II

Boring journey of January 11th to 18th with Pabodie and five others had brought up more and more of the Archaean slate; and even I was interested in evident fossil markings in that unbelievably ancient stratum. These markings were of very primitive life forms. However 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.

Lake’s expedition into the unknown sent out reports from the shortwave transmitters on the planes. 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 an ice-melting and boring at a point some three hundred miles away from us. Six hours after a second message told of the frantic work. Three hours later a brief bulletin announced the resumption of the flight. I saw that Lake was extremely excited, and that I could do nothing to check the risk of the whole expedition’s success.

Then, in about an hour and a half more, came that excited message from Lake’s plane, which almost reversed my sentiments:

“10:05 p.m. On the wing. After snowstorm, appeared mountain range ahead higher than any hitherto seen. May equal Himalayas. Probable Latitude 76° 15’, Longitude 113° 10’ E. Two smoking cones. All peaks black and bare of snow. Strong wind impedes navigation.”

After that Pabodie, the men and I stood by the receiver. Thought of these titanic mountains seven hundred miles away inflamed our deepest sense of adventure. In half an hour Lake called us again:

“The plane forced down on plateau in foothills, but nobody hurt and perhaps can repair. We will transfer things to other three planes. You can’t imagine anything like this. Highest peaks must go over thirty-five thousand feet. Atwood will work with theodolite while Carroll and I will go up. Possibly pre-Cambrian slate with other strata mixed in. Queer skyline effects – regular sections of cubes clinging to highest peaks. Like land of mystery in a dream or gateway to forbidden world. Wish you were here to study.”

Though it was sleeping-time, not one of us went to bed. We were sorry, of course, about the damaged aeroplane, but hoped it could be easily fixed. Then, at 11 p.m., came another call from Lake:

“Up with Carroll over highest foothills. Frightful to climb, and hard to go at this altitude, but it’s worth it. Main summits exceed Himalayas, and very queer. Range looks like pre-Cambrian slate, with plain signs of many other strata. 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. Impressive from distance. Carroll thought they were formed of smaller separate pieces, but that is probably an illusion.

Parts, especially upper parts, seem lighter than any visible strata on slopes. Close flying shows many cave-mouths, some unusually regular in outline, square or semicircular. You must come and investigate. I saw rampart squarely on top of one peak. Height seems about thirty thousand to thirty-five thousand feet. I am up twenty-one thousand, five hundred myself, in devilish, gnawing cold. Wind whistles and pipes, but no flying danger.”

I replied that I would join Lake as soon as he could send a plane. It was possible that the eastward flight might not be made, after all, this season.

Lake called me later to say that he had decided to let the camp stay where Moulton’s plane had landed. The ice sheet was very thin, with dark ground here and there visible. Lake spoke of the majesty of the whole scene, and the queer state of his sensations. The height of the five tallest peaks was from thirty thousand to thirty-four thousand feet. The camp lay a little more than five miles from the higher foothills. I could trace a note of subconscious alarm in his words. He was ready to rest now, after a continuous day’s work.

In the morning 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. Pabodie and I prepared to close our base for a short or long period, as the case might be. Some of our conical tents were reinforced by blocks of hard snow, and now we decided to complete the job of making a permanent village. I sent a message that Pabodie and I would be ready for the northwestward journey after one day’s work and one night’s rest.

Lake began to send me the most extraordinary and excited messages. He had resolved to do some local boring as part of the expedition’s general program. In three hours young Gedney – the acting foreman – rushed into the camp with the shocking news.

They had struck a cave. The layer was not more than seven or eight feet deep but extended off in all directions. Its roof and floor were equipped with large stalactites and stalagmites; but the most important things were shells and bones. This medley contained representatives of more Cretaceous, Eocene, and other animal species than the greatest paleontologist could count or classify in a year. Mollusks, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and early mammals – great and small, known and unknown. No wonder Gedney ran back to the camp, and no wonder everyone else dropped work and rushed headlong to a new-found gateway to secrets of inner earth and vanished ages.

Lake wrote a message in his notebook and sent young Moulton to run back to the camp to tell it by wireless. This was my first word of the discovery, and it told of the identification of early shells, bones, remnants of labyrinthodonts and thecodonts, great 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. Lake concluded that the last deposits had occurred during the Oligocene Age, so they are at least thirty million years old.

The inevitable conclusion 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. Lake continued to send us frequent messages. Those who followed the newspapers will remember the excitement created among scientists by that afternoon’s reports. I will give the messages literally as Lake sent them:

“Fowler discovers important fragments in sandstone and limestone. Several distinct triangular striated prints like those in Archaean slate. That is, their source survived from over six hundred million years ago to Comanchian times without morphological changes. Comanchian prints apparently more primitive or decadent than older ones. It will mean to biology what Einstein has meant to mathematics and physics. It joins up with my previous work and conclusions.

As I suspected, the Earth has seen whole cycle or cycles of organic life before known one that begins with Archaeozoic cells. A thousand million years ago the planet was inhabitable. The question arises when, where, and how evolution took place.”

* * *

“Later. Examining certain skeletal fragments of large land and marine creatures and primitive mammals, I found local wounds or injuries to bony structure. One or two cases of clean bones. Not many specimens affected. I am sending to the camp for electric torches. I want to extend search area underground.”

* * *

“Still later. I have found a peculiar soapstone fragment about six inches across and an inch and a half thick, greenish. It is impossible to place its period. It has curious smoothness and regularity and is shaped like five-pointed star with tips broken off, with signs of other cleavage at inward angles and in center of surface. Probably water action. Dogs were barking continuously while we were working, and they hate this soapstone. I must check if it has any peculiar odor. I 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. It is tough as leather, but flexibility retained in places. Six feet end to end, three and five-tenths feet central diameter. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves. In furrows between ridges there are curious combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans. This reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in Necronomicon. The wings are membraneous, ends of body shriveled. I can’t decide whether it is vegetable or animal. I have trouble with dogs. They can’t endure the new specimen, and would probably tear it to pieces if we didn’t keep it at a distance from them.”

* * *

“11:30 p.m. Attention, Dyer, Pabodie, Douglas. Matter of highest importance. Arkham must connect to Kingsport Head Station at once. The strange barrel left prints in rocks. Mills, Boudreau, and Fowler discover thirteen of them. Mixed with curiously rounded soapstone fragments smaller than one previously found. We have brought all to surface. The dogs cannot stand the things.”

“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, folded, spread out of furrows between ridges. Spread wings have edges. 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 tightly folded to torso but expansible to maximum length of over three feet. Like arms of primitive crinoid.”

“At top of torso blunt, bulbous neck of lighter gray, with yellowish five-pointed starfish-shaped head covered with three-inch wiry things of various prismatic colors. At end of each tube is spherical expansion where yellowish membrane rolls back. Five slightly longer reddish tubes start from inner angles of starfish-shaped head. All these tubes, and points of starfish head, are folded tightly down.”

“At bottom of torso, rough counterparts of head arrangements exist. Bulbous light-gray pseudo-neck, without gill suggestions, holds greenish five-pointed starfish arrangement. Tough, muscular arms four feet long and 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. All these parts infinitely tough and leathery, but extremely flexible. Four-foot arms.”

“Cannot yet assign positively to animal or vegetable kingdom. Fabulously early date of evolution, preceding even simplest Archaean protozoa hitherto known.”

“Complete specimens look like creatures of primal myth. Dyer 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 who have created all Earth life. Also like prehistoric folklore things Wilmarth has spoken of – Cthulhu cult, etc.”

“Vast field of study. We will continue to search later. The dogs bark furiously and can’t be held near them. The wind is bad. But I’ve got to dissect one of these things before we go to sleep. I wish I had a real laboratory here. First the world’s greatest mountains, and then this. Thank Pabodie whose device helped to open up the cave. Now please repeat description.”

The sensations of Pabodie and myself were almost beyond description. I sent Lake congratulations as soon as the Arkham’s operator had repeated back the descriptive parts as requested. Of course, rest was an absurd thought; and my only wish was to get to Lake’s camp as quickly as I could.

Lake, sending more messages, told of the completely successful transportation of the fourteen great specimens to the camp. It had been a hard work, for the things were surprisingly heavy; but nine men had accomplished it very neatly. Now some of the party were building a snow corral at a safe distance from the camp, to which the dogs could be brought. The specimens were laid out on the hard snow near the camp, save for one which Lake was trying to dissect.

This dissection seemed to be a greater task than had been expected. The deceptively flexible tissues of the chosen specimen – a powerful and intact one – were really tough. How to make the requisite incisions without violence destructive? But eventually, he succeeded.

Results, quickly reported over the wireless, were baffling and provocative indeed. This thing was no product of any cell growth science knows about. Despite an age of perhaps forty million years, the internal organs were wholly intact. The leathery of almost indestructible quality was an inherent attribute of the thing. At first all that Lake found was dry, but soon organic moisture of pungent and offensive odor was encountered toward the thing’s uninjured side. It was not blood, but thick, dark-green fluid. By the time Lake reached this stage, all thirty-seven dogs had been brought to the corral near the camp, and even at that distance a savage barking was heard.

All guesses about its external members had been correct, one could call the thing animal; but internal inspection brought up many vegetable evidences. It had digestion and circulation, and threw waste matter through the reddish tubes. Cursorily, there were odd evidences of air-storage chambers. Clearly, it was amphibian. Vocal organs were present in connection with the main respiratory system. Articulate speech was impossible, but musical piping notes were highly probable. The muscular system was greatly developed. The nervous system was very complex and highly developed as well. The thing had a set of ganglial centers and connectives. And it probably had more than five senses. It must, Lake thought, have been a creature of keen sensitiveness.

But to give it a name at this stage was impossible. It looked like a radiate, but was clearly something more. It was partly vegetable, but had three-fourths of the essentials of animal structure. How could it undergo its tremendously complex evolution on a new-born earth? Lake recalled the primal myths about Great Old Ones who came down from the stars and concocted earth life; and the wild tales of cosmic hill things from outside told by a folklorist colleague in Miskatonic’s English department. So Lake jocosely named his creatures “The Elder Ones.”

At about 2:30 A.M. Lake, covered the dissected organism with tarpaulin, left the laboratory tent, and studied the intact specimens with renewed interest. He moved all the undissected specimens close together and threw 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 a problem.

It was after four when Lake at last prepared to sleep. He held some friendly chat with Pabodie, and repeated his praise of the really marvelous devices that had helped him make his discovery. Atwood also sent greetings and praises. I gave Lake a warm word of congratulations, and we all agreed to get in touch by wireless at ten in the morning. If the strong wind was then over, Lake would send a plane for the party at my base.