“That noise. That stomping throb. Pounding feet. Listen!”
Arthur listened. The noise echoed round the corridor at them from an indeterminate distance. It was the muffled sound of pounding footsteps, and it was noticeably louder.
“Let’s move,” said Ford sharply. They both moved – in opposite directions.
“Not that way,” said Ford, “that’s where they’re coming from.”
“No it’s not,” said Arthur, “They’re coming from that way.”
“They’re not, they’re…”
They both stopped. They both turned. They both listened intently. They both agreed with each other. They both set off into opposite directions again.
Fear gripped them.
From both directions the noise was getting louder.
A few yards to their left another corridor ran at right angles to the inner wall. They ran to it and hurried along it. It was dark, immensely long and, as they passed down it, gave them the impression that it was getting colder and colder. Other corridors gave off it to the left and right, each very dark and each subjecting them to sharp blasts of icy air as they passed.
They stopped for a moment in alarm. The further down the corridor they went, the louder became the sound of pounding feet.
They pressed themselves back against the cold wall and listened furiously. The cold, the dark and the drumming of disembodied feet was getting to them badly. Ford shivered, partly with the cold, but partly with the memory of stories his favourite mother used to tell him when he was a mere slip of a Betelgeusian, ankle high to an Arcturan Megagrasshopper: stories of dead ships, haunted hulks that roamed restlessly round the obscurer regions of deep space infested with demons or the ghosts of forgotten crews; stories too of incautious travellers who found and entered such ships; stories of… – then Ford remembered the brown hessian wall weave in the first corridor and pulled himself together. However ghosts and demons may choose to decorate their death hulks, he thought to himself, he would lay any money you liked it wasn’t with hessian wall weave. He grasped Arthur by the arm.
“Back the way we came,” he said firmly and they started to retrace their steps.