The Lotus Caves Read Online Free PDF Page A

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?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œThen 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.
    â€œYour 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.”
    â€œAnd he was an artist, a painter?” She nodded. “He made a living out of that?”
    â€œNot 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.”
    â€œThen how did you all manage?”
    â€œHis 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,