LIKE A ROCK FALLING from a great height, Ethan plummeted into the maw in the ocean bed and began to travel down a rounded tunnel. He fell, or rather, was sucked downward so fast that he rose a little above his seat. Lights flashed past. Already high above him, the black opening to the ocean spiraled closed.
Ethan could not imagine how deep he now was. The scale of the threads’ metropolis amazed him.
Looking downward again, he found he couldn’t make out the end of the tunnel. It disappeared to a perspective point somewhere below. Ethan wondered if he would continue down to the molten, liquid rock that lay beneath the planet’s crust.
But then his vessel slowed and a hole loomed in the tunnel’s wall. The capsule was dragged toward it. Was he about to begin another long journey, though on t
