A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  About the eighth day, we came upon something so hard and solid that our excavator was unable to make any impression on it; and we turned off the power and went forward to investigate. We found that we were up against what appeared to be a solid wall, almost perpendicular to our tunnel. This wall seemed to be composed of a very hard substance resembling concrete, but slightly transparent, like a crude grade of glass. In fact, it seemed very similar to the fragment we had first found.

  At first thought, we were moved to bring out our miners and make an attempt to dig around it far enough to determine what it was. But upon further consideration, we decided that, whatever it was, we could not allow it to block our way; and we decided to make an attempt to blast it out, as we had done with so many boulders.

  So we got out the electric drill, and went to work. But the wall seemed harder than the drill, and before I had made half a dozen inches, both the drills I had on hand were worn to mere stubs. So we had to wait in enforced idleness while we sent a hurry-up call to camp for new drills, which did not, arrive for more than two hours.

  Then we made a renewed attack, and after using up two more drills, decided to try a blast, although our hole was only fourteen inches deep. We tamped in a heavy charge of black powder, and set it off.

  What was our surprise to hear only a weak, muffled explosion; and to find on returning that our tamping was still there, and that the hole was tightly closed. What else could have happened, than that the blast had broken through on the opposite side? In that case, there must be an open space on that side. We were thrilled by the prospect; for here at last was a chance of learning something of the life and activities of the erstwhile inhabitants.

  We put in a call for more drill-points, and set to work to sharpen and temper the longest one we had left. This time we planned to plant a number of shallow blasts in a circle around the original hole, hoping to dislodge a large enough fragment to allow us to pass through.

  This time we succeeded in blowing a hole a little larger than a barrel-head; but, to our consternation, we found a reinforcing rod nearly through the center of it.

  With a pocket flashlight we proceeded to examine the cavity beyond. It was evidently a very roomy place, and the feeble ray of the flashlight revealed only space. So we rigged up a searchlight out of a piece of sheet metal and a hand glass we happened to have in the mole. Fortunately, we had brought a high power bulb to use on our extension cord. Meanwhile, we called up for an acetylene tank and torch, with which to burn the reinforcing rod away.

  What They Found

  AS soon as we had the searchlight made, we inserted it in the hole, and surveyed the vast interior of the place. For it was surely very roomy; a huge cavity, perhaps twenty-five feet across, and stretching away to right and left, above and below, as far as our light could penetrate. Here and there were column-like struts across the cavity.

  We agreed that it must be some extensive engineering project. It resembled the interior of some great power dam, or possibly a storage reservoir, built in connection with filter beds for water supply.

  About this time our torch arrived, and we proceeded to burn the rod out. As we had more than half expected, it resisted the heat surprisingly. In fact it was necessary to turn the flame on full blast, and burn in one spot for nearly five minutes, before it gave way; although the rod was less than an inch in diameter.

  Now at last we were free to enter the strange place; but it dawned upon us that we had been at work for over twelve hours, only stopping a couple of times to snatch a bite of food. Our eagerness and excitement had carried us on to the point of exhaustion. Without washing or undressing, we literally fell on our cots, and slept for ten or twelve hours.

  After breakfast next morning (shall I say morning? There was nothing to indicate whether it was morning or evening and we had become so engrossed with our work that we had lost track of the days), we decided to go to camp and recuperate for a day or two, and return with ropes, extension cords, and such other equipment as we could scare up, and put on an exploring act.

  This we did. Our stay at camp was necessarily longer than we had planned, because we were obliged to send a man to the railroad station to order a large quantity of extension cord from the city, and wait for it to come by express. This took nearly a week so that we had become quite used to sunlight and the regular succession of days and nights, before we were ready to descend again into the bowels of the earth, and as Mr. Kingston put it, “make monkeys of ourselves.”

  When we did return with half a mile of cord and a couple of good spot lights, several hundred feet of rope, gas masks, knapsacks packed with emergency rations, and many pairs of strong gloves, we felt like well-equipped Mammoth Cave explorers.

  First, we erected a permanent light of high candlepower above the hole in the wall, within the cavity. Then we decided to leave a rope always behind us, leading to the opening; so that if anything should happen to the lights or to our extension cords, we could always find the way back. We had no desire to get lost in this apparently endless chasm. We made fast our guide rope, and coiled it where we could easily put it through the hole when needed. Each one fastened a spot light to his belt, we donned our gloves and knapsacks, and prepared to enter the unknown.

  We found there was one of the large struts projecting across the chasm, almost directly below the entrance; and we decided to start operations by descending to this. We were still at a loss to understand the purpose of these columns. They resembled the supporting posts of a large building, except that they were much more massive, and were in a horizontal instead of a vertical position. We finally concluded that they must have been vertical originally, but that the whole structure was no longer in its natural position. We speculated on which must have been the floor, and which the ceiling; and we strained our eyes for some sign of stairs or doorway. We could see none. After tying a number of knots in the rope to make it easy to climb, I lowered myself into the abyss; and after a few swings, found secure footing on the strut, and my partner followed.

  Having reached our first objective safely, we proceeded to plan further “monkey business.” By the aid of our lights, we could make out other columns beneath us, and we decided to make another descent. This accomplished without mishap, we determined to make yet a third, and then return to the mole and call it a day. The columns were perhaps sixty feet apart, and this brought us to about a hundred and fifty feet from the entrance. We judged this would be a fairly stiff climb for the first day, and we didn’t want to lame ourselves at the start; and, besides, we had a feeling that we would like to be out of there.

  It was while we were exploring from our third and last position, that I discovered that the walls were slightly curved; at least they appeared to be. The side we were on being slightly concave, and the opposite one convex, and parallel to it. We thought it strange we had not noticed this before, and wondered what it could mean.

  It was from this point that we also thought we saw a narrow ledge along the wall, far beneath us, extending away in both directions. It was so far away that our lights were not strong enough to bring it out clearly, and we were not sure that it was not a shadow, or merely a discoloration of the wall. We decided to make this our objective on the morrow, and started to make our climb back to headquarters. It proved something of an ordeal, and we were glad enough to rest when we got back.

  On retiring, we lay awake for hours, speculating on what this structure could have been used for. It was entirely empty, and showed no signs of having been inhabited, or used for anything. We argued that these people could have had no use for a power dam, and we could not conceive of any use they might have had for such a large storage tank. And besides, there was no sign of any water or other matter having been present. We did, however, arrive at the conclusion that the curvature we had noticed probably corresponded with the curvature of the asteroid’s surface.

  The following morning we approached our task with a little more assurance, and descended to our former furthes
t point quite briskly. We immediately began to consider how most advantageously to reach the narrow ledge, if ledge it was, that we had sighted the night before.

  We first lowered a light nearly down to it, and it was revealed as a real continuous ledge. It was, however, so very narrow that we were in doubt as to whether it would be possible to walk along it. But we did succeed in reaching it. It was apparently about a hundred feet below us, too far to climb a rope, we thought; so at Mr. Kingston’s suggestion, we made a rope ladder. This was a rather lavish use of our somewhat limited supply of halfinch rope, but it seemed the only safe way.

  By noon, we had the ladder done and securely fastened by means of slings to the column where we were working, and I started the long descent. I found it a hazardous and wearisome climb, because the bottom end was loose, and allowed the ladder to swing and kink and tangle up below me. I was swung back and forth like a pendulum; but I finally reached the ledge, and found to my relief that it was wide enough to stand on, if one stood very straight.

  There was nothing available to which I could tie the ladder, so I stretched it as tight as I could, and stood on the side ropes, so that my partner could come down with greater ease. After passing our lead rope and also our extension cords through the bottom of the ladder, we started to make our way with great difficulty along the ledge.

  The ladder was now a thing of supreme importance, and we most emphatically didn’t want to lose it. We would have been entirely out of luck had anything happened to that ladder, or if we should have lost our bearings, and be unable to find them.

  We progressed very slowly and cautiously, testing the strength of the ledge at every step; in constant fear that it might crumble and give way, plunging us into unknown depths below. This ledge was not level with respect to its course along the wall, but ran at an incline of what seemed to be about 10 or 12 degrees.

  CHAPTER V

  Closer to the Secret

  UPON leaving our landing place, we started in the direction of its descent; because we figured that if the main wall continued to curve inward, as it seemed to be doing, it would gradually approach the horizontal; and the ledge would become increasingly easy to walk on as the wall deviated more and more from the perpendicular.

  We had laid out coils of our lead rope and extension cords, containing about 500 feet, and presently they became so hard to pull that we judged we had come to the end of them, and were now pulling from the main coils. So we determined to retrace our steps and call it another day.

  Before going to bed, we arranged new and longer coils of lead rope and extension cord, in such a manner that we hoped to be able to progress, if necessary, about a quarter of a mile. We also put a small drill, a hammer and some small iron pipes in our knapsacks, so that we could fasten our ladder securely to the ledge. We decided to take the electric grill, to make coffee on, and to carry two days’ rations.

  We called the camp and advised them that we would be off on a two days’ march; and told them, whatever they did, not to turn off the electric current.

  At five o’clock in the morning we began our trek, and by nine-thirty we had, progressed, as nearly as we could estimate, a thousand feet along the ledge. We found, as we had hoped, that we were approaching the bottom of the curved cavity. However, our lines were becoming so long that it was very heavy work pulling them; so we halted to rest, and incidentally to eat a hot lunch. Here we rested a couple of hours, and then, after pulling out some two hundred feet of slack on our lines, proceeded less laboriously along the ledge, for it was no longer steep enough to be dangerous, even if we should lose our footing.

  Presently we were surprised to find ourselves directly in front of a hitherto unnoticed opening in the wall, floored and arched like a great hall, and leading back at right angles to our course, as far as our lights could penetrate. We, of course, had no idea where it might lead, but we decided to investigate. But as our lines had grown so heavy to pull by this time, we thought it well to mount our lights at the entrance, and go on with our battery flashlights; because so long as the hall did not branch off, and so long as we kept within sight of the stationary lights, there was little danger of our getting lost.

  Very slowly and cautiously we went on, flashing our lights on the floor, walls and ceiling, and watching for pitfalls. Our progress was rendered more difficult by the fact that the hall was tipped up on edge, at an angle of about 15”, tilting the floor so far out of level that it was difficult to keep our footing. It also slanted down longitudinally on a grade of 10 or 12°. This of course was due to the fact that the force of gravity within the earth was so much greater than that of the asteroid, that a new center of gravity had been formed as soon as the tiny planet came in contact with our great mass.

  Things that had been orderly were naturally all topsy-turvy now. At the end of about a hundred yards, we came upon a huge door that had broken from its fastenings, and fallen at a crazy angle across the opening. After some little difficulty in crawling past this, we came upon a large room. How large it was, we were unable to determine, since our flashlights gave such a limited ray, and we were determined not to go out of sight of our lights in the rear.

  We could see, however, that the room was not empty, but was filled with furniture of a sort and showed signs of human occupancy. With no little effort we overcame our curiosity, and returned to our lights and lead rope, where we made our supper; after which we lay down in the end of the hall, and in spite of our necessarily uncomfortable attitudes, took a short nap, for we were both dog-tired.

  We were, however, too nervous and excited to sleep long; knowing as we did, that we were on the verge of a very momentous discovery. So, after a few hours of inactivity, although not much refreshed, we started in to pull our lead rope and extension cords as far into the hall as we could. We planned that after we had used up all the stock we had provided, we would return to the mole, and let more slack into the vault. Then we would make all preparations for another expedition, and then take a good night’s sleep.

  Our long climb back to the mole seemed all the more tedious, because of our impatience to get on with our explorations. In the morning—if one could say there was any morning in this eternal darkness—we armed ourselves with goodly stores of provisions, and two high-powered light bulbs, and hastened back to see what was in our newly discovered room.

  Yes, there was no doubt; it was furniture, tables, chairs, wall cases, shelves and a great many other things that we did not at first recognize. Fortunately, all this was securely fastened to the floor and walls, otherwise it would have been in a great heap in the lower corner of the room. For this room was, of course, on a plane with the hall.

  It was indeed a big room, as large as a modern convention hall. We brought in our rope and wire, and after suspending our lights from some of the highest shelves, set to work in earnest to explore this treasure house.

  It seemed to be a cross between a library and a museum. One large apartment, set off from the rest by a low lattice partition, was filled with maps and photographs. Another department was all books, or at least they appeared to be similar to our books. The printing was on very thin sheets of what seemed to be white metal. It could be torn, but not so easily as paper. This was rolled on two rollers, fastened some six inches apart, so as to give a flat surface for easy reading. As one roller unrolled, the other rolled up, like film in a kodak.

  This seemed to be a very compact arrangement, taking much less room than ordinary cover-bound books. Of course we were unable to read any of the text, as the characters were entirely strange to us. But I will return to this subject later.

  Then there were departments filled with machinery, laboratory equipment, mineral specimens, and building material. There were models of animals and fish; manufactured articles, and fully as many other things, concerning whose uses we could form no conception.

  One thing was strikingly evident. They had taken every precaution to preserve everything against the ravages of time. Everything was co
ated with a kind of transparent shellac, or was in some way sealed from the action of the atmosphere. But in spite of all precaution, some things were beginning to decompose; and all was covered with dust, and was grimy with age.

  There were so many totally unfamiliar objects to be examined, that it was like attending an exposition in a foreign land. In this case, however, we were the only visitors, and we were far from being in holiday attire. We were dusty, dirty and dishevelled from our long climb. But what we lacked in personal appearance, we made up in interest and enthusiasm. Needless to say, our nerves and brains were in a highly wrought up condition. Surely, this was no common experience. After months of incessant labor, after burrowing like animals and braving every danger, at last we had reached our goal. Here we were, in the very midst of another world; surrounded by a multitude of things no earthly eye had ever seen.

  A Strange Language

  WE knew not when we might uncover secrets of inestimable value to mankind, or at what moment we might encounter an engine of destruction, ready to annihilate us.

  So frenzied now with eagerness, and frozen now with fear, we went from wonder to wonder, seeing but only half believing; awake, but experiencing all the sensations of an amazing dream. We soon realized that we were going to be able to do no more than scratch the surface at one visit; so we put in the major part of our time in the department of pictures and photographs, for here we could read without knowing the language, and here it seemed we could glean the most knowledge with the least effort. We were especially anxious to learn what kind of people had inhabited this mere speck of a world, and how they had lived.

  From the pictures, it was evident that they did not differ greatly from ourselves; except of course they did not dress as we, and they were pictured in altogether strange environment. We both expected to find they were very small in stature, but there appeared no proof of this.