The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (131 page)

‘Level one-hundred and twelve. Room thirty.’

‘Did you get that,’ I said, turning back to the screen.

Which was blank.

‘Angelina …
.’

I jabbed the disconnect, tapped her code on the keys. The screen lit up. With the message ‘This is an unconnected number.’ Then I ran for the door. Someone clutched at my shoulder, but I brushed him aside, grabbed the door and flung it open.

There was nothing outside. A formless, colorless nothing that did strange things to my brain when I looked at it. Then the door was pulled
from my hand and slammed shut, and Coypu stood with his back to it, breathing heavily, his features twisted by the same unnameable sensations I had felt.

‘Gone,’ he said hoarsely. ‘The corridor, the entire station, all the buildings, everything. Gone. Just this laboratory left, locked here by the time-fixator. The Special Corps no longer exists; no one in the galaxy has even a memory of us. When
the time-fixator goes we go as well.’

‘Angelina, where is she, where are they all?’

‘They were never born, never existed.’

‘But I can remember her, all of them.’

‘That is what we count upon. As long as there is one person alive with memories of us, of the Corps, we stand a microscopic chance of eventual survival. Someone must stop the time attack. If not for the Corps, for the sake of civilization.
History is now being rewritten. But not forever if we can counterattack.’

A one-way trip backward to a lifetime on an alien world, in an alien time. Whoever went would be the loneliest man alive, living thousands of years before his people, his friends, would even be born.

‘Get ready,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’

‘First we must find out where you are going. And when.’

Professor Coypu staggered across the laboratory, and I followed, in almost as bad shape. He was mumbling over the accordion sheets of the computer print-out that were chuntering and pouring out of the machine and piling up on the floor.

‘Must be accurate, very accurate,’ he said. ‘We have been running a time probe backward. Following
the traces of these disturbances. We have found the particular planet. Now we must zero in on the time. If you arrive too late, they may have already finished their job. Too early and you might die of old age before the fiends are even born.’

‘Sounds charming. What is the planet?’

‘Strange name. Or rather names. It is called Dirt or Earth or something like that. Supposed to be the legendary
home of all mankind.’

‘Another one? I never heard of it.’

‘No reason you should. Blown up in an atomic war ages ago. Here it is. You have to be pushed backward thirty-two thousand five hundred and ninety-eight years. We can’t guarantee anything better than a plus or minus three months at that distance.’

‘I don’t think I’ll notice. What year will that be?’

‘Well before our present calendar
began. It is, I believe,
A.D. 1
975 by the primitive records of the aborigines of the time.’

‘Not so aboriginal if they’re fiddling with time travel.’

‘Probably not them at all. Chances are the people you are looking for are just operating in that period.’

‘How do I find them?’

‘With this.’ One of the assistants handed me a small black box with dials and buttons on it, as well as a transparent
bulge that contained a free-floating needle. The needle quivered like a hunting dog and continued to point in the same direction no matter how I turned the box.

‘A detector of temporal energy generators,’ Coypu said. ‘A less sensitive and portable version of our larger machines. Right now it is pointing at our time-helix. When you return to this planet Dirt, you will use it to seek out the people
you want. This other dial is for field strength and will give you an approximation of the distance to the energy source.’

I looked at the box and felt the first bubbling and seething of an idea. ‘If I can carry this, I can take other equipment with me, right?’

‘Correct. Small items that can be secured close to your body. The time field generates a surface charge that is not unlike static electricity.’

‘Then I’ll take whatever weapons or armament you have here in the lab.’

‘There is not very much, just the smaller items.’

‘Then I’ll make my own. Are there any weapons technicians working here?’

He looked around and thought. ‘Old Jarl there was in the weapons sections. But there is no time to fabricate anything.’

‘That’s not what I had in mind. Get him.’

Old Jarl had taken his rejuvenation
treatments recently so he looked like a world-soiled nineteen-year-old – with an ancient and suspicious look in his eye as he came closer.

‘I want that box,’ I said, pointing to the memory unit on his back. He whinnied like a prodded pony and skittered away, clutching at the thing.

‘Mine, I tell you mine! You can’t have it. Not fair to even ask. Without it I’ll just fade away.’ Tears of senile
self-pity rose to his youthful eyes.

‘Control yourself, Jarl! I don’t want to fade you out; I just want a duplicate of the box. Get cracking on it.’

He shambled away, mumbling to himself, and the technicians closed in.

‘I don’t understand,’ Coypu said.

‘Simple. If I am gunning after a large organization, I may need some heavy weapon. If I do, I’ll plug old Jarl into my brain and use his memories
to build them.’

‘But – he will be
you,
take over your body, it has never been done.’

‘It’s being done now. Desperate times demand desperate measures. Which brings us to another important point. You said this would be a one-way trip through time and that I couldn’t return.’

‘Yes. The time-helix hurls you into the past. There will be no helix there to return you.’

‘But if one could be built
there, I could return?’

‘Theoretically. But it has never been tried. Much of the equipment and materials would not be available among the primitive natives.’

‘But if the materials were available, a time-helix
could
be built. Now who do you know that could build it?’

‘Only myself. The helix is of my own construction and design.’

‘Great, I’ll want your memory box, too. Be sure you boys paint
your names on the outside so I don’t hook up with the wrong specialist.’

The technicians grabbed for the professor.

‘The time-fixator is losing power!’ one of the engineers shouted in a voice filled with rising hysteria. ‘When the field goes down, we die. We will never have existed. It can’t be ….’ He screamed this, then fell over as one of his mates gave him a face full of knockout gas.

‘Hurry!’
Coypu shouted. ‘Take diGriz to the time-helix, prepare him!’

They grabbed me and rushed me into the next room, shouting instructions at one another. They almost dropped me when two of the technicians vanished at the same moment. Most of the voices had hysterical overtones – as well they might with the world coming to an end. Some of the more distant walls were already becoming misty and vague.
Only training and experience kept me from panicking too. I
finally had to push them away from the emergency space suit they were trying to jam me into in order to close the fastenings myself. Professor Coypu was the only other cool one in the whole crowd.

‘Seat the helmet, but leave the faceplate open until the last minute. That’s fine. Here are the memories, I suggest the leg pocket would be
the safest place. The grav-chute on your back. I assume you know how to operate it. These weapon canisters across your chest. The temporal detector here ….’

There was more like this until I could hardly stand. I didn’t complain. If I didn’t take it, I wouldn’t have it. Hang on more.

‘A language unit!’ I shouted. ‘How can I speak to the natives if I don’t know their language?’

‘We don’t have
one here,’ Coypu said, tucking a rack of gas containers under my arm. ‘But here is a memorygram—’

‘They give me headaches.’

‘—that you can use to learn the local tongue. In this pocket.’

‘What do I do, you haven’t explained that yet? How do I arrive?’

‘Very high. In the stratosphere, that is. Less chance of colliding with anything material. We’ll get you there. After that – you’re on your
own.’

‘The front lab is gone!’ someone shouted, and popped out of existence at almost the same instant.

‘To the time-helix!’ Coypu called out hoarsely, and they dragged me through the door.

Slower and slower as the scientists and technicians vanished from sight like pricked balloons. Until there were only four of them left and, heavily burdened, I staggered along at a decrepit waddle.

‘The
time-helix,’ Coypu said, breathlessly. ‘It is a bar, a column of pure force that has been warped into a helix and put under tension.’

It was green and glittered and almost filled the room, a
coiled form of sparkling light as thick as my arm. It reminded me of something.

‘It’s like a big spring that you have wound up.’

‘Yes, perhaps. We prefer to call it a time-helix. It has been wound up …
put under tension, the force carefully calculated. You will be placed at the outer end and the restraining latch released. As you are flung into the past, the helix will hurl itself into the future where the energies will gradually dissipate. You must go.’

There were just three of us left.

‘Remember me,’ the short dark technician called out. ‘Remember Charli Nate! As long as you remember me,
I’ll never …’

Coypu and I were alone, the walls going, the air darkening.

‘The end! Touch it!’ he called out. Was his voice weaker?

I stumbled, half fell toward the glowing end of the helix, my fingers outstretched. There was no sensation, but when I touched it, I was instantly surrounded by the same green glow, could barely see through it. The professor was at a console, working the controls,
reaching for a rather large switch.

Pulling it down ….

Everything stopped.

Professor Coypu stood frozen at the controls with his hand locked on the closed switch. I had been looking in his direction, or I would not have seen this because my eyes were fixed rigidly ahead. My body as well – and my brain gave a flutter of panic and tried to bounce around in its bony pan as I realized that I had stopped breathing. For all I knew, my heart wasn’t
beating either. Something had gone wrong, I was sure of that, since the time-helix was still tightly coiled. More soundless panic as Coypu grew transparent and the walls behind him took on a definitely hazy quality. It was all going, fading before my eyes. Would I be next? There was no way to know.

A primitive part of my mind, the ape-man’s heir, gibbered and wailed and rushed about in little
circles. Yet at the same time I felt a cold detachment and interest; it isn’t everyone who is privileged to watch the dissolving of his world while hanging from a helical force field that may possibly whip him back into the remote past. It was a privilege I would be happy to pass on to any volunteers. None presented themselves, so I hung there, pop-eyed and stiff as a statue while the laboratory
faded away around me and I was floating in interstellar space. Apparently even the asteroid on which the Special Corps base had been built no longer had any reality in this new universe.

Something moved. I was tugged in a way that is impossible to describe and moved in a direction I never knew existed before. The time-helix was beginning to uncoil. Or perhaps it had been uncoiling all the while
and the alteration in time had concealed my awareness of it. Certainly some of the stars appeared to be moving, faster and faster until they made little blurred lines. It was not a reassuring sight, and I tried
to close my eyes, but the paralysis still clutched me. A star whipped by, close enough so that I could see its disk, and burned an afterimage across my retina. Everything speeded up as
my time speed accelerated, and eventually space became a gray blur as even stellar events became too fast for me to see. This blur had a hypnotic effect, or my brain was affected by the time motion, because my thoughts became thoroughly muddled as I sank into a quasi-state somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness that lasted a very long time. Or a short time, I’m not really sure. It could have
been an instant, or it could have been eternity. Perhaps there was some corner of my brain that remained aware of the terrible slow passage of all those years, but if so, I do not care to think about it. Survival has always been rather important to me, and as a stainless steel rat in among the concrete passages of society I look only to myself for aid. There are far more ways to fail than to succeed,
to go mad than to stay sane, and I needed all my mental energies to find the right course. So I existed and stayed relatively sane during the insane temporal voyage and waited for something to happen. After an immeasurable period of time something did.

I arrived. The ending was even more dramatic than the beginning of the journey as everything happened all at once.

I could move again. I could
see again – the light blinded me at first – and I was aware of all the bodily sensations that had been suspended so long.

More than that, I was falling. My long-paralyzed stomach gave a twist at this, and the adrenalin and like substances that my brain had been longing to pour into my blood for the past 32,598 years – give or take three months – pumped in and my heart began to thud in a healthily
excited manner. As I fell, I turned, and the sun was out of my eyes, and I looked out at a black sky and down at fluffy white clouds far below. Was this it? Dirt, the mysterious homeland of mankind? There was no telling, but it was still a distinct pleasure to be somewhere and somewhen without things dissolving around me. All my equipment seemed to still be with me, and when
I touched the control
on my wrist, I could feel the tug of the grav-chute taking hold. Great. I turned it off and dropped free again until I felt the first traces of thin atmosphere pulling at the suit. By the time I came to the clouds I was falling gently as a leaf, plunging feet-first into their wet embrace. I slowed the rate of fall even more as I dropped blind, rubbing at the condensation on the faceplate of the
space suit. Then I was out of the clouds, and I turned the control to
hover
and took a slow look around at this new world, perhaps the home of the human race, surely my home forever.