The Lotus Caves

by John Christopher

  His father said: “Hey, you’re not watching your line! That looks like a big one.”

  • • •

  He went with the Millers by crawler to the launch station. It was six miles away along the edge of the Sea of Rains, as a precaution against blowups damaging or maybe even destroying the Bubble. The caterpillar tracks took them steadily with occasional jolts across the Moon’s surface, from time to time plunging through dust pockets and sending dust scattering on either side, a shower of floating sparks in the rays of the risen sun.

  Nobody spoke much. At the launch station they went on board with Paul and saw him for the last time, with all of them crowded together in the capsule. There was the bunk in which he would lie, cushioned for takeoff. And for landing. It was hard to believe that in a few weeks he would be breathing the air of Earth, not inside a protective dome but out of the whole wide sky of the planet.

  Paul said: “You’ll write to me. I’m counting on that.”

  “Sure,” Marty said. “You, too. If you don’t find you have too many other things to do.”

  But he would, of course. Paul said: “I won’t. Bye, Mom, Dad. I’ll visiphone you right away, soon as I land.”

  Mrs. Miller kissed Paul. Mr. Miller put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard. Then they had to get out and take a cabin across to the control center. From the viewing level they heard the relay of the countdown, and saw the exhaust gases rise in a fiery cloud from the pit before the ship itself began to rise, sliding out of its sheath, slowly at first and then faster and faster until it was a gleaming, vanishing speck in the sky. That was when Mrs. Miller started crying.

  She had stopped by the time they took the crawler back to the Bubble, but the silence was worse than on the way out. Marty left them at the main airlock to make his way home. Mr. Miller said: “Thanks for coming along, Marty.”

  Mrs. Miller said: “You’ll come and see us still?” Her hands held his lightly. “We wouldn’t like to lose touch with you, Marty.”

  As if one could lose touch with anyone inside the confines of the Bubble. He said: “I won’t lose touch, Mrs. Miller.”

  2

  The Great Balloon Crime

  MARTY FOUND IT EVEN WORSE than he had expected. He went around to the Millers for Paul’s first visiphone call, and was already restless from three days of mooching about, wondering what to do and whom to talk to. The screen’s circle showed Paul’s head and shoulders and, fuzzily, the room behind. He realized he had had some fantastic notion that there would be a landscape—trees and stuff—but of course Paul was in the rehabilitation center, under artificial gravity. The room was very little different from rooms here.

  Conversation was strained and awkward. Halfway through contact was lost in a burst of static which drowned sound and vision for half a minute or more. Mr. Miller was swearing under his breath: you got no extra time for loss of picture. When it had cleared up, Paul said to him: “I set up my chess set for that game we were playing. I’ll mail you my next move.”

  Mail came in with the supply rockets, photographically reduced onto transparencies which you read through a magnifier. The schedule was roughly three in two months. It was going to take a long time to finish the game.

  Marty said: “Fine. You’re going to lose that ­castle, whatever you do.”

  The seconds ticked on. In a way the five minutes of the call dragged, and in a way it seemed to be over almost as soon as it began. The circle flashed and died in the middle of a sentence from Paul. Mr. Miller said heavily: “That’s that,” and switched off. It would be a month before their next contact. It was not just a question of cost: the channels were needed for scientific and administrative communications and private calls were strictly rationed.

  By the next call, or at least by the one after that, Marty thought, Paul would be out of the rehabilitation center, living a normal life. An Earth life. He said: “Thanks for letting me sit in, Mr. Miller. Hope I didn’t hog things too much.”

  Mrs. Miller said: “Can’t you stay awhile, Marty?”

  “Afraid not. I’ve got a whole load of homework needs doing.”

  That was true, but he did not head back home right away. He felt restless and frustrated. He thought a workout in the gym might help, and dialed a cabin to the Recreation Center. It was near the middle of the Bubble, one of the tallest buildings, with six floors between the gym in the lower basement and the Starlight Room on the roof, which was the one place people could go out to dine. You cooked your own food on the infra and prepared your own wine from instant, but at least the setting was different. A little different, anyway.

  He found he had hit a bad time. The exercising machines were all full with people waiting, and the pool was crowded also. There was a little more room on the bars, but he found he had soured on the idea of exercise. It seemed better to go upstairs and take in part of the current movie at the ground-floor theater. He had seen it already, and not thought much of it, but he had an idea he would feel less surrounded. He went up the stairs in float jumps, touching down on every fourth or fifth step.

  He stuck the film for five minutes before boredom drove him out. He ought, he knew, to take a cabin home and start demolishing that homework. Instead he went up two more floors to the library and study rooms. At least it would be quiet and there might be a chance of being alone. There were three or four people in the library itself and he went through to the rooms beyond. Of the six available, all but one showed the red light outside signifying “Occupied—Don’t Disturb.” He pushed open the door of the sixth and realized there was someone there too. Steve du Cros sat at the table and was busy writing. He looked up, annoyed.

  Marty said: “Sorry. I guess . . . You didn’t put the light on.”

  “Didn’t I?” Steve was stocky for a Lunarian, a little shorter than Marty and more powerfully built. His face was broad but sharp-eyed. He had black curly hair and blue eyes, slightly protuberant behind contacts.

  “You want to use the place?” He closed his pad. “That’s O.K. I’m about finished.”

  “No, it’s all right. I wasn’t doing anything really. Were you writing that book review for English? It’s not due till Monday, is it?”

  “No, it’s something of my own.” He paused. “I’m writing a book.”

  Marty was surprised, but the surprise diminished with reflection. Steve always got low marks in English but that was more due to his general awkwardness and lack of discipline than to being weak in the subject. He said some bright things at times.

  “What about?” he asked, and half expected to be blasted by a sarcastic retort. But Steve said: “Oh, just slush. Pirates in the South Seas—that sort of stuff. It’s crazy, but it passes the time.”

  “Can I read it?”

  “You can if you don’t mind being bored to shreds.” He stared at Marty. “You heard from Paul yet?”

  “I saw him tonight when he visiphoned home.”

  “How is he?”

  “He seemed all right.”

  Steve said enviously: “He’s lucky.”

  “In a way.” A thought struck Marty. “Being sent down . . . why can’t you go? I mean, you don’t have any folks in the Bubble.”

  Steve lived with foster parents who had a boy of their own, some years younger, with whom he seemed to have less in common even than with other boys. He said: “I don’t have folks down below, either. Or none who wants to go to the ­trouble of making a claim. I’m a ward of the Colony and the Colony says I’m better off here. They ran the medical computer on me and it opted for staying. I don’t get the chance to argue till I’m eighteen.”

  “That’s tough if you want to go.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Well, yes.” He thought of his own decision, but could not bring himself to mention it. “Though it’s not too bad here really.”

  “Could be worse,” Steve agreed
. “Like a character in my book. He’s been captured by the Spaniards and chained to the wall for ten years in a dungeon on one of the islands of the Spanish Main. It’s right by the sea and every high tide he gets flooded to the knees. He gets bread and water, thin soup twice a week, and he has to fight the rats for it. They’re two feet long, nose to tail, and keep their teeth sharp gnawing through granite. He doesn’t worry either. He’s only got ten years to go and he doesn’t have to pay taxes.”

  Marty laughed. “See what you mean!”

  “If you’re not busy right now . . .”

  “I’m not.”

  “I thought of going out to the Wall. See if the mountains have moved any. Have a look for a Moon-bird. You want to come along?”

  Marty said: “I don’t mind.”

  • • •

  Marty’s mother said: “I’m glad to see you’ve found a new friend.”

  Steve had been around to the apartment for the evening. He had brought some tapes to play, of seventeenth-century music. Marty knew very little about classical music and he had been bored some of the time, but Steve was good at explaining things and telling you what to listen for. He had enjoyed it more than he expected.

  He realized his mother’s remark was not entirely wholehearted. She probably was glad he was not mooching aimlessly around so much but he also knew that Steve made her uneasy, as he did most people. He was polite, but he managed to give the impression to adults of being just about to bust out in some way. She would not suggest that he look for some other companion—she had said in the past what a pity it was that Steve led such a solitary life—but she was not happy about it.

  Marty said: “Steve’s O.K. He’s so bright I don’t always understand him, but I do my best to keep up.”

  “He’s no cleverer than you,” his mother said. “He’s very strong-minded, though. You don’t want to let him influence you too much.”

  They were in the tiny kitchen and she was getting the turkey ready for tomorrow’s dinner. It was Thanksgiving Day. Since there were no such things as vacations for people in the Bubble and school went on the year round, all sorts of minor holidays were celebrated. Chinese New Year, for instance, though there was only one person of Chinese origin in the Colony and he had been born in Africa and had never seen China. Tomorrow, anyway, it was battery turkey and no school. On Marty’s urging, permission had been obtained for Steve to join them.

  His mother asked: “What time is he coming in the morning?”

  “I’m picking him up,” Marty said. “We’re taking a crawler out.”

  Over the age of twelve you could take crawlers outside the Bubble if you wanted to. It was something else that was supposed to cut down the feeling of confinement. The crawlers had governors which cut the motors if you tried to take them outside an eight-mile radius from the main lock and there was radio transmission back to the control point, so no risk was involved. His mother said: “Don’t be late for dinner. One o’clock prompt.”

  “We’ll be back. Unless we find a Moon-bird.”

  “A what?”

  Marty laughed. “One of Steve’s crazy ideas. He’s full of them. He has a lot of imagination.”

  She trussed the turkey with a spike that had done such duty hundreds of times and would go on being used for years to come. Nothing in the Bubble was thrown away while it had any useful life left in it. She said: “Some imagination’s a good thing. Too much isn’t. Here especially.”

  He knew what she was talking about. People were picked for mental stability but occasionally it broke down. Only a month ago a man had gone outside, tried (absurdly) to shatter the Bubble with a crowbar and then, with a dozen watching him from the other side of the barrier, had taken off his helmet and choked in vacuum.

  “Steve’s all right,” Marty said.

  She smiled. “I’m sure he is. Open up the refrigerator, darling, while I pop this in.”

  • • •

  It was dull, dull. The sun’s glare was harsher without the Bubble’s protective tinting and there was dust and rock all around instead of the familiar paths and buildings, but there was really nothing to be seen that could not have been seen as well through one of the telescopes in the Viewing Room. The crawler lurched through a landscape that, apart from being arid and lifeless, was utterly without surprise. In the relatively near distance was the launch station; farther away the smaller dome of one of the mines. The former lay within the ­crawler’s active radius, the latter not. A special key was needed to unlock the control that overrode the governor, and Control Section issued them only to people who were on duty. There were spacesuits in the crawler, but the same key was needed for opening the external door of the crawler’s airlock.

  Steve drove the crawler under the escarpment until the motor died. He said: “See that draw, just up ahead?”

  Perhaps a quarter of a mile away the escarpment split, showing a channel, wide enough to take the crawler, that led obliquely upward. You could see in for fifty yards or so before it twisted and disappeared. Marty nodded.

  “I see it.”

  “It leads up to the mountains.”

  “I know.”

  “You know what you might find up there?”

  “Moon-birds?”

  Steve said slowly: “Maybe a ship came down, maybe thousands of years ago. When the Egyptians were building the pyramids. Maybe they looked in on them too. A scouting expedition from Rigel or Betelgeuse. Only one of the ships crashed, here on the Moon. Nothing would change, nothing can, so it’s still there. Nose crumpled, airlock burst open. So you could crawl through and see what’s inside. All sorts of weird machines and instruments.”

  Marty said: “You wouldn’t see anything. No lights. Whatever kind of power they used it wouldn’t be still functioning after thousands of years.”

  “Maybe they built the hull out of a transparent material. Like the Bubble, only harder. Something like diamond. A diamond, half a mile long and hollow.”

  “Diamond’s carbon. It would burn to a cinder as soon as you hit an atmosphere.”

  “You have a point,” Steve said. “I could say that perhaps that’s what did happen—perhaps the rest of the fleet burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere—but that would mean the Rigelians or the Betelgeusians were pretty stupid not to work it out in advance. And diamond’s brittle as well as being hard.” He shook his head. “Not too probable, really.”

  Marty said: “Maybe the power switched off when they hit, but works again when someone comes inside. You trip a lever or something.”

  “Or maybe the Moon-birds have been nesting in it, and they lay these big luminous eggs.” Steve pushed the control lever into reverse and the motor hummed into life. The crawler moved back and they could see the marks of its tracks in the Moondust, going so far and no farther. “I suppose we might as well head for home.”

  “We could go over to the launch station.”

  “No traffic for a week,” Steve said. “I’d as soon go back inside.”

  • • •

  Marty’s father made up a bottle of white wine from instant and converted it to champagne-type by adding sparkle. The boys had a glass each with their meal. Everyone ate a lot and afterward they switched on TV. It was a revival of a remake of a musical spectacular. The adults watched it with mild somnolent interest. After a quarter of an hour the boys excused themselves and went out.

  “What now?” Marty asked. “I suppose we could go along to the Center and have a game of zing.”

  Zing was purely local. It had evolved out of table tennis in response to the Moon’s lower gravity. It had a complicated set of rules and in place of table and net a flat surface with one end contained in a sort of box and the other end open. You played from the open end into the box.

  Steve said: “You beat me too easily.” Games bored him and he could not stay interested after the first few minute
s. “We might as well go there as anywhere, though.”

  They cabined to the Center, squashing together into one rather than taking two. The game rooms were full of others who were, like them, free from school and seeking ways of passing time. The kinder­garten was the only place where there was room to move: since it was a holiday the little ones were home with their mothers who normally left them there while on duty. Marty and Steve fooled around with the equipment, built a castle of bricks and knocked it down. Then Steve said: “Remember this?”

  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.”