A Voyage to Arcturus, Page 3

  Chapter 3. STARKNESS

  A couple of days later, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Maskull andNightspore arrived at Starkness Observatory, having covered the sevenmiles from Haillar Station on foot. The road, very wild and lonely, ranfor the greater part of the way near the edge of rather lofty cliffs,within sight of the North Sea. The sun shone, but a brisk east wind wasblowing and the air was salt and cold. The dark green waves were fleckedwith white. Throughout the walk, they were accompanied by the plaintive,beautiful crying of the gulls.

  The observatory presented itself to their eyes as a self-containedlittle community, without neighbours, and perched on the extreme end ofthe land. There were three buildings: a small, stone-built dwellinghouse, a low workshop, and, about two hundred yards farther north, asquare tower of granite masonry, seventy feet in height.

  The house and the shop were separated by an open yard, littered withwaste. A single stone wall surrounded both, except on the side facingthe sea, where the house itself formed a continuation of the cliff. Noone appeared. The windows were all closed, and Maskull could have swornthat the whole establishment was shut up and deserted.

  He passed through the open gate, followed by Nightspore, and knockedvigorously at the front door. The knocker was thick with dust and hadobviously not been used for a long time. He put his ear to the door, butcould hear no movements inside the house. He then tried the handle; thedoor was looked.

  They walked around the house, looking for another entrance, but therewas only the one door.

  “This isn’t promising,” growled Maskull. “There’s no one here..... Nowyou try the shed, while I go over to that tower.”

  Nightspore, who had not spoken half a dozen words since leaving thetrain, complied in silence, and started off across the yard. Maskullpassed out of the gate again. When he arrived at the foot of the tower,which stood some way back from the cliff, he found the door heavilypadlocked. Gazing up, he saw six windows, one above the other at equaldistances, all on the east face—that is, overlooking the sea. Realisingthat no satisfaction was to be gained here, he came away again, stillmore irritated than before. When he rejoined his friend, Nightsporereported that the workshop was also locked.

  “Did we, or did we not, receive an invitation?” demanded Maskullenergetically.

  “The house is empty,” replied Nightspore, biting his nails. “Betterbreak a window.”

  “I certainly don’t mean to camp out till Krag condescends to come.”

  He picked up an old iron bolt from the yard and, retreating to a safedistance, hurled it against a sash window on the ground floor. The lowerpane was completely shattered. Carefully avoiding the broken glass,Maskull thrust his hand through the aperture and pushed back the framefastening. A minute later they had climbed through and were standinginside the house.

  The room, which was a kitchen, was in an indescribably filthy andneglected condition. The furniture scarcely held together, brokenutensils and rubbish lay on the floor instead of on the dust heap,everything was covered with a deep deposit of dust. The atmosphere wasso foul that Maskull judged that no fresh air had passed into the roomfor several months. Insects were crawling on the walls.

  They went into the other rooms on the lower floor—a scullery, a barelyfurnished dining room, and a storing place for lumber. The same dirt,mustiness, and neglect met their eyes. At least half a year must haveelapsed since these rooms were last touched, or even entered.

  “Does your faith in Krag still hold?” asked Maskull. “I confess mine isat vanishing point. If this affair isn’t one big practical joke, it hasevery promise of being one. Krag never lived here in his life.”

  “Come upstairs first,” said Nightspore.

  The upstairs rooms proved to consist of a library and three bedrooms.All the windows were tightly closed, and the air was insufferable. Thebeds had been slept in, evidently a long time ago, and had never beenmade since. The tumbled, discoloured bed linen actually preserved theimpressions of the sleepers. There was no doubt that these impressionswere ancient, for all sorts of floating dirt had accumulated on thesheets and coverlets.

  “Who could have slept here, do you think?” interrogated Maskull. “Theobservatory staff?”

  “More likely travellers like ourselves. They left suddenly.”

  Maskull flung the windows wide open in every room he came to, and heldhis breath until he had done so. Two of the bedrooms faced the sea; thethird, the library, the upward-sloping moorland. This library was nowthe only room left unvisited, and unless they discovered signs of recentoccupation here Maskull made up his mind to regard the whole business asa gigantic hoax.

  But the library, like all the other rooms, was foul with stale air anddust-laden. Maskull, having flung the window up and down, fell heavilyinto an armchair and looked disgustedly at his friend.

  “Now what is your opinion of Krag?”

  Nightspore sat on the edge of the table which stood before the window.“He may still have left a message for us.”

  “What message? Why? Do you mean in this room?—I see no message.”

  Nightspore’s eyes wandered about the room, finally seeming to lingerupon a glass-fronted wall cupboard, which contained a few old bottles onone of the shelves and nothing else. Maskull glanced at him and at thecupboard. Then, without a word, he got up to examine the bottles.

  There were four altogether, one of which was larger than the rest. Thesmaller ones were about eight inches long. All were torpedo-shaped, buthad flattened bottoms, which enabled them to stand upright. Two of thesmaller ones were empty and unstoppered, the others contained acolourless liquid, and possessed queer-looking, nozzle-like stoppersthat were connected by a thin metal rod with a catch halfway down theside of the bottle. They were labelled, but the labels were yellow withage and the writing was nearly undecipherable. Maskull carried thefilled bottles with him to the table in front of the window, in order toget better light. Nightspore moved away to make room for him.

  He now made out on the larger bottle the words “Solar Back Rays”; and onthe other one, after some doubt, he thought that he could distinguishsomething like “Arcturian Back Rays.”

  He looked up, to stare curiously at his friend. “Have you been herebefore, Nightspore?”

  “I guessed Krag would leave a message.”

  “Well, I don’t know—it may be a message, but it means nothing to us, orat all events to me. What are ‘back rays’?”

  “Light that goes back to its source,” muttered Nightspore.

  “And what kind of light would that be?”

  Nightspore seemed unwilling to answer, but, finding Maskull’s eyes stillfixed on him, he brought out: “Unless light pulled, as well as pushed,how would flowers contrive to twist their heads around after the sun?”

  “I don’t know. But the point is, what are these bottles for?”

  While he was still talking, with his hand on the smaller bottle, theother, which was lying on its side, accidentally rolled over in such amanner that the metal caught against the table. He made a movement tostop it, his hand was actually descending, when—the bottle suddenlydisappeared before his eyes. It had not rolled off the table, but hadreally vanished—it was nowhere at all.

  Maskull stared at the table. After a minute he raised his brows, andturned to Nightspore with a smile. “The message grows more intricate.”

  Nightspore looked bored. “The valve became unfastened. The contents haveescaped through the open window toward the sun, carrying the bottle withthem. But the bottle will be burned up by the earth’s atmosphere, andthe contents will dissipate, and will not reach the sun.”

  Maskull listened attentively, and his smile faded. “Does anythingprevent us from experimenting with this other bottle?”

  “Replace it in the cupboard,” said Nightspore. “Arcturus is still belowthe horizon, and you would succeed only in wrecking the house.”

  Maskull remained standing before the window, pensively gazing out at thesunlit moors.

  “
Krag treats me like a child,” he remarked presently. “And perhaps Ireally am a child.... My cynicism must seem most amusing to Krag. Butwhy does he leave me to find out all this by myself—for I don’t includeyou, Nightspore.... But what time will Krag be here?”

  “Not before dark, I expect,” his friend replied.