He ran past the mouth opening into the main corridor. Then came back and ran into the darker, strangely-lighted artery. He ran harder. And yet he wasn't running. Not all of him. As he ran, he was conscious of some undefinable, but terrific conflict.
Beneath the suit, his skin burned with sweat. He felt the rigid pattern of tensed neck and jaw muscles.
I don't feel at all familiar. Something's very wrong. Everything's wrong. I'm displaced, like something that has slipped into an alien dimension.
He stopped, quickly. His heart seemed to swell, burst with terror. Terror and something else. The something else came, and with it came horror of itself. The emotion, and then horror of the emotion. He stood shivering, his teeth clacking like an ancient abacus.
"Pat!" He screamed her name. The cry pounded back into his ears inside the helmet.
This wasn't Drakeson. This was Pat. Pat was going to die now. Not Drakeson.
The walls were—alive. They were not like the walls of the corridors. This was a circular chamber, and the walls were sagging and undulating like part of a giant's flesh. He heard heavy sluggish sounds.
Masses of the gray viscous stuff sagged, changed form, remolded itself into monstrous shapes.
Pat! Only her face and part of her upper body were visible now. The shielding of her suit had been cracked wide open by pressure as the semi-organic thing, whatever it was, had closed around her.