Free The Lotus Caves by John Christopher Page B

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.
    â€œYou O.K.?” he asked.
    â€œWhat happened?” Steve winced, momentarily closing his eyes again. “We hit that loose rock . . .”
    â€œIt’s not a dream then.” Marty felt almost disappointed. “People don’t share dreams.”
    â€œDreams? Where are we?” Steve struggled to his feet. “That light . . . is it real?”
    â€œI don’t know. It must be.”
    â€œWhat’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.
    â€œWhat is it?” Steve insisted.
    Marty started to tell him as much as he knew. Steve interrupted to say: “You went outside? In a suit?”
    â€œNo.” It seemed silly to say you did not need a spacesuit when you were dead. “I was a bit dazed.”
    â€œBut you could breathe ?”
    â€œYes. 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.”
    â€œI don’t believe it.”
    â€œNor 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.
    â€œI must have landed on my skull.” He paused. “I’m going out to have a look. How far did you explore?”
    â€œNot far.”
    He was not going to say that a leaf had scared him.
    â€œCome 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.
    â€œNo, I didn’t imagine it.”
    â€¢ • •
    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?”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œWell, 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