The Escape Orbit Read online

  The explanation of the Bug prisoners-of-war system would, in ordinary circumstances, have caused great surprise and excited discussion, but Kelso was pushing the pace so hard tha tall Warren and the others had breath for were a few incredulous grunts. Even Kelso’s breathing was becoming labored now, but he still continued doggedly with his history lesson.

  In words which were becoming more and more emotionally loaded, the Lieutenant described the situation as it had been shortly after the first prisoners had landed. Briefly he detailed the influences and personalities which had brought about the original disagreement among the prison population—a split which had continued to widen so that, when Kelso arrived six years ago, the differences were so strongly held and basic on each side that there was little hope of ever uniting the two again. It was generally agreed that a planet-sized prison camp was an ingenious idea and caused the minimum of distress to its prisoners. What they could not agree on—and from this disagreement all the later difficulties had stemmed—was that the prison was escape-proof.

  “… Because there are no domes or guards always in sight, a lot of these people forget that they are in a prison camp!” Kelso went on hotly. “Not only have they stopped thinking of themselves as prisoners or war, they’ve forgotten that they are officers and even, judging by the way they act, that there is a war on! They’ve gone civilian. But on the Committee side, we have not forgotten that we are prisoners. Or that it is the sworn duty of any officer taken prisoner in time of war to do everything possible to rejoin his unit …”

  It was at this point that Warren threw his hands out from his sides, palms backwards in a visual order to halt which he did not have the breath to vocalize. The party came to an untidy halt around him. Kelso, whose impetus had carried him several yards ahead, pulled up hurriedly and came trotting back to them. He looked worried and impatient as he waited for Warren to speak.

  “These … these Civilians you talk about,” he said as he began to get his breath. “Are they dangerous? Will they eat us, or something? From what you’ve told me … they’re just …” He broke off to suck a lungful of air, then demanded harshly, “Why the blazes are we running?”

  Kelso did not answer at once. They had reached the base of a long, thickly-wooded slope on whose crest Warren could vaguely make out a high stockade. This would be the Committee post which the Lieutenant had mentioned several times. The civilian searchers were all around them, with the nearest group sounding so close that if it hadn’t been for the screen of trees they would probably have been in plain sight.

  “I … I can explain all this much better at the post, sir,” Kelso began.

  “Now, Lieutenant,” said Warren.

  “Well, sir,” Kelso said helplessly, “they won’t harm you physically. What they intend is analogous to brainwashing. But what makes it so horribly effective is the fact that most of them don’t consider what they’re doing to be a form of coercion—they think they are simply being hospitable …”

  Somewhere on their right there was a shout followed by a long blast on a whistle. Immediately all the other whistling and shouting died away so that Warren could hear the swish and crackle of feet running towards them. Kelso swore but did not look around.

  Trying desperately to hold Warren’s attention, he rushed on. “They begin by welcoming you to the camp, although they’ve stopped thinking of it as that. Then they overfeed you on their home-cooking, which is particularly effective considering how long you’ve had to exist on Bug synthesized food. And because it would be too much of a strain on any one farm to take on all of you, you will find yourselves scattered all over the place. You will lose touch with each other and have no way of knowing for sure what each other is doing or thinking. They won’t ask you to work at first, but you’ll feel obligated for all the hospitality shown you and you will insist on helping out. And they’ll keep talking at you all the time.

  “As you know, sir,” Kelso went on hurriedly, his voice rising in volume as the sound of running feet approached, “most highly trained and intelligent people find pleasure in performing menial, non-cerebral jobs. But very soon these pleasant, manual tasks become a way of life. You grow mentally lax and begin to think slow, farmers’ thoughts. Soon it would be hard to remember that there is a war going on and that you are an officer with certain obligations and duties to perform …”

  Three Civilians arrived at that point. They were large, bearded men clad in the same type of animal skins as those which covered the Lieutenant, except that they favored long, shapeless trousers and an open-at-the-front vest-like garment instead of a kilt. Two of them carried spear-like weapons, the shafts of which were upwards of eight feet long and terminated in a cutting blade whose condition suggested that they might be some kind of farming implement, although the men were not holding them like farming implements. In addition one of them carried a hide-covered drum slung across his back. All three of them looked surprised and angry at the sight of Kelso, and it was the one with the gray beard and the angriest expression who spoke.

  “So you found them first, Lieutenant …”

  “Yes, sir,” Kelso broke in quickly. He was holding the older man’s eyes and ignoring the long, dirty but very sharp blades pointed at his midriff, although the tension in the muscles of his neck and shoulders showed the effort it cost him. But his voice was steady as he went on, “Since I have found them before you did, sir, you will kindly not hinder me or attempt to talk to them while I escort them to the Post.”

  “You found them by sheer luck,” the other said furiously. “And a single, unarmed man isn’t capable of protecting maybe thirty people against battlers or anything else! In such circumstance the rule of first contact is ridiculous! I’m ordering you back to the Post, Lieutenant, and you can tell them there that …”

  While the argument had been going on the three Civilians were joined by six others, three groups of two all of whom were armed with the long spears. Whey they had been some distance off they had waved and smiled at the new arrivals, but when they saw Kelso their expressions changed. As they crowded around the Lieutenant some of them looked really murderous.

  “You’re being unfair, sir!” Kelso protested. “The rule is that the officer who first finds—“

  “Silence!” the other man shouted; then in a tone only slightly more quiet he went on, “Rule or no rule, Kelso, I won’t allow you to walk off with nearly thirty new arrivals! To make them into troublemakers and unsettle them so that it’ll take months or years before we can make them think straight again …”

  He broke off suddenly to gape at the five men who seemed to have grown out of the grass at their feet. Warren had not seen or heard the men approach and obviously neither had anyone else. They wore the same kilt and harness as did the Lieutenant and they carried weapons resembling cross-bows which they held at the ready. After the first startled look around, Warren’s attention was practically dragged back to one of them, a short, heavily-muscled man who at some time had been terribly burned about the head, shoulders and left arm. The injuries must have had deep psychological effects because the eyes which glared out of that terribly disfigured face were more frightening than the face itself. This man held his cross-bow much readier than any of the others.

  The five new arrivals did not speak. Apparently they had heard enough of the argument to understand the situation.

  Until the arrival of the Civilians Warren had thought that he too understood what was going on. One side was Civilian, comprising officers who accepted their position as hopeless and who were determined to make the best of it. The other side was Committee, obviously taking its name from the escape committee which every prison camp contained, whose members had not given up hope of escape. It was natural to assume that there would be a certain amount of bad feeling between them. The Committee would feel jealous and angry about their happily vegetating colleagues and the so-called Civilians would also be angry because their collective conscience was being continuously pricked by the presen
ce and activities of the Committee.

  But this was more than simply bad feeling. Kelso and the gray-haired Civilian were glaring at each other, plainly on the point of going to war on each other with their bare hands. The eight Civilians armed with spears were spread out facing the five Committeemen, whose weapons were now cocked and aimed. The situation had deteriorated suddenly to the point where a shooting was likely to break out at any second. And Warren, all too conscious of his position in the undefended center of things, could not think of a single thing to do or say which might stop it.

  Chapter 3

  “I think it’s nice to have grown men fighting over one,” Ruth Fielding said suddenly. “It boosts a girl’s morale no end.”

  It was a completely stupid, fatuous and selfish remark, the sort of remark which might be expected of a certain type of beautiful but dumb female. As well, her expression and tone while making it only strengthened the impression that she was the pretty, dumb and selfish type. But the Committeemen and Civilians had no way of knowing what her rank and position had been aboard Victorious, although if they had been thinking straight they would have known that the selfish and stupid personalities were never chosen for space service, no matter how nicely they were wrapped. But these people were not thinking straight, and Fielding had successfully injected a note of ridicule into an extremely grave situation.

  Both Kelso and the gray-bearded Civilian turned to gape at her, and the Committeeman with the devastated face pulled back the two stiff masses of scar tissue which were his lips into a smile, although the look in his eyes still made Warren uneasy.

  All at once Warren felt angry at himself. He had been mentally asleep on his feet and Fielding had created the diversion which might allow the argument to be resumed with words instead of physical violence, and his self-confidence—or was it his pride?—had taken a beating. The rest was now up to him. He still felt angry and ashamed, but only the anger showed in his voice.

  “I seriously doubt, Major Fielding, that they were fighting over you alone,” Warren said harshly. “And it is not nice to have officers fighting among themselves, for any reason whatsoever.”

  “What I would like to know, gentlemen,” he continued bitingly, with a definite stress on the last word, “is why we are worth fighting for? Do we ourselves have a choice in this matter? Are we property of some kind, a potential slave-labor force perhaps?”

  “Oh, no, sir …!” began Kelso.

  “Certainly not!” the Civilian protested, practically shouting him down. “The very idea is ridiculous! You won’t be asked to work until you ask us to give you a job, believe me. Even then the work will be easier, and much more useful, than the senseless jobs the Committee would give you …”

  He paused briefly to snap, “Be quiet, Lieutenant!” at Kelso, who was trying vainly to break in, then went on, “for example, a few hours after you arrive in the post up there you will begin what is known as de-briefing. You will understand that everyone here, Committeemen and so-called Civilians alike, are curious regarding the progress of the war or the latest news from home, you would expect them to suck you dry of all the news and gossip from our various home planets. But the de-briefing involves much more than this.”

  “For days on end and for anything up to six hours a day you will be questioned,” he continued grimly, “with the emphasis on the last few days before your arrival. The interrogation will be conducted under light hypnosis, if you’re lucky enough to be a hypnotic subject, and in any event will consist of the same line of questioning repeated over and over. Because the Committee wants to know everything it possibly can about the guardship, and that means everything you saw during transshipment and while on the shuttle coming down, together with everything you saw or heard or otherwise noted without knowing that you did so. Without the proper drugs, digging for these trace memories and peripheral images is a long an exhausting business, and what makes it even worse is that it is a complete waste of time …!”

  “Sir!” Kelso broke in sharply before the other could go on. “I must insist that you say nothing further to these officers. I found them first and –“

  “You found them, yes,” the Civilian snapped back at him, “but you couldn’t have protected them and so your claim to be escorting them is sheer—“

  “I can protect them now, sir,” said Kelso in a dangerously quiet voice.

  Warren saw the spears and cross-bows being raised again. Two powerful and mutually opposed ideologies were struggling for his allegiance, it seemed and he still did not know enough to mediate. All he could do was to attack one of them before they could attach each other.

  “Why do you call him ‘sir,’ Lieutenant?” Warren asked sharply. “You’ve told me that he is a Civilian—someone who, if not actually a deserter, is at very least a person to whom you would not show respect. Yet you call him ‘sir’ and he appears to be giving you orders.”

  “Because he is Fleet Commander Peters,” Kelso replied, without taking his eyes off the other man. He sounded bitter as well as angry as he went on, “Because he is the senior officer on the camp. To prisoners like myself who are trying not to forget we are officers, his rank and position must be respected even though he himself may no longer consider them important.”

  So this large bearded man dressed in animal skins was a Fleet Commander! In the service an officer of that rank, holding as he did authority over the personnel and facilities necessary for the supply and maintenance of a fleet of anything up to one hundred interstellar ships, was a very potent individual indeed. In the ordinary way a Lieutenant regarded such august beings with much more than mere respect, and Kelso’s open contempt towards an officer so vastly his senior angered Warren suddenly. He had to remind himself that the particular Fleet Commander had “gone civilian” while the Lieutenant had not, and that going civilian in Kelso’s book was a very shameful thing to do.

  “I’ve had enough arguing!” Peters shouted again, his voice squeaking with sheer fury. “And more than enough, Lieutenant, of your respectful insubordination!” He swung abruptly to face Warren and, lowering his voice slightly, went on, “I don’t have to go down on my knees. As the senior officer on this planet I can order you to come with me …”

  “You can try,” Kelso broke in savagely. He turned and began raising his hand in some kind of signal to the waiting Committee bow-men.

  “Hold it!”

  The sheer volume of his voice made everyone jump and surprised even Warren himself. He must be angrier than he realize, he told himself, to have let go with such a blast of sound. He felt no less angry as he went on, “A few minutes ago I asked if we had a choice in this matter. I’m still waiting for an answer.”

  There was a long, tense silence which was finally broken by the Fleet Commander.

  “I don’t really want to pull rank in this, you understand,” Peters said in a voice which he was trying to make pleasant. “All I can do is explain the situation and trust your natural intelligence to guide you correctly. The choice, however, is yours.”

  “The rule …” began Kelso, then he shook is head angrily and ended, “You have a choice, sir, of course.”

  “Thank you,” said Warren.

  Considering the available information as objectively as possible, Warren thought that there was little to choose between either faction. Kelso had made a strong first impression and his outline of the situation had seemed fair and balanced. On the other hand Peters’ contention that the place was escape-proof and that the prisoners should accept the fact was also, on the surface, eminently sane and logical. All the evidence was not yet in, however, and until it was he was reduced to basing his choice on the effect the two people had had on him.

  Where Kelso had been concerned, the effect had been good, in a service where practically every operation consisted of several minutes of action sandwiched between months of boredom, a very special type of person was required to stand the strain. Warren had spent most of his early life in the service with people o
f that kind—intelligent, stable, yet enthusiastic people who never seemed to give up. A man who maintained clean-shaven when to do so entailed a considerable amount of trouble and to judge from the many raw patches on his face, pain, might very well be one of those people.

  The Fleet Commander, so far as Warren could see, was one of the people who had given up. There were far too many officers like him in the services since the continuing war had forced down the entrance standards. He felt sorry for Peters and a little ashamed of himself for not according the other man the respect due his rank—although he had been so busy trying to keep the two factions from killing each other off that there had been no time for the niceties. And he was sorry also because the Fleet Commander, who obviously had been having things all his own way on the planet for a very long time, was in for an unpleasant shock.

  “I’ll go with the Lieutenant,” said Warren.

  The Fleet Commander’s teeth came together with an audible click. “Very well,” he said stiffly. He turned to face the rest of Warren’s group and his voice was almost pleading as he went on, “You officers also have a choice. I trust that some of you will see the sensible course—“

  “My officers will do as they’re told, “Warren broke in quietly. By way of softening the blow he added, “Until such time as we have complete information on both sides of the question and are capable of making a final choice, we will stay together and, for the present, go with the Lieutenant.”

  Warren could not see the Fleet Commander’s expression as Peters wheeled and strode away, snapping orders at his men to disperse them as he went. Within seconds Kelso was asking the Committeemen if they would mind taking up escort position around the new arrivals, and Warren realized suddenly that every single member of the escort outranked the Lieutenant although they obeyed his polite requests at the double. Then as they were once again moving up the slope towards the post, with Kelso fighting hard to keep his grin of triumph within dignified limits, Peters came striding back.