“Reporting. I have Joké, no injuries. We’re continuing aft. Be advised, the robots are still in play.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Out.”

“I’ll go first,” says Shell. “Keep a hand on my suit.”

“Ooh, Captain.”

“Try to be serious,” says Shell. “And why didn’t you just… you know, get out of your suit the other way?”

“It doesn’t work like that. It’s somewhat unpredictable, my connection with the Lambers; you never know where you’re going to end up, and, umm, I wasn’t in danger yet. It was snug in the suit, but I had lots of air.”

Joké’s suit is covered in something, maybe a digestive slime? Thankfully it cannot digest the suit.

They fly past a quadruped hunched up, eating something. It eyes them and emits a low growl. Shell considers shooting it.

They get to the first spoke and manoeuvre into the first torus, which is clear of the moss.

“Ragtime, spin Torus 1.” Shell isn’t sure the ship will respond.

“Yes, Captain.”

The sinking feeling, the brief nausea, as artificial gravity comes on.

“We need to check here and the second torus. I was here before the alarm went off and there were things here.”

“What things?” asks Joké.

“I don’t know. They were slithering things that slithered in my direction. They drilled through alloy. I didn’t wait to see.”

“So these… things can get through our suits?”

“Probably. If they can drill through walls.”

“So why are we here?”

“Because I want to see. If we know what they are, how many of them there are, we can decide how to fight them. I also want to be sure the passengers are intact.”

All round the passenger section, they don’t encounter anything biological. The hole Shell saw before is still there, and Ragtime still does not allow entry into the pod. Just before Shell and Joké arrive at the point they entered, they see a much larger hole, maybe a foot across, cut into the floor. The edges are sharp and jagged, but regular.

“That looks like a problem,” says Joké.

Shell gives the gun to Joké and gets prone.

“Whoa, don’t stick your head in there,” says Joké.

“It’ll be okay,” says Shell.

“No, come on. It will not be okay. The mission was to check if the passengers were intact. They are. You’re the captain. We have to go back and regroup.”

Shell hesitates.

“You don’t go in such tunnels, Captain. That’s just asking for your head to be cut off. You get drones to explore them, preferably the kind of drone with a lethal payload.”

“You were there when I asked Ragtime. There are no drones.”

“That’s… um… not what Ragtime said. It said there are no drones under your command.”

Shit, that’s true. The constant stress is getting to Shell.

“I still have none to drop down this hole.”