The Escape Orbit (6 page)

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.

Fifteen years was
not
a reasonable time, Warren insisted. He suggest an absolute top limit of three years.

“… According to Lieutenant Kelso, most of the data we need is available on this Post,” Warren concluded, his tone becoming slightly more friendly, “and I intend going into it fully with you now. So I’m afraid, gentlemen, that the lights will not go out in this building, nor will any of you see your bunks, until together we have set a date for the Escape…”

The faces along the table looked chastened in varying degrees by the tongue-lashing which had gone before and startled by his bombshell regarding the setting of the escape date. But these emotions gave way quickly to a steadily mounting excitement which was reflected in shining eyes and lips which were trying hard not to smile. There was no incredulity, no objections, no verbal response of any kind, and Warren knew suddenly that these officers did not have to be driven to do their duty and he should have realized that. Watching them he felt the warm, tingling contagion of their excitement again and all at once he wanted to praise and compliment them for what they were and for the glorious and nearly impossible thing they were trying to do. But a Sector Marshal did not pay such compliments to junior officers, even when they were deserved. It was very bad for discipline.

Instead he allowed his manner to thaw some more and said, “I’m a reasonable man, however. At this time I won’t insist on setting the hour…”

It was E-Day minus one thousand and thirty-three and the officers on the Post were beginning not to smile self-consciously when they referred to it that way, and they did not smile at all if they were discussing it with the Sector Marshal.

Warren had taken over the main administration building as his headquarters, partitioning off one corner of the big room into an office and sleeping quarters. The office portion, which had a hole in the roof to accommodate the ladder going to the communications platform, was so placed that all maps, records, dossiers, Post personnel, messages via drum or heliograph and an appreciable quantity of rain reached him with the minimum amount of delay. The office gave an illusion of privacy, although the high walls were so thin that every word carried clearly to the men and women he had staffing the outer room.

Present for their regular morning meeting were Major Sloan, the officer in charge of Supply and Assault Training, Major Hynds of Intelligence, and Lieutenant Kelso, whose job was Coordination—Major Hutton having returned to his subterranean smithy two weeks previously, taking with him seven officers from
Victorious
whose training, past hobbies and/or present enthusiasm made them useful to him.

When the salutes had been exchanged and the men stood at ease, Warren said briskly, “It goes without saying that our work in the past has been seriously hampered by the fact that the so-called Civilians outranked the officers on the Committee. And that the same situation occurs within the Committee in that officers who possess ability often do not possess the rank which should go with it. In order to act effectively such officers must employ flattery and cajolery and similar verbal stratagems, and this you will admit is a gross waste of time and ability.

“While my rank gives me wide powers in the matter of promoting able officers serving under me,” Warren continued, “I am forbidden to execute this power while held prisoner of war. But this does not mean that I cannot employ the principles of general staff command and relay my orders through junior officers, delegating such authority as seems necessary. This being so, the present heads of subcommittees are hereby appointed to my Staff and Lieutenant Kelso, because of his recognized ability to handle people nominally his superior, will become my personal aide…”

Warren paused to note their reactions. Kelso and Hynds were grinning hugely and Sloan was showing more teeth than usual. They all had an anticipatory gleam in their eyes as if mentally rehearsing what they would say the next time they met the Fleet Commander or any other high-ranking Civilian. In short, the reaction was as expected.

Tapping the uneven wood of his desk for emphasis, Warren resumed sternly, “As officers on my staff, you will accord your seniors, whether Committee or otherwise, the respect due their rank. You will pass on my orders but you will not throw my weight around. You will be polite and respectful at all times, but you will not accept no as an answer at any time…!”

More than any other single factor, the success of the Anderson Plan hinged on the presence in the escape area of a tremendous volume of manpower, every single unit of which would have to be trained and rehearsed in their movements beyond any possible chance or error. Hutton’s section could be counted on to prepare the dummy ship sections and train the technical support groups, while Hynds and Sloan took care of communications and the assault. But transporting the metal sections to the escape area and assembling them all within the severely limited time during which the guardship’s orbit took it below the horizon was an operation far beyond the capability of the Committee at its present strength.

Their first concern, therefore, must be to gain recruits.

As Warren saw it, the reasons for an officer leaving the Committee were three-fold. Serving with the Committee was a hard life, the hardship was pointless since they had come to believe the Committee’s objective impossible of fulfillment, and since they were unable to take part in the war the sensible course seemed to be to enjoy their enforced peace.

From his study of the available data, however, Warren went on to explain, he was pretty sure that the consciences of these officers gave them considerable trouble—a significant indication being the touchy way most of them reacted to being called Civilians. So, if it could be shown that the escape plan was more than just a pipe dream, and if certain of the rules which hitherto had been necessary for Committee membership were to be relaxed somewhat, Warren was certain that many of the so-called deserters could be persuaded to rejoin.

The first step would be for the Committee to wipe out of its collective mind the word “Civilian.” All
non-Committee
officers would be treated with respect, and the respect should be in no way diminished merely because the officer held different opinions from one’s own. They must be made to feel needed and important, that their cooperation was vital to the success of the plan—which was in fact the case. Even partial cooperation, part-time membership on the Committee, would be welcomed. The main thing was to instill the idea into the prisoner’s minds that the escape was possible,
that it would take place
.

“… With that fact generally accepted,” Warren continued, “we will be in position to bring more direct pressure to bear … Yes, Lieutenant?”

At the news that he was to be Warren’s aide, a position which in effect made him second-in-command and chief advisor to the Marshal, Kelso’s face had displayed a look of almost wolfish pleasure. But as Warren had elaborated on his plans the Lieutenant had become increasingly restive. Something was definitely bothering him.

“Security, sir,” he burst out, then hesitated. “You shouldn’t discuss details with … with…” He nodded violently towards the partition. “There are women out there, sir!”

Warren toyed for a few seconds with a selection of sarcastic retorts, then pushed them reluctantly aside. He said, “Explain yourself, please.”

Kelso opened with some muttered remarks to the effect that he approved of women in general and of the surviving female officers from Victorious in particular, and that they had been very efficient in chasing up Committee records and progress reports for the Marshal. Nonetheless, the unpleasant fact had to be faced that women on the Escape Committee had demonstrated time and time again that they were a bad risk. Kelso went on to cite instances, and Major Hynds nodded agreement each time. For the best interest of the movement, the Lieutenant insisted, all female officers should be gotten rid of as quickly as possible, because girls were born to be civilians…