Free Earth Cult by Trevor Hoyle Page B

rogue cancer cell seeking out a vital organ.
    At seventy-five paces the tunnel became much narrower, so that he had to turn sideways and edge his way forward. It occurred to him that this might be the beginning of a natural fault because it was plainly too small to allow the passage of ore; the only other possibility was that it had been constructed as a linking tunnel between workings, and this turned out to be the most likely explanation, for after ten shuffling paces it opened up into a sizable area and in the light of the lamp Frank could see heaps of rubble and other debris and the pock-marked rock face where the miners had excavated.
    Before stepping forward to examine the area Frank found a small piece of whitish stone and marked the place he had emerged from, aware that it would be only too easy to lose his bearings. He swept the beam of light along the walls and moved slowly forward, crouching down to peer into the holes, most of which were quite shallow, a dozen feet into the rock or less. At the far end of the small cavern was a tunnel – fairly wide and high – and he shone the light along it. He nearly dropped the lamp in the dust when he saw what he thought was an answering flash of light. He held the lamp steady and there in the distance, unmistakably, was a light.
    He tried to call out but his throat was parched. He swallowed and tried again, his voice dead and muffled andsounding strangely alien in his ears. There was no answer. He swivelled the lamp from side to side and the light in the distance copied the movement, and it was then the realization came to him that what he was seeing was in fact a reflection – there was something shiny at the far end of the tunnel reflecting the beam back at him.
    He was relieved and also curious. What kind of material could have retained such a bright surface finish after being underground for fifty, sixty years – maybe longer? Could it be a mirror? Or some form of metal that had withstood corrosion and oxidization? But that was plainly impossible, for such metals had been unknown when the mine was in use.
    His hundred paces were up, and he knew he ought to make his way back, but the object at the end of the tunnel baffled and intrigued him. He thought: I’ll check it out and then return. It’s in direct line with the cavern so all I have to do is turn through 180 degrees and head straight back. There’s nothing in the way; I can’t go wrong if I keep to the main tunnel.
    He held the lamp in front of him and watched its reflection advancing towards him, the bobbing beam of light moving eerily in the pitch darkness. It was farther away than he had realized – a good deal farther, in fact. He walked on, occasionally stumbling over rocks half-buried in the dust, feeling the cold sweat on the back of his neck and beginning to regret his decision to go beyond the hundred paces. He had given the others strict instructions not to proceed one step farther and already he was breaking his own rule.
    The glare of the light dazzled him as he approached the object: it was black and smooth, he now saw, a flat highly-polished surface without a blemish. It blocked the tunnel completely.
    This was no natural object. Nothing in nature was this smooth, unless it was glacier ice, and certainly no rock strata could adopt this formation without being cut, machined and polished by mechanical means. Had it been buried here forsome purpose? Was it perhaps connected with the Project, part of the neutrino detection equipment?
    Frank couldn’t imagine what it might be, or what its function was, or how it had come to be here, nearly a mile underground beneath the Mount of the Holy Cross. For no discernible reason he thought of the Telluric Faith and how the Tellurians believed the mountain to be the focal point of some kind of supernatural power, a cosmic force-field where lines of energy intersected and formed an aura of Earth Magic …
    Where had that