'A pity you didn't warn me,' I said without thinking. 'We could have run on a few hundred yards.'
'That's just what one doesn't do under these circumstances,' said Scarsdale, as though he were explaining something elementary to a child. 'We don't know what we may meet in these tunnels. One notes; one consolidates; and one then reconnoitres in strength — suitably armed.'
Here he slapped the webbing holster at his belt with significance.
'I'm sorry. Professor,' I said contritely. 'I didn't think.'
'It's all right,' he returned. 'But I've naturally given this a great deal of thought over the years. And I've worked out a routine for every eventuality — I trust.'
Sparks of humour glinted in his eyes as he opened the door of the Command tractor and stepped down on to the iron-hard floor of the tunnel. Van Damm had opened the door of his own machine before it had stopped and, stepping delicately on to the metal casing which protected the treads, dropped to the ground. The two men met midway between the machines and conferred quietly.
Van Damm went back to Number 2. I heard his shouted instructions, distorted between the walls of the tunnel.
'Bring the tractor up level with the other. We want to get maximum illumination ahead. Scarsdale's spotted something down the tunnel.'
I stood aside as Holden manoeuvred the big machine alongside our own; when he had switched off the motors the throb of generators echoed back along the passage and then all the main lighting of the tractor came on. I went to stand with Scarsdale to one side; the grotesque shadows of myself and the Professor sprawled ahead of us along the floor. The beams of both tractors stretched a long way and I fancied I could see something faintly white in the far distance.
When I had indicated this to the Professor he called Van Damm over and the lighting of Number 2 vehicle was switched off. The five of us then conferred briefly; Holden went into Number 1 tractor and turned off everything except the main searchlight. I noticed that Scarsdale had his revolver out and the others appeared to be bristling with weapons. Even Van Damm was waving a dangerous-looking automatic pistol as he conversed with the Professor.
Reluctantly, I got out my own revolver and released the safety catch though I felt that the Professor and his companions were in far greater danger from my own incompetent marksmanship than they might be from anything in front of us.
Scarsdale turned back to me when he had finished talking to the doctor.
'You had better come with me, Plowright,' he said. 'We'll keep abreast. In case of emergency this will obviate anything ricochetting off the tunnel walls and injuring one of us.
I hadn't thought of that and gratefully fell in step with his burly figure as we walked away from the tractors into the encompassing gloom. Both of us had switched on the lamps incorporated in our helmets and the bobbing shadows which flickered and flared on the walls either side the farther we got from the comforting beam of the searchlight, made a weird pattern that formed a fitting accompaniment to my sombre thoughts.
We had now got more than two hundred yards from the tractors and were passing the dark mouths of various archways; these were no doubt the side tunnels to which Scarsdale had already referred and I hoped they were as empty as my companion supposed. We could easily be cut off from the main body if anything in this labyrinth wished us harm. I wondered whether the Professor had thought of this but I hesitated to mention it, in case he might find me over fanciful.
I felt my arm silently gripped and at the same time I saw what the Professor wished to draw to my attention; the flicker of white I had glimpsed from the distance was markedly nearer and with every rasping footstep we took began to resolve itself from the gloom. Presently, in the manner in which the image of a developing photograph composes itself before one in the developing tray, we saw what was undoubtedly a human figure lying on the floor of the tunnel.
Scarsdale steadied his revolver and his face was stern in the light of our head-lamps. He tightened his grip on my arm.
'Stay here,' he said quietly.
'Ought I not to go with you?' I queried. 'In case of danger…'
'In case of danger one alone will be enough,' he said firmly. 'You can do more to help by staying here. In an emergency you would be able to do a great deal more to help me.'
I saw the sense of this and said nothing further. There ensued a long thirty seconds as I stood and watched Scarsdale's lamp bobbing and dwindling up the tunnel before me. The rasping of his footsteps ceased and there was just enough light to see that the Professor was kneeling to examine something. He returned a few moments later, walking backwards down the tunnel towards me, fanning his revolver from side to side.
He stood next to me and took a deep breath.
'It's the dwarf, Zalor,' he said in a rather unsteady voice. 'Though God knows how he could have got here. He's quite dead. We'll bring the machines up and dispose of him.'
The next few minutes were a confusion of tractor motors, dipping lights and anxious questions. Holden went out with Scarsdale to drag Zalor into one of the side tunnels. I could confirm that it was he from this nearer view and I recognised the clothing he had been wearing. He looked curiously deflated as I gazed at his remains from a distance; Scarsdale would not let anyone else approach closer.
He and Holden went out later and while they were away I went back into Number 1 tractor and brewed some much- welcomed tea. When I went outside again Scarsdale gave the order to back the tractors down the tunnel and make camp there. I noticed that one searchlight was kept on; Scarsdale ordered permanent sentries to keep watch throughout the night and one of the light machine-guns was set up on top of the Command tractor and an extension wire to the alarm klaxon run out for the sentry's use should it be needed during the night.
I viewed all these precautions with disquiet which was not alleviated by Holden's behaviour; he had apparently been taken sick, said Van Damm, who had attended him. Holden did indeed have several vomiting attacks and when I offered him tea later he had a face that looked ashen and haggard. He took the tea sullenly, quite unlike his usual self and sipped it with great shuddering gasps between.
Scarsdale also looked more grim than I had yet seen him and often turned his night-glasses down the far curve of the tunnel, towards the side entrance where they had taken the dwarfs body. No-one slept much that night and towards midnight I found myself in conversation with Holden in Number 2 vehicle. He looked better than he had that afternoon but his eyes had a strange, haunted look which I didn't like. As we talked — myself interrogatively, he in brief, disjointed monosyllables — his eyes wandered ever and again back to the windscreen of the tractor and the dark bend of the tunnel in the far distance, cut off where the tractor searchlight beam's power failed to penetrate.
'It wasn't so much the loss of weight,' he told me finally, 'though that was bad enough. The dwarf was like a husk from which all the essence had been drained.'
Holden cast a curious look over his shoulder, at the tunnel beyond the windshield.
'All his face seemed to have been sucked away,' he said, the greyness back in his own features. 'I ask you, what sort of creature can have done that?'
It was a question which made sleep impossible for me also that night.
Eleven
We made an early start next morning. It had been a wretched night, not improved by a false alarm from Holden during the small hours when he fancied he had seen a shadow moving further down the tunnel. Fortunately he had not fired, as he might well have injured himself with the ricochet but the infernal noise of the klaxon which tumbled us from broken sleep, and the equally noisy inquest which followed, made rest for the remaining hours impossible. By five we were moving forward again, myself at the controls of Number 1 which, despite his previous instructions, the Professor had insisted should lead.
It was a position of honour, as Van Damm had said, but I could not help wishing as I juggled with the steering handles, that Number 2 had gone ahead as planned, as the lead under our present conditions was a far
