James White - The Escape Orbit

“The plan which was adopted,” Kelso went on, his tone becoming more serious, “was the one put forward by Flotilla-Leader Anderson…”

Anderson had begun by accepting the fact that the only practical way of getting off the planet was to use a Bug ship, his idea being to lure the shuttle rocket to the surface at a predetermined point and in such circumstances that the prisoners would be able to capture it. With the shuttle in their hands it should be possible to effect the capture of the guardship itself, an obsolete battlewagon which was easily capable of transporting anything up to a thousand ex-prisoners to an Earth base, where the news of the existence and position of the planet could be given to the proper authorities.

It was a simple, daring plan which at practically every stage was packed with things that could go wrong. But Anderson had been able to eliminate enough of the uncertainties that it would be workable with just the average amount of good luck instead of a multiple chain of miracles.

The bait which would lure down the Bug ferryship would be a metal dummy of a crash-landed enemy reconnaissance vessel, assembled during a time when the guardship’s orbit kept it below the horizon, from parts prefabricated and hidden in undetectable caches. Then, to make sure that the guardship simply did not bomb this mock-up as they had bombed earlier collections of metal on the surface, carefully positioned fires would be started in the surrounding vegetation to make it plainly obvious to the guardship that a vessel had crash-landed, a vessel which on closer inspection would show to be one of their own scoutships.

By displaying signs of life from the dummy ship and perhaps going to the extent of seeming to attack it with human prisoners, it was hoped to bring the Bug shuttle down on a rescue mission…

Listening to Kelso’s low, impassioned voice as he went on to describe the work already done on the plan, Warren felt excited himself, and suddenly he found himself wanting to re-examine his motives for doing what he had done.

Granted that his chief reason for joining the Committee had been to try to effect an escape, that being the only sure way of avoiding dissention, civil war and an ultimate descent into near-savagery. This did not mean, however, that the Committee members were warmongers or murderers at the present time. Far from it—the people on the Committee side were a group of able, intelligent and resourceful officers who had maintained and even increased their enthusiasm despite years of constantly mounting opposition and steadily dwindling numbers, and Warren was beginning to admire them.

Another reason, and one which he had not yet made public, was that the war was going very badly for the human side and that the Earth forces were urgently in need of the officers who were rapidly going to seed on this prison planet. At one time an elite corps which accepted only the best, the space service was scraping the bottom of the personnel barrel these days for crew. This was something Warren knew from bitter personal experience.

And yet another reason, a purely selfish one this time, was that Warren badly wanted to have officers serving under him again who refused to believe that they were beaten, or that anything was impossible…

All at once he became aware that he had missed a lot of what the Lieutenant had been saying, and that Kelso’s customary tone of enthusiasm had changed to one of anger and frustration—the combination of emotions which were, apparently, the nearest Committeemen came to feeling despair.

“… But the most galling fact of all,” the Lieutenant went on bitterly, “is that the plan had already been initiated years before any of the officers here had arrived! When I came here there were half a dozen concealed observation posts in operation close to the most likely landing areas. The first smelter was working and the maximum safe quantity of metal which could be collected in one spot, both on the surface and buried at various depths underground, had been ascertained experimentally—the experiment usually consisting of increasing the quantity until the Bugs noticed and dropped a couple of tons of old-fashioned HE on it. The special commands which were to take the Bug shuttle and later the guardship were already being trained, together with the Supply and Intelligence groups to support them. By this time we should have been off the planet, or at least have made a damned good try at getting off it!”

Kelso took a deep breath and exhaled it angrily through his nose, then went on, “Instead, the plan has been hampered and sabotaged at every turn. We in the Committee, who are trying to retain our traditions and self-respect and discipline as officers, are very often forced to obey people who have given up and who want everyone else to give up, too, so that their consciences can get together and call black white. The result is that we’ve been forced to conceal nearly everything we do from fellow officers who by rights should be giving us the fullest cooperation.

“At the present rate of progress, sir,” Kelso ended hotly, “we’ll be lucky if we can make the attempt fifteen or twenty years from now!”

Further along the table Hutton and Sloan, the officer whose specialty was assault training, nodded their agreement. Major Hynds, still holding onto his spectacles as he turned to face Warren, said, “A conservative estimate, sir, but based on the assumption that we do not lose any more of our officers to the Civilians…”

He stopped speaking as one of the drums in the tree above them began rattling out the signal, three times repeated, which summoned the night guard to their stations and simultaneously announced Lights Out to everyone else. Like puppets controlled by a single string the four officers at the table pushed back their chairs and rose to their feet.

“Sit down,” said Warren.

He did not raise his voice, but quite a lot of Kelso’s anger and frustration seemed to have rubbed off on him and Warren made no attempt to conceal the fact. At the same time he had no intention of allowing his anger to develop into an uncontrolled outburst of fury, because he knew that a leader who was subject to fits of temper might inspire fear in his subordinates rather than confidence and Warren wanted to inspire both. These Committeemen wanted a leader, and as Warren began to speak he did everything possible short of flaying them with whips to give them the idea that they had acquired one who could drive as well as lead.

To begin with he was merely bitingly sarcastic regarding officers who had practically conditioned themselves to jump when drums banged or whistles blew, going on to suggest that it was this too-rigid insistence on discipline which was one reason for the continuing loss of Committeemen to Peters’ Civilians, and that if the present trend continued the Escape Committee would become a hard core of performing monkeys who did things when somebody made a noise and remained at attention at all other times.

Without altering his scathing tone of voice in the slightest his remarks veered gradually from derogatory to the constructive.

He was deeply concerned over the dwindling numbers of the Escape Committee, he told them. Not only must this steady erosion cease, but they must win back a large proportion of these so-called deserters, and every possible method of influencing them must be explored ranging from subtle psychology to outright blackmail if necessary. The shortage of manpower was the basic reason why the plan had never gotten off the ground, in both senses of the word, and this was a problem which must be and would be solved.

And talking all the foregoing as read, he now required a breakdown into previous specialties and present aptitudes of all prisoners, also the minimum numbers and training needed by these officers to allow the four subcommittees represented here to bring the Anderson Plan to complete readiness in a reasonable time.