Doctor Who_ The Green Death - Malcolm Hulke [16]
‘Do you think they’re doing anything to get us out?’ Jo asked.
‘Must be by now,’ said Bert. ‘But I’ve been thinking. Maybe it’s time we started to get ourselves out.’
‘How?’
‘That fall eight years ago,’ he said, trying to remember. ‘They finally got us out through an old shaft. Of course, it may have fallen in by now—it wasn’t in regular use. I don’t want to lead you on a wild goose chase if I can’t find it again...’
‘Anything’s better than sitting here waiting,’ said Jo, getting to her feet.
‘That’s where you’re wrong. Getting lost in one of the galleries could be a lot worse than sitting on our backsides hoping for help from up top. But if I could remember the way we went... ‘ He haunched down, and started to draw a map of the mine in the coal dust on the floor.
‘We’d take Dai Evans with us, of course?’ Jo asked tentatively.
Bert looked up at her. ‘He’d hold us back, miss. In any case, the way he looks, I don’t think he’ll be seeing daylight again. Ever.’
In the pit head office Dave Griffiths dialled the phone number of the National Coal Board offices in Cardiff. Watching him was Professor Jones, who with a few other local people had come running to the mine on hearing of yet another accident. A girl answered the phone.
‘This is Llanfairfach here,’ said Dave into the phone. ‘Let me speak to Mr Ron Owen, if you please.’
‘I’ll try to find him for you,’ said the girl and went off the line.
‘Surely,’ queried Professor Jones, ‘there must be another way down into the mine?’
‘Uneconomic to have more than one shaft,’ said Dave, waiting for Mr Owen to come to the telephone. ‘The old private owners were in coal for profit, weren’t they?’ He heard Mr Owen speaking on the phone. ‘That you, Ron? Dave Griffiths here. There’s been another accident—’
The Doctor stepped through the door from the room containing the lift machinery. ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he cut in.
Dave asked Mr Owen to hold on for a moment. ‘What are you talking about, Doctor?’
‘I’m saying that what happened was not an accident,’ the Doctor repeated. He put a metal cotter pin on the desk for Dave to see. ‘That was lying on the floor near the cages. It had been removed from the brake linkage. What’s happened to the lifts was deliberate sabotage!’
‘You could be right,’ said Dave. ‘Anyway, we still need cutting equipment.’ He turned to the phone to report the latest incident at Llanfairfach colliery.
As he did so, the Brigadier returned from Panorama Chemicals. He threw his swagger cane down onto the desk, next to the cotter pin. ‘Can you believe it, Doctor? A place the size of that chemical works, and no cutting gear!’ Then he noticed the cotter pin. ‘What’s that?’
The Doctor explained his discovery. There was no way the cotter pin could have fallen out of the brake linkage. It had been pulled out by someone who wanted to create an ‘accident’.
‘You say Panorama have no cutting gear?’ asked the young Professor Jones, puzzled by this news.
‘I saw both the Director there and their chief scientific and technical officer,’ said the Brigadier. ‘May I ask who you are, sir?’
Professor Jones didn’t bother to-answer the question. He turned to Dave Griffiths, who had just put down the phone. ‘Dave, didn’t you borrow cutting equipment from Panorama only a fortnight ago?’
Dave nodded. ‘They let me collect it and put it back myself. It’s in the storage shed at the back of the power house there.’
Professor Jones turned back to the Brigadier. ‘You should have insisted.’
‘Should I?’ said the Brigadier, who did not take kindly to being told what to do by a stranger. ‘If I may repeat my question, are you connected with this mine in some way?’
‘This is Professor Jones,’ said Dave, with a touch of pride. ‘He’s come to live in the village.’
‘Professor Jones?’ said the Doctor, beaming and extending his hand. ‘I never realised. I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. Your paper on DNA synthesis was quite remarkable for your age.’
Professor Jones took the Doctor’s remark as a slight rebuff for his being so young. ‘You regard me as, shall we say, a