After O'Leary and the medic left, the warden tottered to a chair--but
not for long. His secretary appeared, eyes bulging. "The governor!" he
gasped.
Warden Schluckebier managed to say: "Why, Governor! How good of you to
come--"
The governor shook him off and held the door open for the men who
had come with him. There were reporters from all the news services,
officials from the township governments within the city-state. There
was an Air GI with major's leaves on his collar--"Liaison, sir," he
explained crisply to the warden, "just in case you have any orders for
our men up there." There were nearly a dozen others.
The warden was quite overcome.
The governor rapped out: "Warden, no criticism of you, of course, but
I've come to take personal charge. I'm superseding you under Rule
Twelve, Paragraph A, of the Uniform Civil Service Code. Right?"
"Oh, _right_!" cried the warden, incredulous with joy.
"The situation is bad--perhaps worse than you think. I'm seriously
concerned about the hostages those men have in there. And I had a call
from Senator Bradley a short time ago--"
"Senator Bradley?" echoed the warden.
"Senator _Sebastian_ Bradley. One of our foremost civil servants," the
governor said firmly. "It so happens that his daughter is in Block O as
an inmate."
The warden closed his eyes. He tried to swallow, but the throat muscles
were paralyzed.
"There is no question," the governor went on briskly, "about the
propriety of her being there. She was duly convicted of a felonious
act, namely conspiracy and incitement to riot. But you see the
position."
The warden saw all too well.
"Therefore," said the governor. "I intend to go in to Block O myself.
Sebastian Bradley is an old and personal friend--as well," he
emphasized, "as being a senior member of the Reclassification Board. I
understand a medic is going to Block O. I shall go with him."
The warden managed to sit up straight. "He's gone. I mean they already
left, Governor. But I assure you Miss Brad--Inmate Bradley--that is,
the young lady is in no danger. I have already taken precautions," he
said, gaining confidence as he listened to himself talk. "I--uh--I
was deciding on a course of action as you came in. See, Governor,
the guards on the walls are all armed. All they have to do is fire
a couple of rounds into the yard and then the 'copters could start
dropping tear gas and light fragmentation bombs and--"
The governor was already at the door. "You will _not_," he said; and:
"Now which way did they go?"
* * * * *
O'Leary was in the yard and he was smelling trouble, loud and strong.
The first he knew that the rest of the prison had caught the riot fever
was when the lights flared on in Cell Block A.
"That Sodaro!" he snarled, but there wasn't time to worry about that
Sodaro. He grabbed the rest of his guard detail and double-timed it
toward the New Building, leaving the medic and a couple of guards
walking sedately toward the Old. Block A, on the New Building's lowest
tier, was already coming to life; a dozen yards, and Blocks B and C
lighted up.
And a dozen yards more and they could hear the yelling; and it wasn't
more than a minute before the building doors opened.
The cons had taken over three more blocks. How? O'Leary didn't take
time even to guess. The inmates were piling out into the yard. He took
one look at the rushing mob. Crazy! It was Wilmer Lafon leading the
rioters, with a guard's gun and a voice screaming threats! But O'Leary
didn't take time to worry about an honor prisoner gone bad, either.
"Let's get out of here!" he bellowed to the detachment, and they ran.
Just plain ran. Cut and ran, scattering as they went.
"Wait!" screamed O'Leary, but they weren't waiting. Cursing himself for
letting them get out of hand, O'Leary salvaged two guards and headed on
the run for the Old Building, huge and dark, all but the topmost lights
of Block O.
They saw the medic and his escort disappearing into the bulk of the Old
Building and they saw something else. There were inmates between them
and the Old Building! The Shops Building lay between--with a dozen more
cell blocks over the workshops that gave it its name--and there was a
milling rush of activity around its entrance, next to the laundry shed--
The laundry shed.
O'Leary stood stock still. Lafon leading the breakout from Block A. The
little greaser who was a trusty in the Shops Building sabotaging the
yard's tangler circuit. Sauer and Flock taking over the Greensleeves
with a manufactured knife and a lot of guts.
Did it fit together? Was it all part of a plan?
That was something to find out--but not just then. "Come on," O'Leary
cried to the two guards, and they raced for the temporary safety of the
main gates.
The whole prison was up and yelling now.
O'Leary could hear scattered shots from the beat guards on the
wall--_Over their heads, over their heads!_ he prayed silently.
And there were other shots that seemed to come from inside the
walls--guards shooting, or convicts with guards' guns, he couldn't
tell which. The yard was full of convicts now, in bunches and clumps;
but none near the gate. And they seemed to have lost some of their
drive. They were milling around, lit by the searchlights from the wall,
yelling and making a lot of noise ... but going nowhere in particular.
Waiting for a leader, O'Leary thought, and wondered briefly what had
become of Lafon.
"You Captain O'Leary?" somebody demanded.
* * * * *
He turned and blinked. Good Lord, the governor! He was coming through
the gate, waving aside the gate guards, alone. "You him?" the governor
repeated. "All right, glad I found you. I'm going into Block O with
you."
O'Leary swallowed and waved inarticulately at the teeming cons. True,
there were none immediately near by--but there were plenty in the
yard! Riots meant breaking things up; already the inmates had started
to break up the machines in the laundry shed and the athletic equipment
in the yard lockers. When they found a couple of choice breakables like
O'Leary and the governor, they'd have a ball!
"But, Governor--"
"But my foot! Can you get me in there or can't you?"
O'Leary gauged their chances. It wasn't more than fifty feet to the
main entrance to the Old Building--not at the moment guarded, since all
the guards were in hiding or on the walls, and not as yet being invaded
by the inmates at large.
He said: "You're the boss. Hold on a minute--" The searchlights were
on the bare yard cobblestones in front of them; in a moment, the
searchlights danced away.
"Come on!" cried O'Leary, and jumped for the entrance. The governor was
with him and a pair of the guards came stumbling after.
They made it to the Old Building.
Inside the entrance, they could hear the noise from outside and the
yelling of the inmates who were still in their cells. But around them
was nothing but gray steel walls and the stairs going all the way up
to Block O.
"Up!" panted O'Leary, and they clattered up the steel steps.
They would have made it--if it hadn't been for the honor inmate, Wilmer
Lafon, who knew what he was after and had headed for the Greensleeves
through the back way. In fact, they did make it--but not the way
they planned. "Get out of the way!" yelled O'Leary at Lafon and
the half-dozen inmates with him; and "Go to hell!" screamed Lafon,
charging; and it was a rough-and-tumble fight, and O'Leary's party lost
it, fair and square.
So when they got to Block O, it was with the governor marching before
a convict-held gun, and with O'Leary cold unconscious, a lump from a
gun-butt on the side of his head.
As they came up the stairs, Sauer was howling at the medic: "You got to
fix up my boy! He's dying and all you do is sit there!"
The medic said patiently: "My son, I've dressed his wound. He is under
sedation and I must rest. There will be other casualties."
Sauer raged, but that was as far as it went. Even Sauer wouldn't attack
a medic. He would as soon strike an Attorney, or even a Director of
Funerals. It wasn't merely that they were Professionals. Even among
the Professional class, they were special; not superior, exactly, but
_apart_. They certainly were not for the likes of Sauer to fool with
and Sauer knew it.
"Somebody's coming!" bawled one of the other freed inmates.
* * * * *
Sauer jumped to the head of the steps, saw that Lafon was leading the
group, stepped back, saw whom Lafon's helpers were carrying and leaped
forward again.
"Cap'n O'Leary!" he roared. "Gimme!"
"Shut up," said Wilmer Lafon, and pushed the big redhead out of the
way. Sauer's jaw dropped and the snake eyes opened wide.
"Wilmer," he protested feebly. But that was all the protest he made,
because the snake's eyes had seen that Lafon held a gun. He stood back,
the big hands half outstretched toward the unconscious guard captain,
O'Leary, and the cold eyes became thoughtful.
And then he saw who else was with the party. "Wilmer! You got the
governor there!"
Lafon nodded. "Throw them in a cell," he ordered, and sat down on a
guard's stool, breathing hard. It had been a fine fight on the steps,
before he and his boys had subdued the governor and the guards, but
Wilmer Lafon wasn't used to fighting. Even six years in the Jug hadn't
turned an architect into a laborer; physical exertion simply was not
his metier.
Sauer said coaxingly: "Wilmer, won't you leave me have O'Leary for a
while? If it wasn't for me and Flock, you'd still be in A Block and--"
"Shut up," Lafon said again, gently enough, but he waved the gun
muzzle. He drew a deep breath, glanced around him and grinned. "If
it wasn't for you and Flock," he mimicked. "If it wasn't for you and
Flock! Sauer, you wipe clown, do you think it took _brains_ to file
down a shiv and start things rolling? If it wasn't for _me_, you and
Flock would have beaten up a few guards, and had your kicks for half an
hour, and then the whole prison would fall in on you! It was me, Wilmer
Lafon, who set things up and you know it!"
He was yelling and suddenly he realized he was yelling. And what was
the use, he demanded of himself contemptuously, of trying to argue
with a bunch of lousy wipes and greasers? They'd never understand the
long, soul-killing hours of planning and sweat. They wouldn't realize
the importance of the careful timing--of arranging that the laundry
cons would start a disturbance in the yard right after the Greensleeves
hard-timers kicked off the riot, of getting the little greaser Hiroko
to short-circuit the yard field so the laundry cons could start their
disturbances.
It took a _Professional_ to organize and plan--yes, and to make sure
that he himself was out of it until everything was ripe, so that if
anything went wrong, _he_ was all right. It took somebody like Wilmer
Lafon--a _Professional_, who had spent six years too long in the Jug--
And who would shortly be getting out.