They've sealed off the invaded areas of our ship, but I still have my clearance to access the maintenance subsystems.
I know how to get through a series of airlocks into the other ring without contaminating ours.
Once I popped up from under the dirt, I found myself in some kind of unrecognizable surrealist landscape.
What could have changed everything there so much, so fast?
I was glad I'd brought a sampling kit and even more glad I was wearing a clean suit up there.
The flora and fauna had been mutated to a point where everything looked potentially lethal, and it was reactive to my presence.
Grasses had become these thin tubules with bulblike structures that undulated hypnotically.
I flinched when a stalk brushed my glove and left a sticky residue.
Inside my clean suit I started shuddering all over, and wondering why I'd worked so hard to sneak into that place.