Then he tripped on something. He almost fell but recovered his balance in time. He had tripped on a slightly upraised strip that ran along the length of the corridor. He noticed that strips of the same kind were on the ceiling and both walls as well as on the floor. The strips were not as long as the corridor. They came to an end at different places along the corridor. He walked past the strips and noticed that once the strips were gone the light had a bluish rather than pinkish tinge.
He walked on, pulling his jacket tighter around him; and, hunching down in between his shoulders as well as he could, he tripped again. This time, he did fall down on the floor and seemed to bounce on it. That glass or plastic surface seemed to have some flexibility to it. He got up and discovered he had come to another place where one section ended and another began. New strips ran perpendicular to the direction of the corridor. They crossed the floor, both walls, and the ceiling. Before these strips, the light had a bluish tinge but now the light had a yellowish tinge and was also dimmer than the light that existed farther back on the corridor.
He walked on and found that the light grew dimmer and dimmer. It was also getting colder. He wished he had been supplied with a sweater, a couple of tee shirts, a warmer jacket and some gloves but, as far as he knew, none of this had been put in any of the pouches of his space suit and therefore would not be in his backpack.
He looked up ahead of him and saw up ahead a space that was very dimly lit with hidden lights that glowed with a greenish tinge. It was a room. And the wall he faced had a very pale orange rectangle fairly high up on it.
At this point, he felt the wave of despair rise up inside of him again. It was as if some part of him had tapped an underground aquifer and that, with the pressure reduced because of the tapped hole, the water rose quickly, filling up both him and the space around him. He sank down on the floor and waited for the despair to recede. It took a while, but eventually it did begin to recede. But, thinking back to the time when this attack of despair was strongest, he had the idea that he might have howled like a wild and desperate animal during all of that time. He had that idea because he later remembered hearing howling at about this time and wondering what its source was. Now the idea occurred to him that the howling came from him.
He had slowed down while in despair. In fact, he had come to a halt and sank back onto the floor and crouched fearfully against one of the walls. But, at a certain point, feeling that the feeling of despair had receded enough, he stood up and resumed his walk down the corridor containing the strips.
He quickly came to the place where the orange square he had spotted earlier seemed more like a wall than a small square. He now saw that what seemed like a square hanging on the wall of a room was actually a square opening into another room that was about four feet off the ground. Looking around, he realized that the only way forward was through the square opening.
So he hoisted himself up over the bottom edge of the opening, turned slightly sidewise, got his knee up there, got that whole leg over to the other side, got the other knee up, turned all the way around, and shifted his weight so that he would fall down onto room on the other side of that opening (which was elevated above the ground on the other side also).
Because he could not be sure where the floor was that was on the other side, he was worried that the floor there might be so far down from the opening that getting there might risk breaking a leg or dying.
So he clung to the lower edge of the opening he had crawled through for as long as he could while he pushed as much of the rest of his body over to the other side and felt with his foot for a floor. Fortunately he found it, and, though still holding onto the ledge that he had been clinging to, touched the new floor with both feet. Then, once he got his new footing, he let go of the ledge. Reaching the floor of the other room safely, he turned around to face it. He wanted to inspect this new space. It was not very big. He was almost as tall as it was.
Chapter 12: Upper & Lower
This was a small room, a cube really, about 6’ in every direction. The orange light that from a distance had defined the place for him seemed to come into the room through gaps in the corners.
There was not a lot of that orange light but there was enough for him to see what the room contained. He saw, up above, what looked like a door and, just below the one door another door that was part of the floor. Each of these doors seemed to be made of a material that was, or had been made, very smooth except for a section along the edge that had something inscribed on it that had the same combination of outer shapes and inner shapes as the symbols he had seen before.
Each inscription was flush with the surface that surrounded it. As far as he could tell, there was no ornamentation of any kind on the doors or surrounding walls. There was no molding of any kind. The two doors were just simple doors set into holes cut into the surfaces that they were a part of. There didn’t even seem to be a door frame of any kind. The doors were painted. The one above him was dark red. The one below was yellow.
Neither door seemed to have any kind of knob or handle or hole or opening of any kind by means of which he might be able to open it. The one up above was also so high that without a ladder or stool he couldn’t think of any way to reach it.
“One step at a time,” he said to himself. “One step at a time,” he repeated. “One step at a time,” he said and closed his eyes. He had to think of some way to open one or the other door.
But first he had to copy the inscriptions. He took off his backpack, set it down on the floor beneath the lower one of the two doors, pulled out his notebook and pen, sat down on the floor not far from his backpack, and began to draw.
There was a block of outer and inner symbols as before. The block of symbols on the upper door consisted of six symbols wide and three deep—a total of eighteen. On the lower door the symbols were arranged in the shape of a triangle with one combination of symbols at the top, two below that, three below that, and four below that—a total of ten symbols.
He started with the first symbol on the first row on the left of the top set of symbols. The outer symbol was a triangle. Inside of it was a set of three concentric circles. At the very center of the innermost circle was a dot.
The next outer symbol consisted of a pair of wavy lines on the right and left connected by curved lines, the top curve bending down and the bottom one bending up. Inside of that was a set of horizontal lines that were broken up into dots and dashes. The next outer symbol was trapezoidal with the corners curved. Inside was a single horizontal line with an ‘x’ at the very center. They might have been a pair of arrows coming from opposite directions and meeting at the middle, striking each other at their tips.
He proceeded to draw each symbol and was careful to make exact copies. He put the symbols of the upper door on one page (labeling it “upper door”) and the symbols of the lower door on the next page (labeling them “lower door”). When he was finished with his drawings, he looked them over very carefully to make sure everything was copied exactly. Then he put his notebook and pen back in his notebook, got up, put his backpack back on, and stood before the two doors.
He looked from one door to the other. There were no knobs or handles on either one. The one up on the ceiling was just high enough for him to touch the surface slightly if he stood on his tiptoes. And, even to do that, he had to stand on a little ledge at the base of the door set into the floor which made him uncomfortable because it creaked and rattled and even bounced a little when he stood on it.
“Let me take this one step at a time,” he repeated to himself in order to get the wheels of his thinking going. But he couldn’t think of what a first step would be.
Then he had an idea. He would get down on his hands and knees and crawl around the edge of the lower door. He decided to look carefully at every square inch of the door’s surface from very close up. And he would use his hands to double check what he saw. He hoped to find a place where there might be enough room between the floor and the door’s edge t
o make it possible for him to stick his fingers into and around the gap. Then, using his fingers as hooks, he could pull the door upwards.
But he was disappointed in that effort. He found that the door was flush with the frame built into the floor all the way around.
Then it occurred to him that banging everywhere on the surface of the door might expose a weakness. He figured that, since he had heard various sounds and even felt some movement of the door when he stood on the ledge that supported it, banging on the door might expose the place of maximum weakness.
He crawled up to and all around the edge of the door, hitting it all over his knuckles. He was knocking but did not really expect an answer. He was testing the surface instead. Of course, he wouldn’t have minded hearing some nice, kind, benign voice say, “Who’s there?” and then push the door open. He would not have minded at all if that voice happened to be Sylvia Ridgeway’s. But no voice came.
He knocked all over the door. He was looking for weak spots or soft spots or thin spots. He knocked sometimes softly and other times more loudly. He was on his hands and knees and, every once in a while, he pressed his ear close to or against the lower door, not only to hear the sound his knocking made better but also to detect any sound coming from the other side.
He found a spot that seemed to sound a little bit tinnier (that was the word that seemed to him best to describe what he heard) than any of the other spots. There also seemed to be more flexibility or resilience there than anywhere else.
Then he tried hitting the door with the flat of his hand. He wanted to see if doing that would give him other information about the nature of the door and how it might be opened. He detected differences in sound and feel in some spots that made him wonder if the door was hollow and housed something else inside, perhaps another and smaller door. Also, the door seemed to bounce back in one area which was next to and about halfway down one of the door’s long edges.
He wondered if hitting it hard enough or in just the right place and in the right way, he might get the door to bounce up high enough for him to be able to grab onto an edge before the door bounced back.
To test that idea, he shifted his position so that he could hit the door at the place where it bounced the most. When experimenting in that way, one time he pounded very sharply with the side of his fist. It bounced up pretty high. He then very quickly pulled away the hand that did the banging and, with the other hand, grabbed at the raised edge. It took him a few times of trying this before he actually was able grab the edge and hold onto it.
And then he grabbed that edge with the other hand. He had it now with both hands. He moved to the side. He was still on his knees. He moved his knees as close to the edge as he could and tried lifting the door.
He managed to lift the edge of the door up to the height of his shoulders. He rested and then tried lifting it a little higher. He got it up to the height of his forehead. While he lifted it, he also heard something rattling inside of the door. He also saw a line of rectangular openings on the door’s lower inner surface. These openings ran the whole length of the inner surface of the door. Also, at one of the shorter edges, he saw a place where the surface was broken up. He saw there what looked like a pair of rectangular steel rods folded into the body of the door and attached to parts of the door by means of hinges.
He lowered the door part way and then, by moving one hand around to another edge, turned it slightly sideways.
Then, using both hands, he pushed the door sideways, up off of the flange where it had been sitting, and partially over a part of the floor. There, it hung for a couple of seconds, but he still held onto the edge that teetered over the brink and, with that hand, pushed the door sideways until it lay entirely on the floor.
Now, he could stare into the entirety of space the door had covered and do it at his leisure. He had looked down there earlier, when he got the door up as high as his forehead, and had seen only darkness. But that was only a quick glance and he was too worried about dropping the door really to examine the space down there.
Now, with the door out of the way, he could lie down on his stomach and scoot up to the edge of the door and gaze down into that abyss. Still he saw nothing—only darkness. There was no indication of how large or deep the space down there was. He also could not see if there were ramps that could be used to descend into the space. He could not see openings into other spaces. He could not see anything.
He just lay there, brought his arms up, bent his elbows, clasped his hands together, and, using his forearms and hands as pillows, gazed into that void. He wondered whether there were murals down there or if there was water. He wondered if living things lived down there and, down there, lived their mysterious lives.
There was a flange a few inches long along the lower edge of the door frame. He checked to see if he could find anything interesting or useful there but found nothing. He checked to see if any symbols had been inscribed onto the inner surface of the flange but there was nothing. He checked to see if there were any scraps of paper or cards or old tickets or coins lying on that surface, but there was nothing like that.
He got up to check the door again. Since he especially wanted to see its reverse side, he lifted it up off the floor, turned it over, and set it down again. The reverse side seemed to be made of some kind of metal that was tarnished but not really corroded. Centered on the reverse side was a rectangular metal plate. He pressed on it and, just as he thought, it went down but then, when he released it, it rebounded. He assumed one or more springs lay underneath the plate. But he didn’t bother to try to investigate this any further.
There were also two round holes about eighteen inches apart a few inches from one edge. They went completely through the door. It occurred to him that they might once have been used to attach hinges to the door.
He then returned to the hole. He looked down into the darkness. He shouted, “Hello. Is anyone there?” No one answered. He did not even hear any sound at all that might indicate that something alive was in there. He looked for little round shiny spots that might be eyes but saw nothing like that.
His shout did not have an echo. He tried again, louder. Again, there was no answer. He screamed. “Stop being so coy. Answer me,” he yelled. Still, there was no answer.
This time, he took off his backpack and fished around in it until he found the flashlight that was in there. He pulled it out of its pouch, pressed the button that turned it on, and flashed the light into the dark hole. But the space was so vast and the beam of light of such limited range that he saw nothing—the beam of light did not get far enough in any direction to hit anything at all that he could see being illuminated.
He wondered if there was a light switch somewhere and, no matter how unlikely that was, he scooted, still on his belly, all around the door, felt everywhere under the flange as far as he could reach. He hoped he might find a switch that would turn the lights on in that place. But he found nothing like that.
The air down there was still. It seemed to be about the same temperature as the room where he was which was cold though slightly warmer than the room that preceded it. He wondered if the air down there was safe to breathe. He took a shallow breath and, when he found it didn’t make him gasp or cough, he took a deeper breath. That air was stale. It seemed to have dust and decay and age in it. But it was breathable. It didn’t kill him. It didn’t even make him sick.
He wished he had something he could drop into that hole that would be heavy enough to plumb the depths and make enough of a sound when it hit bottom to give him an idea of the depth of that cavity.
He found in his backpack the bag of coins. He took one of these, rubbed it for good luck, held it out over the void as far as he could reach, and dropped it. He thought it might hit something and bounce and fall and hit something else and bounce again and fall again. But he heard absolutely nothing. He waited for quite a while but heard absolutely nothing.
He took another coin out of the bag and, after looking carefully at
the coin with the aid of his flashlight, said, “Heads,” as if he was betting with someone about something. Without getting into what the imaginary bet should be about, he flipped the coin and let it fly spinning out into the abyss. Because the coin did not simply drop straight down but, because of the way he had flipped it, went up and down in a parabolic arc, it hit something when it fell. He heard a slight scraping sound. Then, not long after that, he heard a clunking sound, as if it hit something else. He didn’t hear anything after that. He thought. It might have landed on a ledge of some kind, but, if there was a ledge out there, he could not see it.
He pulled out still another coin. It had a head wearing a feathered headdress and a torso sporting a necklace of large round beads on one side. On the other said was an inscription featuring three stars lined up horizontally and a fourth star above the three and moving back and forth along a dotted line. He dropped that coin into the void too but, once again, heard nothing.
After a while, he decided he better stop staring into that abyss. He lifted his head off his arms and hands and brought his hands forward and pushed himself away from the opening. He got up on his hands and knees, gave the opening another glance, and promised himself not to forget that there was a hole there. He didn’t want to step into it while preoccupied with problem of opening the upper door which he now thought there might be a way to open and enter.
Chapter 13: Devising a Ladder
Then he crawled on his hands and knees over to the door that lifted out of its place and slid across the floor. He wanted to inspect it better because he felt that the square openings on one side, the rods at one end, and whatever it was that was rattling inside of that door might mean something. So he brought his legs forward and sat up and pulled the door over his feet and legs and, using his feet and legs as a workbench, turned it slowly around and looked it over, especially the edges and the side where the rectangular openings were.
A Theory of Gravity Page 7