Battlefield Earth

He got up, took his breathe-mask off a peg, and a few minutes later was at the transshipment platform.

Terl stood there in the swirling dust and din of preshipment time. The dispatch-box courier had already been there, and the box, sealed and ready, lay on a corner of the platform. Char came over, interrupted in his preparation for transshipment firing and unfriendly.

“Routine check of dispatch transmission,” said Terl. “Security business.” He showed him the blanket authorization.

“You'll have to be fast,” shouted Char. “No time to wait around.” He glanced at his clock.

Terl scooped up the dispatch box and took it over to the car he had arrived in. He unlocked it with his master key and laid it on the seat. Nobody was watching. Char was back harassing blade machine operators to neaten up the ore.

Terl adjusted the button camera on his collar tab and speedily riffled through the sheaves. They were routine reports, routine day-to-day recounting of operational data.

Terl had done all this before and it hadn't yielded anything, but there was always hope. The Planetary Director had to initial everything and sometimes added data and comments.

The button camera whirred and in short order every sheet had been recorded.

Terl put them back in the box, locked it, and took it over to the platform.

“Everything all right?” said Char, relieved not to have another detail pushed too close to firing time.

“No personal mail, nothing,” said Terl. “When do you send the dead ones back?” He indicated the morgue.

"Semia

Terl went back to his office. Without really hoping, he put the report copies onto a screen, one after the other, studying them.

He was only interested in the ones that had Numph's writing on them. Somehow, somewhere, there was a secret communication in these reports that only Nipe in accounting could decipher; of that Terl was certain. There was no other way to get a communication back to home planet.

When he finally got this– and when he got a real lever on the animal– he could launch his private mining mission.

Terl sat late, missing di

It was here someplace. He was certain of it.

Chapter 3

Collecting things that would aid his escape was not easy.

At first Jo

He had spent valuable time studying button cameras in the electronics shop. They were simple devices. They had a small mirror to catch the image, and the image became transmitted electrons; the pattern was simply picked up and recorded on a disc. There was no power in the button camera; power was transmitted to it on a closed circuit from the receiver.

He tried to modify his instruction machine to perform the same function. His object was to record a view of the cage with him in it. Then, with a quick switchover, he could leave the button cameras transmitting that picture while he himself was elsewhere. But there were two cameras, viewing from different angles. He only had one recorder.

Terl caught him one day with the instruction machine in pieces. He was bringing in a rabbit he had shot.

The monster stood there for a while and finally said, “Teach an animal a trick and it has to work it on everything. I think you've wrecked that playing machine.”

Jo

“Put it back together so it works and you can have this rabbit.”

Jo

“Don't monkey with things that don't need fixing,” Terl said with the air of good-god-what-you-have-to-teach-an-animal.

But later Jo

Ker had him ru

The drill was heavy, having been built for Psychlos. Jo

“Don't push steady. Just lean on it and let up, time after time. After you got a hole drilled, trip the second trigger and the drill will expand and break off the ore. Keep the net in place to catch it as it falls. Now just keep that sequence going....”

“It’s hot!” Jo

in itself was almost glowing with friction.

“Oh,” said Ker. “You haven't got a heat protector.” He fished around in his pockets amid papers and bits of old snacks and finally dug out a very small package. He put it in a lowering cup and let it down on a line.

Jo

“Put it on,” yelled Ker.

Jo

He resumed bucking the drill. It was amazing. The reflected heat from the wall and the drill bit did not reach him.

After Ker finally decided Jo

“No, no,” said Ker. “Throw it away. It 's disposable. They get dirty and torn. A driller usually carries half a dozen. I don't know why I forgot. But I ain't been a driller for years.”

“It’s the only one I got,” said Jo

Jo

The food problem he had solved. The smoked beef was compact and would keep him from starving if he was ru

He carefully patched up moccasins and made sure he had an extra pair. Terl observed that, too.

“You don't have to wear those, you know,” Terl said one evening as he came out to check the cage locks. " There are old Chinko boots that could be cut down. Didn't they give you any boots with your clothes?”

The following day the compound tailor came out, complaining in his breathe-mask, and measured Jo

It made Jo

The thing that was really giving Jo