James White - The Escape Orbit

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 building 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 realized 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…”

The expected storm of protest came then, with Kelso as its center and Hynds, Fielding and Hutton silent only because the Lieutenant was putting forward their objections much more vehemently than they dared or were capable of doing themselves. And Kelso, Warren noted, was becoming down-right disrespectful.

“… You can’t do it and they won’t stand for it anyway!” Kelso was saying. He was beginning to run down and also to drift from the point. “There’s no need to waste men and effort exploring the other continent when there’s still enough room on this one, no reason to evacuate anyone to it, and this idea of sending everybody to night school is a sheer waste of time! In your efforts to gain support for the Committee you’re undermining it, wrecking it and everything it stands for! Look at all the women coming here, and our location is supposed to be a secret! I tell you the whole damned Committee is fast going Civilian and our security is shot to hell!”

“Our security is shot to hell … sir !” said Warren.

Fielding coughed and the two Majors began rubbing their jaws suddenly so that the lower halves of their faces were hidden. Kelso was silent for a long time, his face becoming a deeper red with every second which passed, then he mumbled, “I—I’m sorry, sir.”

“Very well,” said Warren. Still quietly, he went on, “Your two main objections are that we don’t need the other continent and that we’re all going Civilian. Well now, I personally do not care, Lieutenant, if the whole Escape Committee goes Civilian, if in so doing we are enabled to escape. With that out of the way we come to my reasons for wanting the other continent, some of which you should not have to have explained to you, Lieutenant—weather observation posts for accurate forecasting immediately prior to the Escape date, and the communications relays to bring the data to us. The Escape itself must be made as foolproof as is humanly possible, which means that no effort or sacrifice however great will be too much if by it we can allay Bug suspicions or otherwise improve the chances of the Escape by the tiniest fraction, and I can tell you that our sacrifices will be considerable. At the same time we will not move until we are as certain of success as it is possible to be.

“Even so,” Warren continued, the rasp coming back into his voice despite himself, “it would be criminally negligent and stupidly unrealistic if I did not consider the possibility of failure, or take all possible precautions against Bug reprisals, because we must assume that if the attempt aborted they would retaliate with nuclear weapons. In such an eventuality I would like everyone not immediately concerned with the Escape to be as many hundreds of miles away as possible—where, we hope, they would live to try another day.”

The expression on the faces around him were definitely subdued, Warren thought grimly, and with E-Day just under two years it was not too early to remind them of the consequences of failure. There were still far too many Committeemen who thought of the Escape as something which was always in the future, an event which would never actually come to pass.

Returning his attention to Kelso, he said briskly, “They will stand for it, Lieutenant, and you will have the job of talking them into leaving. If your well-known charm fails, there are various types of pressure which can be brought to bear. It will be a gradual process, of course, so much so that I doubt if force will be necessary at all.

“Here is what I had in mind…”

The morning of E-Day minus three hundred and eighty was cloudless and hot, with a stiff land-breeze which rendered the heat of the sun pleasant rather than unbearable. Taking advantage of the breeze as well as of the fact that the guardship would not rise for another fifteen hours, one of the new catamarans was racing for the concealed anchorage on the nearest island, plowing a dazzling white double furrow across the waters of Anderson Bay. The ship passed close enough for Warren to see details of its deck cargo—section of a glider slipway and a dismantled two-man sail plane before the bow-wave sent his own boat rocking madly.

Beside him Hutton directed some derogatory remarks after the hurrying cat, then handed Warren a wooden bucket with a glass bottom.

“If you look down there, sir,” he said, “you’ll see the units we’ve had under two hundred feet of water since last night. I’m going to see if any have sprung a leak.”

At Hutton’s signal one of the officers in the larger boat nearby took his place on the overhanging platform which had been built onto its stern, and began carefully hauling in the line which had been attached on the surface to a colored float. Simultaneously another officer slipped over the side and trod water, his face submerged for minutes at a time as he watched the suit under test rise slowly toward him.

The problem arose because the Bugs had allowed the prisoners to retain their service battledress while divesting them of the associate equipment which converted this shipboard uniform into a short-duration spacesuit. Solving it had turned out to be one of the hardest jobs the Committee had had to tackle.

Various combinations of materials had been tried in the production of home-made substitutes—wood and glass helmets painstakingly carved to fit the metal shoulder rings of the suits, air-tanks fashioned from hollowed out logs and air-hoses of finely stitched leather reinforced along the seams with the foul-smelling glues and sealing compounds which Hutton’s researchers had developed. But despite everything the air-hoses ruptured, the log tanks split from internal pressure and the wooden helmets besides leaking like sieves, retained so much of their wearer’s body heat that they were impossible to work in. The answer, so far as comfort and safety was concerned, seemed to be all-glass tanks and helmets joined by a short length of cane to which were attached the control taps. But it was not a good answer because the arrangement lacked flexibility and was highly susceptible to accidental damage.