A moment later, he knew he had not been mistaken. All of the symbols, with but one exception, were engraved upon the surface. One, however, close to the left-hand side, was embossed, throwing its shadow across the surface.
Acting on impulse, he stretched out his hand and placed it on that particular motif, pressing hard. There was a faint click and an instant later, the door slid downward into the rock.
Warily, Vic stepped forward and stared around him in amazement. The chamber was huge and here there was no need of the torch. A bright greenish radiance illuminated everything as far as the eye could see.
At the far end on a low dais, stood a vast, carved figure. The outline was not even remotely human — a teratological nightmare. Shuddering, Helen turned her head away.
“What is this place?” Her voice quavered a little in spite of the tight rein she forced on her emotions.
“Evidently a temple of some kind. I suppose, like us, they had gods and this must apparently represent one of them. Ugly looking thing, isn’t it?”
Hovering more than thirty feet above them, the statue dominated the entire end of the chamber. From what Vic could see, it had been carved, or molded, from a single block of the crystalline rock.
“Have you found anything yet?” Clive’s voice, slightly distorted, sounded in their ears. “Is it safe to come down?”
“There doesn’t seem to be any danger. Offhand, I’d say this place has been deserted for several million years.” Vic called back. “Come on down but you’re not going to believe what you see.”
Less than ten minutes later, Clive and Anne entered toe chamber, bewilderment written all over their faces.
“We reckon this must be some kind of temple,” Helen told them. “And that monstrosity would have been one of their deities.”
“Incredible.” Anne shook her head in disbelief.
“I suggest we begin photographing everything,” Clive said briskly. “No one on Earth is going to believe this. An advanced civilization on Mars which must have become extinct millions of years ago, possibly due to some drastic change in the weather pattern.”
“We do know there was once an abundance of water on Mars from the characteristics of many of the channels. Now it seemed to be mainly locked in the polar caps.”
He turned to Anne. “Do you have any ideas about this long-dead race?”
Anne shrugged. “Judging from what we have here, I’d say they attained an extremely high level of technological and scientific achievement.”
“Equal to our own?”
Pursing her lips, she turned that question over in her mind. Finally, she said, “It’s impossible to make an accurate assessment based merely on what we’re seeing here. There’s clearly too much for us to examine everything in detail. I would be surprised if they reached the nuclear level like ourselves.”
“Why do you say that?” Vic asked.
“I’d say their scientific evolution moved parallel to ours. If they were conversant with nuclear power, they would surely have reached the point where they were capable of space flight. They’d have left Mars for another planet before the catastrophe, whatever it was, overtook them. Earth would have been the most suitable planet but there’s absolutely no evidence they ever landed there in the past.”
“They could have gone out to the stars,” Clive suggested. He looked to Vic for confirmation but the astronomer shook his head.
“That’s highly unlikely. Not with the Earth orbiting next door to them.”
“So you believe they just sat here and let the catastrophe happen without doing anything about it?” Clive said.
“So it would seem unless we find anything to the contrary. Let’s examine this place as thoroughly as we can before jumping to any conclusions.”
Almost automatically, Anne moved away with Clive towards the end of the chamber furthest from the massive idol. Glancing at Helen, Vic gestured towards the dais. At first sight, it seemed devoid of anything but the statue. Craning his neck, he stared up at it, feeling a sense of awe at the tremendous time period that must have elapsed since it had first been made.
Inwardly, he was beginning to feel he was wrong in his belief that the race which had left this mute testimony to their existence all that time ago had simply accepted their fate, going to their doom without a whimper. There had to be something more to it than that.
Helen’s voice jerked his thoughts back to the present. She had somehow worked her way around to the back of the statue. Here there was a space perhaps three yards side between the idol and the rear wall.
“I thought this was as far as the chamber extended into the rock,” she said tensely. “But it isn’t.”
She drew him towards a narrow section that appeared to be of a slightly different texture to the rest. “All of this—” she waved an arm to embrace the huge wall, “—is made of the same crystalline rock as the escarpment. But this is definitely metal.”
Stepping forward a couple of paces, Vic examined the area minutely, then nodded. “You’re right. There is another door here but quite clearly it wasn’t meant to be as easy to find as the other.”
Scarcely were the words out of his mouth than a brilliant beam of light speared out from the base of the statue, falling upon the door in front of them. A second later, it slid open.
Helen stared at it in obvious surprise, but Vic said calmly, “Evidently there’s some mechanism here that senses the presence of living organisms.”
His companion turned her head quickly to glance in all directions.
Her voice shook slightly as she muttered, “I have the strange feeling that this place isn’t as devoid of life as we think.”
All of this had passed unnoticed by the other two crew members, being hidden behind the massive bulk of the statue, but their urgent call soon brought them running.
Clive took in the situation at once. “Clearly this second chamber was concealed in this way because it contains something important,” he said, going forward.
The rest followed him into total darkness. Here, there was no light and that from the larger chamber penetrated only a little way beyond the door.
Vic switched on the torch again and swept the beam around the room. Although smaller than the main chamber, it was still sufficiently large for the torchlight to make little impression on the far wall.
Scrutinizing the room closely, Vic said, “This looks like some kind of laboratory. But why here, adjoining the temple?”
“Possibly, in their culture, science and religion were just two aspects of the same thing,” Anne said. “Just like alchemy and religion in the Middle Ages on Earth.”
“Could be, I suppose.” Vic agreed. He was still puzzled but made no further comment.
Taking the lead, he began a slow circuit of the room. Nearest the door, on a low shelf, were several scrolls made of a material resembling plastic on which were inscribed numerous symbols.
“Evidently a Martian language,” Helen observed. “But with nothing to which we can compare it, I’d say it’ll be utterly impossible for anyone to decipher it. There’s no chance of finding a Rosetta Stone here to help us.”
Clive gave a nod. “Notice how each symbol is hooked onto the straight lines above the rows. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We’ll take one of them back with us,” Helen said. “It might give the cryptologists back home something to get their teeth into.”
Deeper into the chamber, they came upon an array of intricate machines, some extending almost the entire length of the room. Clive threw a questioning glance at Vic. “Any idea what these might be?”
The astronomer examined them minutely in the torchlight. “Sticking my neck out, I’d say they’re some form of particle accelerators which would mean they did know about nuclear physics. Yet that doesn’t fit in with them never discovering space travel. Unless—”