Nightfall_at_Algemron

"Yup," Helm said as he unslung the stutter cannon again, clicking off the safety.
Angela and Grawl glanced at each other then unshipped their weapons as well. Gabriel pulled out his mass pistol—a Nova 6 that Helm had given him—and transferred the stone to his left hand. If there was razor filament here, then there were arachnons here as well. or had been. Gabriel was not willing to take the chance that they were gone.
Slowly they made their way forward, Gabriel taking point and disliking it intensely but not having much choice. Helm and Delde Sota were behind him, Grawl and Enda and Angela behind them. A soft sound as they walked made Gabriel pause and turn to see the outer wall quietly sealing itself behind them. The others glanced at this too.
"I do not much like that," Enda said. "The glass is more like steel when it comes to trying to shoot your way out of it. Should we become trapped here."
Gabriel shook his head. "It wouldn't be accidental, I think," he said. "We're either going to get out of here with what we came for, or I don't think we're going to get out at all."
Delde Sota gave him a look. Her braid peeked around from behind her back and began knotting itself into intricate designs. "Opinion: game disturbingly zero-sum," she said.
"That may be," Gabriel said, "but I have a feeling it's the only game in town."
They made their way on toward the razor filament. "Why pile it up against the wall?" Helm said.
"Unless there's a passage behind it," Angela said.
"Or unless there's not," Gabriel said. He paused and looked at it. The stuff would slice to ribbons anyone who tried to force their way through. They could shoot it up, but the flying fragments would probably do them as much damage as a flechette pistol. He put the stone in his pocket for a moment, pulled off his glove with his teeth, pushed it into his breast pocket, and came out with the stone again. He went over to the wall on the left side, and cupping the stone, laid his hand against it.
"Nothing here," he said after a moment. He then crossed over to the wall on the right, reached up, and laid the stone against it.
A tiny sense of movement in the wall, molecules shivering together a little farther down. "Here," Gabriel said and put the stone against that spot.
The glass flowed away from him, revealing a long corridor, glowing slightly, which led around the large hall they were in and onward into the cliff.
"What was that?" Helm said, glancing back at the razor filaments. "A DO NOT DISTURB sign?" "BEWARE THE CROG more likely," Angela said. "Could be either," Gabriel said. "Well, shall we?"
He led them inward, not hurrying. Soon that corridor dead-ended. Gabriel stood before it, briefly confused. then, on a hunch, he reached forward. The dead end drew aside as the outer wall had done, leaving a space exactly ten centimeters taller than he was and twenty centimeters wider.
"Thank you," he said and stepped through. Helm came through behind him—but not before the door had contracted itself to a lower height and a broader width.
"Uh-huh," Gabriel said softly, continuing forward and starting to think with mild derision about all the theories about the shapes of the Precursors, theories based on the shapes of their doors. When a door could flow like water, who knew what shape its builder would normally be? Who knew whether the shape the door held as you approached was not one it had assumed from looking at you and working out what you needed?
He put the thought aside for the moment as he walked. The corridor they were in was shortly joined by others, some winding into it from the sides, some seeming to come from inside the cliff, and all sloping gently downward. Gabriel paused at the first large junction and looked down the three other corridors joining it. They were all of the same smooth green glass, all of hemispherical cross-section, some of them quite low, some taller. Gabriel gestured at one of the lower ones with his hand and saw it draw away and grow taller. All down the length of the corridor its roof stretched upward, and its cross-section narrowed slightly.
"I still want to know where those arachnons are," Helm said softly.
"Maybe down one of those," Gabriel said, "if they were the last to use it half an hour ago—" "Or half a million years," Angela said. "No telling."
"Attention," Delde Sota said, gesturing down one of the right-hand corridors with her braid. "More filament."
It was finer than the last batch, so much so that it was hard to see, strung across the whole breadth of the corridor. Delde Sota advanced slowly, the corridor reshaping itself to her height, and the sticky filament stretched effortlessly with the movement of the clear green-tinged glass.
"Could be unfortunate to run into this at speed," Delde Sota said. "Nearly as much so as the razor filament."
Gabriel nodded and said, "I wish there was a way to tell how old this stuff is." But there was none, at least not that he knew.
He turned back to the main junction and closed his eyes briefly, consulting the stone for some kind of advice on which way to turn. Where the most power is, he thought, the main part of the facility. the most important part.
Assuming the two had anything to do with one another. The stone gave him an indication to his left and down.
"All right," he said softly. "Delde Sota, my eyes aren't as good as yours in this light. Maybe you'd come walk behind me and look over my shoulder so I don't run into any of those things all of a sudden."
He went forward with Delde Sota behind him and followed the stone's hints inward and downward. Once or twice he stopped and consulted the stone at places where corridors joined, and it nudged him left or right. Gabriel went the way it indicated, listening hard as he went, but he heard nothing but the others' footsteps behind him, the occasional chirp or ping of a weapon announcing its load status or charge level, a mutter from Angela, a growl from Grawl. Sometimes he could hear Enda's mind much more plainly than usual, as if the walls reflected her thoughts and concentrated them like sound. She was fascinated but cautious, and always nibbling at the edge of her consciousness was the constant awareness of the faintly malign regard of the stone, watching her.
Malign? I need to have a talk with this thing, Gabriel thought as he consulted it one more time and was told to turn a corner into another corridor. Gabriel did and then stopped immediately.
"Uh-oh," he said. "More razor filament." The corridor was completely blocked with it and did not stretch up and out when Gabriel entered. He eyed the stuff from a meter away.
Delde Sota's braid snaked past him and poked delicately at the blockage, its thinnest strands weaving themselves gingerly among the outermost filaments for a moment. "Assessment: strong filament," she said. "Hard to judge thickness. Helm?"
"My pleasure," he said, stepping forward as Delde Sota backed out of the tunnel, followed by Gabriel.
A second later the roar of the stutter cannon filled everything. It went on for what seemed like ages, and Gabriel was half-deaf when Helm finally lowered the gun and peered into the tunnel.
"Tough, that," he said, and let loose with another twenty-second burst of mobile thunder.
After that he straightened up and said, "Clear."
Gabriel shook his head at the thought of anything that could withstand a stutter cannon at that range for that length of time, and he went carefully back into the tunnel again—for it stayed tunnel-like, declining to stretch itself as the earlier corridors had done.
Bent half over, down Gabriel went with the others following him in varying degrees of discomfort. Helm probably had the least trouble, followed by Enda, who was more or less of a height with him. Down at the far end of the tunnel, Gabriel could see a difference in the light. It was brighter there. He came down to the end and put his head out.