James White - The Escape Orbit

It wobbled into his field of vision, a small, heavy bottle mounted on a throwing stick, burning its last quarter inch of fuse. Sloan did not look at who was holding it because he was suddenly in greater danger from the grenade than he was from the Battler. As the grenade was pushed into the bull’s mouth he threw every ounce of strength he possessed into an effort to twist to one side.

There was a muffled thump, a surprisingly quiet sound, and the Battler’s mouth jerked open. Blood, brains, and fragments of broken glass erupted past him. The tentacles relaxed their hold and the beast rolled onto its side, toppled off the edge of the bridge and joined its last victim at the bottom of the ravine. Sloan would have gone with it, if somebody hadn’t had a strong grip on his kilt…

“Uh, yes…” said Warren.

He had never liked Major Sloan as a person and he could not like him now, Warren told himself, but he found himself wishing suddenly that it was possible for one senior prisoner of war to promote a subordinate prisoner, or to award a decoration or to do something more meaningful than the bestowing of a few words of praise. He was still trying to frame words suitable to the occasion when Ruth Fielding spoke.

“My non-Committee sources of information tell me that there was another spot of trouble on this practice,” Fielding said angrily. “Perhaps Major Sloan is too disturbed through reliving his harrowing experience to remember the second incident?”

Sloan and Kelso both glared at her while Hynds and Hutton merely looked uncomfortable, all of which told Warren that they all knew something he did not know and that the reason for him not knowing was that they had deliberately kept it from him. He also knew that it must be important because Fielding was not the sort to tell tales. Warren stared hard into Sloan’s ravaged face and snapped, “Well, Major?”

Sullenly, the other said, “When we got to the Escape site and officially ended the exercise one of the farmers complained about losing his two Battlers and wagon in the ravine.”

Warren nodded. “I can sympathize with him over the Battlers, at least—they have to be caught young and it takes six years of hard, patient work to take them. What did you say?”

“Nothing,” said Sloan. “I broke his jaw.”

“You broke…” began Warren, and stopped. The sudden reversal of his earlier feelings for the man was so great that he was too angry to speak.

“There was no need to do that,” began Hutton worriedly, but Sloan shouted him down.

“He didn’t have to pull his guts out dragging wagons through the mud! He didn’t have any trouble at all! All he did was lend us two lousy Battlers and then sit back on his fat—”

“I’d have done the same,” Kelso put in hotly. “I’m getting sick of sweet-talking these Civilians into doing things for us, making them think they are doing us a favor! We do all the real work and take all the risks, and we’re supposed to be obliged to them! ”

“Major Sloan,” Fielding broke in, sarcasm tingeing the anger in her voice, “may be too emotionally disturbed to recall that the man whose jaw he broke was nearly sixty, lightly built rather than fat, and that another non-Committeman who went to his assistance was roughed up by some of the Major’s men—although in this case the injuries were not disabling. And that all this strong-arm stuff took place before the two men had any knowledge of the trouble the Major had just gone through…”

“Tempers were short on both sides,” said Hynds quickly, with a warning glance at Kelso. “A pity, but understandable in the circumstances. But we need the help of these people, Lieutenant, and flattering some of them into giving it—a lot of them give it willingly, remember—is one of the easiest chores facing us.”

“No!” Kelso raged back. “I’m sick of licking the boots of lousy Civilians, deserters! So called officers who think more of their deserter wives and brats than—”

Warren’s fist crashed into the table-top. In the silence which followed, his voice sounded loud even though he was trying to keep it down and trying to keep the anger and disappointment he felt from showing in it. He said, “When I allowed a measure of informality during Staff meetings I did not give you permission to wrangle among yourselves! I will think about this matter and decide what restitution and disciplinary action is needed. Meanwhile, and if you can refrain from sniping at your brother officers, Major Fielding, I’d like your report.”

But as the psychologist began speaking Warren was giving her only a fraction of his attention. He had seen the smug, unrepentant expressions on the faces of Kelso and Sloan. They knew, and rightly, that he could take no strong action against an officer as important to the success of the Escape as the chief of Training. Hutton, and to a lesser extent Hynds, had registered embarrassment and disapproval at what must look like weakness on his part.

It would have been so much different if they had all been like Hutton, the type of personality from which a simple suggestion, a hint of a challenge, was enough to call forth maximum effort. And it would have been nice if the whole Escape operation, now that it was going so well, had been free of internal bickering and dissension. Such things introduced a sour note and what should have been, what was , a bold, imaginative and truly great endeavor. But he had to work with the material at his disposal, Warren told himself, and while Fielding, Hutton and Hynds were easily controlled and directed, Kelso had to be driven with a very light rein, Sloan could not be driven at all. Like a missile with a faulty guidance system, he kept going in the direction he was originally pointed, regardless.

“… And to summarize,” said Fielding, winding up her report, “there are enough non-Committee personnel behind you at the present time to give all the help necessary to the Escape. There is a small but growing opposition to the Escape, but I don’t see it hampering us seriously provided we don’t furnish it with material”—she didn’t mention names or even look at Sloan; she didn’t have to—“to turn people against us. At the same time the enthusiasm for the Escape which had already been built up can go stale if we don’t bring it to a tighter focus. So it would help a great deal in maintaining the interest and support if I knew where as well as when the Escape will take place.”

A broken jaw, Warren thought as she sat down angrily, could cause a great deal of pain over a lengthy period of time, especially in a man pushing sixty, whose age would tend to make healing a slow process. Knowing Ruth he decided that it was the doctor in her rather than the psychologist which was angry, and he felt the sympathetic anger rising again in himself.

Curtly, he said, “It seems you all need that piece of information and you can’t go much further without it. Very well, I’ll give it to you—ten days from now at Hutton’s Mountain. There are some jobs I want done first, records and dossiers to be collected—you’ll get the details in due course. Meanwhile you can go. All except Major Fielding and Sloan—I want to see you two.

“Separately,” he added.

Quite apart from her concern over the Sloan incident, Fielding was troubled by the attitude of the original Committee toward those who had joined after Warren’s arrival, the men of the assault groups being the worst offenders. Every officer on full-time Escape work wore Committee uniform, but while the uniforms were supposed to be just that, those worn by the first group had certain markings and methods of fastening which set them apart from group two. They were all in this together, she said, but it was as if some officers had graduated from a top military academy while the others had merely come up through the ranks…