Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [46]
She got to her feet and, eyes and torch fixed on the shaft, edged her way cautiously to the tunnel. There was more leeway than she had first thought, and she slid through the gap to find herself in a narrower but still negotiable tunnel that sloped gently, steadily downwards. Nina started along it. She was acutely aware now of the eerie sound of the sea, heard distantly through thousands of tons of rock. A rumbling vibration, rising and falling, and behind the rumble, in a weird counterpoint, a sort of humming, almost like machinery —
Machinery? Nina stopped dead, listening with an awareness that was suddenly and acutely heightened. The humming was more machine than elemental. And there was a definite rhythm to it — not random, but steady and regular. It seemed to emanate from somewhere ahead, but she didn't trust her sense of direction in here and she moved on with renewed caution, trying to make as little noise as possible. There was finer rubble on the floor now, almost like a coating of dust, and as she raised the torch a little higher to light the way ahead, she saw something that made her stop dead. There were footprints in the dust. Not just a single trail but many of them, going in both directions. Nina crouched to examine them more closely. As she had guessed they were all the same size, and too small to have been made by a man. Someone was using this tunnel regularly. And there were no prizes for working out who it must be.
Then in the darkness beyond the torch beam's reach she heard a noise. It was a strange noise, impossible to identify – something between a groan and the hoarse rattle of a heavy, laboured breath. The echoes sounded bigger, too, as though there were a vaster space just ahead of her. And the tunnel was widening.
Nina took eight more paces before, with no warning, the tunnel opened out into a cave. She couldn't suppress a gasp as the torch lit up the walls and roof, for the entire space was streaked with an intense and brilliant turquoise blue, like a grotto out of an exotic fairy tale. Her reasoning self knew what it was – copper sulphate, residue of the old mineral lodes – but the sheer, unexpected beauty of it was breathtaking. There were ripple patterns in the rock, overlapping each other like wave-edges licking over sand, and the torchlight reflecting on moisture created a shimmer like scattered diamonds.
Nina said softly, 'Wow.' For nearly a minute she stood motionless, simply staring, until recollection of her mission struggled back to the surface. All very well to go off into gawping raptures, but she had work to do – reluctantly tearing her attention away from the blue glory, she pointed the torch across the cave, to see how far it extended.
It wasn't as big as she had thought: a long ellipse in fact, and the far end no more than twenty or twenty-five metres away. Disappointingly, it was completely empty, but she could still hear the regular humming, and there was a dark patch in the far wall that might be the entrance to another tunnel. Nina started towards it. She had taken five steps when there was a quick, slithering sound behind her
She whirled round in time to see the shape that launched itself from the dark. But she wasn't fast enough to dodge the spring, the buffeting impact, and the hands that clawed and clamped around her throat as she crashed backwards to the cave floor.
HAZARD
'Ohhh, you bitch!' Nina's hand whipped out and grabbed the other girls' wrist
as Ruth's fingernails came slashing at her face. They rolled together across the cave floor, sharp stones digging and jarring. Ruth was screaming thinly, a weird, unnatural sound. Her feet scrabbled but Nina kicked her shin hard, throwing her off balance again before she could get a purchase. Then Ruth's arms locked ferociously round her neck and Nina felt