He raised his head and realized that the principal had stopped droning
from the platform, that all the pupils were standing up to leave. He
stood up and marched out.
When the signal for lights out came that night, Plato lay motionless for
a time in the dark, his mind racing far too rapidly for him to think of
sleep. He had plans to make. And after a time, when the dormitory
quieted down, he went to the well of knowledge for inspiration. He
slipped on his pair of goggles and threw the special switch he himself
had made. The infra-red light flared on, invisible to any one in the
room but himself, and he drew his book from its hiding place and resumed
his reading.
* * * * *
_The ship curvetted in space like a prancing steed. Panic-stricken by
the four-dimensional space-warp in which he was trapped, Rogue Rogan
stormed at his terrified followers. "By all the devils of the Coal
Sack," he shouted, "the man doesn't live who can take me alive! You'll
fight and die like men, you hen-hearted cowards...."_
* * * * *
But they didn't die like men. In fact, they didn't die at all, and Plato
permitted a slight sneer to play across his youthful features. Though he
considered himself a passionate admirer of Comets Carter, even he felt
dissatisfied with the story. When they were trapped, they were never
_really_ trapped. Comets Carter, sterling hero that he usually was,
always showed weakness of intellect at the last moment, giving his
deadly enemy an incredibly simple way out, one that Comets had, in his
own incredibly simple way, overlooked.
Plato would never be guilty of such stupidity. He himself--and now _he_
was Comets Carter, a quicker-thinker, smarter Carter, dealing out to
Rogue Rogan a retribution many eons overdue. He was whistling through
space at ten light-speeds. He was compressing light-centuries into a
single second. He was--
He had just time to slip the goggles from his face before his eyes
closed in sleep.
* * * * *
During the day, he continued to make his plans. There was a spaceport a
hundred and forty miles away. At night, if the students poked their
heads out of the window, they could see the distant ships as points of
flame racing away into the darkness, like shooting stars in reverse. He
would steal out of his room in the night, take a glider-train to the
spaceport, and stow away. It would be as simple as that.
Of course, he needed money. He might travel at half fare, but even that
would be expensive. And then there was the matter of food. He'd have to
stay hidden until the spaceship took off and there was no turning back,
and at the thought of crouching in some dark hold, motionless for hours,
cramped, and _with an empty stomach_--
He wasn't going to starve himself. Even Comets Carter couldn't have gone
without eating and got very far in his pursuit of Rogan. Plato would
have to acquire money for flight, fare and food.
The book, of course, he couldn't think of selling. It was only a
decicredit novel in the first place, and somewhat worn at that. And the
other students would have laughed at him for reading it. But his
infra-red bedside lamp and his goggles and the space-receptor radio he
had built out of spare parts--those should bring him enough to travel
and live on for a few days.
He made his first sale in the free time that evening, to a young squirt
in the neighboring dormitory who had a passion akin to his own. He liked
to listen to tales of high adventure, of the kind the radiocasters loved
and the teachers in the school frowned upon. Having arrived here from
Earth only six months before, he had difficulty adjusting to the type of
derring-do featured on the Venus stations, and he lacked a
space-receptor that would bring him his favorites from the next planet.
He snapped up, at the bargain price of ten credits, the receptor that
Plato offered.
There was a little difficulty with the infra-red lamp and goggles. The
customer Plato had selected turned out to be rather suspicious. He
demanded, "Where did you steal them?"