Listing to Port

1. Here is my testimony. In the Autumn of 2100 I was selected to be one of the crew of the Honourable Friendship 8 Mission. We were tasked primarily with establishing a cache of mining equipment at Patsaev Crater on the far side of the moon. Given the loss of the Honourable Friendship 7, we were also tasked with a number of additional investigations assigned to that mission, to be carried out if time permitted. These included crater measurements preparatory to the development of the proposed Dark Side Radio Telescope and the investigation of an unusual feature on the North side of the crater. On the last day of the mission, with the other tasks completed, Commander Elizabeth Murray, Specialist Shen Junqi and myself took Rover B to the Northern site. The anomaly had been reported as a perfectly circular dark artifact, roughly two metres in diameter, appearing on multiple images taken by Honourable Friendship 4. We assumed it was most likely to be a defect in Honourable Friendship 4’s camera, although Liz believed that it might be an unusual mineral deposit. Instead, we found a hole. Let me be clear about this: it was not a natural feature. It reminded me of nothing so much as a spiral staircase, leading down into the rock. Other than a light covering of dust on the upper steps, one would hardly have thought it was on the moon at all. As you might imagine, the three of us discussed what to do with some intensity, particularly as we were outside the communication window with mission control. Shen and myself were of the opinion that, although a mundane explanation was surely still the most likely, we should be cautious and treat this as a potential first contact with some other civilization. But Liz was adamant that it must be a geological feature, and wished to take samples from inside the hole. After some debate, Shen and I agreed that cautious sampling was warranted. We agreed that Liz should not descend out of our line of sight. However, once in the hole, she stated that she was, and I quote, ‘Just going to take a deeper one’. After ten minutes had passed with Liz out of view and radio contact, Shen cautiously ventured down to see if she required assistance. That was the last I saw of either of them. Faced with dwindling oxygen levels, I was forced to return to the Honourable Friendship. Mission Control, weighing up the liklihood of the complete loss of the mission, ordered me home. I fully agree with the conclusions of the scientific committee that my colleagues were likely the victims of a natural cave collapse or similar event. But I can only think of the curious similarity to a manuscript that gained some small fame after its uncovering, in 2030, during excavations for the South-West Deep Sewer project, herein quoted:

2. I can specify my location only as D—, a small town in the West of England. It has no unusual properties that I am aware of. Other than this: one Sunday, in the dead days of August 2002, a hole appeared at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac. It was reported quickly to the local council, who put a board over it, surrounded the site with orange barriers, and left it. This is where my interest begins. The hole was outside my house, and made backing into my driveway difficult. In order to ascertain if I should be complaining to the gas, electricity or water companies, I crept out and lifted the board one night. But there were no pipes underneath. Just a hole, perfectly circular, with spiral steps leading down into the darkness. Taking my torch, I followed the steps down. But after twenty steps they ended in a blank wall of earth. When I thought on this the next day the illogicality of the situation bothered me. So I went back the following night to check I had not missed some piping or wiring or suchlike. This time I counted twenty-one steps, but nothing else had changed. The next night twenty-two; the next twenty-three; and so on. Going out there became a ritual. I wanted to know who was digging it and why. But I could never catch them. Finally, I packed a bag with food, water, paper and batteries and determined that I would wait at the bottom of the stairs for twenty-four hours. Surely this would solve the mystery. But I observed nothing. And worse: when I went back to the top of the steps, I found one fewer than before, and the entrance to the hole sealed by some hard, immovable layer, joined seamlessly with the walls of the shaft. I returned to the base of the stair, where I found the new step finally added. And so it is each day, now. Each day I lose one step from the top and gain one step at the bottom. Each day, perhaps, I am closer to wherever this staircase goes. But I have been without food for a week. Despite my rationing, the water ran out yesterday. It seems that air can enter and leave, but I have felt the walls from top to bottom many times and never found a single hole. I have hope at least that this account will make it out, even if I do not. Though if I am to die for this mystery, I wish I at least knew what it was. The only thing that comes to mind is a story that I read once regarding an expedition to the far North, if I may recall:

3. It was in the Winter of 1830, in those days when everyone with a ship and a dream was talking of the fabled Northwest passage, that great undiscovered trade route to the North of the American continent. An exploratory expedition under the command of Captain R—– was charged with mapping the earlier shores of the likely entrance to the Passage. It was hoped that later navigators could make use of their findings in a full traverse. Captain R—– was an experienced sailor in the Arctic realms and had at his command HMS Sulphur and HMS Devastation, both well fitted out for the icy conditions; it was not a mission that anyone expected to fail. However, the Autumn that year was unusually cold, and both ships were unexpectedly cut off from their return route by pack ice South of Baffin Island. Captain R—– made the decision to sail North, in the hope of finding a clear route back to their planned overwintering site. In short order they found themselves in uncharted waters, sailing between a mass of sharp, rocky islands, and with increasingly little open water to work with. It was at this point that they found the lighthouse. It was nestled in a small bay in the side of a steep, barren island. The sailors were understandably unwilling to investigate, it being a part of the world entirely unfrequented by lighthouse-builders and in any case in an illogical position for a lighthouse; Captain R—– records, in the logbook of the Sulphur, that some believed it to be a mass hallucination. Nevertheless, since they were by this time in sore need of a sheltered site to overwinter, he ordered that they anchor the ships in the bay. The lighthouse proved deserted and unremarkable inside; save that the staircase up to its broken light seemed also to continue down into the rock, but was sealed shut with rocks and ice. Captain R—– gave the order that the crew of the Devastation should overwinter in the bay, whilst that of the Sulphur should overwinter in a wider bay on the next island to the North, in the hope that at least one ship would be able to escape the pack ice come Spring. From this point we have only the testimony of the Sulphur’s crew to go on, as the logbook records were neglected during the Winter. They report that, after some harsh months in the dark of the Arctic Winter, they gathered upon deck to celebrate the rising of the sun once more, when the ship’s doctor noted that green smoke could be seen rising from the direction of the lighthouse. An expedition was mounted to cross the ice of the bay and investigate. Upon arrival, they found the hull of the Devastation, half-stripped of boards and without her masts. There was no sign of the crew or captain. The lighthouse was thick with smoke, but nevertheless the expedition managed to enter. They report that the building was entirely empty, but that the staircase down into the rock had become unblocked; however, owing to the thickness of the smoke, which appeared to emanate from somewhere below ground, they were unable to descend more than a few steps. They returned to the Sulphur and, the following Spring, were able to escape the ice and make their way back to Portsmouth. A full inquest was ordered into the loss of the Devastation, but mysteriously shelved the following year. However, a report was compiled from the testimony of the surviving crew which received a certain amount of media attention. The report also alludes to an earlier incident with some similar features:

4. This incident was recorded in the days of the Venetian Republic; some say around the year 1600, although details are sketchy. A merchant, one Paolo S—–, was in the process of sinking piles into the mud of the lagoon in preparation for the construction of a house and storage area. However, four piles in the middle of the proposed area were observed to be slowly rising. Construction was stopped whilst further investigations were undertaken. It was discovered that a hard, circular object seemed to have been disturbed by the works and was moving upwards towards the surface of the mud. In due course the excavators were able to uncover a thick, heavily rusted metal disk atop some kind of cylinder, around three braccio across. With some effort, they were able to lever the disk from its base, discovering inside a descending metal staircase, also heavily rusted, but free from water. On the uppermost step were a sealed case and a number of warning symbols, unusual in design but relatively clear in intent. On their master’s orders, the excavators retrieved the case, re-sealed the shaft and allowed the mud to re-cover the area, abandoning construction. The case was found to contain a thick document in a nearly indecipherable English dialect. In his diaries, Paolo S—– recorded that he had it sent to a trading partner in London, who believed that it made reference to a great machine for building houses: a machine the size of a city, that could itself build a city. This machine, it was said, had by accident made contact with another great machine, one that had power over time itself. The document seemed to be an investigation into this contact, which had caused both machines to catastrophically malfunction. Most of the details were obscure, other than that the investigators concluded that many thousands of deaths were likely; but that those deaths would only happen in the past, and as such, the company could not be held liable under the laws of the time. Paolo reclaimed the manuscript and threw it into an obscure part of the lagoon, and to his death would tell no-one the location of the staircase.