Tunnels 03, Freefall

the Deeps the whole network had been taken apart. Drake felt a crushing sense of helplessness. The only course open to him now was to try to get in touch with one of the other cells that operated independently across the country, the risk being that he might prejudice them in the process.
    But he was desperate.
    "Wales it is," he said wearily, and started the engine.

    * * * * *

    "I can take her if you want," Chester offered as Will went to lift Elliott.
    Will shook his head. "Doesn't make much difference, does it? It's not as if she weighs anything down here."
    Chester swung the three rucksacks over his shoulders. Back on the surface carrying such a burden would have been unthinkable, but now, as he jumped up and down several times, he was hardly aware they were there. He stooped to pick up his rifle between his thumb and forefinger, and held it out at arm's length. "Yeah, isn't that amazing. It's as light as a pencil. You're right -- nothing weighs very much down here!'
    With no idea where they were going, except that the cave seemed to penetrate further into the wall of the Pore, they began to follow it.
    Even after several kilometers, they found they were still walking on the springy surface of the fungus, which coated every inch of the tunnel around them.
    Then they turned a corner and were confronted by a vertical wall of fungus. "Dead end... to mushroom in here," Chester joked.
    "Very funny. It's not a dead end, anyway," Will muttered, pointing at the opening above their heads. "Dim your light for a second," he said as he put Elliott down. He flicked the lens over his eye to investigate. "Looks like it goes some way," he informed Chester, "but I can't see what's at the top."
    "Well, that's it, then," Chester replied, disheartened.
    "You're forgetting something." Will took a short run up and leapt straight up the wall. He took off, disappearing from sight. Bartleby wasn't going to be left behind by his new master and sprang after him.
    "Oh, great, just leave me here by myself," Chester muttered, peering around the pitch black. He clicked his lantern up and began to whistle to comfort himself. After a while there was still no sign of Will, and he became anxious. "Hey," he yelled. "What's up there? Don't leave me alone down here!"
    Will floated back down and landed lightly beside Chester. "There are several openings we can try. Let's go!"
    "So now we can fly," Chester said. "All in a day's work, I suppose."

    * * * * *

    They encountered more of these vertical seams, and despite the fungal growth that obscured nearly everything, Will began to recognize that there was a pattern to them. They seemed to be arranged in a series of concentric circles radiating out from around the Pore. He pictured it as the geological equivalent of a pebble dropped into a pool of water, the ripples spreading out from it, and wondered if rapid cooling of the bedrock had given rise to the circular fractures.
    "So the Earth isn't solid at all," Will had said to Chester as they were walking. "It's more like one ginormous Swiss cheese -- full of holes."
    "Do you have to talk about food?" was Chester's rejoinder.
    But Will was beginning to suspect that there might be, in fact, a great deal more of these seams hidden from sight, and that over the centuries they had been invaded by the rapacious growth of the fungus. It filled him with a sense of wonder that the fungus was probably one huge organism, stretching for hundreds of kilometers, both in a sheath inside the Pore and also through the surrounding rock.
    "Do you know, we could actually be inside the biggest plant in the world," he mused on another occasion, but Chester gave no response.
    They eventually came to a place where the tunnel before them split into three. They stopped to decide which fork to take.
    "Well, we're really spoilt for choice this time," Will was saying.
    His friend hummed in agreement.
    "Look, Chester, quite honestly I don't care which way we go," Will said. "Makes no odds to me -- there's nothing much between them, is there?" He scrutinized the tunnels again -- they were all of a similar dimension and each of them appeared to continue horizontally, although who knew what lay just around the corner. The boys had already been forced to turn back several times, when the way had become impassable die to excessive fungal growth, or because it pinched down to crawlways too narrow for even the most determined ant to get through.
    "I picked last time. It's your turn,"