Peering Forward

I've got a post brewing in my mind about peerages and other SCA awards. I'm looking for some feedback on the perceived amount of effort required for awards. I'm not looking for comments yet (which is why comments are disabled), just some numbers.

Caveat: My own internal idea of what is required disqualifies myself, so I'm not using this as a way to whine about how poorly done by I am in the SCA. I've actually been remarkably well recognized, which both mystifies and gladdens me.

One last thing, when I talk about effort, I mean effort applied to the thing that you would be recognized for, not effort to become a peer for peerage-sake.

[Poll #1626390]

Look For a Book Title/Author

In high school I read a juvenile SF novel that I subsequently thought was C.S. Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planet." Reading a synopsis of that book, I see my memory was flat-out wrong.

Anyway, the book concerned two teenage boys on another world in the solar system (Either the moon or Mars). While exploring away from the colony in their space suits, they fall into a hole and find themselves in a vast subterranean (ha!) cave system with it's own ecology and a breathable atmosphere.

Exploring this area they come across another human being who has been there for several years. He tells them that they're trapped and can't get out, but it's not so bad. The ecology is actually a single organism that is sentient. While it can't help them to get out, it can provide for them, they have but to ask.

Asking for items causes the creature to grow things for them. Comfortable places to sleep, water-slides to play on, bacon trees, etc.

After awhile indulging in childhood fantasies they start to explore and discover that the creature has succeeded, over many years, in brainwashing the older prisoner. It's not altruistic and, in fact, sees the humans as irritants. Making life so easy on them that they become soft and complaint is its way of dealing with them. The analogy of an oyster making a pearl by slowly covering a bit of sand is used. It won't kill them unless it has to, but it will keep them here to prevent it's location being revealed to humanity.

One boy is reluctant to go, but his more level-headed friend convinces him. They retrieve their spacesuits and, after a suitable number of adventurous close calls with the creature and its pet human, manage to escape back to the surface.

So anyway, I wanted to see just how accurate I remember this book. I can't look up a synopsis because I don't know who wrote it or what it's title was. I read it back in 1985, but I suspect it was a lot older.