THE EMPTY DAWN
The room which the Professor had constructed for his experiments was
circular, walled in an iron-grey metallic substance, empty, and, when
the door closed upon me, it was in absolute darkness.
Waiting there, I had a curious and disquieting consciousness, as of
absolute vacancy, such as a disembodied spirit might feel before its
next incarnation, but nothing happened, neither did the Professor return
as he promised. I knew that the two minutes were long past, but there
was no movement in the room, and no break in the darkness. Had he misled
me, I wondered, and was I the victim of some quite different
experiment,--perhaps of how much strain the human mind could endure, and
yet retain its sanity? And why was the room so much colder?--and the air
against my face was damp, as though a mist were rising.
I looked round, and saw nothing,--upward, and the three great stars of
Orion’s belt showed through the fog, and the upper part of the
constellation; and other stars were in the central heavens, but lower
down the mist hid them.
If I were indeed transported to some remote and future time, at least
the same stars were there, with little change, even of their positions
in the heavens.
It was a moment when any source of confidence was needed. I had imagined
many ways in which a strange world might appear around me, but I had
overlooked the possibility that I might arrive in the night-time. But
there I was, standing on something which felt hard and very smooth, and
afraid to move a step in the darkness.
How long I stood there I have no means of knowing. The mist increased,
and the night continued dark, and very strangely silent.
Fortunately, I had clothed myself warmly, in a suit of close-fitting
leather garments, with the fur turned inward. I had brought sandwiches
which I had calculated would be sufficient for two days, if other food
should be hard to gain, and I ate some of them, and then as the hours
passed, I grew too tired to stand, and sat down on the hard pavement
beneath me. It felt like very smooth and polished stone, and I reached
out on either hand, thinking to feel some joining which would confirm
this supposition, but could find nothing. As the hours passed, I tried
to lie and sleep, but only those who have done this for the first time
on a hard and level surface will understand my discomfort.
Yet I slept at last, and waked again, feeling both cold and hunger, and
ate and slept, and waked and ate and slept again, till I became aware
that all the food was gone, and still the night continued.
Then fear came, indeed.
Had Templeton come to this, and had he fired his foolish pistols into
the mocking stillness of a perpetual and lifeless night?
The silence was absolute.
An ordinary English night is full of joyous, furtive, or defiant sound.
A tropic night is full of life and movement, and noon is the time of
quietness.
The owl hoots even above the silence of the Arctic snow.
But here there was no faintest distant call, nor any whisper of
movement.
Yet I recalled that Templeton had been once, and returned, so once at
least he must have seen daylight. Then I realised that the darkness was
less dense, and the stars were dimmer.
Dawn approached, but how slowly!
I must have watched for hours while the sky flushed faintly, and still
the darkness was but slightly lifted.
Gradually, very gradually, the strange scene opened.
Sloping downward, and stretching as far as sight could reach toward the
coming sun, was one unbroken plain of purple-brown, on which were
growths of one kind only, compact and round, and averaging some eight
feet in height, like gigantic cabbages in shape, and of a very vivid
green.
Behind me rose a high grey cliff, so smooth and straight that I doubted
whether it were of natural formation, or the work of some directing
intelligence.
Between the cliff and the great plain there was a strip of smooth and
lucent paving, about twenty feet in breadth, on which I had rested while
the long night passed.
As the familiar sun rose slowly, a gradual gold spread over the vivid
green that sloped toward it, till the whole expanse shone with a
dazzling splendour; and as the rising light struck across the path on
which I stood, it showed a shining band of opalescence that stretched
right and left to the horizon limits, beneath the background of the
dark-grey wall.
The sky was of a deep unbroken blue, and the whole scene was one of
great though alien beauty.
I had imagined that I might find myself lost amidst the inexplicable
complexities of a civilisation different from anything of which I had
heard or known, or perhaps amidst enormous jungle growths, and beasts of
unfamiliar terrors. But here seemed only an interminable and barren
weirdness, offering neither menace to life nor any means by which to
support it.
So I thought, in a double error, as I was to learn very quickly.
The sun was by now almost completely visible, but there was no cry or
stir of life to break the silence, nor did any bird cross the blue
expanse above me.
The need to explore the new world in which I found myself was urgent.
There was no hope from inaction amid such surroundings. The cliff on one
side was a wall unclimbable. The purple soil, from which I could see
that a slight steam was rising, offered no invitation to lose myself
among the great green globes, which seemed to be its sole fertility.
There remained only the opal platform on which I stood, by which it
seemed that I might go on, to right or left, for ever.
With nothing to direct my choice, I turned southward, and strapping on
the knapsack in which I carried such things as I had brought with me,
but from which my stock of food was exhausted, and shouldering the
woodman’s axe, which was the only thing beside a heavy clasp-knife which
I carried as tool or weapon, I walked briskly forward.