Basil Copper - The Great White Space

'It wasn't your fault,' I said for perhaps the tenth time. 'We have made stupefying discoveries and these, backed with my photographs, should be sufficient…'

I had got up by this time but he broke into my flow of speech, with a vehement shake of his head.

'No, no,' he said. 'You do not understand. This whole thing, I see now, is too fantastic for belief. What real proof could we show people? You do see now why I never went into details of what I really expected to find.'

We both put our shoulders to the trolley and heaved it along between us. Progress was slow, as we had also to watch our rear; my ears were now tuned to hypersensitive frequencies and I found the crackle from the radio linking us with Van Damm a definite intrusion.

I replied to Scarsdale with some commonplace. How could I really reply to him? He was right, of course; what could we say? How could we warn the outside world of our discoveries? And even so, half of Scarsdale's suppositions remained unproved. Mathematicians could no doubt find a method of equating the interior of the earth with the exterior vastnesses of space but I could imagine the response from the average scientific mind, deeply entrenched in library or laboratory in half a dozen European countries. Not that I blamed them. I myself would be in the van of the sceptics were I in their place.

Perhaps the sceptics could be right and we ourselves the victims of some strange dimensional illusion? Self-hypnotism? God knows these dark caves were enough to make anyone's sanity totter. Or perhaps the Great White Space, as Scarsdale called it, was real enough but merely a three-dimensional cavity within the earth but possessed of such blinding luminosity that it seemed to us that it led beyond the stars. The things themselves would take some explaining but it was not beyond possibility that they were some subterranean form of terrestrial being, however loathsome and malignant to our eyes and senses.

My brain was occupied with these and other unproductive thoughts as we lurched and staggered along the endless corridor, back towards the comforting presence of our colleagues. We were not far from them when we heard the scream.

How can I describe it at this distance in time? I hesitate to use the term but it had such a horrific quality, as if whoever uttered it, had his soul torn from his body. The quavering echoes of this hideous intrusion had not yet died away along the corridors before scream after scream came to companion it. My legs buckled and I must assuredly have fallen had Scarsdale not got his strong hand under my elbow. I muttered some apology, trying to conceal the trembling in my limbs. I hoped Scarsdale was not disappointed in my qualities as a man of action; he had expected so much but the conditions we were meeting here were so bizarre and the occurrences so outside the range of normal experience that I feared I was making but a sorry showing. Yet he seemed to have noticed nothing, merely quickened his pace into a jog-trot and the pair of us continued to trundle the trolley along the endless tunnels.

The screams had died out now and were not repeated but there came only the low crackle of atmospherics as I jerkily called Van Damm on the radio over and over again. I heard the faint reports of a revolver then; Scarsdale heard them too. He grunted deep down in his throat.

'That sounded like Holden's voice,' he said grimly. 'The scream, I mean. The things have apparently got round by side I tunnels. I hope Van Damm has managed to hold his own. Holden was certainly in no fit state to help.'

'We shall be there in a few minutes,' I said. 'Do you think I we ought to leave the trolley and rejoin the others?'

'God, no,' said Scarsdale with an intensity I had never I heard in his voice before. 'That would be fatal. Remember, I whatever happens, to stay by the trolley. It holds the grenades and other heavy armaments. They are our only hope I if any more of these things appear.'

We had slackened our pace somewhat by now, as the weight of the trolley was beginning to tell at this speed. We shuffled together, neither speaking, my mind filled with unnameable dread as the light gradually began to lose its strength along the tunnel. We knew then that we must be nearing the spot where we had left our two companions. The radio was still emitting its sizzling static but there were no responses to the calls I continued to make every five minutes or so. Instinctively, Scarsdale and I switched on our helmet lights and with the yellow radiance burning comfortably ahead of us, completed the last stage of our journey.

I myself now had a deep loathing of the dark tunnels and I fought to keep control as I thought of the long miles of corridor along which we must pass over many days if we were to regain the sanity of the outer air. It seemed to have taken us months to penetrate this far and until we could rejoin the tractors we would stand little chance on foot against our lumbering opponents, I gave thanks for the fact that we had first encountered them in the brilliant light of space as my sanity must inevitably have tottered had they burst upon us in the inky-blackness of the outer mountains or in the twilight which now reigned about us.

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.

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.