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plastic adheres to the skin of his fingers like the lips of some unnatural creature. He pushes further in, the membrane sliding slickly over his flesh, until his hand is completely through.
    He waits for a moment, his wrist encircled in plastic. A guy he knows once gave himself second-degree burns by walking carelessly through a web right into the steam of a burst hot water pipe. But the air on the other side is only slightly warmer than inside. “Feels okay,” he says.
    Laboriously, he works the rest of his arm through. He pushes his face into the web, the respirator pressing into the skin around his nose and mouth, and works his head through. He continues to push. Getting his legs through is awkward, but the tension of the webbing keeps him from falling over.
    On the other side, he pulls his foot clear, and the webbing pops shut behind him, vibrating like a drum. His scarf still hangs limply from the center of it. As he yanks it free, it crackles with static electricity.
    While he waits for Bernie, Orel works his jaws, letting his ears pop. If only the boys in Pneumonics would increase the pressure inside the buildings to equal or surpass the pressure of the great cavern outside, he thinks, breaches wouldn’t be so dangerous. But no, that would make too much sense.
    Bernie is through. He looks down at his hands. They are glistening with silicon oil, like the rest of him. “I hate doing that,” he says. Orel nods. The beam of his flashlight reveals scores of thick pipes, a pair of pumping stations, and a series of shallow, forty-meter long tanks filled with dark, motionless water. Even through their respirators the stink of algae is everywhere. The air in these rooms is normally kept high in carbon dioxide — Hydroponics serves the double purpose of food-production and CO2 absorption — so the breach is not immediately a problem. Still, it should be fixed before the poisons in the fumatory damage the plants.
    “Everything looks okay,” Bernie says. “What do you think happened?”
    “I was worried there might have been an explosion, but it doesn’t look like it. We’re pretty close to the edge of the city here. Maybe there was a rock slide.”
    “I hope not.”
    “Agreed.” Their footsteps echo off the low ceiling. Somewhere water drips monotonously.
    Orel’s flashlight fixes on one of the thick cement pillars. The glowglobe on the side of it is broken. Slivers of glass protrude from the rim like jagged teeth. “Someone did that deliberately,” he says.
    He swings the light to the next pillar. The globe there, too, has been smashed. He moves the light further down, revealing the other pillars receding in the distance. Each globe is broken.
    “Someone likes his atmosphere moody,” Bernie says in a hushed voice, moving further into the darkness. The beam of his flashlight bobs and sways in the moist air. He kneels at the edge of one of the tanks. “Look at this.”
    Orel squats beside him. A bed of cultured algae three centimeters thick floats on the surface of the water. A rough semicircle has been scooped away from the edge. Bits of algae have dripped onto the cement, where they are drying in clumps. Green fingerprints are smeared along the edge of the tank.
    “You don’t suppose someone’s been eating this gunge raw, do you?” Bernie asks.
    “Euugh. I hope not.”
    A small clanking noise echoes through the room. Both men jump up. Orel swings his flashlight about, but he sees nothing. Straining his ears, he hears a sound that may be running footsteps, but he can’t be sure over the hum of machinery. “What the hell was that?”
    “It came from down there,” Bernie whispers, gesturing with his flashlight to the far end of the long room. “It could be nothing.”
    “It could be whoever broke the lights.”
    “Maybe we should get out of here. Let the clops handle it.” Bernie’s face, almost invisible in the dark, is pinched with fear. “Bouncing trespassers isn’t our job.”
    Orel thinks