Free The Penal Colony by Richard Herley Page A

scramble into the hatch, the turbines screaming and a
widening gap already appearing between the undercarriage and the
turf, leaving, as often as not, one more unfortunate wretch to join
the population of Sert.
    But new meat was new meat: the only source,
outside the Village, of factory-made clothing, boots, and news of
the world at large. Thanks to the system of initiation Franks had
adopted, the outsiders had at least a chance of exploiting this one
commodity.
    The weekly or fortnightly hunt was becoming
something of a sporting occasion. Obie had even detected a certain
rivalry between the towners and the light. Because of Franks’s
terror of AIDS and HVC, if and when new meat was caught, the
growing custom among the more rampant stonks was to make sure it
failed the medical examination performed at bell-time by Sibley,
the Village vet.
    Quite often the hunt drew a blank.
Occasionally the wild men got there first and only a corpse,
perhaps mutilated, would be found.
    Martinson did not normally deign to
participate. Kept supplied with island-mades by Peto, he had little
need of factory clothes, and very few new arrivals wore boots large
enough for Martinson’s feet. As for the outside world, Martinson
was interested in that not at all. Like anyone, though, Martinson
presumably saw the value of catching the meat as far as rank was
concerned. It would do him no harm with Peto and the others to
bring back the spoils.
    Perdew Wood occupied part of Sert’s central
plain. The wood was merely a continuation and intensification of
the scrub on its northern and western sides. In few places did it
attain the status of real woodland; few of its rowans, thorns, and
oaks could be classified as more than stunted versions of mainland
trees. However, the wood provided the largest single area of cover
on the island. For that reason it was almost invariably the choice
of new arrivals, especially when they were not too bright; and,
inevitably, the wood attracted the largest numbers of hunters.
    As it was so late in the day it seemed likely
that most of the hunters had by now given up or gone elsewhere.
This, at least, was the hope Brookes had expressed on entering the
wood; certainly there was no sign of any competition.
    Among all the men at Old Town – and at the
lighthouse too, for that matter – Martinson had developed the most
formidable outdoor skills. He had adapted completely to his new
life; it was unimaginable that he could ever go back to the way he
must have been before. On those few occasions when he had
accompanied Martinson on food-gathering expeditions, Obie had been
able to observe at first hand Martinson’s awesome tracking
ability.
    He found the trail without difficulty,
separating it from those made earlier by the passage of other legs
through the undergrowth. After striking for the middle of the wood,
the trail turned more to the north, passing through a glade of
gnarled oaks and rowans scarcely more than head-high. The
undergrowth here contained clumps of bluebells as well as brambles
and bear’s-garlic and male fern. Martinson squatted to examine the
colour and texture of some damaged leaves. Then, from the soil near
by, he plucked a tiny brown toadstool. It had been trodden on: the
cap was bruised, and colourless juice had seeped from the stem.
    He arose, grinning malevolently, and
presented the toadstool to Obie.
    “Ten minutes?” Obie guessed.
    “Five.” Martinson raised a forefinger and
touched his lips. “Listen.”
    Almost on cue came the sound of a dead branch
snapping underfoot, like a dull pistol-shot echoing through the
trees.
    It was followed by more sounds of clumsy
progress, no more than two hundred metres ahead.

7

    The search for his knife had taken Routledge
as far down as the rill. It had not been there, so he had again
turned back on himself and eventually, after a meticulous
examination of every centimetre of ground, had found it not fifty
paces from the ridge. The knife had fallen and been