Death is Forever

calm?” she demanded.
    He laughed. “Calm? Honey, my hands are shaking almost as much as the first time I made love to you.”
    The sound she made could have been surprise or laughter or both.
    He stood and absently wiped his hands on his soaked khaki shorts. “Let’s not waste any more time here.”
    “ Waste? We just found a diamond!”
    His only answer was “Watch that last step.”
    Cole dropped to his hands and knees and crawled into the opening that began at a right angle to the bottom of the shaft they had just descended. The floor of the tube hadn’t been pounded by falling water, so it wasn’t as deeply eroded as the plunge pool had been. The surrounding limestone was damp but not under water. The floor was scalloped.
    He probed the scallops at random and found one small diamond. Tucking it beneath his tongue, he went forward. He didn’t bother to probe any more of the shallow scallops. Grimacing at the discomfort, he crawled deeper and deeper into the limestone formation.
    Erin grubbed along right behind him, pushing the rucksack.
    Gradually Cole realized that the tube was descending. Water seeped from ceilings and walls and collected into steady trickles. The trickles gathered in shallow channels on either side of the tunnel floor or found small cracks and disappeared deeper into the limestone. He wondered how high the water table was in this area of the Kimberley, and how long it would take to saturate the ancient, partially dissolved reef until the tunnel they were crawling through became full of water.
    “The ceiling looks scalloped, too,” she said. “Does that mean this tunnel spends a lot of time full of water?”
    He grunted. It was something he’d just as soon not think about.
    From ahead came the sound of rushing water. He slowed down and began searching the flickering shadows ahead very carefully, seeking any openings in the floor.
    Overhead, the ceiling shed water like a sieve with a handful of uneven holes. The tunnel widened from side to side. The floor was very rough, potholed from the con stant hammering of waterfalls during the height of the wet. Some of the potholes were as big as bathtubs. Others were no bigger than a fist.
    Small mounds of stony debris appeared randomly, piled at either side of the tunnel.
    “Abe dug out some of the potholes,” Cole said.
    “Can we?”
    “He kept going, which means there’s something better ahead.”
    Water showered down on Cole and Erin, drenching them while they crawled forward. The temperature of the water had gone from cool to chilly. She began shivering as soon as she stopped to probe a small pothole, but she kept at it. Even her cold hands could tell the difference in texture between fragments of limestone and the sleek texture of a water-rounded diamond.
    “I found one!” she called out.
    “Good for you. Put it under your tongue and keep crawling.”
    “But I found—”
    “Abe’s tailings,” Cole interrupted. “See the debris shoved aside? He’s already been over these potholes.”
    “Then why did I find a diamond?”
    “Offhand, I’d guess he found something up ahead that made these potholes look like a waste of time.”
    While Cole talked, he kept crawling toward the throaty, increasing sound of thunder coming from up ahead. Excitement sleeted through him, taking away the pain of cuts and bruises gotten from crawling over stone. The ceiling rose until he could duck-walk and then walk almost normally. Water lapped around his feet. He ignored it as he flexed muscles that had cramped. When Erin’s lamp appeared a few feet behind him, he turned and pulled her to her feet. She groaned with relief.
    “This is more my idea of a cave,” she said, shining her light around. “A little cramped from top to bottom, but lots of space otherwise. Lots of puddles, too.”
    “Yeah. And they’re getting bigger every minute.”
    He spat out his diamond and put it into one of the pockets of the rucksack she carried. She handed over her own diamond and watched it disappear.
    To her surprise, Cole didn’t immediately press further into the cave’s wide horizontal opening. He simply stood and ran his lamp over everything within reach of the cone of light, memorizing his location within the larger opening. Then he turned and scanned the tunnel they had just emerged from.
    A large, rough #1 had been gouged into the limestone above the tunnel. As Cole turned away, a #2 appeared just at the limits of his helmet light.
    “See any more