“So what happens when the war starts?”
“I know 735 different ways to get into the hospitals.”
“Will you teach me a couple?”
“Anything for a buddy, Bill. I’ll show you tonight, after they bring the chow around. And the guard what brings the chow is being difficult about a little favor I asked him. Boy, I wish he had a broken arm!”
“Which arm?” Bill cracked his knuckles with a loud crunch.
“Dealer’s choice.”
The Plastichouse Stockade was a transient center where prisoners were kept on the way from somewhere to elsewhere. It was an easy, relaxed life enjoyed by both guards and inmates with nothing to disturb the even tenor of the days. There had been one new guard, a real eager type fresh in from the National Territorial Guard, but he had had an accident while serving the meals and had broken his arm. Even the other guards were glad to see him go. About once a week Blackey would betaken away under armed guard to the Base Records Section where he was forging new records for a light colonel who was very active in the black market and wanted to make millionaire before he retired. While working on the records Mackey saw to it that the stockade guards received undeserved promotions, extra leave time, and cash bonuses for nonexistent medals. As a result Bill and Blackey ate and drank very well and grew fat. It was as peaceful as could possibly be until the morning after a session in the records section when Blackey returned and woke Bill up.
“Good news,” he said. “We’re shipping out.”
“What’s good about that?” Bill asked, surly at being disturbed and still half-stoned from the previous evening’s drinking bout. “I like it here.”
“It’s going to get too hot for us soon. The colonel is giving me the eye and a very funny look, and I think he is going to have us shipped to the other end of the galaxy, where there is heavy fighting. But he’s not going to do anything until next week after I finish the books for him, so I had secret orders cut for us this week sending us to Tabes Dorsalis where the cement mines are.”
“The Dust World!” Bill shouted hoarsely, and picked Blackey up by the throat and shook him. “A world-wide cement mine where men die of silicosis in hours. Hellhole of the universe …”
Blackey wriggled free and-scuttled to the other end of the cell.
“Hold it!” he gasped. “Don’t go off half cocked. Close the cover on your priming pan and keep your powder dryl Do you think I would ship us to a place like that? That’s just the way it is on the TV shows, but I got the inside dope. If you work in the cement mines, roger, it ain’t so good. But they got one tremendous base section there with a lot of clerical help, and they use trustees in the motor pool, since there aren’t enough troops there. While I was working on the records I changed your MS from fuse tender, which is a suicide job, to driver, and here is your driver’s license with qualifications on everything from monocycle to atomic 89-ton tank. So we get us some soft jobs, and besides the whole base is air-conditioned.”
“It was kind of nice here,” Bill said, scowling at the plastic card that certified to his aptitude in chauffeuring a number -of strange vehicles, most of which he had never seen.
“They come, they go, they’re all the same,” Blackey said, packing a small toilet kit.
They began to realize that something was wrong when the column of prisoners was shackled then chained together with neckcuffs and leg irons and prodded into the transport spacer by a platoon of combat MPs. “Move along!” they shouted. “You’ll have plenty of time to relax when we got to Tabes Dorsalgia.”
“Where are we going?” Bill gasped.
“You heard me, snap it bowb.”
“You told me Tabes Dorsalis,” Bill snarled at Blackey who was ahead of him in the chain. “Tabes Dorsalgia is the base on Veneria where all the fighting is going on-we’re heading for combat!”