The Escape Orbit Read Online Free

bitingly, with a definite stress on the last word, “is why we are worth fighting for? Do we ourselves have a choice in this matter? Are we property of some kind, a potential slave-labor force perhaps?”
    “Oh, no, sir…!” began Kelso.
    “Certainly not!” the Civilian protested, practically shouting him down. “The very idea is ridiculous! You won’t be asked to work until you ask us to give you a job, believe me. Even then the work will be easier, and much more useful, than the senseless jobs the Committee would give you…”
    He paused briefly to snap, “Be quiet, Lieutenant!” at Kelso, who was trying vainly to break in, then went on, “for example, a few hours after you arrive in the post up there you will begin what is known as de-briefing. You will understand that everyone here, Committeemen and so-called Civilians alike, are curious regarding the progress of the war or the latest news from home, you would expect them to suck you dry of all the news and gossip from our various home planets. But the de-briefing involves much more than this.”
    “For days on end and for anything up to six hours a day you will be questioned,” he continued grimly, “with the emphasis on the last few days before your arrival. The interrogation will be conducted under light hypnosis, if you’re lucky enough to be a hypnotic subject, and in any event will consist of the same line of questioning repeated over and over. Because the Committee wants to know everything it possibly can about the guardship, and that means everything you saw during transshipment and while on the shuttle coming down, together with everything you saw or heard or otherwise noted without knowing that you did so. Without the proper drugs, digging for these trace memories and peripheral images is a long and exhausting business, and what makes it even worse is that it is a complete waste of time…!”
    “Sir!” Kelso broke in sharply before the other could go on. “I must insist that you say nothing further to these officers. I found them first and —”
    “You found them, yes,” the Civilian snapped back at him, “but you couldn’t have protected them and so your claim to be escorting them is sheer—”
    “I can protect them now, sir,” said Kelso in a dangerously quiet voice.
    Warren saw the spears and cross-bows being raised again. Two powerful and mutually opposed ideologies were struggling for his allegiance, it seemed and he still did not know enough to mediate. All he could do was to attack one of them before they could attach each other.
    “Why do you call him ‘sir,’ Lieutenant?” Warren asked sharply. “You’ve told me that he is a Civilian—someone who, if not actually a deserter, is at very least a person to whom you would not show respect. Yet you call him ‘sir’ and he appears to be giving you orders.”
    “Because he is Fleet Commander Peters,” Kelso replied, without taking his eyes off the other man. He sounded bitter as well as angry as he went on, “Because he is the senior officer on the camp. To prisoners like myself who are trying not to forget we are officers, his rank and position must be respected even though he himself may no longer consider them important.”
    So this large bearded man dressed in animal skins was a Fleet Commander! In the service an officer of that rank, holding as he did authority over the personnel and facilities necessary for the supply and maintenance of a fleet of anything up to one hundred interstellar ships, was a very potent individual indeed. In the ordinary way a Lieutenant regarded such august beings with much more than mere respect, and Kelso’s open contempt towards an officer so vastly his senior angered Warren suddenly. He had to remind himself that the particular Fleet Commander had “gone civilian” while the Lieutenant had not, and that going civilian in Kelso’s book was a very shameful thing to do.
    “I’ve had enough arguing!” Peters shouted again, his voice