Cristopher Stasheff - Escape Velocity

“So it was the lieutenant who’d been out to get the general on Betelgeuse Gamma!”

“Or somebody in his command. Who knows? Maybe that CO had a lieutenant who’d said something nasty to George’s lieutenant, back at the Academy. One way or another, the lieutenant didn’t have to press charges, or initiate anything—all he had to do was act on his sergeant’s recommendation. He demoted George to private and requested his transfer to Eta Cassiopeia.”

“Could be worse, I suppose,” Sam mused.

“Well, George heard there was a war going on there at the moment—but that wasn’t the real problem. This lieutenant had charge of a computer section, remember.”

“Of course—what’s wrong with me? His traveling orders came out with a different destination on ‘em.” Sam looked up. “Not Wolmar! Not here!”

“Oh, yes,” Dar said, with a saccharine smile. “Here. And, the first time he showed his orders to an officer, the officer assumed that, if he was en route to Wolmar, he must be a convicted criminal, and clapped him in irons.”

“How neat,” Sam murmured, gazing into the distance. “Off to prison, without taking a chance of being exposed during a court-martial… Your lieutenant was a brainy man.”

“Not really—he just knew the system. So there George was, on his way here and nothing he could do about it.”

“Couldn’t he file a complaint?” Sam bit her lip. “No, of course not. What’s wrong with me?”

“Right.” Dar nodded. “He was in the brig. Besides, the complaint would’ve been filed into the computer, and the lieutenant knew computers. And who would let a convicted felon near a computer terminal?”

“But wouldn’t the ship’s commanding officer listen to him?”

“Why? Every criminal says he didn’t do it. And, of course, once it’s on your record that you’ve been sent to a prison planet, you’re automatically a felon for the rest of your life.”

Sam nodded slowly. “The perfect revenge. He made George hurt, he got him out of the way, and he made sure George’d never be able to get back at him.” She looked up at Dar. “Or do you people get to go home when your sentence is up?”

Dar shook his head. “No such thing as a sentence ending here. They don’t send you to Wolmar unless it’s for life.” He stopped and pointed. “This is where a life ends.”

Sam turned to look.

They stood in the middle of a broad, flat plain. A few hundred yards away stood a plastrete blockhouse, with long, high fences running out from it like the sides of a funnel. The rest of the plain was scorched, barren earth, pocked with huge blackened craters, glossy and glinting.

“The spaceport.” Sam nodded. “Yes, I’ve been here.”

“Great first sight of the place, isn’t it? They chose the most desolate spot on the whole planet for the new convict’s first sight of his future home. Here’s where George’s life ended.”

“And a new one began?”

Dar shook his head. “For two years he wondered if he was in hell, with Wolmen throwing nasty, pointed things at him during the day and guards beating him up if he hiccupped during the night.” He nodded toward the blockhouse again. “That was the worst thing about this place, the first time I looked at it—guards, all over. Everywhere. They were all built like gorillas, too, and they all loved pain—other people’s pain.”

“Yes, I was wondering about that. Where are they?”

“Gone, to wherever the computers reassigned them. When Shacklar came, the guards went.”

“ What ?” Sam whirled, staring up at him. “That’s impossible!”

“Oh, I dunno.” Dar looked around. “See any guards?”

“Well, no, but—one uniform looks just like any other to me.”

“We didn’t wear uniforms when I came here. First thing they did was give me a set of gray coveralls and tell me to get into ‘em.” His mouth tightened at the memory. Then he shook his head and forced a smile. “But that was eleven years ago. Now we wear the uniforms, and the guards are gone.”

“Why?”

Dar shrugged. “Shacklar thought uniforms’d be good for morale. He was right, too.”

“No, no! I mean, why no guards?”

“Wrong question. Look at it Shacklar’s way—why have any guards?”

Sam frowned, thinking it over. “To keep the prisoners from escaping.”

“Where to?” Dar spread his hand toward the whole vast plain. “The Wolman villages? We were already fighting them—had been, ever since this, uh, ‘colony’ started.”

“No, no! Off-planet! Where the rest of society is! Your victims! The rest of the universe!”

“So how do you escape from a planet?”

Sam opened her mouth—and hesitated.

“If you can come up with an idea, I’ll be delighted to listen.” Dar’s eyes glinted.

Sam shut her mouth with an angry snap. “Get going! All you have to do is get going fast enough! Escape velocity!”

“Great idea! How do I do it? Run real fast? Flap my arms?”

“Spare me the sarcasm! You hijack a spaceship, of course!”

“We have thought of it,” Dar mused. “Of course, there’s only one spaceship per month. You came in on it, so you know: Where does it go?”

“Well, it’s a starship, so it can’t land. It just goes into orbit. Around the … uh …”

“Moon.” Dar nodded. “And a shuttle brings you down to the moon’s surface, and you have to go into the terminal there through a boarding tube, because you don’t have a spacesuit. And there’re hidden video pickups in the shuttle, and hidden video pickups all through the terminal, so the starship’s crew can make sure there aren’t any escaping prisoners waiting to try to take over the shuttle.”

“Hidden video pickups? What makes you think that?”

“Shacklar. He told us about them, just before he sent the guards home.”

“Oh.” Sam chewed it over. “What would they do if they did see some prisoners waiting to take over the shuttle?”

“Bleed off the air and turn off the heaters. It’s a vacuum up there, you know. And the whole terminal’s remote-controlled, by the starship; there isn’t even a station master you can clobber and steal keys from.”

Sam shuddered.

“Don’t worry,” Dar soothed. “We couldn’t get up there, anyway.”

Sam looked up. “Why not?”

Dar spread his hands. “How did you get down here?”

“The base sent up a ferry to bring us down.”

Dar nodded. “Didn’t you wonder why it wasn’t there waiting for you when you arrived?”

“I did think it was rather inconsiderate,” Sam said slowly, “but spaceline travel isn’t what it used to be.”

“Decadent,” Dar agreed. “Did you notice when the ferry did come up?”

“Now that you mention it … after the starship left.”

Dar nodded. “Just before it blasted out of orbit, the starship sent down a pulse that unlocked the ferry’s engines—for twenty-four hours.”

“That’s long enough. If you really had any gumption, you could take over the ferry after it lands, go back up to the moon, and wait a few months for the next starship.”

“Great! We could bring sandwiches, and have a picnic—a lot of sandwiches; they don’t store any rations up there, so we’d need a few months’ worth. They’d get a little stale, you know? Besides, the ferry’s engines automatically relock after one round trip. But the real problem is air.”

“I could breathe in that terminal.”

“You wouldn’t have if you’d stayed around for a day. The starship brings in a twenty-four-hour air supply when it comes. They send an advance crew to come in, turn it on, and wait for pressure before they call down the shuttle.” Dar gazed up at the sky. “No, I don’t think I’d like waiting for a ship up there, for a month. Breathing CO 2gets to you, after a while.”