“Medicine? Medicine! What would I want with that beastly stuff? Dr. Carslake wants shooting for ever prescribing such muck.”
Dawson opened his mouth and then closed it again. For hypochondriac Horsley to be talking like this was absolutely incredible.
“Matter of fact,” Horsley said, struggling out of his chair and straightening up, “the one thing I need at the moment is the best meal this hotel can produce. Tell the proprietor I say so.”
“Meal, sir?” Dawson stared stupidly.
“You’re not deaf, are you?” Horsley demanded, flinging aside the plaid shawl from his scrawny shoulders.
“No, sir, of course not, but as a rule you only eat the lightest of foods specially peptonised and everything—”
“Confound it, man, don’t stand there arguing! Do as you’re told!” Then as the baffled Dawson turned towards the door Horsley went on talking. “Y’know; Dawson, it’s a funny thing, but I never felt quite like this before. I feel comfortable, almost contented.”
“Yes, sir,” Dawson answered vaguely.
“It sort of crept upon me,” Horsley mused. “As I sat there in that armchair. It began by my feeling warm. I felt as if the thousand and one ills by which I am beset were commencing to loosen up. They haven’t gone, mind you! Lord, no! I have a great deal to lose yet, but somehow—”
“Possibly the warm afternoon, sir,” Dawson suggested. “The thermometer in the hall downstairs was over a hundred when I passed it a few minutes ago. That’s very high for England—”
“Did you say it is about half past four?” Horsley interrupted, frowning over a thought.
“Twenty-five to five now, sir, to be exact.”
“I was just thinking about that disturbance which was going to affect us around four o’clock. It must have been about that time when I began to feel so much better.”
“Far as I can see, sir, no disturbance has happened. It’s warm, of course, but you expect it in June.”
“There’s more than warmth in the air, Dawson.” Horsley had started pacing up and down the room, grasping at the air with one claw-like hand as though he expected to catch hold of something. “You can’t feel it, perhaps, but I can. I don’t quite know what it is but by heaven I like it! Anyway, tell the proprietor that I want the best meal he can provide at six o’clock exactly. If he raises objections send him to me and I’ll buy the confounded hotel!”
“Yes, sir,” mumbled the still dumbfounded Dawson as he went on his way. Something incredible had happened to his irate employer, and he had not the vaguest idea what.
And, in a different way, Henry Brand—the illegal animal trader in the African jungle—was also being affected by the change that had come upon the world, though like most other people he was hardly aware at first that a change had come. It did occur to him that even for the African forest the temperature was dizzyingly high, but nothing more than this at first came to his notice.
His earlier demand for the capture of animals had still not been met, and Henry Brand was not the type of man to be satisfied with vague excuses about animals behaving strangely, much less so when he had been drinking heavily and when the heat was as terrific as at the moment.
Putting down his drained whiskey glass he lurched unsteadily to the bungalow door and then stood there panting, his gross, powerful body stripped to the waist, rivulets coursing down his broad chest. For a moment or two, as well as the fogs of drink would permit him, he watched the natives supposedly at work in the nearby clearing and two things dawned on him in quick succession. One was that they were working with obvious languor, the heat being beyond anything even they were accustomed to; and the other was that with the moments they were becoming less visible by reason of gradually obscuring vines and twining undergrowth: It was the first time Henry Brand had ever seen vegetation grow as he looked at it. He did not know whether it was an hallucination or whether he was more drunk than usual. In any case he meant to find out.
Reaching to the wall beside the doorway he took down a leather-thonged whip and then strode down the bungalow steps. Out here, thick though the foliage was, the heat was like the interior of an oven. Brand did his best to ignore it and strode across to the clearing where the natives were working on assembling nets and traps—then they swung round as Brand’s voice bawled at them.
“What the hell are you lazing about for? Get on with your job and get out there. It’s hot—sure, but what else do you expect?”
“Bwana, it is too hot for work,” his head boy, M’Bonga, protested. “And the animals are in hiding.”
“Don’t try that excuse on me, M’Bonga: I know you too well! Lazy! The whole wretched lot of you! Remember what I told you would happen if you didn’t get any animals?”
The native nodded uneasily, his eyes on the whip in Brand’s hand.
“Well I meant it!” Brand spat. “I said I’d make the sun so hot it would shrivel your hides to blazes. That’s what I’m doing now! Can’t you feel it blasting the very life out of you?”
M’Bonga nodded fearfully and with a grim smile Brand looked on the startled natives to the rear—then he frowned and looked at his feet. Something was wrong somewhere for, despite the density of the forest which usually completely screened the sun, he could see his own shadow cut on the swelling, surging vines that crept about his feet. He glanced upwards in amazement and saw the sun shining with pitiless brilliance—shining through the foliage. It didn’t make sense. Yet there it was and, in glancing upwards—even though only for a moment—Brand felt as though white hot irons had passed through his eyes He howled with sudden pain and went stumbling away to his bungalow to seek more whiskey and, perhaps, the chance to drown out the fantastic things that seemed to be happening to him. Being practically on the equator, and at a point on Earth more directly in a line with the sun than anywhere else, he was becoming involved in scientific changes that had yet to spread to the rest of a sweltering world.
Not that it was sweltering in the Great Peak Cavern of Derbyshire whither Samuel Baines and his family had gone to spend the first afternoon of their holiday. At the moment they were following the main rugged pathway, which led into the limestone depths—and, to their satisfaction, there were no other ‘explorers’ in sight at the moment.
“I’ve heard of bigger places,” Samuel Baines commented, pausing to look about him upon the six great chambers branching from the entrance track. “One day maybe we’ll see them.”
“Not on your salary, dear,” his wife commented, smiling sadly. “Anyway, what other caves are there? I’m not very well up in geography. Or is it geology?”
“You should read more, Claire,” Samuel Baines told her. “There’s the ‘star chamber’ in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, for instance; and then there’s the Margaret River Caves in Western Australia; there’s the Wookcy Hole Cave; the Blue Grotto of Capri—”
“Yes, dear,” Claire agreed, “but at the moment we’re in the Great Peak Cavern of Derbyshire, so what do we do?”
“Explore!” Samuel Baines held his walking stick aloft. “What else? Come on!”
The four of them began moving, the sound of their feet on the loose stones echoing back to them from confining walls. Remotely—so much so they were not sure if they really heard them—came the sound of voices and other footsteps as visitors like themselves explored distant portions of this massive earthwork.
“Whatever we do,” Samuel Baines said presently, when they had come some distance from the main entrance, “we must keep together and follow these recognised tracks, and we must obey the signs—”
He pointed to them. They were brief and to the point. One said This Way Only. Another said Danger—Keep Clear. Yet another, upon which young Bertie set his eyes with mischievous intent, said Unexplored Track—Keep Away.
“If we go straight on,” Samuel Baines continued, taking his wife’s arm, “we can’t come to any harm.”
“But, dad, I thought you said we were going to explore!” Gwen grumbled. “
Where’s the use of exploring if you don’t come to any harm?”
“I’ll bet Captain Scott wasn’t afraid of coming to harm,” Bertie objected.
Samuel Baines paused and then turned deliberately. “Captain Scott and ourselves are not to be mentioned in the same breath,” he said. “We’re just tourists looking round a cave. Captain Scott was an explorer.”
“But, Dad, I thought you said that was what we were!” Gwen exclaimed.
Samuel Baines looked at his progeny for a moment and closed his eyes momentarily; then with an air of resolution he swung back and began walking again, Claire dutifully at his side.
“Not as cold in here as I’d thought it would be,” Claire remarked at length, picking her way among the stones.
“From all accounts the temperature maintains a level of about fifty degrees Fahrenheit,” her husband answered. “Inside here we’re protected from external temperature variations—so be it snowing or blazing outside we still remain at about fifty degrees.”
“But, Sam, it isn’t fifty: it’s seventy.”
“Can’t be,” Samuel Baines said flatly.
“Then the thermometer we just passed must be a liar. It registered seventy, which seemed to me a pretty high figure for the interior of a cave.”
“Oh, well....” Samuel Baines wrestled with the enigma silently for awhile as he walked along. “Maybe a warm draught of air blowing in from somewhere. Notice how cleverly they have carried lighting into this place?” he asked, changing the subject quickly.
Claire surveyed the overhead cables, which had been swung onto stapled insulators in the rockery. The lamps glowed with an intense brightness in the dustless atmosphere of this sanctuary. “Wonder how they climbed up there to put the cables?” she hazarded.
“Scaffolding,” Samuel Baines replied knowledgeably. “And it looks to me as though we’re coming to an end of this track. Wonder where we’re supposed to go next?”
He paused and glanced behind him, intending to consult Bertie and Gwen. Not that he gave a hoot for their opinions anyway but as part of the family they had to be considered. Only Bertie and Gwen were not in sight. There was only the stone path overhung by the dancing globes, leading back to the entrance to the cave.
“Where—where are they?” Claire asked abruptly, as she grasped the situation.
Samuel Baines’ brows knitted. “Wandered off, I suppose, and I distinctly told them to stay with us!”
“I don’t remember you saying so, dear.”
“Well, if I didn’t they should have known that anyway! We’d better look.”
His walking stick firmly grasped in his hand Samuel Baines began to retrace—at first slowly, expecting to see the youngsters any moment; then he travelled with increasing urgency when he failed to find them. Finally he stopped, his harassed wife by his side. “Bertie!” he shouted. “Bertie! Gwen!”
The rolling echoes flung his voice back at him, but there was no answer from the missing children. Claire caught at her husband’s arm. “Sam, what do we do? Where are they? Should we try and get the police, or a search party, or something?”
“Nonsense! We’ll find ’em.”
Though he was anything but hopeful of doing so Samuel Baines strode forward again, until presently he and his wife reached the fenced-off right-angled pathway, which said Unexplored Track—Keep Away. In the dust and loose stones at the base of the fence were distinct small shoe-marks.
“Gwen’s!” Claire exclaimed. “Look! You can see the mark of her rubber heels. Sam, they’ve followed the track over the fence! The very thing they shouldn’t do!”
Her husband smiled in relief. “Nothing to worry over, Claire. They wouldn’t be normal kids if they didn’t go poking around where they shouldn’t. Soon find ’em. Think you can climb over this fence, or won’t the rheumatics let you?”
“Neither rheumatics nor anything else’ll stop me finding my children!” Claire retorted, and grasped the wooden uprights of the barrier to prove her statement.
Even so it took her some five minutes, with Samuel’s help, to scramble over the fence and drop heavily on the other side. Here she stood breathing hard in semi-gloom until her husband dropped beside her.
“The little idiots!” he muttered. “No lighting is carried along here and it’ll be as black as the tomb further on. Why can’t they do as they’re told. I’ll skin ’em alive when I find ’em.”
“You brought a torch, didn’t you?” Claire asked.
“Uh-huh. Give me time to find it, can’t you?”
Claire ignored the tension under which her husband was labouring. There were convulsive movements in the gloom as he tugged the cheap torch from his jacket-pocket. Then, he switched on the thin beam and waved it ahead of him along a downward-sloping rocky trail, which led into apparent extinction. “What possessed them to explore along here, and in the dark?” Samuel Baines demanded, advancing slowly. “The pair of them must be crazy.”
“Gwen had a fountain-pen torch on her blazer,” Claire said. “I gave it her for her birthday, remember? Not that it provides much light for a spot like this.”
Samuel Baines’ only response was a grunt. The trail, being followed was extremely narrow and, presently, it became only a thin lip on the edge of a sheer wall of rock. To the other side loomed emptiness, some mighty volcanic chasm blown in the earth in the unguessable past and into which Baines’ torch beam failed to penetrate.
“Lord!” he whispered, pausing. “Surely they didn’t—?”
He looked into the abyss and then at his wife. There was a second’s deathly silence—then Samuel Baines yelled with all the power of his lungs: “Bertie! Gwen!”
It seemed an interminable time before the echoes died away—and hardly had they done so before they were followed by an answering cry. It sounded as if it came from another world.
“Here! Down here!” It was the plaintive but unmistakable voice of Bertie. “Give us a hand, Dad. We can’t get back.”
“The little idiots!” Samuel Baines breathed wrathfully, quite spiteful now he knew they were still living. “What the blazes are they doing down there?”
“What on earth does that matter?” Claire demanded. “The thing is to locate them and get them back safely. Whew, but it’s hot in here!” She broke off, tugging off her heavy tweed coat.
“Yes, unusually so.” Samuel Baines looked about him with some mystification in the torchlight. “Shouldn’t be hot in this underworld. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. Here, hold the torch and I’ll see what I can do.”
He removed his jacket and then lay flat on his face and peered into the gulf. The weakness of the torch was infuriating. All he could see was darkness.
“Hey!” he shouted. “How did you get down there, kids?”
“It was Gwen’s fault!” Bertie shouted from a distance.
“Wasn’t, Dad! It was Bertie’s!”
“Never mind whose fault it was” Samuel Baines yelled. “How did you get down? How far below are you?”
“We fell down,” Bertie answered out of the gulf. “I think Gwen’s sprained her ankle. We’re about—two hundred feet down. With fingers and toes you can do it.”
“You hope,” Baines muttered, and debated whether or not to go for a search party. Claire settled it for him.
“How much longer are you going to play around, Sam? Hurry up!”
It was obvious Claire was far more concerned for her children than her husband—and Samuel Baines knew it. He muttered something to himself and then slid himself over the rocky ledge and began to feel his way down. “Nice damned way to spend a holiday this is!” came his mumbling protest. “I’ll skin ’em alive when I get to ’em.”
“Yes, dear, but hurry up!”
Her husband looked upwards for a moment and saw a dim vision of his wife’s head and shoulders behind the brightly haloed eye of the torch—then there was a sudden gasp from her and the torch disappeared. There was a clink in infinity and then utter, crushing darkness.
&nb
sp; “What the hell!” Samuel Baines screamed.
“I—I dropped the torch.” Claire’s voice above sounded disembodied. “It’s—down there somewhere.”
Samuel Baines clung on desperately, more frightened now than he had ever been in his life before. Finally he mastered himself far enough to shout again. “Hey, Bertie! Is that torch down there? Can you find it?”
“No, Dad. We’re on a ledge and there’s a drop we can’t see just beyond us. Torch must be down there. Haven’t you got matches?”
“Matches! Matches, he says!” Baines breathed hard.
“How the heck do you expect me to get at matches when I’m hanging on here by the skin of my teeth? Anyway, I haven’t any. Only a lighter which works when it thinks it will—”
“Go on down, dear,” came Claire’s urgent voice. “I’ll go and find somebody to help us—if I can see my way.”
Baines heard her scrambling movements amidst the stones above and he cursed the cramp in his fingers. Gently he began to edge himself downwards—until the inevitable happened. His brittle fingers refused to grip any more on the rockery and his hold slipped. Down he went, to crash with such force that the senses were knocked out of him.
* * * * * * *
And, not more than a dozen miles from the Great Peak Cavern, Douglas Taylor and his red-haired friend, Gordon Briggs, sat before Douglas’ complicated radio equipment. The time was 4:30 and all radio communication had disquietingly died out some time ago. Both young men sat in their shirtsleeves but even so perspiration was pouring down their faces and the little Nissen hut had a temperature as high as a bakehouse.
“I still think this is crazy,” Gordon said, lighting a cigarette. “With all radio waves completely dead how can we possibly hope to receive anything from out of space?”
“Earth radio waves are dead, sure,” Douglas agreed, after a glance at the silent loudspeaker, “but that is possibly because any point on Earth is quite near to us when compared with the multiple light years to other stellar systems. On Earth we’re in the very epicentre of the spatial disturbance: we have no guarantee that the disturbance is so absolute in outer space.”
The Space Warp Page 4