‘Your description is most apt, Konrad, because I’ve seen something like this before,’ Ziegler confessed in a hushed voice.
‘That’s impossible!’
Zeigler shook his head. ‘There was a museum in Berlin. A medical museum. It belonged to the Reich Institute of Medicine and inside were dozens of dissected specimens in jars similar to these ones we’ve found here and prominent in the museum was a gallery where examples of the work performed by a doctor called Mengele were exhibited. He worked in the East decades ago. He was apparently a great authority on the physiology of all sub-humans. Inside the gallery there were bodies of negros, gypsies, cripples, dwarfs. I even remember there were examples of Bolsheviks on display. I seem to remember that they had Stalin’s pickled body for all to see too,’ Ziegler said. ‘But the centrepiece of this gallery was a case that contained a single body. It was the body of a Jew. It was supposedly the last that ever existed in the Reich. I’d forgotten all about that place until now, until I was here. The galleries in that museum were exactly like this chamber.’
Konrad shivered. ‘This place makes my skin crawl.’
‘Perhaps that might be the case for you and I, but I think in the eyes of whoever created this collection, each of these specimens is a vision of beauty,’ Zeigler said.
Konrad lowered the torch away from the gallery of freaks and illuminated the Nazi colonists. ‘But if we accept your description and this chamber is a depository for some sort of medical experiment, then why are the colonists here in this god-forsaken place too?’
The question hung heavy in the air. Zeigler said nothing.
‘And there’s something else,’ Konrad then said. ‘Another question that remains in regard to the colonists.’
‘What is that?’
‘Who or what stole them?’
‘That does deserve an answer,’ Zeigler replied. ‘But do we really want to find out…’
Their helmet radios suddenly chimed to bring their discussion to a close.
‘Busch here,’ the radio said. ‘There’s something here you should see, Herr Sturmbannführer.’
‘Like what?’ Stahl’s voice crackled over the speaker in reply.
There was a brief pause before the reply crackled back.
‘I’m not sure…’
Led by Stahl, Konrad and the other astronauts emerged from the menagerie and found Busch standing cautiously before yet another black expanse. But it wasn’t completely empty. In the distance was a single ring of light. It hung far above the explorers encircling a giant column that rose from the distant centre of this chimney-like chamber. In the shadows that surrounded the column stood other immense structures, their true scale shrouded by the darkness. In Konrad’s mind it felt like he and the others were on the cusp of an immeasurable wilderness, a place without borders and boundaries.
Stahl stepped first into the new chamber. Now free from the confines of the menagerie, the officer was buffeted by a gentle wind that blew and swirled within the centre of the building. He turned to Wolff. ‘How far would you say that column is?’
‘Without the aid of the data-stick, it’ll be hard to judge and it’s been a long time since I estimated the distance of something down range by eye alone. Certainly not since my Hitler-Youth days,’ Wolff said. ‘However, since I did earn that badge I would say its about one-hundred, maybe two-hundred metres away.’
‘And how much air do we all have left in our life-support tanks?’ Stahl then asked.
‘The tanks are certified for four hours. We’ve been away from the module about an hour, I would say.’
‘Good,’ Stahl smiled.
Wolff correctly guessed that the SS officer was determined to continue exploring the spire interior. ‘Wouldn’t it be more prudent to return to the module and arrange for the recover of the colonists? We can always return with reinforcements, if necessary.’
‘The colonists can wait,’ Stahl said in his usual unemotional tones. ‘This chamber is now our priority.’ The Nazi astronaut moved forward with a determined spring in his step. ‘It is the will of the Führer!’
In the background, Konrad muttered. ‘In my opinion, it’s more like by the will of Stahl.’
Leaving the menagerie far behind, the astronauts descended a seemingly endless series of concentric steps. The shallow stairs pulled the men further and further towards the centre of the chamber, but the toll of their journey, magnified by their bulky pressure-suits, started to wear the men down as long, drawn out breaths started to dominate the airwaves. Stahl led from the front like an eager schoolmaster leading a group of pupils on some field-trip, and keeping the school-trip in mind, Konrad and Ziegler lingered at the rear of the group like a pair of disinterested malcontents.
‘Why do I sense we are being led to our doom without a note of protest from anybody,’ Ziegler said with one eye on his surroundings. ‘I thought seeing that chamber of horrors would have been enough for them. This, in my mind, smacks of SS recklessness.’
‘Things have changed since the crash. We all have a new master now. His word is the law,’ Konrad said quietly. ‘In fact, I feel like one of the children of Hamlin and he’s the Pied Piper,’ he then added.
‘What did happen to the Pied Piper in the end of the story? I know all about the rats and the children, but the Piper’s fate escapes me.’
‘A former minister of state, a so-called man of culture, and he forgets a good old-fashioned German story like that,’ Konrad smiled. ‘You really disappoint me, Ziegler.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve forgotten.’
Konrad pondered what his friend had just said. He sensed something else lay behind the words. ‘Is this amnesia related to your previous incarnation?’
‘Amnesia was as much a part of my job as goose-stepping and Hitler salutes. Old comrades, who you grew up with, who you worked with all your life, all of them had to be wiped from your memory simply because they had fallen from grace and became non-persons. This lack of memory had to be absolute, Konrad. If you remembered anything about them you would be as guilty as they.’
Konrad remembered Ziegler’s Nazi salute outside the module and wondered if his actions then were the first signs that his selective amnesia was returning. Was he starting to forget his current status as a prisoner, his non-person persona, and beginning to return his Nazi roots.
‘So,’ Ziegler continued. ‘What did happen to the fabled Piper?’
‘The Piper done all what was asked of him. He had rid Hamlin of all the rats, but in the end, the town-fathers refused to pay him, and so in revenge, he used his magical pipe to lure all the children of the town into a cave, never to be seen again. His revenge complete, he too disappeared into the same cave,’ Konrad said.
‘Let’s just hope we don’t share the same fate as those poor children,’ Zeigler said with a note of fear.
Out in front, Stahl reached the bottom of the steps, but such was his determination to drive forward he almost stepped headlong into the wide funnel that opened up at his feet. His boots squeaked loudly as he stopped abruptly, but as he did his pistol span from its holster and cart-wheeled into the oily mist that filled the funnel’s depths. For a moment silence only drifted from the maw until a metallic peal eventually rose from the bottom of the funnel.
The giant column they had sighted from the far side of the chamber drove unhindered into the dark pit. The men remained motionless on the cusp of the mammoth structure as if they were uncertain as to their next move. In the case of Konrad this caution was absolute. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as a palpable sense of being watched emitted from the pit. Something was down there watching them; waiting for them. Eager to pull himself away from the unseen presence, Konrad stepped away from the rim. But as he did so, his boot dislodged a section of the floor beneath him. The crystal-like material was no longer hard and rigid, instead, it had become friable and cracked like the surface of a dry lake-bed, and looking around Konrad could see that the decaying material ringed the edge of the entire rim. In his mind the pervasive presence was leeching from its hiding place in the darkness and poisoning and rotting the very structure itself.