Space Prison | Page 7

camp, at the snow whipping
from the frosty hills, at the dead and the dying, and a little girl trying
vainly to awaken her brother.
"They were condemned, without reason, without a chance to live," he
said. "So many of them are so young ... and when you're young it's too

soon to have to die."
* * * * *
Prentiss returned to his own group. The dead were buried in shallow
graves and inventory was taken of the promised "ample supplies."
These were only the few personal possessions the Rejects had been
permitted to take plus a small amount of food the Gerns had taken from
the Constellation's stores. The Gerns had been forced to provide the
Rejects with at least a little food--had they openly left them to starve,
the Acceptables, whose families were among the Rejects, might have
rebelled.
Inventory of the firearms and ammunition showed the total to be
discouragingly small. They would have to learn how to make and use
bows and arrows as soon as possible.
With the first party of guards and workmen following him, Prentiss
went to the tributary valley that emptied into the central valley a mile to
the north. It was as good a camp site as could be hoped for; wide and
thickly spotted with groves of trees, a creek running down its center.
The workmen began the construction of shelters and he climbed up the
side of the nearer hill. He reached its top, his breath coming fast in the
gravity that was the equivalent of a burden half his own weight, and
saw what the surrounding terrain was like.
To the south, beyond the barren valley, the land could be seen dropping
in its long sweep to the southern lowlands where the unicorns and
swamp crawlers lived. To the north the hills climbed gently for miles,
then ended under the steeply sloping face of an immense plateau. The
plateau reached from western to eastern horizon, still white with the
snows of winter and looming so high above the world below that the
clouds brushed it and half obscured it.
He went back down the hill as Lake's men appeared. They started work
on what would be a continuation of his own camp and he told Lake
what he had seen from the hill.

"We're between the lowlands and the highlands," he said. "This will be
as near to a temperate altitude as Ragnarok has. We survive here--or
else. There's no other place for us to go."
An overcast darkened the sky at noon and the wind died down to
almost nothing. There was a feeling of waiting tension in the air and he
went back to the Rejects, to speed their move into the woods. They
were already going in scattered groups, accompanied by prowler guards,
but there was no organization and it would be too long before the last
of them were safely in the new camp.
He could not be two places at once--he needed a subleader to oversee
the move of the Rejects and their possessions into the woods and their
placement after they got there.
He found the man he wanted already helping the Rejects get started: a
thin, quiet man named Henry Anders who had fought well against the
prowlers the night before, even though his determination had been
greater than his marksmanship. He was the type people instinctively
liked and trusted; a good choice for the subleader whose job it would
be to handle the multitude of details in camp while he, Prentiss, and a
second subleader he would select, handled the defense of the camp and
the hunting.
"I don't like this overcast," he told Anders. "Something's brewing. Get
everyone moved and at work helping build shelters as soon as you
can."
"I can have most of them there within an hour or two," Anders said.
"Some of the older people, though, will have to take it slow. This
gravity--it's already getting the hearts of some of them."
"How are the children taking the gravity?" he asked.
"The babies and the very young--it's hard to tell about them yet. But the
children from about four on up get tired quickly, go to sleep, and when
they wake up they've sort of bounced back out of it."

"Maybe they can adapt to some extent to this gravity." He thought of
what Lake had said that morning: So many of them are so young ... and
when you're young it's too soon to have to die. "Maybe the Gerns made
a mistake--maybe Terran children aren't as easy to kill as they thought.
It's your job and mine and others to give the children the chance to
prove the Gerns wrong."
He went his way again to pass by the place where Julia, the girl