Stainless Steel Rat 11: The Stainless Steel Rat Returns (13 page)

It took some time to stir Elmo and company awake and goad them to the meeting. Sensibly, the captain and engineer were prominent by their absence. Angelina sat chatting among the women—while I faced the bleary-eyed men.

“Gentlemen,” I said, starting off with a lie. “You will be pleased to hear that our little adventure was a complete success. The Vengefulers will venge no more and not bother the other kind folk on this planet—and that means you as well. Angelina and I, and the rest of the crew, must leave this fair world. But you—you lucky lot!—have been invited to make this your home. You can look ahead to a prosperous future—though I must admit you will have limited means of disposing of your excellent pork products—”

“That’s a real kind of a problem, Cousin Jim,” Elmo said, breaking in with newfound determination. “Without no income, why how we gonna live?”

“You can trade with the city,” I said, with a touch of desperation in my voice. Elmo gloomily shook his head.

“From what the locals tell us we best stay away from them.”

“And we got us other problems,” a burly swineherd called out. “The only television we got is from them city people and it’s no good at all.”

“All shooting and killing and praying and such and no soap operas,” a woman in the front row said, and the sisterhood nodded fiercely.

“But . . .” I said, and it was a pretty feeble
but
. Any arguments I produced could not sway them from the lost pleasures of TV. I looked at their determined features and had to admit defeat.

“Yes,” I said, fighting to hold back a heartfelt sigh. “You had better start bringing the animals aboard as soon as possible.”

I went to break the news to the crew. Who took it in stoic silence, bad news being the order of the day.

“I never liked this planet from the moment we arrived and were shot at,” Captain Singh said. “Let us get off-planet as soon as we can then plan our next Bloat jump.” He swung about in his chair to face the control board. “Let me know as soon as everyone and everything is aboard. Tell them we’ll pull a maximum of one-G during takeoff. Make sure all the livestock is secured. One of the sows broke a leg when we landed and I have had nothing but hassle from our passengers ever since.”

I went to say my good-byes to Bilboa and friends, which
was a time-consuming process. Even then I found that the boarding was slow and tearful, with many good-byes. I went to the bridge where I joined the equally depressed captain, who was gloomily watching the slow preparations for departure.

“I checked and everyone’s aboard,” Angelina said happily as she joined us. “I’ll miss the nice people here.” The silence that followed was thunderous.

“Best go to our cabin now,” I said.

We went. Angelina gave me a quick hug before lying down on her acceleration couch. “You did everything possible, Jim. We were all so sure that those Vengefulers had interstellar communication. And the vegetarians should really thank you for the way you improved their dealings with those dreadful city people.”

This cheered me slightly, but I still had great fears for the future. “We should change the name of this ship.” I said as I buckled in. “Did you ever hear the old myth about the
Flying Dutchman
?”

“What’s a Dutchman.”

“I have no idea. But it was an ocean vessel of some kind that was supposed to be sailing under a curse. That meant that it could never reach port and was doomed to sail on forever.”

“How awful. But I’m sure that won’t happen to us.”

The buzzer rasped loudly and the recorded voice announced
“Ten-second warning.”

Takeoff went well. At least something did for a change.

Angelina unbuckled and stood up. “I’m going to see how the porcuswine fared after this takeoff.”

“Right. I’ll be on the bridge.”

Captain and engineer were laboring at the computer; cabalistic equations ran down the screen. After much muttering they seemed to reach an agreement. The captain pushed his chair back and pointed to the screen.

“I’ve gone through the galactic ephemeris and this seems to be the optimum balance of all the factors.”

I nodded—although the spatial coordinates were just a meaningless series of numbers.

“I’ve balanced out favorable locations that could be reached in one Bloat, against stellar density. This is our best choice.”

“Do it!” I said. “Let’s see if our luck is better this time.”

“Beginning Bloat,” he said, hitting the
RUN-PROGRAM
button.

Floradora began to shrink slowly behind us, growing tinier and tinier until it blinked out of sight.

“The bar is open!” I said with false enthusiasm. Then I remembered that the captain never drank on duty—and Stramm was already on the way to the engine room.

Hopefully Angelina would share a cocktail with me. If not, I was sure Pinky and I could split a bowl of curry puffs . . .

The days crawled by. I saw little of Angelina, who was exacting a great deal of pleasure from her unexpected female companionship. I began to realize that women were far better than men at enjoying the company of one another. The thought of socializing with Elmo and friends—what could their conversation possibly consist of?—was a frightening one! I did extract some enjoyment—and a good workout—from helping Stramm strip down and reassemble one of the major thrust bearings on the landing jets. I still welcomed warmly the captain’s announcement over the ship’s speakers.

“Getting radio signals now . . . I’ll see if I can amplify them.”

I must say that the elapsed time between emergencies was getting shorter and shorter. I relaxed after we had finished work and had just made my first drink, was stirring the ice to chill it, when the wall speaker rustled and the captain spoke:

“Boss Jim to bridge.”

I sipped, then frowned. Had there been a touch of anxiety to his voice? Yes, there had. I put the drink down and headed for the stairs. He was frowning at the viewscreen when I came onto the bridge.

“Something is wrong?” I asked.

“There certainly is. Come look at this.”

This
was a bright star slightly off-center on the screen. He pointed to a much-dimmer star in the center of the screen.

“This is the star system that is our target destination. The brighter star should not be there.”

“Which means . . . ?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment, as soon as the spectral analysis is complete—there it is.”

The computer pinged, the printer hummed, then ejected a printed sheet. He took it and scanned it quickly: the frown became a scowl.

“Helium, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen—in that order of quantity . . .”

“Which means?”

“Ejecta.”

“Explain if you please—physics was never my best subject.”

He touched a changing number low on the screen. “It is getting brighter and hotter the closer we get.” He was not happy with this. “What we are looking at is a star gone nova. If we stay on this course we’ll be a smoking cinder before long.”

“Cut the power! Go back!”

“Impossible—as I have explained. We cannot retrace a Bloat course. What I can do is gradually reduce the power
and shorten our Bloat time. But we can’t activate a new course until the Bloat is over.”

“We’ll be toast . . .”

“I hope not.”

I was still not sure what was happening. And what was the nova star doing there?

“Wasn’t this nova in the stellar ephemeris when you plotted our course?”

“Obviously not.” He groped in the drawer for his glasses; it was obviously lecture time again. He put them on and we were back in the classroom. “Although stellar surveys are being made constantly, it is a big galaxy out there and this nova was obviously not at this location when the last survey was made.”

“But a star doesn’t go nova just like that.”

“Normally, I agree. But there are exceptions. Some novae are recurrent, albeit on a time scale ranging from a thousand to a hundred thousand years. The recurrence interval for a nova is less dependent on the white dwarf’s accretion rate than its mass . . .”

The lecture ran its course but I tuned out. The only thing that mattered was how hot it would be when we popped back into normal space. I cracked my knuckles and brooded until the lecture mode ground to a halt. Only when the captain took off his glasses did I venture to ask a question.

“Do you know how hot it will be when this Bloat ends?”

“No. I can measure it, but of course we won’t be able to feel it until the Bloat terminates.”

“Why?”

“Because of the attenuation of our molecules during Bloat, all the wavelengths apparently change. Only when we
have resumed our normal dimensions will the temperature change be felt.”

“Which will be when?”

He looked at the control panel. “I’m shortening the Bloat time steadily. As of now we have five hours to termination. But there will be updates.”

I looked at my watch—then set the alarm. “I’ll be here again in a few hours.”

I made my way slowly back to the bar and my tepid drink. Angelina came in just when I was making up a shaker of refills.

“Someone is looking very glum,” she said.

“With good reason I’m afraid.”

I poured out drinks for us both. Then spoke to the point since I knew that she could handle any occasion—and loathed secrecy.

“We will be having a spot of trouble in a few more hours.”

I couldn’t repeat all the physics data that the captain had made so murkily clear, nor did I try.

“The details are both complicated and inescapable. One thing that I can say is that at the conclusion of our Bloat we may be in trouble. That is, we may be fried. All we can do is wait and see.”

“Then there is nothing more to talk about. Let’s finish this drink and go see the captain. We must try and cheer him up.”

My level-headed darling was even cheering me up!

Nor was the captain just sitting on his hands. Engineer Stramm had joined him and they were working deep within the control board. Panels had been opened and cables ran to a newly constructed apparatus that had been bolted to the top.

“Ready for test—” Stramm said.

“Now!”

The captain threw a switch. Nothing happened.

That we could see. Obviously the engineer could see more. He smiled and tossed his screwdriver high, caught it as it fell.

“Total elapsed time—a shade under two seconds.”

“Can we reduce that any more?” the captain asked.

“Not possible. The Bloat termination signal is only three milliseconds long. This has to be transmitted, modified, electronically amplified, relayed—and the new course activated. We’ve already made the activation time as short as we can.”

“All right—we can live with that. But we better test it a few more times.”

“Could the humble peasantry be informed just as to what is going on?” I asked.

“Simplicity itself,” the captain said. “The electronic circuitry we have installed here will be automatically activated the microsecond the Bloat ends. A new course has been calculated—pointing ninety degrees away from the original course. We will be in normal space-time for less than two seconds—then we will again be safe from outside radiation.”

“And just what will happen during those two seconds?” Angela asked.

“Radiation from the nova will hit our hull. It will be quite high and quite sudden. I will not hazard a guess as to just what the results will be.”

“Do we tell the passengers what is going to happen?” I asked.

“As captain of this craft that is now in powered flight, I am in command. I have decided there would be no point in informing anyone else about what is happening. Though she
is old this spacer is soundly built and has plenty of shielding. I think she will survive . . . or . . .”

The silence lengthened—until Angelina spoke.

“Or we will never know what hit us.”

He nodded. “That is correct.”

After that, it was just a matter of marking time. I went to refresh our drinks—and supply Stramm with one since he was now officially off duty. When I got back to the bridge with the tray I found that Pinky had joined the party. Since she had learned how to climb stairs she had the run of the ship. She was mumbling with pleasure as Angelina used a steel brush to comb out her quills.

“How much more time left to end of Bloat?” I asked, putting the drinks tray on the plotting table.

“About twenty-six minutes,” the captain said. “I’ll switch on the countdown at zero minus one minute.”

The silence grew as we sipped our drinks. There was nothing more that could be said. Perhaps it was a time for introspection not conversation. In fact I was startled when the recorded voice said . . .

“Sixty seconds and counting . . .”

Angelina reached out and took my hand. I squeezed back.

“Thirty-one.”