Tunnels 03, Freefall

exchanged glances as she unhitched a sack from her belt, muttering something about not having any time to trim the meat off.
    "So are these yours?" Will asked, pointing in the direction of the gruesome benches.
    But the woman didn't answer him, instead inclining her head and beaming affectionately at Chester. "You're a big, strapping lad. You remind me ever so much of my son." She sighed deeply. "Would you mind holding this open for me, luvvy?" she asked as she passed Chester the sack. Then she set about gathering up all the pieces of smoldering spider-monkey and putting them into the sack.
    Chester mouthed 'food?' at Will, holding the sack at arm's length and curling his lip as if he was going to be sick.
    But Will didn't respond, his mounting curiosity evident as he ran his eyes over what was left of the creatures.
    "It's odd. They seem to be insects or... or maybe arachnoid, but are those shiny white objects teeth? "
    "Yes, their fangs," the old woman replied as she continued to toddle about the place, picking up the grisly remains. "Along with that light they have on a stalk, they use them as lures for catching their prey."
    "Fascinating," Will muttered as without any hesitation he stuck his head right over the sack that his friend was finding so repugnant.
    "Here we go again," Chester grumbled to himself.

6

    "The detail is in the dust... the detail is in the dust." Dr. Burrows was repeating over and over to himself as he knelt before a half-buried human skeleton.
    He was peeling back the fungus and scooping the silt away to reveal more of the bones, but stopped as he heard a distant and very faint thud. He had no idea what could have caused it, but he got to his feet and shouted "Hello! Hello! Anyone there?" at the top of his lungs. Although he had traveled many kilometers, he'd made sure that it was always downwards so he remained close to the Pore. The last thing he wanted to do was to lose his bearings.
    Then he'd struck gold. He'd spotted the skeleton and begun to excavate it.
    Now, as he listened out for any further sounds, all was silent and he told himself he must have imagined the sound. Shrugging, he went back to his discovery. As he tugged more of the fungus away and blew the fine silt from around the old bones, his face lit up. "What've we got here?" he said as he came across an object in the skeleton's hand. Carefully, by moving aside the phalanges -- the small bones that had once formed fingers -- he lifted the object out. It was a piece of pottery not unlike a genie's lantern, with a spout and a lid that seemed to be stuck in place. He picked at the end of the spout with his grimy fingernail. "The wick would have been here," he said aloud. "So you Phoenicians, or whoever you were, you used oil lamps as your light source."
    Putting the lamp carefully to one side, he set about clearing more of the loose soil away, his hands shaking with anticipation, and hunger. In the glow of his luminescent orb, Dr. Burrows cut a rather sad figure as he hunched over the skeleton, whistling weakly to himself. His glasses were a little lopsided -- they'd been knocked about during the fall down the Pore -- and the parts of his face not covered by his patchy growth of beard were grazed and bruised. His shirt was ripped down the back, and one of its arms was almost torn off and hanging by a few threads. And although he'd always been of slight build, he'd lost more weight and was beginning to resemble the skeleton he was working on.
    "Bingo!" he exclaimed as he came across what appeared to be a wooden box. He yanked it out of the dirt rather too enthusiastically and it fell apart. But in amongst the remains of the box were a series of small and flat stone tablets the size of playing cards, with rounded edges.
    "Slate, and obviously worked," he observed, rubbing the uppermost tablet on his shirt to clean it. Then he began to examine it closely, finding there were some tiny letters carved into it, letters that he recognized. They were identical to the characters he'd come across in the Deeps, characters which, using his Burrows Stone , as he'd christened it, he'd been able to translate. Despite the fact that he'd lost his journal as he tumbled into the Pore, he reckoned he could remember just enough to give him a rudimentary understanding of what was on the tablets.
    But, concentrate as he might, the tiny letters seemed to dance before his eyes and it took him an age to identify even a few words. He removed his glasses