Mere
Dinosauria were new and almost brainless objects--but the builders of
the city were wise and old, and had left certain traces in rocks even
then laid down well nigh a thousand million years--rocks laid down
before the true life of earth had advanced beyond plastic groups of
cells--rocks laid down before the true life of earth had existed at all. They were the makers and enslavers of that life, and above all doubt
the originals of the fiendish elder myths which things like the
Pnakotic Manuscripts and the _Necronomicon_ affrightedly hint about. They were the great "Old Ones" that had filtered down from the stars
when earth was young--the beings whose substance an alien evolution had
shaped, and whose powers were such as this planet had never bred. And
to think that only the day before Danforth and I had actually looked
upon fragments of their millennially fossilized substance--and that
poor Lake and his party had seen their complete outlines----

It is, of course, impossible for me to relate in proper order the
stages by which we picked up what we know of that monstrous chapter of
prehuman life. After the first shock of the certain revelation, we had
to pause a while to recuperate, and it was fully three o'clock before
we got started on our actual tour of systematic research. The sculptures in the building we entered were of relatively late
date--perhaps two million years ago--as checked up by geological,
biological, and astronomical features--and embodied an art which would
be called decadent in comparison with that of specimens we found in
older buildings, after crossing bridges under the glacial sheet. One edifice hewn from the solid rock seemed to go back forty or
possibly even fifty million years--to the lower Eocene or upper
Cretaceous--and contained bas-reliefs of an artistry surpassing
anything else, with one tremendous exception, that we encountered. That
was, we have since agreed, the oldest domestic structure we traversed. Were it not for the support of those flashlights soon to be made
public, I would refrain from telling what I found and inferred, lest I
be confined as a madman. Of course, the infinitely early parts of the
patchwork tale--representing the preterrestrial life of the star-headed
beings on other planets, in other galaxies, and in other universes--can
readily be interpreted as the fantastic mythology of those beings
themselves; yet such parts sometimes involved designs and diagrams so
uncannily close to the latest findings of mathematics and astrophysics
that I scarcely know what to think. Let others judge when they see the
photographs I shall publish. Naturally, no one set of carvings which we encountered told more than a
fraction of any connected story, nor did we even begin to come upon the
various stages of that story in their proper order. Some of the vast
rooms were independent units so far as their designs were concerned,
whilst in other cases a continuous chronicle would be carried through a
series of rooms and corridors. The best of the maps and diagrams were on the walls of a frightful
abyss below even the ancient ground level--a cavern perhaps two hundred
feet square and sixty feet high, which had almost undoubtedly been an
educational center of some sort. There were many provoking repetitions of the same material in different
rooms and buildings, since certain chapters of experience, and certain
summaries or phases of racial history, had evidently been favorites
with different decorators or dwellers. Sometimes, though, variant
versions of the same theme proved useful in settling debatable points
and filling up gaps. I still wonder that we deduced so much in the short time at our
disposal. Of course, we even now have only the barest outline--and
much of that was obtained later on from a study of the photographs and
sketches we made. It may be the effect of this later study--the revived memories and
vague impressions acting in conjunction with his general sensitiveness
and with that final supposed horror-glimpse whose essence he will not
reveal even to me--which has been the immediate source of Danforth's
present breakdown. But it had to be; for we could not issue our warning intelligently
without the fullest possible information, and the issuance of that
warning is a prime necessity. Certain lingering influences in that
unknown antarctic world of disordered time and alien natural law make
it imperative that further exploration be discouraged. VII. The full story, so far as deciphered, will eventually appear in an
official bulletin of Miskatonic University. Here I shall sketch only
the salient highlights in a formless, rambling way. Myth or otherwise,
the sculptures told of the coming of those star-headed things to the
nascent, lifeless earth out of cosmic space--their coming, and the
coming of many other alien entities such as at certain times embark
upon spatial pioneering. They seemed able to traverse the interstellar ether on their vast
membranous wings--thus oddly confirming some curious hill folklore long
ago told me by an antiquarian colleague. They had lived under the sea a
good deal, building fantastic cities and fighting terrific battles with
nameless adversaries by means of intricate devices employing unknown
principles of energy. Evidently their scientific and mechanical knowledge far surpassed
man's to-day, though they made use of its more widespread and elaborate
forms only when obliged to. Some of the sculptures suggested that they had passed through a stage
of mechanized life on other planets, but had receded upon finding
its effects emotionally unsatisfying. Their preternatural toughness
of organization and simplicity of natural wants made them peculiarly
able to live on a high plane without the more specialized fruits
of artificial manufacture, and even without garments, except for
occasional protection against the elements. It was under the sea, at first for food and later for other purposes,
that they first created earth life--using available substances
according to long-known methods. The more elaborate experiments came after the annihilation of various
cosmic enemies. They had done the same thing on other planets, having
manufactured not only necessary foods, but certain multicellular
protoplasmic masses capable of molding their tissues into all sorts of
temporary organs under hypnotic influence and thereby forming ideal
slaves to perform the heavy work of the community. These viscous masses were without doubt what Abdul Alhazred whispered
about as the "Shoggoths" in his frightful _Necronomicon_, though even
that mad Arab had not hinted that any existed on earth except in the
dreams of those who had chewed a certain alkaloidal herb.