The Transvection Machine

by Edward D. Hoch

  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?

  Frost went to the ticket counter at the other end of the terminal and presented his newly acquired space travel card to a yawning blond girl. She glanced at it casualty and fed it into the computer at her elbow. There’d be a moment’s delay while an Earth check was completed, he knew, and he passed the time by engaging her in casual conversation. Presently the computer began blinking and sputtering, reporting that the card was not delinquent, not reported stolen, not registered to an exile, not defaced, and fully authorized for government use. The blond girl nodded and stamped out a ticket. “Have a good flight,” she told him. “I miss the old Earth myself.”

  He gave her a grin and returned to the waiting room. The young man still slept in his chair, and Frost carefully worked just a corner of the card case back into his pocket. It might fall out, but he’d find it on the chair. Certainly it would never do to have him report a theft before blast-off time.

  Frost smiled to himself as he considered yet another imperfection of the machine. The space travel computer did not care that two flights were charged to the sa
me travel card, as long as that card was in good standing. They could speculate all they wanted as to how he’d managed to get off the planet, but no one would realize the truth until the computer spewed out its monthly bills. Perhaps, he thought with a chuckle, they might even think he’d gone home via the transvection machine. Or else defected once more to the mountains or the Russo-Chinese Colony.

  Frost managed to doze a bit while waiting for blastoff. At seven-thirty he boarded the ship with the other passengers, receiving only a curt nod from the stewardess checking tickets. There would be no trouble with customs on the other end, either, since he was traveling on a government ticket. No trouble at all.

  By eight o’clock Euler Frost was on his way back to Earth.

  The man’s name was Graham Axman, and Frost hadn’t seen him since his arrest and exile ten years earlier. But Axman still occupied the same dingy office in a Washington slum, and he still looked much as Frost remembered him—with a small pointed beard and fiery eyes such as the devil himself might have envied.

  “It’s good to have you back, Euler,” he said, speaking in the same rasping voice Frost remembered so well. Axman had been his first contact with the revolutionary group a decade before, the man who’d picked him up one evening in Paris and taken him to that man-made island in the Indian Ocean. He’d been in the process of reporting to Axman back in Washington at the time of his arrest.

  “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Earth,” Frost told him truthfully. “It looked awfully good coming in over the Pacific and the west coast.”

  “It is good,” Axman said. “We’re trying to keep it that way. How old are you now, Euler?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Good! A good age! You have the wisdom of adulthood without the physical drawbacks of middle age.” Axman himself was barely past forty, and Frost wondered what his physical drawbacks might be. “No doubt you want to serve the organization once more?”

  “Of course. More than ever.”

  “Good, good! We have grown in this last decade. We have a name now, and members in fifty cities of the world.”

  “A name?”

  “A simple one, to be sure. We call ourselves HAND—Humans Against Neuter Domination. Man against machine.”

  “A good name,” Frost agreed.

  “A very good name.” Axman held out his own hands and turned them slowly over. “Hands built this world, made it what it is. Hands—and the ability to use them—are what make us superior to the apes. Are we to surrender all that to the machine—to a sexless, unfeeling monster of wires and transistors?”

  “No,” Frost replied. He wet his lips and continued, “I think I can serve HAND. My father and a girl I loved died because of machines. I’ve returned to Earth in part to avenge their deaths.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “By killing a man. Vander Defoe.”

  “The secretary of extra-terrestrial defense?”

  “And the inventor of the transvection machine.”

  Graham Axman let out his breath slowly. “Your goals run quite close to our own. We have mounted a campaign against the transvection machine ever since its first human test, when a girl was transported from here to Calcutta. Defoe is especially vulnerable because we understand only he and one other man know the full secrets of the device. The other man, Hubert Ganger, is out of the government now, so there’s a good chance that Vander Defoe’s death could mean the end of the entire project. It’s not yet far enough along for his assistants in the government laboratories to take it on without his guidance.”

  Frost nodded. “Good.”

  Axman hesitated and then said, “I have only recently come upon some special knowledge that may help us in our battle against the transvection machine, but there’s been no time to check it out. I must return to the Indian Ocean, to Plenish Island, and speak to someone there. In the meantime, the death of Vander Defoe can only be good for our cause.”

  “I thought you’d approve.”

  “When will you do it?”

  “Today, tomorrow. No later.”

  Axman’s eyes widened in amazement. “So soon! There are preparations to be made!”

  “No preparations. I only need a weapon.”

  “A laser gun, I suppose.”

  But Frost shook his head. “Nothing so crude. I want time to escape. An anesthesia gun will do nicely.”

  “An anesthesia gun?”

  “One of the advantages of modern medicine is that injections can be given through the skin with an anesthesia gun, and the patient never feels a thing.”

  “I see what you’re getting at.”

  “A poison, slow but deadly. I give him a gentle bump on the street and inject him through the back of the hand or even through his pants leg. A few hours later, in his office, he drops dead.”

  “Very clever. It’s something of a wonder no one ever thought of it before.”

  Euler Frost smiled. “Maybe they have. They just haven’t been caught at it. Now, can you get me the gun and poison?”

  “By tomorrow, surely.”

  “By tomorrow.” Frost stood up and they shook hands. Axman gripped his for an extra instant, and there was meaning in the grip. Frost was a member of HAND now, a working member.

  He could hardly wait till tomorrow.

  Friday dawned bleak and rainy over Washington, despite a promise of a climate-controlled weekend. The wetness on his face felt good to Frost as he walked along Baltimore Street toward the Cabinet Wing of the New White House, reminding him there were still a few things the machines could fail at. He carefully drew the anesthesia gun from its holder beneath his raincloak and held it ready. This would be a day to remember, a day to repay that decade of exile on a foreign world.

  He recognized Vander Defoe at once from his pictures, seeing him leave his electric car in the official parking lot and walk across the street in a black rain-cloak. Frost nodded to himself and started forward. The gun in his hand, hanging loosely at his side, was loaded with a full dose of an obscure industrial poison used to clean atomic reactors. Defoe would feel nothing, but he would be dead in six hours, his skin turned a lovely shade of purple.

  He fell into step behind Defoe, bringing up the gun. Now, now … in just a minute … now …

  “Mr. Defoe!”

  It was a girl’s voice, a secretary’s morning greeting. She came running through the puddles to his side, blocking off Frost’s thrust. The anesthesia gun had to contact skin, or at least some thin fabric, to be effective, and now this girl was walking with him, snuggling close against the rain, unwittingly protecting him. Only his back offered an easy target, and this was covered by the raincloak.

  Frost cursed softly and stopped following them. Bad luck. He could do nothing without making it obvious, and if Defoe became suspicious he might seek medical treatment and obtain an antidote for the poison. Frost must wait for another day, when Defoe might be alone, or without the protection of the bulky raincloak.

  He crossed the street and walked quickly away, turning up his collar against the renewed fury of the rain.

  7 CARL CRADER

  CRADER WAS UNHAPPY WITH progress on the case. It was not going the way he liked to see them go. For one thing, after a day of careful investigation they were still not even certain that the computer had actually killed Vander Defoe. Staring out the window at the dredging scows in the harbor, he began to make a mental list of the possibilities. Granted the machine could do no wrong without human error or intent, he was left with no less than four likely avenues of investigation:

  First, Secretary Defoe’s death could have been accidental, caused by negligence on the part of Nurse Simmons or others on the staff at Salk Memorial Hospital. He had a strong feeling such might be the case, simply because there was no outward evidence of murder, and yet, Earl’s questioning of the hospital people had failed to turn up anything concrete.

  A second possibility was that a revolutionary group, like the one this man Fro
st belonged to, had planned and executed the assassination. It was certainly a likely possibility, and one to be investigated.

  Third, the killing of Vander Defoe might be a purely personal crime, in which case suspicion would point to his estranged wife, Gretel, or to his former partner Hubert Ganger. Each could be said to have a strong motive—especially Ganger, if the rumors that Defoe had stolen the transvection machine from him should prove correct.

  He punched up the vision-phone and got Maarten Tromp at the New White House. “Maarten, I’ve just been thinking about Defoe’s death.”

  “Yes?” Tromp replied, speaking from his cluttered desk. On the wall behind him Crader could see a chart of world population increases since 2025. He had a sudden thought that perhaps enemy agents could be calling high government officials simply to see and photograph their offices on the vision-phone. But certainly the security people had thought of that one too.

  “Well, I understand he was the only one in government familiar in full detail with the operation of the transvection machine.”

  “That’s correct. The machine is still experimental, as you know. We’re having the damndest time trying to make sense out of his notes.”

  “And if you can’t make sense of them?”

  “What?” Tromp was frowning into the vision-phone.

  “If you can’t make sense, does that mean the revolutionary groups are successful? That the transvection machine can’t be used?”

  “Not at all,” Tromp replied. “If they killed Defoe for that, they’re out of luck. The president has already contacted Defoe’s former partner, Hubert Ganger, to stand by. He may be brought in to work with us on the machine. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m trying to establish just who is profiting by Defoe’s death. The revolutionaries are, in a sense, but it’s likely right now that Hubert Ganger might well profit the most.”