Doctor Who: The Green Death by Malcolm Hulke Read Free Book Online Page A

daylight again for the next two days.’
    ‘But you were all safe?’
    This time he shook his head, his helmet light playing horizontally to and fro across the mine wall. ‘Six of us never saw daylight again.’
    Jo was shocked. ‘That’s terrible.’
    He shrugged. ‘You know how many miners are killed a year in the pits? Fifty, on average. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Anyway, I shouldn’t be telling you these terrible things when we’re stuck down here!’ He walked over and looked at Dai Evans. Dai had stopped moaning. His face was turning bright green.
    ‘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