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increased again. Jason took two steps in front of her, as if he were walking
into the mouth of something terrifying.
"Holy _shit!_" He felt himself starting to slip. His booted feet
couldn't find a grip on the floor -- because the floor was no longer there. It
had suddenly lurched beneath him, dropping away like a funhouse gimmick. A
surge of gravity grabbed at him. "I'm falling!"
He flailed his arms, trying to keep his balance; he pushed the
diagnostic unit away from him. Every second seemed to take an eternity. Jason
twisted his body as he fell, trying to prevent his helmet from cracking
against the hard ground. All the time he kept his arms moving. The loose light
twirled beside him, making crazy patterns as it spun through the vacuum.
He heard Erika's shouts, but couldn't make sense of them through his
own yelling.
Even through the bulky padding of the suit and the slow-motion fall in
low gravity, Jason felt the breath go out of him as he struck bottom. He had
landed on his backpack; the heating and oxygen unit had softened the fall. He
struggled to breathe, and only after the first sharp pain had gone away was he
able to gasp for air. Sounds came over his radio, but they were distant,
someone calling....
His heart continued to beat fast. He tried to take slow breaths, to
keep from hyperventilating. He didn't hear any tell-tale sounds of air hissing
in his ears. Checking his life-system parameters with the heads-up display, he
saw that his suit pressure was stable.
He heard a low moan. He struggled to an elbow. His backpack kept him
from bending forward. Jason shoved hard with one hand and rolled to the front.
Pushing up with both hands, he straightened. _You sure weren't meant to fall
down in a bulky spacesuit_, he thought. "Erika?"
"Yeah." Her voice sounded weak. "Right here."
The light was off to the side, illuminating a distant wall. Jason
stepped to the light, reaching out to ensure that he wouldn't hit anything.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I didn't even move, and I still came tumbling after you!" Her
voice took a second to come back. "What happened?"
"Besides falling? I don't know." Jason bent to pick up the dropped
light. He found Erika lying not far from where he had fallen. "How's your suit
pressure?"
She took a minute to reply. "Steady." She reached behind herself. "And
the optical fiber's still attached. Think we're still transmitting out?"
"We don't know if we ever were."
He stepped carefully to her. Walls of alien material rose up around
them, glowing with the edge-of-vision blue color. He couldn't see how far they
had fallen, or what had become of the hole they had walked through.
"Jase," Erika said. She had just finished struggling up from the
ground. "Behind us. Is it my imagination, or is there a passageway back
there?"
At first Jason could see only more of the alien material, then he
caught a glimpse of something darker. "You're right." He turned the light back
toward her. "How could you see that?"
"No blue glow. The light in your hand was blinding you."
Jason pondered that. "Let me try something. Stay still." He switched
off the light. The entire chamber plunged into darkness.
It took a minute, but shortly Jason began to notice the faint outlines
of several square entrances into the chamber. The squares were deep black,
while the walls and floor around them glowed a bluish violet. He felt his eyes
getting used to the darkness about as much as they ever would to the edge of
the spectrum; to a different set of eyes, the chamber might be blazing with
light.
"This place looks like a train station. I can count seven, no eight
tunnels coming in here."
"Nine," corrected Erika. "Think about it -- nine arches outside, nine
pathways, now nine tunnels." Jason stood by and watched as Erika measured all
the entrances to the tunnels, the chamber they were in.
"Sounds like they've got a thing for nines, or threes." Jason took
another deep breath, felt his heartbeat slowing down. "Well, do we try to go
back outside? Everybody must be worried about us. Or do we go on?"
"Go on, of course." He had never heard Erika sound so determined. "We
might not get another chance to come out here, if somebody blows it all up.
All we've seen are tunnels so far. There's got to be something more."
Jason swallowed again, knowing she was right. "Then let's find it." He
switched the brilliant light back on, breaking the spell. "So which way?"
"Your call," said Erika. "Pick a tunnel, any tunnel."
He hesitated for a moment, then struck out for the first corridor. He
lifted the heavy diagnostic pack, hoping it would be worth their while to lug
the thing along. They walked in silence on a level floor.
After many minutes of plodding, they stopped as Erika's light splashed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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