“Oh, what a basta is Asta Zangasta!” hollered the distant Rigellians as they reached the end of their epic poem.
There followed blows, shots, scuffling sounds, howls of fury. A bunch of twenty fully armed guards raced flatfooted past Leeming’s window, headed for the unseeable fracas. The uproar continued for half an hour before gradually it died away. Resulting silence could almost be felt.
At exercise-time Leeming had the yard to himself, there being not another prisoner in sight. He mooched around, puzzled and gloomy, until he encountered Marsin on yard.
“Where are the others? what has happened to them?”
“They misbehaved and wasted a lot of time. They are being detained in the workshops until they have made up the loss in production. It is their own fault. They started work late for the deliberate purpose of slowing down output. We didn’t even have time to count them.”
Leeming grinned into his face. “And some guards were hurt?”
“Yes.” Marsin admitted.
“Not severely,” Leeming suggested. “Just enough to give them a taste of what is to come. Think it over!”
“What do you mean?”
“I meant what I said-think it over.” Then he added, “But you were not injured. Think that over too!”
He ambled away, leaving Marsin uneasy and bewildered. Six times he trudged around the yard while doing some heavy thinking himself. Sudden indiscipline among the Rigellians certainly had stirred up the prison and created enough excitement to last a week. He wondered what had caused it. Probably they’d done it to gain relief from incarceration and despair. Sheer boredom can drive people into performing the craziest tricks.
On the seventh time round he was still pondering when suddenly a remark struck him wit, force like the blow of a hammer. “We had not time even to count them.” Holy smoke! that must be the motive of this morning’s rowdy performance. The choral society had avoided a count. There could be only one reason why they should wish to dodge the regular numbering parade.
Finding Marsin again, he promised, “Tomorrow some of you guards will wish you’d never been born.”
“Are you threatening us?”
“No, I am making a prophetic promise. Tell the guard officer what I have said. Tell the Commandant, too. It might help you to escape the consequences.”
“I will tell them,” said Marsin, mystified but grateful.
The following morning proved that he had been one hundred per cent correct in his supposition that the Rigellians were too shrewd -to invite thick ears and black eyes without good reason. It had taken the enemy a full day to arrive at the same conclusion.
At one hour after dawn the Rigellians were marched out dormitory by dormitory in batches of fifty instead of the usual continuous stream. They were counted in fifties, the easy way. This simple arithmetic became thrown out of kilter when one dormitory produced only twelve, prisoners, all of them sick, weak, wounded or otherwise handicapped.
Infuriated guards rushed indoors to drag out the absent thirty-eight. They weren’t there. The door was firm and solid, the window-bars intact. Guards did considerable confused galloping around before one of them detected the slight shift of a well-trampled floor-slab. They lugged it up, found underneath a narrow but deep shaft from the bottom which ran a tunnel. With great unwillingness one of them went down the shaft, crawled into the tunnel and in due time emerged a good distance outside the walls. Needless to say he had found the tunnel empty.
Sirens wailed, guards pounded all over the jail, officers shouted contradictory orders, the entire place began to resemble a madhouse. The Rigellians got it good and hard for spoiling the previous morning’s count and thus giving the escapees a full day’s lead. Boots and gun-butts were freely used, bodies dragged aside badly battered and unconscious.
The surviving top-ranker of the offending dormitory, a lieutenant with a severe limp, was held responsible for the break, charged, tried, sentenced, put against a wall and shot. Leeming could see nothing of this but did hear the hoarse commands of, “Present… aim… fire!” and the following volley.
He prowled round and round his cell, clenching and unclenching his fists, his stomach writhing like a sack of snakes and swearing mightily to himself. All that he wanted, all that he prayed for was a high-ranking Zangastan throat under his thumbs. The spyhole flipped open but hastily shut before he could spit into somebody’s eye. The upset continued without abate as inflamed guards searched all dormitories one by one, testing doors, bars, walls, floors and even the ceilings. Officers screamed bloodthirsty threats at sullen groups of Rigellians who were slow to respond to orders.
At twilight outside forces dragged in seven tired, be-draggled escapees who’d been caught on the run. Their reception was short and sharp. “Present… aim… fire!” Frenziedly Leeming battered at his door but the spyhole remained shut and nobody answered. Two hours later he made another coiled loop with the last of his wire. He spent half the night talking into it menacingly and at the tap of his voice. Nobody took the slightest notice.
By noon next day a feeling of deep frustration had come over him. He estimated that the Rigellian breakout must have taken most of a year to prepare. Result: eight dead and thirty-one still loose. If they kept together and did not scatter the thirty-one could form a crew large enough to seize a ship of any size up to and including a space-destroyer. But on the basis of his own experiences he thought they had remote chance of making such a theft.
With the whole world alarmed by an escape of this size there’d be a strong military screen around every spaceport and it would be maintained until the last of the thirty-one had been rounded up. The free might stay-free for quite a time if they were lucky, but they were planet-bound, doomed to ultimate recapture and subsequent execution.
Meanwhile their fellows were getting it rough in consequence and his own efforts had been messed up. He did not resent the break, not one little bit. Good luck to them. But if only it had taken place two months earlier or later.
Moodily he finished his dinner when four guards came for him. “The Commandant wants you at once.” Their manner was edgy and subdued. One wore a narrow bandage around his scaly pate, another had a badly swollen eye.
Just about the worst moment to choose, thought Leeming. The Commandant would be all set to go up like a rocket at first hint of opposition of any kind. You cannot argue with a brasshat in a purple rage; emotion comes uppermost, words are disregarded, logic is treated with contempt. He was going to have a tough job on his hands.
The four marched him along the corridor, two in front, two behind. Left, right, left, right, thud, thud, thud it made him think of a ceremonial parade to the guillotine. Around the corner in a little triangular yard there should be waiting a priest, a hanging knife, a wicker basket, a wooden box.
Together they tramped into the same room as before. The Commandant was sitting behind his desk but there were no junior officers in attendance. The only other person present was an elderly civilian occupying a chair on the Commandant’s right; he studied the prisoner with a sharp, intent gaze as he entered and took a seat.
“This is Pallam,” introduced the Commandant with amiability so unexpected that it dumbfounded the listener. Showing a touch of awe, he added, “He has been sent here by no less a person than Zangasta himself.”
“A mental specialist, I presume?” invited Leeming, wary of a trap.
“Nothing like that,” said Pallam quietly. “I am especially interested in all aspects of symbiosis.”
Leeming’s back hairs stirred. He did not like the idea of being cross-examined by an expert. Such characters had penetrating, unmilitary minds and a pernicious habit of destroying a good story by exhibiting its own contradictions. This mild-looking civilian, he decided, was definitely a major menace.