They advanced slowly, Pederson tapping the side of the crawler for identification, and Fritz and Jacko talking so that the sound of voices gave their relative positions. Even so, Jacko got there first. His probe was a shard of splintered ceramic with which he was striking before him as though at some anticipated enemy. Anti-momentum made this a difficult movement to achieve, and the darkness added to the soup-like resistance to movement, giving the whole situation a dream-like character without the visual qualities of the conventional nightmare.
Then Jacko hit the Dark. It was detectable by its complete negation of the force with which he struck it. And it returned no sound, and in this way was distinguishable from any ordinary obstacle struck with force.
‘Got it,’ said Jacko. ‘But that knocking sound you hear is my knees. I admit I’m frightened of this thing, Fritz.’
‘I’m not exactly keen on it, either,’ said van Noon. ‘But this is what we came to see. It’s a pity we can’t see it now we’ve got here. Have you any suggestions, Pederson?’
‘I’ve just discovered the Dark is what we ran the crawler into. No wonder it didn’t move.’
An ominous and familiar staccato rattle made them turn. A rogue storm, travelling towards them and parallel to the wall of the Dark, was making its passage known by its peculiarly pinched lightning. Because of attenuation, the lightning and thunder had been undetectable even from a short distance, and the storm was almost upon them before they were aware it existed. There was no time to seek shelter. They flung themselves down on the damp earth at the foot of the Dark and waited for it to pass. It sprayed the area with quenched fire as it went, doing no damage to them, but the intensity of the arcs was such that momentarily they had a clear picture of their situation.
The Dark was just in front of them, a sheer wall of unblemished black-velvet nothingness, impossibly perfect. The crawler had nosed head-on up to the black wall, and its tracks were pressed hard against the exterior. On all other sides of them lay the ghost-suburb of desolate ruins, the reflecting white teeth of broken masonry contrasting with the wet, black soil of the earth.
As soon as the worst of the storm was over, they climbed back to their feet.
‘What are you going to do, Fritz? Try the lasers?’
‘I don’t know.’ Fritz had moved back to the crawler and was examining the tracks in contact with the Dark by the spasmodic light of the rapidly waning storm. ‘I don’t think we need to. I think I’ve got my answer.
You see, it did take time for the Dark to analyse and apply a counterforce to stop the crawler. But that fraction of a second was sufficient for something significant to happen. The crawler tracks have penetrated very slightly into the Dark.’
It was impossible for the others to verify van Noon’s statement since the light from the storm had rapidly become eclipsed by the strength of the negative effects. The combined output of searchlight and torches failed to re-establish the point, and the lasers refused to function from the crawler’s emergency power supply. But van Noon was sufficiently convinced of what he had seen to regard the expedition as a success.
‘All we have to do now is to get back to tell the tale,’ said Jacko, unhappily.
They started back by the only means available—they walked. For the first half kilometre they stumbled blindly through the darkness and the nightmare of anti-momentum. The coldness, too, was becoming serious now that they were exposed for a long period without the protection of the crawler cab. But gradually their eyes, accustomed to complete darkness began to discern light like the first touch of dawn, and with the returning ability to see, they no longer blundered into blind paths in the ruins from which they had to retreat by sense of touch alone. And the negative effects grew slightly less, so that their pace progressively improved as they made their way out of the deep Pen regions.
Two kilometres away from the Dark they came across the crushed path that their own crawler had made on its way in, and this they followed gratefully. Shortly they found the second crawler, abandoned, and with its engine stalled and cold. The third crawler was patrolling a broad front along a road about three kilometres radius from the Dark perimeter. They were hailed and taken aboard for the last part of the journey through the growing light and finally out into the unbearably bright gold sunset of an Ithican evening.
Courtney was there to greet them. His team had spent the day re-running exploratory tests, but this time with particular reference to the onset-time of negation. His results amply confirmed van Noon’s experience. There was a time-lag on the introduction of any energy phenomenon to the Dark or the Pen before negative effects set in. The exact period of the lag varied with the type of phenomenon, but was greatest for applied physical force.
The party rode with raised spirits back to New Bedlam where work on the next phase of Fritz’s plans against the Dark were just about to begin.
‘A tunnel?’ said Jacko.
‘Strictly speaking,’ said van Noon, ‘I had in mind something more in the nature of a horizontal well, but I think a tunnel is a fair description.’
‘And just how do you propose to sink a horizontal well into the Dark?’
‘Frankly, I don’t see much difficulty. We take an ordinary iron pipe of sufficient dimension to permit the passage of a man—and just knock it in.’
‘Crazy like a fox!’ said Jacko. ‘We’re talking about the
‘I thought I’d already demonstrated that,’ said Fritz. ‘There’s a time-lag before the onset of negation.
Apply a pile driver or something to your pipe and hit it once and it will penetrate the Dark just a little before the detection, analysis, and opposite synthesis has a chance to stop it. Then the negation will be applied and stop the tube going in any farther, and the system will reach stasis. The anti-force obviously cannot continue to be applied after the original force has ceased to operate, so the force anti-force balance will then relax.’
‘So?’
‘So then you hit your pipe again and drive it in a little more. And so on. And providing you work on a completely random and non-predictable basis there’s no chance of the anti-force being applied in anticipation. I suspect that only if we set up a standard repetition rate will we meet with complete and instantaneous negation of the force that we apply.’
‘So we knock in our tube. Then what?’
‘It depends on what we find. The Dark may be a solid or it may be a thin-wall phenomenon. If it’s a solid we shall not gain much except for a little knowledge. But if it’s thin-wall, then we might have a chance to look inside.’
‘From which you’re assuming that the Dark effect won’t penetrate inside the pipe.’
‘I think it may to some extent, but take any physical phenomenon and place an inch of steel in front of it and you always get
‘What do you think’s inside there, Fritz?’
‘As I see it, Jacko, some form of intelligence, but I wouldn’t like to guess any closer than that. Whether the Dark is some cosmic amoeba or has inside it a complex of little green men is something I intend to find out. Are you with me?’
‘I’m right behind you,’ said Jacko. ‘But don’t ask me to be the first man through that damned pipe.’
By the time that Courtney returned to the base camp a few days later van Noon’s plans were fairly well advanced. Fritz described the scheme briefly. Courtney was intrigued but doubtful.
‘I don’t see,’ he said, ‘how you’re going to drive a pipe of that diameter into the Dark—remembering that the driving has to be done in the deep Pen area where the anti-momentum is killing. You’d never get a horizontal pile-driver to work under those conditions.’
‘No. We’ve already taken care of that point by taking a new line entirely. We’re going to fire it in.’
‘Fire it?’
‘Yes. Attach the free end of the pipe to what is effectively a large-bore gun or reaction chamber with an open muzzle pointing away from the Dark. In the gun we fire a high-explosive charge and let the recoil of the apparatus drive the pipe against the Dark. According to my calculations, a series of explosive shocks should have the right sort of driving characteristics for the job. How does it sound as an idea?’
‘It could work,’ admitted Courtney. ‘Unless we’re up against something we don’t know about yet. How far have you got with the project.’
