Prison of a Billion Years

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Imagination April 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  Prison Of A Billion Years

  _by_

  _C. H. Thames_

  Illustrated by H. W. McCauley

  Adam Slade was a man who had nothing to lose by making a break for it. The trouble was, he knew that no one had ever escaped from the--

  * * * * *

  Adam Slade crushed the guard's skull with a two foot length of ironpipe. No one ever knew where Slade got the iron pipe, but it did notseem so important.

  The guard was dead. That was important.

  And Slade was on the loose. With a hostage.

  That was even more important.

  The hostage's name was Marcia Lawrence. She was twenty-two years oldand pretty and scared half out of her wits. She was, before she becamea hostage, a reporter for Interplanetary Video. She had been grantedthe final pre-execution interview with Adam Slade and she had lookedforward to it a long time but it had not worked out as planned.

  It had not worked out as planned because Slade, only hours from theexecution chamber with absolutely nothing to lose, had splattered theguard's brains around the inside of his cell and marched outside witha frightened Marcia Lawrence.

  Outside. Outside the cell block while other condemned prisoners roaredand shouted and banged tin cups on bars and metal walls andjudas-hole-grills. Outside the prison compound and across thedome-enclosed city which served the prison.

  Then outside the dome.

  Outside the dome there was rock. Rock only, twisted and convoluted andthrusting and gigantic like monoliths of a race of giants. Rock aloneunder the awesome gray sky. Steaming rock, for some of the terrestrialwaters were still trapped at great depths. And the sea far off,booming against rocky headlands, hissing tidally and slowly, in anage-long process, pulverizing the rock. The sea far off, a clean sea,not sea-smelling sea, a sea whose waters must evaporate countlesstimes and be borne up over the naked rocks in vapor and clouds andcome down in pelting, endless rain and rush across the rock, frothingand steaming--a sea which must do this countless times in the eons tocome, and would do it, to bring salinity to its own waters.

  "It kind of scares the hell out of you, doesn't it?" Adam Slade said.He was a big man with a thick neck and heavy, sleepy-looking eyes anda blue beard-shadow on his stubborn jaw. He said those words as heclimbed out of the prison tank with Marcia Lawrence. The tank's metalwas still warm from over-heated travel.

  "I didn't think anything would scare you," Marcia Lawrence said. Shehad conquered her initial terror in the five hours of clanking tankflight from the prison. They had come a great many miles from theprison dome, paralleling the edge of the saltless sea and thenfinally, when their fuel was almost gone, clanking and rattling downtoward the sea. She was a newspaperwoman, that above all now. She mustnot be afraid. She had a story here. A story.

  "Get moving," Adam Slade said. "I got nothing against you, lady," hetold her for the tenth time. "But you try anything, you're dead. Youget that? I got nothing to lose. One time is all they can kill me. Butfirst they got to find me, but they won't be able to take me as longas you're here. Just stay meek and you'll stay alive."

  "How long do you think you can hold out?" Marcia Lawrence askedpractically. They had begun to walk away from the now useless tank.Adam Slade was carrying the dead guard's M-gun in the crook of hisbent left arm and walking with long, easy, ground-consuming strides.Marcia almost had to run to keep up with him as they went down astretch of slightly sloping black rock toward the steaming, hissing,pounding, roaring, exploding surf.

  Slade smiled. "Plenty of water," he said.

  "But no food, Mr. Slade. There is absolutely no food on earth now andno possible way of getting food unless you want to stick around for afew million years."

  "You think I came out here without a plan?" Slade asked with somehostility.

  "I don't know. You were desperate."

  "As long as you're with me I figure they might follow, but they won'trush me. They might even send over a 'copter, but it won't tryanything. Not with you here. Desperate? I'm not desperate, and don'tyou forget it. Desperate you don't think straight. Once is all theycan execute me. I stayed behind, they'd of done it. If they catch me,they'll do it. What's the difference?"

  "You said you had a plan."

  * * * * *

  They reached the edge of a thrusting headland, an enormous beak-shapedcliff of beetling black rock which leaned out over the young, stillsaltless ocean. Slade paced back and forth quickly, with a powerfulleonine grace, until he found a fault in the rock. The fault tumbledjaggedly, steeply down almost to the edge of the sea.

  "Down there," Slade said. "We'll follow the sea coast back to theprison."

  "Back?" Marcia said in disbelief.

  "Hell yes, back. You said it yourself. There's no food out here. Sincethere ain't no life, of course there's no food. Oh, it's a great placefor a prison, all right. Whoever thought of it ought to win a prize. Aprison--a billion years in the past. What's the word?"

  "Archaeozoic," she supplied.

  "Yeah, archaeozoic. An archaeozoic prison. You can escape to yourheart's content, but what the hell's the difference. There's no lifeback here, not yet. The Earth's just a baby. So you escape--and youstarve to death. It makes every maximum security jail before this onelook like a kid's piggy bank."

  "There hasn't ever been an escape," Marcia said hopefully as they madetheir way down to the sea, she in front and Slade behind her with theM-gun.

  "There ain't never been a hostage before."

  "No-o."

  "There's a hostage now."

  Marcia Lawrence took a deep breath and asked suddenly, "Are you goingto kill me?"

  "Hell, I don't know. I got no reason to--unless you make me. We'regoing back there. We're double-tracking along the beach, get me? Backto the prison dome."

  "But--"

  "Adam Slade won't starve to death out here. We'll double back to thedome--and the time machine."

  "Oh," she said. They began to walk along the edge of the sea, itswaters sullen gray, mirroring the sky. Here on this dawn earth the skyhas as yet never been blue, for the primordial waters were stillfalling, falling. It rained almost all the time and the air was thickwith moisture and every night when the sun--as yet unseen by the dawnearth except as an invisible source of light--went down and darknesscame, the mists rolled in from the sea. In the morning whether rainshad fallen or not the ground was soaked and tiny freshets rushed downto the sea, returning to it.

  "Look out!" he cried suddenly, and shoved her against the base of thecliff which overlooked the water. The cliff top thrust out over them,umbrella-wise. The base of the cliff was thus a concavity and theypressed themselves against it now, in shadow. The waters of the infantsea were a hundred yards away, surging and booming against the rock.

  She heard it soon after he did. A helicopter. She wanted to scream.She wondered if they would hear her scream. But she looked at AdamSlade's face and did nothing. Soon the helicopter came, buzzing lowover them, searching. It circled a great many times because theabandoned tank was there. It circled and came down on the beach andtwo uniformed figures got out. Now she really wanted to scream. Onesound. One sound and they would hear her. One quick filling of thelungs and--

  Adam Slade hit her sudde
nly and savagely and the black loomed up ather but she did not remember striking it.

  When she awoke, the helicopter was gone.

  "Sorry I had to poke you one," Slade said. He did not seem sorry atall. He said it automatically and then added: "You ready to walk?"

  She nodded. She got up and staggered a few steps before her legssteadied under her. Then with Slade she walked down along the rockybeach. This, she thought, was a story. It was the only big story shehad ever had and probably she would not live to write it. As a woman,she was almost hysterical with fear, but as a videocaster she wasangry. The story was hers--if she lived to tell it.

  Then she had to live.

  Time prison. Sure, she thought. Utterly escape