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Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 884
Miguel Botto-Tobar
Lida Barba-Maggi
Javier González-Huerta
Patricio Villacrés-Cevallos
Omar S. Gómez
María I. Uvidia-Fassler Editors

Information and
Communication
Technologies of
Ecuador (TIC.EC)
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

Volume 884

Series editor
Janusz Kacprzyk, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: kacprzyk@ibspan.waw.pl
The series “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing” contains publications on theory,
applications, and design methods of Intelligent Systems and Intelligent Computing. Virtually all
disciplines such as engineering, natural sciences, computer and information science, ICT, economics,
business, e-commerce, environment, healthcare, life science are covered. The list of topics spans all the
areas of modern intelligent systems and computing such as: computational intelligence, soft computing
including neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computing and the fusion of these paradigms,
social intelligence, ambient intelligence, computational neuroscience, artificial life, virtual worlds and
society, cognitive science and systems, Perception and Vision, DNA and immune based systems,
self-organizing and adaptive systems, e-Learning and teaching, human-centered and human-centric
computing, recommender systems, intelligent control, robotics and mechatronics including
human-machine teaming, knowledge-based paradigms, learning paradigms, machine ethics, intelligent
data analysis, knowledge management, intelligent agents, intelligent decision making and support,
intelligent network security, trust management, interactive entertainment, Web intelligence and multimedia.
The publications within “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing” are primarily proceedings
of important conferences, symposia and congresses. They cover significant recent developments in the
field, both of a foundational and applicable character. An important characteristic feature of the series is
the short publication time and world-wide distribution. This permits a rapid and broad dissemination of
research results.

Advisory Board
Chairman
Nikhil R. Pal, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India
e-mail: nikhil@isical.ac.in
Members
Rafael Bello Perez, Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de Las Villas, Santa Clara, Cuba
e-mail: rbellop@uclv.edu.cu
Emilio S. Corchado, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
e-mail: escorchado@usal.es
Hani Hagras, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
e-mail: hani@essex.ac.uk
László T. Kóczy, Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary
e-mail: koczy@sze.hu
Vladik Kreinovich, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, USA
e-mail: vladik@utep.edu
Chin-Teng Lin, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
e-mail: ctlin@mail.nctu.edu.tw
Jie Lu, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: Jie.Lu@uts.edu.au
Patricia Melin, Tijuana Institute of Technology, Tijuana, Mexico
e-mail: epmelin@hafsamx.org
Nadia Nedjah, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
e-mail: nadia@eng.uerj.br
Ngoc Thanh Nguyen, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland
e-mail: Ngoc-Thanh.Nguyen@pwr.edu.pl
Jun Wang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
e-mail: jwang@mae.cuhk.edu.hk

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11156


Miguel Botto-Tobar Lida Barba-Maggi

Javier González-Huerta Patricio Villacrés-Cevallos


Omar S. Gómez María I. Uvidia-Fassler


Editors

Information
and Communication
Technologies of Ecuador
(TIC.EC)

123
Editors
Miguel Botto-Tobar Patricio Villacrés-Cevallos
Department of Mathematics and Computer Facultad de Ingeniería
Science Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo
Eindhoven University of Technology Riobamba, Ecuador
Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands
Omar S. Gómez
Lida Barba-Maggi Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo
Facultad de Ingeniería Riobamba, Ecuador
Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo
Riobamba, Ecuador María I. Uvidia-Fassler
Facultad de Ingeniería
Javier González-Huerta Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo
Department of Software Engineering Riobamba, Ecuador
Blekinge Tekniska Högskola
Karlskrona, Blekinge Län, Sweden

ISSN 2194-5357 ISSN 2194-5365 (electronic)


Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing
ISBN 978-3-030-02827-5 ISBN 978-3-030-02828-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02828-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958314

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
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methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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Preface

The sixth conference on Information and Communication Technologies “TIC-EC”


was held in Riobamba—Ecuador from November 21 until 23, 2018. This academic
event is considered as one of the most important conferences about ICT in Ecuador,
as it brings scholars and practitioners from the country and abroad to discuss the
development, issues, and projections of the use of information and communication
technologies in multiples fields of application. In 2018, the “TIC-EC” conference
was organized by Universidad Nacional del Chimborazo (Unach) and its
Engineering School, and the Ecuadorian Corporation for the Development of
Research and Academia (CEDIA). The content of this volume is related to the
following subjects:
• Communication Networks
• Software Engineering
• Computer Sciences
• Architecture
• Intelligent Territory Management
• IT Management
• Web Technologies
• Engineering, Industry, and Construction with ICT Support
• Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Academy: a business perspective
In its 2018 edition, the TIC-EC conference received 87 submissions in English
from 234 authors coming from nine different countries. All these papers were
peer-reviewed by the TIC-EC 2018 Program Committee consisting of 50
high-quality researchers coming from 12 different countries. To assure a
high-quality and thoughtful review process, we assigned each paper at least three
reviewers. Based on the results of the peer reviews, 27 full papers were accepted,
resulting in a 31% acceptance rate, which was within our goal of less than 40%.

v
vi Preface

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the invited speakers for their
inspirational talks, to the authors for submitting their work to this conference, and
the reviewers for sharing their experience during the selection process.

November 2018 Miguel Botto-Tobar


Lida Barba-Maggi
Javier González-Huerta
Patricio Villacrés-Cevallos
Omar S. Gómez
María I. Uvidia-Fassler
Organization

Honorary Committee

Nicolay Samaniego Erazo

Presidente de CEDIA/Rector Unach

Juan Pablo Carvallo Vega

Director Ejecutivo CEDIA

Patricio Villacrés-Cevallos

Decano Facultad de Ingeniería, Unach


Organizing Committee

Lida Barba-Maggi, Unach


Ciro Radicelli García, Unach
María Isabel Uvidia, Unach
Gabriela Jimena Dumancela Nina, Unach
Galia Rivas Toral, CEDIA
Andrea Daniela Morales Rodríguez, CEDIA
Ximena Lazo Álvarez, CEDIA

vii
viii Organization

Program Committee

Miguel Botto-Tobar Eindhoven University of Technology,


The Netherlands
Angela Díaz Cadena Universitat de Valencia, Spain
Andrés Robles Edinburgh Napier University, UK
Andrés José Cueva Costales Yachay EP, Ecuador
Yan Pacheco Universidad de las Américas, Ecuador
Fadloun Samiha University of Montpellier, France
Guillermo Pizarro Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Ecuador
Orlando Erazo Universidad Técnica Estatal de Quevedo,
Ecuador
María L. Montoya Freire Aalto University, Finland
Erick Cuenca University of Montpellier, France
David Rivera Espín Interamerican Center of Tax Administrations,
Panamá
Yuliana Jimenez Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador
Juan Fernando Balarezo Radical Alternativas de Avanzada, Ecuador
Serrano
Luis Felipe Urquiza Aguiar Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ecuador
Gustavo Andrade-Miranda Universidad de Guayaquil, Ecuador
Wayner Xavier Bustamante Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, Ecuador
Granda
Janneth Chicaíza Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador
Diego Vallejo-Huanga Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Ecuador
Danilo Jaramillo Hurtado Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador
Pablo Palacios Játiva Universidad de las Américas, Ecuador
Marlon Navia Mendoza ESPAM-MFL, Ecuador
Pablo Saa Universidad Tecnológica Equinoccial, Ecuador
Jeffery Alex Naranjo Cedeño Universidad Politécnica Estatal del Carchi,
Ecuador
Jefferson Ribadeneira Ramírez Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo
(ESPOCH), Ecuador
Julio Proaño Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Ecuador
Maikel Leyva Vázquez Universidad de Guayaquil, Ecuador
Alex Cazañas Universidad de Coimbra, Portugal
Jaime Jarrín AndeanTrade, Ecuador
Washington Velásquez Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Marco Fabricio Falconi Corporación Nacional de Telecomunicaciones,
Noriega Ecuador
José Luis Carrera Villacrés University of Bern, Switzerland
Germania Rodríguez Morales Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador
Patricia Ludeña González Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador
Marcia M. Bayas Sampedro Universidad Estatal Península de Santa Elena,
Ecuador
Organization ix

Israel Pineda Universidad Metropolitana del Ecuador, Ecuador


Tania Jhomara Palacios Universidad Católica de Cuenca, Cuenca
Crespo
Jaime Meza University of Fribug, Switzerland
María Fernanda Granda Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador
Otto Parra González Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador
Jacqueline N. Mejía Luna Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Ecuador
Miguel Zúñiga Prieto Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador
Angel Cuenca-Ortega Universitat Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
Yuliana Jiménez Gaona Università de Bologna, Italy
Luis Urquiza Aguiar Escuela Politécnina Nacional, Ecuador
Johanna Ortega Universidad de las Américas, Ecuador
Cristhy Jiménez Granizo Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso,
Chile/Universidad Nacional del Chimborazo,
Ecuador
Germania Rodríguez Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador
Pablo Torres-Carrión Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador

Sponsoring Institutions

Universidad Nacional del Chimborazo


http://www.unach.edu.ec/

CEDIA
https://www.cedia.edu.ec/es/
Contents

Communication Networks
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation Using Coalitional Game . . . . . . . 3
Pablo Palacios, José Julio Freire, and Milton Román-Cañizáres
Resource Allocation in WDM vs. Flex-Grid Networks:
Use Case in CEDIA Optical Backbone Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Rubén Rumipamba-Zambrano, Luis Vargas, Claudio Chacón,
Flavio Rodríguez, and Juan Pablo Carvallo
NFC-Based Payment System Using Smartphones
for Public Transport Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Diego Veloz-Cherrez and Jaime Suárez
An Open Source Synchronous and Asynchronous Approach
for Database Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Marcos Orellana Cordero, Gerardo Orellana Cordero,
and Esteban Crespo Martinez
Forensics Analysis on Mobile Devices:A Systematic Mapping Study . . . 57
Jessica Camacho, Karina Campos, Priscila Cedillo, Bryan Coronel,
and Alexandra Bermeo

Software Engineering
Analytic Hierarchy Process of Selection in Version Control Systems:
Applied to Software Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Javier Vargas, Franklin Mayorga, David Guevara, and Edison Álvarez
Reliability and Validity of Postural Evaluations with Kinect v2 Sensor
Ergonomic Evaluation System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Christian Mariño, Rafael Santana, Javier Vargas, Luis Morales,
and Lorena Cisneros

xi
xii Contents

Improving the Design of Virtual Learning Environments


from a Usability Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Germania Rodriguez Morales, Pablo Torres-Carrion, Jennifer Pérez,
and Luis Peñafiel
The Digital Preservation in Chimborazo: A Pending Responsibility . . . . 116
Fernando Molina-Granja
Offensive Security: Ethical Hacking Methodology on the Web . . . . . . . . 127
Fabián Cuzme-Rodríguez, Marcelo León-Gudiño, Luis Suárez-Zambrano,
and Mauricio Domínguez-Limaico
Identification of Skills for the Formation of Agile High Performance
Teams: A Systematic Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Héctor Cornide-Reyes, Servando Campillay, Andrés Alfaro,
and Rodolfo Villarroel

Computer Sciences
A Text Mining Approach to Discover Real-Time Transit Events
from Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Belén Arias Zhañay, Gerardo Orellana Cordero, Marcos Orellana Cordero,
and María-Inés Acosta Urigüen
Automatic Microstructural Classification with Convolutional
Neural Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Guachi Lorena, Guachi Robinson, Perri Stefania, Corsonello Pasquale,
Bini Fabiano, and Marinozzi Franco
Clustering Algorithm Optimization Applied to Metagenomics
Using Big Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Julián Vanegas and Isis Bonet
Intelligent System of Squat Analysis Exercise to Prevent
Back Injuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Paul D. Rosero-Montalvo, Anderson Dibujes, Carlos Vásquez-Ayala,
Ana Umaquinga-Criollo, Jaime R. Michilena, Luis Suaréz, Stefany Flores,
and Daniel Jaramillo

Architecture
Multifunctional Exoskeletal Orthosis for Hand Rehabilitation
Based on Virtual Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Patricio D. Cartagena, José E. Naranjo, Lenin F. Saltos, Carlos A. Garcia,
and Marcelo V. Garcia
Contents xiii

Intelligent Territory Management


Subregion Districting to Optimize the Municipal Solid Waste
Collection Network: A Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Israel D. Herrera-Granda, Juan C. León-Jácome,
Leandro L. Lorente-Leyva, Fausto Lucano-Chávez,
Yakcleem Montero-Santos, Winston G. Oviedo-Pantoja,
and Christian S. Díaz-Cajas

IT Management
Importance of ICT’s Use in Business Management and Its
Contribution to the Improvement of University Processes . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Johanna Rosalí Reyes Reinoso and Deisy Carolina Castillo Castillo
ICT and Business Inclusion in the Southern Communities of the City
of Bogotá – Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Camilo José Peña Lapeira and Cliden Amanda Pereira Bolaños
Edition, Publication and Visualization of Geoservices
Using Open-Source Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Pablo Landeta, Jorge Vásquez, Xavier Rea, and Iván García-Santillán

Web Technologies
LOD-GF: An Integral Linked Open Data Generation Framework . . . . 283
Víctor Saquicela, José Segarra, José Ortiz, Andrés Tello,
Mauricio Espinoza, Lucía Lupercio, and Boris Villazón-Terrazas
Semantic Architecture for the Extraction, Storage, Processing
and Visualization of Internet Sources Through the Use of Scrapy
and Crawler Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Ramiro Leonardo Ramírez-Coronel, Ana Cristina Cárdenas,
María-Belén Mora-Arciniegas, and Gladys-Alicia Tenesaca-Luna
Use of Apache Flume in the Big Data Environment for Processing
and Evaluation of the Data Quality of the Twitter Social Network . . . . 314
Gladys-Alicia Tenesaca-Luna, Diego Imba, María-Belén Mora-Arciniegas,
Verónica Segarra-Faggioni, and Ramiro Leonardo Ramírez-Coronel

ICT in Education
Sophomore Students’ Acceptance of Social Media for Managing
Georeferenced Data in a Socially-Enhanced Collaborative
Learning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Erika Lozada-Martínez, Félix Fernández-Peña, and Pilar Urrutia-Urrutia
xiv Contents

Engineering, Industry, and Construction with ICT Support


Random Sub-sampling Cross Validation for Empirical Correlation
Between Heart Rate Variability, Biochemical
and Anthropometrics Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Erika Severeyn, Jesús Velásquez, Héctor Herrera, and Sara Wong
Robotic Arm Manipulation Under IEC 61499 and ROS-based
Compatible Control Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Carlos A. Garcia, Gustavo Salinas, Victor M. Perez, Franklin Salazar L.,
and Marcelo V. Garcia
EDA and a Tailored Data Imputation Algorithm for Daily
Ozone Concentrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Ronald Gualán, Víctor Saquicela, and Long Tran-Thanh
Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Communication Networks
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation
Using Coalitional Game

Pablo Palacios1(B) , José Julio Freire2(B) , and Milton Román-Cañizáres2(B)


1
Departamento de Ingenierı́a Eléctrica, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
pablo.palacios@ug.uchile.cl
2
Departamento de Redes y Telecomunicaciones, Universidad De Las Américas,
Quito, Ecuador
{jose.freire,milton.roman}@udla.edu.ec

Abstract. In millimeter-wave (mm-wave) massive MIMO systems, the


channel estimation (CE) is a crucial component to set the mm-wave links.
Unfortunately, acquiring channel knowledge is a source of training over-
head. In this paper, we propose a CE method leveraging measurements
at sub 6-Ghz frequencies in order to reduce the training overhead. This
solution extracts spatial information from a sub 6-Ghz channel using a
virtual channel transformation, such as the searching space is reduced
to the information provided by the low frequency channel. In a second
stage, a multicell system and its interference between cells is analyzed,
proposing a coalitional game to deal with the intercell interference. In the
single cell case, we analyze the proposed method in different SNR scenar-
ios, the computational complexity and over user equipment (UE) mobil-
ity environment. Finally, we analyze how the coalitional game improves
the throughput and its performance over UE in mobility cases.

Keywords: mm-wave · High-speed · Coalitional game


Channel estimation

1 Introduction
Large antenna arrays (i.e. Massive MIMO) at both sides eNodeB (eNB) and
UE is a promising technology to achieve high-throughput services [1]. Large
antenna arrays at the same time deal with the high path-loss in millimeter
frequencies. By the other hand, channel states information (CSI) in terms of
channel matrix or beam alignment are needed at the eNB to point the beams in
the UE direction. Both strategies are usually acquired by a training sequence [2].
The sequence is used to measure every beamformer and combiner to estimate
the pair of beams that are closer to the desired angles, but this exhaustive-search
method need a large number of measurements to estimate the best beam-pair.
Additionally, this fact could leads to lower channel rate. In vehicular or train
scenarios where due to the UE speed, the channel coherence time becomes shorter
and the training period could occupies all the coherence time, leaving no time
for data transmission [3].
c Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
M. Botto-Tobar et al. (Eds.): TICEC 2018, AISC 884, pp. 3–17, 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02828-2_1
4 P. Palacios et al.

The document is structured as follows: Sect. 2 describes the current work on


millimeter waves, radio cognitive and work proposal. Then, Sect. 3 introduces the
model of the system used for the evaluation of the proposed method. After that,
Sect. 4 reports the channel estimation method for the proposed work. Section 5
includes the multicell analysis in which the proposed coalition game model is
described with its respective algorithm. Finally, in Sect. 6 the numerical results
obtained in the simulation are shown, to finalize with the conclusions that are
described in Sect. 7

2 Related Work

In the literature we can find different mechanism to estimate the Angles of


Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) or the complete CSI with lower
training, for example in [4] a beam alignment method is carried out taken advan-
tage of UE location. Beamforming focused on wireless backhaul in small cell
networks and wind effect on beam misalignment is studied at [5], in the other
hand a typical mm-wave channel estimation (CE) process is carried out based on
compressive sensing (CS) framework [6–8] that is a useful technique to decrease
the training overhead although could not be appropriate for environments where
frequent updates are required to estimate the channel, e.g. railway and vehicular
scenarios.
Therefore some analysis in models with high mobility have been done in order
to provide a better understanding about mm-wave propagation for vehicular and
train environments, in [9] an analysis focused on urban areas was deployed, moti-
vated by measurements and ray tracing, researchers concluded that interference
from a NLOS parallel street is negligible, in [10] was found an optimal beam-
width different than zero which maximizes the coherence time, the paper also
includes the beam misalignment due to motion in the receiver.
In [11] a location-aided mm-wave channel estimation method was proposed
exploiting the eNB and vehicle position to infer the LOS path’s AoA and AoD.
Unfortunately, the adaptive approach is likely to fail if the LOS path is blocked.
Keeping in mind that beam training due to channel estimation process is a source
of overhead, another point of view to resolve the problem is by using spatial
information from different frequencies, specifically measurements from sub-6 Ghz
frequencies which are being broadly used currently, although the number of
common paths decreases with larger frequency separation, there is still a strong
spatial information congruency among sub-6 Ghz and mm-wave frequencies as
was proved in [12], where the researchers provided a mm-wave channel estimation
method using two transform process to relate the spatial correlation matrix from
sub-6 Ghz to mm-wave frequencies. While [13] took advantage of out-of-band
information for beam-selection in a OFDM system, leveraging data from all
active subcarriers to decide the best beam-pair.
In this paper, we propose a channel estimation method using out-of-band
measurements. It is based on training and we assume the microwave channel
have been already estimated. This assumption is taken based on several studies
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation Using Coalitional Game 5

about channel estimation for static and high speed environments have been done
for single carrier and multi-carrier systems in micro-wave frequencies, such that
this is a practical assumption, this solution applies virtual channel decomposition
[14] to the lower frequency channel in order to extract the dominant paths, and
reminding the fact that due to higher path loss and shorter wavelength, high
frequency systems are expected to use a larger antenna array than sub-6 Ghz
[15], this implies a narrower beam at mm-wave system.
Notation: A is a set, |A| is the cardinality of set A. lower-case a is a scalar,
a is a vector, A is a matrix. AT , AH denote the transpose and Hermitian of
matrix A.

3 System Model
We consider a mm-wave MIMO downlink system with uniform linear arrays
(ULAs) conformed by Nt transmitter antennas in the UE and Nr receiver anten-
nas in the eNB, as show in Fig. 1. We consider that both the transmitter and the
receiver have only one RF chain, hence, only analog beamforming/combining
can be applied.
We use f, and q to denote the beamformer and combiner vector, respectively:
1 2π
f = √ [1, ..., ej(Nr −1) λ d cos φ ]T , (1)
Nt
where φ ∈ [−π/2, π/2], is a quantized angle of departure, besides f has constant
modulus entries and only phase can varying, in similar fashion the combiner:
1 2π
q = √ [1, ..., ej(Nr −1) λ d cos θ ]T , (2)
Nr
where θ ∈ [−π/2, π/2], is a quantized angle of arrival, the AoAs and AoDs can
be taken following regular or non regular sampling strategies, the detail about
how we choose this angles is discussed later in Sect. 3.2. Then considering a
narrowband channel model H ∈ CNr ×NT , the received signal in the eNB can be
modeled as:

y= ρqH Hfx + qH v, (3)

where ρ is the average transmit power in the training phase, x is the training
symbol, and v is the vector of i.i.d. ∼ CN (0, σ02 I) noise.

3.1 Millimeter-Wave Channel Model


We adopt a geometric channel model with L scatterers, where each scatterer
contributes to one propagation path. Accordingly, the channel matrix H, can be
expressed as:
 L
H = Nt Nr αl ar (θl )aH
t (φl ), (4)
l=1
6 P. Palacios et al.

Fig. 1. Transmitter and receiver architecture.

Fig. 2. Illustration of virtual channel matrix for: (a) Sub-6 Ghz with Nr = Nt = 16, (b)
Mmwave with Nr = Nt = 64.

where L is the number of paths, αl represents the complex path gain of the
l -th propagation path, θl ∈ [−π/2, π/2] and φl ∈ [−π/2, π/2] denote the AoA
and AoD of the L-th path at transmitter and receiver, respectively. The vectors
at (·) and ar (·) denote the array response vectors for transmitting and receiving
antenna arrays. The array response vector of ar (θl ) is given by:
1 2π 2π
ar [θl ] = √ [1, ej λ d cos θl , ..., ej(Nr −1) λ d cos θl ]T , (5)
Nr
where λ is the transmission wave length and d is the antenna spacing.√Further-
more the array response vector in (5) has a unit norm and the factor Nt Nr in
(4) reflects this normalization. The array response vector at (φl ), can be written
in a similar fashion.

3.2 Beam-Codebook Design


Different codebook models have been designed according to the channel prop-
erty for instance Grassmannian codebooks, or to satisfy an hybrid architecture
for example Multi-Resolution hierarchical codebook In this work due to full-
analogous architecture we denote the codebooks F and Q at the transmitter
and receiver respectively as:
F = {f1 , f2 , ..., fNt } (6)
Q = {q1 , q2 , ..., qNr } (7)
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation Using Coalitional Game 7

where every beamforming vector has the same form of the array response vector,
such that:

fm = at (φ̃m ), m ∈ {1, ..., Nt } (8)


qn = ar (θ̃n ), n ∈ {1, ..., Nr } (9)

The angles are chosen as in [14] such that every beam has same magnitude but
different width, that is to say narrower at broadside direction and broader at
endfire direction, if we set the inter-antenna spacing as λ/2, the positive and
negative angles of departure are given by:
2m Nt
φ̃(+)
m = arcsin( ), m ∈ {1, ..., } (10)
Nt 2
2m −Nt
φ̃(−) = arcsin( ), m ∈ {−1, ..., } (11)
m
Nt 2
The AoAs design follow the same rule than AoDs.

4 Channel Estimation Method


4.1 Extracting Spatial Information
Here thanks to a matrix transformation we propose an easy methodology to
obtain the spatial information from sub-6 Ghz channel. Considering a geometric
channel model H6G already estimated, whose structure doesn’t provide clear
information about AoAs and AoDs in the different paths, therefore a channel
representation that provides a simpler geometric interpretation of the scattering
environment is needed.
A virtual channel representation (VCR) of H6G will provide spatial infor-
mation uniformly spaced over the virtual angles, which are determined by the
spatial resolution of the array. Thus, VCR characterizes the MIMO channel via
beamforming in the direction of fixed virtual transmit and receive angles [14],
that is:
H6G = Ur Ĥ6G UH
t (12)
where Ur = [ur (θ̄−k ), ..., ur (θ̄k )], −Nr /2 ≥ k ≤ Nr /2, is a matrix Nr × Nr
which carries the receiver response vector in the virtual directions that sat-
isfy θ̄k = arcsin( N
2k
r
), likewise Ut = [ut (φ̄−i ), ..., ut (φ̄i )], −Nt /2 ≥ i ≤ Nt /2
is a matrix Nt × Nt that carries the transmitter response vector in the virtual
directions that satisfy φ̄t = arcsin( N2it ), consequently Ut and Ur are unitary
discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrices reflecting the fixed virtual receive
and transmit angles, and H̄6G ∈ CNr ×Nt is the virtual channel matrix and its
entries reveals the desired channel parameters, virtual AoAs, AoDs and path
gain [14]. In addition, typical sub-6 Ghz MIMO systems carry with lower num-
ber of antennas than mm-wave, this fact will lead to broader virtual angles in
the low frequency channel compared with the high frequency channel, as shown
in Fig. 2 several mm-wave virtual AoAs and AoDs overlap to those at virtual
8 P. Palacios et al.

sub-6 Ghz, reducing the searching space to those overlapped mm-wave angles,
then the candidate beam list provided by the spatial information from the sub-
6 Ghz channel, is stored in the set S. At this point the task is select the pair of
virtual angles in the mm-wave virtual representation that provide higher gain in
order in the receiver in order to estimate the mm-wave channel.
Considering the set S is carrying the bunch of possibles arrival and departure
virtual angles θ̄p and φ̄r respectively, where θ̄p , p = 1, 2, ..., P ; P < Nr and
φ̄r , r = 1, 2, ..., Nt ; R < Nt decreasing the searching space and training overhead
to P × R. Then using the set of arrival virtual angles to construct the combiner
at the receiver i.e. Q = [q1 (θ̄1 ), q2 (θ̄2 ), ..., qP (θ̄P )]. The departure virtual angles
are feedback to the transmitter in order to build its beamformer F, where log2 P
bits are needed, that could be sent using the sub-6 Ghz channel. The new received
signal in mm-wave systems is

Y = ρQH S HFS + V, (13)

After a vectorization step:



y= ρ(QTS ⊗ FH
S )h + v (14)

where y = vec(Y), h = vec(H), and v = vec(V). The largest absolute value


entry in (15) determines the best beam-pair, that is to say iopt = arg max |[y]i |,
will match the best pair of AoA and AoD.

1.2

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Length of signal x

Fig. 3. Complex path gain estimation for a typical value.

4.2 Path Gain Estimation


At this point the AoAs and AoDs for different paths have been estimated by
the qî and fî vectors, therefore the final step is to estimate the nonzero values
entries of the channel, to simplify the analysis, we assume a single path channel,
then re-writing Eq. (3) with a vector training symbol such that x ∈ C1×s , the
received signal is:

y = ρqH î
Hfî x + v, (15)
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation Using Coalitional Game 9

We apply the linear LS estimator to calculate the complex path value associated
to the given AoA and AoD, given by
z = (xxH )−1 xyH (16)

where z = ρqH î
Hfî , that carries the path gain estimation. About the vector
training symbol length the Fig. 3 shows the variability of the path gain estimated
αl according to the signal length, we can observe there is a convergence with a
length further than 20.
Additionally we focus on analyze the rate between the eNB and an UE in
downlink transmission. Then the rate R is affected by changing the channel
coherence time due to MS velocity, as

To − Tτ ρqH Hfî fH

HH qî
RSingle = log2 (1 + î ) (17)
To σo2
where the pre log-factor takes account the training overhead necessary to esti-
mates the channel, here To = λB2vo , λ, Bo , vo , are mm-wave carrier wavelength,
o

bandwidth and mobile station speed respectively, additionally Tτ is the number


of P × R training blocks needed to estimate the channel.
Another metric choosed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method
is the computational complexity compared with Fast Channel Estimation (FCE)
method described in [16]. The complexity cost is given by O(Nr Nt L + Nr L)
counting the beam and gain selection, by the other hand the FCE computational
complexity is O(Nr T + LNt T + LT ).

5 Multicell Analysis
From now, considering an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
(OFDMA) multicell system as is shown in Fig. 4. We assume in every cell there
is a small cell microwave station and millimeter-wave small station located in
the same position. Also, we assume a microwave channel estimation have been
already done in every small cell microwave station, such that a CE training-based
method is applied in every millimeter-wave small station. We will analyze the
performance of this mm-wave CE proposed method. Therefore, we focus on this
frequency band. Additionally we assume no interference among the subchannels.
Let’s consider the Fig. 4 where the UE1 is located in the eNB2 coverage area
border, such that this user must deal with handoff management and interfer-
ence from neighboring cells. In order to overcome these problems, we propose a
method based on cooperative model using coalitional games between the con-
cerned eNBs. The goals of this section is to increase the channel rate in the
transmission data stage.

5.1 Coalitional Game: System Model


Assuming a mm-wave system, with N cells in the network and N = {1, ..., N }
denoting the set of millimeter-wave small cells (MMWSCs) which are connected
10 P. Palacios et al.

with each other via a wire backhaul, e.g., fiber, providing reliable links for traffic
control. Each MMWSC i ∈ N works over the same set of channels, that is the
available spectrum, i.e., is the frequency resource shared between all MMWSCs.
Therefore the MMWSCs should share these bandwidth allocated in an oppor-
tunistic way in order to avoid handoff recurrent, besides diminishing the inter-
ference, leading to an improve in the channel rate.

Fig. 4. Multicell network architecture

In the non-cooperative scenario, the access mode is frequency division duplex-


ing (FDD) where each MMWC i ∈ N transmits over a set of subchannels Γ ,
which contains |Γ | = M subchannels. The MMWSC i occupies the full time
duration of all its l ∈ Γ subchannels, under this non-cooperative scenario the
UE1 (Fig. 4) uses the M subchannels available to transmit its data. In this case
a UE located near the coverage area border may suffer an important degradation
due to interference and coalitions in the subchannels from neigboring MMWSCs.
Under this setup and without considering UE mobility, we can rewrite Eq. 15 as:

yi,l = ρqH H f x + v + ĪS ,
î,l i,l î,l i,l
(18)
 √
j∈N ,j=i ρ qj,l Hj,l fj,l xj,l , is the interference from neighboring
H
where ĪS =
cells during the mm-wave CE process in the eNB. Here is easy to notice how
the interference affect the estimation process. By the other hand the rate in
downlink transmission of MMWC i ∈ N to an UE is given by
 ρi,l qH H H
i,l Hi,l fi,l fi,l Hi,l qi,l
RM ulti = log2 (1 + ) (19)
σo2 + IS
l∈Γ

where ρi,l denotes the downlink transmit power by MMWSC i to a UE on


subchannel l, fi,l is the beamforming vector in the MMWSC i pointing to UE
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation Using Coalitional Game 11

on subchannel l, Hi,l is the massive MIMO channel between the MMWSC i and
the UE on the l-th subchannel, qi,l is the combining vector in the UE pointing
to MMWSC i on subchannel l and IS denotes the power interference suffered by
an UE from neighboring MMWSCs, as

IS = ρj,l qH
j,l Hj,l fj,l fj,l Hj,l qj,l ,
H H
(20)
j∈N ,j=i

The term IS can significantly reduce the rates achieved. Specifically, depend-
ing on the signal to noise and interference ratio (SNIR) feedback from the UE,
the MMWCs can decide to form cooperative groups called coalitions, in order
to overcome the interference between neighboring cells and the handoff manage-
ment. Under this coalitional game approach, the MMWCs are modeled as players
that access the spectrum, avoiding coalitions among them by jointly scheduling
their transmissions, we state the following definition for a coalition:
Definition 1. A coalition S ⊆ N is a non−empty subset of N in which players
inside the set access the spectrum via a coordinated manner.
Therefore we consider that if a coalition S is formed, the transmissions inside S
are managed by a local scheduler as in [20], using Time Division multiple access
(TDMA) mode, such that the subchannels are split in time slots allocated for
every MMWSC. As a result no more than one MMWSC will access the every
channel in each time slot, mitigating the interference inside the coalition S.
Although coordination can help to increase the channel rate by decreasing
the interference, it also incurs in a coordination cost. Here we consider this coor-
dination cost in terms of transmit power. Thus, the power spent by a MMWSC
i to reach the farthest MMWSC ĵ in a coalition S is ρĵ,i . Then the power cost
needed to form a coalition S is:

ρS = ρĵ,i (21)
i∈S

In addition, we define a maximum tolerable power cost ρlim for every coalition
S as in [21]. By considering the coalition cost in this way we take account the
spatial distribution of the MMSCs and the coalition size.

5.2 MMWCs Cooperation as a Coalitional Game


The main goal is to deal with interference from neighboring MMWSC in the
border coverage area by forming coalitions, i.e., using coalitional game theory
[18], we denote as B the set of all partitions GN of N , this problem can be
modeled as coalitional game in partition form with transferable utility as [19]:
Definition 2. A coalitional game in partition form with transferable utility
(TU) is defined by the pair (N , v) where N is the set of players in the game,
and a value function v(S, GN ) assigning a real value to each coalition S.
12 P. Palacios et al.

We also assume that v(∅) = 0. Thus, the definition above imposes a dependence
on the coalitional structure N when evaluating the value of S ⊆ N , i.e. to the
players N \S as well. By the other hand the TU property implies that the total
utility represented by a real number, (in our case the channel rate) can be divided
in any manner between the coalition members.
Clearly, the cooperation model can be stated as a game in partition form
where the MMWSC are the players, since the channel rate of a coalition is
affected by the interference from others players, thus there is a dependence
between the coalition and the players which do not belong to the coalition
(coalitional structure). Therefore the utility achieved by the coalition S can
be expressed in terms of the channel rate as:

 ρi,l qH H H
i,l Hi,l fi,l fi,l Hi,l qi,l
U(S, GN ) = αil log2 (1 + ), (22)
i∈S l∈Γ
σo2 + ÎS
where αil ∈ [0, 1] denotes the fraction of time duration during which MMWSC i
transmits on the subchannel l to the UE. In the non-cooperative scenario, i.e.,
FDD transmission mode, each transmission occupies a whole subchannel, hence
αil = 1. In addition IŜ denotes the co-tier interference suffered by the UE served
by MMWSC i on subchannel l from players j ∈ N \S as follows:

IŜ = ρj,l qH
j,l Hj,l fj,l fj,l Hj,l qj,l ,
H H
(23)
j∈GN \S, j=i

Therefore thanks to transmission scheduling the interference from players within


the coalition S is suppressed, while inter-coalition interference still remain and
leads to a game in partition form. Given the power cost and utility function for
any coalition S ∈ N , we can define the value of any coalition, i.e., the total
benefit as:

|S| U(S, GN ) if ρS ≤ ρlim
v(S, GN ) = (24)
0 otherwise,
As the utility in (24) represents a sum rate, then the proposed coalitional
game has a transferable utility, since the sum rate can be shared among the coali-
tion members by dividing the frequency resource in any manner, while meeting a
fairness criterion, consequently our aim is to maximize the sum rate while taking
account the constraints in terms of transmit power.
We can define the payoff of a MMWSC i ∈ S as:
⎛ ⎞
1 ⎝ 
xi (S, GN ) = v(S, πN ) − v({j}, GN )⎠ + v({i}, GN ) (25)
|S|
j∈S

5.3 Proposed Algorithm


For the stated coalitional game is important to notice that due to the power
constraint the grand coalition seldom forms. Therefore cooperation will occurs
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation Using Coalitional Game 13

when the interfering MMWSCs are closely located in a way that ρS ≤ ρlim , thus
coalition with many members is unlikely to happen, in this sense we are not focus
on analyze the stability of the grand coalition. Finding an optimal coalitional
structure for games in partition form have been studied in, [22] and [23], we
will apply the concept of recursive core as in [23]. The concept of recursive core
studies the behaviour of dynamics coalition formation but also considering the
interference from neighboring MMWSCs. The detail about how the recursive
core works is provided in [23].
In the algorithm proposed (Algorithm 1), at the first step an UE is sens-
ing interference which will trigger the coalitional game. Secondly to resolve the
coalitional game, i.e., achieving the recursive core, we propose three phases: envi-
ronment sensing, coalition formation and scheduling transmission. First of all,
the network is partitioned in N single coalitions, this is the non-cooperative
case. Then by discovering neighbors stage, the MMWSCs can create a list of
existing neighbors in the network, once each MMWSC has a neighboring list,
they can start a recursive coalition formation to find a recursive core. Here
every MMWSC establishes negotiations with the discovered neighbors, to iden-
tify potential partners for cooperation, this information is exchanged by using
the wire reliable control channel. Then the cooperation cost for every coalition
is calculates as in Eq. 21, and the potential payoff is computed as in Eq. 25 for
every member of a coalition. To reach the recursive core, each MMWSC joins
to the coalition which provides the highest revenue, i.e., payoff. Then, once the
coalition is formed, coalition-level scheduling occurs in each coalition.

6 Numerical Results
In this section, simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance for the
proposed channel estimation strategies. We assess the channel estimation error,
+the effect of SNR and speed on the method’s performance of the proposed
methods, additionally the computation time is analyzed.+
The sub-6 Ghz channel works at f6G = 3 GHz and mm-wave channel at
fmm = 28 GHz, bandwidth Bo = 10 MHz alike than mm-wave case, the distance
between the UE and eNB is set at 50m, the path loss exponent at sub-6 Ghz
is equal to 2 while for mm-wave has been set to 3. The angles of arrival and
departure for both environments are limited at [− π2 , π2 ), the antennas number at
sub-6 Ghz and mm-wave will be changing according to every experiment at the
UE and eNB, the inter antenna element distance at both cases is half-wavelength.
Additionally the signal-to-noise ratio is set as SN R = Pσ2o .
o
To assess the estimation error we express the mm-wave virtual channel Hvirt
as sparse [16], such that Hvirt = JTLNr Λ JLNt where Λ is an L × L diagonal
matrix and the L are the entries different than zero of Hvirt , the binary matrices
JTLNr , JLNt are L × Nr and L × Nt selection matrices, generated by keeping L
rows of Nr × Nr and Nt × Nr identity matrices respectively. Therefore we can
compute the mean square error as MSE = E{ Hvirt − H̃virt 2F / Hvirt 2F }.
14 P. Palacios et al.

Algorithm 1. The Proposed MMWSC cooperation algorithm


Step 1: UE interference sensing
The UE sense the interference U Eint , once it overpass a threshold Ithr , the UE
feedback the information to its attached eNB in order to initiate the cooperation
process, thus:
if U Eint ≥ Ithr then
Step 2: Coalitional Game Starts
At the beginning when players are not cooperating GN = {1, ..., N } =
{S1 , ..., SN }.
Three stages in each round of the algorithm
Stage 1 - Discovering Neighbors:

– Each MMWSC discovers the neighboring coalitions.

Stage 2 - Recursive Coalition Formation:


repeat

– Each MMWSC establishes negotiations with discovered neighboring FAPs, in


order to identify potential coalition partners.
– Each MMWSC create a list of the feasible coalitions which ensure ρS ≤ ρlim
– The payoff for the feasible coalitions is computed and each MMWSC joins to
the coalition which ensures the maximum payoff.
– The resulting coalition is included in the recursive core.

until convergence to a stable partition in the recursive core.


Stage 3 - Inner-coalition scheduling:

– The scheduling information is gathered by each MMWSC i ∈ S from its


coalitions members, and transmitted within the coalition S afterwards.

end if
Step 3: High Speed mmWave Communications

– And high data rate transmission starts.

In order to explore the performance of the proposed method, in the first


simulation we set the Sub 6-Ghz channel with 16 transmitter antennas and 16
receiver antennas, in the other and we set the mm-wave channel with Nr = Nt =
64, Nr = Nt = 32 and Nr = Nt = 16 antennas, in the Fig. 5 we can see how the
spectral efficiency change according to different SNR values for every antenna
array, as is expected under the beam codebook design, increasing the number of
antennas lead to an increasing in the beam-resolution.
For exhaustive-search this occurs due to the number of Nr ×Nt blocks needed
for channel estimation, here the training time occupies most of the channel
coherence time leaving no time for data sending, by the other hand under this
method thanks to prior spatial information obtained from sub-6 Ghz the number
of beam candidates decrease, such that P Nr and R Nr therefore the blocks
for training are highly reduced, leaving more time for data transmission.
Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation Using Coalitional Game 15

Fig. 5. Rate achieved by CE training-based over different SNR values.

The last experiment takes account the system complexity between the refined
CE method and FCE detailed at [17] in term of their computation time, the
complexity cost are O(Nr T + LNt T + LT ) and O(Nr Nt L + Nr L) respectively.
All simulations are conducted at Matlab R2015a by the Intel Core i5 CPU, in
Fig. 6(a) the Nr is set to 16, while Nt is increasing, then in Fig. 6(b) theNt is set
to 16 and Nt is changing. For the sake of fairness we comparative both method

Fig. 6. Computation time of CE based on training and FCE, varying: (a) Nr and
(b) Nt.
16 P. Palacios et al.

setting the parameters to obtain a higher accuracy, that is L=18 according to


[16]. In the Fig. 6 we observe the computation time for both methods grows
linearly when the number of antennas increase, although this proposed method
run faster than FCE, this is mainly because the searching space is diminished
thanks to prior information obtained from sub-6 Ghz channel.

7 Conclusions

In this work, we proposed a channel estimation method based on coalitional


game for a multicell case that improves the throughput and its performance over
UE in mobility cases. The prior based on an algorithm that improves intercell
interference. We analyze how the coalitional game improves the throughput and
its performance over user equipments (UEs) in mobility cases. The proposed
algorithm allows sharing the bandwidth allocated to the UE in an opportunistic
manner to avoid recurring handover, in addition to reducing interference, which
leads to an improvement in the channel speed. In addition, authors expect that
the proposed method can be applied to reduce complexity and improve efficiency
in terms of probability of non-detection of the system for NOMA (non-orthogonal
multiple access systems).

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demoniacal laughter. Yet I could not pause to remove those grating
shoes of toothed steel. Every second even might be precious now.
I drew near the turn, the revolver thrust forward in readiness for
instant action.
I reached it, and there just beyond, a dark figure was standing,
framed in a blaze of light.
It was Milton Rhodes.
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"Well, we've found it, Bill!" said he.
I was drawing near to him.
"That scream?" I said. "Who gave that terrible scream?"
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is, Bill, I'd like to hear it again."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"'Tis so."
"Who was it? Or what was it?"
"Why, the angel herself!" he told me.
"Where is she now?"
"Gone, Bill; she's gone. When she saw me, she fetched up, gave
that scream, then turned and vanished—around that next turn."
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"I wish that I could tell you! But how can a man describe Venus? I
know one thing, Bill: if all the daughters of Drome are as fair as this
one that I saw, I know where all the movie queens of the future are
coming from."
I looked at him, and I laughed.
"Wait till you see her, Bill. Complexion like alabaster, white as
Rainier's purest snow! And hair! Oh, that hair, Bill! Like ten billion
dollars' worth of spun gold!"
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"Wait till you see her," said Milton.
"And the demon?" I queried.
"I didn't see any demon, Bill."
There was silence for a little space.
"Then," I said, "the whole thing is true, after all."
"You mean what grandfather Scranton set down in his journal, and
the rest of it?"
I nodded.
"I never doubted that, Bill."
"At times," I told him, "I didn't doubt it. Then, again, it all seemed so
wild and unearthly that I didn't know what to think."
"I think," he said with a wan smile, "that you know what to think now
—now when you are standing in this very way to Drome, whatever
Drome may be."
"Yes. And yet the thing is so strange. Think of it. A world of which
men have never dreamed, save in the wildest romance! An
underground world. Subterranean ways, subterranean cities, men
and women there—"
"Cavernicolous Aphrodites!" said Milton Rhodes.
"And all down there in eternal darkness!" I exclaimed. "Why, the
thing is incredible. No wonder that I sometimes find myself
wondering if I am not in a dream."
Said Milton Rhodes:

"'All that we see or seem


Is but a dream within a dream.'

"But come, Bill," he added. "Don't let this a priori stuff bowl you over.
In the first place, it isn't dark down there—when, that is, you get
down far enough."
"In Heaven's name, how do you know that?"
"Why, for one thing, if this subterranean world was one of unbroken
darkness, the angel (and the demon) would be blind, like those poor
fishes in the Mammoth Cave. But she is no more blind than you or I.
Ergo, if for no other reason, we shall find light down there."
"Of course, they have artificial light, or—"
"I don't mean that. If there had not been some other illumination, this
strange race (of whose very existence Science has never even
dreamed) would have ceased to exist long ago—if, indeed, it ever
could have begun."
"But no gleam of sunlight can ever find its way down to that world."
"It never can, of course. But there are other sources of light—
nebulas and comets in the heavens, for example, and auroras,
phosphorus and fire-flies here on earth. The phenomena of
phosphorescence are by no means so rare as might be imagined.
Why, as Nichol showed, though any man who uses his eyes can see
it himself, there is light inherent even in clouds."
I have the professor's book before me as I write—J. P. Nichol, LL.D.,
Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow—and here are
his own words:
"Whatever their origin, they [the auroras] show the existence of
causes in virtue of whose energy the upper strata of our atmosphere
become self-luminous, sometimes in a high degree; for, in northern
regions, our travelers have read by their brilliance. But the Aurora is
not the only phenomenon which indicates the existence of a power in
the matter of our globe to emit light. One fact, that must have been
often noticed, forcibly impresses me with the conviction, that here,
through what seems common, truths of much import will yet be
reached. In the dead of night, when the sky is clear, and one is
admiring the brilliancy of the stars, hanging over a perfectly obscured
earth, a cloud, well known to observing astronomers, will at times
begin to form, and it then spreads with astonishing rapidity over the
whole heavens. The light of the stars being thus utterly shut out, one
might suppose that surrounding objects would, if possible, become
more indistinct: but no! what was formerly invisible can now be
clearly seen; not because of lights from the earth being reflected
back from the cloud—for very often there are none—but in virtue of
the light of the cloud itself, which, however faint, is yet a similitude of
the dazzling shell of the Sun."
After mentioning the phosphorescence of the dark hemisphere of
Venus and the belief that something similar has been seen on the
unillumined surface of our satellite, he continues thus:
"But the circumstance most remarkably corroborative of the
mysterious truth to which these indications point, is the appearance
of our midnight luminary during a total eclipse. By theory, she ought
to disappear utterly from the heavens. She should vanish, and the
sky seem as if no Moon were in being; but, on the contrary, and even
when she passes the very centre of the Earth's shadow, she seems
a huge disc of bronze, in which the chief spots can easily be
described by a telescope."
And that, remember, when the moon is in the utter blackness of the
earth's shadow. Of course, another explanation has been advanced;
but it does not take the professor long to dispose of that.
"It has been put forth in explanation," he says, "that a portion of the
rays of the Sun must be reflected by our atmosphere and bent
toward the eclipsed disc, from which again they are reflected to the
Earth—thus giving the Moon that bronze color; but, the instant the
hypothesis is tested by calculation, we discern its utter inefficiency.
Nor is there any tenable conclusion save this:—That the matter both
of Sun and planets is capable, in certain circumstances whose exact
conditions are not known, of evolving the energy we term light."
All this, and more, Rhodes explained to me, succinctly but clearly.
"Oh, we'll find light, Bill," said he.
All the same this subterranean world for which we were bound
presented some unpleasant possibilities, in addition, that is, to those
concomitant to its being a habitat of demons—and Heaven only
knew what besides.
"And then there is the air," I said. "As we descend, it will become
denser and denser, until at last we will be able to use these ice-picks
on it."
Rhodes, who was removing his creepers, laughed.
"We will have to make a vertical descent of three and one half miles
below the level of the sea—a vertical descent of near five miles from
this spot where we stand, Bill—before we reach a pressure of even
two atmospheres."
"The density then increases rapidly, doesn't it?"
"Oh, yes. Three and a half miles more, and we are under a pressure
of four atmospheres, or about sixty pounds to the square inch. Three
and a half miles farther down, or ten and one half miles in all below
the level of the sea, and we have a pressure upon us of eight
atmospheres. Fourteen miles, and it will be sixteen atmospheres. At
thirty-five miles the air will have the density of water, at forty-eight
miles it will be as dense as mercury, and at fifty miles we shall have
it as dense as gold."
"That will do!" I told him. "You know that we can never get down that
far."
"I have no idea how far we can go down, Bill."
"You know that we could never stand such pressures as those."
"I know that. But, as a matter of fact, I don't know what the pressures
are at those depths. Nor does any other man know. What I said a
moment ago is, of course, according to the law; but there is
something wrong with the law, founded upon that of Mariotte—as
any physicist will tell you."
"What's wrong with it?"
"At any rate, the law breaks down as one goes upward, and I have
no doubt that it will be found to do so as one descends below the
level of the sea. If the densities of the atmosphere decrease in a
geometrical ratio as the distances from sea-level increase in an
arithmetical ratio, then, at a distance of only one hundred miles up,
we should have virtually a perfect vacuum. The rarity there would be
absolutely inconceivable. For the atmospheric density at that height
would be only one billioneth of what it is at the earth's surface."
"And what is the real density there?"
"No man knows or can know," replied Rhodes, "until he goes up
there to see. But meteors, rendered incandescent by the resistance
they encounter, show that a state of things exists at that high altitude
very different from the one that would be found there if our formulae
were correct and our theories were valid. And so, I have no doubt,
we shall find it down in Drome.
"Formulae are very well in their place," he went on, "but we should
never forget, Bill, that they are often builded on mere assumption
and that a theory is only a theory until experiment (or experience)
has shown us that it is a fact. And that reminds me: do you know
what Percival Lowell says about formulae?"
I said that I didn't.
"'Formulae,' says the great astronomer, 'are the anaesthetics of
thought.'
"I commend that very highly," Milton Rhodes added, "to our fiction
editors and our writers of short stories."
"But—"
"But me no buts, Bill," said Milton. "And what do your scientists know
about the interior of this old earth that we inhabit, anyway? Forsooth,
but very little, Billy, me lad. Why they don't even know what a
volcano is. One can't make a journey into the interior of the earth on
a scratch-pad and a lead-pencil, or, if he does, we may be pardoned
if we do not give implicit credence to all that he chooses to tell us
when he comes back. For instance, one of these armchair
Columbuses (he made the journey in a machine called d2y by dx2
and came out in China) says that he found the interior in a state of
igneous fluidity. And another? Why, he tells us that the whole earth is
as rigid as steel, that it is solid to the very core."
"It seems," said I, "to be a case of
"'Great contest follows, and much learned dust
Involves the combatants; each claiming truth,
And truth disclaiming both.'"

"The truth, in this case, is not yet known, of course," replied Milton
Rhodes, "though I trust that you and I, Bill, are fated to learn it—
some of it, I should say."
He smiled a queer, wan smile.
"Whether we are fated, also, to reveal it to the world, to our world—
well, as for that, quién sabe?" he said.
"Then," I remarked, my fingers busy removing my ice-creepers,
"what we read about the state of things in the interior of the earth—
the temperature, the pressure, the density—then all that is pure
theory?"
"Of course. How could it be anything else? All theory, save, that is,
the mean density of the earth. And that mean density gives us
something to think about, for it is just a little more than twice that of
the surface materials. With all this enormous pressure that we hear
so much about and the resultant increase of density with depth, the
weight of the earth certainly ought to be more than only five and one
half times that of a globe of equal size composed of nothing but
water."[6]
"Kind of queer, all right," was my comment.
"It is queer, all right—as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.
However, as old Dante has it, 'Son! our time asks thrifter using.'"
As the last words left his lips, I straightened up, the toothed shoes in
my hand; and, as I did so, I started and cried:
"Hear that?"
Rhodes made no answer. For some moments we stood there in
breathless expectation; but that low mysterious sound did not come
again.
I said:
"What was that?"
"I wish that I knew, Bill. It was faint, it was—well, rather strange."
"It was more than that," I told him. "It seemed to me to be hollow—
like the sound of some great door suddenly closing."
My companion looked at me rather quickly.
"Think so, Bill?" he said. "I thought 'twas like the sound of something
falling."
There was a pause, one of many moments, during which pause we
stood listening and waiting; but the gallery remained as silent as
though it had never known the tread of any living thing.
"Well, Bill," said Milton Rhodes suddenly, "we shall never learn what
Drome means if we stay in this spot. As for the creepers, I am going
to leave mine here."
The place where he put them, a jutting piece of rock, was a
conspicuous one; no one passing along the tunnel could possibly fail
to notice the objects resting there. Mine I placed beside them,
wondering as I did so if I should ever see this spot again.
Milton then wrote a short note, which recorded little more than our
names, the date of our great discovery and that we were going
farther. This, carefully folded, he placed beside the creepers and put
a rock-fragment upon it. I wondered as I watched him whose would
be the eyes that would discover it. Some inhabitant of this
underground world, of course, and to such a one the record would
be so much Greek. 'Twas utterly unlikely that any one from the world
which we were leaving would ever see that record.
"And now, Bill," said Milton Rhodes, "down we go!"
And the next moment we were going—had begun our descent into
this most mysterious and dreadful place.
Chapter 16
"ARE WE ENTERING DANTE'S INFERNO
ITSELF?"
When Scranton came with his weird story of Old He, I was, I
confess, not a little puzzled by his and Milton's reference to the
extraordinary scientific possibilities that it presented. At first I could
not imagine what on earth they meant. But I saw all those
possibilities very clearly now, and a thousand more I imagined. I
knew a wild joy, exultation, and yet at the same time the wonder and
the mystery of it all made me humble and sober of spirit. I admit, too,
that a fear—a fear for which I can find no adequate name—had laid
its palsied and cold fingers upon me.
In a few moments we reached that spot where the angel had
vanished. There we paused in curiosity, looking about; but nothing
was to be seen. The gallery—which from this point swung sharp to
the right and went down at a rather steep angle—was as silent as
some interstellar void.
"Bill," smiled Milton Rhodes, "he is idle who might be better
employed."
And he started on, or, rather, down. A hundred feet, however—we
were now under the glacier—and he halted, turned his light full upon
the left-hand wall, pointed and said:
"There you are, Bill—the writing on the wall."
I pressed to his side and stood staring. The rock there was as
smooth, almost, as a blackboard; and upon it, traced in white chalk,
were three inscriptions, with what we took to be names appended to
them. That on the right was clearly a very recent one—had been
placed there doubtless, at the most but a few days since, by that
"cavernicolous Venus" that Milton Rhodes had seen for so fleeting a
moment.
It was Milton's opinion that the characters were alphabetical ones,
though at first I was at a loss to understand how they could be
anything to him but an utter mystery. The letters were formed by
straight lines only. The simplest character was exactly like a plain
capital T, with, that is, the vertical line somewhat elongated. And it
was made to perform the office of another letter by the simple
expedient of standing it upon its head. The number of cross-lines
increased up to six, three at the top and three at the bottom; and in
one or two characters there were two vertical lines, placed close
together.
"Evidently," observed Milton Rhodes, "this alphabet was constructed
on strictly scientific principles."
For a space we stood there looking, wondering what was recorded in
that writing so strange and yet, after all, so very and beautifully
simple. Then Milton proceeded to place another record there, and,
as he wrote, he hummed:

"'When I see a person's name


Scratched upon a glass,
I know he owns a diamond
And his father owns an ass.'"

The inscription finished, we resumed our descent. The way soon


became steep and very difficult.
"That Aphrodite of yours," I observed as we made our way down a
particularly rugged place, "must have the agility of a mountain-goat."
"Your rhetoric, Bill Barrington Carter, is horrible. Wait till you see her;
you'll never be guilty of thinking of a goat when she has your
thoughts."
"By the way, what kind of a light did the lady have?"
"Light? Don't know. I was so interested in the angel herself that I
never once thought of the light that she carried. I don't know that she
needs a light, anyway."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Why, I fancy, Bill, that her very presence would make even Pluto's
gloomy realm bright and beautiful as the Garden of the Hesperides."
"Oh, gosh!" was my comment.
"Wait till you see her, Bill."
"I'll probably see her demon first."
"Hello!" exclaimed Milton.
"What now?"
"Look at that," said he, pointing. "I think we have the explanation of
that mysterious sound, which you thought was like that of a great
door suddenly closing: in her descent, she dislodged a rock-
fragment, and that sound we heard must have been produced by the
mass as it went plunging down."
"'Tis very likely, but—"
"Great Heaven!" he exclaimed.
"What is it now?"
"I wonder, Bill, if she lost her footing here and went plunging down,
too."
I had not thought of that. And the possibility that that lovely and
mysterious being might be lying somewhere down there crushed and
bleeding, perhaps dying or lifeless, made me feel very sad. We sent
the rays of our powerful lights down into those silent depths of the
tunnel, but nothing was visible there, save the dark rock and those
fearful shadows—fearful what with the secrets that might be hidden
there.
"The answer won't come to us, Bill," said Milton.
"No," I returned as we started down; "we must go get it."
The gallery at this place had an average width of, I suppose, ten
feet, and the height would average perhaps fifteen. The reader must
not picture the walls, the roof and the floor as smooth, however. The
rock was much broken, in some spots very jagged. The gallery
pitched at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, which will give some
idea of the difficulties encountered in the descent.
At length we reached what may be called the bottom; here the tunnel
gave another turn and the pitch became a gentle slope. And there
we found it, the rock-fragment, weighing perhaps two hundred
pounds, that the angel had dislodged in her descent—which
doubtless had been a hurried, a wild one.
"Thank Heaven!" I exclaimed, "she didn't come down with it!"
"Amen," said Milton.
Then a sudden thought struck me, a thought so unworthy that I did
not voice it aloud. But to myself I said:
"It is possible that we may find ourselves, before we get out of this,
wishing that she had."
If a human being, one of the very best of human beings even, were
to voice his uttermost, his inmost thoughts, what a shameful, what a
terrible monster they would call him—or her!
And the demon? Where was the angel's demon?
I could give no adequate description of those hours that succeeded.
Steadily we continued the descent—now gentle, now steep, rugged
and difficult. Sometimes the way became very narrow—indeed, at
one point we had to squeeze our way through, so closely did the
walls approach each other—then, again, it would open out, and we
would find ourselves in a veritable chamber. And, in one of these, a
lofty place, the vaulted roof a hundred feet or more above our heads,
we made a discovery—a skeleton, quasi-human and with wings.
I made an exclamation of amazement.
"In the name of all that's wonderful and terrible," I cried, "are we
entering Dante's Inferno itself?"
A faint smile touched the face of Rhodes.
"Don't you," he asked, "know what this is?"
"It must be the bones of a demon."
"Precisely. Grandfather Scranton, you'll remember, wounded that
monster, up there by the Tamahnowis Rocks. Undoubtedly the bullet
reached a vital spot, and these are that creature's bones."
"But," I objected, "these are human bones—a human skeleton with
wings. According to Scranton, there was nothing at all human about
the appearance of that thing which he called a demon."
"I admit," said Rhodes, "that this skeleton, at the first glance, has an
appearance remarkably human—if, that is, one can forget the wings.
The skull, I believe, more than anything else, contributes to that
effect; and yet, at a second glance, even that loses its human
semblance. For look at those terrible jaws and those terrible teeth.
Who ever saw a human being with jaws and teeth like those? And
look at the large scapulae and the small hips and the dwarfish,
though strong, nether limbs. Batlike, Bill, strikingly so. And those
feet. No toes; they are talons. And see that medial ridge on the
sternum, for the attachment of the great pectoral muscles."
"A bat-man, then?" I queried.
"I should say a bat-ape."
"Or an ape-bat."
"Whichever you prefer," smiled Milton.
"Well," I added, "at any rate, we have a fair idea now of what a
demon is like."
Little wonder, forsooth, that old Sklokoyum had declared that the
thing was a demon from the white man's Inferno itself. And this
creature so dreadful—well, the angel had one like it for a companion.
When Rhodes saw her, she was, of course, without that terrible
attendant: undoubtedly the next time, though—how long would it be?
—she would not be alone.
"Oh, well," I consoled myself, "we have our revolvers."
Chapter 17
LIKE BALEFUL EYES
According to the aneroid, this great chamber is about four thousand
feet above the level of the sea; in other words, we had already made
a vertical descent of some four thousand feet. We were now about as
high above the sea as the snout of the Nisqually Glacier. But what
was our direction from the Tamahnowis Rocks? So sinuous had been
this strange subterranean gallery, my orientation had been knocked
into a cocked hat. It was Milton's belief, however, that we had been
moving in a northerly direction, that we were still under the peak itself,
probably under the great Emmons Glacier. I confess that I would not
have cared to place a wager on the subject. Goodness only knew
where we were, but of one thing there could be no doubt: we were
certainly there.
"Why," I asked, "didn't we bring along a compass?"
"I think," returned Milton Rhodes, slipping loose his pack and lowering
it to the floor, "that, as it was, we had a case of another straw and the
camel's back's busted. Let's take a rest—it's twenty minutes after one
—and a snack. And another thing: we wouldn't know whether to trust
the compass or not."
"Why so?"
"Local attraction, Bill. Many instances of this could be given. One will
suffice. Lieutenant Underwood, of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition,
found a deviation of thirteen and a quarter points on the summit of the
Cobu Rock, in the Feejees—one hundred and forty-nine degrees.
The Island of Nairai was directly north, and yet, according to the
compass, it bore southeast-by-south one quarter south, whilst, placed
at the foot of the rock, that very same compass said Nairai bore
north! So you see that that faithful friend of man, and especially of the
mariner, has in its friendships some qualities that are remarkably
human.
"Still," Rhodes added, "I wish that we had brought one along. Also,
we should have brought a manometer, for the aneroid will be
worthless after we have descended below sea-level. Oh, well, the
boiling-point of water will give us the atmospheric pressure: under a
pressure of two atmospheres, water boils at 249.5° Fahrenheit; under
a pressure of three atmospheres, at 273.3°; four atmospheres,
291.2°; five, 306°; six, 318.2°; seven, 329.6°; eight, 339.5°; and so
on. On the summit of Rainier, it boils at about 185°."
"I wish that we were headed for the summit," said I. "Eight
atmospheres! When we reach that pressure—if we ever do—we'll be
ten and a half miles below the level of the sea, won't we?"
Rhodes nodded.
"According to the law. But, as I remarked, there is something wrong
with the law. 'Tis my belief that we shall be able to descend much
deeper than ten and one half miles—that is, that the atmospheric
pressure will permit us to do so."
"That qualification," I told him, "is very apropos, for there is no telling
what the inhabitants of this underground world will permit us to do or
will do to us—bat-apes or ape-bats, humans, or both."
"That, of course, is very true, Bill."
"And," said I, "we won't need a manometer, or we won't need to
ascertain the boiling-point of water, to know that the pressure is
increasing. Our eardrums will make us painfully aware of that fact."
"When that comes, swallow, Billy, swallow, and the pain will be no
more."
"Swallow?"
"Swallow," Milton nodded.
"Great Barmecide, swallow what?"
"Swallow the pain, Bill. For look you. Deglutition opens the
Eustachian tube. Some of the dense air enters the drum and
counteracts the pressure on the outside of the membrane. You keep
swallowing. The air in the drum becomes as dense as that outside;
there is no pressure on the membrane now—or, rather, the pressures
are in perfect equilibrium—and, presto and abracadabra, the pain is
gone."
"Who would have thunk it?"
"A gink," said Rhodes, "going into compressed air had better think it,
or do it without thinking it. He may have his eardrums burst in if he
doesn't."
"But why does the Eustachian tube open only when we swallow?"
"To shut from the ear the sounds produced in the throat and mouth. If
the tube were always open, our heads would be so many bedlams."
"Wonderful Nature!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, she does fairly well," admitted Milton Rhodes.
"And I suppose," I said, "that the pain in the ears experienced by
those who ascend high mountains is to be explained in the same
way, only vice versa. They too ought to swallow."
"Of course. At lofty heights, the dense air in the drum presses the
membrane outwards. Swallowing permits the dense air to escape.
One swallows until the pressure on the inside equals that of the
rarefied outside air, and, hocus-pocus and presto, the pain has
evaporated."
"I hope," I said, "that all our difficulties will be as easily resolved."
"Hey!" cried Milton.
"What's the matter now?"
"Stop swallowing that water! We've got food sufficient for a week, but
we haven't got water to last a week or anything like a week. Keep up
that guzzling, and your canteen will be empty before sunset."
"Sunset? Sweet Pluto! Sunrise, sunset or high noon, it's all the same
here in Erebus."
"You'll say that it's very different," dryly remarked Milton Rhodes, "if
you find the fingers of Thirst at your throat."
"Surely there is water in this place—somewhere."
"Most certainly there is. But we don't know how far we are from that
somewhere. And, until we get to it, our policy, Bill, must be one of
watchful conservation."
A silence ensued. I sank into profound and gloomy meditation. Four
thousand feet down. A mile deeper, and where would we be? The
prospect certainly was, from any point of view, dark and mysterious
enough, dark and mysterious enough, forsooth, to satisfy the wildest
dream of a Poe or a Doré. To imagine a Dante's Inferno, however, is
one thing, and to find yourself in it is quite another. These are things,
by the way, that should not be confounded. 'Tis true, we weren't in it
yet; but we were on our way.
I hasten to say, though, that I had no thoughts of turning back. No
such thought, even the slightest, was entertained for one single
moment. I did not blink, that was all. I believed our enterprise was a
very dangerous one; I believed it was very probable that we should
never return to the light of the sun. Such thoughts are not pleasant,
are, indeed, horrible. And yet, in the very horror of them, I found a
strange fascination. Yes, we might leave our bones in this
underground world, in this very gallery even. Even so, we should
have our own exceeding great reward. For ours would be the
guerdon of dying in a stranger, a more wonderful quest than any
science or discovery ever had known. A strange reward, you say
mayhap, and perhaps you wonder what such a reward can mean to a
dying or a dead man. All I have to say is that, if you do, you know
naught of that flaming spirit which moves the scientist and the
discoverer, that such as you should never—indeed, can ever—seek
the dread secrets of Nature or journey to her hidden places.
We rested there for exactly one hour. The temperature, by the way,
was 57° Fahrenheit. When we resumed the descent, I was using the
phosphorus-lamp instead of the electric one. It was not likely that
even our electric lights would fail us; still there was no guessing what
might happen, and it might be well, I thought, to adopt a policy of
light-conservation also. As for the phosphorus lamps, these would
furnish light for six months. In this, they were simply wonderful; but
there was one serious drawback: the light emitted was a feeble one.
The manufacture of this lamp (at one time used, I believe, in Paris,
and probably elsewhere, in magazines containing explosives) is
simplicity itself. Into a glass phial is put a small piece of phosphorus.
The phial is filled two-thirds full of olive-oil, heated to the boiling point.
The thing is hermetically corked, and there you are. When you wish
to use your wonderful little pharos, you simply allow air to enter. The
space above the oil becomes luminous then. You replace the cork,
and the phial remains sealed until there is occasion to restore the
waning light, which you do, of course, by allowing more air to enter.
As has been said, such a phial will furnish light for a half-year.
These phials of ours were set each in a metal frame and protected by
a guard in such fashion that it would take a heavy blow to break the
glass. When not in use, they were kept in strong metal cylinders. Of
course, the electric light could be turned on at any instant.
There were places where the gallery pitched in a way to make the
head swim, many spots in which we had to exercise every caution; a
false step might have spelled irrevocable disaster. I wondered how
the angel had passed down those difficult places, and many pictures
of that mysterious creature, as I wondered, came and went. Well, she
had passed down and that without mishap. Where was she now?
Indeed, where were we ourselves?
Steadily we toiled our downward way. For a long distance, the gallery
ran with but slight deviation either to the right or to the left, though the
descent was much broken; I mean now was steep and now gentle,
now at some angle intermediate. Rhodes thought that we were now
moving in an easterly direction; it might have been north, east, south
or west for all I knew. Not a trickle of water had we seen, not even a
single drop, which I confess caused some unpleasant thoughts to
flicker through my mind.
The light clung to them like wraiths of fog, to be slowly
dissipated, as they advanced, in little streams and eddies behind
them.

At five o'clock we were two thousand feet above sea-level; at half


past seven, about half a thousand. And we then decided to call it a
day. Nor was I at all sorry to do so, even though we might be near
some strange, even great discovery, for I was very tired, and sore
from the top of my head to the end of my toes. I was in fair trim, and
so was Milton Rhodes; but it would take us some time to get used to
such work as this.
A very gentle current of air, so slight that it required experiment to
detect it, was passing down the gallery. The temperature here was
62° Fahrenheit.
We had stopped before a cavity in the wall, and, in that little chamber,
we passed the night, one holding watch whilst the other slept.
My dreams were dreadful, but otherwise the night was as peaceful as
any that ever passed over Eden. Neither Rhodes nor I, during that
strange, eerie vigil there in the heart of the living rock, heard even the
faintest, the most fleeting sound. As the watcher sat there waiting and
listening, whilst the minutes slowly passed, he found himself—at any
rate, I know that I did—almost wishing that some pulsation would
come, so heavy and awful was the stillness of the place.
But a sound we were to hear. We had been journeying for about an
hour and a half and had just passed below sea-level. In that place
Rhodes had left the aneroid. Of a sudden Milton, who was leading the
way, halted with a low, sharp interjection for silence. When my look
struck him, he was standing in an attitude of the most riveted
attention.
"There!" he exclaimed. "Did you hear that, Bill?"
The air had pulsed to the faintest sound; now all was still again.
"What was it?" I asked, my voice a whisper.
"Don't know, Bill. Haven't an idea. There!"
Again that gentle pulsation touched the ear, and again it was gone.
And a strange thing was that, for the life of me, I could not have told
whether it came from below or from behind us.
"There it is again!" said Rhodes.
I flashed on my electric light, to the full power.
"A whisper!" I exclaimed. "Angel, demon, human or what? And, great
Heaven, Milton!"
"What now, Bill?" he asked quickly.
"It's something behind us!"
He started. He turned his light up the tunnel, and for some moments
we stood peering intently. Not a moving thing was to be seen there,
however—only the moving shadows.
"Again!" said Milton Rhodes. "But it isn't a whisper, Bill. And it didn't
come from up there."

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