Wishing to hoard his matches, and realizing that it would be better to keep moving than to stand where he was, he put his hand against the metal wall and followed the sloping floor of the passageway.
The slope was definite. With each step his feet thudded heavily. It was when he had walked a thousand steps that he halted. This was an absurdity. He knew that the flat top of the mountain was but two hundred yards across, and he knew the steepness of the rock cliff. It would be impossible to go a thousand steps on this incline without going beyond the rock wall of the cliff.
The third match answered his problem. Above him, only ten feet above his head, was stuff similar to that on which he walked. He knew then that he was in an enormous spiral which, inside the mountain, went around and around, taking him constantly lower. As he walked in the blackness, he kept touching the inner wall. He knew that each complete circle must be taking him around and around some sort of enormous steel cylinder. No, not steel, something else. He wondered if the inside of the cylinder were hollow.
After a time he grew less cautious about walking forward into the darkness and quickened his steps. The softness of the stuff under his feet was deceptive. He fell once, tripping and rolling for several feet. Where his face touched the floor, the skin was rubbed off as though he had touched a file.
The longer he walked, the warmer the air grew. He guessed that it was well above zero by now. It seemed to have a very acceptable oxygen content. And the longer he walked the more impressed he grew with the pure impossibility of such a project.
He remembered how every item used in the expedition had to be carried on the heads of the bearers across countless weary miles. Yet here was an undertaking that would stagger the industrial capabilities of a large country.
He walked on, his legs beginning to shake with weariness. He had no watch with him. He lost track of the hours. For a time he counted his steps. He counted until he lost track of the numbers, not knowing whether the next number should be eight thousand or nine thousand.
Shaking with weariness he stopped and stretched out on his back, his head up the slope, too tired to think or imagine. He was asleep in seconds.
When he awoke, it was many seconds before he remembered his predicament. Lost in the bowels of a mountain, traveling down the gentle slant of a passageway that seemed to go on forever. There was no abatement in the thick blackness that surrounded him. His mouth was dry. He knew that he had slept for a long time. He had no way of telling how long.
Around and around he went, constantly downward. Idiotically downward, perpetually downward. It grew warmer. Finally he threw his hood back and it seemed hours later, he took his jacket off and carried it folded across his arm. Hour followed incredible hour. His mind reeled as he contemplated the work that had gone into the construction of such a thing.
At last, as he was growing intensely weary, he stopped. He could detect a faint light, so faint as to be almost unnoticeable. Could it be there was an end to this incredible, infernal passageway? He began to hurry, stumbling in his eagerness. Daylight loomed ahead, maybe some cave at the base of the mountain.
As he hurried, the light grew stronger and brighter, a white light that could be nothing but daylight. It was light enough so that he could see clearly the gradual and constant curve of the passageway, the shining metal walls. He took his hand from the wall. He could move more quickly.
Brighter and brighter became the radiance. Ahead he saw something, some change in the corridor. As he came down to it he stopped. The corrider had widened out into a high ceilinged cubical room. The resilient floor material stopped. The floor was of metal. The light came from four shining discs set into the wall. They sent forth a clear white light. He touched a disc. It was cold light. Not daylight.
At the far side of the room, the downward corridor began again. He walked to it. The flexible floor covering seemed to curl back on itself around metal rollers so as to form a continuous strip. It was then that he noticed an array of levers. They were set high, parallel to the floor and on a level just above his head. He could see by the slots into which they fitted that they could move either up or down.
With a feeling of awe, he reached up, grasped one and pulled it down. It moved easily. An odd symbol was embossed on the handle. The handle was too big around for him to grasp easily. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Better continue on down the dark corridor. He walked toward it, then stopped in amazement. The floor of the corridor was moving, moving without noise, with just the faint breeze of its passage.
He ran back to the levers and, in a few moments had figured them out. The one he had not touched controlled the escalator floor of the passage he had just left. Pulling it down caused it to run silently down and, had it been turned on, it would have brought him without effort to the square room.
The lever he first touched controlled the flooring he had been about to step onto. The further down the lever was forced, the faster it moved. At its maximum speed, it moved with a faint whistling noise, so fast that he knew he would be unable to leap onto it without injury.
He adjusted it to the fastest speed he could manage, crouched and leaped onto it and was carried away into the increasing gloom. He sat, crosslegged, grasping the haft of his ice ax, and suddenly began to laugh like a child at a street carnival.
The floor of the corridor moved almost without sound and the breeze of his passage was fresh and cool on his cheeks.
“Splendid service,” he said aloud. “Thank you very much, whoever you may be.”
After the laughter come the fear. Fear of being carried down into the depths of the dark earth. Fear of what he could not see. Fear of the mind of someone — something — capable of building a thing such as this.
In time the laughter and the fear were both gone, and his head nodded. The slight motion of the moving corridor made him sleepy. He fought it for a time and at last the ax slipped from his hand and he was stretched on his side, being carried into the blackness.
The cruel jar of a fall dazed him. He awakened even as he was still sliding along the polished metal floor, the ice ax under him, his eyes blinking in the white light. It was very warm. He stood up quickly. He was in a huge room, so terrifyingly huge that he knew at last that he had reached the bottom of the corridor.
Behind him, and three feet in the air, the end of the corridor floor revolved rapidly and silently around the rollers. A lever projected from a cubical box beside it. He walked over and pushed the lever. The corridor floor slowed and stopped.
He looked at the vast room. He had no way of guessing its length. On the nearest wall were huge discs of light, similar to the smaller ones he had seen. They appeared to be at least a yard across and twenty feet apart. Yet, in the remote distance of the big room, perspective made them look like a fine white continuous line.
In spite of the lights, the main effect was of shadows and dimness. He craned his neck, looking up. A ceiling was a short distance above him. Yet, after he walked a dozen steps, the ceiling was gone. He looked up into limitless blackness. He had lost all sense of direction.
The silence was what made him fearful. It was the silence of the long dead, the silence of the tomb, the dead, still, soundlessness of eternity.
He stepped forward and the ice caulks in his climbing boots clinked against the floor. He shouted once, and for long seconds the echoes answered him, diminishing and distorting his shout until at last all was silent again. He remembered nightmares he had experienced as a child. This vast room had a nightmare quality.
He looked around and decided that the huge discs must lead somewhere. Best to follow them, rather than to wander off across the shadows. The clink, clink of the caulks was the only sound in the world.