The Great White Space (7 page)

It sounded once again as someone tested the handle from outside. I was up and groping for my trousers by this time; I swiftly put them on over my pyjamas and put my bare feet into my slippers. I saw a shadow pass across the windscreen of the tractor as I was doing this. It had gone to the left so I waited a few seconds before I myself opened the door and slipped quietly out into the night.

We had parked the machines in a small cul-de-sac by some metal-beaters' workshops just off the main square of the town, so I knew my quarry could only have gone into the square. I felt fairly confident of picking him up again. I was fairly certain also that I knew who he was. None of our colleagues were likely to visit the command tractor at night and leave again in such a furtive manner. I had picked up a strong leather camel whip, a gift from the Mir of Zak to Scarsdale, from the chart-table and I flexed it meaningfully as I crouched for a moment, adjusting my eyes to the light.

When I gained the edge of the square I found I could see some distance ahead and I had no difficulty in making out the hunched figure of the dwarf Zalor which flitted ahead of me over the atrocious surface of the rutted plaza. I knew his destination now and I slackened my pace and skirted round the edge of the square, keeping watch from a sort of arcade of roughly fashioned stone which fronted some craftsmen's stalls.

Earlier that evening Scarsdale had decided to overhaul our equipment before we set out for the last stage of our journey to the Black Mountains. For this purpose he felt it would be an easier proposition if we dismantled as much material as possible that night in preparation for the work the following day. Accordingly, we had taken motor drive units, radio sets and many of the working parts which made the tractors operational out of the machines and placed them in a storeroom which the people of Nylstrom had made available to us.

The headman or whatever he called himself had secured the whole place with a wooden bar and Scarsdale himself had sealed the room with a chain and padlock out of the expedition's stores. I now knew why Zalor had paid us a visit; he was after Scarsdale's keys. The store, which normally housed vegetables and dried herbs grown by the people of Nylstrom was only in a small court giving off the other side of the square, so there was no need for me to hurry, as I was certain of Zalor's destination.

I kept watch, therefore, until he had disappeared in the misty light and followed on at my leisure, giving him a minute or two to release the padlock from the rough wooden door. I wanted to be certain of his malignant intent before apprising Scarsdale of the dwarfs perfidy. I stopped again when I reached the opening through which my quarry had disappeared and waited. It was a fine, dry night, though quite cold and I shivered a little as the wind probed at the thin material of my pyjama jacket. The night invested the humble buildings of Nylstrom with a majesty they notably lacked by day and from far off, though it could not be all that far, owing to the town's geographical compactness, a stray dog howled in a hungry fashion. I could now hear a furtive chinking up ahead and once a small electric torch flashed; I smiled to myself in the gloom. No doubt Zalor had been at the expedition's stores too. He had been carrying on his shoulder what looked like a canvas bag, when I had last sighted him in the square, and I felt certain he contemplated flight after some mischief against us. There was nothing moving in all the night and no-one stirring in any of the dingy buildings in the locality but I felt somewhere out there the brooding presence of the Black Mountains, which were almost a palpable reality, even in the darkness.

There was a grating noise as I still hesitated and then a muffled thump. That would be the lowering of the bar from the door. I crouched low and eased myself round the corner, careful not to make my presence known. I still wanted to give Zalor a last chance to prove his innocence of motive and if I revealed myself beforehand, he would be able to fabricate some quite innocuous reason for his presence in that place and at that time of the morning.

The grating noise continued and then the dim light of the torch disappeared within the vegetable store. I crept noiselessly towards the light and after a few moments found myself in front of the building. Zalor had drawn back only one half of the double portal, no doubt to shield the light from the outside, and I stood behind it to conceal myself. I need not have worried about such precautions; the man inside the store was far too preoccupied with his own affairs to have any time for further concealment.

He was now acting with a reckless disregard for noise and I could hear the swishing sound of straw being raked about; I peered round the edge of the rough timber door. Zalor had placed his torch on one of our generator casings so that its light shone on the floor and walls before him. All our equipment was stacked around in preparation for tomorrow's work; as I watched, Zalor completed piling the straw around it and scuttled to the far corner. He came back with a squat green can, which I recognised. It contained paraffin, of which we had quite a store in case of emergency, or for use in lamps if we were operating away from the tractors.

I did not need to wait any longer. The matchbox fell from Zalor's hand as I sent him sprawling in the fury of my first rush. He was up again quickly though, hissing something in that abominable language of his. I got in two good blows across his shoulders with the leather camel whip I had brought with me, I am glad to say, and the pig-like screams with which he greeted my ministrations were extremely satisfactory to me. He was a powerful fellow, though, despite his small stature and he closed with me fiercely, clutching at a curved-bladed knife he plucked from his belt.

I had dropped the whip in my anxiety to hold his knife- hand off and he got his boot up into my groin while I was doing this; a stabbing pain lanced through me, the room grew dim and I fell back against some boxes. He rushed at me again with the knife but cracked his knees against some low piece of metal equipment chance had left in that spot and collapsed with a howl. By this time I had got to my feet and who knows what would have happened had I not heard Scarsdale's welcome voice shouting from the square.

The dwarf hesitated, thrust his knife back into his belt with a garbled cry of hatred and was then gone through the door and into the night. I got to my feet and half-dragged myself to the door before I collapsed again. I must have presented a sorry sight, panting, covered with dirt and straw and gasping out an incoherent story as the gigantic form of the Professor loomed up in the dim glow of the torch.

He gripped me by the hand, his jaw tightening as he looked around the room. He led me to sit on one of the upturned crates and stopped my broken flow of words.

'On the contrary, my dear Plowright, you did extremely well,' he said. 'If these had been burned the Great Northern Expedition would have been finished. The fault is mine. I should have foreseen something like this and mounted a guard.'

The occasion was so unusual and the friendship between the Professor and myself so close at this moment that I told him about the stone tablet I had seen the dwarf drop. He was silent for a long moment.

'It makes no matter, Plowright,' he said. 'We have both perhaps been a little remiss but the major responsibility must be mine.'

'But what does all this mean?' I asked him.

'I should have mounted a guard,' Scarsdale said softly, as though he had not heard my question. 'Can you walk all right? We must tell the others and make sure there are no further interruptions tonight.'

He had locked up again and we were halfway across the square before I was able to repeat my question.

'There are those who do not wish us to find the resting place of the Old Ones,' Scarsdale said sombrely. 'Zalor was obviously of them or in their employ.'

We were at the tractor by this time and he paused at the door as I prepared to go in.

'I must have words with the Mir about this on our return,' he said grimly.

I went inside and brewed some tea for all of us, waiting for the running footsteps and excited questions Scarsdale's errand would arouse. There was no more sleep for me that night. When I had carried the urn of tea to the vegetable store where my colleagues were already servicing the equipment by the light of portable generating equipment, I went to drink mine by the edge of the town, looking over the Plain of Darkness; there was nothing to see but I knew that the sun would eventually arise from that direction.

I wondered whether Zalor was somewhere out there or if he had fled back in the direction of the ancient City of Zak. I wondered too how he would survive, or whether he had friends among the desert tribes. I smiled grimly to myself in the darkness. People like Zalor always survived. The headman, hastily roused by Scarsdale, had a party searching Nylstrom street by street but I guessed the dwarf would have his plans laid too well and that he would no longer be within the town. And so it proved when dawn eventually came.

Long before that I stirred to find Van Damm by my side. He joined me in my vigil until the distant rays of yellow light harshly illuminated the black plain of ash before us; the dawn wind sent faint whorls of dust moving uneasily on its surface. We looked in vain for any trace of Zalor.

Van Damm glanced at me sombrely. His face was haggard in the strange light of that ancient place.

'A bad business, Plowright,' he said. 'And an ill omen for this enterprise, I fear.'

1

The command tractor shifted and lurched on the Plain of Darkness, the immediate foreground of the windshield filled with whirling dust and cinders. I could see the Black Mountains rising from the raging dustclouds like some monstrous whale-like creature, they were so close. Scarsdale was silent at my side, now peering anxiously ahead, now making abstruse calculations with his slide-rule and mathematical instruments on the chart-table before him.

I went back to steering on a compass bearing, conscious that in a little more than an hour we should be off the plain and into the foothills of the mountains; Scarsdale had told us that there was some vegetation and we intended to follow up a shallow valley which eventually rose steeply and would take us to our destination. I only hoped the tractors would be robust enough to raise us on to the plateau which would lead us to the cave formations of which the Professor held such high hopes. Once again I marvelled at his tremendous vitality and strength in undertaking such a colossal journey on foot and with such an ill-equipped expedition as the earlier one.

When the excitement over Zalor's treachery had died away in Nylstrom and all the headman's searches had failed to discover the dwarf within the town, Scarsdale had held a brief council of war. We had decided to press on to the object of our journey as soon as possible. To that end the technicians among us had proceeded with the overhaul of the tractors and Number 4 had been left in the vegetable store, padlocked and under day and night guard. I was set to boiling water for the tanks of the three remaining vehicles, for that would be our biggest lack once we were among the mountains. I also took charge of gathering what fresh vegetables and fruit there was available, which would make a welcome change from the material in our tinned supply.

From the night of my fight with Zalor, Scarsdale had insisted on breaking out the weapons and we all wore sidearms; some, in addition carried rifles. I found the heavy pistol strapped to my waist in its webbing holster a tremendous nuisance and I had very little idea how to use it so that I felt I should be a greater danger to my companions in an emergency, rather than to any supposed enemy.

I took a last group of still photographs of our helpful headman and his people; and staged the few cinema shots necessary for this section of the route. I had stayed behind to record the scene as the villagers waved off the three remaining tractors into the unknown distances of the Plain of Darkness and once I had stopped the whirring motor of my machine and carried it and the heavy tripod off across the desert to where Scarsdale had halted to pick me up, I could not help reflecting on the contrast this scene would make with that of the splendour of the departure from Zak; the Plain was doubly sombre in the light of our later knowledge.

The Professor and I continued in Number 1 Command vehicle, with Van Damm alone in the middle and with Prescott and Holden in the third vehicle at the rear. Scarsdale had hoped to cross the plain in four hours or so at our maximum cruising speed but in the event it was nearer six before I heard his warning mutter; I altered my steering vector and the tractor's treads grated over solid rock as we slid upwards out of the warm dust and into the welcome shade of some stunted trees. A stiff breeze was blowing down the gully and when I had steered the tractor about a mile down the arid draw in which we found ourselves, the Professor decided to make camp. The sun was already low in the sky but as it now set from us across beyond distant Nylstrom, our shadows were long on the ground before us and the dark replicas of our strange vehicles were stencilled on the rocky floor of the valley as we pulled the machines into a rough circle and cut the motors.

2

For two days we followed the winding contours of the valley, every hour rising higher and higher into the mountain range, whose arms almost imperceptibly and inevitably closed in behind us until we all had the feeling that we were in a giant's grip. The wind increased daily, blowing in gusts from the heart of the range, but it did not trouble us as the desert wind, as there was little dust to obscure our view. It did, however, add to the difficulties of steering and our vehicles tended to yaw from side to side so that one wearied at the handles and muscles craved relief from the buffeting, which went on hour after hour.

It was growing steadily colder too, though the sun shone as regularly as hitherto; this did not bother us at first but we were then aware, during our frequent halts, that the breeze was a chilly one and we were beginning to feel the benefit of the sheepskin-lined coats which was one of Scarsdale's strange-seeming requisitions for the expedition's stores. The way twisted and wound upwards and for most of the time we were steering the tractors at half-speed through mazes of gigantic boulders and among formations of weirdly striated rock.