Basil Copper: The Great White Space

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.’

‘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.’