Rogue in Space Read online

  Three other members of the airport police detail told similar stories; all had been present at the search and testified that the nephthin had been in his possession. Crag’s attorney had not questioned them.

  Crag’s own story came next. He had been permitted to tell it first in his own words and he described boarding the plane and finding his seat to be next to that of a man whom he described as tall, slender, well-dressed. There had been no conversation between them until the plane had neared Albuquerque, when the man had introduced himself as Zacharias and had claimed to be a cigarette salesman for a company introducing a new brand of cigarettes. He had talked about the new brand and had pressed a package of them on Crag as a free sample. The man had left the plane hurriedly and was out of sight when the police had stopped Crag and had taken him to the airport police office to search him.

  Following on the tape was Crag’s questioning by the prosecuting attorney. He failed to change any detail of Crag’s story, but Crag had been forced to hurt his own case by refusing to answer any questions whatever about himself aside from the brief episode he had just narrated.

  Then, in refutation of Crag’s story, the prosecution introduced the tape of one further witness, a man named Krable, who testified after being shown a picture of Crag, that he had sat next to him on the plane flight in question, that he had not introduced himself as Zacharias or under any other name, that there had been no conversation between them and that he had given Crag nothing. Questioning by the defense attorney only strengthened his story by bringing out the fact that he was a respectable businessman, owner of a men’s haberdashery, that he had no criminal record and that his life was an open book.

  There was further testimony from Crag after he had been confronted with Krable. He agreed that Krable was the man who had sat next to him, but stuck to his story that Krable had introduced himself as Zacharias and had given him the cigarette package.

  That was all of the testimony. While Olliver was briefly charging the jury Crag smiled to himself at the simplicity and perfection of the frame-up. So few people need have been involved. No more than four. The tipster who had sent him to Albuquerque. A person in charge of seating arrangements to see that he sat where they wanted him to sit. A woman to make the anonymous phone call. And Krable, who was no doubt as respectable as he claimed to be and who had been chosen for that very reason, so that Crag’s story would sound like a desperate invention—as it had sounded, even to Crag himself—in comparison to Krable’s story. The only reason he hadn’t pleaded guilty was that the plea would not have been accepted unless he’d followed through and told them where and how he’d obtained the nephthin—and the only way he could do that was the way he’d done.

  The five members of the jury filed into the little jury room adjoining the court. They were back within minutes and their chairman reported a unanimous verdict—guilty.

  Judge Olliver crisply ordered the courtroom cleared and the sound machines cut off. The trial itself was over. Sentence was always pronounced after the private conversation customary between judge and prisoner. The judge might announce his verdict immediately thereafter or take up to twenty-four hours to make his decision.

  The trial, to Crag, had been a farce. This was it, and he found himself growing tense. The courtroom was clear now, except for the two guards, the judge and himself.

  “The prisoner will advance.”

  Crag walked forward and stood stiffly before the judge’s desk, his face impassive.

  “Guards, you may leave. Remain outside the door, please.”

  That was a surprise. True, a judge had the option of sending the guards outside or of having them remain, but he always had them remain when he felt that he was dealing with a dangerous man. At Crag’s previous trial, despite the fact that the verdict had been an acquittal, Olliver had had the guards remain. Undoubtedly, then, Olliver had felt or recognized the savagery in Crag, had feared to provoke him to violence by the things he intended to say. That was understandable; under circumstances much more dangerous to himself, would he dismiss the guards?

  Crag shrugged off the question. It didn’t matter, and if Olliver delivered his verdict now and it was the psycher, he’d start his break from here, by killing Olliver. Then the two guards outside the door, and toward freedom as far as he could go before they shot him down.

  He heard the door close behind the guards, and stood waiting, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall just over and behind Olliver’s head. He knew well enough what Olliver looked like without looking at him. A big man, broad shouldered, with iron gray hair and a florid face that could be stern, as it was now and as it had been throughout the trial, or could be pleasant and winning, as it was when he made campaign speeches on television.

  There was no doubt in Crag’s mind which expression Olliver’s face would be wearing now. Until Olliver said, “Look at me, Crag.” and Crag looked down and saw that Olliver was smiling.

  Olliver said softly, “Crag, how would you like your freedom, and a million dollars?”

  And then, “Don’t look at me like that, Crag. I’m not joking. Pull up a chair, one of those comfortable jurors’ chairs, not the one you’ve been sitting on, have a cigarette, and let’s talk.”

  Crag got a chair and sat down in it, but warily. He accepted a cigarette gratefully; they weren’t allowed in the cells. Then he said, “You talk. I’ll listen.”

  Olliver said, “It’s simple. I have a job I’d like you to do for me. I think you’re one of the few men alive who might be able to do it. If you agree to try it, your freedom. If you succeed, the million. And maybe more if you want to keep on working with me after that.

  “And it’s not a racket, Crag. The opposite. A chance to help humanity, to help me help to lift it out of the bog of decadence into which it has fallen.”

  “Save that for your speeches, Judge. I’ll settle for freedom and the million—if you’re on the level. A question first. The charge against me was a frame-up. Yours? To put me in a spot where I’ll have to work for you?”

  Olliver shook his head. “No. But I’ll admit that, when I saw on the docket that you were to be tried, I deliberately obtained permission to sit at the trial. Was it a frame-up?”

  Crag nodded.

  “I suspected so. The evidence against you was too pat, your story too thin. Any idea who did engineer it?”

  Crag shrugged. “I have enemies. I’ll find out.”

  “No,” Olliver said sharply. “If you accept my proposition, you’ll have to agree to let any private vengeance you have in mind go, until you’ve done my job first. Agreed?”

  Crag nodded a bit sullenly, but he said, “Agreed. What’s the job?”

  “This isn’t the time or place to tell you that. Since you’ve agreed in advance to do it, and since it will take some explaining, we’ll talk about it after you’re a free man.”

  “But if I decide it’s too dangerous and turn it down?”

  “I don’t think you will. It’s a difficult job, but I don’t think you’ll turn it down, for a million dollars. And there may be more for you in it than merely money. I’ll take a chance that you won’t turn it down. But let’s get to brass tacks, about your escape.”

  “Escape? Can’t you—” Crag stopped, realizing that the question he’d been about to ask was absurd.

  “Escape, of course. You were judged guilty of a major crime and on strong evidence. If I were to free you, even to give you a light sentence, I’d be impeached. I have enemies too, Crag; any man in politics has.”

  “All right, how much can you help me toward an escape?”

  “Arrangements are being made; when they are completed you’ll be told what to do.”

  “Told how?”

  “By the speaker in your cell. A—a friend of mine has access to the circuits. In fairness, I should tell you that we can’t arrange any foolproof escape for you. We’ll do what we can and you’ll be on your own from there.”

  Crag grinned. “And if I’m not good en
ough to make it from there, I wouldn’t be good enough to do the job you have for me outside. So you’ve nothing to lose if I’m killed escaping. All right. What sentence are you going to give me meanwhile?”

  “It will be better if I announce that I’m taking the full twenty-four hours to decide. If, now, I sentence you to either Callisto or the psycher, preparations to send you to one or the other will start immediately. I don’t know exactly how fast such preparations would proceed, so it’s safer to keep the sentence in abeyance.”

  “Good. And after I escape?”

  “Come to my house. Seven-nineteen Linden. Don’t call. My phone is tapped, undoubtedly.”

  “The house is guarded?” Crag knew that the houses of most important political figures were.

  “Yes, and I’m not going to tell the guards to let you in. They’re members of my own party, but I wouldn’t trust them that far. Getting past them is your problem. If you can’t do that, without help or advice from me, you’re not the man I think you are, or the man I want. But don’t kill them unless you have to. I don’t like violence.” He frowned. “I don’t like it, even when it’s necessary and in a good cause.”

  Crag laughed. “I’ll try not to kill your guards—even in a good cause.”

  Olliver’s face flushed. He said. “It is a good cause, Crag—” He glanced quickly over his shoulder at the clock on the wall and then said, “All right, we’ve time left. I’ve often talked to a prisoner half an hour or longer before sentencing him.”

  “You talked to me that long last time before freeing me, after I was acquitted.”

  “And you know you had it coming. You were guilty—that time. But I started to tell you what the cause is, so you won’t laugh at it. I’m starting a new political party, Crag, that’s going to bring this world, the whole solar system, out of the degradation into which it has sunk.

  “It’s going to end bribery and corruption by taking us back to old-fashioned democracy. It’s going to be a middle-of-the-road party that will end the deadlock between the Guilds and the Syndicates. Both of those parties—I’ll face it; even the one I’m a member of—represent ridiculous extremes. The Guilds grew out of Communism and the Syndicates grew out of Fascism and between them something we once had and called Democracy got lost.”

  Crag said, “I see your point. Maybe I even agree. But are you going to get anywhere with it? Both the Guilds and Gildeds have made Democracy a swear word and a laughingstock. How can you get the public to accept it?”

  Olliver smiled. “We won’t call it that, of course. It’s the word that’s discredited, not the idea. We’ll call ourselves the Cooperationists, represent ourselves as trying to steer a middle course between extremes. And half the members of each of the old parties, those who want honest government, are going to come to us. Yes, we’re operating undercover now, but we’ll come into the open before the next elections, and you’ll see. Well, that’s enough for now. Everything between us understood?”

  Crag nodded.

  “Good.” Olliver pressed a button on the desk and the guards came in. As Crag left with them he heard Olliver, the sound machine turned on again, saying into it that he was postponing his decision on sentencing for twenty-four hours.

  Back in his cell, he paced impatiently. Tried to think ahead. Did the plan for his escape—or chance at escape—include a change of clothes? He looked down at himself. The gray shirt might pass, if he opened it at the throat and rolled up the sleeves above his elbows. But the baggy gray trousers shrieked of prison. He’d have to take the trousers off a guard, and even they wouldn’t be too good and he’d have to change them for shorts as soon as he had a chance. Almost all private citizens of Albuquerque wore shorts in summer.

  He rolled up the sleeves and opened his collar, then stopped in front of the metal mirror set into the wall over the washstand and studied himself. Yes, from the waist up he’d do. Even the short haircut, since it was almost as common outside of prison as in.

  And his face—he was lucky there, for it was a very ordinary face that looked neither vicious nor criminal, a face that didn’t stand out in a crowd, a hard-to-remember face. He’d paid plenty for that face, to the same surgeon in Rio who’d taken care of the artificial hand for him. The face he’d been wearing before that had been becoming a bit too well known in the underworld, a more dangerous thing than being too well known to the police.

  The body under that face was just as deceptive. Neither taller nor broader than average, it masked the wiry strength and endurance of an acrobat and it knew every clean and dirty trick of fighting. Crag could take an average man with one hand, his right, and often had, in fights before witnesses when he didn’t want to give away the secret of his left hand. That was ace-in-the-hole, for emergencies. When he used it, he meant business.

  He paced again, stopped to look out the window. Thirty flights down to freedom. But only the top three levels were jail floors; if he got below them he could take an elevator from the twenty-seventh down and be comparatively safe.

  But what were his chances of making those first three floors? Better than even, he guessed, with whatever help Olliver was going to give him. A thousand to one against him otherwise; that was how he’d guessed his odds before the trial.

  Olliver, of all people! Turning out to be as big a crook as all the rest of the politicians after all. Aiding a criminal to escape so the criminal could steal something for him. Or could there be some truth in the story Olliver had handed him? Could Olliver really be acting from altruistic motives? Crag shrugged mentally. It didn’t matter.

  But Olliver had really surprised him. He wondered how his, Crag’s, face must have looked when Olliver, instead of sentencing him, had smiled and asked him if he wanted freedom and a million.

  Crag chuckled, and then suddenly was laughing aloud.

  A woman’s voice, amused, asked, “As funny as that, Crag?”

  He looked quickly up at the grill in the ceiling. The voice said, “Yes, it’s two-way now; you can answer back. Few people know it but any of the cell communicators can be used two ways. Sometimes the police want to listen in when a lawyer talks to his client. Even the police are crooked, Crag. Or do you already know that?”

  “Are you using the communicator just to tell me that?”

  “Don’t be impatient, Crag. You have time to kill, and so do I. I took over this control cubicle from the guard on duty here by sending him on an errand. He’ll be gone at least fifteen minutes.”

  Crag said, “You must be high brass to be able to do that.”

  “What I am doesn’t matter, except that I’m helping down at his. “And those look like prison so I suggest you leave them. Civilians here wear sandals or go barefoot, about half and half, so you’ll be less conspicuous barefoot than in shoes. I see you’ve had a thought about the shirt yourself, but I can improve it. I can leave you scissors, needle and thread; cut off the sleeves instead of rolling them. You can sew enough to baste a hem?”

  “Yes.” Crag hesitated. “But it would take me twenty minutes or so. I’d rather get going.”

  “You’ll have time for that, for sawing the bolt, and for memorizing—and destroying—the diagram. All those together shouldn’t take over forty minutes and forty minutes from now, on the hour, when you hear the clocks strike, will be the best timing for you. Don’t leave until then even if you find yourself ready sooner.”

  “How about some money?”

  “All right, here’s twenty. You won’t need more than that because you’re to come to—you know where—as soon as you safely can. And sober.”

  Crag didn’t bother to answer that. He never drank when he was working, or in danger. A criminal didn’t live long if he drank at the wrong times.

  “One more thing, Crag. You can fold the collar of that shirt so it looks more nearly like a sport shirt collar. Here, I’ll—”

  She reached for it and Crag jerked aside and stood up. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  She laughed. “Afrai
d of me, Crag?”

  “I don’t like to be touched. Especially by a woman. Now if that’s all, get out.”

  “Such gratitude, Crag. And about women—did anyone ever tell you you ought to be psyched, a little anyway? Well, at least you stood up for me, finally.”

  Crag didn’t answer, and she turned and left. He thought she was still smiling. The lock of the door clicked again.

  He wasted no time glaring at the door. He went to it quickly and started sawing at the bolt, venting his anger on the inanimate. He finished it and the other things he had to do long before the time allotted for them. He almost decided to leave right away, but reconsidered and waited until he heard the clocks striking the hour.

  He left quietly then and found the corridor empty. Followed it quickly and silently, left it when his mental picture of the diagram he had destroyed showed him where to turn. He went along a corridor and down a ramp. Just as he approached another corridor he heard the footsteps of two guards coming. He went back a few steps and stood in a recess in the wall, his left hand ready to strike if they came his way. But they went the other way at the turn and he went on. He came to the second ramp and made it safely. On this level he found more corridors, more portals, but no guards.