PRESENT DAY EXPLORATIONS
The man stood in front of the caves checking his tools and machinery. There were slight traces of oil and grease on them, making them slippery. He cleaned them with an old, smelly piece of rag. A siren wailed in the valley below as a fire engine drove past. The noise gradually died away as the man entered the cave, pushing his tools along in a wheelbarrow. The wheel was rubbing on another part of the barrow and the high-pitched squeak was very loud in the quiet of the cave.
The man switched on the electric lights and walked along the passage to the place where he was working. The lights showed him how big and colourful the caves were. The ceiling was high above him, but he still wore a bright orange helmet because he did not want to bang his head when he went into the smaller holes later.
He was also wearing thick gloves, a pair of goggles and a pair of ear protectors. In the still surroundings of the caves he was feeling very hot. He had to wear all the protective clothing because he was going to use a big, noisy saw to cut off a piece of the rock so that he could take it away with him.
The man started the machine and there was a very loud roar from the engine. Inside his earmuffs the man could still hear the noise. The goggles he wore stopped small pieces of rock from getting into his eyes, but they also made things a little blurred. He had to be careful because the goggles also misted over if he breathed on them. He held the saw up to the rock. Even with the thick gloves on he could feel the vibrations as the teeth of the saw bit into the rockface. There was a long scream as the metal saw cut into and rubbed against the hard rock. Small dust-like pieces of rock were thrown into the air. These were mixed with the smoke from the saw and faint fumes from the petrol which drove the engine. The man did not like the smell and wished he had remembered to bring a facemask with him.
Slowly the man cut the piece out of the rock. He switched off the saw and the loud noise disappeared, but he still had a ringing in his ears for a long while after. He picked up the lump of rock. It was quite small, about the size of a grapefruit, but it was heavy. He shone his torch onto the side of the stone, the side that he had cut from the rock. In the bright light of the torchbeam he could see many different coloured lines running through the rock. He took off one of his gloves and ran his fingers over the lines. The rock was still warm from the rubbing of the metal sawblade. He was surprised to find it was very smooth, like a piece of glass. The saw had made a very smooth cut. He put the piece of rock into the wheelbarrow and moved deeper into the passages to see what else he might find buried in the caves. Later he would take the rock to a scientist who might be able to tell him how old it was, and perhaps explain to him how the caves had been formed such a long, long time ago.
