Prisoners of Tomorrow

by James P. Hogan

  McCain had to force himself to remember that since the supporting platform was banked at twenty-five degrees and they had emerged at its upper edge, the wall they were looking out of was in reality tilted back from vertical by that amount, with respect to the Earth’s surface. But the combination of gravity and centrifugal force generated a “local vertical” within the spinning reference frame of the colony, and that was what the senses responded to—as indeed they had been doing for six months on what was, after all, simply the other side of the same wall.

  Scanlon was to lead the first pitch of the climb. He attached one of the lines to a snaplink on his harness, and McCain ran the line around his shoulder and back, bracing himself to be ready should Scanlon fall. Scanlon clipped a satchel to his harness at one hip, one of the drills to the other, then turned around on the edge of the drop and leaned back the length of his arms to inspect the area overhead. Then he selected one of the S hooks, attached a sling to it, and stretched to reach sideways along the outside. One foot remained visible, and the fingers of his other hand curled around the edge of the opening. The foot vanished, then the fingers, and he was gone. Koh stood by, ready to pay out the cable of the drill, and Rashazzi moved into the now-vacated opening to shine a light upward for Scanlon.

  The line moved intermittently through McCain’s hands and around his body. He could read Scanlon’s progress from its motion: stationary while he worked at preparing holds, then moving up onto them, then stopping again to survey the next part. When about twenty-five feet had run out, there was another halt. Then the line went taut, and after a short pause, jerked three times. Scanlon was signaling that he had anchored himself to the structure and wanted to bring McCain up—they had decided to move in short pitches if they found the outside in darkness, to stay within range of each other’s lamps. McCain gathered a coil of extra line and the second satchel, and Rashazzi squeezed out of the way to let him move forward. McCain tugged twice on the safety line, and Scanlon drew in the slack from above. Then McCain turned around, grasped the sides of the opening, and backed himself out.

  Scanlon’s lamp was sending down enough light from above to show the first sling, which he had hung as a stirrup from one of the gussets where the diagonal ribs crossed. McCain leaned sideways as Scanlon had done, leaving one foot in the opening and a hand gripping the edge, and stretched out his other leg to find the stirrup with his foot. He grasped the gusset and pulled himself across, transferring his weight slowly until he could crouch in the stirrup. A moment later Rashazzi reappeared in the opening behind him with another light. Scanlon had drilled a hole into the skin above the crossover and hung the next sling from an eyebolt. A snaplink was also attached to the eyebolt, with the safety line and drill cable running up through it. Scanlon would have placed “runners” like this at intervals as a safeguard. Thus, had he fallen, he would only have dropped through twice his height above his last runner before McCain checked the fall from below. Without threading the line through the runners, he would have dropped through twice his height above McCain before the line tightened.

  McCain slipped the lines out of the snaplink—if he fell, Scanlon would catch him from above, now—and grasped the higher sling to straighten himself up, which brought his face level with the first of the horizontal ribs. There was a bolt inserted immediately below this rib, attached to a short loop of rope threaded through another snaplink. The end of a longer sling hung down from above the rib. Scanlon must have stood in the sling that McCain was clutching and clipped the loop above it to his waist to hold him while he leaned out around the overhanging rib to attach the sling above. McCain pulled himself up as high as he could using the loop, then stepped out into the long sling, found another one above as he had expected, and moved up to stand on the rib itself, where he could reach the next diagonal crossover. From there the sequence of movements repeated itself. After the next panel, the light from above showed him he was getting close to Scanlon, and one more panel later they were side by side.

  Scanlon was standing on a horizontal rib with his harness fastened to two separate bolts. He passed the drill across and McCain took over the lead, now threading the line as Scanlon had done on the previous pitch, since his protection was now from below and no longer from above. The psychological effect was to make him feel less secure, and as soon as he was more than a few feet above Scanlon, he found himself perspiring and breathing heavily. Physically he was beginning to feel the strain, too. The routine became a torment of forcing aching muscles to stretch and pull, fighting to gain every inch of movement against the drag of the suit. Fatigue dulled his mind and sapped his concentration. He placed the next bolt and attached a sling, but even as he began hauling himself up on it, he remembered too late that he hadn’t tested it before trusting his weight. The thought had barely formed in his mind when the wall and the surrounding void merged into a blur. There was a sensation of falling, then a jolt as if he were being cut in half, and almost simultaneously he felt a painful blow to his shoulder and a crack on the head that set lights exploding before his eyes . . . and the next he knew, he was hanging limply in his harness against the wall, his ears ringing.

  He stirred, and looked about him in a daze. His lamp was hanging a couple of feet below him on the loop of line attached to his harness, still lit. He pulled it in and shone it upward. From him the line went up about five feet to the runner that had caught him, and from there back down past him again to where Scanlon was. So he’d fallen about ten feet. He hung for a few more seconds to regain his breath, then pulled himself back into the nearest sling and climbed laboriously back to the place where he had fallen from. He replaced the bolt that had come out, testing it thoroughly this time, and carried on. And then, when he stretched up to start on the next hole, the drill seized up with a burned-out motor.

  They had expected it. The drills were designed to be air-cooled, and hence overheated rapidly in the vacuum. That was why they had brought several spares and why McCain had brought an extra line. He tied the drill and lowered it to Scanlon, who in turn lowered it on down to Rashazzi at the opening. One drill gone in less than fifty feet, McCain reflected as he waited for a tug on the line to tell him that a replacement was ready for him to pull up. They had over two hundred feet to go, and only three more drills. The odds weren’t reassuring.

  The next drill did even worse. McCain continued to the end of his pitch after the replacement came up, and anchored himself as Scanlon had done; then Scanlon came on up and took the drill to leapfrog as McCain had before and lead the next pitch. He was halfway up it when the second drill burned out. They had planned on getting both of them a full hundred feet above the opening before Rashazzi and Koh moved up to join them—that was how long the rope ladder was. The seriousness of the situation was enough to change that, however, and a series of violent tugs on the line from below told them that Rashazzi wanted them to hold everything right there and to come up himself, now.

  A cardinal rule of roped climbing is that only one person moves at a time. Unable to progress farther, Scanlon secured himself where he was above McCain and lowered the auxiliary line again, this time to pull up the coiled rope ladder. Scanlon secured the top of it at the high point where he was, McCain guided the rest down as it unrolled, and Koh climbed right on past him to join Scanlon, carrying one of the remaining two drills, plus some of the extra gas cylinders and bags. Finally Rashazzi came up, similarly loaded. He stopped when he reached McCain, and, standing on the rope ladder, beckoned urgently for McCain to follow what he was doing. Rashazzi pointed at the vent inlets on the drill he had with him, then held the nozzle from one of the gas cylinders close and with his other hand made the motion of opening the valve. McCain understood. Rashazzi was telling him to use the cooling effect of high-pressure gas expanding into a vacuum. Rashazzi jabbed a finger at the wall, then held it up. Cool the drill after every hole. McCain nodded that he understood. Rashazzi resumed climbing, and vanished around the next horizontal rib above.

 
; McCain stayed in that position for some time. When he finally got a signal to follow, he moved quickly on the ladder, past Scanlon, who was still just a short distance above, and on to where Rashazzi and Koh had pushed while Scanlon and McCain rested, a hundred feet or so from the top. And they were still using the third drill. From there Scanlon led off again, and McCain followed through. Only fifty feet to go.

  Topmost on the rope once again, McCain anchored himself and took up position with the line around him in preparation to bring Scanlon up. He noticed with a feeling of vague detachment that he seemed to be running in slow motion, like an action replay: leadenly deliberating every movement, and then having to exercise inordinate concentration to execute it. He hung, staring out into the void, and the realization slowly came to him that everything was going to be fine. Not jut fine, but—wonderful! The certainty washed over him in a wave, sweeping away his discomfort and bringing, instead, relief. Suddenly all their worries seemed comical through being so trivial. He began giggling behind his facepiece at the thought. The world was going to be just fine. War? There wasn’t going to be a war. . . . He realized that somebody below was trying to pull him off. They were jerking on the line and trying to pull him off. That wasn’t very friendly. . . . Why would anybody want to be unfriendly on a day like this? He let the slack of the line fall away from him. Scanlon didn’t need the protection, anyway—nobody was going to fall. He hung in his harness, laughing into the dark around him, then singing. “Home, home at Lagrange . . .” The world was beautiful, and everybody in it wonderful. . . . After that he remembered nothing until a light shone straight into his facepiece from immediately outside, blinding him. Scanlon must have arrived. McCain grinned back into the light and waved.

  Scanlon caught McCain’s body as it slumped down in the harness, and clipped on an extra sling to hold the inert form fast to the wall. Then he dropped the auxiliary line for the others to send up the ladder, signaling frantically for them to move fast.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  They took Paula down to a room looking out over the main square of Turgenev, where a standard two-way videophone was connected through to Washington via Moscow and the regular international telecommunications system. Olga, Protbornov, and a group of others crowded in to witness the proceedings. A technician in contact with the Russian embassy in Washington on an adjacent panel announced that they were through, and moments later Bernard Foleda, poker-faced, was looking at her from the screen.

  “ ‘Micro,’” he said.

  “ ‘Phone,’” she responded.

  There was a short delay. The transmission time to Tereshkova was a little over a second each way, the engineers had reminded Paula. Also, Soviet censors would be monitoring the broadcast to delete any undesirable material before it went out, which would introduce an additional short delay—Americans did the same thing on most of their “live” TV shows. Also, of course, it masked the additional turn-around time of the transmission’s being sent up from Earth before it was relayed back again.

  Foleda nodded. “Glad to see you’re looking okay. It’s been quite a while. People here were getting worried. There’s a lot been going on back here to try and get you out.”

  “I guessed.”

  Again there was a delay before the image of Foleda responded. “Do you have any news of Sexton?” He was playing his part straight, not knowing what the score was.

  “He’s here, and they know I know he’s here. I assume you received the previous message that I sent, validation initializer ‘Pin.’” That had been the message confirming the presence of the Soviet leaders.

  A flicker of genuine surprise crossed Foleda’s face. “They’ve found out about that?”

  “I revealed it,” Paula told him.

  Foleda drew in a long breath, containing his emotions with obvious effort. “Go on,” he said curtly.

  “You wanted confirmation that the Soviet leaders are really here. The tone of your request implied that if the facts were otherwise, you had reason to believe that the Soviets were intending attack. You suspected that the broadcasts you’re receiving might be recordings. Obviously a mistaken impression couldn’t be risked. I know their leaders are up here, because I’m up here and I’ve seen them. I sent the ‘Pin’ message to say so. But I wasn’t sure that it would carry enough weight in itself. The accomplices I have here, who helped me operate the channel that we’ve been communicating over, convinced me that the situation was serious enough to go to the Russians and get them to let me talk direct to you, to do whatever I have to do to make sure there’s no misunderstanding.” Following cues from one of the Russians across the room, Paula walked across to the window. A technician followed her with a camera. “This is the central square of Turgenev, in Valentina Tereshkova,” Paula said. “I’m in a building looking down over it. The people you can see down there are waiting for the arrival of the Soviet First Secretary and his party. If you’re getting Russian news coverage of this, compare what they’re showing you with what I’m seeing. What I’m offering to do is go down into the square and describe the scene from there as the first Secretary actually arrives. I have approval from the Russian authorities here to talk with some of his party on-camera, if you request it. They’re all extremely concerned here.”

  “If they’re so concerned, why don’t they let Sexton come on with you?” Foleda asked.

  “I tried to get him to do just that, but he refused. He wouldn’t cooperate with Russians in any way.”

  Back across the room, Foleda’s face stared out of the videophone screen for a long time, unmoving and unblinking. Paula hadn’t said anything about a message giving the laser frequency, and neither had he. That, of course, was still supposed to be a secret. Suddenly, Foleda seemed to arrive at a decision. “Wait,” he said. “There are other people that I have to bring in on this.” With that he stood up abruptly and disappeared from the picture.

  Mutters of approval came from the audience that had been watching from around the room. In the midst of the hubbub, Major Uskayev came in and drew Protbornov over to the window. He pointed down at the far side of the square outside, where two figures were working their way along the edge of the crowd. One was wearing a knee-length tan coat with a black hat; the other had workman’s coveralls and a floppy brown peaked cap. Both were carrying long, rolled bundles. They looked casual, but were moving closer to the doors of the garage underneath the air-processing plant. Protbornov pointed them out to Paula. “Those are Earnshaw and Scanlon?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, that’s them.”

  “Is their way clear?” Protbornov asked Uskayev.

  “Yes, sir. All police have been moved back from that side of the square. The building is cleared but under observation.”

  “Excellent.” Protbornov raised a pair of binoculars and gazed down through them. “My word, what theatricals!” he commented. “One has put on a beard. The other has a beard and spectacles.”

  “They believe in being thorough,” Olga said, next to him.

  Paula watched the two figures saunter to the back of the crowd, stand looking around them for a few seconds, and then vanish quickly inside one of the garage doors. For an instant no one was looking at her, and she smiled to herself. “Yes, very thorough,” she agreed.

  Then, Foleda reappeared and stated that the transmission from Tereshkova was being put onto a conference circuit to involve other US officials also. He requested live coverage from the square outside as Paula had offered. Accordingly, she went on down and out of the building with a party that included a number of Russian officers, engineers, and the camera and sound operators. Protbornov, Olga, and the remainder of his group went back upstairs to follow the exchange from the control room that Paula had been taken to on her return from Zamork. A number of screens had been hooked into the conference circuit by the time they arrived. On them, the Russians had so far identified Foleda’s chief, Philip Borden, the director of the CIA and his deputy, two senior military assistants to the def
ense secretary, a White House presidential aide, and several faces from the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Protbornov was radiating triumph, and Olga looked coolly pleased with herself.

  Then a thunderous applause went up from the crowd on the screen showing Paula in the square outside, as the doors at the rear of the terrace in the background opened. The dignitaries who were already gathered parted to make way for the familiar stock figure of First Secretary Vladimir Petrokhov, flanked by his most senior ministers and key Party members. “Describe what’s happening now,” Foleda said from one of the screens.

  “Petrokhov and his group are coming out onto the terrace in front of me now,” Paula replied on the other screen.

  At that instant one of the engineers at the consoles on the other side of the room looked up sharply. “Laser contact! We’re picking up a laser transmission from the roof. Positive acknowledgment from Sokhotsk. It’s relaying out to Tereshkova now.”

  “Text?” Protbornov snapped.

  “Just a call for acknowledgment, sir, coded ‘Tycoon/High from Sexton.’”

  Absolute silence descended on the room. Even while the operator was speaking, the signal had been repeated on a portable laser set up by the military inside Anvil two hundred thousand miles away, and transmitted back out in the direction of Earth. Now everything depended on whether the Americans had managed to organize some means of receiving it. Tension mounted as the dialogue between Paula and Foleda continued on the screens. Then, on the screen showing Foleda, a woman approached him from behind, caught his shoulder, and whispered something urgently in his ear. He promptly excused himself and left. In the Russian command room, the suspense became agonizing. Shortly afterward, Borden was summoned away, too. More minutes of agony dragged by. And then the engineer who had spoken previously shouted out in jubilation, “Acknowledgment! A response is coming in from the Americans, via Anvil!”