The Great White Space (2 page)

1

It was a wet, miserable afternoon, with a misty rain drifting across the countryside when I drove down to Surrey the following week. I had taken lunch at Guildford and it still wanted a few minutes of two when I arrived at the Professor’s residence. The Pines had not been imaginatively named but as I drove up a gravel drive between those trees, the white facade of a large Georgian house began to form itself in the drizzle beyond my windscreen. I had no intention of staying the night and I hoped, due to the weather conditions, that our conference would not take long. With the week’s interim, the impact made by the Professor’s personality had faded and I had partly forgotten the excitement generated by our conversation.

However, it rapidly revived when Scarsdale himself came out on to the great tiled porch to greet me; he dismissed the manservant who had come to open the door of my car, gave my hand a bone-shaking clasp and quelled the savage-looking dog that barked round my heels, all, it seemed, in one smooth movement.

‘I hope you’ve come with an open mind,’ he said. ‘People I invite to become my collaborators always begin by raising so many sceptical objections. It does waste so much time, which is why I’ve been able to mount only two major enquiries in the past ten years.’

‘You’ll find me a fairly amiable subject,’ I said placatingly. ‘I find it best merely to take the films or photographs and leave the theorising to those best qualified.’

Scarsdale slammed the door of my car with a crash that set the dog barking again and his great eyes seemed to glow with enthusiasm.

‘Admirable,’ he said. ‘Admirable. I’m hardly ever wrong in my analysis of character. We’ll get along fine.’

He led the way over towards the front door, the dog slinking at his heels. I followed him into a large tiled hallway, whose pastel-coloured walls were lined with sombre oil-paintings.

‘Miserable brute,’ said Scarsdale as the man shut the door behind us. ‘He goes with the house.’

His face creased with amusement as he looked at the expression on my face.  

‘The dog, man, the dog,’ he exclaimed and added, sotto voce, ‘Not Collins.’

He flung open the door of a vast room containing thousands of multi-coloured books that marched down three sides. A generous fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth but most of the heat came from radiators set against alcoves in the walls.

‘You’ve eaten, I expect,’ said Scarsdale. ‘Well, I guess you’ll not say no to coffee and a brandy after your drive.’

I assented gratefully and sat on the arm of a leather chair before the fire while I absorbed the details of the room. One or two things about it struck me as decidedly curious for a library. There was a large buffet with silver chafing dishes set on it, against the long wall unoccupied by books. A bay window at one end commanded a fine view of misty countryside; a dining table was set in it. There were four places laid and the remains of a meal.

A sand-table occupied the immediate foreground of the study and there was also a green baize board attached to the wall near the buffet, which had notices pinned to it. The whole place reminded me of nothing more than an informal sort of military mess, used by a small group of officers. Scarsdale had evidently noted my puzzlement for he came back down the room bearing two giant-sized cups of steaming coffee. He put them down on a small mahogany table before the fire and went back for balloon glasses and the decanter.

We drank the coffee and brandy an indulged in small talk for a few minutes, the chill of my drive slowly receding. Scarsdale saw me look at the dining table and said quietly, ‘I have three colleagues in my current project, all personally selected. You’ll be meeting them later. That is, if you agree to my proposition.’

He finished his coffee and stood up. The dog, a wolfhound I took it to be, regarded him balefully from one yellow eye and showed its equally yellow teeth in a low growl. Then it sank its head back on the carpet before the fire and composed itself to sleep as Scarsdale and I took our glasses over towards the sand-table.

‘What do you make of this?’ the Professor said. I went round the other side to find the best light and examined the lay-out. My photographer’s mind was already absorbing the information before me and noting the best position for pictures. What I saw was a series of mountain ranges on a colossal scale; these were set at one end of the table. A route was pegged through with pink tape and various labels in neatly-inked white card gave place-names. I noted two, Nylstrom and Zak, but I had no idea what country was supposed to be represented and the Professor volunteered no information, merely stood sipping his brandy and watching me from the other side of the table.

I walked farther down and followed the pink-taped route, which meandered up valleys and across gorges; the trail ended with a honeycomb segment of caves, which I examined with great care before passing on. There seemed to be about forty openings, grouped about one great central cave at ground level; if these were all to scale with the mountain range, the height of the main cave roof would have been about as big as St Paul’s Cathedral. I went round the table looking for any legend that would have indicated the country or the nature of the expedition but there was nothing.

I went back to my original position, watched silently by Scarsdale. A piece of timber had been placed across the sand-table at this point and the other half was given up to a clay surface. But the pink tape trail went on and I guessed, correctly, that the remainder of the model demonstrated in cutaway sections, the interior of the caverns. There was a stool standing near the buffet some way away and I went and got this and sat on it in order to study the project in greater detail. Scarsdale produced another stool and went and sat next to me but still said nothing.

The pink tape went along endless passages and alleyways before it came to an abrupt conclusion in the middle of a featureless circle of clay. In the middle of the oval space someone had scrawled a huge question mark with the point of a stick.

I had come to the end of my examination of this enigmatic construction and was about to put the first of my queries to my companion when we were suddenly interrupted by a curious noise. It was like a high, whining shriek and I followed Scarsdale as he rose and led me over to the window. The rain had cleared a little now and from farther down the slope of lawn, which dropped away to a lake in the distance, there was a fold of tumbled, orchard-like ground which had been left rough and full of weeds.

From out the tangled mass of grass and nettles the snout of an extraordinary grey machine was protruding. It poked its way like some blind animal finding its route; then the grasses parted and I could see tracks, something like a tank’s, moving delicately as a caterpillar’s legs beneath a metal skirt. A shutter slid back in the upper half of the structure, revealing an oval window. A head appeared in the conning tower or whatever it was, surveyed the landscape and the shutter slid to. The screaming of the engine increased, the thing turned and then a fence-post snapped off as the machine slid back down the slope from our view. Scarsdale swore. He went over to the fireplace and pressed a bell set in the moulding of the surround.

The manservant appeared with astonishing alacrity.

‘Collins,‘said Scarsdale. ‘You might tell Dr Van Damm that I would appreciate him keeping to the agreed terrain and not invading the garden. I do not own the property, as he knows, and must pay for any damage.’

‘Certainly, Professor,’ said the attendant, as though the Professor’s instruction were a long-standing one. He went out, closing the double-doors behind him.

‘Now that you’ve seen our little exhibition,’ said the Professor, resuming his original seat by the fireside, ‘I’d like to tell you what my proposition is all about.’   

2

‘I am not at liberty to divulge how I came by all my information,’ said Scarsdale, ‘but you may remember the occasion which first prompted my getting in touch with you.’

‘My photographs of the Crosby Patterson relics, if I remember rightly,’ I replied. ‘With particular reference to the inscriptions on the rock excavated from under the ice by Patterson’s team.’

‘Precisely,’ said the Professor. ‘You may recall from the public prints of the time that I expressed great interest in the hieroglyphs. Not only was it extremely unlikely that such things could have been found in the Polar regions. I had another reason for my interest. You see, I had seen them before.’

There was silence in the room for a while, broken only by the faint sputtering of logs on the hearth. The wolfhound appeared to be dreaming; his flanks were heaving and from time to time one of his hind legs gave a satisfied twitch.

The Professor drained the last of his brandy and looked round for the coffee percolator. He carefully poured himself half a cup and added sugar and cream before he went on.

‘Some strange things have been happening in the world this past few years,’ he said. ‘Not only in the world but out there in space.’

He indicated the window, with an expansive wave of his hand.

‘Yet most of mankind seems absolutely oblivious of the implications. Do you remember what the press were pleased to call the “Scarsdale Lights”? Back in 1932?’

‘I seem to recall something of it now that you mention it,’ I said. ‘Weren’t they put down to solar flares…’

Scarsdale interrupted me with an exasperated snort.

‘I don’t mean to be rude my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘But you really must learn to keep an open mind. I will just tell you the facts as I see them. Without the theorising behind them, you understand. That will come later. There will be much time, when we are out there. The solar flares, as you call them, were something much more. I have made a long study of the phenomena and it is my considered opinion — borne out by field research I might add — that the hieroglyph inscriptions appeared at the same time, in various parts of the world.’

‘From space you mean?’ I asked him.

Scarsdale gave me a long, fierce look.

‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘If we could but read the inscriptions in their entirety we might possess the secrets of the universe. I believe, most sincerely, that the tablets are instructions of some sort, for beings who may visit our planet at some future time. Or who may even be amongst us as we sit here.

‘This is why I was so interested in your pictures of the Patterson relics. I was already working on my own line of research; one that was cut short after I had made a promising beginning. The route you see on the sand-table there was traced by myself, with much labour and danger, just over a year ago. I cannot divulge its exact location, for reasons which will become apparent later, but I believe it to be of vital importance to the future of our race. Or even to the survival of our race as we know it.’

Scarsdale looked unusually serious as he made this pronouncement and he made an imperious figure as he sat before the fire in the gloom of the big study, the light from the shaded lamps catching the fleeting expressions of his face, half shadowed by the beard.

‘This was why I chose you,’ he resumed after a moment. ‘You are not only a first-rate photographer and a man with a scholarly background who would understand my views. You also have other attributes which are admirable for my purposes. You have physical courage, youth and strength, and you have already demonstrated your spirit of adventure by seeking out the tasks you have already accomplished. All of which taken together adds up to a pretty convincing package from my point of view.

‘The three scientists I have already chosen to accompany me are first-rate people and eminent in their own fields, but none of them have the physical strength necessary for certain aspects of our task. That will have to be up to you and I. I need at least one other man who is a man of action, an adventurer as well as a technician. My own capabilities I have already proved to my satisfaction. Are you game?’

‘I don’t know what the devil you’re driving at. Professor,’ I said. ‘Neither do I know where we’re going or what we’re going to do when we get there, but I wouldn’t miss this trip for anything. As long as I’m able to photograph and you indicate the sort of equipment I’m likely to need that’s all that matters to me.’

The Professor struck his thigh with a long sigh and clasped me by the hand. The gesture was a theatrical one and he drew his hand away almost immediately with a muttered apology as though he were ashamed of the movement, yet it was a perfectly apposite one. He did look like a man who was worried over his future plans and it did also appear that my agreement had solved his particular problems.

I smiled and said that though I had now agreed to come and that nothing would turn me from my purpose so long as he wanted me, I would still like to know more about the project. I appreciated that he didn’t yet want to tell us where we were going and the precise nature of our enquiries but I would be interested to hear more of the enigmatic matters of which he had already hinted.

Scarsdale sat back in his chair and drained his coffee cup before replying.

‘The lights,’ he said. ‘I have been engaged in research for many years on such matters. My particular line of enquiry directed me to the remote region for which we are bound. After a great deal of difficulties — some of them, I am compelled to say, caused by my own ignorance and foolhardiness at the time of which I am speaking, I achieved a partial success. The expedition I am mounting, plus the skills of its members combined with the special equipment, much of which I have myself designed, should now be able to score a complete success.’

Scarsdale paused again and then went on. ‘You will find some strangeness, I daresay. The title of the project is the Great Northern Expedition. Yet we are not going north. This is a purely diversionary measure designed to placate the press and the wider world. The scientists and other colleagues who have long sneered at my efforts in this field, may think and say what they will. But secrecy as to our intentions is a prime necessity. I must ask you to behave with the utmost discretion and must also urge you to move in here with us within the next week. This is in order that you may train with your companions and get to know us well before we embark.’