Tunnels 03, Freefall

one who was acting strangely. "Time for another," she said. She plucked one of the small sprigs from her belt and held it over her flaming torch until it was smoldering, then flung it to the floor. The pungent smell quickly filled the enclosed space.
    "Phew!" Will said, wrinkling his nose. "That's pretty powerful. Reminds me of liquorice or something!"
    "Yes, it does, doesn't it? It's called Aniseed Fire," Martha gave him a knowing look. "Got the Colonist's nose, haven't you, dearie? Sense of smell like a bloodhound?"
    "Well, yes, I suppose so," Will replied. "But why are you burning that stuff? What does it do?" he asked.
    "If you don't watch it, the spider-monkeys gather in the ceiling vents and suddenly drop on top of you. The fumes from Aniseed Fire keep them away. I grow it in my garden, you know," she said, launching herself off again down the tunnel.
    "Garden? Your garden? " Chester called after her as she sailed away. The word was so everyday and comforting in this most alien of places. "Did she really say garden?" he quizzed Will.
    "Who knows?" Will whispered, going cross-eyed at Chester, just in case his friend hadn't realized that the woman obviously had more than a few screws loose.
    "Watch yourselves through here," she warned as Will and Chester caught up with her again. "The lodge is narrow and the wind strong."
    "Lodge?" Chester said.
    "Yes, it's narrow."
    "I think she means ledge ," Will suggested to Chester in a whisper.
    They came out onto a fungal ledge barely more than a meter wide, beyond which Will could again make out a gaping void. "The Pore?" he asked himself in a whisper. But something seemed to be different about it. The air was incredibly humid and instead of the showers of rain he's seen before, there were clouds of steam rising in the air. And as he looked across to the other side, everything was saturated with an intense red glow -- then he felt the heat on his face and knew it couldn't be the Pore.
    Chester chose that moment to speak up, breaking through Will's thoughts. "Isn't that where we just came from?" he asked. "It's not the Pore again, is it?"
    Martha chuckled. "No, it's not the Pore -- it's another of the Seven Sisters. We called this one Puffing Mary." She turned her head aside and the boys heard her mutter, "Didn't we, Nat?"
    At this, Chester shot an urgent glance at Will, who knew precisely what his friend was thinking. There was no question that they were in the hands of a rather confused old woman, who didn't even seem able to get their names right.
    Keeping close to the wall, they took great care as they made their way along the ledge, which was slick with water. The limited illumination cast by Chester's light orb and Martha's burning torch gave Will the impression that this void was on the same scale as the Pore. He kept his eyes away from the darkness beyond the edge of the path, but he felt himself being drawn towards it. The urge had come back, the inexplicable urge to step off the ledge, which had assailed him before. The voice which wasn't really a voice but something much more powerful and deep-seated, like an irresistible desire, was trying to take control of him, to make him do it.
    "No," he mumbled through gritted teeth, "Pull yourself together." He had Elliott to consider. What was he thinking about? What was wrong with him?
    After twenty minutes of slow stepping along the ledge, Will was relieved beyond words as the path swung back into another opening in the wall. As they left the void behind them, Will stumbled a few steps, knocking into his friend.
    "You all right?" Chester asked.
    "Fine -- just tripped," Will told him as he and Chester followed Martha into a long galley, where the ubiquitous fungal growth became patchier and patchier until Will could quite clearly see areas of dark rock around him. Then, after a few more minutes, there seemed to be no more fungus at all. It was quite a novelty to feel the shingle crunch under their feet as they ascended a gentle incline.
    "Here we are," Martha declared as a large cavern opened out before them. From floor to roof, some sort of curved barricade or bulwark extended thirty meters down one whole side of it. Martha led the boys halfway along the barricade. Will could see it was formed from many vertical strips of metal, overlapping each other and welded in place. And the metal strips themselves were of a variety of different types; some were dull, others highly polished, and a number were even perforated, with