Escape! by Ben Bova Page A

lookin’ at travel
ads. See where you want to go in Canada. Or maybe Mexico.”
    “Danny, you’re not...”
    He silenced her with an upraised hand. “Don’t worry
about it. This time it’ll work.”
    Laurie shook her head. “Danny, forget about it. You
can’t escape....”
    “I can and I will!” he snapped.
    “Well, then, forget about me,” Laurie snapped
back.
    “What?”
    “Danny, I’m just getting to the point where I can
live without looking over my shoulder to see who’s following me.
I’ve spent all my life with you and the other kids, dodging the
cops, fighting in gangs. For the first time in my life, I’m out of
that! I’m living like a free human being. I like it! Can’t you
understand? I don’t want to go back to living scared every
minute....”
    “You mean if I....”
    She grasped his hands and looked straight into his
eyes. “I mean I want you to walk out of this place a free man. Not
only free, but a man. Not a kid who doesn’t care what he
does. Not a convict who has to run every day and hide every night.
I’ll wait for you for a hundred years, Danny, if I have to. But
only if you’ll promise me that we can both be free when you get
out.”
    Danny pulled his hands away. “I’m not waiting any
hundred years! Not even one year. I’m busting out of here, and then
I’m coming to get you. And you’d better be there when I come for
you!”
    She shook her head. “I won’t go back to living that
way, Danny.”
    “Oh no? We’ll find out. And soon, too.”
    “I’d better go now,” Laurie got up from the sofa.
    “If you blab any of this to Tenny....”
    She glared at him. “I won’t. Not because I’m afraid
of you. I won’t say a word to anybody because I want you to
decide. You’ve got to figure it out straight in your own mind.
You’ve got a chance to make something good out of your life. If you
try to break out of the Center, you’ll just be running away from
that chance. You’ll be telling me that you’re afraid of trying to
stand on your own feet. That you want to be caught again and kept
in jail.”
    “Afraid?” Danny felt his temper boil.
    “That’s right,” Laurie said. “If you try to break out
of here, you and me are finished.”
    She walked to the door and left. Danny stood in the
middle of the room, fists clenched at his sides, trembling with
anger, chest hurting.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Twenty-Three
     
    That night, after dinner, Danny and the other boys
met in the gym. They took a basketball and shot baskets for a
while, then sat together on one of the benches. The gym was only
half full, and not as noisy as usual.
    “Okay,” Danny said. “I got enough scoop on how the
generator works and how to blow it. We’re going to turn off all the
electricity in the Center and walk out of here while everybody else
is runnin’ around in the dark.”
    Their faces showed what he wanted to see: They liked
the idea.
    “I thought it was something like that.”
    “It’ll be a blast.”
    Noisy asked, “What about the emergency
generator?”
    “Got it all worked out,” Danny said. “Been getting
all the info I need from SPECS.”
    “When do we go?”
    “Tomorrow night,” said Danny.
    Hambone whistled softly. “You sure ain’t fooling
around.”
    “What time?”
    “Six o’clock. Almost everybody’ll be in the cafeteria
for dinner. All the lights go, all the phones go, everybody goes
crazy, and we split.”
    “Great!” said Midget. “The maintenance man at the
power station goes to the cafeteria at six. That’s when he leaves a
kid in there alone for about fifteen minutes.”
    “I know, you told me,” Danny said. “That’s why I
picked that time. Who’s the kid tomorrow? Can we talk him into
going with us or do we have to lump him?”
    Midget answered, “It’s Lacey. I don’t think he’ll go
along with us.”
    “Lacey!”
    Ralph laughed, low