The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 397
"But to get over that wall is impossible."
"We'll admit it after we've found it can't be done," said Wardle. "And not before." Dismissing the point, he carried on to the second problem. "About ten thousand are in this jail but four hundred thousand on Gathin. We've a mere tithe of the whole. We've got to contact other prisons, persuade them to join in with us and take action at the same time. There are seven within easy reach. If they're the same size as this one, that means another seventy thousand men available."
PARTHA pursed his lips and frowned. "There is no communication between prisons."
"Then communication must be established. It's got to be done and will be done—and here's how." Wardle registered a faint smile as he continued, "You may not realize it, but to Terran eyes most Aluesines look remarkably alike. So also do Stames."
"Terrans look much alike to us," said Partha.
"It's highly probable that Kastans have similar trouble in distinguishing one from another," Wardle pointed out. "Adjacent prisons have forestry parties working almost alongside ours. If some prisoners swapped places, their respective guards wouldn't notice the difference."
"If they did notice, they wouldn't care," suggested Holden. "One bunch of slaves is as good as another."
"Maybe," Wardle conceded. "But a scheme can always be wrecked by one individual's officiousness." He returned attention to Partha. "You must find a number of volunteers, all officers capable of restoring and exercising their own authority, all able propagandists for the new viewpoint. They will join a forestry gang and switch into one from another prison."
"That can be done," agreed Partha. "There is one difficulty. An exchange is a two-way arrangement. It needs the co-operation of others who mentally are still slaves conditioned never to disobey."
"The Kastans haven't issued any orders about captives returning to their own jail. You can't disobey a command that has never been given. Besides, to change prisons is not to escape."
"Yes, that is true. Leave this task to me."
"We'll have to. We've no choice. A Terran can't swap. Among a bunch of eight-footers he'd be as conspicuous as a circus midget." Leaving it at that, Wardle said, "Now to our third problem. Prisoners must hold themselves in restraint until arrives the right moment to strike together and effectively. Premature action by individuals or groups could be fatal to our plans. We've got to insure that they don't jump the gun. Any suggestions?"
"They need a diversion," opined Holden. "One good hullabaloo would keep them happy for a month."
"Can you offer a suitable gag?"
"Yair," said Holden. He chewed vigorously, let go with a soul-shaking, "A-a-argh!" and fell flat. Then he curled up violently until his knees rammed into his chest, his eyes rolled under the lids to show only the whites, a long spurt of foam came from his writhing lips. It was a sight sufficiently revolting to turn the onlookers' stomachs.
"A-a-argh!" groaned Holden, most horribly. More foam appeared. Watching Stames and Aluesines bugged their eyes at him. Even Wardle felt a spasm of alarm.
Making a remarkable recovery, Holden got up, went to the basin, washed his mouth out, gargled a couple of times. "All it needs is a little practice."
"What good will it do?" inquired Partha, studying him as one would a maniac.
"A sick slave cannot work. A hundred sick slaves cannot work. A thousand sick—"
"Show me how," ordered Partha, making up his mind.
Shaving off a sliver of soap, Holden put it in the other's mouth, doing it like mailing a letter. "Now chew. All right, fall down. Curl up and moan. Louder than that, much louder. Your eyes, man, your eyes—roll them up until you can look at your brains!"
General Partha-ak-Waym lay curled up and rolled 'em. It was extremely effective since Aluesine eyeballs were pale orange in color. He looked awful.
Within short time ten Aluesines and eight Stames were groaning and foaming on the floor. It was, thought Wardle privately, the most beautiful chore ever thought up for a bunch of military brasshats.
"Good," he said when the horrid performance ended. "Find a battalion of volunteers for that and get them busy rehearsing. The show goes on at breakfast-time tomorrow. It should provide a satisfactory emotional outlet and bollix the Kastans more than somewhat."
The council of war ended. The members departed accompanied by Cheminais who was to lock them back in.
When they'd all gone, Wardle turned to Holden. "You said it needed practice. You've had plenty. Where'd you get it?"
"At about age four. Whenever I rolled and foamed my loving mother would give me the moon."
"What a repulsive little brat you must have been. If I were your father, I'd have given you a taste of hickory."
"He did," admitted Holden, grimacing. "Whenever he caught me at it." He switched attention to the silently listening Casasola. "For Pete's sake shut up and let me get a word in edgewise."
"We're wasting time," commented Wardle, impatiently. "The longest night doesn't last forever. We've got to get two fellows over the wall—we've not erected a secret beacon for nothing."
LYING on his back he edged beneath his bed, fiddled around with the underside of it, edged out again. He was now gripping a grooved wooden stock with the truck-spring fastened across one end. A wire ran taut across the spring's curve. Farther back in the stock was a winder and a simple trigger mechanism which Casasola had made in the workshops.
"This," he remarked, "is where we put to use our training in the exploitation of rudimentary supplies. Learn to make the best of what is available, they said. And do not despise primitive things, for man conquered the animal world with no better." He held a hand out to Casasola. "The bolts."
Casasola gave him the machined nails which by now had small aluminum vanes fitted into their slots.
"The string."
Impassively Casasola handed over a ball of fine twine. Measuring it along the room, Wardle cut off a length of approximately a hundred and twenty feet, doubled it, fastened its middle to the tail of a bolt. Six inches behind the bolt he knotted in a sliver of wood to act as a spreader, holding the strings some three or four inches apart.
"Open a window, someone, and watch for a guard." He stood waiting while Pye tied one of the string's two ends to the coil of stronger cord that Holden had stolen from the quarry. "Remember," he said to Pye, "when everything is ready you'll have less than ten minutes."
"I know."
"Too much delay will get you a dozen slugs in the guts."
"So what?"
"If you or Mac want to back out, say so—we'll understand."
"Go jump," suggested Pye.
"What d'you think I am?" put in McAlpin, indignantly.
"Guard coming," hissed Holden from the window. "Here he is, the big, flatfooted lug. Right opposite." A pause, followed by, "Now he's passed."
He stepped aside. Wardle knelt by the window and steadied the crossbow on its ledge. Taking careful aim at the distant wall-top, he squeezed the trigger. The arbelest gave a slight jerk as its driving-wire slapped dully against two small silencers neatly carved from Holden's rubber heels.
The bolt shot into the night, fled three-quarters of the way to the wall, pulled up sharp as its trailing string snagged on a window-frame splinter and failed to pay out. In the darkness the bolt swooped back, hit the barrack-block two floors lower down. There sounded a loud clunk, a clatter of broken glass, a startled Stame exclamation.
Wardle cussed in a low voice, peered out and down for signs of Stame activity beneath. There wasn't any. Whoever had been shaken out of his beauty sleep had wisely decided to do nothing about it, probably because nothing effective could be done.
"A minute and a half gone," announced Pye.
They pulled back the tethered bolt, shaved the splinter from the ledge, rearranged the string to run more freely. Again Wardle took aim a few inches above the flare-path. The bolt sped out, went straight over the wall, stopped as it reached the following string's limit.
Slowly and with care they drew on the string. Infuriatingly, the bolt wriggled between the spikes and fell clear. Now they reeled in with frantic haste but again it clunked the barrack-block with a sound hugely magnified by the stillness of night. However, no glass was busted this time.
"Four minutes gone," said Pye.
The third shot proved just as futile, produced yet another crack of metal against stone. When the bolt came in they found the string-separator had broken. Hurriedly they replaced it.
"Six and a half minutes," informed Pye, morbidly.
"He's on his way back by now," said Wardle. "We'd better wait for him to pass again."
CLUSTERING in the gloom, they listened and waited, hearing little save each other's breathing. Presently the guard went by along the wall-top, his big figure magnified to the monstrous by the flare of light. He did not look unusually alert, showed no sign of having been alarmed by strange noises.
When he'd gone from view, Wardle fired again. The bolt shot out with a very faint hiss. Its aluminum vanes shone briefly as it crossed the wall-top. Holden gently drew on the string and a few feet came into the room before it went taut.
"Hallelujah!" he said.
He now pulled only one end, giving a couple of fierce jerks to dislodge the distant separator. It stuck stubbornly a short time, came free. The string then reeled in easily. As it did so its other end went out the window taking with it the strong cord.
Before long Holden found himself pulling in cord instead of string. There was now a double line of cord extending from the room, across a forty-foot gap with a sixty-foot drop below, and terminating at one or more wall-top spikes over which it was looped.
"How long have we now?" asked Wardle.
"Four minutes."
"Not enough. We'll have to wait again. Got your own cord ready?"
"Sure thing," said Pye.
They waited. The guard's footsteps could be heard coming back. He seemed to take an inordinate time to get near. Everything depended on where his attention lay, how observant he was. The flarepath was a brilliant but narrow beam directed dead along the wall-top but there was enough side-glow to reveal the horizontally stretched string for a distance of several feet.
The guard neared the critical point. They held their breaths as they watched him. Strolling boredly along, he halted beside the looped spike, looked outward instead of inward, gave a wide yawn and moved onward.
"Thank heaven we blacked that rope," exclaimed Holden.
"Now!" urged Wardle.
Pye scrambled out the window, let himself hang from the cords by holding one in each grip. With body dangling over the drop he worked himself along hand over hand. His legs swung wildly as he strove to make speed. The cord creaked but held.
In this manner he reached the wall-top and still had come no raucous shout, no crack of a gun. Desperately he swung himself up sidewise, got handholds on two spikes, a toehold between two more. Levering himself over the triple row he rolled right into the flarepath.
Still prone, fearful of the light and whoever might look along its beam, he grabbed his own coil of rope, looped it around one of the opposite spikes. How he got over this other triple row was not clear to the watchers. His body humped itself, there was some momentary fumbling, he vanished from sight as he slid down outside the wall.
"It took him four and a half minutes," said Holden.
"Seemed like ten years to me," contributed Wardle.
The guard mooched back. There were now two looped spikes for him to discover, one on each side of his path. Would he see them? He did not. In the same manner as before he ambled by and his footsteps faded.
McALPIN was swinging in midair almost before the guard had disappeared. He crossed the gap a good deal faster than Pye had done but had more difficulty in getting over the spikes. All the same, he made it. His shape vanished over the other side of the wall.
Unfastening one end of the cord, Holden pulled on the other end, got it all back into the room. To leave it out for several hours would be to tempt Providence. Perforce the outer rope would have to remain dangling, but only the couple of inches around the spike could be visible to the guard, the rest hanging in darkness down the wall.
"Just thought of something," said Holden. "A fellow parading along a flarepath can see pretty well to the right or left but is somewhat blinded if he looks straight ahead. I doubt whether that clunker could find Pye's rope even if you told him it was there."
"We're not counting on that," Wardle told him. "We are betting on a state of mind. Excepting on a peculiar dump called Terra nobody ever breaks out of jail—but nobody!"
After that they organized a constant watch at the window, taking turns one at a time while the others slept. It was an hour before dawn when the escapees returned.
Cheminais, keeping red-rimmed eyes directed on the wall, knew that their rope was still in position because every guard had been observed and none had so far interfered.
A guard went past, gun clasped in a spade-sized hand. A minute later McAlpin heaved himself over the outer spikes, pulled up half of the doubled cord and slung it down the inside wall. Then he rolled across the flarepath, got over the next lot of spikes with the same difficulty as before, slid down into darkness.
Apparently his thirty pounds of extra weight helped heave his companion up the outer wall as he went down the inner one. He'd no sooner gone than Pye popped up like a cork from a bottle, looped the cord and followed the other down inside. The cord shook violently, fell to ground.
Awakening the others, Cheminais informed, "They're back."
They let the guard pass again before tossing their own cord out the window. A weight came upon it, they hauled together. McAlpin rose into the window-gap, struggled through, trod on someone's toes and received a couple of choice oaths by way of welcome. The cord went down again, fished up Pye.
"How did it go?" Wardle asked them, anxiously.
"Topnotch," assured McAlpin. "The beacon is now bawling its head off."
"What d'you think will happen if it's picked up by a Kastan ship ahead of one of ours?"
"They'll trace it to Gathin. They know Gathin is a Kastan stronghold. Therefore the beacon must be an official one even if they haven't been notified of it. That's logical, isn't it? The alternative is an illegal beacon and that's plain silly."
"Let's hope you're right. You've done a good job."
"Like to know the toughest part of it?" McAlpin showed him a pair of red-scared palms. "Climbing sixty feet of thin cord."
"Dead easy," scoffed Holden.
"It would be for you," McAlpin retorted, "being several generations nearer to the monkeys."
Holden let that pass with the contempt it deserved.
"Well," prompted Casasola, shocking him with sudden speech, "why don't you say something?"
THE MULTIPLE line-ups for breakfast were divisible into two parts: those aware and those unaware of what was brewing. Partha had considered it desirable to keep a goodly number in ignorance and thus support the play with an audience that could be depended upon to behave plausibly.
Stewed sludge was served. Ten thousand sat around scooping at their wooden bowls. The last and slowest had hardly finished when Guard-Major Slovits blew the whistle.
Eighty prisoners judiciously scattered around the yard promptly collapsed, doubled up, foamed, yelled bloody murder. The mob about to make for the gates stopped and stared. Near the gates four hefty guards gazed aghast at an afflicted Stame who was making like a circus acrobat with a thousand devils in his belly.
Among the guards there followed the inevitable moment of chronic indecision during which another fifty prisoners artistically added themselves to the sufferers on the floor. They vied with each other in producing the most foam, the loudest screams, the worst agonies.
Prisoners not in the plot milled around like scared sheep, watched themselves for similar symptoms. A number of guards became pinned within the mob, strove to force their way out. Stames and Aluesines dropped and had six fits in front of them, alongside of them, impeding them to the utmost. The mob pushed and shoved as those nearest tried to back away from each successive victim.
One Stame standing in what looked like shocked silence suddenly let go with an ear-splitting shriek, flung long, skinny arms around an adjacent guard, slid down foaming and slobbering all over the Kastan's pants and jackboots. He got away with it, receiving not so much as a flick of the whip. The guard looked down in horror, made for some place else good and fast.
Slovits pounded heavily into the office building, reappeared a moment later with the prison commander. A solid rank of sixteen Aluesines immediately strove to please both of them by falling flat, foaming, groaning, dribbling and rolling orange-colored eyeballs.
Noting that Festerhead himself was now among those present another couple of hundred piled into the act all over the yard, added their howls to the general uproar. Guards shouted unbearable orders, Festerhead bellowed and waved his arms, Slovits blew the whistle ten times.
More individuals collapsed here and there in response to surreptitious signals from officers. Some of them were decided whole-hoggers who worked themselves into such a frenzy they swallowed their soap and began to puke in dead earnest.
At this point the captives who were uninformed got into a panic. The rumor went around like wildfire that something called "the black death" was highly contagious. There followed a concerted rush for the open gates.
Four guards who still had their wits about them moved swiftly, slammed shut the gates in the faces of the leading rank. The mob churned around a piece, made up its collective mind, headed for the sanctuary of the barrack-blocks. It split into a hundred racing lines threading their ways through a carpet of rolling bodies. Among the runners were many more plotters ordered to hold off until the last. These now made confusion worse confounded by collapsing in the most obstructive places including the barrack-blocks' doorways.
By now over a thousand were on their backs in the yard, screaming, hooting, hugging their bellies, voicing death rattles and other versions of last gasps. A form of rivalry had arisen between Aluesines and Stames, each striving to outdo the other in putting over a melodramatic picture of hell's torments. The resulting scene was like something out of the galaxy's maddest madhouse. The din was deafening.
