The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 218
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 manoeuvres grim-faced and stiff-backed and they had insisted that they could do the same under weightless conditions in the guardship, and they 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 knew some of the hotheads who made up the assault groups and he had done some insisting of his own. To Hutton, that he produce a better answer.
Now the answer was drifting up through the green depths of the bay towards the surface, a grotesque man-shape with a giant misshapen head and a pouter-pigeon 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 airtanks 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 lattice-work of thin 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 at all.
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 waste basket 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, so 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 on to the projecting platform of the larger 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 on to the back of his kilt.
"There's at least a pint of water sloshing about in there," he said, witholding the pat temporarily.
"Sealing the helmet and wicker surround on to an empty suit is tricky, sir. With a man inside to direct the sealing process there should be no leakage."
Warren nodded, smiling. "Permission granted. You've done very well, Major. I suppose you'll put Lieutenant Nicholson's girls on to 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 text-books 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 requires approximately one hundred and ten hours work, although this will come down as the girls gain experience. We'll standardise 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 the process was allowed for, and in some cases actually fostered by Warren. 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, side-slipping 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 permitting, could range anything up to one hundred miles inland from their coastal bases. However 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 plans 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. 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. 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 shorewards 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.
Because 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 fly 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 wing-tip 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 gaining height when the necessary up-draughts were absent or for extending the glider's range, and he had designed solid-fuel rockets. Hutton was something of an all-round 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 realise 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. 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 inter-marrying and the free passage into hitherto secret Committee projects would appear to Peters as a definite Civilianizing process. As also would the boat-building 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 programme. 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.
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 realise 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 focussed 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 towards 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 ...
Chapter Eleven
WARREN said, "The evacuation must be speeded up, Lieutenant. All personnel not actively engaged on 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 continually acquiring who aren't, after all, combatants. You know the drill, 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 trouble-makers must be moved to the other continent and dispersed before they can organise 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 sub-committee 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 some of the time they save in not having to build stockades should be used boning up on hyper-jump theory, nucleonics and such instead of ... of ..."
"Acting like rabbits," Sloan, from the other side of the table, finished for him.
"Not in those exact words," Hynds said, smiling but with an uncomfortable glance at Ruth Fielding who was beside him. He went on, "Apart from this we are up to schedule. The weather posts and communications relays are, or will be, set up and operating in time. Hutton has given us an improved signalling device ..."
THE DEVICE, Warren knew from his examination of the drawings, consisted of the light from a bright-burning, shielded fire being focussed into a tight beam and directed towards the next leg of the relay. The beam had just enough spread to compensate for the fact that the stations were usually mounted in trees and subject to wind movement, so there was no possibility of it being seen from above. It was used in conjunction with a telescope to increase the range and accuracy at the same time cutting down on the number of relay stations needed.
"... But the final alignment and full-scale testing of the system, sir," Hynds concluded, "must wait until the escape site has been chosen."
"Major Sloan," said Warren.
"We carried out the practice run between Mallon's Peak and a pretended escape site twenty-three miles away," the Training chief said in his tight, perpetually angry voice. "I used eight-man carrying platforms where there were no roads and wagons pulled by domesticated battlers or my men where roads were available ..."
Between the subsidiary smelters at Mallon's Peak and the road two miles away the going had been hard. They used the trees for cover whenever possible, but soon discovered that the more effective the overhead concealment the more difficult it was for the platforms to move. They had the choice of moving like snails undercover or of making rapid progress leaving a trail which a Bug guard would probably be able to spot with his naked eye. The compromise forced on them, crossing open ground on duck-boards laid down ahead of the column and picked up in their wake, involved so much extra work and confusion that Major Fielding's idea for maintaining smoothness and uniformity of effort could not be tried. The men were too busy cursing to have the time, or inclination, to sing.
When the thirty-two platforms with their simulated loads arrived at the road they were transferred into wagons drawn up under the trees which bordered it. Sixteen domesticated battlers, all that could be collected in the area, were already harnessed to their carts and moved off at once, but the other vehicles had to be pulled by his men.
It began to rain heavily.
Under normal conditions—five or six battler-drawn carts and less than fifty pedestrians per week—the Committee roads were adequate. Their top-surface of broken rock cemented together with clay gave good support while allowing rain to drain away quickly. But with sixteen battlers and upwards of three hundred men dragging maximum loads over it in a steadily increasing rainstorm, the surface began to break up. Battlers pulling the leading wagons sank into it up to their knees, which meant that the men harnessed to the following wagons were almost hip deep in the tracks the beasts had made. Then the wheels began to sink into the gradually liquifying surface and the struggling, cursing procession began splitting into three parts.
IN THE lead were the carts pulled by the domesticated cows, being dragged over or through all obstacles—in one case despite the loss of a rear wheel—by animals whose tremendous strength left them sublimely indifferent to loads, gradients or road conditions. Then came the wagons, bunched together and falling steadily behind the first group, which were harnessed to officers whose language was not that of gentlemen and who were all too conscious of such factors.
Finally there was the group which laboured furiously to heal the deep, muddy scars left in the road so that when the sun came out and dried it off there would be nothing to arouse the suspicions of a possible observer in the guardship.
Three miles from the pretended Escape site the road crossed a bridge which spanned a deep ravine between two thickly-wooded hills. The first part of the convoy was slightly ahead of schedule at this point and the other two considerably behind it, and the bridge had never before been subjected to such a load. The first three battlers and their wagons went across without the structure showing any visible signs of strain, although the same could not be said for their drovers and handlers and everyone began to breathe easier.
