At the mountains of madness
triangle eight inches long and six wide at farther end. This is the
paddle, fin, or pseudofoot which had made prints in rocks from a
thousand million to fifty or sixty million years old.
From inner angles of starfish arrangement project two-foot reddish
tubes tapering from three inches diameter at base to one at tip.
Orifices at tips. All these parts infinitely tough and leathery,
but extremely flexible. Four-foot arms with paddles undoubtedly
used for locomotion of some sort, marine or otherwise. When moved,
display suggestions of exaggerated muscularity. As found, all
these projections tightly folded over pseudoneck and end of torso,
corresponding to projections at other end.
Cannot yet assign positively to animal or vegetable kingdom, but
odds now favor animal. Probably represents incredibly advanced
evolution of radiata without loss of certain primitive features.
Echinoderm resemblances unmistakable despite local contradictory
evidences.
Wing structure puzzles in view of probable marine habitat, but may
have use in water navigation. Symmetry is curiously vegetablelike,
suggesting vegetable's essential up-and-down structure rather than
animal's fore-and-aft structure. Fabulously early date of evolution,
preceding even simplest archæan Protozoa hitherto known, baffles all
conjecture as to origin.
Complete specimens have such uncanny resemblance to certain
creatures of primal myth that suggestion of ancient existence
outside antarctic becomes inevitable. Dyer and Pabodie have read
_Necronomicon_ and seen Clark Ashton Smith's nightmare paintings
based on text, and will understand when I speak of Elder Things
supposed to have created all earth life as jest or mistake. Students
have always thought conception formed from morbid imaginative
treatment of very ancient tropical radiata. Also like prehistoric
folklore things Wilmarth has spoken of--Cthulhu cult appendages,
etc.
Vast field of study opened. Deposits probably of late Cretaceous
or early Eocene period, judging from associated specimens. Massive
stalagmites deposited above them. Hard work hewing out, but
toughness prevented damage. State of preservation miraculous,
evidently owing to limestone action. No more found so far, but
will resume search later. Job now to get fourteen huge specimens
to camp without dogs, which bark furiously and can't be trusted
near them.
With nine men--three left to guard the dogs--we ought to manage the
three sledges fairly well, though wind is bad. Must establish plane
communication with McMurdo Sound and begin shipping material. But
I've got to dissect one of these things before we take any rest.
Wish I had a real laboratory here. Dyer better kick himself for
having tried to stop my westward trip. First the world's greatest
mountains, and then this. If this last isn't the high spot of the
expedition, I don't know what is. We're made scientifically.
Congrats, Pabodie, on the drill that opened up the cave. Now will
_Arkham_ please repeat description?
The sensations of Pabodie and myself at receipt of this report were
almost beyond description, nor were our companions much behind us in
enthusiasm. McTighe, who had hastily translated a few high spots as
they came from the droning receiving set, wrote out the entire message
from his shorthand version, as soon as Lake's operator signed off.
All appreciated the epoch-making significance of the discovery, and
I sent Lake congratulations as soon as the _Arkham's_ operator had
repeated back the descriptive parts as requested; and my example was
followed by Sherman from his station at the McMurdo Sound supply cache,
as well as by Captain Douglas of the _Arkham_.
Later, as head of the expedition, I added some remarks to be relayed
through the _Arkham_ to the outside world. Of course, rest was an
absurd thought amidst this excitement; and my only wish was to get to
Lake's camp as quickly as I could. It disappointed me when he sent word
that a rising mountain gale made early aërial travel impossible.
But within an hour and a half interest again rose to banish
disappointment. Lake, sending more messages, told of the completely
successful transportation of the fourteen great specimens to the camp.
It had been a hard pull, for the things were surprisingly heavy; but
nine men had accomplished it very neatly. Now some of the party were
hurriedly building a snow corral at a safe distance from the camp, to
which the dogs could be brought for greater convenience in feeding. The
specimens were laid out on the hard snow near the camp, save for one on
which Lake was making crude attempts at dissection.
This dissection seemed to be a greater task than had been expected,
for, despite the heat of a gasoline stove in the newly raised
laboratory tent, the deceptively flexible tissues of the chosen
specimen--a powerful and intact one--lost nothing of their more than
leathery toughness. Lake was puzzled as to how he might make the
requisite incisions without violence destructive enough to upset all
the structural niceties he was looking for.
He had, it is true, seven more perfect specimens; but these were too
few to use up recklessly unless the cave might later yield an unlimited
supply. Accordingly, he removed the specimen and dragged in one which,
though having remnants of the starfish arrangements at both ends, was
badly crushed and partly disrupted along one of the great torso furrows.
Results, quickly reported over the wireless, were baffling and
provocative indeed. Nothing like delicacy or accuracy was possible with
instruments hardly able to cut the anomalous tissue, but the little
that was achieved left us all awed and bewildered.
Existing biology would have to be wholly revised, for this thing was no
product of any cell growth science knows about. There had been scarcely
any mineral replacement, and despite an age of perhaps forty million
years the internal organs were wholly intact.
The leathery, undeteriorative, and almost indestructible quality was an
inherent attribute of the thing's form of organization, and pertained
to some paleocene cycle of invertebrate evolution utterly beyond our
powers of speculation.
At first all that Lake found was dry, but as the heated tent produced
its thawing effect, organic moisture of pungent and offensive odor
was encountered toward the thing's uninjured side. It was not blood,
but a thick, dark-green fluid apparently answering the same purpose.
By the time Lake reached this stage all thirty-seven dogs had been
brought to the still uncompleted corral near the camp, and even at that
distance set up a savage barking and show of restlessness at the acrid,
diffusive smell.
* * * * *
Far from helping to place the strange entity, this provisional
dissection merely deepened its mystery. All guesses about its external
members had been correct, and on the evidence of these one could hardly
hesitate to call the thing animal, but internal inspection brought up
so many vegetable evidences that Lake was left hopelessly at sea. It
had digestion and circulation, and eliminated waste matter through the
reddish tubes of its starfish-shaped base.
Cursorily, one would say that its respiratory apparatus handled oxygen
rather than carbon dioxide; and there were odd evidences of air-storage
chambers and methods of shifting respiration from the external orifice
to at least two other fully developed breathing systems--gills and
pores.
Clearly, it was amphibian and probably adapted to long airless
hibernation periods as well. Vocal organs seemed present in connection
with the main respiratory system, but they presented anomalies beyond
immediate solution. Articulate speech, in the sense of syllable
utterance, seemed barely conceivable, but musical piping notes covering
a wide range were highly probable. The muscular system was almost
pre-naturally developed.
The nervous system was so complex and highly developed as to leave Lake
aghast. Though excessively primitive and archaic in some respects, the
thing had a set of gangliar centers and connectives arguing the very
extremes of specialized development.
Its five-lobed brain was surprisingly advanced, and there were signs of
a sensory equipment, served in part through the wiry cilia of the head,
involving factors alien to any other terrestrial organism. Probably it
had more than five senses, so that its habits could not be predicted
from any existing analogy.
It must, Lake thought, have been a creature of keen sensitiveness and
delicately differentiated functions in its primal world--much like the
ants and bees of to-day. It reproduced like the vegetable cryptogams,
especially the pteridophyta; having spore cases at the tips of the
wings and evidently developing from a thallus or prothallus.
But to give it a name at this stage was mere folly. It looked like a
radiate, but was clearly something more. It was partly vegetable, but
had three fourths of the essentials of animal structure. That it was
marine in origin, its symmetrical contour and certain other attributes
clearly indicated; yet one could not be exact as to the limit of its
later adaptations.
The wings, after all, held a persistent suggestion of the aërial.
How it could have undergone its tremendously complex evolution on a
new-born earth in time to leave prints in archæan rocks was so far
beyond conception as to make Lake whimsically recall the primal myths
about Great Old Ones who filtered down from the stars and concocted
earth life as a joke or mistake; and the wild tales of cosmic hill
things from outside told by a folklorist colleague in Miskatonic's
English department.
* * * * *
Naturally, he considered the possibility of the pre-Cambrian prints
having been made by a less evolved ancestor of the present specimens,
but quickly rejected this too-facile theory upon considering the
advanced structural qualities of the older fossils. If anything, the
later contours showed decadence rather than higher evolution.
The size of the pseudofeet had decreased, and the whole morphology
seemed coarsened and simplified. Moreover, the nerves and organs,
just examined, held singular suggestions of retrogression from forms
still more complex. Atrophied and vestigial parts were surprisingly
prevalent. Altogether, little could be said to have been solved; and
Lake fell back on mythology for a provisional name--jocosely dubbing
his finds "The Elder Ones."
At about two-thirty a.m., having decided to postpone further work and
get a little rest, he covered the dissected organism with a tarpaulin,
emerged from the laboratory tent, and studied the intact specimens with
renewed interest.
The ceaseless antarctic sun had begun to limber up their tissues a
trifle, so that the head points and tubes of two or three showed
signs of unfolding; but Lake did not believe there was any danger of
immediate decomposition in the almost subzero air. He did, however,
move all the undissected specimens closer together and throw a spare
tent over them in order to keep off the direct solar rays. That
would also help to keep their possible scent away from the dogs,
whose hostile unrest was really becoming a problem, even at their
substantial distance and behind the higher and higher snow walls, which
an increased quota of the men were hastening to raise around their
quarters.
He had to weight down the corners of the tent cloth with heavy blocks