The Escape Orbit

by James White

  At no time did Warren tell them in so many words that the population of this prison planet, should they return to active service, could bring about the end of the war in their favor within a few years. In every one of them, Warren was convinced, there was a small voice saying it for him.

  “…This place is not escape-proof,” he went on. “You know enough about the Anderson Plan and the work already done on it to know that the number of officers directly concerned with the capture of the guardship is relatively small. The part which the rest of you will be called on to play is also small, but important. From most of you I will require simply your moral support, which is important, believe me! From a few others there will be the added inconvenience of moving their families and belongings to safety a few months before E-day, should the dummy be placed in an inhabited area. As well, I will have to ask for volunteers with the necessary aptitude or interest in the work to help with Major Hutton’s research projects, and we will need officers who have the talent for it to donate a few hours a day to compiling textbooks and training manuals, or to teaching. Then there is the problem of the children…”

  Warren could not see faces clearly in that dim room, but he noticed quite a few heads come up sharply, including the bald, shining pate of Anderson himself, and he felt the atmosphere begin to congeal—just as it had congealed at the Nelson farm and in the other homes and villages where he had brought up this highly ticklish subject.

  “…As you know,” Warren continued, veering away from it temporarily, “there are a number of officers here who, although they are extremely valuable people, will be unable to return to active service because of age, family ties and so on. Again, some of you have been here so long your early training may be out of date. That is why I want textbooks and training manuals prepared, circulate and studied so that you can be fitted for ship service or, in the case of older officers or those who have acquired families, for training commands. And while you are busy bringing each other’s education up to date, you must give some thought to the children…”

  Next to the Escape itself, Warren knew, his greatest problem was the large number of children born to the prisoners and the very mixed feelings of these officers regarding them. Coupled with the natural feelings of responsibility and affection towards them there was a definite feeling of shame that they were there in the first place, because no self-respecting officer would even consider having children while on ship service or while a prisoner of war—although it could be argued that the situation here was a case of being marooned rather than imprisoned. But Warren did not seek to chide or criticize, and because they were expecting him to do both they would be relieved when he did neither, and tend to be more sympathetic and less critical of the things he did say. Which was why he stressed the problem of the children and did not even mention the Escape, giving the impression that getting off the planet was simply a matter of time and as certain to occur as the Tuesday of next week.

  “…Through circumstances beyond their control,” he went on seriously, “these children have been born into a very primitive world. When they return to civilized society I would not like to think of them being hurt or embarrassed in any way because of illiteracy, or even partial illiteracy.”

  “And now,” he concluded, resuming his seat, “are there any questions?”

  The first question came within seconds from a man, dimly seen but with a young voice, at the back of the hut. It was a searching, detailed question having to do with certain technical aspects of the Escape itself, proving to Warren that verbal sleight-of-hand had not worked with one person, at least.

  “If you don’t mind I’ll ask Flotilla-Leader Anderson to answer that question,” Warren said. “After all, it’s his plan we’re using….”

  And now I’m using Anderson, too, Warren thought with a growing feeling of shame. The Flotilla-Leader could be expected to defend his own plan better than anyone else was capable of doing. But the very act of defending his own brainchild proclaimed that he, the leading citizen of the town which had been named for him, was supporting the Marshal, and if he had not been an old man and grown a little stiff in his thinking he would have realized that he was being used.

  All at once Warren felt that he was becoming a quite despicable character. It was not simply the Anderson business which had brought on the feeling; it was the fact that he was lying to everybody, including himself. Without promising anything in so many words he had given the impression that none of the activities which had gone on among the prisoners would be the subject of a court martial, or that officers who had married and had children on the prison planet would not be expected to return to ship service while their youngsters were cared for by institutions. Certainly he would exert every iota of his very considerable authority as a Sector Marshal to bring this about, but he could not be absolutely sure of how the High Command would view the situation here or how the desperate shortage of officers would affect their thinking. And there was his not quite accurate picture of the war situation. It would all have been much simpler if everyone were as keen as the Committeemen, and there had been no children to worry about and no necessity to lie and cheat and play people off against each other.

  He became aware that Anderson, who despite his age had retained a firm voice and the habit of command, had demolished the first questioner and that another officer was on her feet. After giving name, rank and qualifications she asked if it was possible for her to volunteer for duty with Major Hutton’s research section.

  Warren told her that it was.

  “But … but …” she began, then stopped.

  “I can see that you are a girl, Lieutenant Collins,” Warren said, in a tone which was complimentary rather than sarcastic, “and I have a sneaking suspicion that it is not only patriotic zeal and the urge to escape which is driving you. I am aware of the situation here, you see, and I can say that I have the greatest respect and admiration for officers like yourself who have resisted the pressures to adopt polygamy as a solution. But there are certain aspects of this duty, certain dangers, which you should consider. Not only is the terrain rugged between Hutton’s mountain and this town, with the danger of battlers every mile of the way, but at the end of the trip there is the frightful risk of being mauled by two hundred and fifty men who have not see a girl for …”

  They laughed longer than the crack warranted, he thought, but when they had settled down again the questions were simply requests for information rather than subtly worded objections. And by the time the meeting ended Warren had eight more volunteers and the questioning had turned to the possibility of obtaining leave on their various home planets after the Escape.

  He knew than that he had them, and that there was little if anything that Peters would be able to do about it.

  Chapter 9

  The complex system of tunnels and chambers had been carved out of the solid rock to duplicate the major corridors and compartments of the great Bug guardship. Hutton told him, and the dimensions and proportions were as accurate as repeated psychological probing of the memories of the prisoners could make them. As he spoke the major sounded intensely proud of the place—with justification, Warren thought.

  “This was part of the mine’s original workings,” Hutton went on, “since bypassed because of low yield. Someone remembered that the useless tunnel was approximately the same length as the central corridor of the guardship, so we decided to cut out Control, Drive and shuttle-cock compartments and use it for training assault groups. The later additions and refinements—cross corridors, the Bug living quarters that we know about, dummy controls and Drive housings—were and are useful in training, but they also served as make-work for the people who, with nothing but assault drills to occupy them, would otherwise go stale. Only the more important compartments have been reproduced and the bulkheads are, of course, greater than scale thickness because of the necessity of supporting the system. The entry locks have been made as bulky and difficult to operate as the real ones, but the t
wo things which we cannot hope to reproduce are the Bug lighting and the weightless conditions …”

  Hutton broke off as another assault group pounded along the corridor past them. The men wore kilts, but there were bulky wickerwork baskets covering their heads and heavy logs strapped to their shoulders to simulate the equipment they would have to carry.

  “Those kilts give too much freedom of movement, “Warren said. “The drills should be more life-like. Can you reproduce the Bug atmosphere …” he broke off, nearly strangling himself in an effort not to cough.

  “It is bad today, sir” said Hutton apologetically. “The wind must be blowing up the gorge again.”

  The base of Hutton’s Mountain was riddled with interconnecting tunnels, labs, living quarters and the ventilating system which rendered them livable. The air inlets, which also served as observation and communications tunnels, joined the main network at several points while a single outlet used the chimney effect to carry away the smoke and heat from the smelter and machine shops, at the same time drawing fresh air into and through the rest of the system. This outlet emerged some distance up the mountain in a gorge so narrow and steep that the river responsible for its formation fell in a series of spectacular cataracts, the spray from which merged with the smoke so effectively that it was impossible to distinguish them at a distance of a few hundred feet much less from an orbiting guardship. But when the wind blew directly into the gorge, as it did a few times a month, the smoke did not escape completely and the interior of the mountain became barely habitable.

  “Is it necessary to duplicate Bug air, sir? Hutton asked suddenly. “There are other gases easier to produce which would be unpleasant enough to make them careful without being lethal.”

  Warren shook his head. “There drills have become … well, drills—something performed without conscious thought. That frame of mind will have to go. Besides, your people working on the assault suits will be that little bit more careful if they know that the wearer can die, during practice as well as on the big day, if they make a slip.”

  “The Bug atmosphere is deadly stuff, sir,” Hutton said thoughtfully. “Getting rid of it afterwards will be a problem. We’ll have to evacuate the place and rig fans to—”

  “When we’ve taken the guardship, we won’t need the mountain!” Warren snapped, irritated by the objections. “Except, that is, as a place to house Bug prisoners, in which case a few tunnels and compartments already filled with their atmosphere would come in handy.”

  In the flickering yellow light of the oil lamps Hutton’s face, already red from constant proximity to open furnaces, grew even redder.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Hutton. “Maybe I haven’t fully accepted the fact that we will be taking Bug prisoners of war again.”

  Warren relaxed. “You will, Major, you will,” he said, smiling. “And now let’s go and give your spacesuit technicians a pep-talk.”

  Considering the necessity for concealment and the severely limited resources available, the level of technology inside Hutton’s Mountain was surprisingly high. As the weeks passed Warren gradually came to know every room and gallery and dimly-lit corner of the place, and his growing familiarity bred admiration rather than contempt. He grew used to the hiss and thump and rumble of the steam engines at every major intersection and the endless belt and pulley systems which transmitted their drive to the mechanical hammers, lathes, air-compressor pumps and to the fans which augmented the natural ventilation system. He considered normal the anvil chorus from the smithy and machine shops which echoed continuously throughout every tunnel in the mountain, the sound becoming as familiar and distracting as the ticking of a bedroom clock. He became accustomed, when the wind was in the wrong quarter, to conducting staff conferences where every fifth word was a cough, although on those days he tried whenever possible to visit the heavily camouflaged lab out on the mountainside where the gunpowder was produced and where they were currently developing more sophisticated forms of nastiness using wood alcohol, oil and various combinations of organics.

  One of the most important things he learned was that Hutton only appeared to object to all new ideas and suggestions. The Major had a habit of considering minutely every aspect of a question, the snags first and then the advantages, and Warren’s original mistake had occurred because the Major was also in the habit of thinking aloud.

  Hutton was now getting all the specialists he needed. From Andersonstown and from farms and villages out to a radius of two weeks travel away they came trickling in. Most of them were girls, of course, but there were enough men among the recruits to tell Warren that he was gaining support for the Escape itself and not merely operating a part-time matrimonial bureau. Naturally the weddings were coming thick and fast and, while there were any number of ex-Captains around to officiate, Fielding suggested that it would be a nice gesture and a considerable boost to a girl’s morale to be married by a Sector Marshal.

  Warren did not mind. It would serve to improve and strengthen his image, he thought cynically, against the time in the not too distant future when he would have to start getting tough with some of these people.

  The time came some eight months after his visit to Andersonstown, on the first occasion that Kelso and Hynds were present at the mountain together. Major Hynds received his orders first.

  “You have the communications system and enough non-Committee support to begin our re-education program,” Warren said. “I want you to organize the manufacture and distribution of paper and books on the widest possible scale. Every adult on the planet must shortly have enough paper to take initially, say fifty thousand words. Wherever possible there should be consultation between them to avoid duplication of effort, but the main thing is that they commit to paper everything they know. Every fact, theory, background detail or item of personal knowledge regarding their specialties as computermen, doctors, psychologists or what have you. Also details of their hobbies and any helpful experiences gained while living on the prison planet. They must organize this data as best they can, being in mind the fact that they are preparing the texts from which their fellow officers will study …”

  Warren broke off, then said sharply, “I caught the remark about us being lucky that paper grew on trees, Major, but I missed the rest. Speak up!”

  “I said, sir,” Hynds answered warily, “that I suppose I’m the logical one to head this programme, although up to now Intelligence and Education had a very tenuous connection in my mind. But hobbies, sir! And planet-side experiences …!”

  For a time Warren stared silently through the Major. There were very good reasons for preparing books on prison planet know-how, but some of them could not be given to his Staff. He also thought, self-analytically and a trifle philosophically, that while sometimes it was a good thing for a tactician not to let his right hand know what his left was doing—an enemy had two chances of being surprised then instead of one—if carried to extremes the tactician might find that he had surprised even himself. Warren could not understand why, now that everything pertaining to the Escape was going so well, the possibility of its complete failure worried him more and more. Nor could he understand why his disposition towards his Staff and other senior Committeemen continually worsened, even though both individually and as a group, his feelings toward them were little short of paternal. Unless the reason was that he liked and trusted them so completely that he allowed more of his true face to show to them than to less important people, and the face was that of a mean, short-tempered old man.

  Abruptly Warren brought both his mind and his eyes to focus on the Major, realizing as he did so that his blank stare had caused Hynds considerable discomfort. In a tone so warm and friendly, and so different from that which he had been employing of late that it made the Intelligence head even more uneasy, Warren said, “All hobbies are useful, Major, some more than others. You have two fully operational gliders at Thompson Mountain which you would not have had if certain prisoners had not had the juvenile hobby of buil
ding model airplanes. And those not directly of use are usually good for morale. So far as recording prison planet experiences for study is concerned, there are two reasons for this.

  “First,” Warren continued quietly, “you must have realize by now that there may other Bug prisons like this one, and that when we return to service there will be the possibility of us being captured again. I want as many officers as possible capable of forming an Escape Committee wherever they may be imprisoned. The second reason will become plain when you hear my instructions for Lieutenant Kelso ….”

  Not to mention a third reason, Warren added silently to himself, which he could not go into now or perhaps ever.

  “I’ve a big job for you, Kelso,” he went on, “that of making the people of Andersonstown and the smaller coastal villages into sailors. You will initiate a large-scale boat building program—and not just fishing smacks; I want ships capable of carrying passengers, livestock and cargo in useful quantities over long distances. While it is getting under way you will send exploring teams to the other continent and to the islands which link it to us. As well as filling in some of the blank spots on our maps these teams will advice on likely sites for farms and villages which must be built to house the officers evacuated from this continent. As a large proportion of these officers will be townspeople they will have to study the texts produced by earlier farmers …”