Free Escape! by Ben Bova Page B

do,” Midget answered.
    Turning to Vic and Coop, Danny said, “You two guys
got to get yourselves into the maintenance crew. Try to get jobs
that involve big machinery, like the heaters. Okay?”
    Vic shrugged. “I don’t know nothing about
machinery.”
    “Then learn!” Danny snapped.
    Ralph gave Danny a hard look. “And what’re you goin’
to be doing?”
    “Me?” Danny smiled. “I’m gettin’ myself a job with
SPECS. He’s got all the brains around here. He’s got to tell me a
few more things before we can blow this dump.”
     

Chapter Twenty-One
     
    They all met again in the cafeteria two days later.
Each boy reported that he had gotten the job Danny wanted him to
take.
    “Good,” Danny said as he hunched over the dinner
dishes. He kept his voice low enough so that the others could just
about hear it over the racket made by the rest of the crowd.
    “Now listen. This is the last time we meet all
together like this. From now on, I’ll see each one of you alone, or
maybe two of you together, at the most. Stay cool, work your jobs
like you really mean it. In a month or so, we’ll be out of
here.”
    When he got back to his room, there was an envelope
on the floor just inside his door. Danny leaned down and picked it
up, then shut the door as he looked it over. It was from outside.
His name and the Center’s address were neatly typed on the
envelope.
    The return address, in the upper left corner of the
envelope, was from some insurance company. Then he spotted the
hand-typed initials, LM, alongside the printing. It was from
Laurie!
    Danny ripped the envelope open as he went to his desk
and flicked on the lamp. He had trouble pulling the letter out of
the envelope.
     
     Dear Danny:
    I’m sorry about the blow-up on Christmas Day. I still
have your present. I will give it to you when I visit you again. I
won’t be visiting again for a month or so. I think it might be
better if we both sort of think things over before we see each
other again.
    I still love you, Danny. And I miss you a lot. I know
it is very hard for you inside the Center. But we both have a lot
of growing up to do before we can be happy together.
    Love,
    Laurie
     
    Danny read the letter twice, then crumpled it in his
fist and threw it in the wastebasket. For the first time in weeks,
he had to take an asthma pill before he could get to sleep that
night.
     
    The weeks crawled by slowly.
    Danny got his job at the computer center, down in the
basement of the administration building. He often saw Midget there.
Midget was working somewhere upstairs. SPECS’ home was a relaxing
place to work in. It was quiet. For some reason, everybody tended
to talk softly. SPECS himself made the most noise—a steady hum of
electrical power. When he was working at some special problem,
SPECS made a singsong noise while he flashed hundreds of little
lights on the front control panel of his main unit.
    Danny’s job was to help the adults who programed
SPECS and feed him new information. He carried heavy reels of
magnetic tape down the corridors between SPECS’ big, boxlike
consoles. There was a store room for the tapes that weren’t being
used, back behind the main computer room.
    “These tapes carry SPECS’ memory on them,” said one
of the computer programmers to Danny. “They’re like a library...
except that SPECS is the only one who can read them.”
    After a few weeks, Danny got to know most of the
people who ran the computer. More important, they got to know him.
They told him what to do when they needed him. The rest of the time
they ignored him.
    Which suited Danny fine. He found a few little
corners of the big computer room where he could talk to SPECS, ask
questions. If anyone saw him sitting at one of the tiny desks,
talking to the TV screen on it, they would smile and say:
    “Good kid, learning how to work with the
machine.”
    One of the first things Danny learned from SPECS was
that every conversation he had with the machine was