Chapter Twenty-Six
The gaping maw of the overhanging thread creature approached and there was nothing Ethan could do to escape. Even if he figured out how to open the capsule, he would be instantly crushed by the water pressure. Even if he could maneuver the vessel he didn’t know how to get back to the shore. The threads were not going to give him directions, not now he’d agreed to ‘join.’
He wondered what would happen once he was inside the creature’s mouth. Would it squeeze the capsule until it shattered and then extract the meat? The ceremony was bizarre, a strange way to treat the leader of another intelligent species. Had that xenobiologist misunderstood the threads’ intentions? Had he mistaken their attitude entirely? What if they didn’t intend to help the human colonists?
Or had
