The Escape Orbit

Chapter 19

Because the dummy was supposed to be lying on its side the lock’s outer seal formed a short, steep ramp to the ground. Warren stumbled going down and the sweat of fear was mixed briefly with the super-heated perspiration already bathing him as he thought of the possible effects of a fall on the too-brittle seals of his helmet and air-hose. But he recovered balance and ran carefully into the smoky sunshine of the site, rounding the farmhouse on the side opposite that used by the Bug rescue party and heading for the tall shadow in the smoke which was the shuttle. He was not running much risk of being seen because the Bug on watch, if it could see anything at all in the smoke, would be watching the place where its friends had last gone from sight.

Most of the assault force was already in position, packed tightly into the small circle around the ship’s stern which was hidden from the control-room by the bulge of the hull. A few feet above their heads the flaring mouth of the main venture, still glowing red, was a stark reminder of their fate should the Bug upstairs decide suddenly to take off. There were two figures already on the ladder, climbing rapidly and silently on padded boots—Kelso and Sloan were not wasting any time. Two other men, the pilots, were starting up the ladder as Warren reached it. He joined them, having to pull rank on the other commandos waiting to ascend by tapping a few helmets firmly and indicating the number painted on his shield. He mounted silently, although not as quickly as Kelso and Sloan, so that the only noise from the ladder was the regular tap, thump, tap-tap made by the Committeeman beating on one of the handrails with padded sticks.

Considerable research had gone into the development of that particular rhythm, which was the nearest they could come to the sound made by a six-limbed being slowly climbing a ladder. The Bug in the control-room should be really confused by that sound, since it had just seen its friends disappear towards the dummy and if any one of them had a reason for coming back it would have told him about it on the suit radio. The other possibility was that a survivor from the crashed ship had been wandering the area and found its way to the shuttle, missing its four rescuers in the smoke. This was a pretty strong possibility, Warren told himself desperately, and even if the Bug was frightened it would think twice about taking off and abandoning its friends and this possible survivor. At his moment it was probably asking the advice of its superior in the guardship about the situation.

The first bolas with its attached line whirled upward past Warren as he climbed, closely followed by two more, to wrap themselves around the thin metal post and spidery antenna which projected from the hull a few yards above the lock. The weights on each bolas were enclosed in padded bags to ensure maximum silence in use, and the bolas with its attached line had been soaked in super-saturated solutions of CuSO₄ until a few seconds before it was needed, and the other ends of the wetted lines were being grounded in equally wet earth. Copper wire fine enough to be woven into a rope was beyond even Hutton’s present resources, so that water and copper salts had had to serve instead.

The three lines tightened suddenly and Warren saw the antenna support quiver, bend slightly, then sag until it was lying almost flat against the hull.

If everything had worked as it should, the cutting off of communications between guardship and shuttle should not have been a dramatically sudden or frightening occurrence. There should have been a gradual fading of signal strength followed by a complete fade-out as the bolas first grounded the antenna and then pulled it off target, and the whole thing would be attributed to malfunctioning equipment—the other person’s equipment, of course. They should not be suspicious, Warren told himself as he reached the top of the ladder, not yet…

The lock chamber was a large compartment extending deep into the ship, a three-way lock opening into the prisoner accommodation as well as the Bug-inhabited section. It allowed prisoners to be disembarked without having to contaminate the whole ship with oxygen or letting the prisoners retain their complete spacesuits. The ship could carry up to one hundred prisoners in four closely-spaced decks connected by a ladder running up through a central well, so that the top two decks and the entire length of the ladder were covered by the weapon mounted in the floor of the control-room. This was an unsophisticated but very effective affair firing solid projectiles only, since anything more devastating might have blown the stern off the ship. The other seal opened into a companionway leading to the control-room, but in a series of flat zig-zags which was more comfortable for climbing by the ungainly Bug life-form. The two pilots were standing beside the Bug seal, and Warren joined them so as to avoid blocking the assault men who were silently following him up the ladder. Sloan was knocking the last of a series of wedges into the pivot of the outer seal, quietly with his fist. The metal wedges were padded for silence of insertion and for increased friction when in place. Kelso, a pouch of wedges tied to his middle, was checking the manual controls of the prison-deck seals.

In a war lasting as long as this one had, it was natural for both sides to gain knowledge of how and why each other’s equipment worked, there being an ample number of wrecks to study. It was normal practice on both sides to have a manual over-ride on all lock controls, a local control which in turn could be over-ridden only by an Emergency Lock. But once the seals were opened on local and wedged, the emergency controls would not be able to close them. The snag was that the operation of the manuals would show on the control-room tell-tales.

There were about twenty men in the lock chamber by now, standing motionless and with their wickerwork armor making them look like grotesque half-vegetables in the garish blue light used by the Bugs. The man at the base of the ladder had stopped reproducing Bug footsteps and the occupant of the control-room would be expecting this Bug-that-never-was to open one of the seals. Being a survivor of the crashed ship and hence unfamiliar with the purpose of the shuttle, it was likely that it would open the larger of the two seals, the one leading into the prisoners’ quarters.

Kelso opened the large seal and sidled back along the wall to join Warren, Sloan, and the pilots at the smaller one. The assault men crowding the compartment moved through and began to mount the ladder to the prison decks, their place being taken by men already on the landing ladder. In addition to cross-bows they carried bunches of long, thick canes which could be slotted and locked together to form a thirty-foot lance. With these metal-tipped lances it was hoped that the men could get high enough to damage the machine-gun projecting from the control-room blister, or even smash through the transparent plastic of the blister itself. It was possible, just barely conceivable, that they could storm the control-room with them. But the attack through the prisoners’ section was to be mainly diversionary…

It took about eight seconds after the large seal was opened for the Bug to react, then the machine-gun burped thunderously and two men crashed to the bottom of the ladder. One of them landed head-first and he remained in that position, with one leg hooped around the fifth rung and his body held unnaturally stiff by his wickerwork shield, effectively blocking the ascent of the others. An officer bent forward to detach him from the ladder and continued to bend forward until he was flat on the deck, splinters flying from his back as a stream of metal tore through him. The same burst sent another man higher up the ladder crashing to the deck, and somehow the first officer’s body was no longer blocking the way. The men in the lock compartment pressed forward again. None of them got higher than the third rung.

But still the men came crawling up the ladder from the ground and pushing past him, as if eager to get to some wild and wonderfully exclusive party. There must have been twenty or more bodies around the base of the ladder now, twitching and writhing feebly as they died from their wounds or from chlorine coming through smashed helmets, or from both. Many of them were plainly dead and moved only because the weapon above them gave them no peace. And the whole horrible, twitching mass leaked red, a red that was too vivid and garish in the harsh blue light to look like blood.

Warren found himself pounding on Kelso’s arm with his fist and shouting—to no avail since the words were inaudible in the din outside his own helmet—for the Lieutenant to get on with it! But Kelso refused to move until he was good and ready, which meant the next time there was a sustained burst of fire from the control-room. When that happened the Bug’s eyes would be on its weapon and not on the master panel, where the opening to the second lock would be registering. He stopped maltreating Kelso’s upper arm and forced himself to look at the slaughter again.

Somebody had got the bright idea of going up the ladder two at a time, one in the normal way and the other on the inside where it projected a couple of feet from the wall. The man on the inside had the ladder’s supporting struts to climb around as well as mounting the rungs, but it was a very good idea. The first time it was tried a very long burst indeed was needed to pick the inside man off the ladder, and Warren was suddenly aware that the seal beside him was open and Kelso was thumping a wedge into place.

They went up the zig-zag companionway fast, but carefully so as not to spring a leak in their suits—Kelso, Sloan, the two pilots and Warren trying hard to keep up with the younger men. They had to reach the control-room before the Bug had time to think, time to realize that its friends were dead, that there were no survivors from the crash-landed ship and that the present attack was so well timed that the whole thing had to be an elaborate ambush. They had to get there before it decided to hit the emergency takeoff button. It could even wreck the Escape by putting an Emergency Lock on the air-tight hatch leading into the control-room, by making it impossible for Kelso to operate the manual controls…

But the hatch was wide open when they reached it, the big, circular cover standing at right angles to the control-room floor. Kelso banged home a wedge so enthusiastically that he overbalanced and just kept himself from falling by grabbing the edge of the opening with both hands. He was still hanging there and trying to get his feet back onto the companionway as Sloan carefully withdrew a heavily padded bag from his pouch and from the bag took even more carefully a large, lumpy ovoid of glass. The glass container held nothing more harmful—to humans, at least—than oxygen under pressure, and the glass was much thinner than that used in the suit air-tanks. He lobbed the glass container into the control-room, waited for five seconds and then went charging up through the hatch with one of the pilots hot on his heels.

There was a soft, red explosion in the region of Sloan’s stomach and the Major folded violently in the middle and rolled from sight. The pilot toppled backwards a second later, his helmet and head inside it blown open. The Bug up there had a sidearm, too, Warren thought sickly, of the type which fired explosive bullets. But the Bug had no business being alive, with an oxygen bomb bursting beside it!

The second pilot was going up and Warren had to restrain him. He couldn’t talk to the man, but by dint of hanging onto one of his arms and climbing above him he made the officer realize that the reason they’d had two pilots was in case one had an accident, and since one of them had had an accident the second pilot was no longer expendable. By the time the other was convinced of this Warren was himself part-way into the control-room and the Bug was shooting at him. But Warren was covered by the upright hatch seal which rang loudly with each hit of an exploding pellet, and he was additionally fortunate in that the Bug was trying to do two things and watch three places at once.

One of its manipulators held the sidearm, the other worked the machine-gun covering the prisoner well while its head jerked heavily from the hatch to the machine-gun to the control panel behind it and back to the hatch again. A few feet from the Bug the oxygen bomb lay unbroken where it had fallen into the deep padding of an acceleration couch. Warren swore and flung his knife, but it didn’t hit a vital spot and it landed handle first anyway. He backed away hurriedly, using the hatch for cover until a projecting metal cabinet gave him slightly more protection.

Kelso’s head rose suddenly above the rim of the opening, and Warren began frantically drawing triangles in the air with his forefinger. Kelso’s bewilderment was plain even through the small area of helmet not covered by his wicker-work.

A wedge! Warren screamed silently at him, trying by sheer telepathy to make the other understand. Something hard and heavy to throw at that gas-bomb! A wedge, you stupid idiot—a wedge with the padding off!

Looking puzzled, the Lieutenant began knocking another wedge into the hinged side of the hatch cover.

Sloan was still moving. The Major was humping himself along the control-room deck like some grotesque snail, with agonizing slowness, leaving a trail that was bright red rather than silvery. He was not moving directly toward the couch with the oxygen bomb on it or towards even the Bug, but was instead inching along a course which could only take him against the metal supports of the communications desk—perhaps he had no idea where he was going. Despite the tight fit of the battledress suits, chlorine must be already seeping into his helmet from the tear caused by the pellet, and the Major’s abdominal wound was the worst thing Warren had ever seen in a lifetime of war service. The Major was dead! Warren wished fervently that he would admit the fact and stop moving. But he did not stop until he bumped into the communications desk supports and then he struggled and heaved weakly until he was on his side. Warren didn’t see what he did then because for a few seconds he couldn’t bear to look at him, but when he did look back Sloan was gripping one of the supports with both hands. With a sudden, convulsive effort the Major pulled the unprotected section of his helmet against the metal strut.

He must have opened the air taps because the contents of both his tanks went whistling out through his smashed helmet. The Bug jerked back, dropped his weapon and began tearing at his gills. Warren climbed to his feet and snatched up the unbroken gas-bomb and smashed it with totally unnecessary violence at the Bug’s feet. It shriveled visibly, wrapped its six limbs tightly around itself and died. Major Sloan had finally stopped moving, but somehow Warren could not stop looking at him.

He became aware suddenly of a lance smashing through the machine-gun blister and of cross-bow bolts smacking off the control-room ceiling. Of the pilot checking the positions of essential controls, and of Lieutenant Kelso tearing the padding off a wedge and handing it to him.

Warren took it and on the nearest bulkhead he hammered out the signal “All Secure.”