Doctor Who: The Green Death Read Online Free PDF

‘ Dr Stevens knew he was swaying slightly with the pain. ‘I want you to...’
    ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Although Hinks asked the question politely there was ice in his voice. There always was.
    ‘The mine,’ said Dr Stevens, ‘nobody must go down the mine.’
    ‘I’ll see to it,’ said Hinks, grinning. The prospect of any kind of violence always made Hinks grin. ‘Sure you’re all right, sir?’
    ‘Perfectly all right,’ Dr Stevens lied. ‘Just see no one goes down the mine. That’ll be all.’
    ‘Right you are, sir.’ Hinks turned and went. Dr Stevens hated to imagine what Hinks might do to stop people going down the mine.
    Alone, Dr Stevens staggered over to the door and locked it. Then he crossed back to his desk, unlocked a little cupboard built into the side of the desk. His hands were now shaking, and his head felt like splitting open. He reached into the cupboard and brought out a very special pair of earphones. Fumbling, he put them on, plugged the lead into a special socket in his desk intercom, and slumped back into his chair. The voice of his friend Boss at once started to talk to him through the earphones, reassuring Dr Stevens that what he was doing was right. Almost immediately the headache went away.
    Jo was pleased with the way Nancy, or Mum, had welcomed her, but she was still angry with Professor Clifford Jones. Over lunch she met a number of the Wholeweal Community, mainly young people who had come to Llanfairfach because they were fed up with the pressures and materialism and pollution of the big cities. Conversation during the meal was light hearted, and they seemed pleased to have this newcomer, Jo, in their midst. But as soon as the meal was over they all went back to their various occupations. The Nut Hatch was a hive of activity, where these young people spent their time evolving alternative methods of production and living. Jo helped Nancy wash up the dishes. Then she had nothing to do. Everyone was far too busy to involve her, or even talk to her. Burning with curiosity about the man who died and went green, she decided to go and look at the mine.
    The closed mine looked sadly derelict. Grass and weeds grew over the little narrow gauge railway lines once used for pushing wheeled tubs of coal. Immediately over the shaft was a high metal construction with wheels at the top. This was part of the lift mechanism. When a coal mine is in full life, the wheels at the top of these metal constructions are turning all the time, either taking miners down to work, or bringing up the coal they have hewn from the bowels of the earth—but here everything was ghostly still.
    As Jo wandered about among mounds of coal dust, the unused wheeled tubs, and the outhouses and sheds around the main shaft, a man came out of the pit office and shouted at her.
    ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘What are you doing?’
    Jo went over to him. Like many Welshmen he was short and dark eyed.
    ‘I’m from UNIT,’ she said. ‘I want to look at the mine.’
    ‘Well now you’ve seen it,’ said the man. ‘So go away. You can’t walk round here without authority.’
    ‘Where do I get it?’
    ‘National Coal Board,’ said the man, ‘in Cardiff.’
    ‘You’re just trying to be awkward,’ said Jo.
    As he spoke, another short dark-eyed man popped his head out from the office and called something urgently in Welsh. The man talking to Jo turned and rushed into the office. Jo followed and stood at the door. The office was small and untidy, its wooden floor black with in-grained coal dust. A door led off to the lift machinery. The man who talked to Jo had grabbed an old-fashioned telephone. He listened, then spoke in rapid Welsh.
    ‘What’s happening?’ Jo asked quietly.
    The second man said, ‘One of our mates, Dai Evans, has gone down the pit. Now he’s in trouble.’ He was too worried to ask who Jo was or to tell her to go away.
    With one man on the phone, and Jo and the other man watching him, none of them