The Transvection Machine (7 page)

“But these are not crimes against the planet,” Folger pointed out. “They are not crimes that soil the land, like pollution, nor rip it apart, like war.”

“Those need people,” Fergana agreed. “Great masses of people, arriving as fast as the transvection machine could bring them.”

Euler Frost nodded. It was Manitoba all over again. The rocketcopter had been the forerunner of a tide of industrial might geared to the rape of the land and the expulsion of the Indian. His father had died fighting against it. Now this transvection machine could do the same to the yet-unsoiled lands of Venus. “We can fight it,” he said quietly. “Destroy it.”

“But how?”

“You could guide us through the sentry posts,” Frost told Folger. “It would be simple after that.”

“Yes …”

They thought about it, making their plans, acting first only like children plotting some elaborate charade. In those early days it was doubtful if any of them except Frost really wanted to risk the freedom they’d so carefully won by launching an attack on a machine. “The thing might not even work,” someone argued. “Let’s wait till they test it before we think about destroying it.”

But Frost had too many memories of the machines of Earth. “Once they know it works on Venus, they’ll send a dozen of them up here—a hundred! It’ll be too late to destroy it then.”

The Bull nodded in agreement, but he said nothing. Finally it was decided they would wait until Folger’s next foray for food, in hopes he could learn more information.

But that night, late, Frost was awakened by Fergana at his side. “Euler, I can’t find the Bull! I think he’s gone alone to wreck the transvection machine!”

He was wide awake. “Let’s get Folger.”

The three of them searched quickly beneath the dome, but there were not that many places in which a person could hide. “His pressure suit’s gone,” Folger said at last. “I guess you’re right, Fergana.”

“How does he hope to do it?” she asked, more of herself than the others. “He doesn’t know how to get by the sentry posts.”

Frost placed a gentle arm on her shoulders. “I think somehow he’s doing it for you, Fergana. He wants to show you something.”

She looked up at him, and there were tears in her eyes.

They did not have long to wait before the Bull’s fate became clear to them. A party of USAC troops surrounded the dome at morning, flashing their lights like a dozen rising suns, and Frost gazed out through the plastic walls at the unfamiliar sight of laser guns and stunners. “We call upon you to surrender!” a voice boomed out through an amplified suit speaker. “In the name of the government of the United States and Canada, we demand your surrender!”

Folger cursed and scurried about for a weapon. He returned in a moment with two empty air tanks—slim metal cylinders that fit well into the hand and could pack a wallop if used against someone’s head. “Think we’ll get close enough to use these?” Frost asked him.

“We’ll see.”

“You are surrounded!” the voice boomed again. “Come out!”

Before Frost knew what was happening, Fergana was through the air lock and out there with them. He never knew whether she intended to surrender or was simply driven by rage at the apparent fate of the Bull. All he knew was that she was running—running toward the nearest of the garrison troops. In her pressure suit, all sex was anonymous. The soldier must have seen only an enemy running toward him. He turned and fired his stunner, at a range of five feet.

The weapons were not meant to kill, but at that range, in the thick atmosphere of Venus, the effect was deadly. Fergana was hurled back onto the rocks, where she crumpled like a broken toy. Frost knew before he reached her that she was dead. He turned, facing the man with the stunner, realizing that he was alone. Fergana was gone and the others, still struggling with their pressure suits, were useless. In that moment it was him against the enemy. While the soldier recocked the stunner for another shot, Frost leaped at him, bringing the empty air tank down on the man with a fury close to insanity.

It was like his father all over again, and he knew he would have killed the copter pilot if he had been there that day too. It was a time when words ran out, when cold fury took possession of a man and he could only strike out and batter the enemy.

The man went down before his blows, the pressure suit ripping with a great gasp of air. Frost staggered to his feet and turned to face the others, still clutching his weapon. The blasts from two stunners hit him almost simultaneously, toppling him backward into a great black void.

Fergana and the soldier were the only ones who died that day on Venus. The Bull had been captured at the initial sentry port, and had admitted under psycho-questioning that the others were living in the mountain colony. He had been returned with the other Russo-Chinese to their own colony for punishment.

Frost had awakened two days later in the USAC Colony hospital, still suffering from the impact of the stunners. He didn’t see Folger or the others again, though he heard later that Folger was being returned to a prison on Earth. Frost wondered about this and thought it odd, especially when he was tried and convicted of killing the soldier, and sentenced to an indeterminate term in the maximum security prison on Venus.

The prison itself was something of a wonder to behold. It was, in essence, a series of simple cells constructed beneath a small dome, and set perhaps a mile away from the main domes of the colony. There were no guards at the prison, since its air lock was guarded by electronic proximity devices like the colony’s own sentry posts. Escape was impossible without sounding the alarm, and even then it would be impossible to leave the dome without a pressure suit. A single video camera monitored the exercise area, but it was a simple matter to avoid its gaze.

Euler Frost was alone in the prison, though it had a capacity of two dozen men. He knew it had been used in the past, but quite often minor crimes were punished at the garrison lockup in the main colony, and the maximum security prison was used only for the most major of offenses. In a colony of twenty thousand inhabitants there were not many of these. Until now, there had been only two killings among the residents of the USAC Colony, both involving drinking and drugs on a Saturday night.

And so Frost had the prison to himself, roaming the twenty-four empty cells at will, searching out hidden messages left scrawled on walls by earlier inmates. He was visited every two weeks by guards who left him a fortnight’s supply of food and drink and occasional beer, but otherwise he saw no living person during the months of his confinement. He could only stand by one of the plastic walls, as he often did, and stare across the plain at the distant domes of the colony.

He thought often of Fergana, remembering how she’d looked in death, crumpled to the ground by a mortal blow. He thought of Folger too, and wondered why he’d been sent back to Earth. Perhaps he’d been ill, in need of treatment. Here, in the maximum security prison, Frost had no medical supplies for himself. If illness struck, he had to press a button that would inform guards and doctors of his plight, then wait while they made the journey out to his dome. He had never pressed the button, though he often considered doing so, especially in the lonesome nights when his only companion was a scrawled message beneath one of the bunks:
There is no escape from the computer!
He wondered if a prisoner or a guard had placed it there.

Finally, he thought about escaping, as all prisoners everywhere do. Though escape seemed impossible at first, the more he thought about it the more intrigued he became with the possibility. The four-page video-print newspaper the guards often left on their biweekly visits carried news now of the transvection machine, and of the forthcoming tests. There was news too of its developer, Secretary Vander Defoe, and of his bright plans for a “new Venus Colony” to counter the Russo-Chinese threat. As Frost read it, he began to think that it was Vander Defoe and his machine—rather than the Russo-Chinese—who posed the greatest threat to the future of Venus. That was when he decided he must escape from this place and somehow return to Earth.

And kill Vander Defoe.

He needed two things to escape—a pressure suit and a way past the electronic sentry. At first both seemed impossibilities, as he considered and rejected a score of different plans. Most obvious was some manner of overpowering a guard and stealing his pressure suit, but the guards never came singly. There was always one by the air lock, stunner ready, to foil just such an attempt.

One night he even buzzed the sick alarm, to see what would happen. The two guards came, within ten minutes, escorting a doctor between them. He thought they might bring an extra pressure suit, in the event he needed to be moved to the hospital at the colony, but they did not. And even as the doctor examined him, the guards held their stunners ready.

So he was left alone again, to consider the possibilities. He wished someone might be here to plan and scheme with him, but he was all alone. Folger had been sent back to Earth.

Folger had been sent back to Earth!

For the first time, the full meaning of the words got through to him.

Folger had been sent back because the maximum security prison on Venus would not hold him. They certainly knew of his food-foraging expeditions through the sentry posts of the colony, and they knew his work in maintaining the electronic proximity devices had left him with a wealth of dangerous knowledge. The Venus prison would not hold Folger because he knew a way past the sentry devices!

And with that simple fact, Euler Frost knew that he too could escape. Folger had shown him the techniques for outwitting the proximity devices, and he was certain he could accomplish the task. Not as quickly as Folger might have done it, perhaps, but time was something he had plenty of.

With that bit of realized knowledge came too the solution of the pressure-suit problem. They had not trusted Folger in the Venus prison, even without a pressure suit. Why? Because he didn’t need a suit to make good his escape? Because there was a suit hidden at the prison for emergencies? Yes, yes—that had to be the answer! It explained why the doctor that night had brought no extra suit with him. There was one already here—carefully hidden and unmentioned. If a prisoner needed immediate transportation to the colony hospital, that suit was used.

But where would it be?

Certainly somewhere beyond the sentry devices. They wouldn’t want prisoners stumbling upon it accidentally. But the only thing beyond the sentry devices was the air lock. The air lock, with its opaque plastic panels.

The certainty was such that Frost never hesitated in his plan from that point on. He knew the suit would be there, hidden behind a panel in the air lock, when he needed it. There was no other possibility.

He waited until after the next food delivery before starting work on the proximity device that guarded the air lock. Avoiding the video camera was easy enough, and he didn’t think the guards even bothered to turn it on. But it took him nearly a day of careful, sometimes painful, dismantling before he had the proximity alarm apart. Finally, at the end, he breathed a sigh of relief and celebrated with his week’s ration of beer.

Hours later, after a brief sleep, he ventured into the air lock and searched for the hidden pressure suit he knew would be there. The walls of the tiny room were smooth, but almost at once he located a tiny keyhole. He worked for two hours trying to pick the lock, then gave up and spent another hour hacking away at it with a metal hinge from the sentry box. Finally, just when he was growing weary of the task, the lock gave with a snap of metal. He pulled open the plastic door and smiled as he saw the green pressure suit folded inside.

Frost made the journey to the domed colony that night, using his practiced technique to bypass the electronic sentry. Once inside, he headed directly for the rocket launching station. The video-print newspaper had carried the month’s launching schedule, and he knew there would be a ship for Earth leaving the following morning. Getting on it might be a problem, but he had to try. His escape might well be discovered by the time the next ship was ready to leave.

Since the majority of Venusian citizens were exiles, passengers to Earth consisted mainly of garrison troops going home on leave or scientists returning from study missions on Venus. Occasionally there would be a mother or sister, ending a tearful visit with an exiled relative, but such sights were rare. A Venus trip was not yet in the category of a weekend jaunt. For one thing, the journey took eight days each way, or longer if the planets were in unfavorable positions. For another, it cost upwards of five thousand dollars for a round trip ticket, provided one wasn’t traveling on official government business.

The problem of buying a ticket, paying for it, and slipping through the rocketport security forces seemed to be difficult, but he’d already worked it out in his mind. He’d often noticed, during his years as an exile, that the rocketport was much like jetports and sea-rail stations back on Earth in one major respect. The nighttime hours always found the waiting room awash with sleepers awaiting the early morning flights. Usually they were young men, garrison soldiers heading home on leave, not wanting to risk a missed flight that would mean a whole week’s wait till the next one.

This night was no different. When Frost reached the rocketport there were seven young men dozing in the waiting room, slouched down in the form-fitting chairs with caps or handkerchiefs shielding their eyes from the eternal glow of the radiant ceiling, Frost walked around the waiting room as if seeking someone, then dropped down in a chair next to one of the sleeping young men.

He purposely chose a man in civilian clothes rather than a soldier, because the soldiers would have travel orders to surrender at the gate. The young man. though, was most likely a federal employee traveling on a government space travel card. It took Frost fifteen minutes of careful fingerwork to get the card case free of the man’s back pocket, but he was rewarded. There was a space travel card in the first slot, punched and magnetized and protected against counterfeiting, but carrying no photograph or fingerprint. Frost often thought he could give the authorities some pointers on crime prevention—like holograms on credit cards, and more closed-circuit video cameras in prisons—but their trust was always in the machine. An electronic device would keep a prisoner from escaping, and a computer could check any credit card in a split second, so who needed the costly refinements of an earlier age?