II
Popular
imagination, I judge, responding actively to our wireless bulletins of
Lake's start northwestward into regions never trodden by human foot or
penetrated by human imagination, though we did not mention his wild hopes
of revolutionizing the entire sciences of biology and geology. His
preliminary ledging and boring journey of January 11th to 18th with Pabodie
and five others--marred by the loss of two dogs in an upset when crossing
one of the great pressure ridges in the ice--had brought up more and more
of the Archaean slate; and even I was interested by the singular profusion
of evident fossil markings in that unbelievably ancient stratum.
These markings, however, were of very primitive life forms involving no
great paradox except that any life forms should occur in rock as definitely
pre-Cambrian as this seemed to be; hence I still failed to see the good
sense of Lake's demand for an interlude in our time-saving program--an
interlude requiring the use of all four planes, many men, and the whole
of the expedition's mechanical apparatus. I did not, in the end,
veto the plan, though I decided not to accompany the northwestward party
despite Lake's plea for my geological advice. While they were gone,
I would remain at the base with Pabodie and five men
and work out final plans for
the eastward shift. In preparation for this transfer, one of the
planes had begun to move up a good gasoline supply form McMurdo Sound;
but this could wait temporarily. I kept with me one sledge and nine
dogs, since it is unwise to be at any time without possible transportation
in an utterly tenantless world of aeon-long death.
Lake's
subexpedition into the unknown, as everyone will recall, sent out its own
reports from the shortwave transmitters on the planes; these being simultaneously
picked up by our apparatus at the southern base and by the Arkham
at McMurdo Sound, whence they were relayed to the outside world on wave
lengths up to fifty meters. The start was made January 22nd at 4
a.m.; and the first wireless message we received came only two hours later,
when Lake spoke of descending and starting a small-scale ice-melting and
bore at a point some three hundred miles away from us. Six hours
after that a second and very excited message told of the frantic, beaver-like
work whereby a shallow shaft had been sunk and blasted, culminating in
the discovery of slate fragments with several markings approximately like
the one which had caused the original puzzlement.
Three
hours later a brief bulletin announced the resumption of the flight in
the teeth of a raw and piercing gale; and when I dispatched a message of
protest against further hazards, Lake replied curtly that his new specimens
made any hazard worth taking. I saw that his excitement had reached
the point of mutiny, and that I could do nothing to check this headlong
risk of the whole expedition's success; but it was appalling to think of
his plunging deeper and deeper into that treacherous and sinister white
immensity of tempests and unfathomed mysteries which stretched off for
some fifteen hundred miles to the half-known, half-suspected coast line
of Queen Mary and Knox Lands.
Then,
in about an hour and a half more, came that doubly excited message from
Lake's moving plane, which almost reversed my sentiments and made me wish
I had accompanied the party:
"10:05
P.M. On the wing. After snowstorm, have spied mountain range
ahead higher than any hitherto seen. May equal Himalayas, allowing
for height of plateau. Probable Latitude 76° 15', Longitude 113°
10' E. Reaches far as can see to right and left. Suspicion
of two smoking cones. All peaks black and bare of snow. Gale
blowing off them impedes navigation."
After
that Pabodie, the men, and I hung breathlessly over the receiver.
Thought of this titanic mountain rampart seven hundred miles away inflamed
our deepest sense of adventure; and we rejoiced that our expedition, if
not ourselves personally, had been its discoverers. In half and hour
Lake called us again:
"Moulton's
plane forced down on plateau in foothills, but nobody hurt and perhaps
can repair. Shall transfer essentials to other three for return or
further moves if necessary, but no more heavy plane travel needed just
now. Mountains surpass anything in imagination. Am going up
scouting in Carroll's plane, with all weight out.
"You
can't imagine anything like this. Highest peaks must go over thirty-five
thousand feet. Everest out of the running. Atwood to work out
height with theodolite while Carroll and I go up. Probably wrong
about cones, for formations look stratified. Possibly pre-Cambrian
slate with other strata mixed in. Queer sky line effects–regular
sections of cubes clinging to highest peaks. Whole thing marvelous
in red-gold light of low sun. Like land of mystery in a dream or
gateway to forbidden world of untrodden wonder. Wish you were here
to study."
Though
is was technically sleeping time, not one of us listeners thought for a
moment of retiring. It must have been a good deal the same at McMurdo
Sound, where the supply cache and the Arkham were also getting the
messages; for Captain Douglas gave out a call congratulating everybody
on the important find, and Sherman, the cache operator, seconded his sentiments.
We were sorry, of course, about the damaged aëroplane, but hoped it
could be easily mended. Then, at 11 P.M., came another call from
Lake:
"Up
with Carroll over highest foothills. Don't dare try really tall peaks
in present weather, but shall later. Frightful work climbing, and
hard going at this altitude, but worth it. Great range fairly solid,
hence can't get any glimpses beyond. Main summits exceed Himalayas,
and very queer. Range looks like pre-Cambrian slate, with plain signs
of many other upheaved strata. Was wrong about volcanism. Goes
father in either direction than we can see. Swept clear of snow above
about twenty-one thousand feet.
"Odd
formations on slopes of highest mountains. Great low square blocks
with exactly vertical sides, and rectangular lines of low, vertical ramparts,
like the old Asian castles clinging to steep mountains in Roerich's paintings.
Flew close to some, and Carroll thought they were formed of smaller pieces,
but that is probably weathering. Most edges crumbled and rounded
off as if exposed to storms and climate for millions of years."
"Parts,
especially upper parts, seem to be of lighter-colored rocks than any visible
strata on slopes proper, hence of evidently crystalline origin. Close
flying shows many cave mouths, some unusually regular in outline, square
or semi-circular. You must come and investigate. Think I saw
rampart squarely on top of one peak. Height seems about thirty thousand
to thirty-five thousand feet. Am up twenty-one thousand, five hundred
myself, in devilish, gnawing cold. Wind whistles and pipes through
passes and in and out of caves, but no flying danger so far."
From
then on for another half hour Lake kept up a running fire of comment, and
expressed his intention of climbing some of the peaks on foot. I
replied that I would join him as soon as he could send a plane, and that
Pabodie and I would work out the best gasoline plan--just where and how
to concentrate our supply in view of the expedition's altered character.
Obviously, Lake's boring operations, as well as his aëroplane activities,
would require a great deal for the new base which he planned to establish
at the foot of the mountains; and it was possible that the eastward flight
might not be made, after all, this season. In connection with this
business I called Captain douglas and asked him to get as much as possible
out of the ships and up the barrier with the single dog team we had left
there. A direct route across the unknown region between Lake and
McMurdo Sound was what we really ought to establish.
Lake
called me later to say that he had decided to let the camp stay where Moulton's
plane had been forced down, and where repairs had already progressed somewhat.
The ice sheet was very thin, with dark ground here and there visible, and
he would sink some borings and blasts at that very point before making
any sledge trips or climbing expeditions. He spoke of the ineffable
majesty of the whole scene, and the queer state of his sensations at being
in the lee of vast, silent pinnacles whose ranks shot up like a wall reaching
the sky at the world's rim. Atwood's theodilite observations had
placed the height of the five tallest peaks at from thirty thousand to
thirty-four thousand feet. The wind-swept nature of the terrain clearly
disturbed Lake, for it argued the occasional existence of prodigious gales,
violent beyond anything we had so far encountered. His camp lay a
little more thn five miles from where the higher foothills rose abruptly.
I could almost trace a note of subconscious alarm in his words--flashed
across a glacial void of seven hundred miles--as he urged that we all hasten
with the matter and get the strange, new region disposed of as soon as
possible. he was about to rest now, after a continuous day's work
of almost unparalleled speed, strenuousness, and results.
In the
morning I had a three-cornered wireless talk with Lake and Captain Douglas
at their widely separated bases. It was agreed that one of Lake's
planes would come to my base for Pabodie, the five men, and myself, as
well as for all the fuel it could carry. The rest of the fuel question,
depending on our decision about an easterly trip, could wait for a few
days, since Lake had enough for immediate camp heat and borings.
Eventually the old southern base ought to be restocked but if we postponed
the easterly trip we would not use it till the next summer, and, meanwhile,
Lake must send a plane to explore a direct route between his new mountains
and McMurdo Sound.
Pabodie
and I prepared to close out base for a short or long period, as the case
might be. If we wintered in the antarctic we would probably fly straight
for Lake's base to the Arkham without returning to this spot.
Some of our conical tents had already been reinforced by blocks of hard
snow, and now we decided to complete the job of making a permanent village.
Owing to a very liberal tent supply, Lake had with him all that his base
would need, even after our arrival. I wirelessed that Pabodie and
I would be ready for the northwestward move after one day's work and one
night's rest.
Our
labors, however, were not very steady after 4 P.M., for about that time
Lake began sending in the most extraordinary and excited messages.
His working day had started unpropitiously, since an aëroplane survey
of the nearly-exposed rock surfaces showed an entire absence of those Archaean
and primordial strata for which he was looking, and which formed so great
a part of the colossal peaks that loomed up at a tantalizing distance from
the camp. Most of the rocks glimpsed where apparently Jurassic or
Comanchian sandstones and Permian and Triassic schists, with now and then
a glossy black outcropping suggesting a hard and slaty coal. This
rather discouraged Lake, whose plans all hinged on unearthing specimens
more than five hundred million years older. It was clear to
him that in order to recover the Archaean slate vein in which he had found
the odd markings, he would have to make a long sledge trip from these foothills
to the steep slopes of the gigantic mountains themselves.
He had
resolved, nevertheless, to do some local boring as part of the expedition's
general program; hence he set up the drill and put five men to work with
it while the rest finished settling the camp and repairing the damaged
aëroplane. The softest visible rock--a sandstone about a quarter
of a mile from the camp--had been chose for the first sampling; and the
drill made excellent progress without much supplementary blasting.
It was about three hours afterward, following the first really heavy blast
of the operation, that the shouting of the drill crew was heard; and that
young Gedney--the acting foreman--rushed into the camp with the startling
news.
They
had struck a cave. Early in the boring the sandstone had given place
to a vein of Comanchian limestones, full of minute fossil cephalopods,
corals, echini, and spirifera, and vertebrate bones--the latter probably
of teleosts, sharks, and ganoids. This, in itself, was important
enough, as affording the first vertebrate fossils the expedition had yet
secured; but when shortly afterward the drill head dropped through the
stratum into apparent vacancy, a wholly new and doubly intense wave of
excitement spread among the excavators. A good-sized blast had laid
open the subterrene secret; and now, through a jagged aperture perhaps
five feet across and three feet thick, there yawned before the avid searchers
a section of shallow limestone hollowing worn more then fifty million years
ago by the trickling ground waters of a bygone tropic world.
The
hollowed layer was not more than seven or eight feet deep but extended
off indefinitely in all directions and had a fresh, slightly moving air
which suggested its membership in an extensive subterranean system.
Its roof and floor were abundantly equipped with large stalactites and
stalagmites, some of which met in columnar form: but important above all
else was the vast deposit of shells and bones, which in places nearly choked
the passage. Washed down from unknown jungles of Mesozoic tree ferns
and fungi, and forests of Tertiary cycads, fan plants, and primitive angiosperms,
this osseous medley contained representatives of more Cretaceous, Eocene,
and other animal species than the greatest paleontologist could have counted
or classified in a year. Mollusks, crustacean armor, fishes, amphibians,
reptiles, birds, and early mammals--great and small, known and unknown.
No wonder Gedney ran back to the camp shouting, and no wonder every one
else dropped work and rushed headlong through the biting cold
to where the tall derrick marked
a new-found gateway to secrets of inner earth and vanished aeons.
When
Lake had satisfied the first keen edge of his curiosity he scribbled a
message in his notebook and had young Moulton run back to the camp to dispatch
it by wireless. This was my first word of the discovery, and it told of
the identification of early shells, bones of ganoids and placoderms, remnants
of labyrinthodonts and thecodonts, great mosasaur skull fragments, dinosaur
vertebrae and armor plates, pterodactyl teeth and wing bones, Archaeopteryx
debris, Miocene sharks' teeth, primitive bird skulls, and other bones of
archaic mammals such as palaeotheres, Xiphodons, Eohippi, Oreodons, and
titanotheres. There was nothing as recent as a mastodon, elephant,
true camel, deer, or bovine animal; hence Lake concluded that the last
deposits had occurred during the Oligocene Age, and that the hollowed stratum
had lain in its present dried, dead, and inaccessible state for at least
thirty million years.
On the
other hand, the prevalence of very early life forms was singular in the
highest degree. Though the limestone formation was, on the evidence
of such typical imbedded fossils as ventriculites, positively and unmistakably
Comanchian and not a particle earlier, the free fragments in the hollow
space included a surprising proportion from organisms hitherto considered
as peculiar to far older periods--even rudimentary fishes, mollusks, and
corals as remote as the Silurian or Ordovician. The inevitable inference
was that in this part of the world there had been a remarkable and unique
degree of continuity between the life of over three hundred million years
ago and that of only thirty million years ago. How far this continuity
had extended beyond the Oligocene Age when the cavern was closed was of
course past all speculation. In any event, the coming of the frightful
ice in the Pleistocene some five hundred thousand years ago--a mere yesterday
as compared with the age of this cavity--must have put an end to any primal
forms which had locally managed to outlive their common terms.
Lake
was not content to let his first message stand, but had another bulletin
written and dispatched across the snow to the camp before Moulton could
get back. After that Moulton stayed at the wireless in one of the
planes, transmitting to me--and to the Arkham for relaying to the
outside world--the frequent postscripts which Lake sent him by a succession
of messengers. Those who followed the newspapers will remember the
excitement created among men of science by that afternoon's reports--reports
which had finally led, after all these years, to the organization of that
very Starkweather-Moore Expedition which I am so anxious to dissuade from
its purposes. I had better give the messages literally as Lake sent
them, and as our base operator McTighe translated them from the pencil
shorthand:
"Fowler
makes discovery of highest importance in sandstone and limestone fragments
from blasts. Several distinct triangular striated prints like those
in Archaean slate, proving that source survived from over six hundred million
years ago to Comanchian times without more than moderate morphological
changes and decrease in average size, Comanchian prints apparently more
primitive or decadent, if anything, than older ones. Emphasize importance
of discovery in press. Will mean to biology what Einstein has meant
to mathematics and physics. Joins up with my previous work and amplifies
conclusions.
"Appears
to indicate, as I suspected, that earth has seen whole cycle of cycles
of organic life before known one that begins with Archaeozoic cells.
Was evolved and specialized not later than a thousand million years ago,
when the planet was young and recently uninhabitable for any life forms
or nomal protoplasmic structure. Question arises when, where,
and how development took place."
-----------
"Later.
Examining certain skeletal fragments of large land and marine saurians
and primitive mammals, find singular local wounds or injuries to bony structure
not attributable to any known predatory or carnivorous animal of any period,
of two sorts-- straight, penetrant bores, and apparently hacking incisions.
One or two cases of cleanly severed bones. Not many specimens affected.
Am sending to camp for electric torches. Will extend are underground
by hacking away stalactites."
-----------
"Still
later. Have found peculiar soapstone fragments about six inches across
and an inch and a half thick, wholly unlike any visible local formation
- greenish, but no evidences to place its period. Has curious smoothness
and regularity. Shaped like five-pointed star with tips broken off,
and signs of other cleavage at inward angles and in center of surface.
Small smooth depression in center of unbroken surface. Arouses much
curiosity as to source and weathering. Probably some freak of water
action. Carroll, with magnifier, thinks he can make out additional
markings of geological significance. Groups of tiny dots in regular
patterns. Dogs growing uneasy as we work, and seem to hate this soapstone.
Must see if it has any peculiar odor. Will
report again when Mills gets
back with light and we start on underground area."
-----------
"10:15
P.M. Important discovery. Orrendorf and Watkins, working underground
at 9:45 with light, found monstrous barrel-shaped fossil of wholly unknown
nature; probably vegetable unless overgrown specimen of unknown marine
radiata. Tissue evidently preserved by mineral salts. tough
as leather, but astonishing flexibility retained in places. Marks
of broken-off parts at ends and around sides. Six feet end to end,
three and five-tenths feet central diameter, tapering one foot at each
end. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves.
Lateral breakages, as of thinnish stalks, are at equator in middle of these
ridges. In furrows between ridges are curious growths - combs or
wings that fold up and spread out like fans. All greatly damaged
but one, which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangements
reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder
Things in Necronomicon.
"Their
wings seem to be membranous, stretched on frame work of glandular tubing.
Apparent minute orifices in frame tubing at wing tips. Ends of body
shriveled, giving no clue to interior or to what has been broken off there.
Must dissect when we get back to camp. Can't decide whether vegetable
or animal. Many features obviously of almost incredible primitiveness.
Have set all hands cutting stalactites and looking for further specimens.
Additional scarred bones found, but these must wait. Having trouble
with dogs. They can't endure the new specimens, and would probably
tear it to pieces if we didn't keep it as a distance from them."
------------
"11:30
P.M. Attention, Dyer, Pabodie, Douglas. Matter of highest -
I might say transcendent - importance. Arkham must relay to
Kingsport Head Station at once. Strange barrel growth is the Archaean
thing that left prints on rocks. Mills, Boudreau, and Fowler discover
cluster of thirteen more at underground point forty feet from aperture.
Mixed with curiously rounded and configured soapstone fragments smaller
than one previously found - star-shaped, but no marks of breakage except
at some of the points.
"Of
organic specimens, eight apparently perfect, with all appendages.
Have brought all to surface, leading off dogs to distance. They cannot
stand the things. Give close attention to description and repeat
back for accuracy. Papers must get this right.
"Objects
are eight feet long all over. Six-foot, five-ridged barrel torso
three and five-tenths feet central diameter, one foot end diameters.
Dark gray, flexible, and infinitely tough. Seven-foot membranous
wings of same color, found folded, spread out of furrows between ridges.
Wing framework tubular or glandular, of lighter gray, with orifices at
wing tips. Spread wings have serrated edge. Around equator,
one at central apex of each of the five vertical, stave-like ridges are
five systems of light gray flexible arms or tentacles found tightly folded
to torso but expansible to maximum length of over three feet. Like
arms of primitive crinoid. Single stalks three inches diameter branch
after six inches into five sub-stalks, each of which branches after eight
inches into small, tapering tentacles or tendrils, giving each stalk a
total of twenty-five tentacles.
"At
top of torso blunt, bulbous neck of lighter gray, with gill-like suggestions,
holds yellowish five-pointed starfish-shaped apparent head covered with
three-inch wiry cilia of various prismatic colors.
"Head
thick and puffy, about two feet point to point, with three-inch flexible
yellowish tubes projecting from each point. Slit in exact center
of top probably breathing aperture. At end of each tube is spherical
expansion where yellowish membrane rolls back on handling to reveal glassy,
red-irised globe, evidently an eye.
"Five
slightly longer reddish tubes start from inner angles of starfish-shaped
head and end in saclike swellings of same color which, upon pressure, open
to bell-shaped orifices two inches maximum diameter and lined with sharp,
white tooth-like projections -probably mouths. All these tubes, cilia,
and points of starfish head, found folded tightly down; tubes and points
clinging to bulbous neck and torso. Flexibility surprising despite
vast toughness.
"At
bottom of torso, rough but dissimilarly functioning counterparts of head
arrangements exist. Bulbous light-gray pseudoneck, without gill suggestions,
holds greenish five-pointed starfish arrangement.
"Tough,
muscular arms four feet long and tapering from seven inches diameter at
base to about two and five-tenths at point. To each point is attached
small end of a greenish five-veined membranous triangle eight inches long
and six wide at farther end. This is the paddle, fin, or pseudofoot
which has made prints in rocks from a thousand million to fifty or sixty
million years ago.
"From
inner angles of starfish arrangements project two-foot reddish tubes tapering
from three inches diameter at base to one at tip. Orifices at tips.
All these parts infinitely tough and leathery, but extremely flexible.
Four-foot arms with paddles undoubtedly used for locomotion of some sort,
marine or otherwise. When moved, display suggestions of exaggerated
muscularity. As found, all these projections tightly fold over pseudoneck
and end of torso, corresponding to projections at other end.
"Cannot
yet assign positively to animal or vegetable kingdom, but odds now favor
animal. Probably represents incredibly advanced evolution of radiata
without loss of certain primitive features. Echinoderm resemblances
unmistakable despite local contradictory evidences.
"Wing
structure puzzles in view of probable marine habitat, but may have use
in water navigation. Symmetry is curiously vegetablelike, suggesting
vegetable's essential up-and-down structure rather than animal's fore-and-aft
structure. Fabulously early date of evolution, preceding even simplest
Archaean protozoa hitherto known, baffles all conjecture as to origin.
"Complete
specimens have such uncanny resemblance to certain creatures of primal
myth that suggestion of ancient existence outside antarctic becomes inevitable.
Bryer and Pabodie have read Necronomicon and seen Clark Ashton Smith's
nightmare paintings based on text, and will understand when I speak of
Elder Things supposed to have created all earth life as jest or mistake.
Students have always thought conception formed from morbid imaginative
treatment of very ancient tropical radiata. Also like prehistoric
folklore things Wilmarth has spoken of - Cthulhu cult appendages, etc.
"Vast
field of study opened. Deposits probably of late Cretaceous or early
Eocene period, judging from associated specimens. Massive stalagmites
deposited above them. Hard work hewing out, but toughness prevented
damage. State of preservation miraculous, evidently owing to limestone
action. No more found so far, but will resume search later.
Job now to get fourteen huge specimens to camp without dogs, which bark
furiously and can't be trusted near them.
"With
nine men--three left to guard the dogs--we ought to manage the three sledges
fairly well, though wind is bad. Must establish plane communications
with McMurdo Sound and begin shipping material. But I've got to dissect
one of these things before we take any rest. Wish I had a real laboratory
here. Dyer better kick himself for having tried to stop my westward
trip. First the world's greatest mountains, and then this.
If this last isn't the high spot of the expedition, I don't know what is.
We're made scientifically. Congrats, Pabodie, on the drill that opened
up the cave. Now will Arkham please repeat description?"
The
sensations of Pabodie and myself at receipt of this report were almost
beyond description, nor were our companions much behind us in enthusiasm.
McTighe, who had hastily translated a few high spots as they came from
the droning receiving set, wrote out the entire message from his shorthand
version as soon as Lake's operator signed off. All appreciated the
epoch-making significance of the discovery, and I sent Lake congratulations
as soon as the Arkham's operator had repeated back the descriptive
parts as requested; and my example was followed by Sherman fro his station
at the McMurdo Sound supply cache, as well as by Captain Douglas of the
Arkham.
Later, as head of the expedition, I added some remarks to be relayed through
the Arkham to the outside world. Of course, rest was an absurd
thought amidst this excitement; and my only wish was to get to Lake's camp
as quickly as I could. It disappointed me when he sent word that
a rising mountain gale made early aërial travel impossible.
But
within an hour and a half interest again rose to banish disappointment.
Lake, sending more messages, told of the completely successful transportation
of the fourteen great specimens to the camp. It had been a hard pull,
for the things were surprisingly heavy; but nine men had accomplished it
very neatly. Now some of the party were hurriedly building a snow
corral at a safe distance from the camp, to which the dogs could be brought
for greater convenience in feeding. The specimens were laid out on
the hard snow near the camp, save for one on which Lake was making crude
attempts at dissection.
This
dissection seemed to be a greater task than had been expected, for, despite
the heat of a gasoline stove in the newly raised laboratory tent, the deceptively
flexible tissues of the chosen specimen--a powerful and intact one--lost
nothing of their more than leathery toughness. Lake was puzzled as
to how he might make the requisite incisions without violence destructive
enough to upset all the structural niceties he was looking for. He
had, it is true, seven more perfect specimens; but these were too few to
use up recklessly unless the cave might later yield an unlimited supply.
Accordingly he removed the specimen and dragged in one which, though having
remnants of the starfish arrangements at both ends, was badly crushed and
partly disrupted along one of the great torso furrows.
Results,
quickly reported over the wireless, were baffling and provocative indeed.
Nothing like delicacy or accuracy was possible with instruments hardly
able to cut the anomalous tissue, but the little that was achieved left
us all awed and bewildered. Existing biology would have to be wholly
revised, for this thing was no product of any cell growth science knows
about. There had been scarcely any mineral replacement, and despite
an age of perhaps forty million years the internal organs were wholly intact.
The leathery, undeteriorative, and almost indestructible quality was an
inherent attribute of the thing's form of organization, and pertained to
some paleogean cycle of invertebrate evolution utterly beyond our powers
of speculation. At first all that Lake found was dry, but as the
heated tent produced its thawing effect, organic moisture of pungent and
offensive odor was encountered toward the thing's uninjured side.
It was not blood, but a thick, dark-green fluid apparently answering the
same purpose. By the time Lake reached this stage all thirty-seven
dogs had been brought to the still uncompleted corral near the camp, and
even at that distance set up a savage barking and show of restlessness
at the acrid, diffusive smell.
Far
from helping to place the strange entity, this provisional dissection merely
deepened its mystery. All guesses about its external members had
been correct, and on the evidence of these one could hardly hesitate to
call the thing animal; but internal inspection brought up so many vegetable
evidences that Lake was left hopelessly at sea. It had digestion
and circulation, and eliminated waster matter through the reddish tubes
of its starfish-shaped base. Cursorily, one would say that its respiratory
apparatus handled oxygen rather than carbon dioxide; and there were odd
evidences of air-storage chambers and methods of shifting respiration from
the external orifice to at least two other fully developed breathing systems
- gills and pores. Clearly, it was amphibian and probably adapted
to long airless hibernation periods as wall. Vocal organs seemed
present in connection with the main respiratory system. Articulate
speech, in the sense of syllable utterances, seemed barely conceivable,
but musical piping notes covered a wide range were highly probable.
The muscular system was almost prematurely developed.
The
nervous system was so complex and highly developed as to leave Lake aghast.
though excessively primitive and archaic in some respects, the thing had
a set of ganglial centers and connectives arguing the very extremes of
specialized development. Its five-lobed brain was surprisingly advanced,
and there were signs of a sensory equipment, served in part through the
wiry cilia of the head, involving factors alien to any other terrestrial
organism. Probably it has more than five senses, so that its habits
could not be predicted from any existing analogy. It must, Lake thought,
have been a creature of keen sensitiveness and delicately differentiated
functions in its primal world - much like the ants and bees of today.
It reproduced like the vegetable cryptograms, especially the Pteridophyta,
having spore cases at the tips of the wings and evidently developing from
a thallus or prothallus.
But
to give it a name at this stage was mere folly. It looked like a
radiate, but was clearly something more. It was partly vegetable,
but had three-fourths of the essentials of animal structure. That
it was marine in origin, its symmetrical contour and certain other attributes
clearly indicated; yet one could not be exact as to the limit of its later
adaptions. The wings, after all, held a persistent suggestion of the aërial.
How it could have undergone its tremendously complex evolution on an new-born
earth in time to leave prints in Archaean rocks was so far beyond conception
as to make Lake whimsically recall the primal myths about Great Old Ones
who filtered down from the stars and concocted earth life as a joke or
mistake; and the wild tales of cosmic hill things from outside told by
a folklorist colleague in Miskatonic's English department.
Naturally,
he considered the possibility of the pre-Cambrian prints having been made
by a less evolved ancestor of the present specimens, but quickly rejected
this too-facile theory upon considering the advanced structural qualities
of the older fossils. If anything, the later contours showed decadence
rather than higher evolution. The size of the pseudofeet had decreased,
and the whole morphology seemed coarsened and simplified. Moreover,
the nerves and organs just examined held singular suggestions of retrogression
from forms still more complex. Atrophied and vestigial parts were
surprisingly prevalent. Altogether, little could be said to have
been solved; and Lake fell back on mythology for a provisional name - jocosely
dubbing his finds "The Elder Ones."
At about
two-thirty A.M., having decided to postpone further work and get a little
rest, he covered the dissected organism with a tarpaulin, emerged from
the laboratory tent, and studied the intact specimens with renewed interest.
The ceaseless antarctic sun had begun to limber up their tissues a trifle,
so that the head points and tubes of two or three showed signs of unfolding;
but Lake did not believe there was nay danger of immediate decomposition
in the almost sub-zero air. He did, however, move all the undissected
specimens close together and throw a spare tent over them in order to keep
off the direct solar rays. That would also help to keep their possible
scent away from the dogs, whose hostile unrest was really becoming a problem,
even at their substantial distance and behind the higher and higher snow
walls which an increased quota of the men were hastening to raise around
their quarters. He had to weight down the corners of the tent cloth
with heavy blocks of snow to hold it in place amidst the rising gale, for
the titan mountains seemed about to deliver some gravely severe blasts.
Early apprehension about sudden Antarctic winds were revived and under
Atwood's supervision precautions were taken to bank the tents, new dog
corral, and crude aëroplane shelters with snow on the mountainward
side. These latter shelters, begun with hard snow blocks during odd
moments, were by no means as high as they should have been; and Lake finally
detached all hands from other tasks to work on them.
It was
after four when Lake at last prepared to sign off and advised up all to
share the rest period his outfit would take when the shelter walls were
a little higher. He held some friendly chat with Pabodie over the
ether, and repeated his praise of the really marvelous drills that had
helped him make his discovery. Atwood also sent greetings and praises.
I gave Lake a warm word of congratulations, owning up that he was right
about the western trip, and we all agreed to get in touch by wireless at
ten in the morning. If the gale was then over, Lake would send a
plane for the party at my base. Just before retiring I dispatched
a final message to the Arkham with instructions about toning down
the day's news for the outside world, since the full details seemed radical
enough to rouse a wave of incredulity until further substantiated.
Go to Next Chapter.....
