The glare from the Great White Space made everything look blanched and strange but the Professor's attitude alarmed me; there was something about his head which was not quite right. He looked ill and somehow crumpled. Perhaps he had been attacked by the creatures and was still suffering from injuries. He kept his head turned away from me as if his neck hurt him. I saw stickiness on his clothing then. My vision blurred and I slipped on the unspeakable foulness of that unholy floor.
I pulled Scarsdale again and he broke into a shambling run beside me.
'Quickly, Professor,' I shouted, 'or we shall be too late.'
He nodded then as if he understood. But just at that moment some of the slug-creatures, who were getting dangerously close, came up towards us. They mewed with that strange, distressing call and the whole air seemed to be filled with that unearthly vibrancy.
Scarsdale had slowed his pace again as if he were waiting for them.
'You do not understand, Plowright,' he said again. 'There are fantastic things to be learned here, if only one has the courage. I must tell you. I beg you not to resist further.'
I did not understand him and turned round, keeping my grip on his arm.
Three of the slug-things were quite close now and moved hesitantly towards me, as though they sensed the dangers of the last grenade in my hand. When I looked back at Scarsdale he once again had his head averted.
'Are you injured. Professor?' I said.
He shook his head. I removed my eyes from him once more and then turned again to the menacing line of things that were spread out in front of us. They waved their tendrils slowly, their forms half-transparent in the brilliant light. I glanced at the group nearest to me and then my knees buckled and there came an uncontrollable trembling in my limbs. I glanced wildly over my shoulder, saw my retreat was clear into the blessed darkness.
Scarsdale smiled at me encouragingly and then it happened. I glanced stupefied from him to the slug-things and then I shrieked and shrieked as though I would never stop. I tasted the bitter taste of blood and bile in my mouth and my brain was a seething cauldron of white-hot terror. I hurled the Professor from me and, with the mewing cries of the slug- things vibrating in my ears and with that unutterable stench in my nostrils I fled from the Great White Space and plunged headlong into the tunnels for my life.
Twenty
I fled as though from nightmare. I ran until the breath was throbbing in my throat and the brilliance of the Great White Space had faded to the dim luminosity of the further corridors. Once or twice I must have cannoned into the walls because I later found my clothing torn and blood on my hands and fingernails. At some point I had the good sense to switch on my helmet lamp and its bright yellow beam sliced and bobbed along the corridor like a beckoning finger.
Mercifully, I had dropped the remaining hand grenade and my pistol or I might have done myself an injury in my horrified and agitated condition. My head was a red-hot furnace, perspiration dripped down my face and I reeled and lurched like a man in fever. It was not until some time had passed that I thought to remove my goggles and then I hurled them behind me. I found myself back at the trolley but so great was my fear and the shrieking state of my nerves that I dare not stop there.
My mind could not encompass the immensity of the journey which faced me so I thought only of getting through the next few hours; of surviving until then, when I would try to make plans. At least, I reasoned this out later; for my knowledge of the events while they were taking place is muddled and blurred. There was food on the trolley; I knew that. There were weapons and Very flares too; those meant survival, life and the sanity of the outside world. At the moment I cared not whether I lived or died but if I died at least let it be with the sweet skies of the outer earth above me and the kiss of the sun on my face.
I longed for the fresh breezes of the upper earth and was terrified of dying like a rat in a hole down here, miles beneath the surface. So somehow, though normally I would have thought it beyond my strength at that time, I manhandled the trolley, defective and difficult to wheel as it was, and set off in the southward direction. Every so often I would stop and listen with straining ears for the faintest scratch of a footfall, the rasp of leathery wings or the sinister whispering that would have been the sign that I was pursued. My sanity hung by a thread at those moments and I would not, for all the money in the world, endure the tortures I endured during those next few days.
Indeed my cheeks were sunken like an old man and my hair a shade or two whiter when I eventually ended my ordeal. But there was nothing moving in all the long corridors behind me; the warm wind blew from the north and the faint pulse, hourly growing feebler, again pumped out its sinister message. I put the sound at my back and it gradually died away though it persisted for many a long mile, just as it had on the inward journey.
Mercifully, I had a small compass on me with which I could make sure I was homing southwards, for in my mental state and in the delirium which followed, I would surely have gone blindly back in the northward direction without it. My remaining portable camera too, supported on its strap round my neck, was banging against the walls as I pushed, until at last I took it off and laid it down on the trolley.
The few shots in the camera itself and a dozen or so prints I had in an envelope and which had been brought with us from the tractor-base were the only things I was to bring out from the Great Northern Expedition intact, and the manner of losing the others I will speak of later. That first day I remained more or less coherent, though my physical condition gradually deteriorated. I was drenched in perspiration and the wind blowing on my back, warm as it was, must have set up a feverish condition as my skin was icy cold.
At some time — I had long ago forgotten whether the how- on my wrist watch indicated day or night — I slumped down and ate a meal from the tinned provisions on the trolley. I was so far coherent at that stage, that I was able to sort out some of the stores. By jettisoning the heavier containers and a few of the more bulky elephant guns and weapons of that sort, I managed to lighten the load considerably. My biggest dread, something which gnawed constantly at the edges of my mind, was that the creatures would cut round behind me, through interconnecting caves, just as they must have done with poor Holden and Van Damm. I did not dare dwell on this overlong; but mercifully, I found a bottle of whisky on the trolley and swigged a good quarter of it, so that my mind must have been deadened and dulled about this time.
There was no sign of pursuit, thank God, and as the hours passed I began to feel a little more security in my mind; of course, this may well have been due to the blunting of my sensibilities with the liquor but whatever the cause, I thanked the Almighty for it. In this way I suppose I must have covered a considerable distance before I finally slumped down and sleep mercifully took me.
I went on running. No-one came after me. Despite intense questioning from many eminent authorities in the field, I was never able to give any consequential explanation of my movements or explain coherently how many days it took me to regain civilisation again. Neither could I pinpoint the time when I finally broke down and fever claimed me. The dates between my re-appearance in the valley before the Black Mountains and my arrival at what cynics may describe as a 'civilised community' was something like six months.
I am told also that I had been in fever for almost two months and if it had not been for the devoted efforts of a French doctor and a German nursing sister I should assuredly have died. Perhaps, under the stress of these dreary after days, it might have been better so. But I am drawing ahead of my narrative. I made my way onwards, still pushing the trolley, guiding myself by compass. I must have taken my meals automatically from the provisions in the cases, for I have no clear recollection after all this time of how I ate or what I ate.