A few moments later there was a flash and a sharp crack, which echoed around the vast hall for several seconds.
When they came out into the cavern again, a small cloud of thin grey smoke was writhing and drifting up to the roof, the trolley lamp picking it out like a pale ghost.
The explosive had done its job, there was no sign of the scroll design on the doors, and one door had very slightly moved outwards, in relation to the other.
‘If we all pull together, it should open.’ said Hans, desperately hoping it would.
After several sustained efforts, there was a loud clank from behind the door as something dropped off the lock mechanism, and the door opened just enough for Greg to squeeze through with a hand lamp.
‘We’ll have to open it up a bit more to get the trolley through.’ he said. ‘And be careful nothing drops on you from the rest of the lock mechanism above, there’s not much holding it on.’
By pushing against one door, they managed to open the other just enough to get the trolley through, and all five stood inside the next section of the complex, gazing up at the remains of the lock mechanism, and the huge hydraulic rams which operated it.
‘That charge has blown the clevis off one of the rams,’ said Hans, pleased with his expertise, ‘and without that, there’s no way we could have got in, just look at the size of those rams.’
The hand lamp was played up and down the enormous doors, illuminating the shattered remains of the control and locking mechanism, which hung precariously on the few remaining studs.
‘Well, we’re in, so now what?’ John was being a little ungracious considering what they had achieved.
‘The tracks lead on up the tunnel, so we’ll follow ’em, and see what’s at the other end.’ said Greg.
They were beginning to think there wasn’t an end to the tunnel, for it went on for several kilometres, and the first sounds of disgruntlement were being made.
‘There’s something up ahead.’ said Ben, as the beam from the lamp glinted off a shiny metallic surface. ‘Better go carefully, the tunnel’s opening out.’
They had reached the end of the rail tracks in a massive circular cavern, the top of which they couldn’t see because the hand lamp wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the gloom above.
Before them, sitting on the tracks in the middle of the chamber, was the massive assembly platform, devoid of whatever had been assembled, and so providing no further enlightenment as to what the whole complex had been set up to produce.
‘You could get at least ten of our Landers on that platform, and then have some space for a dance.’ remarked Ben. ‘I wonder how they moved it?’ They walked around the now redundant assembly bed, but apart from a large-box like structure on one end, there was no visible means of motivation.
Leaving the platform, their attention then turned to the chamber itself. It seemed to be a vast featureless circular shaft, reaching up into the impenetrable darkness above.
‘My God it’s big.’ said Greg, swinging the trolley lamp around with its more powerful beam. ‘As the tunnel stops here, the only way is up.’ He took the lamp off the trolley and swung it upwards, the light reflected off the smooth polished rock walls of the shaft.
‘As we can’t see the sky, either the shaft doesn’t go right up to the surface, or there’s a cover on it,’ said Ben, thoughtfully, ‘I suspect the latter.’
As Greg swung the lamp to and fro, they were able to make out a faint suggestion of something at the top of the shaft. Hans thought it looked like a system of girders, but it was too high for them to discern any details.
‘There must be a way up there,’ Paul stated confidently, ‘let’s check out the base of the shaft.’
Halfway around the huge chamber, they came to a recess,
‘That’s a door, like the ones in the workshops.’ said Paul. ‘I’ll bet it’s a lift.’ It refused to open, despite copious prodding of what was obviously a control disc at the side of the door.
‘Even if it is a lift, there’s no way we can use it with the power off,’ said Greg, ‘maybe there’s another way up, surely they couldn’t have been so confident as to not have an emergency escape route in case the lift failed.’
Hans went to the back of the recess, and called out excitedly,
‘Hey, we nearly missed this, it’s another door. As there’s no control disc, perhaps it’s a manual one.’
They inspected the second door, but apart from a slightly raised section near one edge, there was no sign of an opening device.
‘Got your laser cutter, Hans?’ Hans had already turned to retrieve it from the trolley.
This time the metal gave way to the fierce blast of light from the cutter aimed at the raised bump on the door’s edge, and a few moments later it swung open after a hefty kick from Hans. A flight of steps led up into the darkness above, smoothly carved out of the solid rock, and another spiralled downwards.
‘OK,’ said Greg, ‘two of us will go down to see what’s at the bottom, the rest of us will wait here. One more will come down if you should get into difficulty.’
Hans and Ben descended the spiral stairway, the light from their hand lamp reflecting back up from the smooth walls, until with a final glimmer, that too, disappeared.
There must have been something in the structure of the surrounding rock, for their radio signals grew fainter and fainter, until all links with them were lost, helping to make their absence seem longer than it really was.
The rest of the team waited patiently for the pair to return, and then with a crackle, the radio transmissions returned, faintly at first, but growing stronger as the pair clambered back up the stairway.
‘That was one hell of a long way down,’ said Ben, when he got his breath back, ‘and you won’t believe what we found at the bottom.’
‘Well, tell us then.’ said John impatiently.
The Departure
‘You didn’t do the bloody climb.’ retorted Hans, crossly. ‘Anyway, when we got to the bottom, it opened out into a vast domed chamber, with a ledge running all around the edge. We couldn’t see the other side, the lamp wasn’t powerful enough, but I reckon it was bigger than this one by a long way.
‘The whole thing was filled with water, or at least, that’s what we think it was. It looked like black ink to me, but as we couldn’t test it, we assume it must be water. Paul went to the edge and dipped his hand in, and the ripples ran off into the distance, so we know it’s fluid.’
‘How come it isn’t frozen?’ asked John. ‘Surely it’s not deep enough to get any heat from the core of the planet?’
‘Perhaps they put antifreeze in it.’ said Ben, feeling better now that they had both joined the others, and his muscles had ceased to ache.
‘OK, let’s check out the other stairway.’ said Greg. 'Paul and John, feel up to it?’ John desperately searched for an excuse not to, but couldn’t find one in time.
‘Same procedure as before, try to keep in radio contact. If it fails, as I suspect it will, we’ll give you thirty minutes, and then one of us will come looking for you.’
Paul led the way up the spiral stone steps, with John close on his heels muttering away to himself. The reflected light from the hand lamp soon faded from view, and then the radio faded out.
The remaining three discussed the possibilities of what the pool might have been, the general conclusion being that it was indeed water, and probably the complex’s main supply, the only puzzle being why was it so big, and fluid, when they expected it to be frozen?
Greg was about to go looking for John and Paul, when the radio crackled into life and they announced that they were on their way. Shortly afterwards, a glimmer of light lit the stairwell, and the pair came into view.
‘Despite the low gravity, that’s one long climb up,’ said Paul, ‘but it was worth it. At the top, a gallery runs all around the shaft, and there’s another door which I expect would take us up even further, but we couldn’t open it, and we didn’t have Hans's c
utter with us.
‘You're right about there being a cover to the shaft, and what a cover! It’s in four sections, and if you think the hydraulic rams on the doors were big, you should see the monsters up there.
‘Whatever was in this shaft, went up and out, I reckon, so it looks as if the space ship theory fits. They must have built it on the platform, moved it into the shaft, lit the touch paper, and prayed.’
‘Must have shot out like a cork from a bottle,’ observed Hans, ‘and under a good many G’s. Rather them, than me.’
‘What do you think, John?’ asked Greg, wanting to keep a cohesive team spirit.
‘I agree with him.’ said John, nodding his head at Paul.
‘I don’t think there’s much else we can do here, so we may as well head back to the Lander,’ Greg said. ‘unless anyone has any other ideas?’ Nobody had.
‘We could take a sample of that water we found, if it is water.’ said Hans. ‘That’s if we have a volunteer willing to climb down there.’
‘There’s little point,’ Greg replied. ‘they’ll be sending another team before long, and they’ll sort that out. Don’t forget, tomorrow we go back up to the orbiter, and then it’s homeward bound, and a considerable slice of leave.’
They left the Martian launching chamber and squeezed back through the twin doors into the main cavern, Hans looking longingly at the rows of workshops and the alien tools they contained.
Halfway along the chamber, a violent shudder nearly threw them off their feet, this was followed by a deep booming sound and the tinkle of sundry metallic objects obeying the pull of gravity. Several subsequent smaller thumps followed, and finally all was silent again.
‘What the hell was that?’ asked Ben, more from nervous reaction than intent.
‘Either something’s blown up, or we’ve just had a meteorite strike.’ replied Greg. ‘I would think it is more likely to be a meteorite. Good thing we’re down here, the surface will have been peppered with fragments if it was something from space.’
Their trolley lamp, as bright as it was, seemed to be almost lost in the blackness of the vast cavern, only illuminating the immediate area around them and giving the feeling of even more space around them than there actually was.
The airlock was reached, and the journey down the tunnel to the outside world began.
‘Better run the poles along the walls as we go.’ said Greg, mindful of the illusion diversion they had experienced in the first complex. Luckily there were none.
Once their eyes had got used to the light out in the valley, it was decided to head straight back to the Lander, and they set off, looking for the long cord they had used on their way down the slope from the plateau above.
Several large pieces of the valley lip had been loosened by the impact of the meteorite, and had fallen in their path, making it difficult to manoeuvre the trolley.
The cord they had so carefully anchored to the lip of the plateau now lay in a jumbled pile at the foot of the slope, half buried in the debris which had fallen with it.
‘That’s all we need.’ said Paul, looking up at the loose scree which now covered their way up, offering very little in the way of a firm foothold.
‘Without the cord, we’ll never be able to get the trolley up,’ said Hans, looking after his own, ‘unless one of us goes up first to re-anchor it.’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’ Ben began climbing up the slope of loose stones and sand which offered the only gradient climbable in that part of the valley.
The others stood at the base of the slope, watching Ben struggle against the frequent tide of loosened detritus he dislodged, as he climbed ever higher. Paul leaned against the trolley, waiting for the inevitable to happen, and gave a sigh of resignation when it did.
Ben came flying down the slope in a slithering bed of loose sand and gravel, his arms flailing wildly trying to keep reasonably upright, which he did for a short distance, until gravity finally took over.
When the dust cleared, and Ben had regained his feet and some semblance of dignity, it was agreed that the slope was definitely out as far as getting up to the plateau was concerned. The only remaining alternative was to travel on down the valley, looking for another easy gradient which hadn’t been loosened by the meteorite strike.
‘I don’t like the feel of this.’ said Greg, after a while, looking up at the walls of the valley closing in and getting even steeper. ‘It’s beginning to look like a sharp rift in the terrain rather than a valley, and that could mean we shall have to go back up past the complex, to find a way out.’
As they progressed along the bottom of the rift, they were dismayed to see the sides steepen still further, until they were almost vertical rock walls with no possibility of climbing up to the distant plateau above.
A sharp bend in the track, which by now had narrowed to about eight metres from wall to wall, nearly caused their downfall.
Rounding the bend, Greg nearly fell off the edge when the track ended in a drop of some ten metres to the level below.
‘Watch it, Greg,’ Ben called out, ‘or we’ll have to rope you up to one of us, if only to make sure you survive long enough to get aboard the orbiter!’
They gathered along the edge of the drop to see what lay beneath the cross rift in the valley floor.
‘Good God, look at that.’ exclaimed John unnecessarily, as they were all looking at the enormous pile of bleached bones which filled the rift from side to side.
‘Some of those bones must be at least three metres long.’ said Paul, leaning over the edge as much as he dared. ‘What kind of creature could they have belonged to?’
‘Must have been native to the planet, I would think.’ Greg replied. ‘No one’s going to import animals of that size. If you allow two bones for the legs and then add in the shoulder joint, that would take the back up to at least seven or eight metres, then add a neck and head, and you have a very big hunk of a creature.’
‘Not necessarily,’ John butted in, ‘it could be thin and tall, don’t forget the low gravity here.’
‘You may be right,’ Greg mused, ‘but look at the thickness of those main bones, they’re designed to carry a lot of weight, fleshed out, it must have been an awesome sight to any one of our size, and the Martians were about that. I think it might be well worth our while to go down there and take a closer look at those bones,’ said Greg, ‘that’s if we can drive a holding stake into the ground, we’ll never make it without a climbing cord.’
Hans took one of his shorter extension poles, and hammered it into a split in the rocky surface of the ground, securing the climbing cord to it. Greg was first over the edge, abseiling down to the bone yard below, the rattle of the hard dry bones coming clearly over his radio link.
The others followed, leaving Paul behind just in case someone was needed later at the top.
‘Look, these bones are like the ones we saw in the illusion pit, with the strange web like ridges running from end to end,’ said Ben, waving one around, ‘but they don’t all have these ridges, so do you think there’s two different species here?’
‘Could be,’ John answered, ‘dig around a little deeper, and if you find the same ridged bones at a much lower depth mixed with the non ridged type, then we must suppose that there were at least two different types of creature over a long time period.’
The bones rattled and clattered as they were unceremoniously heaved from their ancient resting place, while the hole in the pile grew deeper and deeper. When Ben’s head had disappeared, Greg thought he had gone deep enough, in case the surrounding bones caved in on him.
‘Still got the same mixture, even at this level.’ Ben called up. ‘I think I’ll call it.......Hey, look what I’ve found.’ he said, holding up what was remarkably like a human skull.
‘The rest of the bones are here, scattered about a bit, but I reckon there’s almost a complete skeleton.’
‘Can you get at all of them?’ asked Greg.
Ben passed the bo
nes up to Hans, who then threw them up to Paul on the ledge above, while the others looked for anything which would indicate what might have happened to the last two expeditions which had visited Mars.
Paul began laying out the bones, and when he had what he thought was a nearly complete skeleton, called the others to came and have a look.
They had found no trace of the former expedition that they could identify, so they all climbed back to the ledge to see what he had done with the bones.
‘Well, the first thing I can say for sure is that it isn’t human. Humanoid yes, but it didn’t come from Earth. There are certain little discrepancies between us and this skeleton which proves the point, but I don’t need to go into all that, I’m sure.’ Greg nodded in agreement.
‘So where do we go from here?’ asked Ben, ‘we’ve got to get out of this ravine soon, or we’ll be in twilight again before we find the Lander.’
‘By the tilt in the bone layer, I’d say the ravine is getting deeper, so the only way out is back.’ Greg sounded resigned to the gruelling task ahead of them, and none of them looked too pleased at his decision, but they knew he was right.
‘Can we bring these bones back with us?’ asked John.
‘Bloody right we can,’ Ben rejoined, ‘after all the trouble I took getting them out of that pile.’
‘Sure we can.’ Greg added, just to make it official.
They had only gone a few hundred metres back up the ravine towards the complex, when Hans called out excitedly,
‘Look up there! It’s the next best thing to a stairway.’
On the side of the rift wall, the rock must have suffered a series of fractures, leaving a line of ledge like steps, leading to the top of the ravine.
‘I don’t believe it,’ exclaimed Paul, ‘how come we missed it on the way to the bone yard?’
‘Probably because it was hidden from our general view behind that ridge of rock, don’t forget, we were facing the other way at the time. Who cares anyway, we can get out now.’ Greg was more relieved than he thought he should show.
The Martian Enigma Page 12