As can be imagined, I was somewhat perturbed by this, and insisted that we leave the train at the very first opportunity but Challenger would have none of it.
“What kind of a scientist would I be if I walked away from this now, just as it’s getting interesting? And another thing,” he said. “It’s also spiraling downward as well as inward. Remember how it was high in the sky in the photograph—and ten feet above the ground at the footbridge? This time it may even touch down.”
“And what will happen then?”
“I have no idea, old boy. That’s what we’re going to find out.”
If Challenger was worried he certainly didn’t show it. And he surprised me further by removing a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and tearing it roughly into strips that he proceeded to ball up into tight wads of cotton. He passed two to me.
“Earplugs,” he said. “I fear we might need them.”
He was proved right just minutes later.
It started so innocuously that I scarcely noticed, until Challenger pointed out that the sky had taken on a red tinge. I followed his lead in placing the wadded plugs in my ears, and not a moment too soon. The red glow in the sky pulsed, and the train carriage started to shake and roll—so much so that I feared a derailment. Once again my stomach churned as a deep vibration coursed through me, and even through the earplugs, I heard a far-off chanting.
But that was the least of our problems. The train shuddered to a complete standstill, so violently that I was almost thrown into Challenger’s lap. The window beside him fell out with a huge crash and we fell sideways, almost in slow motion, tumbling and rolling in a bundle of flailing arms and legs as the carriage fell down a small bank to finally come to rest at a forty-five degree angle. Challenger had to almost bodily drag me out what remained of the window and we stood, somewhat unsteadily, on the carriage roof to survey the damage.
Whatever was happening, it was clearly not yet over. A roiling red cloud hung overhead, so close that I could have stood on tiptoe and touched the base of it. Indeed Challenger looked as if he would attempt that very thing, but a glance along the length of the tumbled train made me drag his arm down and away. Toward the rear carriage the red cloud hung even lower and smoky tendrils wafted over three men who stood, bemused, amid a pile of wreckage. The smoke drifted over them. Their screams were mercifully short, and when the smoke moved on there was nothing left of them but a mess of blood and steaming meat, as if their bodies had been put through a mincing machine. And it was not just the men that were taken. Everything the tendrils touched became disrupted, torn and twisted as if melted and reformed.
“This way,” Challenger called as the wispy smoke started to drift in our direction.
I did not need telling twice.
We fled along the embankment as fast as we were able.
On arriving at the station platform in Helensburgh we found the place in turmoil. A small group of survivors had made it there ahead of us and were already being tended to by station staff. A group of local firemen, still struggling into their gear, passed us going the other way. I started to warn them, but Challenger pointed back the way we had come.
“Let them go, lad,” he shouted. “The danger has passed. For now.”
I saw that he was right. The train was a smoking, ruined wreck in the distance, but the red cloud had lifted away and was already dissipating. I removed the earplugs. My head rang, but there was none of the nausea I had felt the night before, and the headache was rapidly fading.
I stopped, thinking of helping with the cleanup, but Challenger dragged me away.
“Come, man. We must find the focal point, before it is too late for all of us.”
I knew better than to ask him exactly how we might go about accomplishing the task, and followed him down into the town. He muttered to himself all the way, and I only caught fragments, but it was obvious that he was formulating a theory about the strange occurrences that so afflicted us. There was mention of spectral shifting, and interdimensional vibrational entities, and some discourse on the nature of reality and the vastness of space, but I am afraid it was all a jumble to me, my mind still reeling from the tumbling chaos of the train crash. Indeed I was so befuddled that I walked into Challenger’s broad back when he stopped suddenly in front of me.
I saw why when I looked up past him. The sky ahead had taken on the now-familiar red glow, and the sound of far-off chanting filled the air. My first instinct was to flee in the opposite direction, back toward the train wreck, on the grounds that lightning wouldn’t strike twice in the same place, but Challenger had other ideas. He studied the cloud for some seconds, marking its path and its rapid descent toward the town center some four hundred yards west of our position. He, too, looked back the way we had come, then returned his attention to the cloud. He nodded, as if coming to a conclusion, and strode off at a brisk pace in a northerly direction.
We walked up a side street lined with neat little cottages that seemed remarkably calm and quiet after the earlier noise and chaos.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“I’ll know it when I see it,” Challenger replied. “But someone has called this thing here. And the call has been answered.”
The far-off chanting got louder, and faint screams could be heard rising to join it.
“It has made land,” Challenger said grimly. “Hurry. Time is getting short.”
Just as I was thinking once again of making a run for it, Challenger spotted something off to our right. A tall metal pole, like the mast of a yacht but festooned with a mishmash web of wire, cable and valves, stood proud above a small stand of pine trees. Even over the sound of chanting and the mercifully weak screams from the town center, the contraption gave off an audible hum that set my teeth on edge.
Challenger immediately headed for the spot. A tangle of cables led from the pole to a long shed in the back garden of a small cottage set away from the main road. Knocking on the door of the cottage produced no result, but as soon as we approached the shed the door opened. A small wiry man greeted us, wearing pince-nez glasses, a tweed suit, and the air of someone too busy to be disturbed.
“The name’s Logie Baird,” he said. “And if you’re selling something, I’m not interested.”
He had a broad Scots accent that I found difficult to understand, such was the speed with which he spoke, but Challenger seemed to have no such problems.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re coming to the end of an experiment, the result of which will change the world.”
Baird looked up, as if seeing us for the first time.
“Challenger, isn’t it? I attended your lectures on the electromagnetic field of the conger eel and its use in navigation. Fascinating stuff. But it was a deeply flawed analysis. Let me tell you …”
Challenger pushed the small man aside and made for the interior of the shed.
“We’ve no time for that. Where’s this experiment?”
Baird unwisely tried to pull Challenger back.
“You can’t just …”
Challenger turned, his face contorted in rage, and lifted Baird off his feet as if he weighed no more than a doll. He carried the small man out onto the garden and turned him to face where the red cloud roiled in the sky. Forked lightning crackled from it on cue.
“Descending Fibonacci sequences, messages beamed off the magnetosphere and calling down destruction on a grand scale,” Challenger shouted. “Any of this ringing any bells?”
Baird kicked and struggled but Challenger had him held tight. He went quiet as a lightning bolt crashed to the ground nearby and the red cloud started to drift, slowly at first, then with more purpose, heading in our direction.
Baird struggled to speak until Challenger relaxed his grip, but only slightly.
“I will admit I am working on a system that forms images from reflected radio waves and can transmit them across large distances. The Fibonnacci series is the final test. I shall call it Photovision.” He alm
ost smiled but another shake from Challenger put paid to that. “I know nothing of destruction though—I merely sent out some messages.…”
“Aye,” Challenger replied. “And something merely responded in kind. Quick, man … can you reverse the sequence?”
“Certainly. I have it encoded in a spring-loaded coil. Rather ingenious, actually; I think you’ll like it. It …”
Challenger shook him again. “Can it be done?!” he bellowed.
“Yes. It’ll take five minutes.”
Challenger looked at the glowering sky. It was already several shades deeper red.
“Better make it three,” he said, and pushed Baird through into the laboratory.
Given time, I could have spent many happy hours in Baird’s laboratory. It was obvious he was trying out several different inventions at any one time. I saw a particularly strange pair of shoes with pneumatic soles, a razor blade that looked to be made of glass, and a bench piled high with many pairs of long socks that could be internally heated through a cunning weave of copper wires attached to a dynamo.
The lab proper was crammed with chugging generators, sputtering valves and arcing electricity, and Logie Baird darted excitedly around the equipment with the air of a giddy schoolgirl. A flat white screen stood at the rear of the laboratory, with a contraption mostly made of spinning disks and copper wire projecting a spluttering light onto it. Baird pulled a switch … and a flickering image came slowly into focus. It was immediately recognizable—a crude line drawing, of a teardrop, just about to start its dribble down a window.
I was still thinking about the implications when I realized that the white screen had taken on a distinct pinkish glow. I turned to see Challenger looking up through a skylight window to where red clouds gathered angrily above us. Another lightning bolt crashed, too close for comfort, and the small laboratory shook and rattled. Challenger bellowed at Baird.
“Reverse the bloody sequence. There is no time left!”
The dissonant chanting returned, louder than we had yet heard it. My stomach churned as the whole lab pounded in time, as if we were caught inside a kettledrum. Through the skylight I saw wispy tendrils of smoke, then the whole view was obscured as a red teardrop, in shape a perfect replica of the image projected on the screen, fell on the laboratory.
Baird was busy fiddling with a piece of equipment on the far side of the lab—so intent on his work that he did not notice when a piece of the roof was melted away, dissolving as fast as a piece of ice dropped in boiling water. Smoky tendrils wafted down toward the inventor.
I heard, as if from a distance, a loud bellow of defiance and watched dumbfounded as Challenger swept a large table free of the mechanisms that festooned it and, carrying the table above his head, moved to stand over Baird. I saw his intent immediately, and ran over to hold one end of the table, using it like an umbrella to protect us all from the falling tendrils.
“Hurry, man!” Challenger shouted as Baird fumbled with the mechanism below us. The table started to feel lighter in my hands and I smelled smoke. I looked up to see that the wood was melting and flowing, like wax in a hot flame.
“I’ve got it,” Baird shouted. A second later Challenger pulled us away just as a fresh clutch of tendrils wafted in our direction. The chanting rose to a crescendo that threatened to shake the bones from my flesh. We crawled ignominiously under a trestle as the tendrils snaked around us.
“Did you reverse the sequence?” Challenger shouted.
Baird had fresh blood in his ears and nostrils, and his eyes fluttered alarmingly, but he was aware enough to reply.
“It’s done. But if the transmitter goes, then it will never get sent.”
I do believe that Challenger might have put his own body between the tendrils and that transmitter if it was required, but our luck changed for the better at that point. Just as I feared the very structure of the shed itself might be completely melted, the chanting diminished to an almost acceptable level, the red haze started to lift, and the smoky tendrils wafted up and away.
I saw a patch of blue sky above and remembered to breathe.
And there you have it—as much of the tale as my understanding can tell. Challenger tried to fill in some blanks for me later that evening.
We had returned to Glasgow, and were once more at a quiet table in the corner, nursing our second flagon of ale. The events in the laboratory were already taking on a dreamlike quality in my memory. I barely remembered the rush back to the train wreckage to clear the railway track of rescuers before the imminent return of the entity, the hurried explanations to the authorities—most of which we left to Baird—and the slow bus journey back through Glasgow to our hotel. It was only after I had a beer inside me that I started to be able to look at the day dispassionately.
“What in blazes was it, Challenger?”
He spent a while staring into his beer, then dipped a finger in it and let a drop fall back into the glass.
“Baird unwittingly caused ripples in the space-time continuum when he bounced those messages off the magnetic field of the planet,” he said, leaving me none the wiser. “And something took note and followed them back to their source. We may never know what it was exactly, but I believe there are entities of magnetic energy out there. It maybe that they are just cruising the ether. Until they meet a ripple.”
He made a swirling motion with his finger pointed downward over the beer, dipping ever closer to the surface.
“Luckily for us, we stopped it in time.”
He reversed the spin and drew his finger away. That was when I understood. I could finally see it in my mind’s eye—the teardrop hanging over Helensburgh starting to spiral away and upwards, slowly at first, then ever faster out into the black depths of space and away into an unimaginable distance.
“I have asked Baird to keep the transmitter running for some months,” he said. “That should be ample time for the planetary orbit to take us far enough apart to avoid further interference.”
Challenger drained his beer in one smooth motion. The same child as the previous night arrived at that moment at the barroom door.
“The singing’s back. Down at the bridge again.”
Challenger stood. I thought he might want to have another look at the entity, but instead he went to the bar and returned with two more beers.
“It is merely the return leg of the spiral. As long as the crowd stays back the danger is past—for now,” he said. “But Baird is only a pioneer. Others will follow. We are announcing our presence into the ether. And who knows what might reply?”
He took a long swig of his beer, and looked as pensive as I have ever seen him.
“Watch the skies, Malone. Keep watching the skies.”
The Valley of the Lost
~1~
Losing his wife was nearly the end of my old friend Challenger. He’d been locked in his study for weeks, coming out only to demand more Scotch or smokes. On my last visit he had looked haggard and drawn, and I feared, on my arrival a week later, that matters might have got quite a lot worse.
So I was somewhat surprised to have him open the door to me on my first knock. He gripped my hand and shook it firmly.
“Come in, Malone. Just the man I wanted to see.”
Something had him energized; that much was obvious. The old enthusiasm seemed to be back in full force, and if I still saw some hint of darkness and despair around his eyes I was too polite at that moment to mention it.
Not that I was given the chance. He had already gone off ahead of me. I followed him through into the study. He had pulled a table into the center of the room, and had a map spread out over it. He seemed to have already forgotten my presence and was intent on tracing the course of a river across the paper.
“Planning an expedition, old chap?” I asked.
“Since you ask, yes,” he said, and let out a booming laugh the like of which I hadn’t heard from him since his wife fell ill. “Come and see, Malone.”
I walked over an
d looked down at the map. It had been produced to a small scale, and it was not immediately obvious where it was. I spotted one thing quickly enough, though. It was mountainous, rough terrain, pockmarked with glacial lakes.
“Siberia?” I asked, taking a guess.
“Montana,” Challenger said. “High country.”
“And why would you be planning to go there, old man?”
“Not just me,” he said, and clapped me so hard on the shoulder that I almost buckled. “We. I’ve already cleared it with McGuire. The Express will partially fund us, you will report, and I will have the find of the century.”
“What, again?” I said, softly. If he heard, he didn’t take offense, and that’s when I knew he was deadly serious.
“Steady on, Challenger,” I said. “I can’t afford the time away from …”
“Away from what?” he said. “A desk in Fleet Street? A couple of society weddings? Or are you so attached to the Old Bailey that you want to sit through another dozen trials?”
I had to smile in reply. “Well, if you put it like that …”
Five minutes later we sat in matching armchairs on opposite sides of the fireplace. Challenger poured us stiff measures of Scotch; he lit a cheroot, and I got my pipe going. It was only then that he told me the whys and wherefores of his plan.
“I’ve already telegraphed the Smithsonian,” he said. “They’ll provide us with support staff for the trip. Good men, or so I’m told. We’ll be gone for some months, though, given the remoteness of the area. And I had to promise that at least some of the credit for the find would go to the museum, which will not please the Royal Society at all.”
Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories Page 15
