Space Prison

Space Prison, by Tom Godwin

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Title: Space Prison
Author: Tom Godwin
Release Date: September 9, 2007 [EBook #22549]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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PYRAMID BOOKS F-774 40c
One of the truly unusual novels of science-fiction--a vivid portrayal of
the deadliest planet ever discovered!
SPACE PRISON
(original title: THE SURVIVORS)
Tom Godwin

AFTER TWO CENTURIES....
The sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume.
Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully
deadly--the Gern battle cruiser, come to seek them out and destroy
them.
Humbolt dropped inside the stockade, exulting. For two hundred years
his people had been waiting for the chance to fight the mighty Gern
Empire ...
... with bows and arrows against blasters and bombs!

Space Prison
(original title: The Survivors)
a science-fiction adventure by
TOM GODWIN
PYRAMID BOOKS NEW YORK

To

JOE AND BLANCHE KOLARIK, whose friendship and
encouragement in the years gone by will never be forgotten.
SPACE PRISON (original title: The Survivors)
A PYRAMID BOOK published by arrangement with Gnome Press,
Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY Gnome Press edition published 1958 Pyramid
edition published February 1960 Second printing: September 1962
This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character
herein and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely
coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc. 444
Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York, U.S.A.

* * * * *
PART 1
* * * * *
For seven weeks the Constellation had been plunging through
hyperspace with her eight thousand colonists; fleeing like a hunted
thing with her communicators silenced and her drives moaning and
thundering. Up in the control room, Irene had been told, the needles of
the dials danced against the red danger lines day and night.
She lay in bed and listened to the muffled, ceaseless roar of the drives
and felt the singing vibration of the hull. We should be almost safe by
now, she thought. Athena is only forty days away.
Thinking of the new life awaiting them all made her too restless to lie

still any longer. She got up, to sit on the edge of the bed and switch on
the light. Dale was gone--he had been summoned to adjust one of the
machines in the ship's X-ray room--and Billy was asleep, nothing
showing of him above the covers but a crop of brown hair and the furry
nose of his ragged teddy bear.
She reached out to straighten the covers, gently, so as not to awaken
him. It happened then, the thing they had all feared.
From the stern of the ship came a jarring, deafening explosion. The
ship lurched violently, girders screamed, and the light flicked out.
In the darkness she heard a rapid-fire thunk-thunk-thunk as the
automatic guard system slid inter-compartment doors shut against
sections of the ship suddenly airless. The doors were still thudding shut
when another explosion came, from toward the bow. Then there was
silence; a feeling of utter quiet and motionlessness.
The fingers of fear enclosed her and her mind said to her, like the cold,
unpassionate voice of a stranger: The Gerns have found us.
The light came on again, a feeble glow, and there was the soft, muffled
sound of questioning voices in the other compartments. She dressed,
her fingers shaking and clumsy, wishing that Dale would come to
reassure her; to tell her that nothing really serious had happened, that it
had not been the Gerns.
It was very still in the little compartment--strangely so. She had
finished dressing when she realized the reason: the air circulation
system had stopped working.
That meant the power failure was so great that the air regenerators,
themselves, were dead. And there were eight thousand people on the
Constellation who would have to have air to live....
The Attention buzzer sounded shrilly from the public address system
speakers that were scattered down the ship's corridors. A voice she
recognized as that of Lieutenant Commander Lake spoke:

"War was declared upon Earth by the Gern Empire ten days ago. Two
Gern cruisers have attacked us and their blasters have destroyed the
stern and bow