The tour kept stumbling through the tunnels. The flameless torches were becoming fewer in between leaving them all in moments of near total darkness. Fred kept reassuring everyone that what he wanted to show them wasn't much farther. Conversations had died down into soft pants during the hike and concentrated stares on the path ahead to void tripping on anything. For the most part, the path was smooth with an occasional rise and fall. The sides and ceiling would come in and out at them making some have to stoop or curve their bodies around to get through. There were almost audible sighs of relief when the path would widen again.
"Have you seen Jaster?" Dandella asked falling behind a little bit to talk to Amara.
"Um, no. Isn't he up there with Meng?" Amara gestured to the front of the group. That was the last place she had seen him, but looking ahead now through the people she couldn't seem to find him either.
"How long ago did you notice?" The Doctor asked.
"About five minutes ago, but I thought that maybe he was just hidden from view." Dandella answered him. By now, Jude had glanced back at them a few times finally also falling back to be closer to them.
"Jaster went down a side path not that long ago." He whispered quickly to them before quickening his pace to rejoin the rest of the group. So far, no one else seemed to notice the small gathering at the rear of the group or that Jaster was gone. Even Fred carried on without a care.
"I don't like this." The Doctor said to no one and turned on his heel to go back down the path.
"Wait!" Amara called after him.
"Where are you going?" Dandella tugged at the back of her shirt.
"To find your husband apparently." Amara followed the Doctor with Dandella in tow.
"Ah-ha!" The Doctor said once he found an off chute that seemed to please him. It was one of only a few that was big enough to allow a person through, even if they had to squeeze and push past the initial tight entrance first. It opened up after into a path big enough for two people to walk comfortably side by side.
"I have no idea why he would do something like this." Dandella scoffed, but then just as quickly yelped when the Doctor turned on her.
"Do something like what exactly?" He asked staring her down.
"I don't know! I have no idea what's going on!" She stood up to him after a moment. He continued to stare down her for a moment longer before continuing down the path.
"Dandella, do you know anything at any of this at all?" Amara decided to step in.
"No, I really don't. He's the one that wanted to go on these stupid excursions for the past year. Do I look like the kind of woman who wants to be rolling around in the dirt all day? He's the one that paid the extra fifty thousand credits to this stupid thing. That was supposed to be for our second honeymoon! This whole thing is just stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She stomped a foot hard on all three of the words, her breath coming out shaky as she tried to breath deep her fists clenching and unclenching.
"Better?" Amara asked carefully.
"Yes, thank you." Dandella sniffled and calmed herself. "Shall we continue?"
"Are you sure?" Amara asked.
"Yes, I'm fine." She reassured with a smile and calmly walked past as if ready for a stroll through a park.
Wow. I can't really blame her, but wow. Amara thought about the outburst as she walked alongside Dandella following the Doctor who led the way down the path.
They walked on with little more than a few words spoken. At first, the path got darker and darker as they got farther from the main path they had been following. All along the walls were the same painted arrows they had seen in before, but there was only one color here; red. Fred has said they were supposed to follow the red colored arrows. Why were these ones leading away from the path they were on before? These arrows looked much fresher and brighter than the other ones like a new path had been marked. The same flameless torches were mounted to the walls down this path, but much further in between than before. It was literally just enough light. Amara let her hand run over the various rocks and stalagmites as they passed by. She liked the feel of the smooth cool textures under her skin. She spotted what looked like the top of a perfectly round orb sticking up out of another rock and let her hand run over it like she had let her hand run over other rocks.
Amara wasn't entirely sure how it happened. One minute she was walking with Dandella while somewhat zoning out and touching at rocks that came into reach as they walked, and then the next she was being roughly pulling along by the Doctor who had a firm grip on her wrist as he ran at top speed making her keep up. He had yelled something at her that didn't sink in right away, but she later recognized as 'run'. Glancing back, she saw Dandella looking shocked and trying to keep up. Further behind her, something was moving in the cave they had all just been walking through. No, it wasn't just something moving down the narrow path, it was the cave itself that was moving! The floor of the cave to be exact. It started as a low rumble and then a curl started like a small wave before it began to get slightly bigger and longer in its roll, as if someone picked up and snapped the other end of the path. Smaller rocks bounced and fell out of the way, dust was kicked up, and it just kept coming. Just as it seemed it would be at their backs, they made a small hop over a slight raise in the path and the Doctor finally stopped to turn around. Turning to look Amara saw the roll of the ground seem to reach its end at the small raise they had just hopped over which started to quiver and shake.
"What is that!" Amara asked still trying to fully catch her breath after the sudden made dash. Dandella was panting behind her sounding on the edge of having a panic attack. As they watched, the quivering rise of dirt lifted up out of the ground and a similar edge came down from the ceiling.
"What do you think it is?" the Doctor asked in return. He seemed much calmer with the situation and even intrigued.
"It looks like a…mouth." Amara ventured not really sure, but it certainly looked like two lips or at least edges of a mouth coming down together. It certainly wasn't a door of any kind and it couldn't be a rock or even a boulder slide. This was way too controlled for that and the rumbling stopped at the two halves nearly touched.
"That's exactly what that is." He said still taking it all in.
"A mouth…a mouth…a mouth!" Dandella had started to panic.
"A nice big one too!" He whistled and started to approach it.
"Doctor!" Amara grabbed his arm.
"It's alright." He took his arm back and continued until he was standing just half a step away from the now slightly parted dirt mouth. "You weren't going to eat us, were you? No, of course you weren't! You just don't like people walking on your tongue and touching your uvula. I wouldn't care for that either although that almost happened to me once. Well, I mean tiny people were walking all over me. It was like Gulliver's Travels, really!"
"Doctor, not to interrupt, but what is it?" Amara had braved a couple steps closer while Dandella clung to a wall behind Amara.
"It's a worm, of course!" He smiled back to her before turning back to the dirt covered worm.
"Really? So it's not dangerous at all?" Amara had edged her way over to his side to get a closer look.
"What worm do you know that eats people?" He asked. She looked up at him to say what was on her mind, but he frowned before she could actually say it. "Star Wars doesn't count. That wasn't a real worm and there's no worm in the universe like that." She giggled a bit and started to say something else. "Tremors aren't real either."
"Okay, okay. So, we just walked into a worm that embedded itself in a cave with its mouth open. Why was it just lying there like that?" Amara couldn't take her eyes off the creature in front of her. It was the exact color of the cave inside and out. The parted mouth was moving up and down softly as if breathing, but no breath of any kind could be felt. Amara could smell something though. It was the scent of moist earth after a fresh rain.
"Resting most likely." The Doctor shrugged as he looked it over and walked side to side in front of it to see how much space it was taking up. Most of it still seemed to be embedded in the walls, ceiling, and floor around them.
"With its mouth open?" Amara asked and started to reach out. She placed a hand as gently as she could on what she guessed was its lip area right in front of her. It felt like regular dirt and rocks, but there was a slight warmth and hum underneath it all. The Doctor watched her do this and started to smile.
"It was going to eat us!" Dandella practically screamed from behind them making them both turn as if they had forgotten she was still there.
"I highly doubt it." He shook his head.
"We walked into its mouth and it was going to eat us!" She was starting to back away from them with a wild panicked look as her eyes darted from them to the worm behind them.
"That's impossible. First of all, it doesn't even have the proper digestive system to process us. Second, like all land based worms, it eats dirt. Lastly, it's just a baby." He explained calmly.
"A baby? How can you tell?" Amara asked looking back to the impressively sized worm.
"This one is the smallest one I have seen for starters, and there's no teeth to—" He started.
"Teeth! The bigger ones have teeth!" Dandella had reached the height of her panic and turned to bolt down the path.
"Dandella!" Amara called after her and started to follow, but he grabbed her arm to stop her.
"Let her go." He told her and turned back to the worm. "So, why were you just lying around with your mouth open?" He seemed to be asking the worm and had taken out his sonic screwdriver. He messed with it and the crystal blinked off and on as the device emitted various noises. For the most part the worm didn't do anything differently and remained sitting in its spot with a slightly parted mouth. It wasn't until the sonic screwdriver made a low rumbling version of its usually buzzing noise did the worm have a reaction. The tunnel shook violently making both the Doctor and Amara cover their heads from the shower of dirt and small debris. The worm seemed to have scooted back several feet when it all stopped.
"What did you do?" Amara asked slowly uncovering her head.
"Interesting." Was all the Doctor said before making the noise again. Once again, the tunnel shuttered and shook as the worm jerked back from him again. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry! Shh, it's okay." He soothed and quickly put away the screwdriver.
"You scared it." Amara realized it.
"Yeah, sorry about that. I was just curious." He still was talking more so to the worm as he carefully approached it and gently put a hand on it as Amara had done earlier. After a moment, the tunnel rumbled again, but it was low and more of a constant vibration rather than the earthquake they had felt before when it was scared. The worm continued to move back from them and seemed to be following the tunnel away.
"Where is it going?" Amara asked watching it go. Where the worm had been embedded into the wall was smoothed away as if shaved off for several feet all the way around. It was the same smooth scrapings from the other tunnels.
"Let's find out!" He was nearly beside himself with excitement as he started to follow behind the worm.
"How does it know where it's going?" She asked walking next to him. They had no problem keeping up even at a leisurely stroll.
"These worms don't have eyes so it doesn't actually need to see where it is going. Tell me, when you touched it, what did you feel?" He asked.
"It felt warm and there was this hum or buzz kind of." She recalled the sensation.
"You were feeling the warmth of a living creature and that slight vibration was the billions and billions of tiny claws all over its body that move it through the tunnels. That's what is scraping the rocks and dirt into fine dust that it eats. It makes these smooth walls." He side stepped in his walking to get closer to the wall nearest him to run a hand along it.
"But if it eats dirt why do the bigger ones needs teeth and how big do they get?" She continued on.
"You really aren't scared, are you?" He asked.
"I was more scared when you suddenly grabbed me and we were running. Besides, giant earthworms are not the strangest things I have seen today by far!" She giggled.
"No, I suppose not." He gave a soft laugh. "You know that main room we came down into?"
"Yeah?"
"Bigger!"
"That's ginormous!"
"Even bigger than ginormous! They need the teeth to help break down the really large boulders in mountains. I said baby earlier, but this one is more of a toddler compared to other ones I have seen. In fact, the majority of tunnels down here seem to be by younger worms. If there had been bigger ones, you would have clearly seen it! What's really weird though is that most planets out here have a handful of these worms, and I do mean just a few per planet. They can live hundreds of years and keep growing all that time. When they are born they are the size of a small car and each worm usually only has one maybe two offspring in their entire lives. These caves look like at very least five different young worms have been here."
"How can you tell there were than many? What if it was only this one?"
"Each worm has a signature in the marks they leave behind in the same way leopard spots or zebra stripes do. They look incredibly similar at a distance, but close up you can tell. See? Look at the patterns on the walls its creating as it moves. All those billions and billions of tiny claws move in a slightly different way on each worm and create slightly different looking scrapes." He stopped them for the moment so they could look closer at a wall. Upon closer inspection, Amara could see that the scrapings from this worm were wavy, like how sand looks after a wave has washed over it. Feeling the wall, it felt perfectly smooth even though the wavy lines were visible.
"You sure do know a lot about these worms." She remarked when they continued on their way.
"I wanted one when I was younger, but my parents wouldn't let me. Said it was too big of a responsibility." He shrugged.
"That was bad." She shook her head, but couldn't help the smile.
"What? It's true!" He defended.
"Sure." She rolled her eyes.
"You have to admit, I would have turned a lot of heads taking the giant worm for a walk." He joked earning a laugh from her.
