Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 2 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

132 both Da Costa and Huldricksson knew and trusted. We piled her long-boat up with my instruments and food and camping equipment. The Swwarna took us around to Metalanim Harbor, and there, with the tops of ancient sea walls deep in the blue water beneath us, and the ruins looming up out of the mangroves, a scant mile from us, left us. Then with Huldricksson manipulating our small sail, and Larry at the rudder, we rounded the titanic wall that swept down into the depths, and turned at last into the canal that Throckmartin, on his map, had marked as that which, running between frown- ing Nan-Tauach and its satellite islet, Tau, led straight to the gate of the place of ancient mys- teries. And as we entered that channel we were envel- oped by a silence; a silence so intense, so—weighted that it seemed to have substance; an alien silence that clung and stifled and still stood aloof from us —the living. It was a stillness, such as might fol- low the long tramping of millions into the grave; it was—paradoxical as it may be—filled with the with- drawal of life. Standing down in the chambered depths of the Great Pyramid I had known something of such silence—but never such intensity as this. Larry felt it and I saw him look at me askance. If Olaf, sitting in the bow, felt it, too, he gave no sign; his blue eyes, with the glint of ice within them again, watched the channel before us. As we passed, there arose upon our left sheer walls of black basalt blocks, cyclopean, towering fifty feet or more, broken here and there by the sinking of their deep foundations. In front of us the mangroves widened out and filled the canal. On our right the lesser walls of Tau, sombre blocks smoothed and squared and set with a cold, mathematical nicety that filled me with vague awe, slipped by. Through breaks I caught glimpses of dark ruins and of great fallen stones that seemed to crouch and menace us, as we passed. Somewhere there, hidden, were the seven globes that poured the moon fire down upon the Moon Pool. Now we were among the mangroves and, sail down, the three of us pushed and pulled the boat through their tangled roots and branches. The noise of our passing split the silence like a pro- fanation, and from the ancient bastions came mur- murs—forbidding, strangely sinister. And now we were through, floating on a little open space of shadow-filled water. Before us lifted the gateway of Nan-Tauach, gigantic, broken, incredibly old: shattered portals through which had passed men and women of earth’s dawn; old with a weight of years that pressed leadenly upon the eyes that looked upon it, and yet was—in some curious inde- finable way—menacingly defiant. es the gate, back from the portals, stretched a flight of enormous basalt slabs, a giant’s stairway indeed; and from each side of it marched the high walls that were the Dweller’s pathway. None of us spoke as we grounded the boat and dragged it up on a half-submerged pier. And when we did speak it was in whispers. “What next?” asked Larry. AMAZING STORIES “I think we ought to take a look around,” I re- plied in the same low tones. “We'll climb the wall here and take a flash about. The whole place ought to be plain as day from that height.” Huldricksson, his blue eyes alert, nodded. With the greatest difficulty we clambered up the broken blocks. To the east and south of us, set like children’s blocks in the midst of the sapphire sea, lay dozens of islets, none of them covering more than two Square miles of surface; each of them a perfect Square or oblong within its protecting walls. On none was there sign of life, save for a few great birds that hovered here and there, and gulls dipping in the blue waves beyond. : We turned our gaze down upon the island on which we stood. It was, I estimated, about three- quarters of a mile square, The sea wall enclosed it. It was really an enormous basalt-sided open cube, and within it two other open cubes. The enclosure between the first and second wall was stone paved, with here and there a broken pillar and long stone benches. The hibiscus, the aloe-tree, anda number of small shrubs had found place, but seemed only to intensify its stark loneliness. “Wonder where the German‘can be?” asked Larry. I shook my head. There was no sign of life here. Had von Hetzdorp gone—or had the Dweller taken him, too? Whatever had happened, there was no trace of him below us or on any of the islets within our range of vision. We scrambled down the side of the gateway. Olaf looked at me wistfully. “We start the search now, Olaf,” I said. “And first, O’Keefe, let us see whether the grey stone is really here. After that we will set up camp, and while I unpack, you and Olaf search the island. It won’t take long.” Larry gave one look at his service automatic and grinned. “Lead on Macduff,” he said. We made our way up the steps, through the outer enclosures and into the central square. I confess to a fire of scientific curiosity and eagerness tinged with a dread that O’Keefe’s analysis might be true. Would we find the moving slab and, if so, would it be as Throckmartin had described? If so, then even Larry would have to admit that here was something that theories of gases and luminous emanations would not explain and the first test of the whole amazing story would be passed. But if not And there before us, the faintest tinge of grey setting it apart from its neighboring blocks of basalt, was the moon door! There was no mistaking it. This was, in very deed, the portal through which Throckmartin had Seen pass that gloriously dreadful apparition he called the Dweller. At its base, was the curious, seemingly polished, cup-like depression within which, my lost friend had told me, the opening door swung. What was that portal—more enigmatic than was ever sphinx? And what lay beyond it? What did that smooth stone, whose wan deadness whispered of ages old corridors of time opening out into alien, unimaginable vistas, hide? It had cost the world of science Throckmartin’s great brain—as it had cost Throckmartin those h(ctoveo\ Gd JOOKS:- GO: an)