The Escape Orbit

Chapter 3

“I think it’s nice to have grown men fighting over one,” Ruth Fielding said suddenly. “It boosts a girl’s morale no end.”

It was a completely stupid, fatuous and selfish remark, the sort of remark which might be expected of a certain type of beautiful but dumb female. As well, her expression and tone while making it only strengthened the impression that she was the pretty, dumb and selfish type. But the Committeemen and Civilians had no way of knowing what her rank and position had been aboard Victorious, although if they had been thinking straight they would have known that the selfish and stupid personalities were never chosen for space service, no matter how nicely they were wrapped. But these people were not thinking straight, and Fielding had successfully injected a note of ridicule into an extremely grave situation.

Both Kelso and the gray-bearded Civilian turned to gape at her, and the Committeeman with the devastated face pulled back the two stiff masses of scar tissue which were his lips into a smile, although the look in his eyes still made Warren uneasy.

All at once Warren felt angry at himself. He had been mentally asleep on his feet and Fielding had created the diversion which might allow the argument to be resumed with words instead of physical violence, and his self-confidence—or was it his pride?—had taken a beating. The rest was now up to him. He still felt angry and ashamed, but only the anger showed in his voice.

“I seriously doubt, Major Fielding, that they were fighting over you alone,” Warren said harshly. “And it is not nice to have officers fighting among themselves, for any reason whatsoever.”

“What I would like to know, gentlemen,” he continued bitingly, with a definite stress on the last word, “is why we are worth fighting for? Do we ourselves have a choice in this matter? Are we property of some kind, a potential slave-labor force perhaps?”

“Oh, no, sir…!” began Kelso.

“Certainly not!” the Civilian protested, practically shouting him down. “The very idea is ridiculous! You won’t be asked to work until you ask us to give you a job, believe me. Even then the work will be easier, and much more useful, than the senseless jobs the Committee would give you…”

He paused briefly to snap, “Be quiet, Lieutenant!” at Kelso, who was trying vainly to break in, then went on, “for example, a few hours after you arrive in the post up there you will begin what is known as de-briefing. You will understand that everyone here, Committeemen and so-called Civilians alike, are curious regarding the progress of the war or the latest news from home, you would expect them to suck you dry of all the news and gossip from our various home planets. But the de-briefing involves much more than this.”

“For days on end and for anything up to six hours a day you will be questioned,” he continued grimly, “with the emphasis on the last few days before your arrival. The interrogation will be conducted under light hypnosis, if you’re lucky enough to be a hypnotic subject, and in any event will consist of the same line of questioning repeated over and over. Because the Committee wants to know everything it possibly can about the guardship, and that means everything you saw during transshipment and while on the shuttle coming down, together with everything you saw or heard or otherwise noted without knowing that you did so. Without the proper drugs, digging for these trace memories and peripheral images is a long and exhausting business, and what makes it even worse is that it is a complete waste of time…!”

“Sir!” Kelso broke in sharply before the other could go on. “I must insist that you say nothing further to these officers. I found them first and —”

“You found them, yes,” the Civilian snapped back at him, “but you couldn’t have protected them and so your claim to be escorting them is sheer—”

“I can protect them now, sir,” said Kelso in a dangerously quiet voice.

Warren saw the spears and cross-bows being raised again. Two powerful and mutually opposed ideologies were struggling for his allegiance, it seemed and he still did not know enough to mediate. All he could do was to attack one of them before they could attach each other.

“Why do you call him ‘sir,’ Lieutenant?” Warren asked sharply. “You’ve told me that he is a Civilian—someone who, if not actually a deserter, is at very least a person to whom you would not show respect. Yet you call him ‘sir’ and he appears to be giving you orders.”

“Because he is Fleet Commander Peters,” Kelso replied, without taking his eyes off the other man. He sounded bitter as well as angry as he went on, “Because he is the senior officer on the camp. To prisoners like myself who are trying not to forget we are officers, his rank and position must be respected even though he himself may no longer consider them important.”

So this large bearded man dressed in animal skins was a Fleet Commander! In the service an officer of that rank, holding as he did authority over the personnel and facilities necessary for the supply and maintenance of a fleet of anything up to one hundred interstellar ships, was a very potent individual indeed. In the ordinary way a Lieutenant regarded such august beings with much more than mere respect, and Kelso’s open contempt towards an officer so vastly his senior angered Warren suddenly. He had to remind himself that the particular Fleet Commander had “gone civilian” while the Lieutenant had not, and that going civilian in Kelso’s book was a very shameful thing to do.

“I’ve had enough arguing!” Peters shouted again, his voice squeaking with sheer fury. “And more than enough, Lieutenant, of your respectful insubordination!” He swung abruptly to face Warren and, lowering his voice slightly, went on, “I don’t have to go down on my knees. As the senior officer on this planet I can order you to come with me…”

“You can try,” Kelso broke in savagely. He turned and began raising his hand in some kind of signal to the waiting Committee bow-men.

“Hold it!”

The sheer volume of his voice made everyone jump and surprised even Warren himself. He must be angrier than he realize, he told himself, to have let go with such a blast of sound. He felt no less angry as he went on, “A few minutes ago I asked if we had a choice in this matter. I’m still waiting for an answer.”

There was a long, tense silence which was finally broken by the Fleet Commander.

“I don’t really want to pull rank in this, you understand,” Peters said in a voice which he was trying to make pleasant. “All I can do is explain the situation and trust your natural intelligence to guide you correctly. The choice, however, is yours.”

“The rule…” began Kelso, then he shook his head angrily and ended, “You have a choice, sir, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Warren.

Considering the available information as objectively as possible, Warren thought that there was little to choose between either faction. Kelso had made a strong first impression and his outline of the situation had seemed fair and balanced. On the other hand Peters’ contention that the place was escape-proof and that the prisoners should accept the fact was also, on the surface, eminently sane and logical. All the evidence was not yet in, however, and until it was he was reduced to basing his choice on the effect the two people had had on him.

Where Kelso had been concerned, the effect had been good, in a service where practically every operation consisted of several minutes of action sandwiched between months of boredom, a very special type of person was required to stand the strain. Warren had spent most of his early life in the service with people of that kind—intelligent, stable, yet enthusiastic people who never seemed to give up. A man who maintained clean-shaven when to do so entailed a considerable amount of trouble and to judge from the many raw patches on his face, pain, might very well be one of those people.

The Fleet Commander, so far as Warren could see, was one of the people who had given up. There were far too many officers like him in the services since the continuing war had forced down the entrance standards. He felt sorry for Peters and a little ashamed of himself for not according the other man the respect due his rank—although he had been so busy trying to keep the two factions from killing each other off that there had been no time for the niceties. And he was sorry also because the Fleet Commander, who obviously had been having things all his own way on the planet for a very long time, was in for an unpleasant shock.

“I’ll go with the Lieutenant,” said Warren.

The Fleet Commander’s teeth came together with an audible click. “Very well,” he said stiffly. He turned to face the rest of Warren’s group and his voice was almost pleading as he went on, “You officers also have a choice. I trust that some of you will see the sensible course—”

“My officers will do as they’re told, “Warren broke in quietly. By way of softening the blow he added, “Until such time as we have complete information on both sides of the question and are capable of making a final choice, we will stay together and, for the present, go with the Lieutenant.”

Warren could not see the Fleet Commander’s expression as Peters wheeled and strode away, snapping orders at his men to disperse them as he went. Within seconds Kelso was asking the Committeemen if they would mind taking up escort position around the new arrivals, and Warren realized suddenly that every single member of the escort outranked the Lieutenant although they obeyed his polite requests at the double. Then as they were once again moving up the slope towards the post, with Kelso fighting hard to keep his grin of triumph within dignified limits, Peters came striding back.

“I’m anxious to hear the latest war news, Lieutenant,” the Commander said in a carefully neutral voice. “I take it you’ve no objections to me listening to what they have to say for a while…?”

There could be no objection to what on the surface was a completely reasonable request and Warren began to consider the possibility that he had been a trifle hasty in his estimate of Peters’ character—on the present showing the Fleet Commander did not appear to be a man you gave up easily…

All the way to the post, however, Peters walked at Warren’s side without speaking. Several times he looked as if he was about to say something, and on the other side Kelso edged closer in order to be ready to counter it, but he never progressed farther than clearing his throat. Warren took advantage of the silence to examine the layout of the post.

The stockade which surrounded the post was roughly twenty feet high, composed of logs which had been either buried or driven deeply into the ground, and was supported at each corner by four massive trees. The trees had had their lower branches lopped off up to the level of the top of the stockade, and above this the larger branches supported what seemed to be defense or observation platforms linked by a system of catwalks and ladders to the platform which ran along the inside of the stockade. Because of the position of its corner posts was governed by nature rather than human design the plan-view of the structure was not quite square and its walls, which had a tendency to curve towards the support of smaller intervening trees, were anything but straight. Entrance was by way of a section of log wall, which dropped open like a drawbridge and was hauled into position again as they passed through.

Inside the stockade extensive use had again been made of naturally growing trees, which formed the main supports of several large structures, and many smaller huts had been built under them, some with extensions into the upper branches. Only the lower branches had been stripped from any of the trees which Warren could see, so that the whole of the stockade’s interior was in shadow. He was beginning to realize that the post was a larger and more complex place than he had at first thought, and that it would be practically impossible to spot it from the air.

Or space.

They were shown into a large, log building in which a long table with benches on each side of it occupied one wall while the three other walls were filled with shelves containing hundreds of what seemed to be loose-leaf files. He wondered briefly where all the paper had come from, and added that question to the others on his list. Despite the fact that the log walls and ceiling had been stripped of bark it was still too dim inside the place to make out details.

“When the sun rises a little higher you’ll be able to see comfortably,” Kelso explained as he saw Warren peering about. “The de-briefing can wait until after you’ve eaten. It’s only breakfast, I’m afraid, but there’s plenty and it will probably taste like Christmas dinner after the Bug food. But there are a few preliminaries which we can get out of the way while we are waiting…” He broke off suddenly as someone called to him from the other side of the room, then said hastily, “Excuse me, sir. Be right back.”

The buzz of conversation in the room was growing into a muted roar as the Committeemen extended themselves to make the new arrivals feel at home and answer the questions being shot at them from all sides. Warren did not realize that Peters was speaking to him until the Fleet Commander gripped his arm.

“… Wondering why a Fleet Commander was out looking for you,” Peters was saying in a quiet, urgent voice, “and our siding with him was partly due to your feeling of sympathy for the underdog. But Lieutenant Kelso is not an underdog. He leads the Committee just as surely as I lead the so-called Civilians. Six years on the Inner Committee have given him lots of practice in giving orders which sound like polite questions, and similar forms of verbal sleight-of-hand. He uses his superior officers and he’ll use you…”

Across the room Kelso had ended his conversation with a Committeeman and was pushing his way back through the crowd towards Warren. Peters went on quickly, “The Committee is in bad shape. It has been steadily losing officers to me for years—its highest ranking officers, which should prove something if you’ll stop and think about it. Kelso desperately needs a big stick to wave at me. All he had is a few Flight-Colonels and a Flotilla-Leader long past retirement, and none of them have the rank or temperament to oppose me directly. I’ve eaten Colonels before breakfast and—”

Irritated suddenly, Warren said sharply, “When I’ve heard the Lieutenant’s version I’ll listen to yours. Without interruptions and for as long as you like. That’s a promise.”

The Fleet Commander seemed to droop, and Warren realized that, despite his powerful physique and hair that was more lack than gray, Peters was close to retirement age. His voice sounded hurt rather than angry as he said, “I expect a certain amount of impertinence and insubordination from Committeemen, but new arrivals usually show me the respect of my rank…”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake! I didn’t mean to sound … Yes, Lieutenant?”

“As I was saying, sir,” said Kelso, rejoining them, “we would like to list the names, ranks, and ships of origin of your people. Beginning with yourself, sir.”

“They all came from my ship,” began Warren, then stopped.

“Please go on, Captain,” said Kelso. It was plain that he had already calculated the size of Warren’s ship, based on the number of survivors added to the much higher figure of those who had not survived, and the result impressed him. Doubtless he had already calculated the rank of such a ship’s commanding officer.

“I wasn’t the Captain,” Warren went on, and saw Kelso look slightly less impressed. But the Lieutenant was still jumping to the wrong conclusions, he thought as he turned to face Peters. Almost apologetically he said, “The ship was the battlecruiser Victorious. My flagship. I am Sector Marshal Warren…”

He had done his best to soften the blow, but Peters’ expression simply proved to him once again that there was no painless way of telling a man that he is no longer the Boss. Warren turned back to the Lieutenant.

Kelso no longer gave the impression of being an intelligent, efficient, eager young officer. His mouth had gone slack and his eyes had an odd, unfocused look as if he were contemplating some glorious inner vision.

Perhaps it was the vision of a big stick.