On the afternoon of the final day the grating noise beneath the tractors' treads finally ceased and we lurched along in an odd silence; it was near lunch-time when this happened and Scarsdale gave the order over the radio for the party to halt for the break. I was down and out of the cabin door almost before we had stopped and I gave an exclamation. Scarsdale joined me at the door, with an amused expression in his eyes.
I then saw the reason for the unexpected silence. Stretching behind us, like the slime-track left by a gigantic slug was our own trail, every scratch and indentation on the tractor treads reproduced exactly on the surface of the gulley. I printed my own foot-mark behind me as I ran back towards Van Damm's tractor, which was just turning the bend. The entire floor of the valley was lined with black sand, a unique and extraordinary sight; if it had not been for the perennial blue of the sky above us the effect would have been overwhelming in its morbid darkness.
Like an engraving to illustrate the stories of Poe or a work by Dore or Samuel Palmer, the Black Mountains literally ingested us; they were above, behind and before us and now their own ebony opaqueness stretched beneath our feet. Van Damm had joined me and then the others; the tractors were formed into the familiar triangle and we ail stood about, talking little, overcome by this bitter darkness which blackened our very spirits. Only Scarsdale seemed unmoved; in fact his demeanour was positively jaunty under the circumstances and he gave out at great length over our al fresco lunch on the nearness of our destination and the positive tasks on which we would shortly be engaged.
We were under way again within the hour and the soft crunching of our progress along this dark sea of sand combined with the whine of the motors to lull my mind into a semblance of rest. The far-off rays of the sun had disappeared behind the far hills long ago but the light in the sky was still brilliant when I looked through the windscreen and saw that the way before us was at last blocked.
Darkness stretched supreme from the black floor of sand to the dizzy heights of the mountain peak far above us; Scarsdale drove the tractor onwards, over a hummocked ridge, where the sand lay in strange whorls like the casts of crabs, presumably sculptured by the wind. I got out the tractor. The sand terrace sloped away from me gently towards the face of the cliff; darkness married with darkness in the gigantic face of rock before me.
The echo of something like great wings broke the silence as the other two tractors whined to a halt, our companions leaping to the ground. I found a crack in the rock formation with my eye, followed it up to misty heights like a Gothic cathedral. A huge shard of rock breaking out of the sea of sombre sand shocked with its pallidity. I walked over to it. The rock, white and crystalline like quartz, shone like a blasphemy in that place of shadows. My suddenly shaking hand traced out the outlines of strange and obscenely-shaped hieroglyphs upon it. It seemed to point like a finger towards the entrance which beckoned before us. I turned to look again as Scarsdale walked towards me.
A warm wind blew out of the cliff and with it the memories and associations of something far off and long ago. My eyes raked the cliff again, refusing to believe what they saw. A hewn doorway in the black basaltic surface of the natural rock. A doorway that seemed to lead to the utmost depths of the earth. A doorway, moreover, that must have been all of five hundred feet high.
Eight
Aeons seemed to pass as we gazed silently at that stupendous entrance. My soul was completely overwhelmed at the sight and I could not, did not in fact, dare contemplate what manner of being could have used such a doorway in the dawn of time. Unless the construction had a purely symbolic significance. To cover my confusion I returned to the Command tractor and sought my photographic equipment; the photographs I busied myself taking were excuse enough not to engage in speculation with my companions. Scarsdale was the only person who did not seem overwhelmed by the sight before us.
He stood with his legs and his arms folded across his massive chest and gazed before him as though he were in the tranquil atmosphere of one of the London or American museums; in his eyes was an infinite satisfaction and I realised that this moment represented a culmination of his life's work. In one way his entire career had been an advancement towards this point. The others recognised it too, and kept apart from the Professor, the small knot they made clustered in front of the gigantic entrance symbolising their puny stature by comparison with this freak of architecture.
I finished my moving picture work and picked up my still camera again; I was setting up my tripod to take close-ups of the hieroglyph inscriptions on the stone when a shadow fell across the pale surface of the obelisk. I turned, expecting Van Damm, but it was the Professor. He gazed without saying anything, while I completed my exposures. I turned back to him when I had dismantled my equipment. His lips were moving noiselessly as he traced the carvings on the stone with his fingers. He seemed almost oblivious of my presence.
'Let he who will, enter,' he said, like a man who was choosing his words with care. He knotted his brows together and tried again, stumbling over the phrases.
'Let he who enters, remain,' he continued. Van Damm had joined him by this time and watched the performance with grim concentration.
'He who remains will not return,' the Professor concluded. He made some notes in his books.
'I didn't know you were able to decipher the inscriptions. Professor,' I ventured.
Scarsdale looked at me with thinly disguised triumph. 'I have been working long years at this, my dear Plowright,' he said. 'These carvings are hardly unfamiliar to me. And I had The Ethics of Ygor to guide me.'
'Hardly an inviting message for such an entrance,' said Van Damm with a return to his old waspish manner. He looked an oddly enigmatic figure as he stood in his old cord riding breeches, legs in brown leather boots straddling the sand.
'I do not think we need worry overmuch,' said Scarsdale comfortably. 'The Old Ones were inclined perhaps to exaggerate. You forget that I have been here before.'
'And you returned safely,' I put in. The tension seemed to lift as I said this. We had been joined by the other two now and we all stood in a small group round the Professor, like students at a site lecture. Which is exactly how I felt. All these men had greater knowledge than I as to why we were here and Van Damm and Scarsdale were two of the foremost authorities in their own fields.
'Perhaps the Old Ones wanted the Professor to return,' said Van Damm softly. 'He is, in effect, drawing others in.'
Scarsdale smiled. 'You have too much imagination for a man of science, doctor,' he told his tall colleague. 'I have, as Plowright so aptly observed, returned to tell the story. Not without difficulties, as you all know. But my struggles were against physical obstacles only. There is nothing within the caverns that would lead me to believe they support any form of life inimical to man.'
'That may be because you did not penetrate far enough, Scarsdale,' said Van Damm calmly. 'The Trone-Tables speak of the guardians and there are other, certain indications, possibly more forbidding…
'This is no time to discuss it,' Scarsdale broke in authoritatively. 'It will be dark in an hour or two and we have much to do. We camp here tonight and tomorrow we leave Number 3 tractor as a reserve inside the entrance. From then on we travel in two machines only, in constant radio contact. You will command Number 2 Van Damm, as hitherto and I Number 1. We will take it in turns to lead.'
Van Damm nodded and the small group broke up, its members walking back towards the tractors. Their footprints made disturbing trails in the dark sand behind them.