_The Escape_
"Are you sure you understand, Tallis?" MacMaine asked in Kerothic.
The alien general nodded emphatically. "Perfectly. Your Kerothic is notso bad that I could misunderstand your instructions. I still don'tunderstand why you are doing this. Oh I know the reasons you've givenme, but I don't completely believe them. However, I'll go along withyou. The worst that could happen would be for me to be killed, and Iwould sooner face death in trying to escape than in waiting for yourexecutioners. If this is some sort of trap, some sort of weird way yourrace's twisted idea of kindness has evolved to dispose of me, then I'llaccept your sentence. It's better than starving to death or facing afiring squad."
"Not a firing squad," MacMaine said. "That wouldn't be kind. Anodorless, but quite deadly gas would be pumped into this cell while youslept."
"That's worse. When death comes, I want to face it and fight it off aslong as possible, not have it sneaking up on me in my sleep. I thinkI'd rather starve."
"You would," said MacMaine. "The food that was captured with you hasnearly run out, and we haven't been able to capture any more. Butrather than let you suffer, they would have killed you painlessly." Heglanced at the watch on his instrument cuff. "Almost time."
MacMaine looked the alien over once more. Tallis was dressed in theuniform of Earth's Space Force, and the insignia of a full generalgleamed on his collar. His face and hands had been sprayed with anopaque, pink-tan film, and his hairless head was covered with a blackwig. He wouldn't pass a close inspection, but MacMaine fervently hopedthat he wouldn't need to.
_Think it out, be sure you're right, then go ahead._ Sebastian MacMainehad done just that. For three months, he had worked over the details ofhis plan, making sure that they were as perfect as he was capable ofmaking them. Even so, there was a great deal of risk involved, andthere were too many details that required luck for MacMaine to beperfectly happy about the plan.
But time was running out. As the general's food supply dwindled, hisexecution date neared, and now it was only two days away. There was nopoint in waiting until the last minute; it was now or never.
There were no spying TV cameras in the general's cell, no hiddenmicrophones to report and record what went on. No one had ever escapedfrom the Space Force's prison, therefore, no one ever would.
MacMaine glanced again at his watch. It was time. He reached inside hisblouse and took out a fully loaded handgun.
For an instant, the alien officer's eyes widened, and he stiffened asif he were ready to die in an attempt to disarm the Earthman. Then hesaw that MacMaine wasn't holding it by the butt; his hand was claspedaround the middle of the weapon.
"This is a chance I have to take," MacMaine said evenly. "With thisgun, you can shoot me down right here and try to escape alone. I'vetold you every detail of our course of action, and, with luck, youmight make it alone." He held out his hand, with the weapon resting onhis open palm.
General Tallis eyed the Earthman for a long second. Then, withouthaste, he took the gun and inspected it with a professional eye.
"Do you know how to operate it?" MacMaine asked, forcing calmness intohis voice.
"Yes. We've captured plenty of them." Tallis thumbed the stud thatallowed the magazine to slide out of the butt and into his hand. Thenhe checked the mechanism and the power cartridges. Finally, he replacedthe magazine and put the weapon into the empty sleeve holster thatMacMaine had given him.
MacMaine let his breath out slowly. "All right," he said. "Let's go."
* * * * *
He opened the door of the cell, and both men stepped out into thecorridor. At the far end of the corridor, some thirty yards away, stoodthe two armed guards who kept watch over the prisoner. At thatdistance, it was impossible to tell that Tallis was not what heappeared to be.
The guard had been changed while MacMaine was in the prisoner's cell,and he was relying on the lax discipline of the soldiers to get him andTallis out of the cell block. With luck, the guards would have failedto listen too closely to what they had been told by the men theyreplaced; with even greater luck, the previous guardsmen would havefailed to be too explicit about who was in the prisoner's cell. With noluck at all, MacMaine would be forced to shoot to kill.
MacMaine walked casually up to the two men, who came to an easyattention.
"I want you two men to come with me. Something odd has happened, andGeneral Quinby and I want two witnesses as to what went on."
"What happened, sir?" one of them asked.
"Don't know for sure," MacMaine said in a puzzled voice. "The generaland I were talking to the prisoner, when all of a sudden he fell over.I think he's dead. I couldn't find a heartbeat. I want you to take alook at him so that you can testify that we didn't shoot him oranything."
Obediently, the two guards headed for the cell, and MacMaine fell inbehind them. "You couldn't of shot him, sir," said the second guardconfidently. "We would of heard the shot."
"Besides," said the other, "it don't matter much. He was going to begassed day after tomorrow."
As the trio approached the cell, Tallis pulled the door open a littlewider and, in doing so, contrived to put himself behind it so that hisface couldn't be seen. The young guards weren't too awed by a fullgeneral; after all, they'd be generals themselves someday. They weremuch more interested in seeing the dead alien.
As the guards reached the cell door, MacMaine unholstered his pistolfrom his sleeve and brought it down hard on the head of the nearestyouth. At the same time, Tallis stepped from behind the door andclouted the other.
Quickly, MacMaine disarmed the fallen men and dragged them into theopen cell. He came out again and locked the door securely. Their gunswere tossed into an empty cell nearby.
"They won't be missed until the next change of watch, in four hours,"MacMaine said. "By then, it won't matter, one way or another."
Getting out of the huge building that housed the administrative officesof the Space Force was relatively easy. A lift chute brought the pairto the main floor, and, this late in the evening, there weren't manypeople on that floor. The officers and men who had night duty wereworking on the upper floors. Several times, Tallis had to take ahandkerchief from his pocket and pretend to blow his nose in order toconceal his alien features from someone who came too close, but no oneappeared to notice anything out of the ordinary.
As they walked out boldly through the main door, fifteen minutes later,the guards merely came to attention and relaxed as a tall colonel and asomewhat shorter general strode out. The general appeared to be havinga fit of sneezing, and the colonel was heard to say: "That's quite acold you've picked up, sir. Better get over to the dispensary and takean anti-coryza shot."
"Mmmf," said the general. "_Ha-CHOO!_"
Getting to the spaceport was no problem at all. MacMaine had anofficial car waiting, and the two sergeants in the front seat didn'tpay any attention to the general getting in the back seat becauseColonel MacMaine was talking to them. "We're ready to roll, sergeant,"he said to the driver. "General Quinby wants to go straight to the_Manila_, so let's get there as fast as possible. Take-off is scheduledin ten minutes." Then he got into the back seat himself. The one-wayglass partition that separated the back seat from the front preventedeither of the two men from looking back at their passengers.
Seven minutes later, the staff car was rolling unquestioned through themain gate of Waikiki Spaceport.
It was all so incredibly easy, MacMaine thought. Nobody questioned anofficial car. Nobody checked anything too closely. Nobody wanted torisk his lifelong security by doing or saying something that might beconsidered antisocial by a busy general. Besides, it never enteredanyone's mind that there could be anything wrong. If there was a waron, apparently no one had been told about it yet.
MacMaine thought, _Was I ever that stubbornly blind? Not quite, Iguess, or I'd never have seen what is happening_. But he knew he hadn'tbeen too much more perceptive than those around him. Even to anin
telligent man, the mask of stupidity can become a barrier to theoutside world as well as a concealment from it.
* * * * *
The Interstellar Ship _Manila_ was a small, fast, ten-man blaster-boat,designed to get in to the thick of a battle quickly, strike hard, andget away. Unlike the bigger, more powerful battle cruisers, she couldbe landed directly on any planet with less than a two-gee pull at thesurface. The really big babies had to be parked in an orbit and loadedby shuttle; they'd break up of their own weight if they tried to setdown on anything bigger than a good-sized planetoid. As long as theirantiacceleration fields were on, they could take unimaginable thrustsalong their axes, but the A-A fields were the cause of those thrusts aswell as the protection against them. The ships couldn't stand stillwhile they were operating, so they were no protection at all against aplanet's gravity. But a blaster-boat was small enough and compactenough to take the strain.
It had taken careful preparation to get the _Manila_ ready to go justexactly when MacMaine needed it. Papers had to be forged and put intothe chain of command communication at precisely the right times; othershad had to be taken out and replaced with harmless near-duplicates sothat the Commanding Staff wouldn't discover the deception. He had hadto build up the fictional identity of a "General Lucius Quinby" in sucha way that it would take a thorough check to discover that the officerwho had been put in command of the _Manila_ was nonexistent.
It was two minutes until take-off time when the staff car pulled up atthe foot of the ramp that led up to the main air lock of the ISS_Manila_. A young-looking captain was standing nervously at the foot ofit, obviously afraid that his new commander might be late for thetake-off and wondering what sort of decision he would have to make ifthe general wasn't there at take-off time. MacMaine could imagine hisfeelings.
"General Quinby" developed another sneezing fit as he stepped out ofthe car. This was the touchiest part of MacMaine's plan, the weakestlink in the whole chain of action. For a space of perhaps a minute, thedisguised Kerothi general would have to stand so close to the youngcaptain that the crudity of his makeup job would be detectable. He hadto keep that handkerchief over his face, and yet do it in such a waythat it would seem natural.
As Tallis climbed out of the car, chuffing windily into the kerchief,MacMaine snapped an order to the sergeant behind the wheel. "That'sall. We're taking off almost immediately, so get that car out of here."
Then he walked rapidly over to the captain, who had snapped toattention. There was a definite look of relief on his face, now that heknew his commander was on time.
"All ready for take-off, captain? Everything checked out? Ammunition?Energy packs all filled to capacity? All the crew aboard? Full rationsand stores stowed away?"
The captain kept his eyes on MacMaine's face as he answered "Yes, sir;yes, sir; yes, sir," to the rapid fire of questions. He had no time toshift his gaze to the face of his new C.O., who was snuffling his waytoward the foot of the landing ramp. MacMaine kept firing questionsuntil Tallis was halfway up the ramp.
Then he said: "Oh, by the way, captain--was the large packagecontaining General Quinby's personal gear brought aboard?"
"The big package? Yes, sir. About fifteen minutes ago."
"Good," said MacMaine. He looked up the ramp. "Are there any specialorders at this time, sir?" he asked.
"No," said Tallis, without turning. "Carry on, colonel." He went on upto the air lock. It had taken Tallis hours of practice to say thatphrase properly, but the training had been worth it.
* * * * *
After Tallis was well inside the air lock, MacMaine whispered to theyoung captain, "As you can see, the general has got a rather bad cold.He'll want to remain in his cabin until he's over it. See thatanti-coryza shots are sent up from the dispensary as soon as we are outof the Solar System. Now, let's go; we have less than a minute tilltake-off."
MacMaine went up the ramp with the captain scrambling up behind him.
Tallis was just stepping into the commander's cabin as the two menentered the air lock. MacMaine didn't see him again until the ship wastwelve minutes on her way--nearly five billion miles from Earth andstill accelerating.
He identified himself at the door and Tallis opened it cautiously.
"I brought your anti-coryza shot, sir," he said. In a small ship likethe _Manila_, the captain and the seven crew members could hear anyconversation in the companionways. He stepped inside and closed thedoor. Then he practically collapsed on the nearest chair and had a goodcase of the shakes.
"So-so f-f-far, s-so good," he said.
General Tallis grasped his shoulder with a firm hand. "Brace up,Sepastian," he said gently in Kerothic. "You've done a beautiful job. Istill can't believe it, but I'll have to admit that if this is an actit's a beautiful one." He gestured toward the small desk in one cornerof the room and the big package that was sitting on it. "The food isall there. I'll have to eat sparingly, but I can make it. Now, what'sthe rest of the plan?"
MacMaine took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. His shakessubsided to a faint, almost imperceptible quiver. "The captain doesn'tknow our destination. He was told that he would receive secretinstructions from you." His voice, he noticed thankfully, was almostnormal. He reached into his uniform jacket and took out anofficial-looking sealed envelope. "These are the orders. We are goingout to arrange a special truce with the Kerothi."
"_What?_"
"That's what it says here. You'll have to get on the subradio and dosome plain and fancy talking. Fortunately, not a man jack aboard thisship knows a word of your language, so they'll think you're arrangingtruce terms.
"They'll be sitting ducks when your warship pulls up alongside andsends in a boarding party. By the time they realize what has happened,it will be too late."
"You're giving us the ship, too?" Tallis looked at him wonderingly."And eight prisoners?"
"Nine," said MacMaine. "I'll hand over my sidearm to you just beforeyour men come through the air lock."
General Tallis sat down in the other small chair, his eyes still on theEarthman. "I can't help but feel that this is some sort of trick, butif it is, I can't see through it. Why are you doing this, Sepastian?"
"You may not understand this, Tallis," MacMaine said evenly, "but I amfighting for freedom. The freedom to think."