The Escape Orbit (14 page)

Warren rose and half-turned toward the wall-map behind him, lifting his pointer as he continued, “Bearing all this in mind I’ve decided to place the dummy half a mile south of town, just here. Major Fielding assures me that this will not arouse Bug suspicions, because what could be more natural than for a badly damaged ship to land as close to the lights of a town as possible, especially on a planet deep inside its own territory where it would have no reason to expect the natives to be unfriendly.”

Ignoring Kelso and Hutton, who were fairly stuttering with surprise and incredulity, he went on, “The advantages of this site are obvious. The non-metal framework of the dummy can be transported to the town and stored long before E-Day, more than half of the metal sections can be moved by sea, which will be less trouble than by road as well as freeing manpower for the convoy which must come overland, and the accommodation for the people working on the ambush tunnels is readymade, which is the reason I’ve already ordered Hutton’s mining specialists into town…”

“But … but…” began Kelso, the first of them to become articulate. “I mean … that is, I understand now why you insisted on more and more street-lighting at night. It seemed stupid at the time … Uh, sorry, sir, but you know what I mean. But even so, considering the cowardice of the guards, isn’t it unlikely that they would risk landing so close to the town…?”

Warren sat down again and said, “When the time comes the risk will not seem great to them, Lieutenant. Let’s suppose that in coming down so close to town the ship lands practically on top of a farmhouse, setting fire to it with its tail-flare and burning the occupants. This is an unfortunate but allowable coincidence. Angered by the killing we’ll suppose that the human prisoners from town attack this hypothetical ship which, although damaged by battle and a hard landing, still has its C-7 projector operable. The attack will be repelled and in the process all the farms in the immediate vicinity will be burned. I don’t foresee there being much left of Andersonstown, either.

“When the guardship rises, which on that day will be an hour before dawn,” Warren continued, “it will see the fires. Later, when it climbs higher, it will have a birdseye view of the nicest little scene of devastation that a Bug could wish to see. Certainly there will be ample evidence that someone is alive and kicking in the dummy ship. The risk of sending down a rescue party will seem negligible, and the Bugs in the guardship should not have their suspicions aroused at all, because the whole area around the dummy will be burning furiously and all our people who are not directly attached to assault groups will be seen to be hightailing it out of town by road and sea, all making like panic-stricken refugees for all they are worth.

He stopped speaking to look at the faces around the table.

All Sloan’s teeth were showing and his eyes glared their approval. Kelso’s face was split by a grin of sheer delight as he murmured, “Man! Oh,
man
…!” But Warren had been expecting some such reaction from Sloan and Kelso and they hadn’t let him down. It was the others who were causing him anxiety now. Fielding had been cooperative but coldly disapproving since she had learned of his plans. Hynds was staring at him over his ridiculous spectacles, his mouth grim. Hutton seemed to be still partially in shock, although it was he who spoke first.

“Do we have to destroy the
town
, sir?”

To Warren it seemed odd that an officer whose technical ability and capacity for improvisation had been the greatest single factor in the successful preparations for the Escape should cavil at a little destruction of property. The Major was going soft, and Warren did not know as yet whether to be glad or angry.

“I’m afraid we do, Major,” he said impatiently. “As I’ve already said,
anything
goes which will in any way improve our chances. And surely you realize that after the Escape the condition of the town will not matter, although here I must stress again that the projected destruction of Andersonstown is information restricted to the present company. Others besides yourself, Major, may have a sentimental attachment for it and may want to make trouble.

“And now,” he went on, “before we start work on the ambush and communications tunnel layouts, a job which will take some time, there are still some occupied farms near the escape area which will have to be evacuate. The people in them are being stubborn and I’d like to discuss methods of getting them out—short of stampeding a herd of Battlers through their stockade, that is…”

Kelso and Sloan laughed, Warren noted, but not the others.

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?”