He signaled to our guards and Morton and I were pulled to our feet and dragged back to our cell. Since no further orders about us had been issued we were thrown into our prison room, still chained and gagged.

We looked at each other in muffled silence as the key was turned in the door.

If my eyes looked like Morton’s eyes,’ then I was looking very, very frightened.

Chapter 18

We lay like this for an uncomfortable number of hours. Until the door was unlocked and a b~rly MP came in with our dinner trays. His brow farrowed as he looked down at us. I could almost see the feeble thoughts trickling through his sluggish synapses. Got food. Feed prisoners. Prisoners gagged. No can eat… Just about the time his thought processes reached this stage he turned and called over his shoulder.

“Sergeant. Got kind of a problem here.”

“You got a problem if you are bothering me for no reason,” the sergeant said as he stamped in.

“Look, sarge. I got this food to feed the prisoners. But they’re gagged and can’t eat…”

“All right, all right—1 can figure that one out for myself.” He dug out his keys, unlocked my chains, and turned to Morton. I emitted a muffled groan through my gag and stretched my sore fingers and struggled to sit up. The sergeant gave me a kick and I groaned harder. He was smiling as he left. I pulled off the gag and threw it at the closing door. Then pulled over the tray because, despite .everything, I was feeling hungry. Until I looked at it and pushed it away.

“Hotpups,” Morton said, spitting out bits of cloth. “I could smell it when they brought the trays in." He sipped some water from his cup and I joined him in that. “A toast,” I said, clanking his cup with mine. “To military justice.”

“I wish I could be as tough as you, Jim.”

“Not tough. Just whistling in the dark. Because I just don’t see any way out of this one. If I still had my lockpick we might have a slim chance.”

“That’s the message the general gave me?”

“That’s it. We can’t do much now except sit and wait for morning.”

I said this aloud not to depress Morton any more, surely an impossibility, but for 5ie ears of anyone listening to planted bugs. There might be optic bugs as well, so I wandered about the cell and looked carefully but did not see any. So I had to risk it. I ate some of my hotpup, washing down the loathsome mouthfuls with glugs of water, while at the same time picking up the discarded chains as silently as I could, balling them around my fist. The dim MP would be back for the trays and he might be off guard.

I was flat against the wall, armored fist ready, the next time the key rattled in the lock. The door opened a fingers width and the MP sergeant called out.

“You, behind the door. Drop those chains now or you ain’t going to live to be shot in the morning.” I muttered a curse and buried them across the room and went and sat by the back wall. It was a well-concealed optic bug.

“What time is it, sergeant?” Morton asked.

“Sixteen-hundred hours.” He held his gun ready while the other MPs removed the trays and chains, “I got to go to the toilet.”

“Not until twenty-hundred. General’s orders.”

“Tell the general that I am already potty trained,” I shouted at the closing door. To think that I actually had had his neck in my hands. If they hadn’t hit me—would I have gone the full three seconds and killed him? I just didn’t know. But if I hadn’t been ready then—1 felt that I was surely ready for it now.

They took us down the hall later, one at a time and heavily guarded, then locked us in for the night. With the lights on. I don’t know if Morton slept, but with the general bashing about I had had even the thin mattress felt good. I crashed and didn’t open my eyes again until the familiar rattle at the door roused me.

“Oh-six hundred and here is your last meal,” the sergeant said with great pleasure. “Hotpups again?”

“How did you ever guess!”

“Take them away. I’ll die cursing you. Your name will be the last thing on my lips.”

If he was impressed by my threat he didn’t show it. He dropped the trays onto the floor and stamped out.

“Two hours to go,” Morton said, and a tear glistened in his eye. “My family doesn’t know where I am. They’ll never know what happened to me. I was running away when I was caught.”

What could I say? What could I do? For the first time in my short and fairly happy life I felt a sensation of absolute despair. Two hours to go. And no way out.

What was that smell? I sniffed and coughed. It was very pungent—and strong enough to cut through my morbid gloom. I coughed again, then saw a wisp of smoke rising from the floor in the corner of the room. Morton had his back turned to it and seemed unaware. I watched, astonished, as a smoking line appeared in the floor, extended, turned. Then I could see that there was a rough circle of dark fumes coming from the wood. Morton looked around coughing.

“What… ?” he said—just as the circle of wooden flooring dropped away. From the darkness below a man’s gray head emerged.

“Don’t touch the edges of the opening,” Stimer said. “It is a very strong acid.”

There were shouts and running feet in the hall. I dragged Morton to his feet, buried him forward.

“They are watching us—can hear everything we say!” I