He didn't need to get literally knotted up in the labyrinth. Ratchet rolled his optics and unhooked himself and wound the rope back in. Right back to a damned corridor he'd already wandered through, his leadline leading off back the tunnel he'd just explored. Ratchet steered clear of all of them, slogging through as best he could. Long undulating ribbons of spattering electricity and spiny calcified things that bobbed gently on the currents of the clouds. Wee creatures that spat acid and little zippy ones that pinged through the air bouncing off the walls at high speed. Though there were other things lurking in the tunnels, he discovered. It was basically just a coral reef in space-and the tiny creatures that made up the structure of the Seething weren't especially lively.
The Seething was an overly portentous name for the place, he decided. Drift had to be looking for something, once he knew what was normal he’d be able to pick out what that something might be. No way to know which way Drift had gone he picked a direction at random and tried to get get a sense of the place. He couldn't get a read on lifesigns, the tunnels of the Seething obstructing the signal. He opened his comm channels and sent another ping out on Drift's personal frequency. It was a unnatural feeling, low-gravity but held fast by his feet.
The surface of the Seething was sticky, resistant as he pulled his legs free to stand in the cramped space. Ratchet shivered as unidentifiable liquids condensed on his plating in the sudden warm atmosphere. The living colonies of the Seething hung wetly in color-shifting fronds, gaseous folds billowing up from their surfaces. Inside, the walls of the inner scaffolding grew in spirals and interconnected passageways, a tight lattice of mineralized cells. He was drawn deeper until the inner walls caught him. The outer folds of the Seething parted around him and swallowed up all sight of the ship.
Then he pushed off the shuttle's surface and dove inside. He checked his leadline, hooked into his hip and tethering him to the ship.
Just in case Drift did get out of there first. Then he made ready to follow him.ĭrift's shuttle was a mess solar scars and dents and what looked like plasmafire littering its surface, so Ratchet didn't feel bad getting out his laser scalpel and burning a message onto the doorway. For a moment he entertained the fantasy that if he waited for a few minutes Drift would emerge without assistance. It wasn't fear of what lay beyond it was a sensible distrust of any location described in the texts as "an unexplored and deadly labyrinth". Bound at anchor, he found the ship empty at the edge of the Seething Space.