The next thing he knew, he was passing through a large iron gate. It was as though his memory had skipped a few minutes. Then he saw a man in front of him. "Excuse me, sir," he said. "Could you please . . .?"
"My name is Branton. Follow me," said the man and immediately turned and walked away. Colin stared after him. The man turned around. "Come on!" he called, and kept going.
Colin followed Mr Branton up a steep grassy slope. All around them other men were hurrying busily to-and-fro, along vast networks of paths, which, strangely enough, he hadn't noticed before. Most of them were carrying things, heavy loads, boxes, even picks and shovels. After about fifteen minutes the two men reached the top of the ridge.
"There she is!" said Branton. "Big, ain't it?"
Colin stopped and stared. He had never seen anything like it. Only a few yards away was a cliff - it looked like a sheer drop - and he could not see the bottom. The sight that extended before him was a vast hole in the shape of a circle; the cliff in front of him was part of the hole, which was completely black and seemed to go down forever. The circle, as Colin was told a little later, was indeed a circle, an absolutely perfect circle, but the cliffs were not completely vertical, as he himself discovered by looking more carefully over the edge. What he did not and could not know until he was told was that all the sides sloped inwards at exactly the same angle all the way around and down. The fact was that this enormous pit was a perfect cone.
"But . . . how on earth did it get there?" he asked.
"I wouldn't have a clue, pal. I don't know and I don't care. I doubt if anybody knows, not even the Big Man himself."
Colin shuddered at this allusion. Surely there was nothing the Big Man did not know. The pit, he was told, had been there since before anyone could remember. As far as they knew, it always had been there and always would be there.
"And the same with the triangle," said Branton. "No one knows how it got there, or how long it's been there - probably trillions of years."
"What triangle?"
"You don't know much, do you, pal? Why do you think you've been sent here?"
"I really don't know. I've only been told that I'd be working here for two months and then go back home."
"Two months. Yeah, that's long enough, believe me. I been here six years and it's cut about twenty-six years off my life."
"You mean they sent you here for that long . . .?"
"Nah! Volunteered. That way they can't send me to the building. Once was enough for me. I couldn't stand it again. It'd kill me. This is tough work, but I'd rather work on the triangle forever than go back to that place."
"You haven't told me yet. What triangle?"
"Okay, pal, you'll find out soon enough anyway. There's a bloody great triangle stuck in that hole - further than halfway down. It's stuck there tight. Nobody knows when or how it got there, but our orders are to get it out, and that's what we've been trying to do for the last hundred and fifty years; thousands of men, all working on it - scientists and labourers - building foundations, hauling equipment, gradually wedging parts of the triangle away from the broken rock where it apparently fell aeons and aeons ago from some unknown place. I don't know why it's there and I don't know why it has to come out. All I know is you and me have to try to get it out."
"I don't believe it. It's not possible."
"Yeah, that's what they all say. Now, you've got the rest of the day off to get yourself familiar with the place. You report to me tomorrow morning at seven. You can guess the penalty for being late." And Mr Branton walked off. Colin stood bewildered, looking down that enormous dark cone.
"How far down must it be?" he wondered. "How far before the hard walls end in a single point - an infinitesimal dot - at the very bottom."
The triangle was made of hard metallic concrete-like material. He and many other men were part of the project to remove it. He turned and walked around the edge for about a hundred yards to an area where the rock had been cut into and where there were machines around the edge and going deep down out of sight.
Suddenly he found himself in an elevator, surrounded by other men all packed together like sardines, all completely silent, except for an instant when one turned his head to Colin and said, "It's tomorrow," and turned his head back. In five seconds it seemed that nobody had spoken at all, but a picture remained in Colin's mind of the man's haggard face and bloodshot eyes, his tousled greyish hair and wrinkled face. All the other men were the same, as far as Colin could see without turning his head. He didn't want to turn his head. Or at least he felt that he couldn't even if he wanted to, so he made no attempt to try.
The elevator was going down, monotonously slowly. Through a small opening covered with glass, Colin could see, at a distance, a smooth dark wall sloping towards them, gradually getting closer and closer as the elevator descended vertically. Feeling uncomfortable he tried to change his position but was unable to, as the hot bodies of the surrounding men were pressed tightly against him. He felt stifled and sweaty and wished desperately to be back in the fresh air. The other men stood still and silent, quietly breathing, tired looks on their faces. Perhaps Colin looked the same. He did not know. All he could think of now was the wall outside the window, approaching with excruciating and tedious slowness, as the room became hotter and the atmosphere became thicker, and he felt himself losing consciousness.
He woke up on a hard wooden ledge. A few lights flickered through the darkness, illuminating strange bits of inert machinery and the smooth hard sloping wall of the pit, curving away into the black distance. High above him he could see a circle of faint light, not even as bright as the artificial rays below. Walking along the ledge he came to a lighter section where a large number of men were working with huge ropes and picks and strange machines. Stretching up out of the seemingly endless darkness was a thick flat metallic plane, with two straight sides approaching each other and coming to a damaged point at the level where the silent men were working, chopping away at the smooth hard pit walls, where the tip of the angle rested. He knew what it was. It was the highest corner of the triangle which had to be extracted from the conical pit. Large iron cables had been attached to it ready to begin hauling it up when it was loose enough. The idea seemed to be to pull it up by steps - raising the corner a few yards and suspending it while a new ledge was built directly under it, and doing the same with the other vertices. The loosening work had only just begun a few years before, most of the previous time being used in building huge foundations capable of supporting the heavy weight of the triangle, and the many machines necessary for the immense task of raising the triangle. The job was expected to take centuries.
Silently Colin took up a pick and walked to where the labourers were cracking the rocky wall of the pit, not smooth there because of the original force of the triangle's fall, slowly chopping away hard rocks which rolled onto the wide ledge where the men were working, the supports of which extended into the depths below. Her stood there, silently working, listening to the echoing thud of the picks. Every time a rock finally fell from the part where he was working, his heart lightened for a moment. But when he turned again to the hard endless surface his heart seemed to sink lower. One day of this work would be too much, he thought. How could Branton stand six years of it? He remembered he hadn't seen Branton since their first meeting, and then forgot about him altogether, thinking only of the task before him. One idea seeped into his mind and eventually filled it totally. One idea and one only: the triangle must come out. The triangle must come out.