“That, I will concede,” said Challenger, curtly before stalking away from the ship’s prow. After the speck had grown into an island which we could make out, I noticed we changed course, making straight towards its eastern side. The isle appeared on the horizon as a triangle. It rose from the East and grew towards the West before cutting down back upon itself, to form (what Summerlee informed me) a scalene triangle. Curious was a word I began to hear from everyone’s lips apart from the captain, who had seen it before, and Mr Hayward.
“I say, couldn’t we circumnavigate it?” asked Hayward once to Captain Storlock. After a nod from Mrs Moster, Storlock went off to have a word with his helmsman. Little did we realise Hayward’s reasons then. Innocent as we were able to wonder at the strange fat formation. It was widest at its lowest point and slowly grew to a blunt tip that, once closer, we could see was a plateaux. Under this towering height we sailed to see the shadow of a massive hole, oblong in shape that cut downwards. From this hole gleamed some sunlight.
“By George, that most go all the way to the top!” exclaimed Roxton. “ Indeed,” mused Challenger, “but what does it signify, I wonder,” he said quietly, in awed tones, as we were all gathered together on the deck.
“I begin to believe Dr Illingford was right,” noted Summerlee.
“You always were easily led,” replied Challenger, as he managed to insult Summerlee, in his most matter of fact voice. It was at this point that we came out from under the overhang and could stare at the vertical line of rock that rose up towards the plateau. As one, we gazed silently on as the ship continued towards the eastern point. Apart from the addition of carbuncles upon carbuncles, gathered upon the stonework from whatever time this thing came from, the shape of the island could still be discerned. It was an entirely linear and, for half the precious stones I had just brought back with Lord Roxton, I could not say that the island was a natural formation.
The low end was formed of a wide curving breaker with a gap in its centre to allow vessels to enter. Flabbergasted and with the captain now at the helm, we slowly drew up to an internal side of the dock. No longer did I wonder at his use of the word.
Inevitably we drew up against the stones where carbuncles had been squashed by this very hull in the not too distant past. Behind the rising wall, the dock still had stone bollards and a couple of handy sailors jumped to, with ropes, to secure our good ship. The crackling and squishing sounds testified to the layers of carbuncles that had survived from the earlier docking here.
Small as it was, the island was still at least a couple of miles wide at this point and it seemed that it rose, slowly to its height over that distance, if not more, to that blunt end. It was only then that I noticed that it was early afternoon. With our walking boots on, we joined the sailors on the quayside, once the ship was tied off. We were able to explore enough of the port area to find a decent corridor where we could store our material in preparation for investigating the island properly on the following day.
It had been a long and tiring process getting ashore with the party’s equipment otherwise I would have noted that the only life we could see was formed of carbuncles, limpets and, amongst these, the odd adventurous crab underfoot. It made for a lot of effort in only covering even a short distance and after spending another night on board Captain Storlock’s vessel, we prepared for our journey into the interior of the strange island.
The rock, where we chipped it free from limpets and all, was a deep, marine green, wet as it was from the damp spray that was about the dock area. Looking up, away from the reaches of the spray and mist and, where it was visible it was a flat grey. Equipped with electric torches in case of subterranean passageways, other sundries packed in our packs, and the pipes of Summerlee and Challenger lit, we advanced.
Perhaps I should name the few who advanced; the party consisted of Mrs Moster, her chaperone the ever ready Hayward, the Professors Challenger and Summerlee, Lord John Roxton and myself, Edward Malone. It was difficult for me to accept that I was in such vaunted company, but with a slap on the back from Sir John accompanied by his familiar,“Come on, young fellah,” I felt once more at home, remembering our South American adventure.
Challenger led the way, his dark Virginia mix blowing away in the wind. He advanced inwards, almost seeming to take care to squash as few crustaceans as possible. Summerlee followed his suit but the rest of us were too awed for such attention. At the edge of the dock, as the island widened out we could see the form of steps, worn by the ages and limpet covered as they were. Notwithstanding that route up, Challenger continued on the gentle rise of the quayside until we came to points which seemed choked with sea wood, thrown up from winds and high tides and left behind where no caretaker ever cleaned.
There was one tunnel that granted us access to the interior which seemed to have been recently cleared, “Illingford,” said Challenger pointing it out and we, faithfully, followed his trail. The tunnel was wide and about ten foot tall, along the ceiling there appeared strange bulbous protrusions at regular intervals.
“There’s no way this was formed by nature,” said Roxton in a hushed tone.
“We will test that idea to destruction, once we gain the summit,” declared Challenger. After a few minutes we found a ramp leading upwards, which we followed eagerly. Further along, now on another flat level, we came across a gaping hole in the floor. Shining our torches we could see the floor below us and then upwards, the hole cut through levels going up, how far we were unable to obtain by our torchlight. Partly to avoid a contentious rebuke from one of our scientists, but mostly out of awe, we held our silence and moved further inwards, into this monstrous structure.
“ What shall we try to see first?” asked Summerlee, when we found another ramp, this time there were deep lines cut into the floor, so as to admit some form of ridged wheel.
“Up. There we may have a better picture of just what this is,” said Challenger, deciding our direction. The further we progressed the greater our astonishment at what met our eyes. There were stairs which were cut clean and remained undamaged by time. Off corridors that forced us to travel three abreast there were empty rooms, where only their bare interiors had survived. Anything that was in them must have been reduced to dust and then carried away by whatever skirling winds penetrated this far with their eddying currents. We had to work the top of our staircase free from blown flotsam, as we neared the top of the isle.
Eventually we gained the summit. We could see the locations of other access points, the wide ramps or other stairwells that just rose blindly to the surface by the debris caught in their tops and then, with ever more material, some plants had grown above the otherwise wind scoured surface. These hallmarks of entrances appeared like giant patches of stubble from the stonework. On closer inspection we discovered that the ramps coming up to the summit were wide, and the staircases missed any supporting building for those who had climbed this far, their secondary structures around them must have been washed away with time, if they had ever existed.
Above all our attention was caught by a thin tower that protruded into the sky like an accusing finger. We walked towards it. On our approach we could see that it fronted a gaping pit the like of which we had not seen so far on our climb up. Below the surface were, we thought, two parallel protrusions from the tower’s side of this hole.
“This must be the shaft that goes straight through. It must be the one we saw from the ship,” said Roxton quietly.
“I say, what on earth are you doing, Challenger?” asked Summerlee. “ Endeavouring to test whether this is an artificial construction, once and for all,” bellowed the professor, clearly taking the question as an affront to his intellect, as he paced the side of the pit and then returned to stand in front of the middle of the tower. “Here is the middle of this side of the island,” he declared as he placed his bag down to rummage in it. He stood up once more, holding a funnel and a canteen of water.
Not having a clue as to what he was about, I push
ed to his side to see what he was up to. “ Stand back, I will need some room,” he shouted at us. He handed me his canteen and then stood to one side of his bag, after blocking the stem with his thumb, he said, “Now, Malone, fill the funnel.”
I did so. After I had filled it he took his thumb away and watched the water carefully. As it drained away it began to circulate in an anti-clockwise fashion. He repeated the process on the other side of the bag and the water draining away circled clockwise, “There! We are on the very line of the equator,” he beamed as he made his declaration.
“ That rather clinches it, what?” said Roxton, hopefully, but not entirely sure of what we had witnessed. Challenger gave Summerlee a pained look as if to say he could not talk down to Sir John’s level.
“ Well, as the Earth spins, water north of the line of the equator,” and here, Summerlee paused to make sure that even I could keep up, “will spin when drained in the direction opposite to that of water drained south of the equator. As has been demonstrated just now.”
“ That is good enough for me, gentlemen, as I think the odds of that being an accident of nature are greater than my brother being correct,” declared Mrs Moster, “I do hope you are prepared to testify that my brother is indeed correct in his findings. Once he is accepted back into the scientific establishment, I am sure he will have no further need of his sanatorium.”
“ It may be good enough for you, madam, but science demands that we now explore this installation thoroughly to see what secrets it has been keeping all this time,” retorted Challenger hotly, taking his canteen back from me.
“ Indeed,” replied Summerlee, “there must be countless questions to ask, apart from all the answers we may yet discover in this one trip.”
“ When do you think this was built?” I asked. It seemed one of the fundamental questions and I could see the possible headlines that my copy would attract once back at the Gazette.
“We’ll have to see if there are any symbols that we can recognise but this may just predate us,” said Summerlee, tentatively.
“ Pah! Don’t be an old woman Summerlee. This clearly dates from before monkeys had come out of the trees,” barked Challenger.
“I see you two get along like two spoiled children,” cut in Mrs Moster, silencing them.
“Let us descend,” suggested Lord Roxton, as he started to clear the nearest stairwell of debris. We all set to and we finished by having to form a line to manhandle the larger deadwood up and clear from our route down. Challenger, with his short stature, barrel chest and powerful build was of great assistance. Finally, with torches once more switched on, we descended into the unknown. The first steps were worn but, once past the first flight, they became sharply delineated and so we managed, carefully, to reach the first level.
“There should be something around here,” said Sir John. “Spread out and, if you see anything you don’t understand, let me know,” commanded Challenger as he took off in a random direction.
“I declare that man….” said Summerlee.
“Isn’t he just himself,” declared Sir John, good naturedly.
“I suppose we all have our foibles,” answered Summerlee.
“He is simply intolerable,” said Mrs Moster.
“He is that, and much more,” answered Sir John. I must admit my heart swelled with pride at being part of such a party of great individuals. Whether it be Challenger’s great mind or Lord Roxton’s great heart, they were all, in their own line, great in my eyes. “Found something,” shouted Mr Hayward, cutting my reverie short.
We all gathered around him. He was holding up some red dust he had gathered from one of the tram lines and besides him there was a stack of what looked to be tiles.
“Well, I never!” exclaimed Sir John. “ Ceramics, I suppose,” muttered Challenger as he pried the top layer from the stack to cast it down. It shattered against the floor, into shards, “Iron wheels and ceramic tiles. Interesting at the very least, Summerlee?”
“Indeed.” “What’s this,” muttered Hayward, crouching down around a stone slab which had an indentation within which still clung some red dust. He swept the slab clear to find it was circular in nature and then, taking out his knife, prised it open. The smell of fumes hit us hard. We coughed and then, like some bipedal moths, advanced. The hole revealed a tank of some sort. Our torches could just make out the bottom of the shaft before it then turned a corner.
“Propellant,” said Challenger, “probably only fumes by now though, pity.”
“Yes,” concurred Summerlee. “Well, that is sufficient cause for me, I’m afraid,” declared Mrs Moster before she gave her curt order, “Mr Hayward, if you’d be so kind?”
“Certainly, ma’am,” he answered as he started to delve into his pack.
“Just what is it you are proposing?” demanded Challenger.
“Just what do you think my brother stumbled upon here?” she asked. “ Well, given the tower and the propellant we may be looking at some form of site where vehicles were shot into the sky, if not beyond…” began Summerlee.
“ Foregoing half measures, madam,” cut in Challenger with a withering look towards Summerlee, “we appear to have found an otherwise prehistoric site which was used by some sort of lizard men to escape the devastation caused by an approaching asteroid, long before humanity even existed.”
“ The use of the equator to give an additional push, if you will,” broke in Summerlee, unwilling to allow Challenger to claim full credit for calculating the island’s purpose.
“Exactly,” interrupted the professor, “And so the technology here surpasses our own by a good margin, I must admit.”
“And you intend to go back and publish your entire findings?” asked Mrs Moster.
“Definitely, a joint paper…” Challenger’s cough broke Summerlee’s sentence. “ How naive you both are, I do declare,” said an exasperated Mrs Moster, “Well, to answer your earlier question, Mister Hayward has orders to destroy that which could compromise world peace and failing that, to stop others from creating weapons of such massive power as to be able to strike nations hundreds of miles away.”
“I don’t see how that can come from this expedition,” challenged Lord Roxton. “ One of my nephews works alongside a chap called Carruthers who helped to uncover a plot by the Kaiser to create a fleet of torpedo boats and I can only say that if he managed to start his scientists upon this path it would be most worrying, most worrying. Therefore, I am not willing to stand by whilst you blithely help nations with rockets. Chinese rockets on New Year’s Day are one thing, this is of an altogether more worrying scale,” explained Mrs Moster,“Ah, here he comes now,” and we turned to see Mr Hayward approach with a stick of dynamite, attached to which was a long fuse. At a nod from his mistress, and a “Here goes nothing,” he cast it down the shaft.
“Think we should make haste,” he advised.
“Indubitably so,” remarked Mrs Moster and gave such a start that we were left stranded in her wake for a moment. We scrabbled for the staircase which we had just moments before descended. It was whilst we were engaged in climbing to relative safety that the first shock passed us with a deafening boom. Thrown off our feet we were lucky to escape any serious injury. With two sprained ankles between the party, we then limped down using the ramps or steps that were presented to us on the surface. Other shocks followed the first and it was relief that we reclaimed the quayside then to be helped aboard our ship by Captain Storlock’s men.
It was agreed that mention of the isle, still venting explosive gasses, as we sailed away, could be declared but for the sake of European peace, we should do no more than agree with Dr Illingford’s claims and thus the matter of Challenger and the Isle out of Time came to its rather ignominious end.
THE DAMNATION GATE: Being An Account of a Brief Occurrence with Professor Challenger as Related by Ira Grimm, Jr
by Harding McFadden
(for Naomi, Eleanor and Iris)
1 I was less than a month
off the boat and still shaking myself awake every time a car back-fired outside my apartment window, when the letter arrived from Edward Malone, informing me of an extraordinary visitor to the States.I’m a Boston man by birth, third generation Irish immigrant, and have little faith in anything that the British might have to say to me, even transplanted ones who bleed as green as me. However, thanks to a harsh editor and one of his “Special Assignments”, having survived an encounter by happenstance with Malone at the Battle of Somme, both of us limping away with scars and nightmares that would last a lifetime, the bugger had earned my notice. And my respect...
I opened his letter with shaking hands, memories of this brave Brit bringing back more horrors than I could shake a stick at.“Dearest Yank,” it began. I smiled. That little prig...“I know, that if you are anything like myself, you find it difficult to get back into the swing of things. There are bad days and bad days, if you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do. But, seeing as one good turn deserves another, and seeing as you have done me a better turn than all but one other, I have decided to give you a hand-up. Coming to your shores is a most singular man. Just this afternoon, he has been called there at the request of your American Academy of Sciences, to speak of things that they feel fall well within his particular purview. It is my understanding that he will be arriving by boat at Boston Harbour on Wednesday, 29 January. Interesting times follow this man wherever he travels, and this is just such a thing as a newspaper man like yourself needs. Think of it as soothing for the soul. Think about this, my friend, and look for him. As always, I remain your ally and stalwart friend -Edward Malone.”
Following was a name that the world knows well: Professor George Challenger. My hands abruptly stopped shaking. I smiled. Eddy, you sneaky bugger: how could any man resist this invitation to the wondrous, practically right in his own back yard?
2 In all too brief a time, I met the man at Boston Harbour, and was at once astounded by him. By most accounts, I had come to think of him in my minds-eye as a giant, in stature as well as intellect. This was not at all the case, as he stood more than a head shorter than myself, though broader of shoulder by far. His beard and head of thick, somewhat wavy hair gave him an almost caricature-like appeal. It was his eyes though that grabbed the attention of all those waiting on the docks that icy morning: intense, allencompassing and brutally intelligent. I knew in an instant just why Malone had made it a habit of trolling around after him...
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