There was still light spilling onto the lawn from the lower floor but now it was different, tinged with an angry red. It was not candlelight but something far more frightening and deadly.
The house was ablaze. He could not understand how it had happened but he knew he had to get out of there, and quickly. Pulling the dresser from the doorway, he tugged urgently at the handle. It refused to open.
There was the faint sound of carriage wheels diminishing into the distance, followed by the insidious crackle of flames eating into the woodwork, spreading swiftly through the lower half of the house.
As he pulled futilely at the door, Charles Ingham now saw it all. With the possible exception of one, there were no ghosts here. It was the house itself which was the ghost, taking him back to that far-off time of Sir Roger and his cronies — and in a single soul-searing instant, he knew the identity of that body which had been found in the burnt-out ruins all those years ago!
THE MARTIAN ENIGMA, by John Glasby
After two days in orbit, the third expeditionary ship to Mars landed gently on the rust-red surface within half a kilometre of the designated position. Outside, there was a dust storm in the distance but Clive Bradwell, the pilot, estimated it was too far away to pose any danger to them.
Two earlier expeditions to the Red Planet had both landed in this region and had reported finding something strange situated close to the large mound, which they could now clearly see on the rectangular visiplate.
Vic Cranton, the astronomer, stood facing the viewer, a worried frown on his lean features. Beside him, Anne Kirby, the biophysicist and Helen Wainwright, an eminent geologist, made up the rest of the crew.
“What do you make of it, Vic?” Bradwell asked. “Anything there to explain why those two ships failed to return to Earth?”
The astronomer shook his head. “Nothing. To be quite honest, this is precisely what I expected. You’re absolutely certain this is the location they gave in their initial reports?”
“No doubt about it. The coordinates agree exactly.”
“Just what did those two missions report?” Anne asked. “Remind me.”
“Simply that an important find had been made,” Clive replied. “Neither team went into any detail. And as far as we know, they took off successfully on their return to Earth.”
“So whatever happened to them, it must have occurred after they’d left the planet.”
“That’s the presumptive conclusion back on Earth.” Clive walked over to the lockers, which housed the protective suits. “But there’s something here which seems highly peculiar to me. Two spacecraft malfunctioning on the return journey. That makes no sense.”
Vic glanced away from the visiplate, rubbing his chin. “Before we go down onto the surface, does anyone have any suggestions as to what might have happened?”
It was Anne who answered him. “Either we accept that something went wrong with both ships or — or whatever they found here was the cause of their disappearance.”
“Then I suggest we check out what’s down there but proceed with caution,” Helen put in. “We’ll certainly discover nothing just standing here.”
Fifteen minutes later, they had suited up and were standing on the Martian surface. The large dust cloud had disappeared into the far distance.
Beneath their feet, the ochre soil was dotted with rocks and boulders of every shape and size. Bradwell pointed a gloved hand. Over the communicator, he said, “That long escarpment yonder in where they claimed they found something out of the ordinary.”
In the lower gravity, they made their way cautiously towards it. It loomed about a hundred feet above the flatness of the surrounding sand and Bradwell estimated it to be at least six kilometres in length.
He scanned it meticulously through the transparent vizor. Outwardly, it appeared no different from the hundreds of other similar formations they had scanned from orbit.
The pale sunlight, slanting obliquely across the surface made it glow a dull crimson.
“Nothing here but solid rock,” Helen said, examining it closely. “Somehow, I doubt if—”
She broke off sharply as Anne’s voice sounded excitedly over their communicators.
“There’s something here but I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”
Clive glanced round quickly. She was standing some distance away, staring down at the base of the escarpment immediately in front of her.
Feet sloughing off the reddish sand, they joined her.
There was a dark, irregular opening in the rock and, even though the aperture was deeply shadowed, they could clearly make out the steps leading down into absolute darkness.
For a moment, they stared at each other in stunned silence. Then Clive said harshly, “So there was once intelligent life on Mars. But these steps must be millions of years old and whoever, or whatever, made them must have died out along with any vegetation there may have been, almost as long ago.”
“I wouldn’t be too dogmatic about that,” Anne said tensely.
Vic forced casualness into his tone. “Surely you’re not suggesting that—”
“All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t forget those two other missions. Either they found something here — or something found them.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, broken by the astronomer. “Then I think you and Clive should remain here while Helen and I investigate.”
When the pilot made to protest, he added, “You have to stay, Clive. You’re the only one who can take the ship back to Earth if anything does happen.”
“Then watch your step, both of you,” Cranton said, his face twisted into a worried frown. “We’re dealing with the unknown here. There’s no telling what might be down there.”
Nodding, Vic took the large torch that the pilot held out to him, switched it on, and shone the powerful beam down into the blackness. The steps seemed to descend as far as the torchlight could penetrate. He also noticed their peculiar delineations as if they had been designed for feet totally unlike those of humans.
With Helen following close behind him, he lowered himself down, one hand trailing along the wall. Faceted crystals along the walls reflected the light back at him out of thousands of winking eyes.
Just what is this? he wondered. Some incredibly alien artefact encrusted within the rock, or some long-dead Martian burial place like the pyramids? It seemed certain that several million years of geological time lay stratified within these crystal rocks.
Helen’s voice crackled over the communicator in his helmet. “Can you see any end to these steps? We must be more than a hundred feet below the surface already.”
“Nothing yet,” he answered. “They just seem to—” He broke off sharply. “What is it?”
“There’s something down there. I can’t quite make out what it is.”
Carefully, they eased themselves down for a further thirty feet. In front of them stood a huge door inlaid with the cryptic symbols of some alien language.
“So what do we do now?” Helen asked. “Personally, I can see no way of opening this. Yet, somehow, I have the feeling those others who cam here were describing something more important and unusual than this.”
“Meaning that, somehow, they opened it and saw what’s on the other side?”
“Exactly.”
Vic pondered that for a moment, then thrust the torch into her hands.
“Hold this for me.”
While Helen shone the light over the door, Vic reached out and ran his fingers over the strange symbols. By now, he was convinced those two earlier teams had found the means of opening it. Yet at first, he could see nothing.
Then he thought he noticed something. “Move around to the side and shine the light obliquely across it,” he said tautly.