Produced by Greg Weeks, Joel Schlosberg and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the United States copyright on this publication was renewed. PYRAMID BOOKS F-774 40c One of the truly _unusual_ novels of science-fiction--a vivid portrayal of the deadliest planet ever discovered! SPACE PRISON (original title: THE SURVIVORS) Tom Godwin AFTER TWO CENTURIES.... The sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully deadly--the Gern battle cruiser, come to seek them out and destroy them. Humbolt dropped inside the stockade, exulting. For two hundred years his people had been waiting for the chance to fight the mighty Gern Empire ... ... with bows and arrows against blasters and bombs! Space Prison (original title: The Survivors) a science-fiction adventure by TOM GODWIN PYRAMID BOOKS NEW YORK To JOE AND BLANCHE KOLARIK, whose friendship and encouragement in the years gone by will never be forgotten. SPACE PRISON (original title: _The Survivors_) A PYRAMID BOOK published by arrangement with Gnome Press, Inc. PRINTING HISTORY Gnome Press edition published 1958 Pyramid edition published February 1960 Second printing: September 1962 This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental. Printed in the United States of America _PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc. 444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York, U.S.A._ * * * * * PART 1 * * * * * For seven weeks the _Constellation_ had been plunging through hyperspace with her eight thousand colonists; fleeing like a hunted thing with her communicators silenced and her drives moaning and thundering. Up in the control room, Irene had been told, the needles of the dials danced against the red danger lines day and night. She lay in bed and listened to the muffled, ceaseless roar of the drives and felt the singing vibration of the hull. _We should be almost safe by now_, she thought. _Athena is only forty days away._ Thinking of the new life awaiting them all made her too restless to lie still any longer. She got up, to sit on the edge of the bed and switch on the light. Dale was gone--he had been summoned to adjust one of the machines in the ship's X-ray room--and Billy was asleep, nothing showing of him above the covers but a crop of brown hair and the furry nose of his ragged teddy bear. She reached out to straighten the covers, gently, so as not to awaken him. It happened then, the thing they had all feared. From the stern of the ship came a jarring, deafening explosion. The ship lurched violently, girders screamed, and the light flicked out.