by Basil Copper
Though they had apparently reached Van Damm and Holden by a circuitous route I was by no means certain in my own mind that this was so. The creatures were apparently emerging into the underground complex from the Great White Space and, unless they had incredible restraint, did not inhabit the city of Croth or the long labyrinth which separated us from the outer world, or we would surely have seen signs of them long ago.
It was true, as Scarsdale had suggested, that they might well have means of coming up behind us. But equally Holden, with his strained nerves and now the breakdown of his physical health, might have screamed during medical treatment. This did not explain Van Damm's continued silence but there was a slim chance that he might have noticed something unusual and gone off to investigate. These were the rationalisations I presented to myself as we panted down the last stretch of tunnel which separated us from our companions.
That they were not logical or sequential thoughts did not matter. I myself was partly unhinged with terror, even if only temporarily; Prescott's sudden and shocking death would have been enough for that — and my reaction to that was to feverishly assure my inner self that there could be a rational - even an ordinary explanation for anything which happened, however extraordinary it might appear to the outward eye. I had just reached this point in my rambling evaluation when Scarsdale gave a grunt and pulled at my arm. We both stopped the trolley as if at a given command and automatically stepped behind it. We had reached the point where we had left our companions. Apart from the crackle of the radio, now that the rumble of the trolley wheels had ceased, an unnatural silence pervaded the miles of tunnel that stretched about us.
Eighteen
1
Again, I must be perfectly precise in the words I now choose to lay the terrible facts of the Great Northern Expedition before the public. We were, as I have said, almost at the point where we had left Van'Damm and Holden. The first thing we saw in the glimmer of our helmet lamps was the glint of several small objects lying upon the hard floor of the tunnel. Both Scarsdale and I had our revolvers out by this time, of course, and as I was furthest from the tunnel wall I walked in front of the trolley and bent down to examine our find.
I picked up several used cases. I handed them to Scarsdale without a word.
'Those were the shots we heard,' said Scarsdale grimly, putting the spent shells in his pocket. 'He had time to re-load, then.'
We pushed on the remaining few yards with the trolley; there were several debouching tunnels from the main corridor at this point and we kept a sharp look-out. It was I who first noticed the sickening stench which grew stronger as we proceeded. I had a hard time to keep a firm grip on my nerves and if it had not been for Scarsdale's sturdy presence I might well have given way to flight.
He, without any outward sign of emotion, merely motioned me to stop the trolley and in his bull-like voice sent echoing shouts along the corridor. As their wandering reverberations died away along the miles of caverns, we listened in vain for any reply from Holden or Van Damm. After a few more shouts which were answered by a faint scuttering noise from somewhere far off and which caused me to tighten my grip on the butt of my revolver, Scarsdale and I heaved and shouldered the crippled trolley the final hundred feet.
We had left some stores at this point, including a stretcher, on which had reposed the blanketed form of Holden. What we first saw on the tunnel floor now was the tumbled and disarrayed blankets and then the stretcher itself, turned upside down and from it ran a trail of the slime-like excretion we had seen already in the ancient city of Croth. I felt my throat constrict with fear but before I could voice any opinion both Scarsdale and I, at almost the identical moment, sighted Holden.
To my intense relief he appeared to be all right; he had apparently fainted — perhaps with shock at the sudden drama which had caused Van Damm to fire? He was half-seated on one of the small packing crates we had stacked against the wall of the tunnel, his shoulder resting on the wall and his head sunk on to his chest as if he were too tired to hold it up any longer. Letting go the trolley 1 bounded forward and put my hand on my friend's arm to arouse him. Scarsdale's shouted warning came too late. Although it happened years ago that moment of frozen horror is with me now.
For the figure of Holden, wafer-thin and insubstantial as a husk from which all the living goodness had been drained, as a leech ingests the blood of its victim, turned from the wall with a harsh paper-like rustle. It twisted in my hand and the horrified face of Holden, perfect in all its detail as to hair and eyes and skin, began to buckle and disintegrate in the wavering yellow light of my lantern while all the time there came a high, shrill scream from the slightly parted lips, like the hiss of escaping air.
And hideously and inexorably the disembowelled shell that once was Holden twisted and collapsed like the nauseous bag of wind and tissue that it was and the flabby, sac-like thing was finally reduced to a grey, shrivelled bag of skin no bigger than my fist which would assuredly have blown away along the corridor had there been any wind to carry it. All that remained, apart from a hank of hair, the shrivelled skin and the clothes, were the ten toenails and the ten fingernails of our friend.
I myself descended into shrieking, gibbering madness then and it was only half an hour later that I came to myself, after Scarsdale had literally slapped me into sensibility. I came round to find myself propped against the wall of the tunnel with the bearded form of Scarsdale above me. He was pouring raw brandy down my throat and as I coughed and puked my way back to consciousness, I saw him gulp a tot of the raw spirit down his own throat. Otherwise he seemed as strong and imperturbable as ever, as he lifted me solicitously and helped me into a standing position. I found my revolver thrust back into my hand while Scarsdale said over and over again in my ear, as one might to a drowning man, 'Everything is all right, my dear fellow. Everything is all right.'
He repeated the words slowly and simply as though the sense of them might take some time to penetrate - as indeed it did - and as if the simple repetition might, of itself, be sufficient to dispel the black nightmare of horror in which we now found ourselves.
For there was worse to follow and it was only over the next hour, as I calmed and Scarsdale's words began to make more sense, that I realised we must go back yet again. Back into those tunnels of abomination towards the region of the Great White Space, where lurked the insubstantial monadelphous creatures whose bleating cry we had such cause to fear. But as my nerves recovered and I grew stronger I realised that Scarsdale was right. Van Damm was alive — or had been but a short while before — and assuredly needed our help.
I retched again as I thought of what he might even now be suffering and this in itself underpinned my resolve. Assisted by the raw spirit I again found my strength and I believe myself to have been in those last hours once again the man Scarsdale had taken me for long ago in that far-off tea room by the British Museum; in another world, another age it now seemed to me. For as I lay in babbling madness Scarsdale had again heard shots far off down the tunnel, back in the direction from which we had come and had then heard Van Damm's choked cry for help.
Knowing him as I did I believe he would have set off alone at that instant, armed only with his revolver and a few rounds of ammunition, had it not been for leaving me helpless and unprotected in that spot. In which case I should assuredly have joined Holden and Prescott in death; I owe Scarsdale my life not once but many times and though the gift of existence has become a tortured burden to me in these latter years, I did not then know to what I would latterly be reduced and I was brimming full of gratitude and hope during the first few minutes of my newly recovered sanity, before I was fully cognisant that we must return.
Yet, when my senses were fully restored, I was as eager as Scarsdale to see what we could do to effect the rescue of the unfortunate Van Damm. Would not I have been demented had I been in Van Damm's position and imagined that we knew he was alive and were doing nothing to attempt his rescue? We had to go; I knew this as well a
s Scarsdale and I soon made him see that I realised the duty we owed to our tragic companion. He clapped me silently on the shoulder and then we set to to assess the situation.
First we prepared a quick meal and ate it as we stripped down the trolley; it was many hours since we had eaten and we would be worse than useless if we did not keep up our strength. It was unlikely that the ten minutes we spent on this would make much difference either way but even if it had we could not have prepared ourselves more quickly as we had to discard many items from the trolley's load in order to make better speed.
Reluctantly, we discarded the elephant guns. They had made little impression on the jelly-creatures and were taking up disproportionate weight in the small vehicle which, with one twisted axle, was now extremely awkward to manoeuvre with such a heavy load as we had been carrying.
Too late, we wished we had more Very flares and more grenades; the latter, more than anything seemed to be effective, though of course, neither of us really knew whether the creatures could be killed or even temporarily stopped. I myself felt that fire might be the answer; if we had petrol here we might have made a small lake and, leading the creatures on to it, have ignited the fuel by lobbing grenades into it. But there was no chance of that; we had no petrol so it was useless to speculate further on such lines. There were but two dozen grenades left and we would have to make effective use of them. So, the trolley lightened, Scarsdale and I looked meaningly at one another and for the second time set back along the tunnel for the Great White Space and the outer corridors of hell.
2
The light slowly grew and the throbbing pulsations with it. Scarsdale and I walked purposefully but with all our senses anaesthetised; neither of us cared to talk of the fears haunting the edges of our minds. Indeed, we hardly dared hint even to ourselves what might be waiting in the slowly growing light at the end of the tunnel. We had heard or seen nothing in ten minutes since we had started. The going was uphill again but the trolley was lighter now and giving no trouble, though it was making more noise than either of us would have liked.
Both of us had checked the revolvers hanging at our belts; my pockets were stuffed with cartridges and two Very pistols sat on the load in the trolley, near to my hand. Scarsdale's belt seemed to bristle with weapons; strangely enough, I had forgotten to ask him where he had obtained his most bizarre find. This was an old naval cutlass in a brass and leather scabbard which now jogged reassuringly at his hip. Strangely enough, this museum piece might be more useful to us than a machine-gun in face of our weird adversaries.
Had our companions been issued with them, there might have been a very different outcome to the past twelve hours. Though who could have foreseen such creatures; even Scarsdale, with his greater knowledge, could not have imagined such beings. I preferred myself to keep them firmly within my mind as natural phenomena existing within the subterranean depths of the earth. I could not grasp the mathematical complexities involved in assuming that somehow, space could be bent so that a door to the stars could exist many miles below the surface of the earth. Scarsdale could have spent weeks with a blackboard and chalk and I should have been none the wiser. But I was slowly coming round to the idea, as horrifying and outrageous as it might appear.
The light grew and my thoughts, despite my resolve to keep a blank mind, constantly revolved around such suppositions as our progress gradually took us back into the area of strengthening light. The pulsations grew also and then we had crossed the old slime trails of our previous penetration. Like Scarsdale I had tied a handkerchief around my throat and I now put it across my nose and mouth to blot out some of the nauseous stench. The goggles were pushed up to my forehead and I lowered the smoked glass over my eyes as white fingers of extra-terrestrial origin began to probe at the far distance.
Scarsdale and I had prepared earplugs of cotton wool on this occasion and with these in position we were somewhat insulated from reality, as both felt we must be if we were to survive. But the lessening of our sensibilities which this would imply, particularly of hearing and sight, carried its own dangers and the Professor and I had previously arranged that each would protect the other's back in an emergency.
We stopped the trolley where the ghastly pulsating brilliance of the ever-increasing light source beat upon the floor of the corridor like a physical flood. We had piled the grenades into a wicker basket which had once contained batteries for our generators and each taking a handle we carried it between us, leaving the other hand free for the revolvers. Despite the plugs and goggles the intensity of the light source combined with the insidious beat of the unknown pulse induced a sense of nausea in me as we at last came out on the great disc of glowing radiance that Scarsdale had christened - so aptly - The Great White Space.
Nothing stirred, there was no movement in the far shadows behind but newly-created slime trails described whorled patterns on the rock floor before us.
Both of us dropped to the ground, despite the increased stench here, and tried to make what we could of this enigmatic trail. The surface of the corridor, of course, was too hard to carry any impression such as might be made by the dragging heels of Van Damm’s recumbent figure but the trails did tell us something. They went, not as we had feared, directly towards the pale oval of white-hot luminosity that vibrated and throbbed in time to the drum-beat but curved off to one side; a rocky spur projected here and led to an area of shadow, further back, and beyond the rim of the pale fire of space.
Dragging the trolley behind us, Scarsdale and I made our way over, cautiously glancing behind and to either side. As we gained the shadowed area the stench became more unbearable. It was like an open, suppurating wound from a patient suffering from some loathsome disease. Even Scarsdale seemed affected and I could see beads of moisture glittering in his beard and running down in rivulets across his chin. We now had our backs to the white luminosity and had to adjust our eyes to the greatly changed conditions.
There was a narrow shelf of rock on which we now stood; both of us seized a couple of grenades and put them in our pockets in case of emergency. We pulled the trolley as close in to the shelf as possible, in case we had to leave in a hurry and walked across the entrances of three dark caverns which were now materialising from the gloom.
We both saw Van Damm's hunched form at the same time; abandoning precaution we were about to run forward when I put my hand on Scarsdale's shoulder and arrested our hasty action. With my recent horrifying experience fresh in my mind I had no wish to repeat the ordeal; both Scarsdale and I by now thought it extremely unlikely that our unfortunate companion could have survived. There was a bare chance, of course. Van Damm was lying with his face to the rock wall; except that he was on the ground the posture was hideously reminiscent of Holden. I had no desire to see Van Damm's I inanimate figure collapse in disintegrating ruin and for that I reason my feet remained resolutely fast to the floor of the I cavern.
But it was not so much Van Damm as a small, furtive movement in the dimness which had caught the corner of my eye and registered itself as a minute flicker. I directed my companion's gaze towards it and we both removed our goggles. I had difficulty in preventing myself from screaming; I now saw that a long tube of some grey-coloured material stretched from beneath Van Damm's collapsed body. It led back several yards to the edge of one of the cave entrances.
Round the corner was peering one of the most hideous visages it has ever been my misfortune to encounter, even in the grip of nightmare. The creature's face was grey; it slobbered from slit-like mouth and red-rimmed nostrils and it was this which gave off the nauseating slime which littered the floor of the caves. The eyes were large, jelly-like plates covered by some form of pulsating membrane, which pulsed and glowed so that one moment the lids were opaque and at the next the greenish-tinged core of the eye was staring through. The ears were pointed and bat-like; yellowed and crooked teeth glinted among the slime in its mouth.
The grey tube grew into an elephant-like proboscis which waved slowly abou
t as the thing sucked or pumped fluids either out or into Van Damm's body. Neither of us could make out which and I was as near collapse as I had been at any time during this expedition. Mercifully, I could not see any more of the creature, the bulk of which was hidden beyond the cave entrance but it could not have been less than fifty feet high. It had a scaly claw which it used to probe the surface of the tube from time to time. I did not think it had seen us, for some obscure reason, and Scarsdale and I each took the pin out of a grenade.
Then, as I moved slowly forward my foot scraped on a projection in the tunnel floor; this seemed to disturb the nightmare being and as it turned to face us, I heard again the strange rustling I had heard so long ago at the entrance to these caves of madness. The thing had great leathery wings, in a transparent casing on its shoulders and these brushed together as it moved. The tube was withdrawn with lightning rapidity; whip-like, it snaked back along the floor. Scarsdale and I had each thrown a grenade by this time; the second set followed while the first were in the air. We flung ourselves down as scarlet flame spurted in the gloom and fragments of metal went whanging viciously about the cavern. Above the crackle of charred flesh as we rolled back along the floor into the light, was a high, bleating moan which seemed to penetrate my eardrums, even with the cotton wool plugs.
I looked up, rigid with shock. The moan was now mingled with shrill, urgent screams; then I saw beyond the writhing horror of the winged creature, the flabby slobbing figures of the monadelphous things and their urgent bleating sounded above the crackle of flame. Scarsdale had rolled back to the trolley and got off two more grenades as I rose and went over to the form of Van Damm. I was prepared now for what I saw but the shock was, if anything, far greater than that of my experience with Holden.