horror: quite the opposite. He always felt miserable when he remembered Herbert. Poor, lumbering, eighty-ton Herbert, buried somewhere nearly a thousand miles down in the earth. Neither Cliff nor Joan could ever forget that they owed their very lives to the monster’s colossal strength. Without him they would never have returned to the surface of the Earth and the blessed light of day.
“Stop making me miserable, can’t you?” Cliff growled, as he headed for the lounge door to freshen up before the evening meal. “The past’s finished with, Joan—and Herbert with it. At least I hope so!”
“You don’t hope anything of the sort!”
Cliff paused at the door, looked back, then returned across the lounge to where Joan was standing. She was an ash blonde with hazel eyes—a most feminine girl, with plenty of courage, but not over-quick on the uptake, which was probably why she was so appealing.
“You dare to question my statement,, Mrs. Brooks?” Cliff asked severely, gripping her shoulders.
“I do, sir! You know as well as I do that if Herbert were to come romping across the ground of this wilderness of a house of ours, you’d be the happiest man alive! I know I’d be the happiest woman, anyway.”
“This is absurd,” Cliff muttered. “What kind of chumps are we, Joan? What in blazes have we in common with an eighty-ton beast from the prehistoric age? It’s ridiculous!”
“Not a bit—just natural love of animals. Doesn’t matter how big he is. We’re fond of him, and he’s fond of us. Not easy to forget an old friend when you’ve reared him from an egg.”
“The egg that you thought of using for omelettes!” Cliff reminded her; then with a gentle tilt at her chin he added: “And now I’ve really got to get changed, sweetheart. Can’t be as Bohemian as we used to be now there are servants around.”
Joan nodded and smiled absently, gazing outside on to the peace of the summer evening; then presently she glanced at the clock, saw it was time for the telenews, and pressed the button on the remote control. An immaculate announcer with an impeccable voice merged into view on the large flat screen.
“…can be discounted as nothing more than meteor strikes on Mars and atmospheric aberrations on Earth. Dr. Handersley thereby disposed of the prevalent myth that danger might threaten us from the planet Mars. If that were really so, the danger would indeed be extreme since, as yet, we of Earth have not completely—”
Joan yawned a little and settled herself on the chesterfield. Same old story. Threat of invasion from Mars being explained away by yet another of the so-called experts in the scientific field.
“From the region of the Scottish Highlands,” the announcer resumed, “there are reports of slight earth tremors. These are being experienced over an area of perhaps fifty miles, and seismologists and geologists are of the opinion that their cause is land subsidence some thirty miles down.… In the Commons today it was decided that a higher tax rate should—”
Joan switched off and yawned again. The heat of the summer evening was trying, and everything was so monotonous. For her, anyway. Cliff had his job to do, and therefore he was kept on his toes—too much so in fact. But for her things were slow indeed. Only this big house to supervise, a jaunt in the city now and again perhaps, and that was all. So different to the days when she and Cliff had been fighting for their lives a thousand miles down in the Earth.…
Then after a while Cliff returned, spruced up, but still looking like a man who is doing too much. He glanced at his wristwatch as he crossed the lounge.
“I’m too late for the news, I suppose?”
“’Fraid so,” Joan responded, rising. “I got some of it, but there’s nothing interesting—unless you’d call it interesting to hear that Dr. Handersley has decided that the so-called spaceships darting from Mars are actually atmospheric aberrations.”
Cliff reflected. “Atmospheric aberrations, my foot!”
“What? You don’t mean you actually believe the bunk about attack from Mars being possible? Why, everybody knows it’s a dead world with nothing but deserts! We’ve been sending TV cameras there for goodness knows how long.…”
“I only wish it were bunk, Joan, but I don’t think it is. There may not be any actual Martians around, but what if beings from another world have recently landed on Mars? I’ve made a special point of studying the various reports on the matter—cold, dispassionate, scientific accounts without the unimaginative bleatings of the boys of the Press—and I think there may be something in it.… Nothing we can do about it, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised at anything which might happen.”
Joan looked vaguely troubled, but said nothing. Cliff gave her a glance.
“Nothing else in the news worth having?”
“No—except for earth tremors in Scotland caused by land subsidence thirty miles down—or something.”
Cliff frowned. “That’s queer. In fact it’s almost unheard of. The Scottish Highlands are rooted absolutely deep, and the possibility of land subsidence, and thirty miles down at that, is almost impossible. Wouldn’t surprise me if I’m not contacted about it for an opinion—”
He paused as there was a gentle tap on the door. Parkinson, the, manservant, was there to announce that dinner was served.
* * * *
And away in the Highlands another dinner was being served—or it might equally have passed for supper or tea. It was, to be precise, the edible handout provided by the canteen of a mining contingent. Here, in the deeps of the Highlands, some forty miners and their engineering counterparts were based, probing for new sources of mineral deposit which instruments had definitely proclaimed were present.
So whilst Cliff and Joan sat in lordly and none too happy state in their palatial home, the mining engineers joked with one another in the warm summer gloaming, and ate the meal on the enamel plates before them. Cliff had often eaten his meals like this in the earlier days, and been a much happier man in consequence.
“Any ideas on that earth tremor business, Nick?” one of the men asked, and his southern accent sounded odd in these regions north of the border.
“None at all.” Nick was the foreman of the outfit, and like everybody else in the unit, had heard the news over the field radio. “I certainly felt it, and it struck me that it wasn’t very far from here.”
“Do you suppose that our jabbings have had something to do with it?”
“Not a chance!” the foreman scoffed. “Why, we’ve hardly scratched the subsoil as yet, and this tremor was traced to thirty miles down and more.”
“Come to think of it,” one of the men said, pausing with a hunk of bread half way to his mouth, “I believe I can feel a sort of tremor at this very moment! How about you fellows?”
The assembly looked about them in the gloaming. Away to the north and east the mountains had foundered into the purple of the summer night. To the south and west was rocky landscape, but it was more or less level. Here and there it was despoiled by mighty electric pylons carrying power, and the new McDermott River Valley Project.
Tremors? Yes, there was something, and every man could sense it, probably because every man was seated and thereby directly conscious of ground vibration. It was a curious, intermittent shaking which seemed to be coming nearer. Just as though a vast pile driver or trip hammer was being released at intervals, and being brought closer each time.
“What in blazes is it?” the foreman demanded at last, staring about him—but all he saw were the lights of the little ‘portable’ mining huts and domiciles and the brooding mountains grouped beyond.
Then for a space the concussions ceased. The men resumed eating, and talking amongst themselves, Nick included. Then, as he talked to the man nearest him, he suddenly froze in mid-sentence and stared in paralysed terror into the gathering night.
“What’s