Tunnels 03, Freefall

darkness made him feel slightly better. And, as his eyes adjusted further, he could vaguely make out the cat's fleeting silhouette as he circled around him like a prowling jaguar.
    "Elliott!" he called. "Are you there, Elliott?"
    He noticed that as he shouted there was a definite echo coming from his left, but nothing at all from his right. He yelled several more times, each time waiting for a response. "Elliott, can you hear me? Will! Hello, Will! Are you there? But no one answered.
    He told himself he couldn't stand there all day, simply shouting. He realized that one of the points of illumination was in fact coming from quite close by and made up his mind to try to reach it. He clawed himself out of his pit. Because he was soaked in the slippery fluid, he didn't risk getting to his feet, but kept on all fours as he moved over the springy surface. He noticed something else as he went: he felt strangely buoyant, as if he was floating in water. Wondering if this was because the knocks to his head had made him a little dizzy, he told himself to concentrate on the job in hand.
    He inched forward with small, deliberate movements, his fingers extended towards the light. Then the light seemed to catch the underside of his outstretched palm -- and he realized it was coming from something embedded deep in the rubbery material. He rolled up his sleeve and stuck his arm into the hole to retrieve it.
    "Yuck!" he said as he prized the light out, his arm coated in the unctuous liquid. It was a Styx lantern. He didn't know if it had been his or had belonged to one of the others, but that didn't matter right now. He held up the lantern to assess his surroundings, his confidence building to the point where he decided to get to his feet.
    He found he was on a grayish surface -- it wasn't smooth by any means but striated and pitted, with a texture somewhat akin to elephant hide. His light revealed that there were other things stuck in it, varying from small pebbles to substantial chunks of rock. They had evidently hit the material with some force and penetrated it, just as he had.
    He lifted the lantern higher and saw that the ground stretched away on all sides in a gently undulating plateau. Treading carefully so as not to lose his footing, Chester went back to his hole to inspect it more closely. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, and chuckled in amazement. He was looking at a perfect outline of himself, sunk deep into the surface of the material. It brought to mind the Saturday morning cartoon with the unfortunate coyote, which always seemed to end up falling from great heights and leaving a coyote-shaped impression when it hit the canyon floor. And her was a real-life Chester-shaped version! The cartoon didn't seem to be quite so funny any more.
    Muttering with disbelief, he jumped back into the hole to retrieve his rucksack, which took quite some doing. Once he'd freed it, he hoisted it onto his back and scrambled from the hole. Then he bent to lift up the rope. "Left or right?" he asked himself, looking at the opposite ends of the rope, which disappeared into the darkness. Picking a direction at random and steeling himself for what he might find, he began to follow the rope, heaving it out of the rubbery surface as he went.
    He'd gone about ten meters when the rope suddenly came away in his hands, and he tumbled back into a sitting position. Grateful that the subterranean rubberized mat had absorbed his fall, he got to his feet again and examined the end of the rope. It was frayed as if it had been cut. Despite this, he was able to follow the line it had left, and soon came to a deep impression in the ground. He sidestepped around the shape playing his light into it.
    It certainly looked as if someone had been there; the outline wasn't as perfect as his, as if whoever had made it had landed on their side. "Will! Elliott!" he called out again. There was still no reply, but Bartleby suddenly reappeared, fixing Chester with his big unwinking eyes. "What is it? What do you want?" Chester growled impatiently at him. The cat slowly turned to face the opposite direction and, with his body low to the ground, began to creep forward. "You want me to come with you -- is that it?" Chester asked as he realized that Bartleby was behaving precisely as if he was stalking something.
    He followed the cat until they reached a vertical surface -- a wall of the grey rubbery material down which water ran in rivulets. "Where now?" he demanded,