The Escape Orbit

Chapter 13

From the observation platform in the highest tree in Nicholson’s post the town looked peaceful and innocent—which was exactly how it was supposed to look, since the guardship was overhead at the moment. A few fishing catamarans drifted aimlessly on the bay and in the streets the people were deliberately moving more slowly than usual, giving the impression of people who did not have much to do. Warren nodded approval and swung his telescope to bear on the Escape site half a mile to the south. It was the afternoon of E-Day minus one hundred and seventy-two.

Beside him Hutton said, “The ambush tunnels and ready rooms are complete, sir. Half an hour’s work will break them through to the surface once the dummy is in place. We start on communications tunnels now, one to the observation and attack point in that clump of trees and another to link up with the hollow on the right. I thought of linking all attack points with secondary tunnels in case the shuttle lands in the wrong spot and causes a cave-in. If I can keep work parties on it around the clock we can finish them in time.”

“Do that,” said Warren.

He was thinking that now he would have to send for Major Sloan’s commandos, that Hutton’s suit and explosives technicians would also have to be brought in and billeted in Andersonstown, and that the place was going to become devilishly crowded if he couldn’t talk the remaining non-Committee people into moving out. As well, with the influx of men and material it was going to be impossible to maintain the pretense that all the tunneling that was being done was simple practice. And when the non-committee people realized that the actual Escape site was to be within half a mile of the town, they would react. Some of the smarter ones would take a closer look at the tunnel layout, and at the type and quantity of material currently being moved into the town, and they would be able to piece together his plan in its entirety.

But the assault groups would have to accustom themselves to moving in bulky spacesuits through narrow, dimly-lit and often muddy tunnels, and to waiting for hours on end in those conditions. They would have to learn to operate effectively after long periods without food or water and cope with the problems which must crop up. Warren had no other choice.

“Simulating the projector damage worried me, sir,” Hutton said, bringing Warren’s mind back to the here and now.

“To achieve the effect you want will require enough powder and fire-paste to start a non-nuclear war, and making such a quantity means hurrying the manufacturing process, which will add tremendously to the risk of accidents. Storing it in town is asking for trouble, too, considering the way some of the tunnelers act when they come off duty. One wrong move and the town would go up, prematurely. That would certainly tell the Bugs we were up to something!”

Compared with some of the difficulties Hutton had overcome these were as nothing. The answer was simply to tighten up on safety precautions, but Hutton was acting as if the whole plan were in jeopardy. The Major, Warren thought angrily, was beginning to drag his feet.

A lot of officers these days seemed to be dragging their feet or were visibly having second thoughts about a great many things, and the odd thing about it was that most of them were Committeemen of long standing, not recruits. With less than six months to go, enthusiasm for the Escape should have nearly reached its height…

On E-Day minus one forty-three Fleet Commander Peters arrived at the post, unescorted and requesting a meeting. Warren granted the request and Peters was shown into his office, a room not nearly so soundproof as the Staff room in Hutton’s Mountain, but then Warren had the feeling that many of the secrets he had been trying to keep were secrets no longer, otherwise the Fleet Commander would not have been there in the first place.

He stood up when Peters entered, a courtesy he had not extended to a junior officer for more years than he could remember, but when the Commander took the chair on the other side of the table without either saluting or saying “Sir” Warren sat down again, violently.

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” Peters said, obviously reading Warren’s expression and feeling that some sort of apology was called for. But the bitterness in his voice robbed it of all warmth or sincerity as he went on, “It is simply that I can’t bring myself to salute while wearing this caveman get-up—I’m improperly dressed—and I have no right to do so in any case since I passed the compulsory age of retirement four months ago. I’m afraid I really have become a civilian, Marshal.”

Hutton and Hynds and a few others had begun to whine at him, Warren thought angrily, and now the chief member of the opposition was doing it, and the self-pitying whine of the aged from an officer of this man’s stature sounded worst of all. It took a great effort for Warren to alter his expression and say pleasantly, “We’ll have to escape now, Commander. Four months’ back pension plus retirement bonus is too much to give up.”

“You don’t have to humor me, Marshal,” Peters said quietly. “I’m not as old as all that.”

Warren stopped trying to be pleasant. He said, “You wanted an interview. You’ve got it, but you’ll have to make it short.”

Peters bowed his head, muttering something about no longer being entitled to the courtesy due his rank and that he was foolish to expect it, then he looked up and said, “I seem to have started this all wrong. I’m sorry. What I came for was to ask you to cancel the escape attempt, permanently…”

“Don’t laugh at me, dammit!” he raged suddenly, then in a voice filled with quiet desperation he went on, “You can do it if you want to, I know that. In two and a half years you’ve done things which I thought were impossible! Making Kelso run errands for you and like it, when we were all expecting the exact opposite. Making hidebound Committeemen fraternize, and very often marry, with non-Committee officers and generally turning the Committee upside down and inside out—and making them all like it! Not to mention having all the married officers with children practically eating out of your hand because you expressed concern for their safety and lack of proper education. All of this, with the buildup of non-metal technology, communications, exploration and now even an efficient medical service, was simply an elaborate ruse to disarm our suspicions and to clear the escape area of everyone but your personal bullyboys!”

“And don’t try to deny that Andersonstown will be the escape site,” Peters went on angrily, “because too much work has gone into the so-called practice tunnels. There are other indications, too. You probably intend to destroy the town!”

Warren did not try to deny it.

“When you deliberately avoided meeting me,” Peters continued, “and when you kept doing all these unorthodox things I thought you were on our side and were goring from within, or should I say leading the Committee to its own destruction. There were times in the early days when I could have hamstrung some of your projects, but I helped them instead—quietly, of course, so as not to make Kelso and the others suspicious. I know now that I was deluding myself, but I thought that a person with your ability and authority would also have the intelligence to see that…”

He broke off, shaking his head. Pleadingly, he said, “I’m making a mess of this again. I’m sorry. What I want to say is that there is still time to make the bluff the actuality and the Escape the ruse. You can do it. I have never in my life met anyone else capable of doing it, but you could. Please.”

Warren was silent for perhaps a minute, staring into the other’s desperate, pleading, embittered features, and feeling impatient and sympathetic and not a little embarrassed by compliments of such blatant crudity. Then suddenly he shook his head.

“I won’t cancel the Escape just because you ask me to,” he said, “even if you gave good reasons, which you haven’t up to now, I wouldn’t do it. You are aware of the situation as it was when I arrived here. If I hadn’t got tough there would have been a civil war on the first day! And I give you credit for intelligence somewhat above the average, Commander, so that you must realize where that situation must lead. The outbreak of fighting between Escape Committee and Civilians, stabilizing itself with the farmers and other Civilians submitting to the authority of the local Committee posts which would furnish protection against Battlers and the raids of neighboring Committeemen would shortly have become indistinguishable from slavery, and then more violence as the Posts recruited and trained their slaves to fight for them and expand their respective territories. You must realize that a descent into savagery would be swift and all too sure, and that succeeding generations would grow up in a feudal culture which would get a hell of a lot worse before it got any better. I’m thinking in terms of hundreds of years!”

Warren broke off, realizing that he was almost shouting, then went on more quietly, “One reason for the Escape is that I can’t allow such a criminal waste of high intelligence and ability to occur. Another is that the training and ability of these officers could very well win the war for us if they were returned to active service. Yet another, and perhaps the least important of the reasons, is that it is the duty of any officer when taken prisoner in time of war, no matter what the circumstances, to make every effort to escape and rejoin his unit.” Warren’s tone, still quiet, took on a cutting edge, “… Do you still believe in a sense of duty, Commander?”

Peters shook his head violently, but it was probably in anger rather than in simple negation. He said harshly, “Those are good reasons but they are not good enough to excuse what you’re going to do. Surely you see that yourself—unless initiating and pushing through large-scale operations regardless of mental or physical suffering is an occupational disease with Sector Marshals, and I don’t want to think that of you! As for duty, traditions of the service, patriotism—they’re all a matter of inner conviction, while men of lesser intelligence, such as the type of officer the service is producing now, have to have it conditioned into them!”

“Surely you can see that it is the older and more highly-trained officers who tend to go civilian,” Peters rushed on, “and that the later arrivals make the most fanatical Committeemen. You can’t avoid the implications of that. It’s my guess that even now, within the Committee and possibly even among your own Staff, things have begun to go sour for you—people having second thoughts, wondering if they are in fact doing the right thing. Because it is the sensitive, intelligent people who are the stuff of traitors. And you could help subvert them. Even now you could turn enough of them against the Escape to—”

“That’s enough!” Warren thundered. His anger at this man who had awakened all the self-doubt and mental turmoil which had made sleep nearly impossible for him in the early months of captivity, and which he had thought were settled at last, was so overwhelming that for several seconds he could not speak. But finally he said, “We must escape, commander. I’ve given this a lot of thought, believe me. Escape is the only real solution and I can conceive of no possible argument which will change my decision—”

“You mean you want to go on playing with your soldiers!” Peters broke in, his face and even his balding scalp blotchy with anger. “Earth, the war and the glorious traditions of the service are just excuses to let you go on feeling important! To let you make a last heroic, stupid gesture which nobody but your fellow prisoners will ever know about!”

“Get out, Commander!” said Warren thickly.

“Very well!” said Peters, jumping to his feet. “I’m wasting my time here anyway, trying to talk sense to a stupid, narrowminded martinet with delusions of grandeur! But I’m warning you, Marshal, I’ll do everything possible to stop this escape short of killing you!”

“I’m sorry, Mister Peters,” Warren said coldly, as he also stood up. “Sorry that you had to add that qualifier. It puts me under no obligation to stop short—not too far short, perhaps—of killing you if you try to hamper me.”

It was some time before Warren’s anger subsided to the point where he could feel regret at his mishandling of the interview. He should not have been angered by the other’s initial lack of courtesy, not lost his head when Peters had got home with the jab about his best officers being potential traitors. He should have kept his temper and remembered that the Fleet Commander was an old, embittered man whose mental processes had hardened too much for him to see that there could be no easy way out of Warren’s dilemma…

Abruptly, Warren strode out of the room and the Post, his intention being to inspect the new tunnels, chat with the officers working on them and generally to occupy his mind with any constructive activity which presented itself. For the thought had come to him that it might not be only the Fleet Commander’s mental processes which were hardening, and with that thought came rushing back all his other doubts.