Green Grow the Rashes and Other Stories Read Free Page A

outside, aware even as I did so that I was
probably the first human to walk above ground for three
centuries.
    I had to turn up the suit
heater after just two steps. The helmet told me I had two hours
power left, but I wasn’t worried. I just wanted a short walk, just
enough to be able to brag about it back in the warren.
    The only sound was the
steady grinding of drill on rock. My heads-up told me that the
strata being drilled was sedimentary on top of schist, the drill
currently penetrating rock that was over two hundred million years
old, and going through a million years of sediment a
second.
    All of which was
secondary to the fact that I had just found a cave.
     
    ~-o0O0o-~
     
    The heads up told me that
drilling would take another thirty minutes. And with the heater
turned up full, I was cosy enough, despite the outside temperature
of minus 65, a figure which meant nothing to me. Besides, I could
always rationalise my decision to enter the cave mouth by telling
myself I needed some respite from the lowering stars in the sky
above.
    I stepped into the
darkness, and got a sudden fright when my helmet switched on a
bright light to show me the way. I felt my heart pound in my ears
and had to steady myself to quell the impulse to flee. But two more
steps took me in to the cave proper, and I almost felt at home. The
walls were smooth, some weathering process over the millennia was
my assumption, and the light from the helmet was bright enough to
light my way for twenty yards ahead. The cave floor sloped
downwards, and as I proceeded the temperature rose. It was when it
reached minus four that I was given pause for thought.
    I might have discovered
much more than just a source of ore. There was obviously heat here.
And plenty of it.
    I went in
further.
    Fifty yards in I had to
turn off the suit heater. I also got the first indication that this
was more than a simple cave. I found a number imprinted on the
wall. It read:
    SUB LEVEL 25.
    The passageway was man
made.
    As you can imagine, my
heart rate was elevated as I went in further. We know from our
history that we were not the only ones to go under; indeed we were
communicating with some of the others for the best part of a
century. But there has been no contact for more than two hundred
years. The thought I might be close to meeting another human being
made me descend even faster.
    There was still no sound
beyond the increasingly distant grind of the drill searching for
ore. Neither was there any light beyond what my helmet provided.
But it kept getting warmer. The heads-up told me there was only the
thinnest of atmosphere beyond my visor, but it felt almost as if I
walked a corridor in the warren.
    I came to a junction and
chose the right hand fork, heading deeper into the
system.
    I found the first corpse
seconds later.
     
    ~-o0O0o-~
     
    We are inured against
death by our merit procedures. That, and the walk to the chamber
when our time has come, means I have lived my whole life in the
warren without seeing a dead person.
    It is not
pretty.
    Pieces of dried skin hung
in flaps from white bone. I was so appalled that it took me seconds
to spot the important fact. The dead man had not been wearing a
suit. He had died while there was still an atmosphere in the cave
system.
    Not being an expert, I
had no way of telling how long ago that might have been, but
judging by the decomposition of the clothing, I guessed that many
years had passed.
    I kept going, but I was
no longer convinced I would meet anyone yet alive.
    The corridor opened into
a wider chamber, an eating area of sorts.
    Bodies lay strewn
everywhere, lying on mounds or pairs. Skeletal arms were wrapped
around broken necks, skulls showed signs of having been bashed in
against tabled and floor. They had all killed each other in a
frenzied melee.
    As I bent to inspect the
closest, I saw the cause.
    The darkness danced in
their eye-sockets, a deeper shadow. It was full of stars where the
sky had fallen in and got