The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (129 page)

‘That is not that. Generators are complex and not easy to build. There are very few
factories that turn them out because most people are satisfied to buy them from someone else. I am sure the Cliaand have at least one factory, but that can be found and knocked out from space.’

‘So they get
one from the warehouse.’

‘There is a limit to the number they can have, and quite soon the warehouse will be empty. Because we are going to have agents on every planet now ruled by the Cliaand and they are going to blow up every warpdrive generator on every ship on those planets. We won’t have to go anywhere near the home planet. The warpdrive will be knocked out of cargo ships, war ships, any
and all within the Cliaand area of control. Nor will they be able to get any from the outside since this is one embargo that it will be easy for the corps and the cooperating planets to enforce. End of an empire.’

‘How?’

‘Think, Inskipp, age couldn’t have withered your brain as much as your leathery hide. Angelina gave me the clue. The Cliaandians must keep expanding or perish. They don’t have
enough food on their single planet to carry on this kind of continual expansion. So they conquer a planet, put it to work on their behalf, then restored and resupplied go on to bigger and better things. Only not any more. They still have their planets and the materials – but what good are they if they can’t be transported to where they are needed? The expansion will have to stop, and as the ships
grow scarce they will have to pull back. Further and further back until they are on their home planet again and that will be the end of that. Any single planet can support itself with raw materials and food, at least enough to survive. But an empire cannot survive with its trade arteries cut. I give them a year, no more, before Cliaand is just another backwater planet with a lot of guys in uniforms
and out of jobs. When it is all over
normal trade can be started again. A year at the outside. What do you think?’

‘I think you did it again, my boy, as I knew you would.’

He beamed at me and I winked at Angelina and we drank to that.

W
E WERE STANDING AT THE INNER LOCK,
ready to
disembark from the spaceship, when one of the pursers hurried over and handed me a psigram. Angelina blasted it with a withering look.

‘Tear it up,’ she said. ‘If that is from foul Inskipp canceling the one little vacation we have ever had …’

‘Relax,’ I said, glancing through it quickly. ‘Our holiday is still safe. This is from
Taze …’

‘If that top-heavy hussy is still chasing you she is in for trouble.’

‘Have no fear, my love. The communication is of a political nature. The results of the first election to be held since the Cliaandian withdrawal are in. The men’s Konsolosluk party have been swept from office and the girls are back at the helm. Taze has been appointed Minister of War, so I don’t think future invasion
will be as easy as the last. The psigram further states that we have both been awarded the Order of the Blue Mountains, First Class, and there will be much ceremony and medal pinning when next we get to Burada.’

‘Just see you don’t try going there on your own, Slippery Jim.’

I sighed as the massive outer lock of the spaceship ground open and the militant oompah of band music was carried in by
the outside air. The sky was clear and empty of anything other than the puffy White clouds and a copter towing a banner that read
WELCOME WELCOME
.

‘Very nice,’ I said.

‘Urgh urgh,’ Bolivar said,
or something like that, or was it James who had spoken? They were hard to tell apart and Angelina took a very antipathetic view towards my suggestion that we paint a B on one little forehead and J on
the other. Just for a while. She bent over their tiny forms in the robopram, tucking in blankets and doing other unessential maternal things. Only I knew that she had a gun in her girdle and a knife in the nappies. My Angelina is just as motherly as any female tiger: she takes care of her cubs but also keeps her claws sharp just in case. Pity the poor kidnapper who tried to swipe the diGriz babies!

‘That’s an improvement over the usual rattling escalator,’ I said, pointing to the platform outside.

A shipyard repair stage had been polished and decorated with flags and turned into a passenger elevator. It not only held all the people disembarking but there was plenty of room left over for the military band. Who were now thumping and trumpeting and generally having a good time. We strolled
out onto the platform and the robopram rolled after us. James – or was it Bolivar? – tried to hurl himself out of it, but a padded tentacle pushed him back to the pillows.

‘It doesn’t look so bad,’ Angelina said, looking out across the spaceport to the city while the stage slowly descended. ‘I can’t understand what you were complaining about.’

‘Let’s say the reception was a bit different last
time I was here. Isn’t that a pleasant sight?’

I pointed to the row upon row of abandoned spaceships, the streaks of rust on their sides visible even from here.

‘Very nice,’ she said, not looking, tucking in an infant that the robopram had already done an excellent job on. Like all new fathers I was more than a little jealous of the attention lavished on the kiddies, and I looked forward to
the new joint assignment when I might get a little closer to center stage in her
affections. I was being broken to the marriage harness and, despite my basic loathings and thrashings, was beginning to enjoy it.

‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ Angelina asked as we reached the ground and the double row of soldiers of the honor guard snapped to attention with a resounding crash and clatter. There must have
been at least a thousand of them and each one was armed with a gaussrifle.

‘Weapons have been incapacitated, that was part of the agreement.’

‘But can we trust them?’

‘Absolutely. One thing they know how to do is to take orders.’

We strolled on towards the reception buildings, between the rows of gaudy glittering soldiers, erect as statues with their rifles at present arms.

‘I’ll show you,’
I said and led her over to the nearest soldier while the pram turned to follow us. He was tall, erect, big-jawed, steel-eyed, everything a soldier should be.

‘Right shoulder-
HARMS
!’ I barked in my best parade ground manner. He obeyed instantly with a great deal of snappy exactitude. Gray haired too, he must have been at the game for a long time.

‘Inspection … wait for it …
HARMS
!’

He snapped
the weapon down across his chest and with a double clack-clack opened the inspection port and extended the rifle. I seized it and looked inside the receiver. Spotless. I held it up to the sky and looked down the barrel and saw only unrelieved blackness.

‘There’s something blocking the barrel.’

‘Yes, sir. Orders, sir.’

‘What is it?’

‘Lead, sir. Melted it and poured it in myself.’

‘An excellent
weapon. Carry on, trooper.’ I hurled it back at him and he caught
and rattled it efficiently. There was something about him.

‘Don’t I know you, trooper?’

‘Perhaps, sir, I’ve done duty on many planets. I was a colonel once.’

There was a distant glint in his eyes when he said this, but it quickly faded. Of course. I hadn’t recognised him without his beard. He was the officer that Kraj had watching
me, who had tried to shoot me when we first landed on Burada.

‘I knew that man, high ranking officer,’ I told Angelina as we strolled on.

‘Very little chance for that kind of work now. He should be happy he has a job that keeps him out in the fresh air. It’s amazing that they all seem to be taking it so well.’

‘They have little choice. When their empire collapsed they flocked back here to Cliaand
and found out that all their mineral and power resources had been exhausted during the invasion years and they had never noticed it. So it was either farm or go hungry. I understand that the agriculture is going just fine right now. And the gray men are gone. Inskipp sent agents in and found they had all packed up and left. To cause trouble elsewhere, I suppose. We are going to have to track
them to their home planet one of these days.’

‘Nasty people. That’s where a globe-buster bomb would do some good.’

‘Not in front of the children,’ I said, patting her hand. ‘You don’t want them to get wrong thoughts about their mother.’

‘They’ll get some right ones. And I’m still suspicious of these ex-warrior types.’

‘Don’t be. We had political agents in here after the breakdown. Issuing
orders, and orders are one thing they know how to take. All
things considered they have been quite good about it.’

Angelina sniffed, still not convinced. ‘I wonder what bright boy thought up the tourist routine – and suggested we come on the first tour ship?’

‘I did. Guilty on both counts. And don’t look daggers at me. They need something that will keep them busy and bring in foreign exchange
and that sort of thing, and tourism is about all a planet without resources can manage. They have swimming and skiing and all the usual things, plus a deadly sort of fascination for the people they once invaded. It will work out, you just wait and see.’

Hordes of uniformed porters jostled for our baggage, then led the way with the bags to the surface transportation. Things had changed mightily
since my first visit to this planet. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, too. I don’t think they were ever cut out to be a warrior race and interstellar conquerors. For old times’ sake I had registered us at the Zlato-Zlato where I had first stayed, still the most luxurious hotel in town. The doorman’s manners were better this time and the desk clerk even bowed as we came up.

‘Welcome to Cliaand,
General and Mrs. James diGriz and sons. May your stay here be an enjoyable one.’

Traveling with a title always helps, even more so on this world. I looked around the lobby and then at the clerk.

‘Ostrov! Is that you?’ I said. He bowed again.

‘I am Ostrov, indeed sir, but I am afraid you have the better of me.’

‘Sorry. Couldn’t expect you to recognize me with my own face, or a reasonable facsimile.
The last time you talked to me you thought I was a creature named Kraj, and before that you knew me as Vaska Hulja.’

‘Vaska – can it be you! It is, I do believe, the voice, of course.’ Then his own voice sank. ‘I hope you will accept my apology at this late
date. I never did feel right about helping that Kraj to capture you. Even though I was unconscious for a day and a half, I was still rather
happy you had escaped. I know you were a spy and all that, but …’

‘Say no more. The matter is closed and I prefer to think of you as the roommate of our drinking days.’

‘Most kind. Would you grant me the courtesy of shaking your hand?’

We shook and I looked at him curiously.

‘You’ve changed, for the better I think. Put on a little weight, polished up the old manners.’

‘Thank you, Vaska. Most
kind. Stopped drinking so I have to watch my diet now. And I don’t have to worry about flying those filthy spaceships any more. My family were always innkeepers, traditional trade and all that. Until the draft got me. A pleasure to return to something I know, and right at the top too as you can see. Shortage of good hotel men now. If you will sign here.’

He handed me the pen and continued in
the same neutral voice, only not as loudly.

‘I hope you will pardon my saying this is a bit of emergency, so please don’t jump or turn around. But there has been a man staying here ever since we opened, one of Kraj’s men I do believe, and he has the staff terrified. I didn’t know what he wanted until this moment. I believe he is after you and I hope you are armed. He is coming from the right,
behind you, wearing a plum jacket and yellow striped hat.’

It was a holiday – and I was unarmed. For the first time in a long time. I swore silently that it would be the last. Then I remembered Angelina and saw her bending over the robopram again.

‘I don’t wish to bother you, dearest,’ I said, smiling, an itchy feeling crawling up
my back and into my skull. ‘But the man in the plum jacket coming
up behind me is an assassin. Do you think you could anything about it – and keep him alive if possible?’

‘How sweet of you to ask!’ she said, laughing, patting the pile of diapers in the pram.

I stepped back to the desk, watching her. Charming, relaxed, smiling, touching her hair.

Taking her time too. I opened my mouth to mention this fact – just as her arm snapped down. There was a muffled
shriek behind me and I turned and ducked.

It was all over. Plum coat had lost his striped hat – and his pistol as well which was lying on the rug. He was reaching for the knife that projected from his upper arm, making little scrabbling motions. Then Angelina was at his side, chopping his neck and lowering his unconscious
figure to the floor.

‘Holiday world, indeed,’ she sniffed, but I knew
she was enjoying herself.

‘You’ll get a medal for this, my sweet. The Corps will take care of this lad and I imagine they will extract information about his home planet, which will be a relief.’ I turned back to Ostrov.

‘Thanks for saving my life.’

‘Not at all, sir. I always believe that it is the little extra services that count. Now – may I show you to your room?’

‘You may, and a drink as
well. You’ll join us in a glass, won’t you?’

‘Well, just this once, seeing as how it is a special occasion. And I must say that you are a lucky man to have a wife who shares your same enthusiasm and talents.’

‘It was a match made in crime and someday I may tell you all about it.’

I looked on fondly while my Angelina neatly wiped her knife on the unconscious man’s shirt, then stowed it back
among the diapers. I was sure that when the children got older they would appreciate her talents.

She was the sort of mother every boy should have.