“They haven’t been on a real tear since I’ve been here.”
“Lucky you. Let’s hope they don’t bust loose tonight. It’s
a break in the monotony, sure—but those girls play rough. Five prisoners died last time.”
“They beat them up?”
“One of them.”
“What about the others? Oh! Oh, Gawd—fifty liters, you said?”
Bernie began to whimper: “Not again! Not those plug-uglies! I swear I’ll throw myself through the spacelock if they make a pass at me. Ross, isn’t there anything we can do?”
“Seems not, Bernie. Maybe they won’t come in. Or if they do, maybe they’ll pass you by. There certainly isn’t any place to hide.”
A raucous female voice roared through the annunciator: “Bed check five minutes, boys. Anybody got any li’l thing to do down the hall, better do it now. See you lay-terrr!” Hiccup and drunken giggle.
For the first time in his life Ross suddenly and spontaneously acted like a tri-di hero, with the exception that he felt like a silly ass through it all.
“Got an idea,” he muttered. “Get out of your bunk.” He pulled the wad of cellosponge, old Whitker’s present, from his pocket and yanked it in half, one for him and one for Bernie.
The Pullover said faintly: “Thanks, but I don’t have
Ross didn’t bother to answer. He was carefully fluffing the stuff out to its maximum dimensions. He unzipped his coveralls and began wadding them with cellosponge.
“I get it,” Bernard said softly. He stepped out of his one-piece garment and followed suit. In less than a minute they had creditable dummies lying on their bunks.
The others watched their activity with emotions ranging between awe and envy. One giant of a man proclaimed grimly to whoever cared to listen: “These are a couple of smart guys. I wish them luck. And I want you guys to know that I will personally break the back of any sneaking rat who tips off a guard about this.”
“Sure, Ox. Sure,” came a muted chorus.
Arranged in a fetal sleeping position, face down, the
dummies astonished even their creators. It would take a lucky look in a f air light to note that the heads were earless, fibrous globes.
“They’ll do,” Ross snapped. “Come on, Bernie.”
They walked quietly from the dormitory in their singlet underwear toward the dormitory latrine—and past it. Into the corridor. Through a doorless opening into a storeroom piled with crates of rations. “This’ll do,” Ross said quietly. They ducked into a small cavern formed by sloppy issuing of stock and hunched down.
“The dummies will fool the bed check. It’s only a sweep with a hundred-line TV system. If the guards do raid the dormitory tonight we’ll have to count on them ignoring the dummies or thinking they’re a joke or being too busy with other things to care. They’ll be drunk, after all. Then in the morning things’ll be plenty disorganized. We’ll be able to sneak back into formation—and that’ll be that for a matter of years. They can’t often bribe the pilots with enough to guarantee a real ripsnorting drunk. Now try and get some sleep. There’s nothing more we can do.”
They actually did doze off for a couple of hours, and then were awakened by drunken war whoops.
“It’s them!” Bernie wailed.
“Shut up. They’re heading for the dormitory. We’re safe.”
“Safe!” Bernie echoed derisively. “Safe until when?”
Ross threatened him with the side of his hand and Bernie was quiet, though his lips were mumbling soundlessly. The guards lurched giggling past and Ross said:
“We’ll sneak into the lockroom. There won’t be anybody there tonight; at least we’ll get a night’s sleep.”
“Big deal,” grumbled Bernie, but he followed, complaining inarticulately to himself. Ross thought tiredly: All this work for a night’s sleep! And saw, half-formed, the dreadful procession of days and nights and years ahead. . . .
They reached the lockroom and stumbled in breathlessly.
“Dearie!” Two guards, playing a card game on the floor with a ring of empty bottles around them, looked up in drunken delight. “Dearie!” repeated the bigger of the two. “Angela, look what we’ve got!”
Ross said stupidly. “But you shouldn’t be here——”