The Lotus Caves (3 page)

He was holding a warm-air tube. It was used for heating certain low-melting-point plastics. The heat came from a fuel cell and did not get above 40° centigrade so it was quite safe even for very small children. They could use it to bend and reshape plastic rods and other objects.

Marty said: “Yes. But I was never mad on plastics modeling.”

“Nor was I. It's just that I've had an idea.”

“What?”

“Come on up to the storeroom. I want to see if I can find something.”

The storeroom was a closely packed and organized repository of items that had a seasonal use in the Center: lanterns for the Chinese New Year, different sets of decorations, Christmas trees and streamers—all that sort of thing. It was among the Christmas stuff that Steve found what he was looking for: a carton of reusable balloons, carefully deflated and packed away for next year.

Marty said: “Well?”

“Hot air rises. If we use the warm-air tube to inflate them and let them go out of the window . . . they'll float up to the underside of the Bubble.”

The idea was appealing . . . dozens of balloons bobbing upward and fastening themselves against the curved invisible roof overhead. He said: “And when the temperature equalizes . . .”

“They'll drop again, but they'll dodge about a bit in the convection currents. They should spread pretty well all over the Bubble before they're all down. There's something else too.”

“What?”

“The paints downstairs in the kindergarten. We could paint faces on them before we send them up. You can draw pretty well.”

“I can do Sherrin. That bushy moustache and receding hairline and those old-type spectacles.” The principal of the school would not wear contact lenses, claiming they irritated his eyes. “He's pretty easy.”

“Make them all Sherrin,” Steve said. “Forty or fifty Sherrins floating down all over—how's that for a nightmare?”

Marty laughed. “What are we waiting for?”

• • •

Mr. Sherrin removed the old-type spectacles from his nose, and polished them with a cloth. He stared at the two boys who faced him across his desk. When he had given the forbidding silence time to sink in, he said: “Does either of you have any explanation, or excuse?”

Marty said: “No, sir.” Steve echoed him a fraction later.

Mr. Sherrin said: “I would not have thought I needed to remind you of the importance of discipline in the Colony, nor of the dangers of thoughtlessness. To take the materials question first, you have wasted paint and also, unless a caricature of my features is to darken Christmas for years to come, wasted balloons. Neither of these is made here; both have to be freighted across nearly two hundred and fifty thousand miles of space. This is not trivial because on the Moon no waste is trivial. This is something you have been taught over and over again, and which by your ages you ought to act on instinctively. Do you accept what I am saying?”

They accepted. It was all, Marty knew, absolutely right and sensible. Mr. Sherrin went on: “Waste apart, there is the question of indiscipline. I am not so much referring to poking fun at your superiors as to the indulging of a childish whim. We do not have whims on the Moon. We cannot afford them. Everyone's life in this Colony depends on discipline and co-operation, and if it is to work in large things it must be rigidly enforced in small.”

He pushed his spectacles back on.

“Now,” he said, “I am not going to try to allocate responsibility between you. I have a suspicion, Marty, that you may have done rather more on the artistic side, but very likely Steve made up for his deficiency there in other ways. You were in this together, and you will be punished equally and together.

“We all suffer from boredom here, and it is probably harder on young minds than older ones. We do the best we can and the Center, of course, is the focal point for that. You two found yourselves so bored that you committed a stupid prank for which you must be punished. I could give you extra work here in school, or extra duties, but I have decided on a different course. I think you must be made to realize your good fortune in having a place like the Recreation Center, so that in future you will not treat its advantages so lightly. I am therefore banning you both from using it for one month. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you can go to your class. And after school you will occupy yourselves recovering the remainder of the balloons. It may be possible to paint over Marty's artwork and use them again, though that means using still more paint, of course.”

He paused. “I saw them going up. Very colorful they looked. But the Moon is not the place for ­colorful things. Dismiss.”

3

A Key to Adventure

T
HE PUNISHMENT WAS MORE SEVERE than appeared at first sight. The Recreation Center was something Marty had taken for granted all his life; he visited it every day, occasionally several times a day, for exercises or a swim, to change books, watch a movie, or just to meet other fellows and talk. For the first few days he found himself automatically planning to go there and once he actually picked up a cabin before remembering the ban. He was left with school and home—a three-room apartment—and the tiny park with the ­reservoir.

It was a relief that his parents at least did not go on about it. His father told him he had behaved ­stupidly—that in his view Mr. Sherrin had let them off very lightly—and left it at that. His mother said nothing, but changed his books for him and did her best to help him combat boredom in other ways. She talked to him a lot, and talked about the subject which had previously been avoided: her own early life on Earth. She opened up the bottom drawer of the small locker which held her personal things, and showed him old photographs which he had never seen before—photographs of her family, the family that under other circumstances would have been his.

There was one that impressed Marty more than the others. It was a photograph of a man in his fifties, broad-faced and bearded, the curly hair of the beard streaked with white. The face was strong and looked as though it could be stern, but there were laughter wrinkles at the corners of the eyes.

“Your grandfather,” his mother said. “I've never shown you any of them before because . . . well, they wouldn't mean anything to you, would they? They're just photographs, not people.”

“And he was an artist, a painter?” She nodded. “He made a living out of that?”

“Not really. I think his paintings were good, but they weren't popular with the critics. He sold a few, now and then, but not many. Since he died they're becoming more valuable.”

“Then how did you all manage?”

“His father—your great-grandfather—was fairly rich.”

Marty said: “I see.”

She shook her head. “I don't think you do. There was really quite a lot of money. He gave most of it away, keeping only just enough for us. And not to live luxuriously, either. We lived in different parts of the world at different times, but usually in broken-down houses in the country and quite modestly. It was not that he was ashamed of the money, or of being a painter. He worked hard at it and he thought it was a worthwhile thing to do. But he liked living simply, and he wanted us to do the same. The money was paid once a month through the bank, and there were times we ran short before the end and had to skimp like mad. Once we lived on bread and herrings for a week. That was when we were living by the sea in Norway. And we had shabby shoes and all my clothes were handed down from my two sisters. No, there was very little in the way of luxury.”

He could see that while she was talking she was remembering; her face relaxed from its anxious lines into a smile. Marty asked: “When did he die?”

She hesitated and the smile went. “After we came up here. A couple of years before you were born.”

“What was he like?”

“It's difficult to say. A hard man, in some ways. It was hopeless to try to argue with him when his mind was made up. And yet very gentle. Birds and animals did not seem to be frightened of him—he used to tame them wherever we went. And he had this tremendous sense of humor. He was always either terribly serious or making people laugh.”

The smile had crept back. She went on talking about him, and Marty listened. He could see how happy she had been as a girl, and it made it worse that she was so much less happy now. This life, confining for all, was harder on her because of the freedom she had known. He asked her what his grandfather had thought about her decision to come to the Moon Colony, and she was evasive and sad. He did not press the point on her. There was no need to. It was very obvious what the big bearded man, the artist and the wanderer, would have felt about such a limited and colorless existence.

He felt a sudden resentment against his father, who took the Bubble for granted, who was neither particularly serious nor humorous, whom it was difficult to imagine taming birds and animals even if one could imagine birds and animals being here. Above all, who was responsible for his mother being here instead of leading the life she really wanted—since plainly it was only because of his father that she had chosen to come.

• • •

Marty had seen very little of Steve since the interview with Mr. Sherrin. He had been asked to visit a lot, to homes where there was a boy of around his age, and his mother encouraged him to ask them back and put on special treats when he did so. Then one day he accidentally overheard a visiphone conversation between her and another mother, Mrs. Parker, which explained things. It was clear from what Mrs. Parker was saying that there was a general attempt being made to detach him from what was thought to be Steve's bad influence. The old doubts and reservations about Steve had given rise to the conviction that he had been responsible for what had ­happened—that he had talked Marty into it.

What brought Marty up short and made him particularly indignant was the fact that he had held a similar sort of view himself. He had been annoyed with Steve for helping to get him into trouble and very much aware of the idea having been Steve's in the first place. He realized he had been, to some extent, avoiding him.

That other people thought the same, that this was taken for granted in the Bubble, showed him the injustice of it. Even if the notion had been Steve's he had more than cooperated. After all, he had painted the faces on the balloons. And Steve, who had been friendless in the first place, was being further isolated while he was having people make things easy for him. He waited until his mother had gone to the store and dialed Steve's home. Steve himself answered, his face coalescing out of the blur of the screen.

Marty said: “Hi. How are things with you?”

“I've known them brighter. You?”

“The same. I wondered if you might be drifting up toward the park.”

“Now?”

“Unless you're busy.”

It had occurred to him while he was talking that Steve might well be feeling some resentment over the way he had neglected him lately. He showed no sign of it, though. He laughed.

“Busy doing nothing. I'll see you there.”

They met and talked; about nothing much but he felt better afterward. When he got back his mother asked him where he had been, and he told her. A little later she asked him if he were going over to Ben Trillici's as he had planned.

Marty shook his head. “I'm going to Steve's.”

“But hadn't you fixed things with Ben?”

“No. It wasn't fixed. I said I might drop around.”

“Don't you think you would be letting him down if you don't go?”

“He has a couple of other guys coming. If I'm not there they can go up to the Center if they feel like it—have a game of zing. Otherwise they have to stick with me and get bored.”

She sighed, but did not dispute this. Marty said: “O.K. if I ask Steve along tomorrow?”

“Of course. If you want to.”

“I do.”

• • •

It was Steve's suggestion, a couple of days later, that they should take a crawler out again. The rocket from Earth was due in, and it was true, as he said, that you got a better view of the landing from outside. Not that this would normally have been such an overwhelming attraction—it was a sight almost as familiar as the sun's rays breaking through the gaps in the easterly mountains for the lunar dawn—but in present circumstances filling in time had become important. Mr. Sherrin's intention of making them appreciate the advantages of the ­Center was being fulfilled very effectively.

There were five crawlers at the service bay just inside the main airlock. Steve was for taking the first one, but Marty, on impulse, decided to look along the rank. Steve asked what was the point in doing that—the crawlers were identical, after all—but shrugged and followed.

The crawler at the end was out of line with the others, as though whoever brought it in last had been in a hurry to get back home. They climbed in and Marty stared at the control panel. He had been in a hurry, all right, or else careless. He had left the key in its slot. Silently he nudged Steve, who had come in behind him.

There was a pause before Steve said: “I used to come here hoping for that one time. I'd given up, though.” He pulled the key out and slipped it back in. “It's real.”

“What do you think?”

“There's nothing in the rules. I mean, it says you have to apply for a key and we know we wouldn't get one, but there's nothing about finding one in a crawler. We could even not have noticed it till we were outside the Bubble. What do you say we ­haven't noticed it?”

“Are we going to use it, though?”

“Do we have to decide right now? But if we went the same way we went last time—another few hundred yards and we could at least have a look what it's like up that draw.”

“Yes.” Marty felt a rising excitement; out of proportion really with the proposition Steve had put forward. “Let's move then. Before he remembers he didn't take the key out, and comes back.”

He himself took the controls. He pressed the port-closing button and the airlock doors closed. Then he put the drive in forward and the crawler began to move.

His flashing light, showing that he was going outside, was answered by a wink from the box and the inner wall of the main airlock lifted for them. Marty drove forward and then had to wait while that wall came down, the precious air was sucked out, and the outer wall opened to the vacuum. His nerves prickled with the thought that at any moment the man who had left the key would return—that the lifting wall-section would drop again, the radio order them in. But nothing happened. He pushed the lever back to forward and the crawler trundled out onto the black basalt rock surrounding the Bubble.

They reached the point where the governor cut in and stopped the motor. Marty and Steve looked at each other.

“They haven't called us,” Steve said. “Even if anyone contacted us they couldn't tell where we were, within a quarter mile.”

Behind them they could see the Bubble, or at any rate the top of the dome and the wireless mast. Level horizons on the Moon were only two miles distant and the base was lost behind the curve. Marty turned the key. The motor hummed into life again, and the crawler lurched forward.

They did not speak until they were in sight of the draw which had fascinated Steve. It was a great disappointment. It ran up steeply for some fifty yards and petered out at a sheer rock face. Steve said: “I've always thought this was the pass that goes up through the mountains.”

Marty went back to the realization that people were trying to cut him off from Steve. It was not only that he had thought it unjust. There had been a little resentment as well at their assumption that the balloon stunt had been all Steve's idea—that he did not have the initiative, or maybe the nerve, to do something like that unless he were dragged into it. He said: “Have you looked in the store locker?”

“Yes. It's full. That last trip must have been a very short one. If it had been refilled, someone would have been bound to spot the key.” Steve ran a hand through his black wiry hair. “Why?”

“That pass. It must be somewhere along here. It cuts across the foothills of the main range. First Station is on the plain beyond them. That's not much more than three hundred miles. We could get there in a couple of days.”

Steve said: “It means trouble. We might get away with having used the key. Even with scouting a bit farther along. But if we're away for nearly a week . . .”

The trouble it meant scarcely bore thinking about. They would have everyone on top of them. Marty felt a slight trembling at the knees. He would not be too sorry if Steve vetoed the plan. He shrugged and said: “Just as you like.”

“But we'll never get a chance like this again.” Steve examined the reading on the oxygen tank. “Almost full. That gives us fourteen days clear.” He looked up. “I'm game if you are.”

“O.K.” Marty hoped his voice sounded steadier than it felt. “Then let's get going. Before they realize we're out here and haul us back.”

“There's one thing.”

“What's that?”

“We don't want to have them mount a search for us.”

“No.” The thought was appalling: all the resources of the colony marshaled in a hunt whose cost was scarcely computable. One might waste paint and balloons, but expense of this order was unthinkable to a Lunarian. “In that case . . .”

“We can drop a beacon.”

He meant a radio beacon. They were carried as part of the crawler's emergency equipment and consisted of transmitters linked to miniature tape recorders and time clocks. When set, a message was beamed out at regular intervals.

“They'll pick it up right away,” Marty objected. “And with a jumbo crawler they can catch us in ten minutes. Five, more likely.”

“Set the clock for delayed transmission. An hour, say. By that time we'll be well out of reach, especially if we're up in the foothills.”

This was true. Marty searched his mind for other objections and found none: none, that was, except the trouble they would be in when they got back. Overhead was the pale crescent of Earth, to the east the harsh orb of the sun, twenty-four hours risen. The fuel cells which powered the crawler were even now being replenished with energy from the battery of photoelectric cells on the roof. A journey through the mountains meant a considerable time spent in shadow, but with the sun rising toward its zenith there would be plenty of opportunity for finding patches of sunlight in which they could recharge. They had over twelve days before lunar night fell, more than twice as long as they would need.