The Collected Stories

by Earl

Asquith backed out of the opened door, slipping his pistol away.

  “That was your last chance, Hale. You’re doomed!”

  Alone again in his cell, Hale heard those words re-echoing. Had the invisible net snared him?

  THE trial, a week later, was conducted with a swift deadliness that numbed Hale’s mind. He had the feeling of standing at the edge of a sinister pit, with the Five pushing him in. The Five—and Laura.

  The girl was there, wearing a netted veil. She sat far to the side, never looking at him. Hale was not allowed to approach her.

  When he looked around at the others, cold shock battered his nerves. Jonathan Mausser was State’s prosecutor. Sir Charles Paxton sat with lofty dignity in the judge’s seat. Ivan von Grenfeld marshaled the witnesses. Dr. Emanuel Gordy sat in the rear, like a spider surveying his web. Peter Asquith, by a subtle irony, was to be his character witness. And Laura—What part was she to play?

  The answer came soon enough. Jonathan Mausser, as prosecutor, worked with the efficiency of a medieval executioner. Ivan von Grenfeld presented State’s evidence that the Dictator Syndicate had received the million-dollar subsidy from the sub-Atlantic Tube Co. Peter Asquith, under cross-examination, was “forced to admit” that his young friend had very often mentioned the Syndicate. In his high seat, Sir Charles Paxton called the jury’s attention, at strategic moments, to the growing evidence against the defendant.

  It was a farce, a deadly, cunning, ruthless farce. But even the reporters and ike-men took it all for gospel truth. Out to the world was going the front-page news that Richard Hale, erstwhile young altruist, was in reality a traitor to the World Government.

  Hale leaped up suddenly, unable to stand it any longer.

  “Lies! All lies!” he shouted. “Can’t any of you see? How can you be so blind? I’m being framed, railroaded into prison. Transport Corporation wants control of my Tube. The Five want control. They are right here—Jonathan Mausser, Sir Charles—”

  Long before he had completed even the first name, he was coughing and gagging incoherently. Ivan von Grenfeld, standing near watchfully, had used his para-beam pistol, aiming it for Hale’s throat. Its harmless but effective ray paralyzed Hale’s vocal chords, by an inductive electric shock. It was an official court weapon.

  “The defendant will make no more such outbursts,” commanded Judge Paxton. “Proceed.”

  The ike-men and reporters shrugged for all their audience. All through court history, the guilty had always acted the part of the innocent. One could only go by evidence. And that, under the skilled judgy hands of Jonathan Mausser, was damning.

  By late afternoon, the case drew to a close. Court processes, since the court reforms of 1982, worked with swiftness, if not accuracy.

  Jonathan Mausser glanced at Hale, as though measuring him for the final thrust. Then he called Laura Asquith to the stand.

  AT that moment, the shades were partly drawn, plunging the court room into semi-darkness. From the side came the whirr of a movideo projector. Three dimensional images, cast by the machine, materialized overhead, for all to see. Two figures were seen—Peter Asquith and Richard Hale. They were dim, ghostly, but recognizable. Their voices spoke with the slight hiss of the recording film.

  “Leaving, Richard?” Asquith’s image asked. “Why not stay? What’s so important?”

  “Nothing much,” Hale’s image returned, smiling. “Just an appointment with a Syndicate member.”

  That was all. The film clicked off and the shades were lifted. Hale gasped at the sheer hypocrisy of it. The bit of conversation meant nothing. It was a world-wide standing social excuse of the time, for breaking away at awkward moments. It meant no more than, “I’m seeing my Congressman about something.”

  But here, diabolically, it fitted in like a glove. Jonathan Mausser pointed a finger at Laura Asquith. “Do you recognize the scene, Miss Asquith? State what you know.”

  Laura answered in a dull voice.

  “It was taken by myself about a year ago. I’ve always had a candid movideo camera. The speakers were my uncle and Richard Hale, the defendant.”

  Hale heard no more. He could only stare bitterly at the girl who was testifying against him. It was true, then. She had schemed, along with her uncle, to lull Hale’s suspicions till the time was ripe. She had been told to pose as loving him, so that he would confide in her. And all the while she had plotted his downfall. When the Five were in power, no doubt she would have everything a scheming girl could desire. Could that be the deadly truth? He didn’t want to believe it.

  “Laura!” he groaned. “Laura, I can’t believe—”

  The rest was a choking rasp, as von Grenfeld again used his para-gun. The girl’s head had jerked sharply, at the note in his voice. For a moment she seemed on the point of answering his call, running to him.

  “That will be all. Thank you, Miss Asquith.” Jonathan Mausser’s voice had cut in sharply.

  The girl seemed to shrink within herself. She stepped down from the stand, avoiding Hale’s pleading eyes.

  The jury returned its verdict in fifteen minutes.

  “Guilty!”

  “The defendant, Richard Hale, will please stand,” Sir Charles Paxton intoned sonorously. “The sentence, for your crime of high treason against the World Government, is life imprisonment in Strato-prison!”

  IT was the final touch. Strato-prison—the super-bastille of 2001 A. D.! Life imprisonment there meant isolation from Earth, as fully and finally as though marooned in the next universe. Hale stood silent and bitter. The Five had achieved the ultimate against him. Capital punishment had been abolished in 1984, otherwise he would now be a dead man. As it was, he would be only one degree better, a living-dead man.

  “Because of its affiliations through Richard Hale with the Dictator Syndicate, the Subatlantic Tube Company is automatically dissolved,” Sir Charles Paxton droned on. “All its assets and contracts will be auctioned to the highest bidder.”

  No need to say who would be the “highest bidder.” The Five had done well for themselves. In one stroke they had eliminated Hale, broken up his company, and gained control of the future of the Tube. Yes, they had done well.

  That thought lashed through Hale’s mind like a cruel whip.

  “Have you anything to say before the court?” queried Paxton, carrying on the routine legal tradition.

  Hale stood silent for a moment. His burning eyes traveled from face to face of the Five, as though indelibly imprinting their features on his mind. His gaze stopped on Dr. Emanuel Gordy.

  “I say only one thing to the Five.” His voice was low, tense, deadly. “Revenge!”

  His glance flickered to Laura Asquith, at the last, as if including her in his vow. Then, face set stonily, he turned to be led to his cell.

  “It might interest you to know,” hissed von Grenfeld in his ear, “that escape Is impossible from Strato-prison!”

  “Let that thought comfort you,” Hale replied between his teeth. “Nobody can stop my revenge. I’ll have it some day!”

  Ivan von Grenfeld shuddered at the unspeakable resolve in that voice.

  “When?” he mocked. “Tomorrow? There is no tomorrow for those in Strato-prison!”

  CHAPTER IV

  Escape and Back

  RICHARD HALE watched Earth dropping away from the window of the strato-ship that was taking him to prison.

  He was in the small stern guard cabin, along with another man recently sentenced. With his back to the door sat an armed guard, bored but watchful.

  The powerful beat of the atomic rockets shot the ship up and up at a steady slant. New York City assumed toylike proportions. New Washington, the seat of World Government, on Long Island, dwindled beside it. It had never seemed such a magnificent sight, for bright sunshine glinted from its tall spires. The countryside around was blanketed with silvery snow. The ocean to the east, broad and blue, sparkled with white caps. Aircraft, like mechanical eagles, were drumming below, a symbol of the busy, bustling c
ivilization they were leaving.

  “Take a good look at it, you two,” admonished the hard-bitten guard laconically. “You’ll never see it again!” He watched his two prisoners with the eyes of a sadist. He went on harshly. “It’s a pretty awful feeling, isn’t it, leaving Earth and knowing you’ll never come back? You can’t escape from Strato-prison. Only one prisoner ever escaped in thirty years. How he did it, no one knows. But anyway the rest, and you two, won’t. You’ll live and die up there, fifty miles above Earth!”

  Each word to Hale was like a whiplash. An Earth slipped away, the stark realization bit deeper each second that he was leaving it forever. All its joys and sorrows and daily living were no longer his. Nothing but a lifetime of prison existence yawned before him. His life was completely ruined. His father’s life-work was now in the hands of the Five. His future happiness with Laura had been destroyed utterly. The acid of bitterness corroded his soul.

  “Damn you, stow it!” growled the other prisoner to the guard. Then he addressed Hale, in a tone of the common fraternity of crime. “I blew up an AP-dynamo, breaking a strike. Killed ten men. Name’s Tom Ranee. What you in for, pal?”

  “I was framed, railroaded,” Hale said hollowly. “At least you know what you’re being sent up for, but I’m innocent!”

  The prisoner looked cynical.

  “Yeah, of course. Innocent,” jeered the guard. He stared curiously at Hale. “In that case, you’re taking it pretty calm.”

  Hale’s eyes met those of the guard, but he said nothing. The guard shivered. Something deep and deadly and infinitely bitter lay naked in those eyes.

  Hale’s leaden calm gave no indication of the burning thoughts in his brain. He was living, over and over, the court scene. Again and again, like a specter, arose the searing picture of the Five twisting the coils of law about him. The Five—and Laura, the girl who had betrayed him. And like a great clanging bell, one word reverberated in his mind—revenge!

  But how, and when?

  Once locked up in Strato-prison, nothing could be done. In thirty years, out of thousands of prisoners, only one had escaped. He could find no hope there. His only chance of escape was now, before the ship reached Strato-prison.

  THE other prisoner stood at the window, looking down with a sort of frantic eagerness. His chin trembled slightly. Cold-blooded murderer though he had been, leaving Earth shook him to the bottom of his calloused soul. Hale could sense hysterical rage building up in the man with each passing second.

  Hale suddenly caught Ranee’s eye. An unvoiced signal passed between them. Overhead, in the ceiling, hung parachutes. The cabin window could be cracked with a determined heel. Only the guard was in the way. Perhaps between the two of them—There could be no planning of the desperate attempt, no chance to talk it over without the guard hearing. And the ship was ranging higher every minute, making the parachute drop to Earth a more precarious proposition. It was now or never.

  Hale tensed himself, but waited for Ranee to take the lead. Ranee suddenly did. He was a big man, but whirling, he threw himself at the guard. Startled, the guard half drew his para-beam pistol. A blow from the big prisoner staggered him against the wall. He let out a yell of alarm and flung himself at the attacker.

  Hale thought rapidly, in the desperation of the moment. He darted for the door, instead of joining in the battle. Another guard, stationed out there, must be kept from entering. Barely in time, Hale clutched at the door’s handle as it began sliding aside. He heaved it shut, held it closed by main strength. There was no lock or bolt. The guard on the other side jerked again and again. Hale felt his arm muscles crack, but braced his feet. He could hear the outside guard bawling for help.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Hale watched the progress of the fight in back of him. Both men were battering at one another savagely, grunting and cursing. The guard was too busy defending himself to use his paralysis pistol. Tom Ranee, handy with his fists, fighting for far more than a moment’s victory, rapidly gained the advantage. A final powerful blow cracked on the guard’s chin like a pistol-shot. He slumped against the wall, his head lolling.

  Hale felt like yelling in triumph Their chances were excellent now. But a jerk at the sliding door nearly pulled his arms from their sockets. Two guards were trying to force an entrance.

  “Bench!” gasped Hale. “Hurry—barricade door!”

  “Hold on!” barked Ranee.

  Hastily he unsnapped the bolts holding down the bench. Then he heaved the long metal bench against the sliding door, wedging it between the handle and one wall. Hale eased his hold on the handle. His hands were numb.

  At that moment, those beyond the door ceased tugging. Instead, something banged against the thin metal panel. It began to buckle slowly.

  “They’re battering it down!” panted Ranee. “Get down the parachutes while I kick out the window.”

  He kicked at the port with one heel of his heavy shoes. A tough quartz pane, it was designed to hold against the near-vacuum of the higher stratosphere. A dozen blows finally cracked it. The pieces fell outward, and the port was open to the thin air.

  Hale felt the breath whip out of his lungs, for the ship was up almost ten miles. Gasping, his ear-drums roaring, Hale helped the other prisoner strap on a parachute. His own was already in place.

  WITH the door ready at any second to crumple inward under a battering ram, the two prisoners leaped through the open port-hole. Ranee went first, simply because he got there first and wanted frantically to escape. But Hale was right after him, dizzy and exultant.

  As he slipped from the port edge, his thoughts were back in the court room. Once again he was looking from one to the other of the Five and promising revenge. When he landed below, on Earth, he would go into hiding, lay careful plans. He would—

  His thoughts ended abruptly the instant his body struck something springy and binding. He had not opened his parachute. He had fallen, in fact, no more than a few feet. Dazedly he looked around. Ranee was a yard away, in a wide net hung over the side of the ship!

  It took Richard Hale a full minute to realize they had not escaped after all. The ship had slowed, was barely cruising along under low rocket power. The navigators had flung out the nets just in time and caught them like two giant insects.

  A stream of invective came from Tom Ranee as he struggled uselessly against the net. Then he relaxed with a sigh. The beam of a para-pistol had sprayed over him. The beam touched Hale and he went numb. He felt the nets being drawn in slowly.

  “Guess we failed, pal,” Ranee struggled to say. “It’s Strato-prison for us, after all.”

  An hour later, the laboring rocket engine had lifted them within sight of Strato-prison.

  The broken port had been resealed with another quartz pane and vacuum wax. Normal pressures had been restored. The two prisoners were back in custody, tightly bound with chains. Three watchful guards stood over them. There had been no slightest second chance to escape.

  Hale looked out dully, utterly dejected in spirit. Strato-prison was a huge, pitiless globe of metal, hanging fifty miles above Earth’s surface. A half-mile in diameter, it was upheld by a zero-gravity field, created by giant AP-dynamos. It served double duty as a prison and sun-power station. Its sunward side, as it slowly rotated, held great lenses that focused the Sun’s beams within. Electro-converters captured the sun-energy, and sent it to Earth via radio power beams.

  It was hoped one day that it would also serve as a way-station in space flight. No ship had yet reached the Moon or another planet successfully. AP-rockets and zero-gravity fields were not enough. Above the protective ionosphere of Earth existed the deadly cosmic rays in full force. Life withered in their blast. They would have to be conquered before men could visit the planets.

  But men had at least extended their domain to fifty miles above Earth. Experimental ships had even gone a little higher.

  Hale already felt as though he were in another world. Nothing was familiar. The blue-black of near space swam
with bright stars. The Sun lay revealed in all its glory. Its halo and corona were starkly beautiful. Sun and stars could be seen together here, for this was not Earth. Earth lay invisible below, behind a blanket of clouds. It was another totally alien world.

  The rocket ship circled over the gigantic globe, flashing a radio signal to Earth for the locks to be opened. The single sealed entrance to Strato-prison was operated by remote control from the home planet. As a result, Strato-prison was escape-poof. Once a month the supply ship arrived from Earth, and that was the only contact with the world below.

  Yet one prisoner had escaped!

  HALE nourished that thought, though sight of the impregnable prison has struck him with almost utter hopelessness. A year before, for the first time, a prisoner had completely vanished. How he had accomplished the miraculous escape, the astounded prison officials did not know. It was almost a legendary feat. Hale clung to the fact that if it could be done once, it could be done again. Then he shelved the matter far back in his mind. It was something for the unpredictable future.

  Hale knew little more about Strato-prison. Not much was known on Earth of the hell of bitter, lost souls. Earth’s worst criminals were its denizens, bestial murderers, saboteurs, plotters of treason. All were lifers. All had been completely disowned by the society against which they had sinned. All of them, in times of capital punishment, would have been executed.

  Hale shuddered, now that he was so close. To live out a life among such dregs of humanity would be sheer torture to him. Most bitterly ironic of all, he was innocent.

  Two enormous drawbridge doors swung wide in the upper surface of the globe. The supply and prisoner ship entered on throbbing rockets. Two sets of locks closed overhead. Air hissed into the large space. The crew of the ship stepped out to begin unloading supplies. A moment later a door opened in the large chamber, and a file of denim-clad men marched in, flanked by armed guards. They helped in the unloading.

  “All right, you two, let’s go,” barked the ship’s guard to Hale and Ranee. He was the guard they had attacked. His face had been patched with adhesive. He grinned evilly. “This is it, your home for the rest of your natural lives. And I wish you a long life!”