The Lotus Caves Read Online Free PDF Page B

Trillici’s as he had planned.
    Marty shook his head. “I’m going to Steve’s.”
    â€œBut hadn’t you fixed things with Ben?”
    â€œNo. It wasn’t fixed. I said I might drop around.”
    â€œDon’t you think you would be letting him down if you don’t go?”
    â€œHe 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?”
    â€œOf course. If you want to.”
    â€œI do.”
    â€¢ • •
    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.”
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    â€œThere’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?”
    â€œAre we going to use it, though?”
    â€œDo 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.”
    â€œYes.” 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.
    â€œThey 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