The Lotus Caves (6 page)

Marty did not suggest accompanying him; it was routine that one person remained inside the crawler except in an emergency. He watched him go through the lock and then clamber awkwardly up inside the fissure so that he could see what lay on the other side. He stayed there some minutes. When he got back, Marty said: “Well?”

Steve shook his head. “Nothing. There's what looks like a small crater on the other side with a long drop beneath it. Nothing remarkable.”

“So he must have been mistaken. Or mad. More probably mad since he took it so seriously. Do we go back now?”

Steve said: “What I think might be an idea is to work around and see if we can get up
on
to the other side. There's a ledge which looks broad enough. We could see much better from there.”

“See what? You've seen enough to know there couldn't be a giant flower here, or anything like a flower. What's the point in going on?”

“I think he must have been wrong,” Steve said. “There's nothing but rock. But now we've come so far . . . I think we could try to spot his crawler. This is the place he was heading for.”

“But once he got here,” Marty argued, “and found he had drawn a blank, he may have traveled on. Perhaps by that time he was chasing giant butter­flies.”

“I don't think so. I think he would have hung around.”

“In any case, the patrols from First Station that made the search for him will have come here. Mike Pozzi knew where it was. They must have worked that out.”

Steve got back into the driving seat. “I'd like to have a look, all the same.”

He spoke with the same inflexible determination. Short of fighting him over it, he was not going to be stopped. And quite apart from the fact that, as Marty had learned during their few wrestling bouts in the gymnasium at the Recreation Center, Steve was a lot stronger than he was, one did not start fights inside a crawler: the risks were too great. All he could do was bear with the situation and hope that Steve would soon get as bored with the business as he was already.

• • •

The going became even worse. Steve drove a tortuous course through the rocks, with the crawler at times balanced at precarious angles. Gradually, though, he worked his way past or around the various obstacles, and they reached the ledge he had spoken of. They were much higher than they had been. Below and in front of them was what Steve had thought was a crater, but from here one could see that it was more like a cone-shaped depression in the rock, no more than thirty feet across. Below it, the rock face fell into a gulf whose bottom could not be seen. Across lay the other face, broken by the fissures through one of which Steve had climbed.

Marty said: “I still don't see anything.”

“You'll have to do the looking. This ledge . . .” Steve was concentrating on the controls. “It's narrower than I thought.” The crawler's left-hand tracks dropped and they were traveling at an angle to the horizontal again. “Tricky.”

“Want me to take a turn?”

“Not right now. You could make some coffee, but I would wait till we get level again. Keep your eyes skinned.”

The ledge continued to narrow and continued to cant over to one side. Steve was proceeding very slowly, letting each spike bite home in turn. They were safe enough, but Marty found he was not enjoying the glimpses he had of the ravine on their left. It was possible that Thurgood had fallen down there—the early crawlers had been much less stable than modern ones were.

The ledge turned a corner ahead of them and from there was presumably directly above the cone-shaped depression. If it were any more narrow or oblique, Steve would have to reverse. They inched around, and could see what lay ahead. Steve gave a grunt of satisfaction.

“That's better.”

The ledge broadened in front, extending into a shelf at least twenty-five feet across. That part was in shadow, but farther on there was a broad sunlit pass leading downward. Steve said: “We can move a bit faster now.”

The engine whined on a higher note as he increased speed, retracting the grip-spikes at the same time. They rolled forward, moving into shadow. Marty said: “I think I'll see about that coffee.”

“That's a brilliant idea. I was just . . .”

Steve wrenched violently at the wheel as, without warning, the crawler slid sideways. With one arm he slammed the grip-spike lever, to engage them again. But the crawler was out of control, loose stones screeching and whining under her tracks. A small patch of scree, Marty thought, masked by the shadow of the overhang above. It was the last logical thought he had before the crawler tipped over, falling free into space, and everything dissolved into fear and the certainty of death.

6

A Storm of Leaves

M
ARTY REMEMBERED CLOSING HIS EYES tightly as the crawler skidded and fell. He had no recollection of opening them again, but he realized he could see light. There had been the smack of impact which had thrown him hard against the bunk curtain. But a dragging, braking impact, followed by a second: sharp and final but not the annihilating crash which he had expected—which had seemed inevitable.

Not only light but color. It shimmered softly through the spectrum—reds and golds, greens and blues. A dream? He closed his eyes and opened them again. The colors were still there, and outside. He was seeing them through the observation dome of the crawler. And yet impossible. He looked for Steve and saw him slumped against the wall. He went to him, having to climb up because the crawler was at an angle, its nose pointing down. He said: “Steve . . .” and touched his hand. It seemed warm but there was no response.

Things were moving, high in the rainbow air. He looked up and saw them, and it was more fantastic than the colors. They were like leaves, a storm of them, but leaves that floated upward. Leaves, he thought . . . floating? Was he dead, perhaps? Was this the afterworld—heaven?

Dazed, he went to the airlock. It crossed his mind that he ought to put a suit on. But a spacesuit—to walk through paradise? He buttoned the inner door, stepped inside, and released the outer. He had not operated the air pump, but there was no hiss of escaping air. Instead air billowed in against him, pleasantly warm. It felt thick, heavy, rich to the lungs and sweet to the nostrils. He jumped down and his feet sank into a springy softness.

His eyes were growing accustomed to the light. It was altogether unlike anything he had known. Light on the Moon was full of harshness, hard blacks and whites with intermediate somber grays. This was gentle, flickering, continually changing, richly colored. He glanced down and saw that there was light at his feet, too. He stood on a carpet of something like moss and the carpet glowed green, mauve, dull amber. He walked and saw tiny stars of light splash from his treading feet. Splash? He bent down and touched with his fingers. Wetness clung to them. He had read of dew in meadows on Earth, small beads of brilliance hanging poised on spears of grass. Dew, on the barren Moon? If he were not dead he must be dreaming.

He could take in his surroundings better now. He was inside a cavern, some fifteen yards across and perhaps half that height. It was roughly circular but the floor sloped down. At the bottom it dipped quite sharply and there was what looked like the opening of a tunnel. The leaves . . . he raised his eyes, looking for them. A few still moved through the air but most seemed to have plastered themselves against the ceiling in a glowing patchwork. Light came from them, as it did from the moss. Phosphorescence—that was it.

By the far wall there was a moss-encrusted outcropping of rock. Farther up and in the middle of the cave he saw what at first looked like a giant snake. Giant indeed—more than a foot in thickness and lying in a huge elaborate coil. The body of it was black but the top swelled into a spheroid, creamy white, a couple of yards in diameter. Not a snake, he realized: the other end disappeared into the ground.

And yet that did not mean anything. In dreams nothing was fixed, everything capable of changing into something else. He watched to see if it would move. Nothing happened. Then he jumped as something lightly touched his cheek. He brushed at it frantically with his hand and saw a leaf go spinning away through the air, deepening from pink to crimson as it went. Two or three others were spiraling down toward him. He turned back to the crawler, jumped into the airlock and closed the door behind him.

He heard a noise as he came through the inner door. From Steve—a small groan. Marty bent down and saw movement. He lifted Steve's head, and the eyes opened.

“You O.K.?” he asked.

“What happened?” Steve winced, momentarily closing his eyes again. “We hit that loose rock . . .”

“It's not a dream then.” Marty felt almost disappointed. “People don't share dreams.”

“Dreams? Where are we?” Steve struggled to his feet. “That light . . . is it real?”

“I don't know. It must be.”

“What's that?”

Three of the leaves floated down and rested on top of the crawler. Two were pale lemon, the other a deep pulsating blue. After a moment the lemon-­colored ones detached themselves and drifted up and away but the third remained.

“What is it?” Steve insisted.

Marty started to tell him as much as he knew. Steve interrupted to say: “You went outside? In a suit?”

“No.” It seemed silly to say you did not need a spacesuit when you were dead. “I was a bit dazed.”

“But you could
breathe
?”

“Yes. There's air, all right. It's different—scented, and it seems to make your lungs tingle. But you can breathe it. I was about five minutes out there.”

“I don't believe it.”

“Nor did I at first. We're in some sort of cave.” It was beginning, in a weird way, to make sense; since they were obviously alive, it had to. “I suppose we're
inside
the Moon. We must have broken through the surface in that fall.”

Steve shook his head and then put a hand up to it, grimacing.

“I must have landed on my skull.” He paused. “I'm going out to have a look. How far did you explore?”

“Not far.”

He was not going to say that a leaf had scared him.

“Come on then.” Steve stopped by the airlock. “You're
sure
you went out. You didn't imagine it?”

Marty rubbed his fingers together; they were still wet.

“No, I didn't imagine it.”

• • •

They stood in silence. The pattern of colors moved and spun along the walls and ceiling and floor of the cave. Steve spoke at last. He said: “Well, where?”

He had not spoken loudly but his voice had a slightly echoing quality. Marty said, keeping his own hushed: “What do you mean?”

“You said we'd broken through to the inside of the Moon. How? Where's the hole we made?”

It was a good point. All around and above them the colors ebbed and flowed in lambency. There did not appear to be a space a grip-spike could penetrate, let alone something as big as the crawler.

“Well, we're here,” Marty said. “And I remember crashing. There were two impacts, the first a sort of dragging one. The second must have been when we dropped this last bit to the floor.”

He remembered something else: the leaves which had been rushing through the air and which he had later seen plastered against the ceiling. He looked for them again and could not find them. That part of the cave's roof was no different from the rest, no leaf shapes showing in its kaleidoscope of shifting patterns.

He told Steve of this. Steve said: “Does that explain anything? I suppose it could.” He stared around. “There has to be an explanation. Doesn't there? I mean, it can't be jabberwocky—it must have rules. We've only got to think them out.”

Marty said: “I wonder . . .”

“What?”

“There's air in here, a bit denser than in the Bubble I would say. The cave has to be sealed or it would simply rush out into vacuum. The leaves floating up may have plugged the gap that was made when the crawler crashed through.”

Steve objected: “It's not possible. How do you make a vacuum seal with
leaves
? And where are they now?”

“I don't know. But we're here, we're alive, and we must have got in some way.”

Steve said: “It's crazy. Let's look around. We may find something.”

They went up the sloping floor first. The moss covered it completely. It was an inch or two deep and one could push one's fingers through to soil underneath. Reaching the wall they could see there was no dividing line—the moss climbed up without a break. Looking back they saw that the floor carried the same shimmering play of colors as walls and ceiling, except that where they had walked the imprints of their feet showed darker. But these gradually blended back into the colors and were lost. Steve pressed his hand against the wall at shoulder height.

“There can't be soil on a vertical surface. I thought not. So how . . . ? Wait a minute. Thin stalks running up. But what kind of plant could work that way?”

“What kind of leaves float upward?”

“Well, if there
were
a hole in the roof and air was blowing out I suppose the current would draw them up. Except that we still have the same nonsense of leaves sealing a gap between quite high air pressure and absolute vacuum. And where do the leaves come from? I don't see any trees around.”

“There's that.”

Marty pointed to the black snake-like coils, topped by the vast bud.

“No leaves, though.”

Steve went over and Marty followed him. They ran their hands along it. The surface was very smooth and hard. The spheroid end was raised above the rest, some ten feet high. Steve jumped to try to touch it but failed.

“It moved a bit,” Marty said.

“I didn't see. How?”

“A sort of swaying.”

It was hard to describe. He felt uneasy. It had almost looked as though the movement had been a conscious one. But that was ridiculous. He said: “You probably shook it.”

“No leaves anyway,” Steve said. “And no sign of anywhere they could have been. There isn't a break on the whole of that surface. I'm going to take a closer look at that leaf which landed on the crawler.”

But when they reached the crawler there was no sign of it. Steve stared around the cave.

“They have to come from somewhere. And go somewhere. What's that down there at the bottom?”

“It looks like a tunnel mouth.”

Steve clicked his fingers. It was something which he did well and which Marty, despite hours of trying, could not do at all.

“That's it!” he said. “Of course. A tunnel. With an air current blowing through.”

“Blowing which way?” Marty asked. “The leaves came and now they seem to have gone. And I can't feel a breeze, can you?”

The air was still and heavy and scented. Marty tried to think what the scent was like, but he had very little experience to go by. The Bubble was almost odorless, a place where the nose had very limited scope. This scent was not cloying but light, and subtly shifting like the colors.

The ground dipped sharply and they could see the tunnel. It went down at an angle of almost forty-­five degrees. It was quite wide and had plenty of headroom. But for the slope it would have been easy to walk down.

“Maybe an intermittently varying air flow,” Steve said.

“Caused by what?”

Steve stared into the tunnel. “I don't know. But the answer is down there. It has to be. There's nowhere else the leaves could have come from or gone to.”

Uneasily Marty said: “I suppose you're right.”

“So the obvious thing is to go and look.”

“You don't know what's there.”

“Leaves, I hope. And trees as well, I should think. Maybe Moon-birds nesting in them!”

“What I meant was, there could be a precipice or something. You won't get much purchase on the moss, on a slope like that. If you slipped . . .”

“I won't.”

One could see a few yards into the tunnel, after which it twisted to the left. There was no way of knowing what lay past the bend.

Steve said: “No point in our both going down. You hang on up here.”

Marty was not sure whether Steve had read the reluctance in his voice. He said angrily: “I'm going down if you are. I just thought . . .”

“I've got a better idea,” Steve said. “Get a rope from the crawler. One goes down and one stays as anchor man. My idea, so I have the choice. Fair enough?”

It was obviously sensible. Marty went back to the crawler and fetched a coil of rope. Steve fastened it around his waist, pulling hard to check the knot.

“We're off, then. Take a strain.”

He sat down and slid feet first into the tunnel. His body left a trail of phosphorescence on the moss. Marty stood with his feet apart and paid out rope. He saw Steve reach the bend and go around it. The rope came hard over against the wall on that side, cutting into the moss and disappearing beneath the shimmer. Marty hoped there wasn't a sharp edge under there.

Steve's voice came back, echoing: “All right from here.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes. The tunnel levels. I can walk.”

“I'll keep paying out.”

“Right.”

Marty stared about him as he let the rope through his hands. Against the pervasive glimmer the squat hulk of the crawler looked hard and yet unreal. Their refuge, he supposed. There was food for a few weeks. After that . . . He thought of being alone here, with the spheroid that shook on its vast black trunk, the leaves that came and went like ghosts or messengers . . .

How long since Steve had gone? Thirty seconds, a minute, five minutes? He had no idea. He looked at his finger-watch and saw that it was one-thirty. One-thirty
a.m.
that would be. Earth-time, Bubble-time. Time meant nothing in this glowing cave. Could it have been more than five minutes? The rope was no longer under tension but lying slack. Did that just mean that Steve had stopped going forward, or . . .

Steve's voice came up, muffled and very distant. So thin he could only just make out the words.

“Marty, come on down.”

“Where are you?”

“It's all right. Come and see . . . It's fantastic.”

He was still not keen on facing the tunnel but delaying would not help. He made the rope secure by knotting the end around one of the crawler tracks. Then he flung himself down the slope, sliding. The moss here was not actually wet, but damp and very springy. He got around the bend and found, as Steve had said, that the floor turned into an easy downward incline. The tunnel was very big; it would have taken the crawler with room to spare. He walked along toward another bend, to the right this time, and saw as he approached it that there was brighter light beyond. When he turned the corner he saw Steve sitting silhouetted against it. As Marty reached him, he said: “Look. It's unbelievable.”