Death is Forever

rock. He found another rung and dropped more deeply into the hole. The rucksack scraped against rock and hung up in the narrow opening.
    Cole cursed and went up a rung. He wriggled out of the rucksack and slung one of the straps over his right arm. Carefully he descended again. It was still a very tight fit. If he’d put one more item in the rucksack it would have hung up.
    “You’re too big,” she said. “Let me take it down.”
    “I was hoping you weren’t coming down at all.” But he climbed back up again and handed the rucksack to her. “Put my extra shirt back on before you get any colder.”
    She reached for the clammy shirt and pulled it on. “How long will it take for the limestone below to fill up with water?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe it hasn’t filled this far for ten thousand years. Maybe it won’t fill up at all.” He glanced up and caught a flash of intense green from her eyes. “But I’ll tell you this, honey. I wouldn’t plan on making more than one trip before the next dry.”
    She bit her lower lip as he went back down the ladder once more. She heard the scrape of stone against cloth and flesh, followed by Cole cursing the size of the very body whose strength had gotten them this far.
    “Can you make it?” she asked.
    “Barely.” He grunted and swore again. “Abe was built more narrow in the shoulders than I am.”
    Cole vanished by inches into the hole. Water hissed when it hit the glass shielding the flame in his helmet.
    “Have you ever used a flexible ladder before?” he asked just before he disappeared completely below the stone lip.
    “Every time I went from a cargo ship to a Zodiac. Usually in a force-five gale.”
    “After that, this will be a piece of cake. The wall slopes away enough so that you don’t bang your hands much, but not enough to let you twist in the breeze.”
    When he called up from the bottom, Erin put on the rucksack, took a deep breath, and reminded herself that she’d done the same thing before under worse circumstances.
    But not in the dark.
    Silently Cole watched her descend the ladder while water dripped and slid and splashed all around. The rivulets had become trickles as thick as his finger. They fell harder and stayed around longer. He was standing at the bottom of the ladder in an ankle-deep pool of water. There was just enough space for two people to stand close to each another. Closer than an embrace.
    A nearly circular passageway led off at an angle. The tunnel was smooth-sided and narrow.
    “Watch it,” Cole said, catching Erin when her foot searched for and didn’t find a final rung. “The shaft is two feet longer than the ladder.”
    Her breath came in as cool water lapped above her ankles. “I hope we aren’t going much lower.”
    “So do I.”
    Cole looked down and ran his helmet light over every bit of floor that he could. In a spot that would have been the base of a waterfall during the wet, the limestone floor was eaten away, making an irregular bowl. Small hunks of water-rounded stone lined the bowl.
    “Can you go back up the ladder a few feet?” he asked.
    She climbed back up several rungs. “Is this far enough?”
    “One more.”
    Ignoring the cool shower of water, Cole sat on his heels in the space she’d opened. He started scooping out handfuls of stones, trying to find the bottom of the basin. Something in the eighth handful winked and shimmered in the light with a life of its own.
    “Bingo.”
    “What?”
    Without answering he stood up and held out his hand so that it caught the full flood of his helmet light. A rounded crystal the size of a small marble gleamed between his thumb and forefinger.
    “Diamond?” Erin asked, hardly able to believe.
    “As ever was. Hang onto it. I’ll see if Abe missed any more.”
    “Missed?”
    “This is the first pothole I’ve seen. He must have worked it over more than once on the way into the cave.”
    The diamond felt cool on her palm. Adrenaline swept through her. In that instant she understood why men risked their lives mining the earth. She closed her hand around the crystal until her fingers ached.
    Below her came the sound of rocks rolling together, Cole searching through debris down to the stony bottom of the basin itself. There was a long crack in the bottom where water flowed out. He probed the crack. It was too narrow for his fingers.
    “Oh, well,” he said. “If there are any diamonds in that crack, they’re not real big.”
    “How can you be so