The Escape Orbit (11 page)

In the poison filled tunnels of the guardship mock-up at Hutton’s Mountain the men had actually carried out a series of drills in such brittle death-traps, so far without any fatal accidents. The men had gone through their maneuvers grim-faced and stiff-backed and they had insisted that they could do the same under weightless conditions in the guardship—and had insisted further that no conceivable agency or circumstance, be it Bug, human or major natural catastrophe, would panic them into making the sort of sudden, unthinking movement which might kill them. Even though there could be no doubt about their bravery, Warren know some of the hotheads who made up the assault groups and he had told Hutton that he’d have to produce a better answer.

And now the answer was drifting up through the green depths of the bay toward the surface, a grotesque man-shape with a giant, misshapen head and a pouter-pidgeon chest. When it broke the surface the officer already in the water detached the weights which had held it to the sea bed and helped lift it aboard. Hutton brought his boat alongside so that Warren could see the details.

To a stiffly-inflated spacesuit had been added a glass helmet and air-tanks of conventional Hutton design, the two tanks being mounted in front so that the taps in the hoses were easily accessible to the wearer. The fishbowl, a lumpy sphere of varying thickness whose optical properties left much to be desired, was enclosed at the top, back and sides by an open latticework of this cane shoots which continued over the shoulders and down the back to the level of the hips, and curved outwards to enclose the two spherical chest tanks.

Sealing compound had been used to reinforce the wicker-work shield; a large amount of seaweed had become entangled in it overnight and several varieties of marine life wriggled and flapped in and around it. The object made Warren think of a man who had undergone a rather gruesome sea change, then he had a second look at the spherical chest tanks and decided that it couldn’t possibly make anyone think of a man.

Hutton said, “The wickerwork around the helmet and tanks protects them against accidental damage, and is open enough to allow unwanted heat to escape by radiation from the helmet. And enclosing the body to hip level in this … this form-fitting wastebasket means that the arms and legs can be moved freely, even violently, without danger of the air connections coming adrift. It is comparatively light and fairly rigid, sir, and considering the materials, facilities and time available I consider it to be the best workable design to be produced. I’d like your permission to put this one into production, sir.”

The tone of the normally cautious and reticent Major contained the nearest approach to smugness that Warren had ever heard from the research chief, and that it was plain that Hutton thought he had the answer and was expecting a pat on the back for finding it. Warren grunted and scrambled onto the projecting platform of the large boat, where he lifted the dripping, weed-covered spacesuit carefully and tilted it backwards and forwards several times. He replaced it on the platform and rubbed the green slime from his hands onto the back of his kilt.

“There’s at least a pint of water sloshing about in there,” he said withholding the pat temporarily.

“Sealing the helmet and wicker surround onto an empty suit is tricky, sir. With a man inside to direct the sealing process there would be no leakage.”

Warren nodded, smiling. “Permission granted. You’ve done very well, Major. I suppose you’ll put Lieutenant Nicholson’s girls onto it?”

“Yes sir.” said Hutton. “And the girls in town and in the nearer farms will want to help, too. I’d prefer to have female officers exclusively working on this project. They have the temperament for fine work needing lots of patience, and they’ll feel that they’re making a direct contribution to the Escape, something which they don’t feel slicing paperwood or copying textbooks all the time.”

Hutton paused while a second suit broke the surface and was hauled in, then he went on, “The wickerwork shield and connections require approximately one hundred and ten hours of work, although this will come down as the girls gain experience. We’ll standardize production into four basic sizes…”

As the Major talked on enthusiastically, Warren began to consider the implications of having a workable spacesuit and how it would affect his immediate planning.

The fact that the wickerwork spacesuit project had already leaked to practically everybody did not concern Warren as much as it did people like Kelso and Hynds, who threw up their hands and howled loudly about security. The time was very near when certain matters must be discussed and plans drawn up which would have to be kept secret from the general populace, but meanwhile officers talked too much and allowed themselves to be pumped by admiring friends and Warren allowed it and in some cases actually fostered it. Gossiping was good for morale and news or information gained with difficulty tended to have more weight given to it than that which was given away free.

Warren’s eyes were caught suddenly by a motion in the sky which was too regular to be a sea bird. A glider was coming in from the direction of the glass plant further up the coast, at an altitude which showed that it had made good use of intervening thermals. It banked steeply above the town, sideslipping off surplus height and generally showing off. The underside of one wing bore the white diamond which indicated a trainee pilot.

The glider men were not supposed to talk, but it was general knowledge anyway that they operated in conjunction with the survey catamarans, that the cats which explored the other continent and set up observation posts had, as part of their duties, the construction of camouflaged glider runways on nearby slopes. The job of mapping the other continent had been enormously accelerated by the gliders which, wind and cloud cover permitting could range anything up to a hundred miles inland from their coastal bases. And the cat men were not supposed to talk about the places they’d been—at least, not officially.

So the information leaked out that the other continent was much superior in every way to their present environment, and the fact that it was a leakage of true information aided Warren’s plan considerably. The ground over there was more fertile and at the same time less densely wooded, the mountains, rivers and lakes were higher, longer and more beautiful and the grass was, of course, greener there. But the greatest selling point of all, a stroke of sheer good fortune which Warren could still hardly believe was that for reasons which were still obscure the native life-form known as the Battler was virtually unknown on the other continent.

So the officers with young families whose farms were in constant danger from these creatures, as well as men who simply wanted a change of scenery, began pressing Warren to evacuate them. The numbers had grown to such proportions that he was building more and more ships to cope with them as well as pulling cats off survey duty. And every time Meteorology forecast suitable winds and a lengthy period of overcast which would hide the operation from the orbiting guardship, a small armada left for the other continent…

The glider swept out over the bay, banked steeply and headed shoreward again on a course which would take it near a squat log building set on the edge of the sea which was its hangar. In the boat Hutton had stopped talking and was watching it go over, his expression reflecting the odd mixture of pride, criticism and parental concern of the person who is observing the antics of one of his brain-children.

Hutton had had a lot to do with the designing of the latest gliders. It had been he who had insisted that, for ease of operation and subsequent rapid concealment, they should be built to take off sloping ramps and land on water. He had designed the stepped hull and, when the first three test models had cartwheeled all over the bay because one wingtip float had dug itself into the water while the other was in the air, he had suggested the sponsons—short, stub wings projecting from the fuselage just above the water line, which removed the landing hazard and in the air added to the lift. It had also been Hutton’s idea to use rockets for gain-height when the necessary updraughts were absent or for extending the glider’s range, and he had designed solid-fuel rockets. Hutton was something of an all-around genius, and he was one of the reasons why Warren’s plans had gone so smoothly up to now.

Starting today, however, the snags, hitches and deliberate foul-ups would come thick and fast. Peters would see to that.

Warren had not spoken to the Fleet Commander since the day of his arrival. At first he had avoided meeting the other by always keeping on the move. Then gradually it became apparent that Peters no longer sought contact with him, and Warren thought he knew why. Peters probably believed that his arguments for the Civilian viewpoint that first day had, when the Marshal had had a chance to think them over, converted Warren to Peters’ way of thinking, and during the past two years Warren had managed to proceed with the Escape plan without disabusing the other of this notion.

Fleet Commander Peters, Warren had long ago decided, was intelligent enough to realize the danger the long-term danger, of the two factions which had grown up among the prison population. He had not been able to accomplish much against the Committee himself except to pare down their numbers and make them an even tighter and more fanatical group, but he must have hoped that someone with Warren’s authority could succeed where he had failed. And one of the ways this could be done, again given the rank which was Warren’s, was ostensibly to take over leadership of the Committee and wreck it from within.

The steady increase of cordial relations between Committee and non-Committee members, the intermarrying and the free passage into hitherto secret Committee projects would appear to Peters as a definite galvanizing process. As also would the boatbuilding programme, the gliders and the opening up of Battler-free land on the other continent—not to mention the definite Civilian applications of the re-education program. True, there were good Committee reasons for doing all these things, too, but a tired and ageing Fleet Commander might think that these reasons had been provided by Warren to keep the Committeemen happy while he dispersed them and dissipated their energies in what was obviously Civilian work. And Warren’s recent suggestion of lighting the streets of Andersonstown at night with oil lamps—a measure aimed at showing the orbiting guardship that they had nothing to hide—could also be taken as a first indication that the prisoners were beginning to accept their lot and settle down.

It had been an elaborate double-bluff aimed at lulling Peters and the opposition which he represented into a false sense of security. But when Hutton’s spacesuit went into production the Fleet Commander would not be so old and tired that he would not realize what had been going on, and Peters would react.

With the Fleet Commander alive at last to what was happening, the obvious course would be to hit him as hard and as often and from as many different directions as possible. But Warren had somehow to do these things without losing the respect he had built up among Committee and non-Committee alike. If any particular order seemed too harsh he would have to issue another which took the sting out of it, or at least forced attention elsewhere…

The glider was skimming the surface of the bay, the first step slapping rhythmically along the tops of the waves until water drag abruptly checked its forward speed and it came foaming to a halt. A long, low boat with twelve oarsmen and a towing rope was already shooting toward it to haul it into the cover of its hangar.

It had become almost a reflex these days to cover or otherwise conceal any object likely to arouse the suspicions of the watchers in space. So much so that the action was performed with the same speed and enthusiasm even, as now, when the guardship was below the horizon.

But sight of the glider had given him an idea. It was in connection with one of the points raised by Ruth Fielding at the last Staff meeting about the steadily increasing birthrate…

Warren said, “The evacuation must be speeded up, Lieutenant. All personnel not actively engaged in Escape work must be cleared from this area six months before E-Day. You can use the line that I am becoming increasingly concerned over the possibility of Bug reprisals in the event of an unsuccessful attempt. Stress the fact that I’m thinking of their safety, and the safety of these children we’re continuously acquiring who aren’t, after all, combatants. You know the story; lay it on thick. Hynds will give you a list of Peters’ supporters and I want you to make a special effort with them. All potential troublemakers must be moved to the other continent and dispersed before they can organize serious opposition.”

Kelso nodded briskly and bent to make notes. Warren turned to Hutton and said, “You have a progress report, Major?”

Progress in the Research subcommittee was satisfactory, Major Hutton reported, which from a person as cautious as he was meant that it was going very well indeed. The necessary quantity of assault suits would be ready and tested by the required date, as would the sections of the dummy. Improvements in glass-making had given them a lens which was much more capable of resolving activity around the guardship. Gunpowder, flares and an incendiary material analogous to napalm could be produced in any desired quantity within reason. Hutton concluded by saying that in his opinion no further progress was possible until the position of the Escape site had been fixed.

Warren nodded, then said, “Hynds.”

“I’m having trouble with the re-education project,” Hynds said. “The preparation and distribution of material is going fine, but the only texts being studied are those associated with farming. This is understandable considering the numbers of inexperienced people being shipped to the other continent, but I’ve suggested pretty strongly that more of the time they save in not having to build stockades should be used boning up on hyperjump theory, nucleonic and such instead of … of…”