Tunnels 02, Deeper

when he heard the reverberations of her movements in a larger space. He climbed up a final, almost vertical section of the passage and, using his scope, saw they were in a gallery some ten by fifty yards. Elliott was already lying next to a fissure in the floor. He brushed himself down and then began to cough from all the dust he'd inhaled.
    "Shut up," she growled.
    He managed to muffle his coughing with his sleeve, and then joined her, lying by her side.
    Together they peered down into the jagged fissure. They were looking from a dizzying height into a huge cathedral-like chamber. Far below, he could see the blur of many points of light. He pulled back slightly from the fissure, and, by angling his head, he could get a better view of the area below, where there were the oddest-looking machines. Will counted ten in all, parked in a row.
    They were like stubby cylinders, each having a single serrated wheel-like contraption at one end. They called to mind photos he'd seen of the equipment used in the construction of the London Underground. Will assumed these, too, were some form of digging equipment. Then he spotted several groupings of stationary Coprolites and a handful of Styx watching them from a distance. Will looked at the rifle by Elliott's side and wondered if she was going to use it. At this range, it wouldn't have been difficult for her to snipe at the Styx.
    After several minutes, there was a sudden burst of activity. Some of the Coprolites began to move slowly along as the Styx strolled threateningly behind them, their long rifles in their arms. The bulbous men looked tiny in comparison to the strange machines as they climbed into them. One of the machines fired up, its engine turning over with a roar and a black cloud issuing from its rear. Then it began to trundle forward, still under the scrutiny of the Styx, and edged out in front of the others.
    Will kept watching as it picked up speed. He was able to see the hatches at the rear and the array of exhaust pipes around it, from which steam and smoke were pouring. He also saw the broad rollers on which it was being conveyed forward and could hear rocks cracking under them. The machine steered toward a tunnel that led off the main chamber and disappeared from view down it. He guessed the Coprolites were going off to do some mining, but he had no idea why so many Styx were monitoring them.
    Elliott muttered something as she pulled away from the fissure, and he heard her go to a corner of the gallery. Using his scope, he watched as she reached behind a boulder to draw out several dark packages. He went over to her.
    "What's that?" he said before he could stop himself.
    She didn't answer him for several moments, then said, "Food," as she stowed the packages in her satchel.
    She didn't seem to be about to volunteer anything further, but Will's curiosity was piqued.
    "Who... where's it from?" he ventured.
    Elliott pulled out a smaller, tightly bound package from her rucksack and tucked it behind the boulder. "If you really need to know, it was put here by the Coprolites -- we trade with them." She pointed at the boulder. "I've just left them some of the orbs you filched from the Miners' Train."
    "Oh," Will said, not about to complain.
    "They're totally reliant on the orbs. The food's not that important to us, but we try to help them whenever we can." She looked rather scathingly at Will. "After what's been happening around here, they could do with all the help they can get."
    Will nodded, but he found it difficult to believe he was responsible for what the Styx were doing to the Coprolites and shrugged off the barbed comment. He was beginning to think that he was being blamed for everything that went wrong.
    Elliott twisted away from him.
    "We're going back," she said, and together they moved off in the direction they had come from, toward the oval runnel again.
    The journey home went without incident. They stopped while Elliott gathered up the cave oyster -- it was still where she had propped it. Its single stumpy leg had evidently been working overtime, whipping around as it had tried to right itself, producing a disgusting white lather that overflowed from the shell in large gobs. But this didn't put off Elliott. She wound a piece of cloth around the bulky shell and stowed it in her satchel. While she was doing this, Will watched her face through his scope. It was grim and unsmiling. Very different from how it had appeared only hours before.
    He regretted his