Death is Forever

sheet of water that stretched away into the darkness.
    She grabbed Cole’s forearm and pointed. “Look!”
    His helmet light cut a swath through the darkness until he saw more mounds rising from the dark lake. He walked to the edge of the lake. It quivered at his feet as though alive, responding to unseen currents of air and water. The water in the lake was absolutely clear, having rid itself of surface grit on the long trip down through the limestone reef.
    If the lake hadn’t caught the light with each disturbance of air or water, it would have been invisible.
    Slowly Cole turned, scanning the wall behind him, memorizing the location of the passage. Abe hadn’t numbered the tunnel. As far as Cole could see, none of the other cracks and holes had numbers.
    “I don’t see any arrows,” Erin said.
    “Don’t go out of sight of the tunnel mouth. You’re my safety line.”
    Cole walked to the edge of the trembling water, then began wading along the shoreline, searching for some sign that Abe had been there before him.
    “Here. Underneath the water,” Cole said after a minute. He looked up. His helmet lamp easily reached to the tunnel mouth. “Come over here.”
    He had to repeat the words again, because the throaty roar of water filled Erin’s ears. She waded toward him until she saw the arrow mark gouged out of the limestone floor.
    “Does that mean it was dry when Abe was here?”
    “Probably,” Cole said. “He wasn’t much on water. Hated it, as a matter of fact. Couldn’t swim.”
    “It must have been awful for him to explore the cave.”
    “Not in the dry. The water that’s coming down now is new.”
    Her breath came in and stayed until she forced herself to breathe out. She thought of the torrential rains of the wet and ten square miles of surface limestone covered one inch deep, and all those drops gathering together into rivulets and tiny streams, streams that flowed into crevices that also joined together, creating runoff channels that ate down and down into stone, dissolving tunnels and shafts and small rooms, water lured by gravity further and further down.
    And each solution channel was the narrow end of a funnel whose mouth could be half a mile square, or a mile, or more. Tons upon tons of water sliding down and down and down. When runoff filled up all the holes, there would be nothing left but darkness and water and stone.
    Don’t stay too long. You’ll drink black water and drown.
    With an effort Erin pulled her thoughts away from the massive weight of stone and water balanced over her head. Deliberately she waded after Cole, keeping her head down and watching the silver patterns of water glittering around her feet. Overhead, long ribbons of water gushed out of darkness into the artificial light, creating random showers.
    “There are potholes among the rubble mounds,” Cole said. “Channels, too. At one time this whole chamber had powerful currents of water moving through it.”
    “During the last wet?”
    He didn’t answer.
    Grimly she concentrated on the water that was now halfway up her ankles. There was a definite sluggish current leading into the darkness they hadn’t yet explored.
    While Cole knelt in the water and probed a small pothole, she looked for something to distract her from the ominous weight of darkness and the increasing thunder of water. The cone of her light probed in the water for a pothole. A circular shadow caught her attention.
    At first she thought it was simply another water-rounded stone. Then she realized that it was too perfectly circular, and there were others like it, all circular, all perfect. She waded farther, then made a startled sound as she stumbled into a pothole whose depth was masked by the clarity of the water. She put her hands out to break her fall.
    Her fingers closed over a candy tin.
    The pothole was full of them.
    “Erin?” he asked, looking up from a handful of rubble he had gathered. “Are you all right?”
    She tried to answer but couldn’t speak. She grabbed a tin in each hand and held them up to meet the cone of light sweeping toward her as Cole turned. Water showered down her arms, reflecting light in countless glittering points of white and green and yellow.
    Then he realized that it wasn’t water cascading from the rusted tins. She was standing knee deep in God’s own jewel box, and diamonds were pouring from her hands.

45
Abe’s mine
    The ladder closest to the surface was buried in a cascade of water that was