"You got any motion or heat readings Nezir?" Commander Emerty inquired over the comm link.
"Naw. Got nuthin' sir. This place is dead."

Gives me the creeps, I thought to myself. There are hundreds of sublevels to this place and I wasn't about to
trust the crud-assed motion sensors that we were issued. My intuition was screaming at me to get the hell out of
this place and hide under the nearest convenient rock.

----------
Fourteen hours had gone by, and we'd checked out the upper levels of the station. We chowed down, and prepared
to descend into the lower levels. Since there was so much area to cover, six of us were assigned to different sections.
I had the great 'unfortune' to be assigned to sub-level 80. The others would all be up above me, and much closer to
the main group -- and the way out.

The commander motioned to me as I snapped the last seal on my suit into place.
"Here's the rest of your gear. You ready to head out?"
"Yeah. I got everything I need. Last check was finished just before you came over."
"Good," he nodded, "we'll get moving straight away." He turned and walked towards the lift hatch, punched the
entry code, and commanded the rest of the group to follow. Against my better judgement, I followed close to the
leader.

"The lighting system is non-operational. You'll have to use the light sources that you've been supplied."
Commander Emerty watched the levels slide up and past us -- one after another -- in a dark and forboding maze
of metal, tubing, and cut stone. "Keep your comm unit on at all times. Let us know immediately of any problems
that you encounter."

A sudden jolt, and the lift came to a complete stop on sub-level 12. "Evans. Chilton. This is your stop."
Chilton popped the switch, and the door ground open. Cautiously, they stepped out and switched on their motion
sensors. The doors sealed themselves, and we continued on. I watched their boots slide up and out of view, through
the weathered metal latticework of the cage-like shaft elevator.

Level after level, I watched the group count down to one. It was just me now, dropping ever deeper into the ebony
heart of the mine. Hollow and silent darkness washed past me as the lift's counter ascended. 44, 45, 46, 47...,
I thought, as the dim light of the dirt-encrusted lift flickered on and off.

Finally, the metallic sound of the lift descending came to a close, with a few hard jolts. My flashlight slammed
against the metal bar closest to me. I quickly switched it on. It was working fine.

The lift door slowly slid open. The blue flashlight beam revealed a whole hell of a lot of nothing. It barely
managed to reach one of the nearest walls of stone-encrusted metal. "I'm out and on 80," I voiced over my comm.

The commander's voice crackled over the link, "Fine. Keep me informed."

I walked over to the ledge that the lift had descended to, and looked up. The area that I was in was a huge
vertical shaft, cut out of the planet's crust. I could see the inner ridges of the many levels above... fading
into a dim blue haze of diffused light. The levels continued on until the ledges blurred into a ripple of darkness.

Below me was a vast chasm; It seemed to swallow light. Even with the high-power flashlight, I could only see
the first six or seven ledges. After that, it was blackness. Yet, I could FEEL the depth of the shaft. There
were rumored to be upwards of 200 sub-levels in this place. There were four lifts -- equally spaced around the
rim of the shaft.

I'd had enough of staring into the pit of hell, and decided to turn around and head down the corridor that I
was assigned to explore.

The ragged hallway continued for about a half-mile, before it began to widen into a large bowl shape. Around
the lower edge of the bowl were narrow tunnels that seemed to reveal a hollowed-out area below.

Carefully, I crept down the edge of the bowl, and sized up to one of the tunnels. "How're you doin' down there
Corvie?" Nezir chimed over the comm. "Oh -- just great." My enthusiasm was quite false. "I seem to have found
an uncharted area 'off the beaten path,' shall we say."

"Oh yeah?" Nez inquired, "anything interesting?"
"Not yet, I'll let you know in a bit."

With that, I slid feet first into the tunnel, and managed to crouch down below the roof of the hollow. I could
hear static, and then the chop of Nezir's voice over the link. "Fi-e g-- -ack -- me on -t."

"What?" I replied "I can barely make you out." There was no response. I turned to reach the link module on my
suit, and felt the ground drop out from beneath me. The ceiling rushed upwards, and I reached out for something
to grab onto, but by the time I had a grip, my feet hit the ground. There was still no sound from my comm, save
for a slight crackle and the constant hiss of the ear speakers.

"Gad, where's the fuckin' flashlight gotten to?" I slid my hand over the stone floor, recognized the feel of
the light, and picked it up. I had to give the thing some credit, it was still working fine.

The beam revealed that the 'chamber' that I was in was both cramped and large at the same time. There were odd
organic-looking formations all around me. The ground, walls, and ceiling were anything but flat, and there were
sections that I could just barely squeeze through.

I looked back at the way that I had fallen, only to realize that there was no way that I'd be able to climb back
up there in this suit. So I continued on, in the hopes that there was possibly another way out.

The comm unit was still crackling as I crawled over the bulbous stone formations and mazed farther into the dark
cavern. Despite my continued attempts to communicate with the rest of the group, I heard no reply. I had the
distinct feeling that I wasn't travelling over level ground, but was instead descending deeper into the depths of
the mine.

After some effort, I managed to make it quite a distance into the cavern. The flashlight revealed an area up
ahead with a higher ceiling and some very odd stone shapes in it.

I entered the 'room' up ahead and found myself surrounded by more of the bulbous shapes that I'd seen before.
But these were much more well-defined. I began to doubt that they were stone or mineral.

As I passed the light beam over the ceiling, I noticed rounded stalactite-like shapes hanging from it...

... the base of one of them was right beside my visor. I turned to get a better look at it. It was cracked open
and it reflected light as if made of black metal. I stepped back to get a wider view of it, tripped, and fell
backwards, shattering the top of one on the ground. It was then that I saw the bulbous shapes for what they were.

They were heads.

The head of an alien...
of a horrible creature...
... suspended silently dead from the ceiling of the cavern.

My flashlight began to flicker out, and I wondered to myself, could there be living ones down below?

Startled, I banged the light again. It flickered on just long enough for me to catch another glimpse of the alien's
shiny hollow skull -- long enough for me to see the reflection of something crawling towards me from behind.