The Masters of Science Fiction - Erle Cox Edition. Erle Cox

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СКАЧАТЬ had better have then."

      Bryce hastily remarked something about sparking plugs.

      "Then, as I said, your car will not be fit to take Marian home in, so it will be necessary for Alan Dundas to drive Marian Seymour home, a distance of five miles–in fact, nearly six–in the moonlight, and," she concluded, "I know the seat of Alan's dog-cart is not very spacious for two. Perhaps you see now?" and she tossed her head disdainfully.

      Bryce spoke slowly. "And Alan called me a Machiavelli! Good Lord! Well, as you please. These manifestations are beyond me."

      That afternoon Dundas watched the dust of Bryce's car until it died away along the track, and after setting his domestic affairs in order returned to his "condemned clayhole." For some time he stood on the edge of the excavation staring thoughtfully into it, but in spite of appearances, his thoughts were far from pick and shovel. Had Doris Bryce only known, she need not have condemned her long-suffering man on her own somewhat biassed and self-satisfied feminine judgment, for Hector's sledge-hammer diplomacy had undoubtedly given the owner of 'Cootamundra' an unexpected mental jolt that for the time being had left the smooth running of his thoughts somewhat out of gear.

      For a long ten minutes Alan stood and stared, then pulling himself together abruptly he scrambled down, and drawing his pick from its cover began to make up for lost time. He worked himself mercilessly in spite of the breathless, sweltering heat.

      The greater part of the afternoon had gone before he paused, after clearing up the bottom, to survey the result of his labour with pardonable satisfaction, and he estimated that a couple of weeks' clear work would see his property the better for a serviceable waterhole. Then, taking up his pick, he struck heavily at a spot on the face some two feet below the surface level. The result of the blow was both unexpected and disconcerting. Hard as the clay was, and braced as his muscles were for the stroke, the jar that followed made his nerves tingle to the shoulder. The pick brought up with a loud, clear ring, while two inches of its tempered point and a fragment of clay flew off at a tangent and struck his foot. Alan swore softly, but sincerely. He picked up the broken point and examined it critically. Then he stooped and inspected the spot where the blow had taken effect. Then he swore again wholeheartedly. "Rock, and I suppose the only rock on the whole dashed place, and I've found it." However, he was not the sort to waste his time in growling, so set to work carefully and scientifically to discover the extent of the obstacle, and the longer he worked the more puzzled he became.

      His usual stopping hour passed. The shadows of the trees and homestead grew to gigantic lengths and grotesque shapes, but the rim of the sun was touching the distant timber belt before he finally flung down his tools.

      In the fading light of the evening, Dundas strolled back to the hole again. He had hurried over a meal that he usually took at his leisure. He had brought with him a cold chisel and a heavy hammer, and after throwing off his coat he jumped into the excavation. There was just enough light for his work, and he selected a spot for an attack. Holding the chisel carefully against the uncovered rock, he brought the hammer down on it again and again with smashing force, bringing a flash of sparks with every blow, until at last a corner of the tool's edge snapped with a ring, and whirred into the dusk like a bullet. Alan examined the dulled and broken edge with a frown, and then peered at the spot on which he had been striking. The stone showed neither chip nor mark. Not the faintest scratch appeared on the hard glass-smooth face after a battering that would have scored and dented a steel plate. Just as wise as when he started his investigation, he returned the ruined chisel and hammer to the tool shed, and went back to the house.

      The book Dundas selected lay on his lap unopened for half an hour. The pipe he lit hung between his lips, cold after a few pulls, and he stared into the dark through the open window. Finally he pulled himself together and sat up.

      At last he stopped, at peace with himself and the world. Close beside him and just where the light fell from the open window, a vine shoot from the verandah had sent down a tendril, and along the tendril, doubtless attracted by the light, appeared, cautiously feeling its way, a fat black vine caterpillar. The insect arrived at the end of the tendril and reared up as if seeking assistance to continue its journey. Dundas watched it idly. With absurd persistence it reached from side to side into space. Then, speaking half aloud, (habit formed of his solitary life), he addressed his visitor.

      "My friend, can you tell me this? I have to-day broken up ground that I am absolutely sure has never been broken before, and yet below the surface I have come on rock that is not rock. It is a rock that I am prepared to stake my life on came out of a human workshops and not nature's. Perhaps you can tell me how that human handiwork comes to be embedded in virgin soil that has never been stirred since time began. No, Mr. Caterpillar, the smoothness of that rock, which is not a rock, does not come from the action of water. I thought so myself at first. No, and again, no. It is human work, and how did it get there? Give it up? Well, so do I–for the present. I'm off to bed, old chap, and I'm very much obliged for your intelligent attention."

      Ten minutes later darkness and silence held the homestead.

      Chapter III

       Table of Contents

      Next morning Alan Dundas returned to his work with an interest he had never known before.

      When he had stopped the night before, he had uncovered about two square yards of the obstacle that had broken first his pick and then his cold chisel. In colour it was a dull red, not unlike red granite, but without a trace of "grain." The surface was as smooth as glass, but it was the indication of a symmetrical shape that puzzled Dundas most. Where he had cut away the clay low down in the hole the rock sprang perpendicularly from the ground for about two feet, then from a clean, perfectly defined line it came away to form a dome. Of that he could make no mistake. Running his eye over the uncovered space, he estimated roughly that, supposing the lines continued as they appeared, he had unearthed the edge of a cylindrical construction, terminated by an almost flat dome, of some twenty-five to thirty feet in diameter. How far down the foundations might go he could not even hazard a guess.

      So, filled with curiosity, he set to work, and as the hours passed the original idea of tank-sinking fled, and he worked solely to solve the mystery he had unearthed. The course he had to follow took his trench across the boundary he had first marked out, but as he worked surmise became fact. The boast he had made the day before was forgotten, and he ate his midday meal standing in his kitchen, and washed it down with a drink from his water-bag. By evening he surveyed the results of his day's work, the most perplexed man in Christendom. To follow the course of what, for want of a better name, he called the rock, he had cut around the segment of a circle of about the size of his original estimate for about twenty feet. He had made his cut about three feet wide and shoulder deep, and all round he had found the clean cut line of the spring of the flat dome as clearly defined as if it had been moulded, and every inch he had uncovered strengthened his first idea that the work was from human hands. So far as he had examined it he was absolutely at a loss to account for its purpose. It was like nothing he had ever seen or heard of, and moreover again and again came back the certainty that the surface of the soil had been hitherto unbroken.

      For a while he considered whether he should catch Billy Blue Blazes and drive into Glen Cairn to talk the matter over with Bryce, but the mystery had eaten into his soul, and in the end he determined at all costs to solve it for himself. When he had arrived at this resolution he felt a keen satisfaction in the thought that his place was so far removed from the beaten track.

      It was not until late in the afternoon of the following day when the strain of the past few days was beginning to tell on his energy, that he came on the first break in the wall, and it so far revived СКАЧАТЬ