I leaned against one of the jars to clear that loathsome odour from my nostrils. I was thus some feet away from where Prescott and Scarsdale, their activities recommenced, had lifted away the stopper. The back of Prescott was between me and the jar, with the Professor on the far side. There was a grating noise, as the vessel was lifted on to its edge and the two men started to ease something out. I heard a muffled thump, the empty jar rolled with a hollow echo to one side and Prescott gave a loud shriek which jarred my nerves.
I jumped forward, the odour momentarily forgotten, to see Prescott backing away from something on the floor of the gallery; his face was white as he turned to me and his lips moved without formulating any words. I pushed round him somewhat unceremoniously and had to bite my own tongue to prevent my cry from joining the echoes of his own.
The creature which lay before us in shimmery putrescence on the rock bed of the gallery was unlike anything in my experience. It was about four to five feet high, with a shrivelled, white maggot-like body from which depended two stringy lower limbs, hinged in three places and packed behind it. On its back were gigantic wing-cases of bluish sheen. The thing appeared to be all the colours of the rainbow but as we watched the hues lost their brilliance, faded and finally died to a neutral brown as it degenerated in the air of the tunnel.
It was the nightmare face which had wrenched such a horrifying cry from Prescott's pallid lips and it would need the genius of a Bosch or a Goya to depict such a monstrosity in pencil or paint. The features, low set on a neck which seemed to form a contiguous alignment with its chest, were insectivorous. Black tipped antennae projected from a high domed forehead; a series of mucous-plugged holes underneath seemed to serve it for breathing purposes and a tangle of tubes writhed from where the ears would have been in a human visage. A horny slot in the hinged lower jaw served it as mouth but it was the eyes which were the most unnerving and terrifying aspect of the creature. As large as soup plates and all the colours of the rainbow they seemed yet to have life of their own; all the evil of cosmic space and the wisdom of ten million years seemed to gaze from them as the creature weltered in its own juices on the floor. It resembled nothing so much as a gigantic grasshopper imbued with extra-terrestrial intelligence and I breathed a little faster as I imagined its living counterpart countless thousands of years ago.
Scarsdale, as always, was the first to recover. He stepped forward again, removing the handkerchief he had held to his nostrils, the light of enthusiasm gleaming in his eyes.
'Did you ever see the like?' he said to his companion.
'Sacred objects? Or the slaves or pets of the gigantic beings who built these tunnels?'
'Revolting but undoubtedly fascinating,' said Prescott drily, though I caught in his voice the same excitement which was animating the Professor's conversation.
'Do you observe. Professor, the resemblance to the sacred baboon galleries in the tombs of the Ancient Egyptians?'
'Exactly,' said Scarsdale with a chuckle. 'I am glad the allusion had not escaped you. It would seem, however, that unlike the mummified remains of the Egyptians these creatures are highly perishable.'
He scrabbled with the toes of one thick riding boot on the suppurating mass before him; within fifteen minutes the grasshopper-thing had dissolved, melted and evaporated, leaving nothing on the floor but a few drying membranes and some thicker muscular portions of the creature's torso.
I apologised to the Professor for not having taken any photographs.
'Oh that's all right, Plowright,' he said casually. 'We'll open another one straight away and you can get your photographs. Then we'll have to get back.'
He took the radio microphone from me and commenced to dictate a stream of detail to Van Damm back at the base, who seemed, from his comments, as excited as our leader.
'This would happen when I remain behind,' he said irritably.
'Don't worry, Van Damm,' Scarsdale told him. 'There's enough material here for a hundred field workers. We will be returning within the next half an hour.'
He signed off and then he and Prescott turned over another of the jars. They merely broke this with their hammers and though I was expecting it this time, the sight of those hideous eyes staring up at me made it difficult for my trembling hands to focus the camera. However, I captured a dozen or so excellent shots of the thing before it too dissolved as the other before it. I was reminded irresistibly of Poe's description of M. Valdemar disintegrating into 'loathsome putrescence'.
All of us, it appeared to me, were walking rapidly when we turned our backs on the gallery for our long trek back to Camp Three.
Thirteen
We spent two days on what Scarsdale and Van Damm had christened the embalming gallery. Once the excitement of our discovery had died away we were all kept busy on our various tasks; much to my own personal distaste Van Damm and Scarsdale had insisted on opening more of the sealed jars with their loathsome contents, though I suppose, to the scientific mind their enthusiasm was understandable. The feelings of the remainder of the expedition were more mundane and muted and it was with some reluctance that I was persuaded into photographing more of the abominations from the jars which, like their predecessors, rapidly evaporated into vapoured and gelid putresence.
Of the beings who had embalmed the grasshopper- creatures we had no scrap of knowledge, for. we found nothing within the gallery that would give us an indication; there was no embalming-room, no tools or trepanning equipment, not even a fragment of an inscription. Yet I realised Scarsdale and possibly Van Damm knew a great deal more about this strange race of ancient beings, engineers and fantastic builders who had wrought these mighty underground workings thousands of years before.
We had not yet advanced beyond the embalming gallery; this was no less than 1,000 metres long and at a conservative estimate there must have been over 10,000 of the strange jars within the building. Van Damm and Scarsdale had opened at least a dozen of the containers and every evening conversation continued long and late as the scientists debated the possibilities. The gallery ended with a similar portico to that by which we had entered. Beyond it was another massive flight of stone steps descending to a lower level; the mist hung thickly here and the steps descended into it until they were lost to sight. Strangely enough the wind still blew strongly from the north but though the vapour billowed and eddied, it still re-formed, making an impenetrable cloud, continually in motion.
Holden carried out a chemical test on the steps, the northernmost point of our penetration, and said the result showed a strong concentration of sulphur but nothing poisonous. We pitched our tents at Camp Four, near the plinth with the weird hieroglyphs and were glad of the shelter because of the grit which flew about that dusty plain. It was odd to realise that it was the same grit which was flung here and there across the surface; it had nowhere to go except within the area of that vast cavern — which, however, we had no way of measuring — and so the same tiny chippings must circle and re-circle wearily over the years.
We were unable to penetrate the floor of-the cavern because of the hardness of the rock so the tentpoles were secured by running them through specially designed steel centre-pieces, which Scarsdale had made in the Surrey workshops. The ropes were secured by the heavier pieces of equipment. Specially annoying to those of the milder- mannered members of the party, were the heavy machine-gun, the elephant guns and other solid pieces of ordnance which Scarsdale insisted on bringing along. These were loaded on to a small rubber-tyred trolly, like a perambulator which one or other of us had to wheel behind him wherever he went.
We were dreading mounting the great steps with this load but Scarsdale said it had to be done and no doubt it would be achieved; what our leader set out to do had a way of being accomplished. I must say I was glad he was in charge and not another of Van Damm's nature. A fine scientist but too finely- wrought and argumentative and not a born leader of men like Scarsdale. The Professor had good humour and great mental toughness, which was essential for such an enterprise as that upon which we were engaged.
Holden and Prescott had been working on their own lines of research and Van Damm and the Professor were filling notebooks with their own figures and data about the insect- creatures. As my main function was photographic-historian and my dark-room and other equipment far away with the tractors, I had little practical to do
