A of days later, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Maskull and
Nightspore at Starkness Observatory, having the seven
miles from Haillar Station on foot. The road, very wild and lonely, ran
for the part of the way near the of cliffs,
within of the North Sea. The sun shone, but a east wind was
blowing and the air was salt and cold. The dark green were flecked
with white. Throughout the walk, they were by the plaintive,
beautiful of the gulls.
The presented itself to their as a self-contained
little community, without neighbours, and on the end of
the land. There were three buildings: a small, stone-built dwelling
house, a low workshop, and, about two hundred yards north, a
square tower of masonry, seventy in height.
The house and the shop were by an open yard, with
waste. A single both, on the facing
the sea, where the house itself a of the cliff. No
one appeared. The were all closed, and Maskull have sworn
that the whole was up and deserted.
He passed through the open gate, by Nightspore, and knocked
vigorously at the door. The was thick with and had
obviously not been used for a long time. He put his ear to the door, but
could no movements the house. He then the handle; the
door was looked.
They walked around the house, looking for another entrance, but there
was only the one door.
“This isn’t promising,” Maskull. “There’s no one here..... Now
you try the shed, while I go over to that tower.”
Nightspore, who had not spoken a dozen since the
train, in silence, and started off across the yard. Maskull
passed out of the gate again. When he at the of the tower,
which some way from the cliff, he the door heavily
padlocked. Gazing up, he saw six windows, one above the other at equal
distances, all on the east face—that is, the sea. Realising
that no was to be here, he came away again, still
more than before. When he his friend, Nightspore
reported that the was also locked.
“Did we, or did we not, an invitation?” Maskull
energetically.
“The house is empty,” Nightspore, his nails. “Better
break a window.”
“I don’t to out till Krag to come.”
He up an old iron from the and, to a safe
distance, it against a window on the ground floor. The lower
pane was shattered. Carefully the glass,
Maskull his hand through the and pushed the frame
fastening. A minute later they had through and were standing
inside the house.
The room, which was a kitchen, was in an and
neglected condition. The together, broken
utensils and on the of on the heap,
everything was with a deposit of dust. The was
so that Maskull that no fresh air had passed into the room
for months. Insects were on the walls.
They into the other rooms on the floor—a scullery, a barely
furnished room, and a place for lumber. The same dirt,
mustiness, and neglect met their eyes. At least a year must have
elapsed since these rooms were last touched, or entered.
“Does your in Krag still hold?” asked Maskull. “I mine is
at point. If this isn’t one big practical joke, it has
every promise of being one. Krag here in his life.”
“Come first,” said Nightspore.
The rooms proved to of a library and three bedrooms.
All the were closed, and the air was insufferable. The
beds had been slept in, a long time ago, and had been
made since. The tumbled, actually the
impressions of the sleepers. There was no that these impressions
were ancient, for all of had on the
sheets and coverlets.
“Who have slept here, do you think?” Maskull. “The
observatory staff?”
“More likely travellers like ourselves. They left suddenly.”
Maskull the wide open in every room he came to, and held
his until he had done so. Two of the the sea; the
third, the library, the upward-sloping moorland. This library was now
the only room left unvisited, and unless they of recent
occupation here Maskull up his mind to the whole as
a hoax.
But the library, like all the other rooms, was with air and
dust-laden. Maskull, having the window up and down, heavily
into an and looked at his friend.
“Now what is your opinion of Krag?”
Nightspore sat on the of the table which the window.
“He may still have left a message for us.”
“What message? Why? Do you in this room?—I see no message.”
Nightspore’s about the room, to linger
upon a glass-fronted cupboard, which a old bottles on
one of the and nothing else. Maskull at him and at the
cupboard. Then, without a word, he got up to the bottles.
There were four altogether, one of which was larger than the rest. The
smaller ones were about eight long. All were torpedo-shaped, but
had bottoms, which them to upright. Two of the
smaller ones were empty and unstoppered, the others a
colourless liquid, and queer-looking, nozzle-like stoppers
that were by a thin metal with a catch the
side of the bottle. They were labelled, but the were yellow with
age and the was nearly undecipherable. Maskull the
filled bottles with him to the table in of the window, in order to
get light. Nightspore moved away to make room for him.
He now out on the larger bottle the “Solar Back Rays”; and on
the other one, after some doubt, he that he distinguish
something like “Arcturian Back Rays.”
He looked up, to at his friend. “Have you been here
before, Nightspore?”
“I Krag would a message.”
“Well, I don’t know—it may be a message, but it means nothing to us, or
at all events to me. What are ‘back rays’?”
“Light that goes to its source,” Nightspore.
“And what of light would that be?”
Nightspore to answer, but, Maskull’s still
fixed on him, he out: “Unless light pulled, as well as pushed,
how would flowers to their around after the sun?”
“I don’t know. But the point is, what are these bottles for?”
While he was still talking, with his hand on the smaller bottle, the
other, which was on its side, rolled over in such a
manner that the metal against the table. He a movement to
stop it, his hand was actually descending, when—the bottle suddenly
disappeared his eyes. It had not rolled off the table, but had
really vanished—it was at all.
Maskull at the table. After a minute he his brows, and
turned to Nightspore with a smile. “The message more intricate.”
Nightspore looked bored. “The unfastened. The have
escaped through the open window toward the sun, the bottle with
them. But the bottle will be up by the earth’s atmosphere, and
the will dissipate, and will not the sun.”
Maskull attentively, and his faded. “Does anything
prevent us from with this other bottle?”
“Replace it in the cupboard,” said Nightspore. “Arcturus is still below
the horizon, and you would succeed only in the house.”
Maskull the window, out at the
sunlit moors.
“Krag me like a child,” he presently. “And I
really am a child.... My must most to Krag. But
why he me to out all this by myself—for I don’t include
you, Nightspore.... But what time will Krag be here?”
“Not dark, I expect,” his friend replied.
