“I’m getting out of here,” said Leeming.
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’m getting out. I’m not going to stay here and rot.” He waited in the hope of some comment about others feeling the same way, perhaps evasive mention of a coming break, a hint that he might be invited to join in.
Standing, up, the Rigellian murmured, “Well, I wish you luck. You’ll need all you can get.”
He ambled away, having betrayed nothing. A whistle blew, the guards shouted; “Merse, faplaps! Amash!” And that was that.
Over, the next four weeks he had frequent conversations with the same Rigellian and about twenty others, picking up odd items of information but finding them peculiarly evasive whenever the subject of freedom came up. They were friendly, in fact cordial, but remained determinedly tightmouthed.
One day he was having a surreptitious chat and asked, “Why does everyone insist on talking to me secretively and in whispers? The guards don’t seem to care how much you gab to one another.”
“You haven’t yet been cross-examined. If in the mean-time they notice that we’ve had plenty to say to you they will try to force out of you everything we’ve said—with, particular reference to ideas on escape.”
Leeming immediately pounced upon the lovely word. “Ah escape, that’s all there is to live for right now. If anyone is thinking of making a bid maybe I can he1p them and they can help me. I’m a competent space-pilot and fact is worth something.”
The other cooled at once. “Nothing doing.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve been behind walls a long time and have been taught many things that you’ve yet to learn.”
“Such as?”
“We’ve discovered at bitter cost that escape attempts fail when too many know what is going on. Some planted spy betrays us. Or some selfish fool messes things up by pushing in at the wrong moment.”
“I am neither a spy nor a fool. I’m certainly not enough of an imbecile to spoil my own chance of breaking free.”
“That may be,” the Rigellian conceded. “But imprisonment creates its own special conventions. One firm rule we have established here is that an escape-plot is the exclusive property of those who concocted it and only they can make the attempt by that method. Nobody else is told about it. Nobody else knows until the resulting hullabaloo starts going. Secrecy is a protective screen that would-be escapers must maintain at all costs. They’ll give nobody a momentary peek through it, not even a Terran and not even a qualified space-pilot.”
“So I’m strictly on my own?”
“Afraid so: You’re on your own in any case. We sleep in dormitories, fifty to a room. You’re in a cell all by yourself. You’re in no position to help with anything.”
“I can damned well help myself,” Leeming retorted angrily.
And it was his turn to walk away.
He’d been in the pokey just thirteen weeks when the tutor handed him a metaphorical firecracker. Finishing a session distinguished only by Leeming’s dopiness and slowness to learn, the tutor scowled at him and gave forth to some point “You are pleased to wear the cloak of idiocy. But am I an idiot too? I do not think so! I am not deceived-you are far more fluent than you pretend. In seven days’ time I shall report to the Commandant that you are ready for examination.”
“How’s that again?” asked Leeming, putting on a baffled frown.
“You will be questioned by the Commandant seven days hence.”
“I have already been questioned by Major Klavith.”
“That was verbal, Klavith is dead and we have no record of what you told him.”
Slam went the door. Came the gruel and a jaundiced lump of something unchewable. The local catering department seemed to be obsessed by the edibility of a rat’s buttocks. Exercise-time followed.
“I’ve been told they’re going to put me through the mill a week from now.”
“Don’t let that scare you,” advised the Rigellian. “They would as soon kill you as spit in the sink. But one thing keeps them in check.”
“What’s that?”
“The Allies are holding a stack of prisoners too.”
“Yes, but what they don’t know they can’t grieve over.”
“There’ll be more grief for the entire Zangastan species if the victor finds himself expected to exchange very live prisoners for very dead corpses.”
“You’ve made a point there,” agreed Leeming. “Maybe it would help if I had nine feet of rape to dangle suggestively in front of the Commandant.”
“It would help if I had a very large bottle of vitx and a shapely female to stroke my hair,” sighed the Rigellian.
“If you can feel that way after two years of semi-starvation what are you like on a full diet?”
“It’s all in the mind,” the Rigellian said. “I like to think of what might have been.”
The whistle again. More intensive study while daylight lasted. Another bowl of ersatz porridge. Darkness and a few small stars peeping through the barred slot high up. Time seemed to be standing still, as it does with a high wall around it.
He lay on the bench and produced thoughts like bubbles from a fountain. No place, positively no place is absolutely impregnable. Given brawn and brains, time and patience, there’s always a way in or out. Escapees shot down as they bolted had chosen the wrong time and wrong place, or the right time but the wrong place, or the right place but the wrong time. Or they had neglected brawn in favour of brains, a common fault of the overcautious. Or they’d neglected brains in favour of, brawn, a fault of the reckless.
With eyes closed he carefully reviewed the situation. He was in a cell with rock walls of granite hardness at least four feet thick. The only openings were a narrow gap blocked by five massive steel bars, also an armour-plated door in constant view of patrolling guards.
On his person he had no hack-saw, no lock-pin, no implement of any sort, nothing but the bedraggled clothes in which he reposed. If he pulled the bench to pieces and somehow succeeded in doing it unheard he’d acquire several large lumps of wood, a dozen six-inch nails and a couple of steel bolts. None of that junk would serve to open the door or cut the window-bars. And there was no other material available.
Outside stretched a brilliantly illuminated gap fifty yards wide that must be crossed to gain freedom. Then a smooth stone wall forty feet high, devoid of handholds. Atop the wall an apex much too sharp to give grip to the feet while stepping over an alarm-wire that would set the sirens going if either touched or cut.
The great wall completely encircled the entire prison. It was octagonal in shape and topped at each angle by a watch-tower containing guards, floodlights and guns. To get out, the wall would have to be surmounted right under the noses of itchy-fingered watchers, in bright light, without touching the wire. That wouldn’t be the end of it either; beyond the wall was another illuminated area also to be crossed. An unlucky last-lapper could get over the wall by some kind of miracle only to be shot to bloody shreds during his subsequent dash for darkness.
Yes, the whole set-up had the professional touch of those who knew what to do to keep prisoners in prison. Escape over the wall was well nigh impossible though not completely so. If somebody got out of his cell or dormitory armed with a rope and grapnel, and if he had a daring confederate who’d break into the power-room and switch off everything at exactly the right moment, he might make it. Up the wall and over the dead, unresponsive, alarm-wire in total darkness.
In a solitary cell there is no rope, no grapnel, nothing capable of being adapted as either. There is no desperate and trustworthy confederate. Even if these things had been available he’d have considered such a project as near suicidal.