Ziegler patted his fellow prisoner on his humming life-pack. ‘Rather you than me!’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll be keeping you on a tight leash while you’re inside,’ Stahl said as he snapped a life-line from a small pack at his feet to a clip that dangled from the webbing across Konrad’s chest. ‘I can’t have you wondering off like a disobedient hound on a hunt.’
Konrad silently accepting his mission because perhaps more than anyone else who stood on this wind-swept terrace he needed to know what was inside the spire. Its clarion calls to him in his dreams needed to be answered. This unspoken feeling to find out the truth swept away his fear.
Stahl placed his hand on Konrad’s shoulder. ‘We’ll be listening, so report everything you see inside, no matter how small and insignificant you think it may be. Understand?’
Konrad nodded as he tested the tether.
‘And no tricks,’ Stahl added. ‘Explore and report, simple as that.’
‘I understand,’ Konrad said.
‘If you deviate from that path, I swear I’ll cut you loose and let this tower become your tomb,’ Stahl said with a snake-like smile.
Konrad turned, took a deep breath and then waded into the darkness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Konrad crawled through the earthen tunnel, his backpack scraping softly along the solid peak of the entrance, while his visor and chest controls burrowed through the compacted dirt below him. As he clambered deeper, the light-beams of his Nazi masters grew dimmer, until only his single helmet-mounted torch remained to illuminate the cramped tunnel. From his awkward point of view the tunnel seemed endless, its narrow tube stretching to infinity. The feeling of claustrophobia was acute as his arms and legs struggled to manoeuvre his swollen form along, while his laboured breathing sounded deafening inside the helmet. His dust-smeared visor pressed deeply into the grimy earth, his lamp magnifying the particles into forbidding rocks and boulders. Breathing deeply, Konrad reached forward and crawled at the compacted dust until a furrow appeared that was deep enough for him to slither through like a maggot rooting through a rotten piece of meat.
Eventually Konrad made it past the peak of the mound and encountered a gentle incline beyond. After a few moments, Konrad could clamber to his feet and carefully walk his way down the mound. Swirls of dust erupted with each foot-fall, while a steady stream of disturbed material followed down in his wake. In normal circumstances the gentle incline would have presented no problem to the prisoner, but the energy-sapping powder and the bulk of the space-suit soon took their toll upon him. The cool artificial air within the suit clung to his sweat-covered features like a blanket. Eventually, Konrad reached solid ground, and after gathering his thoughts and wiping his dirty visor clean, he waited for the dusty cloud that had accompanied him down the slope like an irritating salesman to settle.
The prisoner glanced at his suit’s controls. He checked its air-tanks and saw that their volumes, including the emergency back-up, were well within the safe green section of the display. Satisfied that he could continue, Konrad looked ahead and widened the lamp’s beam. He still remained in the large triangular tunnel and outside the halo of light, the darkness still completely isolated him. He reached out and touched the tunnel’s wall to gain some sense of perspective, but for all he knew, a set of treacherous stairs, an impenetrable wall or even a bottomless pit was but a single step away, and so in place of any visual stimuli, his imagination conjured up all manner of abominations hiding in the gloom.
Pressing into the darkness, his lamp played across the angular walls of the hidden corridor and a featureless floor, the surface of which was covered by a powdery veneer. The layer of dust was smooth and virginal, apparently untouched for years, perhaps even centuries.
Konrad stepped closer to the wall and saw his own reflection standing before him. His gaunt face stared back at him, his eyes tired, yet focussed. His reflection triggered a mischievous reaction from Konrad. Carefully he crouched down and used his gloved finger to scrawl in the dust: KONRAD WAS HERE! Ever since he was a child, Konrad had been unable to resist walking by a patch of wet cement without scrawling his name or initials into the sticky material. Even as an adult at the school he taught, there were numerous examples of his handiwork; in the schoolyard, the toilets, even at the base of the new memorial to the Überführer that had been erected at the school gates. This practice had even continued at Neu Magdeburg, the most obvious example at the camp being the initials he had scrawled next to his crude depiction of the spire above his bunk.
He stood back and admired his latest piece of graffiti, but as he gazed proudly at the crude scrawl, a ghostly glow briefly emanated from the writing. For a few seconds he thought his eyes had deceived him, but when the haze shone again he realised it was not a figment of his imagination. He reached forward and swept his gauntlet across the dust like some manic house-maid. For a moment, the floor showed no signs of the ethereal glow, but then eventually the ribbons of light flowed again, swirling along the length of the corridor like pieces of flotsam on an ocean swell.
Scrambling to his feet, Konrad moved further down the corridor and swept more dust away from the floor. Again the mysterious shapes swirled back into view, this time, Konrad kept his hand pressed to the smooth floor. The ethereal ribbons appeared to be attracted to his glove, dancing around his fingers like fish clustering around a source of food. Then, as soon as Konrad pulled his hand away, the enigmatic objects sank back out of sight.
He laughed with delight at the beautiful, but somehow disturbing display until after a short time, he ran into a seemingly solid wall. It would appear that Konrad had reached a dead end. His child-like smile disappeared as he found it hard to believe that his adventure would end so quickly and so disappointedly. He looked at the featureless barrier and reached forward to touch it, and much to his surprise, the wall reacted. At the point where Konrad touched, a small gap appeared in the ebony structure. The gap grew in size, and as Konrad watched, he saw it was no random, shapeless opening. Complex geometric shapes ringed the growing partition, the angular patterns devouring the black wall and allowing Konrad passage deeper into the spire.
Before the motley astronaut was a wide chamber which appeared to ring the entire spire. But the chamber was far from empty. Thousands of pipes, conduits, vessels and pieces of machinery filled the vast room. The machinery, like the chamber itself, were colossal in scale, easily dwarfing their equivalent in the engine room of the now destroyed Odin. Glancing up and down from the ledge he stood on, Konrad could see the machine room stretched far above and far below him. But straight ahead was what appeared to be a wall of some-sort. He decided to make for that.
As he wandered across the causeway that ran across the giant room he noticed that the constant whine of the winds outside and pervasive presence of the dust were now gone. Instead, an eerie silence ruled. But the silence wasn’t total. The distant sound of shifting machinery occasionally echoed. The sound added an eerie, almost organic soundtrack to the jungle of machinery that was exposed by his lamp-beam. The light reflected off the polished surfaces like a series of star constellations, their positions shifting as he wandered through. Halfway across, Konrad once again looked at his suit’s air-reservoir display. It was still within the green zone, but he knew the longer he remained inside the spire, the further he would be from the “safety” of the module. Caution should have stayed his progress, but being inside this cathedral of machinery heightened his sense of freedom.
But then as he attempted to move on, the prisoner was nearly yanked off his feet. The taut life-line held him back like a cautious colleague. He leaned forward, but the line remained tight and unyielding as if it had crystallised into the same ebony materials as the spire. He pondered what to do next. It was obvious something tantalizing lay beyond the confines of the room, but he also remembered the orders given to him by the Sturmbannführer about not detaching the life-line. He made up his mind and unclipped the life-line from the bracket on his life-support pack. It chimed loudly as it bounced on the causeway, its echo reverberating endlessly off the machinery as if the sound was reluctant to fade away and leave Konrad alone.