Escape! by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page A

shut.
    “Yeah... I’m okay....” Danny grabbed the ropes and
tried to stand. His legs were very shaky. He felt other people’s
arms holding him, helping him to stand.
    Lacey was in front of him. “Hey, Danny, you all
right?”
    “Sure,” Danny said, through swollen lips.
    Back in the locker room they sat him on a bench. The
doctor stuck a needle into Danny’s leg, and within a few seconds
his chest started to feel better.
    The doctor growled to Tenny, “You should never have
let this boy exert himself like that.”
    Joe nodded, his face serious. “Maybe you’re
right.”
    “I’m okay,” Danny insisted. His chest really felt
pretty good now. But his face hurt like fire and he felt more tired
than he ever had before in his life.
    “This whole business of staging fights is wrong,” the
doctor said.
    Joe said, “If they don’t fight in the ring, they’ll
do it behind our backs. I’d rather have it done under our control.
It’s a good emotional outlet for everybody.”
    Danny turned to Ralph, who was sitting glumly on the
bench beside him. “Guess I didn’t do too good.”
    Ralph shrugged and tried to cheer up. “Yeah, he
smacked you around pretty good. But that one sock you caught him
with was a beauty! Did ya see th’ look on his face when he hit the
floor? I thought his eyes was going to pop out!”
    Just then Lacey came by, a robe thrown over his
shoulders and his gloves off.
    “Good fight, Danny. Man, if the ref didn’t stop it
when he did, my arms was going to fall off. I hit you with
everything! How come you didn’t go down like you’re supposed to?”
He was grinning broadly.
    “Too dumb,” said Danny.
    “Smart enough to deck me,” Lacey shot back. “Got me
sore there for half a minute. Well, anyway... good fight.”

    Lacey stuck out his right hand. The tape was still
wrapped around it. Danny was surprised to see that his own gloves
had been taken off by somebody. He looked at his hands for a
moment, then grasped Lacey’s. It was the first time he had ever
shaken hands with a Negro.
     

Chapter Fourteen
     
    To his surprise, Danny was something of a hero the
next morning. He felt good enough to go to his reading class, even
though his eye was still swollen, and really purple now. His arms
and legs were stiff and sore. His ribs ached. But he went to class
anyway.
    “Here comes the punching bag,” somebody said when he
came into the classroom.
    “Look at that shinner!”
    “Tough luck, Danny. You showed a lot of guts.”
    “First time Lacey’s ever been knocked down.”
    “Goin’ to fight him again next month?”
    Danny let himself sink into one of the chairs. “Not
me. Next fight I have is goin’ to be with somebody a lot easier
than Lacey. Like maybe King Kong.”
    Mr. Cochran came in, looked a little surprised at
seeing Danny there, and then put them all to work.
     
    Laurie was shaken up when she visited that week and
saw Danny’s eye. But he laughed it off and made her feel better. By
the time she came back, the following week, Danny’s face was just
about back to normal.
    By that time, Danny had enough of Joe Tenny’s voice
on tape to do the job he wanted to. One afternoon he went back to
the language classroom. It was empty.
    The booths in the back of the room had big tape
recorders in them. Danny worked for more than an hour, taking
Tenny’s words off his pocket recorder and getting them onto the big
machine’s tape in just the right way. Finally, he had it exactly as
he wanted it to sound:
    “SPECS,” said Dr. Tenny’s voice, “I want you to turn
off all the alarm systems right now.”
    It didn’t sound exactly right. Some of the words were
louder than others. If you listened carefully, you could hear
different background noises from one word to the next, because they
had been recorded at different times. Danny hoped SPECS wouldn’t
notice.
    He got his faked message onto the tape of his pocket
recorder and erased the tape on the big machine. Then he