by Earl
Hale stopped, suddenly realizing he was thinking aloud, as he had in his cell.
DR. RISS smiled peculiarly. “Y-fourteen-eighteen, say the first word that comes to mind at each word I say. Don’t hesitate. Ready?”
Hale nodded. Swiftly he told himself to be alert. The Five would want him adjudged insane. Dr. Riss probably had his orders. At the slightest excuse, Hale would be branded unsound of mind, consigned to the mercy of Euthanasia death.
“Red!” snapped the psychiatrist. “Color.”
“Sound!”
“Silence.”
“Cell!”
“Solitary.”
It went on for some time. The keywords all related to his confinement. An unhinged man would have screamed at each one.
Dr. Riss’ tone changed. “Syndicate!”
“Innocent.”
“Tube!”
“Mine.”
“Laura!”
Hale hesitated for an instant. The list had been prepared by the Five, obviously. His nerves, about to crack, eased as a gong rang in his mind—“Watch yourself, Richard Hale, or you’re done for!”
“Girl,” he snapped back.
“Revenge!”
“Word.”
It went on for some time, ending with the psychiatrist snapping “confession!” and Hale instantly returning, “Never!”
Dr. Riss arose, flashed a bright light in Hale’s eyes, peering intently. He turned finally.
The psychiatrist drew himself up.
“Warden, in all honesty to myself and my profession. I can’t pronounce this man anything but sane, no matter who—” He broke off and finished: “This man has a strong mind. I dismiss the case.”
Hale’s heart leaped. He had scored against the Five! No matter how small and empty a victory it was, he had won this much against them.
“Back to solitary,” snapped the warden. His glance at Hale said: “We’ll see how long this strong-minded man lasts!”
Locked in his cell, Hale wondered himself. The oppressive silence and dark again coiled themselves around his mind. The brief interlude above was already a forgotten dream that served only to heighten his returned misery. Diabolically, the prison masters had planned it so. It was mental Inquisition.
TIME dissolved into itself. Days or weeks meant nothing to Richard Hale in his lightless, soundless, timeless cell. Mind-staggering eternities hung before him, punctuated only by the regular clank of the robot conveyor.
Hale’s misery touched bottom. If he only had something to do, a book to read, paper or wire that he could occupy his fingers with. Just eternally sitting and thinking made him feel like a blind worm. Even the prisoners above did not realize how happy they were, with a chance to work and talk with others.
And when Hale thought back to Earth, he wondered if people realized what staggering treasures were heaped around them. A breath of wind, a shaft of sunlight, a tuft of grass—each was a blessed jewel denied him, And the whole Earth was crammed and loaded with them! The thought grew almost incredible, as though Earth were a dream heaven that did not really exist.
Hale realized, in the hack of his tortured mind, that these were distorted thoughts, that bit by bit he was losing the struggle to remain mentally balanced. He might last another six months, but what about the next six months—and the next and next? What if for five or ten or fifteen years he could think of no way of escape?
Years, whole unending years of this! The thought crushed him. If no escape presented itself, his jailer would one day open the cell to find a broken creature stumbling around, croaking “Revenge!” without even knowing what the word meant.
No, it must not be years. That would be more than the human brain could stand. If he was to escape, it must be soon. Subconsciously he had been constantly wrestling with the problem, and it seemed impossible. Yet one prisoner had done it. But how, through walls of steel, past swarming guards, and out of a sealed globe suspended in a near-vacuum?
Hale jumped up suddenly, yelling and screaming at the air vents of the door. He had thought of something. The jailer’s voice answered beyond the door.
“Ready to confess?”
“No. Listen to me.” Hale went on tensely: “I have friends on Earth—Rich friends. Does money have any value to you?”
“Money has value to everyone,” returned the jailer noncommitally.
Hale exulted. The jailer did not leave. The word money had evidently caught him.
“Could you get a note to Earth, from me to my friends, at a price?” Hale asked eagerly.
“Well?”
Hale took a breath. “They would arrange any sum you mention, if you could help me.” Hale paused suggestively. He did have business friends who might—it was a forlorn chance at best—scrape together a sizable amount.
“The price of a candle is one hundred dollars,” the jailor said candidly.
“What is the price of—freedom?” Hale demanded breathlessly.
“More than you could pay, my friend,” laughed the jailer. “Because you would have to buy off all the guards. It is impossible to arrange a prisoner’s escape. It has never happened.”
HALE’S heart sank. “But what about the one who did escape?” he queried wistfully.
“Z-ninety-nine-twenty-two? That was a mystery.” The jailer’s voice filled with sudden awe. “He was in solitary too. A year ago I opened his cell, and he had gone. The cell looked intact, but he was gone. They suspected me, but the electric lock record showed no tampering. He was simply gone!”
“But how, where?” Hale pursued. “Who knows?” The jailer must have shrugged. “Maybe he went into the fourth dimension.” He laughed shortly and moved away. “And that’s your only hope, Y-fourteen-eighteen. Find the way into the fourth dimension!”
Alone, Hale pondered the mystery of Z-9922. Days later he was still pondering, weeks later, an eternity later. The silence and the dark and the timeless web around him whispered evilly.
“Into the fourth dimension—escape—revenge! Into the fourth dimension—escape—revenge!”
On and on the endless refrain went in his tormented mind, like a cracked phonograph record.
And suddenly Richard Hale knew the truth. It was a lie, a diabolical myth developed by the master sadists of Strato-prison. No prisoner had escaped! There had been no Z-9922. It was a story designed to keep alive the faintest of hopes in prisoners’ breasts, so they could not accept the philosophy of resignation. Then the mind, chasing like a mad hare between the two extremes of hope and hopelessness, would more speedily wear itself out, and collapse.
There was no escape!
And Richard Hale, driven by the demon that yelled “revenge!” ceaselessly and meaninglessly, knew that he was going mad . . .
Another eternity of bitter loneliness crept by.
Hale sat with his face in his hands, peering into the darkness, thinking. He no longer talked of himself. He listened to the silence, and he thought.
“Damn you!”
He suddenly whirled, clutching with his hand, and almost caught them.
“Please let me alone!” he begged.
Damn those dark-creatures, always pulling at his hair and ears and tormenting him. Couldn’t they let him alone? Couldn’t let him think in peace?
He had something very important to figure out. The Door. He hadn’t found it yet. On hands and knees he had crawled the circuit of the walls, feeling with his hands thousands of times. Some time he would find it, the door into the fourth dimension. And then he would walk out. It was so simple.
He swore again, suddenly. Now he heard the crawl of a bug. There were bugs here too, and they disturbed his deep study. He dropped silently in a crouch, listened, turning his head like a radio aerial. Finally, moving forward cautiously, he spied the bug, for his eyes were tempered to near-darkness. He scuttled forward, stamped, heard the crunch of the bug underfoot.
SATISFIED, he went back to his bunk. He resumed his thinking, waving the dark-creatures aside. He would
find the door through the fourth dimension, and escape. Then he would find the Five, lead them back to the cell, make them listen to the bugs, and play with the dark-creatures.
He shrieked with laughter. Make them listen to the bugs, the bugs that slithered along the wall, making tiny scraping sounds. There, another one! It was scraping, clicking, sliding along with a sort of slither. He could almost distinguish the sound of each insect leg lifting up and down, in that perfect silence, scraping, hissing—Hissing? Why should it make a hissing sound?
Hale sat up, listened intently, cupping his ears. Then he eased himself to the floor, placing one ear against the metal. The sound came from below the floor!
Cold shock swept over Hale’s mind. He forgot the bugs and dark-creatures. This new phenomenon demanded his attention. It was the first outside sound that had ever penetrated his absolute isolation. What could it be?
Intently he listened for an hour. It was a steady hiss that reminded Hale of something he had heard before. Many eternities before, on a place called Earth, he had heard a similar sound. It was the sound of some instrument in operation.
Hale’s mind beat against waves of obscurity. God, if he could only remember the time before the dark-creatures had come! That hissing sound, and the crunch of billions of little things together—
Atoms!
The word was like cold water thrown over his fevered mind. He gasped, remembering.
An AP-beam was biting into matter!
By degrees Hale’s mind swam upward from a pool of bedlam. Reasoned thoughts charged forward against mad conceptions of dark-creatures and the fourth-dimensional door.
“Who or what,” came the thought, “is working or digging with an AP-beam under this floor?”
CHAPTER VII
Weird Visitor
WHILE Hale waited in breathless suspense, the answer came days later. One day a sharp hiss sounded, almost like a pistol shot. Hale momentarily saw the purling-violet flame of an AP-beam stab upward from the floor. The beam broke through one needlelike hole. And it stopped.
Wild with wonder, Hale kneeled at the spot and pounded against the metal with a wooden bowl he had saved from his last meal. He pounded three times, heavily. Would the sound penetrate below? Would the signal reach his possible—rescuers! Hale’s fevered thoughts had formed that explanation for the mysterious event. He or they, whoever he or they were, were digging up toward his cell, perhaps from the outer hull. Either that or workmen were doing routine repairs.
He waited in an agony of suspense to find the result of his signal. No answer came, no sound at all. The thermometer of hope dropped. But suddenly it leaped high again. The fact that they hadn’t answered meant they were afraid to, whereas workmen would have ignored his signals. That made him cling to the theory of rescuers who feared they had been detected by guards.
Hale gripped his wooden bowl firmly. Sweat started on his brow as he searched a confused memory for the International Code, learned years before and almost forgotten. Finally he began tapping, slowly, struggling to remember.
“R-i-c-h-a-r-d H-a-l-e p-r-i-s-o-n-e-r Y-1l-4-1-8 w-a-i-t-i-n-g p-l-e-a-s-e a-n-s-w-e-r.”
Then he lay flat, one ear pressed against the metal floor. He held his breath, lest his harsh breathing hide any sounds from below. But no slightest sound returned. Hale left the weight of despair. Had it all been imagination in a disordered mind? But no, he could feel with his fingers the tiny hole an AP-beam had cut. Why in God’s name didn’t they answer? Even if they didn’t know the code, any tapping signal would be reassurance. They must realize that.
They must realize that.
An hour passed. Hale’s muscles were numb from lying rigidly in one position. He picked up the bowl finally, to try again. Perhaps his first signal hadn’t gone through—
And then he dropped it, seized by a fit of trembling.
The return signal!
It was a faint metallic tapping, barely audible, as though the sender feared detection at any moment.
“A-n-y g-u-a-r-d-s n-e-a-r.”
“N-o,” Hale returned joyfully. “C-o-m-e t-h-r-o-u-g-h.”
For long minutes there was no answer to this and no sign from below. Then suddenly the hiss of the AP-beam resumed. Skillfully guided by an unseen hand, it ate through the metal floor in a rough circle two feet in diameter. Then the severed plate, like a manhole cover, slowly raised at one side. Slowly it inched upward as though a pair of eyes were gradually taking in more and more of the view beyond.
The raised side of the lid remained poised six inches off the floor. Hale’s owl-sensitive eyes made out a forehead, overhung by a tangled mop of hair, and a pair of eyes that painfully peered about.
Hale stood paralyzed, wondering what to do or say.
WHEN the eyes met his, they widened, taking in his figure from head to toe. They were eyes also apparently able to see by the dim reflected glow of the cell, pitch darkness to normal vision.
Hale waited for the unknown man to make the next move. He did. He spoke, wearily.
“Here, help me. Lift this lid away.” Hale complied, rolling the inch-thick metal plate aside and leaning it against the wall. Beyond was a dark tunnel, almost parallel to the floor, but slanting down gradually. Out of it crawled the newcomer. Hale made out an old, scrawny man with uncut hair and white beard. He sat dejectedly beside his tunnel, staring about as though to make sure that what he had seen actually existed. Then he looked up.
“Whom did you say you were?” he queried in his weary voice.
Hale hadn’t spoken a word aloud for long months. His first attempt resulted only in a hoarse mumble. Then, he repeated, taking great care:
“Richard Hale. Or number Y-fourteen-eighteen.”
“What cell?”
Hale searched his memory. “B-fifty-five.”
“B-fifty-five!” echoed the other. “Then my calculations were way off!” He groaned from the very bottom of his soul. “Five years! Five years of labor and planning gone for nothing!”
The old head bowed. Dry sobs racked the bony frame. Hale, watching, was also shaken by grinding disappointment. The moment the old man had crawled out of his tunnel, Hale had seen he was another prisoner, not rescuers but another poor wretch from another cell! One part of Hale’s mind cursed bitterly and savagely. Lost hope crushed the buoyant spirit that had awaited the wielder of the AP-beam.
For long minutes they said nothing more to each other. Hale hated the man, for he represented shattered hope. But another part of his mind was gradually shaken by emotion of a different sort. This man, fellow prisoner though he was, was another human being—someone to talk to—someone to keep away the nightmare dark creatures that swarmed in the frightful silence.
“Whoever you are,” Hale said abruptly, kneeling beside the old man and gripping his shoulders, “you’ve saved my sanity. I’m glad you’re here.” He stopped, unable to express the feelings that gripped him.
The old man straightened, controlling himself. He also seemed ashamed of his first reaction.
“Dr. John Allison was my name on Earth when I was among the living. Forgive me, Richard Hale. I know what the loneliness of solitary is. Our meeting is its own reward. But, you see, I had hoped to penetrate into a main passage of Strato-prison that would have meant escape!”
The word sounded sweet to Hale.
“Is that how Z-ninety-nine-twenty-two did it?”
“I’m Z-ninety-nine-twenty-two!” the old man chuckled harshly.
“But I thought he—you—escaped!” Hale gasped.
“Only my cell, not from Strato-prison. Its record, though they don’t know it themselves, is still unblemished. No one has escaped Strato-prison, though I have come close.”
ONCE more awakened, Hale’s scientific mind prompted a question. “Where is your AP-projector?”
“Here.” Dr. Allison held up his hand. A tubular instrument small and crude, rested in his palm.
“The smallest AP-projector I ever saw on Earth stood three fee
t high and weighed a quarter-ton!” Hale protested.
The scientist smiled, with a trace of pride.
“Clumsy machines. I constructed this myself, here in prison. Look, it is based on a new principle.”
He pressed a spring trigger on the side. From the small nozzle leaped a five-inch AP-beam. When he held it against the wall, it ate out a slight depression.
“The metal is transformed into helium, of course, as with Earth AP-excavators. My power-source is a speck of radium.”
Suddenly there was a metallic ping. The small instrument burst into a dozen flying pieces. The beam died with a hissing gurgle.
Dr. Allison stared at the broken parts in his palm. Though unwilling to believe it had happened, he did not seem too surprised.
“I thought it would happen before this,” he sighed wearily. “It was ready to fall apart at any moment, after five years of use.” He smiled with an effort. “Well, that’s the end of escape from Strato-prison.”
“But if you somehow managed to construct one, why can’t you make another?” Hale asked, wondering whether he dared raise hope.
The old scientist spoke dully.
“Do you know how long it took me to build this one? Ten years!”
Hale’s confused thoughts, alternately hopeful and hopeless in the past few minutes, consigned themselves to his former despair. He could think of only one thing to say.
“At least we have each other’s company.”
On the following phase of Hale’s prison life, that was an inestimable blessing. It was easier now to face silence, dark, and frustrated existence with another human presence. Time moved less leadenly.
Dr. Allison’s story was strange, rivalling the somber imaginations of Poe, Hugo, or Bierce.
“I’ve been here in Strato-prison for thirty years,” he began with a weary sigh. “I was one of the ‘charter’ prisoners. It is a sort of poetic justice, I suppose, because a Dr. Karl Gordy and I helped devise the zero-gravity field that upholds this globe.”
Hale started, shocked and suddenly grim.
“Dr. Gordy secretly sold the plans to the Centro-Europe dictatorship of nineteen-seventy for a stratosphere war base. I got enraged when I found out. I went to their capital and demanded return of the plans. How foolish I was! I was arrested and sentenced by them for the murder of Dr. Gordy—whom they shot! Thus they had both of us out of the way.” He sighed again. “The only consolation to me was that Dr. Gordy’s treachery was paid in its own coin. His kind doesn’t deserve to live. He at least is gone.”