Then, as if angered by the presence of Konrad and the others, the rim suddenly, and without warning, crumbled away from under them.
They all tumbled down the funnel’s angled walls. Konrad desperately clawed at the wall as it sped by, his gauntlets skimming and bouncing off the hard surface as he slid deeper. All around him, the funnel simply became a dizzying mixture of light and darkness.
Eventually Konrad slammed into solid ground.
Momentarily stunned, he slowly heaved himself up. A think carpet of dust and several chunks of rubble continued to settle all around the astronaut, the particles mixing with the strange metallic mist which swirled and twisted like mercury. He clawed away from the rubble, huffing and puffing like a beached whale given his appearance with the air-tanks upon his back. As he moved, Konrad pawed at his helmet’s visor, checking for any cracks; fortunately for him the visor was intact. This may have been the case with himself, but for others, the opposite was true.
An outstretched hand lay close by, and as Konrad moved closer, he saw Busch. He lay face down between the jagged pieces of wreckage. Ominously, the soldier remained completely still as Konrad reached out and attempted to rouse him. Moving closer, he then pulled the soldier’s body over and instantly regretted doing so. Unlike Konrad, Busch’s visor had been smashed open. His face, or to be more precise, what was left of it, was now just a bloody pulp. Muscle, skin, teeth and bone had been pulverised into a single caricature of a human face. The horrific sight sent a shiver of revulsion down Konrad’s back. As a result, he quickly released the body and let it roll back, but as he did so, something else caught his eye among the blood, glass and rubble on the floor – the soldier’s gun. Konrad eyed the discarded weapon and glanced furtively all around him. No-one else had yet emerged from the mist, and as far as he was concerned he was totally alone here at the bottom of the funnel. Perhaps he was the only one who survived the catastrophic fall. Ziegler, Haas, perhaps even Stahl were all dead, and so, with this thought in mind, Konrad cautiously reached out and fingered the butt of the weapon.
A boot then appeared out the mist and slammed down on both the rifle and Konrad’s hand. It belonged to Stahl.
‘I don’t think so,’ he smiled. The SS officer reached down and picked the rifle up off the floor. ‘We can’t have such dangerous items falling into the hands of such childish and undeserving hands.’
Stahl slung the rifle over his shoulder and coldly stepped over the soldier’s mutilated body. His interest was now solely focussed upon a new set of pictograms which decorated the funnel’s wall. Unlike the designs they had found on the slabs, these shapes and symbols were monstrous in comparison.
While Stahl was enraptured by the pictograms, Konrad sheepishly moved away from the Nazi, the corpse and the rubble, and crawled across the glassy deck. As his eyes adjusted to the mist and dim light, he could see that the base of the funnel simply consisted of the flat, featureless deck and the column. Also within the haze were the rest of the party. He could see the two other soldiers and, much to his relief, Ziegler. Like him, they were trying to understand what this part of the complex represented. To Konrad, it felt he was standing on top of a lake of black ice as he slipped across the floor’s surface. It didn’t feel like he was standing on solid ground. This feeling was confirmed when he saw that the chunks of debris appeared to float several centimetres above the deck as if a barrier, or, using a more scientific term, a force-field enveloped the floor.
He peered deeper at the floor and saw something below the glossy surface. The shape, indistinct through the panels, was unlike the ethereal streams he had observed elsewhere in the spire; instead the shape was more organic, more bestial.
‘Have you found something?’ Ziegler asked as he was reunited with his comrade.
‘I’m not sure. I just thought I saw something below us,’ Konrad replied with a quizzical frown.
‘Have you found another creature?’ Ziegler said as he knelt down and cupped his hands in front of the helmet to peer into the panel. But all the prisoner could see was a sea of darkness.
‘I don’t know,’ Konrad shrugged. ‘There was nothing that I saw that was distinct. But I’m convinced that I saw something down there.’
Ziegler looked again without success. ‘Even if you’re right, my friend, I doubt it would be a good idea to disturb it.’
‘I beg to differ.’ The voice belonged to Stahl.
Konrad and Ziegler looked at one another and spun around to see the SS officer standing over them. He had been listening to the prisoners’ conversation from the start. He gestured to the column behind him. ‘We’ve found a mechanism,’ Stahl stated. ‘Perhaps it controls access to the chamber below. If it does, we can find out if there’s indeed something down there.’
Stahl grabbed Konrad and roughly shoved him towards the column. The surviving soldiers stood waiting, their torches focussed upon a cavity set in the structure’s surface. As Konrad approached he saw that the column’s basalt-like skin was cracked and damaged just like the funnel’s rim. The damage, however, was more extensive as large sections had fallen away obliterating the hieroglyphs that decorated its surface.
‘The mechanism is inside,’ Stahl indicated.
Konrad eyed the black portal in the fragmented rock and wondered what lay within. Was Stahl being honest with him? Did a mechanism really lie within the hole? In his imagination all many of horrific devices awaited him, so it was with a sense of trepidation that he raised his gauntlet and placed it inside the hole. His hand slid forward until his shoulder met the column wall. Within the hole he could see a series of silver discs which glittered in the shadows. His bulky gloved fingers pawed at these discs until they connected with a number of bars on their surfaces. They allowed Konrad to turn the mechanism.
‘Can you operate it?’ Stahl asked.
‘I think so,’ Konrad replied. ‘But I think it’s still a bad idea to…’
‘Silence!’ Stahl cried as he cut off the prisoner. ‘I don‘t give a damn what you think. Just you operate that mechanism. Hurry!‘
Konrad slowly turned his arm. There was resistance from the mechanism at first, but the discs soon moved with a satisfying click. At first, there was no reaction from the obelisk-like column. After a few seconds, a barely audible ticking then began, at which point, Konrad withdrew his arm. The ticking continued, growing in strength. The ticking morphed into a thumping, and then eventually it transformed into a deep rumble. Then, with a loud god-like sigh, the column started to move. At the same time, the invisible barrier above the floor dissipated, dropping the hunks of rubble and the men the short distance onto the glassy surface which shook violently beneath their feet.
The giant column slowly rose from the funnel floor, its remorseless movement like that of a giant rising from a century-long slumber. Fissures appeared in the crystalline floor, splitting and dividing it into a number of diagonal sections, which in turn were then drawn into the air by the rising column. The explorers sensibly backed away and clambered onto the lower walls of the funnel, using the intricate pictogram designs as hand-holds as the entire structure shook and groaned all around them.