Short Fiction Collected by James White

Author:James White [White, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2020-03-29T21:00:00+00:00

1964

OPEN PRISON

James White’s latest novel in serial form is considerably different in general construction to his already famous “Sector General” stories. This time he takes a planetful of human POW’s—technicians, admin personnel and even high-ranking officers—and sets up the Great Escape against impossible odds.

part one of three parts

one

When Warren had been extricated along with the other survivors of the erroneously named Victorious and made a prisoner of war he had thought that he knew what to expect, his expectations being based on the knowledge of how enemy POWs were handled by his own side.

With the other officers he had been moved to an enemy heavy cruiser and confined in one of its storage compartments, into which had been pumped what the enemy thought was an Earth-like atmosphere and where there was introduced at regular intervals substances which were the enemy’s idea of what human beings ate. The air had had to be breathed but the food could only be eaten after the processes of starvation were well advanced. Then had come the expected series of transfers between supply ships returning from the the battle area until eventually they found themselves being herded aboard a vessel of tremendous size which was in orbit around a planet. Within a few hours they were moved again, this time to a ship which was obviously a ferry, and now they were landing.

But on the final approach Warren was able to see that the planetary surface was green and heavily forested and that its night side showed no trace of artificial illumination—two facts which, considering the enemy’s marked preference for dry worlds and harsh blue-white lighting, came as a surprise to him. He was still wondering about it when the ship landed in a clearing and they were directed to the airlock and down a ladder which had not been made for human feet, on to grass still smouldering from the effects of the tail-blast. Nobody followed them out of the ship and neither did they appear to be under any form of restraint, which surprised Warren even more.

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