Free The Lotus Caves by John Christopher

remarkable.”
    â€œSo 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.”
    â€œSee 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?”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œBut 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.”
    â€œI don’t think so. I think he would have hung around.”
    â€œIn 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.
    â€¢ • •
    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.”
    â€œYou’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.”
    â€œWant me to take a turn?”
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œThat’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