The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (109 page)

By the time she had finished, my thoughts had congealed into something roughly resembling their normal shape and I was weak but ready. I was out of the car before she had finished talking and standing in front of her,
blocking her way, holding her most gently by the arms.

‘Angelina, I will tell you this but once and probably never again the rest of my life. So listen well and remember. At one time I was the best crook in the galaxy, before I was conned into the Special Corps to help catch other crooks. And I caught you. Not only were you a crook but a mastermind criminal as well and a cheerfully sadistic murderess.’
I felt her body shiver in my hands and held her tighter. ‘It has to be said, because that is what you were. You aren’t any more. You had reasons to be that way and the reasons have been removed and some unhappy quirks in your otherwise pristine cortex have been straightened out. And now I love you. But I want you to remember that I loved you even then during your unreconstructed days, which
is saying a lot. So if I buck at the harness now, or am difficult to deal with
in the mornings, just remember that and make allowances. Is it a deal?’

It apparently was. She dropped the bag – on my toe, but I dared not flinch – and wrapped her arms around me and was kissing me and knocked me over into the deep grass and I had a jolly time kissing her right back. The newlywed effect I suppose
you would call it, great fun …

We froze, rigid, as a pair of flywheel cycles moaned and skidded to a stop by our car. Only the police used these since they move a good deal faster than the peat-powered steamers. They are tricycle affairs with a great heavy flywheel encased between the rear wheels. They plugged them in at night so their motor-generators could run the flywheel up to top speed.
During the day the flywheel generated electricity to drive the motors in each wheel. Very efficient and smog-free. Very dangerous.

‘This is the car, Podder!’ one of the police shouted out over the constant moan of the flywheels.

‘I’ll call it in. They can’t have gone far. We sure have them trapped now!’

Nothing infuriates me like the bland assurances of petty officials. Oh yes, really trapped
now. I growled deep in my throat as the other uniformed incompetent poked his nose around the car and gaped at our cozy cuddle in the grass. He was still gaping when I lunged an arm up and around his neck with a tight squeeze on his throat and pulled him down to join us. It was fun to watch his tongue come out and his eyes pop and his head turn red but Angelina spoiled it. She whipped off his helmet
and rapped him smartly – and accurately – on the temple with the heel of her shoe. He turned off and I let him drop.

‘And you talk about
me,’
my bride whispered. ‘You’ve got more than a touch of the old sadist in your own makeup.’

‘I called it in. Everybody knows. We’ve sure got them now …’ the enthusiastic remaining
officer said, but his voice rattled to a stop when he looked down the muzzle
of his associate’s riot gun. Angelina dug a sleep capsule out of her bag and snapped it under his nose.

‘And now what, boss?’ she asked, smiling happily at the two black-uniformed, brass-buttoned figures by the side of the road.

‘I have been thinking,’ I said, and rubbed my jaw and frowned with deep concentration to prove it. ‘We have had over four months of worriless holiday, but all good things
must end. We could extend our leave. But it would be hectic to say the least and people would get hurt and you – while that is a fine shape – it is not quite the shape for flight and pursuit and general nastiness. Shall we return to the service from which we fled?’

‘I was hoping you would say that. Morning sickness and bank robbery just don’t seem to mix. It will be fun to get back.’

‘Particularly
since they will be so glad to see us. Considering that they turned down our request for leave and we had to steal that mail ship.’

‘Not to mention all the expense money we have stolen because we couldn’t touch our bank accounts.’

‘Right. Follow me and we’ll do this with style.’

We stripped off their uniforms and gently laid the snoring peace officers in the rear of the car. One had pink polka-dot
underwear while the other’s was utilitarian black – but trimmed with lace. Which might have been local custom of dress but gave me second thoughts about the police on Kamata and I was glad we were leaving. Uniformed, helmeted, and goggled we hummed merrily down the road on our flywheel cycles waving to all the tanks and trucks that roared by the other way. Before there were too many screams
and shouts of discovery I braked in the center of the road and signaled an armored car to a stop. Angelina swung her cycle behind them
so that they would not find the sight of a pregnant officer too distracting.

‘Got them cornered!’ I shouted. ‘But they have a radio so keep this off the net. Follow me.’

‘Lead on!’ the driver shouted, his mate nodding agreement while thoughts of rewards, fame,
medals danced dazzlingly before their eyes. I led them to a deserted track into the woods that ended at a small lake complete with ramshackle boathouse and dock.

I braked, waved them to a stop, touched my fingers to my lips and tiptoed back to their car. The driver lowered the side window and looked out expectantly.

‘Breathe this,’ I said and flipped a gas grenade through the opening.

There
was a cloud of smoke followed by gasps followed by two more silent uniformed figures snoring in the grass.

‘Going to take a quick peek at their underwear?’ Angelina asked.

‘No. I want to maintain some illusions, even if they are false.’

The cycles rolled merrily down the dock and off into the water where they steamed and short-circuited and made a lot of bubbles. As soon as the armored car
had aired out we boarded and drove away. Angelina found the driver’s untouched lunch and cheerfully consumed it. I avoided most of the main roads and headed back to the city where the command post was located at the central police station. I wanted to go where the big action was.

We parked in the underground garage, deserted now, and took the elevator to the tower. The building was almost empty,
except for the command center, and I found an unoccupied office nearby and left Angelina there. Innocently amusing herself with the sealed – but easily opened – confidential files. I lowered my goggles into place and staged a dusty, exhausted entrance to control. I was ignored. The man I wanted
to see was pacing the floor sucking on a long dead pipe. I rushed up and saluted.

‘Sir, are you Mr.
Inskipp?’

‘Yar,’ he muttered, his attention still on the great wall chart that theoretically showed the condition of the chase.

‘Someone to see you, sir.’

‘What? What?’ he said, still distracted. Harold Peters Inskipp, director and mastermind of the Special Corps, not quite with it this day. He followed me out easily enough and I closed the door and slipped off the heavy goggles.

‘We’re ready
to come home now,’ I told him. ‘If you can find a quiet way of getting us off this planet without the locals getting their greedy hands on us.’

His jaw clenched with anger and fractured the mouthpiece of the pipe into innumerable fragments. I led him, spitting out pieces of plastic, to the room where Angelina was waiting.

‘A
RRGH
!’ I
NSKIPP SNARLED
, and
shook the sheaf of papers in his hand so that they rattled like dry skeletal bones.

‘Very expressive,’ I snarled, slipping a cigar from my pocket humidor and holding it to my ear. ‘But with a very minimal content of information. Could you be more explicit?’ I pinched the cigar’s small end and there was not the slightest crackle. Perfection.

‘Do you
know how many millions your crime wave has cost? The economy of Kamata …’

‘Will not suffer an iota. The government will reimburse the institutions that suffered the losses and will then in turn deduct the same amount from its annual payment to the Special Corps. Which has more money than it can possibly use in any case. And look at the benefits bestowed in return. Plenty of excitement for the
populace, increased sales of newspapers, exercise for the sedentary law enforcement officers – and that is an interesting story in itself – as well as field maneuvers that were a pleasure for everyone involved. Far from being annoyed they should pay us a fee for making all these exciting things possible.’ I lit the cigar and blew out a great cloud of fragrant smoke.

‘Don’t play wise with me,
you aging con man. If I turned you and your bride over to the Kamata authorities you would still be in jail 600 years from now.’

‘Little chance of that, Inskipp, aging con man yourself. You are short of good field agents as it is. You need us more than we need you. So consider this chewing out at an end and get on with the business. I have been chastised.’ I tore a button off the front of my
jacket and threw it across the desk to him. ‘Here, rip off my medals and reduce me to the ranks. I am guilty. Next case.’

With a final simulated growl of anger he filed the papers in the wastebasket and took out a large red folder that buzzed threateningly when he touched it. His thumb print defused the security device and the folder dropped open.

‘I have a top secret gravely important assignment
here.’

‘What other kind do I ever get?’

‘It is hideously dangerous as well.’

‘You are secretly envious of my good looks and have a death wish for me. Come on, Inskipp. Stop sparring and let me know what the deal is. Angelina and I can handle it better than the rest of your senile and feeble agents.’

‘This job of work is for you alone. Angelina is, well …’ His face reddened and he examined
the file closely.

‘Whoopee!’ I shouted. ‘Inskipp the killer, daredevil, master of men, secret power in the galaxy today. And he can’t say the word
pregnant!
How about
baby?
Wait,
sex,
that is a goodie. You blush to think about it. Go ahead, say
sex
three times fast, it will do you good—’

‘Shut up, diGriz,’ he growled. ‘At least you finally married her which shows you have a single drop of honesty
in your otherwise rotten carcass. She stays behind. You go out on this one-man job. Probably leaving her a widow.’

‘She looks awful in black so you can’t get rid of me that easily. Tell.’

‘Look at this,’ he said, taking a roll of film from the folder and slipping in into a slot in his desk. A screen dropped down from the ceiling and the room darkened. The film began.

The camera had been handheld,
the color was off at times, and it was most unprofessional. But it was the best home movie I had ever seen because the material was so good. Authentic, no doubt about it.

Someone was waging
war. It was a sunny day with white puffs of cloud against a blue sky. And black puffs of antiaircraft fire in among them. But the fire was not heavy and there was not enough of it to stop the troop carriers
that came in low and fast for landing. This was an average sized spaceport, with the buildings in the far background and some cargo ships nearby. Other aircraft roared in low and bomb explosions reached skyward from what must have been the defense positions. The impossibility of what was happening finally came home to me.

‘Those are
spaceships!’
I gurgled. ‘And space
transports.
Is some numbskull
government so stupid as to think that it can succeed in an interplanetary war? What happened after they lost – and how does it affect me?’

The film ended and the lights came up again. Inskipp steepled his fingers on the desk and leered over them.

‘For your information, Mr. Know-it-all, this invasion succeeded – and so did the other ones before it. This film was taken by a smuggler, one of our
regular informants, whose ship was just fast enough to get away during the battle.’

This was a stopper. I dragged deeply on the cigar and considered what little I knew about interplanetary warfare. There was little enough to know. Because it just doesn’t work. Maybe a few times in the galaxy when local conditions are right, say a solar system with two inhabited planets. If one planet is backward
and the other advanced industrially the primitive one might be invaded successfully. But not if they put up any kind of a real defense. The distance-time relationships just don’t make this kind of warfare practical. When every soldier and weapon and ration has to be lifted from the gravity well of a planet and carried across space the energy expenditure is considerable, the transport demands incredible
and the cost unbelievable. If, in addition, the invader has to land in the face of determined opposition the invasion
is impossible. And this is inside a solar system where the planets are practically touching on a galactic scale. The thought of warfare between planets of differing star systems is even more impossible.

But, once again, it has been proven that nothing is basically impossible if
people want to tackle it hard enough. And things like violence, warfare and bloodshed are still hideously attractive to the lurking violence potential of mankind, despite the centuries of peace and stagnation. I had a sudden and depressing thought.

‘Are you telling me that a successful interplanetary invasion has been accomplished?’ I asked.

‘More than one.’ That evil smirk was decorating his
face as he spoke.

‘And you and the League would like to see this practice stopped?’

‘Right on the head, Jim my boy.’

‘And I am the sucker who has been picked for the assignment?’

He reached out, took my cigar from my numb fingers and dropped it into the ashtray – then solemnly shook my hand. ‘It’s your job. Go out there and win.’

I slipped my hand from his treacherous embrace, wiped my fingers
on my pant leg and grabbed back my cigar.

‘I’m sure that you will see that I have the best funeral the Corps can afford. Now, would you care to squeeze out a few details or would you prefer to blindfold me and shoot me out in a one-way cargo rocket?’

‘Temper, my boy, temper. The situation seems to be quite clear. There has been little word about this in the news media because of a certain political
confusion surrounding the invasions, plus a rigid censorship by the planets under consideration. As we have reconstructed it – and good men have died getting this information – the responsible world is named Cliaand, the third
planet in the Epsilon Indi system. There are two score planets orbiting this sun, but only three are inhabitable. And inhabited. Cliaand took over both the sister worlds
some years ago, but we considered this no cause for alarm. What is alarming is the fact that they have expanded their scope.
Interstellar
conquest, heretofore considered an impossibility. They have invaded and conquered
five
other planets in nearby systems and seem poised for bigger and better things. We don’t know how they are doing it, but they must be doing something right. We have had agents
on the conquered worlds but have learned little of value. The decision has been made, a high level one I assure you – you would stand and salute if you heard some of the names of the people involved – that we must get a man to Cliaand to root out the problem at the core of the woodpile and cut the Gordian knot.’