The Arctic blizzard swept needles of stinging ice against Saul Duncan’s
face. Doggedly he plowed on, head lowered, heavy shoulders hunched
against the fury of the winds. Once he heard the drone of a heliplane
overhead, and flung himself flat till the sound had been swallowed by
the gale. Then for a few moments his body refused to obey the grim
demands of his mind. Deceptive warmth was stealing over him, inviting
him to rest. But that, he knew, meant death then and there.
If he kept going, there was a chance of safety and freedom—not much of
a chance, though, for few men ever escaped alive from the Transpolar
Penitentiary. Situated within the Arctic Circle, the grim, guarded
fortress of stone and metal and tough plastics was safer than Alcatraz
had been a century and a half ago. Yet Duncan had escaped....
His bitter lips twisted in a harsh smile. Escape! Into a polar
blizzard—but that was the only possible time when a prisoner could
evade the guard planes that patrolled the frigid waste. And Duncan could
not have made his escape without aid from outside.
With stiff fingers he fumbled out a compass-like instrument that had
been smuggled to him in the penitentiary. The needle held motionless,
pointing directly into the teeth of the gale. If he kept on in that
direction, sooner or later he would reach Olcott’s plane. But how long
it would take he did not know.
Still, even dying in the blizzard was better than another five years in
Transpolar—five years that had ravaged and embittered Saul Duncan,
hardening his no-longer-youthful face, putting ice into his glance and
hatred in his heart. But physically he had thrived. If a prisoner
survived the first year at Transpolar, he grew tougher, harder—and more
dangerous.
Duncan trudged on, shaking with cold. Ten years for murder—second
degree murder. Well, he hadn’t been framed. He’d wanted to kill
Moriarty. And he had succeeded, in a moment of blind, crimson rage that
had flooded his brain and sent his fist smashing into Moriarty’s face
with the impact of a pile-driver. The man had put his filthy hands on
Andrea....
Damn him! Even now Duncan’s muscles grew tight at the memory. He
recalled how he and Andrea had fought their way up, slum-bred, facing a
future of poverty and crime, and how they had seized a chance of
escaping from that dark future. It meant arduous work, years of
training, for learning to pilot a spaceship is no easy task. But he had
done it, and Andrea had been willing to wait, scraping along on just a
little more than nothing, in preparation for the day when Duncan could
draw the pay of a first-rate pilot.
But Moriarty had been Duncan’s superior officer. And there had been no
witnesses except Andrea and Duncan. The verdict was murder, with
extenuating circumstances. A recommendation for mercy.
Mercy—ten years in Transpolar, of which Duncan had already served five!
Five years of knowing that Andrea, ticketed as a jailbird’s wife, could
scarcely earn enough to keep alive. Five years, and there were patches
of iron gray along Saul Duncan’s temples.
He had grown bitter. He hated the society that had sent him to a living
hell, and when Olcott offered escape....
At a price, of course. But Duncan was ready to pay that price. His gray
eyes were savage as he marched on, staggering sometimes, snow crusting
on his lashes so that he could scarcely see.
* * * * *
So well was the plane camouflaged that he almost lurched into the white
hull before he realized that he had reached the end of the march. Sudden
weakness overtook Duncan, and he found it difficult to move the few
steps to the cabin’s door. He pounded on the alloy with fists that had
no feeling.
There was a click, and the panel slid open, letting a gust of warm air
play about Duncan’s cheeks.
Brent Olcott stood there, tall, dark-haired and arrogantly handsome. He
was a big man, like Duncan, but so well proportioned that his movements
were tigerishly graceful. His teeth flashed under a well-kept mustache
as he extended a hand.
It was impossible to speak above the gale’s shriek. Not till the panel
had been shut, cutting off the uproar, did Olcott say tersely, “Glad you
made it, Duncan. I didn’t count on a storm like this.”
“I made it. That’s the important part.” It was difficult to articulate
with almost frozen lips. Olcott looked at him sharply.
“Frost-bite? Can’t have that. Strip down and rub yourself with that.” He
nodded toward an auto-refrigerated bucket of chopped ice on a shelf. “If
we’re ordered down, I’ve a secret compartment you can slide into.
Crowded quarters, but you won’t be found there. Now—” He turned to the
controls as Duncan, shivering, peeled off his wet garments.
It was a difficult take-off, despite the triple-powered motor. Only a
gyro-equipped plane could have made it. The ship lurched and rocked
dangerously in the blast.
Duncan fought his way beside Olcott. “Got rockets?”
“Auxiliaries, yes. But—”
“They won’t be seen in this storm.”
Olcott spread his hands in a meaning gesture. Few atmosphere pilots
could handle the tricky manipulations of rocket-tubes. They were for
emergency only, but this, Duncan thought, was an emergency. He thrust
Olcott away and slid into the cushioned cradle-chair. His fingers, still
stiff, poised over the keys.
Then his old-time skill came back, the intricate series of what were
really conditioned reflexes that made a pilot capable of handling a bank
of tube keys. Split-second thinking wasn’t quite enough. Reactions had
to be almost without thought. The ship spun down, and Duncan’s hands
flashed into swift movement on the studs.
The sudden acceleration hit him in the pit of the stomach. Olcott had
braced himself, but was almost torn loose from his grip. For a moment
the plane bucked and jolted madly, rocket fighting rocket, both fighting
the gale. Then, without warning, they were above the storm, in air
almost too thin for the prop, leveling off at an easy keel.
* * * * *
Duncan set the course due south and turned to Olcott for instructions.
The latter was at another keyboard, carefully studying a visiplate
before him. It showed the sky, dark blue and empty. After a moment
Olcott made a few adjustments and came back to take over the controls.
“Nice work. You’re a better pilot than I’d hoped. But you’ll need to
be—” Olcott didn’t finish.
Duncan was rubbing his skin with ice. “I know rockets. Say, isn’t this
dangerous? We may be spotted from below.”
“We won’t. This plane’s a chameleon. The man we’re going to see invented
the trick for me. We’ve a double hull, and the outer skin’s transparent
plastic. The space between the skins can be filled with certain colored
gases—I’ve a wide range of colors. On the snowfield I used white, to
blend with surroundings. Here it’s a blue gas. From below we’re
invisible against the sky.” Olcott rose to make an adjustment. “I’d
better lighten the color a bit. We’re going south fast, and the sky’s
not so dark now.”
Duncan nodded appreciatively. He had heard stories about Brent Olcott,
few of them savory, but all hinting at the man’s intelligence and power.
He was one of those who, in the Twenty-first Century, made money without
being too scrupulous about his methods. Technically Olcott owned a firm
named “Enterprises, Ltd.” Unlimited would have been more suitable. His
finger was in plenty of pies, but he had always managed to pull out
plums without getting his hands soiled. Legally his record was clean.
But he was dangerous. When Duncan had accepted Olcott’s offer of help,
he had known what that meant—a job, and a dirty one. Nevertheless, it
would pay plenty—and it would mean freedom from Transpolar, and being
with Andrea again.
Duncan dressed in the clothes Olcott had provided, an unobtrusive dark
fabricoid blouse and trousers, gathered at the ankles in the
conventional fashion. In the heated cabin no more clothing was
necessary.
“There’s a bottle over there,” Olcott suggested.
Duncan gulped whiskey, feeling the hot tingling of the liquid spread out
from his stomach. He felt better, though there was a curious air of
unreality about the whole thing. A port, showed him the storm cloud,
below and behind now. Somewhere in that troubled darkness lay the grim
fortress of Transpolar Penitentiary, the hell that had swallowed five
years of Duncan’s life, and drained him of hope and ideals.