask of wonder in the rapidly strengthening light; it was like being reborn after months in semi-darkness though in reality I supposed we had been underground for something like a fortnight. But here a day could seem like a month with the feeble glow of the artificial sky and the shifting patterns forming in the wispy afterglow which served for atmosphere in this place.

  Scarsdale and Van Damm exchanged triumphant glances and I realised that this was what they had been expecting all along; that the central premise of the whole expedition, probably known only to them, was at last coming to life before their eyes, transformed from dusty parchment and well-thumbed typescript and page after page of abstruse calculations.

  'The Trone-Tables were right, Professor,' Van Damm muttered, his thin savant's face alight with strange dreams. 'Allow me to congratulate you, sir.'

  And impulsively, he moved forward, and began to pump Scarsdale's hand.

  The big man blinked slowly in the strengthening paleness that glowed along the walls of the corridor, obviously moved. I stepped to one side, leaving
them to their moment of quiet victory. The others sensed that something important was about to happen and as if by a common impulse withdrew to a discreet distance.

  Van Damm and the Professor stood together for the next ten minutes, consulting their notebooks and tables of crabbed notes before rejoining us.

  'All will be made clear to you, gentlemen, very soon,' said Scarsdale crisply. 'You have all been patient and extremely forbearing, I must say. I calculate —and I am sure my colleague here will confirm - that we are nearing our objective; the end of our epic journey and one that will, I am sure, be destined to go down in the epoch-making explorations of this first half of the twentieth century. I say this without self-importance or undue pomposity and without taking the credit to myself. I could have done nothing without the unstinted efforts of each of you and 1 would-like to thank you here and now for everything that you have done and will do before we bring the task to a successful conclusion.'

  It had been a long speech for the Professor and he had evidently been moved; he paused for a moment, his face flushed and the light shining on his strong features etching his beard with shadow so that he looked more than ever like an engraving of some age-old god or perhaps a Viking raider from the North.

  'An honour and a pleasure, my dear Scarsdale,' said Van Damm awkwardly, on behalf of us all.

  'Well then,' said Scarsdale, with a return to his old manner. 'We press on. But first a commonsense precaution.'

  He crossed over to the trolley and grunted as he rummaged about among its contents. Presently he opened a sealed package of canvas. He handed its contents round among us. I found myself clutching a pair of deeply tinted snow goggles with heavy elasticised straps.

  'A curious item, perhap's,' said the Professor. 'You possibly wondered why these were shipped. You're about to find out. I have many theories but I don't know how strong this light will get.'

  There was a perceptible stirring among the party at this and Prescott queried, 'Do you mean to say that we are approaching the open air?'

  Scarsdale shook his head.

  'This light comes from a subterranean source of whose origins I am not certain. There may be some danger without the goggles. I would like everyone to put them on when I give the order. And not to remove them under pain of the most serious consequences.'

  This promise was rapidly given by all of us, of course, and when we had each stowed the goggles away where they could easily be reached, we resumed our march.

  Holden turned to me as we walked together, pulling the trolley. I could see his face more clearly now and was shocked to note that there were dark shadows under his eyes and his lips were a startling white. He seemed but the shadow of the man who had set out with us so enthusiastically from the Professor's Surrey home; looking back on that hectic period it seemed to me now that it had taken place not only long ago but on another planet, so alien and bizarre were our present surroundings. Most of us too had lost all sense of time and we could have been many weeks here, instead of the minutely documented days that we had spent beneath the surface of the earth. Even the time since leaving Croth seemed infinitely distant.

  I put my face close to Holden as he mumbled something; his ravaged features looked like a steel engraving in the slowly growing light. I had to ask him to repeat his sentence, his words were so slow and hesitant.

  What I eventually made out was the broken sentence, 'I cannot go on.'

  I looked at him sharply. I saw now that he was trembling slightly as though he were suffering from fever. There had been such a marked deterioration in him since I had last had occasion to observe him a few days earlier that I was startled. But of course the dimness of the light in which we had previously been immured would have made it difficult to observe his condition in detail. I stopped abruptly as my companion's legs gave; the trolley veered and tipped against the wall of the tunnel with a sharp grating sound. Holden's knees buckled and he tried feebly to support himself with one hesitant hand on the metal railing of the trolley, failed and slipped to the ground in an insensate heap.

  My shout brought Scarsdale and the others running back towards me. I had already turned Holden over but Scarsdale elbowed me aside with a muttered apology. I busied myself in removing the trolley so that the Professor and Van Damm could examine our companion properly. There was little further I could do so I stood off at a distance with Prescott while the two scientists busied themselves over the huddled form on the tunnel floor. One foot of the recumbent man lay at a grotesque angle.

  Van Damm got up presently and fumbled among the kit on the trolley.

  'Is there anything I can do to help?' I asked him.

  The doctor shook his head. He looked puzzled.

  'He's fainted but there is more to it than that,' he said. 'Apart from nerves, that is.'

  He paused as though he had said too much.

  'I know he had a bad shock when we found the dwarf's body,' I said. 'There's no secret about that.'

  My manner must have seemed a little short for the doctor shot me a sharp, shrewd glance.

  'I don't mean only that, my dear Plowright,' he said. 'Holden was one of the fittest men along on this party. If I didn't know better I'd say he was suffering from some form of pernicious anaemia. He's in a comatose condition. I'd say he's collapsed from sheer physical exhaustion. His nerves were strung-up, yes, but this is not the cause of his condition.'

  He refused to be drawn any further and went back to the two men, taking the flash of brandy with him. Prescott and I stood in the strengthening light that flooded from the long tunnel before us and waited for the verdict.

  Sixteen

  1

  In the end it was arranged that Van Damm would stay with Holden while Prescott and I, led by the Professor, would press on towards the strengthening light which beckoned in front of us. It took some element of self-sacrifice on the part of Van Damm to suggest remaining behind and I was near to admiring him at that moment. Despite the assumed waspishness between the two of them Scarsdale and Van Damm were close, and they had together hammered out a successful formula for the Great Northern Expedition. It seemed as though Van Damm had cheated himself of the shared glory if we now discovered something even more extraordinary in the growing luminescence of that subterranean place.

  Moved by these and other considerations I had myself volunteered to remain behind with Holden, who was now conscious and able to speak. But I was immediately overruled by the two heads of the expedition; apart from being deputy leader Van Damm also had specialist medical knowledge. What could I do if there were some emergency beyond my own sparse rudiments of first-aid? No, said Scarsdale, it would not do; besides, he added sotto voce to me, as we stood alone for a moment, apart from the others, he might have need of my agility and strength at the front.

  Prescott was experienced in the use of firearms and would be needed also; so it was arranged. We presently set off, led by the Professor carrying a naked revolver, followed closely behind by Prescott and myself pushing the trolley. In addition to the light machine-gun, ready on its tripod, Scarsdale had also laid out a number of hand grenades within easy reach. I watched these grim preparations with growing disquiet. I did not know what the Professor expected to find but it was obviously something large and inimical to human life if we needed protection on this scale.

  We had gone only a few hundred yards beyond the point where we had left our two companions before there was an appreciable strengthening of the light; not only its intensity but its quality. It had a flickering, throbbing property which was hard on the eyes; it seemed to pulsate in time with the vibrating pulse which beat ahead of us with ever-increasing strength.

  We could now see our way quite clearly by this illumination; the branching tunnels still led away to left and right but there was no doubt that the one we were following was the correct one; it led, despite slight curvatures to either side, unerringly to the north and both the light and the throbbing pulse which had the strength of a muted kettledrum played a
t a distance, undoubtedly emanated from this source. I did, in fact, at Scarsdale's suggestion, try one of the branching tributaries to the right but the light faded in a very few seconds and the vibrating rhythm of the pulse-beat with it.

  Prescott now drew to my attention some more of the curiously incised hieroglyphs which were carved at various points on the side of the tunnel we were following; I wondered perhaps whether they might be distance marks but the Professor thought not. He puzzled at them for a few minutes and then announced sharply that they were mathematical formulae whose purpose for the moment escaped him. I gave him a long searching glance and by the way he lowered his eyelids I felt that he was not speaking the truth.

  The markings appeared to me to be no different to the other inscriptions in the ancient language and I could see no formulae which would make any mathematical symbols. However, I guessed that the Professor had his own reasons for not translating the signs; it may have been that they had a sinister import and that he had no wish to alarm us.

  I did, however, persuade him and Prescott to pose for some pictures by one of the plaques and then changed round to allow Prescott to photograph myself with the Professor. As it turned out this was the only picture of the expedition to survive which showed myself. By now we had little or no need of any artificial illumination and could see perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead along the tunnel. It was this factor - and thank God for it - which was instrumental in saving our lives.

  A sudden shout from Prescott put my nerves on edge. He was at my elbow, pointing.

  'There, man, there. The slime trails!'

  I saw what he meant a moment later, before the awful stench was brought to us on the warmth of the strengthening wind. Great, slug-like smears on the surface of the tunnel which led off into unknown debouchments at the side.

  Scarsdale nodded as I caught him up. He had obviously already seen them.