Read Tunnels 03, Freefall for Free Online

they've got him somewhere. Maybe it was just another of their nasty little lies."
    "No, I don't think so," Will said, his eyes bright with hope. "What could they get from lying about that?" He looked at Chester. "So, if Drake did survive the ambush... and somehow got away from the Limiters... I wonder where he is now."
    "Maybe he's holed up somewhere on the Great Plain?" Chester suggested.
    "Or maybe he went Topsoil. Don't ask me why, but I had the feeling he could go to the surface any time he wanted."
    "Well, wherever he is, we could really do with his help now," Chester sighed as he scanned the darkness. "I wish he was down here with us."
    "I wouldn't wish that on anyone," Will declared earnestly, grunting as he worked the device over his face. He positioned the strap over his forehead and tightened it, then adjusted the flip-down lens so it was directly over his right eye. He found that the cable had become unplugged from the small rectangular unit in his trouser pocket, and made sure it was connected again before turning on the device. "So far, so good," he exhaled as the lens began to glow with a muted orange iridescence.
    Closing his left eye, he looked through the device, waiting for the image to settle down through a helter-skelter of static. "I think it's okay... yeah, it's okay... it's working," he told Chester as he got to his feet. The headset revealed the full extent of the fungal shelf to him as if it was bathed in a citrus glow.
    "Jeez, Chester, you look really weird," he chuckled as he surveyed his orange-hued friend through the lens. "You look a bit like a badly-bruised grapefruit... with an afro!"
    "Don't worry 'bout me..." Chester said impatiently. "Just tell me what you see."
    "Well, this place is flat, and it's pretty big," Will observed. "It looks sort of like... well..." he hesitated, searching for a comparison, "as if we're on a beach right after the tide's gone out. Sort of smooth, but with a few dunes."
    They were on a gently rolling plateau that was perhaps the size of two football fields, although it was difficult to tell precisely how far it extended.
    Will spotted a large section of rock a little distance away and, with several massive strides leapt onto it. With the reduced gravitational pull, it had hardly taken any effort.
    "Yes, I think I can see the edge over there... it's a hundred feet or so away." From his elevated position he could just make out where the fungal growth ended. But the lens gave him the ability to see much farther than this, to the titanic void of the Pore itself. He could even make out its far wall, which appeared craggy, and shone as if water was running down it. "Jesus, Chester, we fell down one almighty hole!" he whispered, as the sight brought home to him the scale of the Pore. He was struck with the thought that it must be rather like glimpsing the sheer face of Mount Everest through the window of a passing aeroplane.
    Then Will turned his attention to what was above them. "And I reckon we've got another ledge right over us." Chester was squinting up at where his friend was looking, but nothing was visible to him through the heavy blanket of darkness that enveloped everything. "It's not as big as the one we're on," Will informed him. "And it's got holes in it." As he examined these, he wondered if they were the result of boulders and rocks slamming into it and tearing large rents.
    "Anything else?" Chester asked.
    "Hang on," Will said as he moved his head to get a better view.
    "Yes?" Chester pressed. "What can you--?"
    "Just be quiet for a second, will you?" Will said distractedly, as a series of objects caught his eye. They were regular and patently not formed by nature, not even by the strange forces of subterranean nature that never ceased to surprise him. They just didn't fit in. "There's something very odd up there," he said quickly as he pointed. "There, right on the edge of the shelf."
    "Where?" Chester asked.
    Several seconds passed as the view through