The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (107 page)
“If I told you I was innocent—gave you my most sincere word of honor—would you believe me?” I asked. “I have nothing to do with this and know nothing about it.”
“Hooray for the Boy Space Scout,” Angela said with bitter mockery.
“Why don’t you admit the truth, since you will be dead in twenty seconds no matter what you say.”
“I’ve told you the truth.” I wondered if I could reach her before she fired, but knew it was impossible.
“Good-bye, James diGriz. It was nice knowing you—for a while. Let me leave you with a last pleasant thought. All this was in vain. There is a door and an exit behind me that no one knows about.
Before your police get here I shall be safely gone. And if the thought tortures you a bit I intend to go on killing and killing and killing and you will never be able to stop me.”
My Angela raised the gun for a surer aim as she touched a switch in the molding. A panel rolled back revealing a square of blackness in the wall.
“Spare me the histrionics, Jim,” she said disgustedly, her eyes looking
into mine over the sight of the gun. Her finger tightened. “I wouldn’t expect that kind of juvenile trick from you, staring over my shoulder and widening your eyes as if there were someone behind me. I’m not going to turn and look. You’re not getting out of this one alive.”
“Famous last words,” I said as I jumped sideways. The gun boomed but the bullet plowed into the ceiling. Inskipp stood behind
her, twisting the gun into the air, pulling it out of her hand. Angela just stared at me in horror and made no move to resist. There were handcuffs locked on her tiny wrists and she still didn’t struggle or cry out. I jumped forward, shouting her name.
There were two burly types in Patrol uniforms behind Inskipp, and they took her. Before I could reach the door he stepped through and closed it
behind him. I stumbled to a halt before it, as unable to fight as Angela had been a minute ago.
“Have a drink,” Inskipp said, dropping into Angela’s chair and pulling out a hip flask. “Ersatz Terran brandy, not this local brand of plastic solvent.” He offered me a cupful.
“Drop dead, you …” I followed with some of the choicer selections from my interstellar vocabulary, and tried to knock the cup out of his hand. He fooled me by raising it and drinking it himself, not in
the least annoyed.
“Is that any kind of language to use on your superior officer in the Special Corps?” He asked and refilled the cup. “It’s a good thing we’re a relaxed organization without too many rules. Still—there are limits.” He held out the cup again and this time I grabbed it and drained it.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, still wracked by conflicting emotions.
“Because you didn’t, that’s
why. The operation is over, you are a success. Before you were merely on probation, but now you are a full agent.”
He grubbed in one pocket and pulled out a little gold star made of paper. After licking it carefully and solemnly he reached out and stuck it to the front of my shirt.
“I hereby appoint you a full Agent of the Special Corps,” he intoned, “by authority of the power vested in me.”
Cursing, I reached to pick the damn thing off—and laughed instead. It was absurd. It was also a fine commentary on
the honors that went with the job.
“I thought I was no longer a member of the crew,” I told him.
“I never received your resignation,” Inskipp said. “Not
that it would have meant anything. You can’t resign from the Corps.”
“Yeah—but I got your message when you gave me a discharge.
Or did you forget that I stole a ship and you set off the scuttling charge by remote to blow me up? As you see I managed to pull the fuse just before it let go.”
“Nothing of the sort, my boy,” he said, settling back to sip his second drink. “You were so insistent about looking for the fair Angelina that I thought you might want to borrow a ship before we had a chance to assign you one. The one
you took had the fuse rigged as it always is on these occasions. The fuse—not the charge—is set to explode five seconds
after
it is removed. I find this gives a certain independence of mind to prospective agents who regret their manner of departure.”
“You mean—the whole thing was a frame-up?” I gurgled.
“You might say that. I prefer the term ‘graduating-exercise’. This is the time when we find
out if our crooked novices really will devote the rest of their lives to the pursuit of law and order. When they find out, too. We don’t want there to be any regrets in later years. You found out, didn’t you Jim?”
“I found out something … I’m not quite sure what yet,” I said, still not able to talk about the one thing closest to me.
“It was a fine operation. I must say you showed a lot of imagination
in the way you carried it out.” Then he frowned. “But that business with the bank, I can’t say I approve of it. The Corps has all the funds you will need …”
“Same money,” I snapped. “Where does the Corps get it? From planetary governments. And where do they get it from? Taxes of course. So I take it directly from the bank. The insurance company pays the bank for the loss, then declares a smaller
income that year, pays less taxes to the government—and the result is exactly the same as your way!”
Inskipp was well acquainted with this brand of logic so didn’t even bother to answer. I still didn’t want to talk about Angela.
“How did you find me?” I asked. “There was no bug on the ship.”
“Simple child of nature that you are,” Inskipp said, raising his hands in feigned horror. “Do you really
think that any of our ships
aren’t
bugged? And the job done so well it cannot be detected if you don’t know where to look. For your information the apparently solid outer door of the spacelock contains quite a complex transmitter, strong enough for us to detect at quite a distance.”
“Then why didn’t I hear it?”
“For the simple reason that it wasn’t broadcasting. I should add that the door also
contains a receiver. The device only transmits when it receives the proper signal. We gave you time to reach your destination and then followed you. We lost you for a while in Freiburbad, but picked up your trail again in the hospital, right after you played musical chairs with the corpses. We lent you a hand there, the hospital was justifiably annoyed but we managed to keep them quiet After that
it was just a matter of keeping an eye on doctors and surgical equipment since your next move was obvious. I hope you’ll be pleased to know that you are carrying a very compact transmitter in your sternum.”
I looked at my chest but of course saw nothing.
“It was too good an opportunity to miss,” Inskipp went on. There was no stopping the man. “One night when you were under sedation the good
doctor found the alcohol we had seen fit to include in one of your supply packages. He of course took advantage of this shipping error and a Corps surgeon made a little operation of his own.”
“Then you have been following me and watching ever since?”
“That’s right. But this was your case, just as much as it would have been if you knew we were there.”
“Then why did you move in for the kill like
this?” I snapped. “I didn’t blow the whistle for the marines.”
This was the big question for the hour and the only one that mattered to me. Inskipp took his time about answering.
“It’s like this,” he drawled, and took a sip of his drink. “I like a new man to have enough rope. But not so much that he will hang himself. You were here for what might be called a goodly long time, and I wasn’t receiving
any reports about revolutions or arrests you had made.”
What could I say?
His voice was quieter, more sympathetic. “Would
you
have arrested her if we hadn’t moved in?” That was the question.
“I don’t know,” was all I could say.
“Well I damn well knew what I was going to do,” he said with the old venom. “So I did it. The plot is well nipped before it could bud and our multiple murderess is
offplanet by now.”
“Let her go!” I shouted as I grabbed him by the front of the jacket and swung him free of the ground and shook him. “Let her go I tell you!”
“Would you turn her loose again—the way she is?” was all he answered.
Would I? I suppose I wouldn’t. I dropped him while I was thinking about it and he straightened out the wrinkles in the front of his suit.
“This has been a rough assignment
for you,” he said as he started to put the flask away. “At times there can be a very thin line between right and wrong. If you are emotionally involved the line is almost impossible to see.”
“What will happen to her?” I asked.
He hesitated before he answered. “The truth—for a change,” I told him.
“All right, the truth. No promises—but the psych boys might be able to do something with her. If
they can find
the cause of the basic aberration. But that can be impossible to find at times.”
“Not in this case—I can tell them.”
He looked surprised at that, giving me some small satisfaction.
“In that case there might be a chance. I’ll give positive orders that everything is to be tried before they even consider anything like personality removal. If that is done she is just another body,
of which there are plenty in the galaxy. Sentenced to death she’s just another corpse—of which there is an equal multitude.”
I grabbed the flask away from him before it reached his pocket, and opened it. “I know you, Inskipp,” I said as I poured. “You’re a born recruiting sergeant. When you lick them—make them join.”
“What else,” he said. “She’d make a great agent.”
“We’d make a great team,”
I told him and we raised our cups.
“
Here’s to crime
.”
THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT’S REVENGE
Harry Harrison
I
STOOD IN LINE
, as patient as the other
taxpayers, my filled out forms and my cash gripped hotly in my hand. Cash, money, the old fashioned folding stuff. A local custom that I intended to make expensive to the local customers. I was scratching under the artificial beard, which itched abominably, when the man before me stepped out of the way and I was at the window. My finger stuck
in the glue and I had a job freeing it without pulling off the beard as well.
‘Come, come, pass it over,’ the aging, hatchet-faced, bitter and shrewish female official said, hand extended impatiently.
‘On the contrary,’ I said, letting the papers and banknotes fall away to disclose the immense .75 recoilless pistol that I held.
‘You
pass it over. All of that tax money you have extracted from
the sheep-like suckers who populate this backward planet.’
I smiled to show that I meant it and she choked off a scream and began scrabbling in the cash drawer. It was a broad smile that showed all of my teeth, which I had stained bright red, which should have helped her decide on the proper course of action. As the money was pushed towards me I stuffed it into my long topcoat that was completely
lined with deep pockets.
‘What are you doing?’ the man behind me gasped, eyes bulging like great white grapes.
‘Taking money,’ I said and flipped a bundle at him. ‘Why don’t you have some yourself.’ He caught it by reflex, goggled at it, and all the alarms
went off at once and I heard the doors crashing shut. The cashier had managed to trigger an alarm.