if I had to. All things considered, if I were aboard my ship right now, I don’t think I’d wait to be court-martialed.” I stared him in the face all the while, still waiting for the punch line.
“Rumor has it that you got rich,” he said, delivering it.
“Where are these rumors coming from?” I asked him. “All of a sudden, I seem to be famous. Rumor says that I got deep into Asgard, met some funny people. Rumor says that I got rich. Who’s doing the talking, John?”
“Star Force,” he replied, laconically. “Some of their guys were with you down below, right? Makes a good story, especially with the star-captain featuring. She’s famous. You’re just notorious. But they do talk about you, Mike. Flattered?”
“Not exactly. I’d rather be inconspicuous.”
“I know the feeling. I can get you out of Goodfellow, you know. The benefits of knowing the maintenance man, if you see what I mean. Locks don’t matter.”
“And you were thinking of helping me out for old time’s sake, were you?” I asked, with the merest hint of sarcasm.
“No,” he replied, bluntly.
“What sort of price do you have in mind?”
“Well,” said Finn, “I don’t say it’s going to be easy. In fact, it could expose me to a bit of risk. I wouldn’t be able to stay here, would I? And the Star Force would be looking for me, too. What are you carrying in the way of exchange?”
I had part of my fortune in metals, part in organics, and part in Tetron drafts. Tetron paper money is the only kind you can trust. I told him, without being specific about amounts.
“I can’t use the Tetron scrip,” he said. “It’s registered to user, too easy to trace. But if we were together, we could split everything fifty-fifty, couldn’t we?”
I supposed we could. It was a lot of money to pay a maintenance man for fiddling a lock or two, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be partners with John Finn. I was sure, though, that I didn’t want to serve ten years in a penal battalion. But we hadn’t got to the bottom line yet.
“And I’ll want half of the ship,” he added.
“The ship!”
“Well,” he said, patiently, “it’s not really your ship, anyhow. It was Mickey’s. It always should have come to me. I’m just a little late in claiming it, that’s all. I’m only asking half. Half of everything. What other options do you have?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, sourly. “But I bet they’d be cheaper ones.”
“Sure,” he replied. “They aren’t charging you for the room, are they? “
I hadn’t heard an offer like it since Jacinthe Siani had volunteered to buy me out of jail on Asgard with Amara Guur’s money. If it came to a contest, I decided that I’d rather deal with John Finn than with Amara Guur—but it wasn’t the kind of choice a sane man would want to be faced with. I was in the frying pan again, and I was only being offered a fire to jump into.
“I don’t know yet what the Star Force intend to do with me,” I told him.
He laughed. “If you wait to find out, it will be too late to stop them. They only have a dozen men on Goodfellow, and they’re mostly ones they couldn’t trust to do a good job in the real line of action, but they have a couple of hundred combat soldiers on Leopard Shark. Once you’re in their hands, Superman and the Scarlet Pimpernel couldn’t get you out. This is your last chance, Mike. Take it or leave it.”
It didn’t seem to be much of a chance, but there didn’t seem to be any others.
“Okay,” I said, defeated. “You’re on. Spring me, and the ship’s half yours. Half the money, too. I presume that I can leave it to you to get the paperwork ready?”
“You certainly can,” he assured me. He sounded very pleased with himself. He had every right to be. When I thought what I’d had to go through to earn that money, the idea of cutting him in as a reward for opening a door seemed pretty sick. But if I wasn’t free, I couldn’t spend my money, could I?
“Get some sleep,” said Finn. “I just have to make a few preparations, and then we’re away. I wouldn’t do this for everyone, you know—but you’re nearly family.”
I tried to smile. I’d never had a brother, but if I had, I wouldn’t have wanted one like John Finn. It was bad enough to have him for a friend. Sometimes, though, friends are in such short supply that you have to take whatever you can get.
It can be an unfriendly universe, sometimes.
CHAPTER FOUR
I can’t claim to be the galaxy’s foremost expert on jailbreaks—although, as you’ll learn later, I have more than a single instance of experience from which to generalize. Nevertheless, I believe that I can confidently identify four criteria that need to be fulfilled if the break is to stand much chance of success. While not wishing to encourage delinquent behavior, I’m prepared to pass on these pearls of wisdom.
Firstly, it helps a lot if make your break at a time when those people who are interested in keeping you locked up are not paying attention. This might be because you have arranged with your allies to create some kind of a diversion, but it’s more likely to be because they’re all asleep.
Secondly, it helps a lot if you can move around inconspicuously once you’re no longer in your place of imprisonment. Darkness helps, but even in darkness it’s a good idea not to be instantly recognizable as a fugitive to anyone you might happen to meet.
Thirdly, you need to have somewhere safe and cozy to go—either a vehicle in which you can make a clean getaway, or a place of refuge where you can be securely hidden away while a search is conducted.
Fourthly, never—and I mean never—put your trust in the supposed expertise of an assistant who has always seemed to you in the past to be a confirmed no-hoper.
Anyone studying these four criteria will immediately realize that John Finn’s grand scheme to liberate me from my secure quarters on Goodfellow was bound to be a bit rickety. The fact that he could open the door was merely a beginning, and counted for less than one might imagine.
One problem with trying to be inconspicuous on a microworld is that it’s very small and entirely artificial. It has no cycle of day or night, so the internal lights are never switched off. Another is that everybody knows everybody else by sight, and a stranger sticks out like a sore thumb. Your average microworld has very few hidden and forgotten corners, and in any case is crammed full of sensory equipment and alarms because it has to be perpetually on guard against things going wrong. If the staff are engaged in scientific research, they could hardly work a regular eight hours out of twenty-four, even if twenty-four hours did mean anything special, because they have to fit their personal timetables into the timetables of their observations.
Had I thought about all this very carefully, I would have realized that John Finn’s escape plan was far from certain to succeed. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about it carefully. I just assumed that he could do it. This was not because I am the kind of person who readily puts his trust in his fellow man, but because I was still feeling benumbed and disoriented by the horrible shock of it all.
I
