Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [45]
The sky had cleared overnight and the sun was up now; the beach area was still in shadow, but light was shining brilliantly on the water out to sea. The wind, though, was gusting hard, and the sea looked dangerous; the tide was low and the breakers roared and foamed on the beach as they rolled in. A telltale haze on the horizon told her that the clear sky would not last. Better make the most of this respite, before the next frontal system came in.
Nina reached the narrow entrance of the mine working. She had never ventured in before and the prospect of doing so made her feel faintly queasy. But there was a torch on her key ring – a small one but powerful for its size, and she switched it on and peered inside. The interior passage was level for as far as the torch beam could reach, and when she shone it up to the roof she saw that the wooden ceiling props of the first section had been replaced fairly recently. Safe enough thus far. Come on, then. What are you waiting for?
She moved cautiously into the fissure.
The slit of daylight behind her started to shrink and fade almost immediately, then abruptly the passage took a turn to the left and the torch was her only source of illumination. Suppressing a strong urge to run back outside, Nina proceeded step by careful step, testing the ground under her feet, shining the torch on floor and roof and floor again, alert for any sign of danger. At first she counted her paces, but the need to watch for treacherous ground took all her concentration and before long she lost track of the distance she had covered.
She guessed – very roughly – that she must be about thirty metres into the workings when she came to the barrier. It was only a few slats of wood put up criss-cross fashion, a warning rather than a serious attempt to bar the way. But several of the slats were broken, and the breaks looked new. Which meant that someone had come through this way very recently.
Nina felt a sharp thrill as she pushed past the barrier and moved on, shining her torch into the darkness ahead. The ground was rougher here, strewn with rubble and rock chips, and she knew she was breaking every basic safety rule by going on alone, with no protective clothing or equipment. But she was far too excited to turn back. She wasn't stupid. She'd be careful. She was –
'Ahh!' It was more of a gasp than a shout, and the speed of Nina's reflexes probably saved her life as the torch beam lit the black maw of a shaft in the floor directly in front of her. Even as the danger registered she was instinctively throwing herself backwards, and she hit the floor with a force that jarred her spine and winded her, but nothing worse.
'Shit ...' The passage tossed the echoes of her whisper around and brought them mockingly back as she sat up, rubbing the small of her back. Thankfully she had not dropped the torch, and she pointed it again towards the gaping hole in the floor. The shaft was two metres wide, and at first sight it appeared that the tunnel ended at its brink, with no means of getting past other than by an unthinkable jump. But as the bright beam swung across the gap, Nina saw a narrow slit in the rock just before the shaft's edge. A secondary tunnel, leading away to the right and wide enough for a slim person to squeeze through.
Go on, or turn back? Nina stared at the shaft, then at the new tunnel, trying to make up her mind. Not a living soul knew she was here, so if anything went wrong the consequences were too grim to contemplate. But the need to test her theory was a burning compulsion now. Listening, she heard a distant, echoing roar that seemed to be rising from the shaft's depths. The sea? Experimentally, she tossed a small piece of rock into the shaft and listened to the diminishing clatter of its descent until —ages later, it seemed to her — there was the faintest of splashes as it fell into