The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (148 page)

The grenade exploded, but the door was thick and remained stuck in the frame. Angelina sprayed it with explosive bullets. He talked on as though this weren’t happening.

‘I know
who you are, little man from the future, and I know where you come from. Therefore I shall destroy you before you have a chance to be born. I will destroy you, my only enemy; then the past and the future and all eternity will be mine, mine,
mine!’

He was screaming and slavering before he finished, and the door went down, and I was the first one through.

My bullets were exploding in the delicate
machinery of the time-helix as my He-bomb arced through the air.

But he had already actuated the time-helix. Its green glow was gone; He was gone, the machinery left behind no longer needed. My hell-bomb exploded in empty air and was more of a danger to us than to the vanished one it had been intended for. We dropped to the floor as death whizzed overhead, and when we looked next, the machinery
was dissolving and smoking.

He spoke again, and the muzzle of my gun looked for him.

‘I made this recording in case I had to leave abruptly, so sorry.’ He chuckled insanely at his own bad humor. ‘I have gone now; you cannot follow me, but I can follow you through time. And destroy you. But you have other enemies with you, and I wish them to feel my vengeance, too. They will die, you will all
die, everything will die; I control worlds, eternity, destroy worlds. I will destroy this Earth. I
leave you only enough time to consider and suffer. You cannot escape.

‘In one hour every nuclear weapon on this planet will be triggered.’

‘Earth will be destroyed.’

There was very little satisfaction to be gained from blowing up the recording machine that had He’s hateful voice coiled in its guts, but I did it anyway, one shot. The thing exploded in a cloud of plastic bits and electronic components, and the insane laughter was cut off in mid-cackle. Angelina patted my hand.

‘You did your best,’ she said.

‘But just not good enough. I’m sorry I
got you involved in this.’

‘I wouldn’t want it any other way. What happens to us happens together.’

‘This sounds like something very terrible will be done to your people,’ Diyan said. ‘I am very sorry.’

‘Nothing to feel sorry about. We’re all in the same boat.’

‘In one sense, yes. One hour from now. But Mars is saved, and we who die here know that we accomplished at least that much. Our families
and our people will live on.’

‘I wish I could say the same,’ I said with utmost gloom, borrowing his gun and picking off two of the enemy who tried to rush in through the broken door. ‘When we lost here, we lost for all time. I’m surprised we are still around at all, should have snuffed out like candles.’

‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’ Angelina asked. I shrugged.

‘Nothing I can think of.
You can’t outrun H-bombs. The time-helix equipment is kind of melted, so that is out. What we need is a new time-helix, which we are not going to get unless one appears out of thin air.’

In echo to my words there was the sudden crack of displaced air above, and I rolled and ducked, thinking it was a new attack. It wasn’t. It was a large green metal case that
hung unsupported in midair. Angelina
looked at me in the strangest manner possible.

‘If that is a time-helix, you must tell me how you did it.’

For once in my outspoken life I was silent, even more so when the box began to drift down before us, and just before it grounded, I read the lettering on the side.

‘Time-helix – open with care.’

I didn’t move. It all seemed too unbelievable. The two grav-chutes strapped to the top of
the case, the timing device that had caused them to lower the whole thing to the floor, the small recording apparatus also fixed to the case with the boldly lettered words ‘Play me’ lettered across it. I boggled and gaped and it was ever-practical Angelina who stepped forward and pressed the starting button. Professor Coypu’s rotund voice rolled out to us.

‘I suggest you get moving rather quickly.
The bombs, you know, go off quite soon. I have been asked to tell you, Jim, that the bomb control apparatus is concealed in a cabinet on the far wall behind the dehydrated rations. It has been disguised to look like a portable radio because it really is a portable radio. With additions. If mishandled, it will set all the bombs off now. Which would be uncomfortable. You are to set the three dials
to the numbers six six six, which I believe, is the number of the beast. Set them in sequence from right to left. When they have been set, press the
off
button. Now turn me off until you have done that. Be quick about it.’

‘All right, all right,’ I said, irritated and switched him off. He had quite a commanding tone for an individual who wouldn’t be born for another 10,000 years or so. And how
come he knew so much? I complained, but I went and did the job, hurling the dehydrated rations to the floor, where they obviously belonged. They looked like lengths of yellowish-green desiccated octopus tentacles. Suckers and all. The radio was there. I did not attempt to move it but set the dials as instructed and pressed the button. Nothing happened.

‘Nothing happened,’ I said.

‘Which is just
the way we want it,’ Angelina said, standing
on tiptoe to give an appreciative kiss on the cheek. ‘You have saved the world.’

Feeling very proud of myself, I swaggered back to the recorder before the admiring gazes of the Martians and switched it on again.

‘Don’t think you have saved the world,’ Coypu said. Party pooper. ‘You have just averted its destruction for approximately twenty-eight days.
Once activated, the bombs wait that period, then self-destruct. But your Martian associates can profit from this delay. I believe they have supply ships on the way?’

‘Due in fifteen days,’ Diyan said, hushed awe in his voice at the disembodied oracular powers before him.

‘Fifteen days, more than enough time. The Earth will be destroyed, but when its present condition is considered, this is more
of a blessing than a tragedy. It is time to open this case now. On top of the controls is a molecular disrupter. If this is pointed at the outside wall, where the small windows are high up, and angled downward at fifteen degrees, it will cut a tunnel that will exit outside the walls. I suggest this be done as soon as possible. The Martians can get out that way. Now press button A, and the time-helix
will form. James, Angelina, strap on the grav-chutes and leave as soon as the ready light comes on.’

Still partially unbelieving I did as instructed. The time-helix crackled into existence and groaned and sparked as it wound itself up. Diyan stepped forward, his hand out to take mine.

‘We will never forget you or what you have done for our world. Generations yet unborn will read your name and
about your exploits in their schoolbooks.’

‘Are you sure you have the spelling right?’ I asked.

‘You make light of this because you are a great and humble man.’ First time I have ever been accused of
that.
‘A statue will be erected with “James diGriz, World Saver” inscribed upon it.’

Each Martian shook my hand in turn; it was very embarrassing.
There was an admiring gleam in Angelina’s eye
as well, but women are simple creatures and enjoy basking even in reflected attention. Then the ready light came on, and after a few more good-byes, we put on the grav-chutes as directed and – for the last time I sincerely hoped – were bathed in the cool fire of the time force. Our contact must have triggered the apparatus because before I could make the very apropos remark that was on my lips everything
went
zoinng.

No worse than any other time trip, certainly no better. This was one kind of transportation I would never get adjusted to. Stars like speeding bullets, spiral galaxies whirling around like fireworks, movement that was no movement, time that was no time, all the usual things. The only thing that was good about the trip was its ending, which was in the gymnasium of the Special Corps
base, the largest open chamber there. We floated in midair, my Angelina and I, smiling madly at each other and oblivious to the cries of amazement from the sweating athletes below. We held hands in the simple happiness of knowledge that the future still lay ahead of us.

‘Welcome home,’ she said, and that was really all there was to say.

We floated down, waving to our friends and ignoring their
questions for the moment. Coypu and the time lab first, to report. There was a quick feeling of unhappiness that He had escaped me and the hope that this time, when he was tracked through time, a few very large bombs could be sent in the place of me or any other volunteer.

Coypu looked up and gaped. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said. ‘You are supposed to be eliminating this He person. Didn’t
you get my message?’

‘Message?’ I asked, blinking rapidly.

‘Yes. We made ten thousand metal cubes and sent them back to Earth. Sure you would get one of them. Radio direction and such.’

‘Oh,
that
old message. Received and acted upon, but you
are a little out of date. What is that doing here?’ I’m afraid my voice rose a bit on this last as I pointed with vibrating finger at the compact machine
across the room.

‘That? Our Mark One compact folding time-helix? What else should it be doing? We have just finished it.’

‘You’ve never used it?’

‘Never.’

‘Well, you are now. You have to strap a couple of grav-chutes to it – here, use these – and a recorder and molecular disrupter and shoot it right back to save Angelina and me.’

‘I have a pocket recorder, but why …’ He took a familiar-looking
machine from his lab coat.

‘Do it first, explanations later. Angelina and I are about to be blown up if you don’t do this right.’

I grabbed some paint and wrote ‘Play me’ on the recorder, then ‘Time-helix – open with care’ on the machine. The exact moment when He had left Earth was determined by the time tracer and the arrival for this cargo set for a few minutes later on the big helix. Coypu
dictated the tape under my instruction, and it wasn’t until the whole bundle was whisked back into the past that I heaved a grateful sigh of relief.

‘We are saved,’ I said. ‘Now for that drink you promised me.’

‘I didn’t promise …’

‘I’ll have it anyway.’

Coypu was muttering to himself and scratching on a pad while I prepared some hefty drinks for Angelina and myself. We clunked glasses and
were baptizing our throats when he came over, smiling genially.

‘I needed that,’ I said. ‘It must be
ages
since I last had a drink.’

‘It is all coming clear at last,’ Coypu said, tapping his protruding teeth with contained excitement.

‘Is it all right if we sit while we listen? It’s been a busy couple of thousand years.’

‘Yes, by all means. Let me retrace the course of events. A time attack
was launched upon the Corps by He, a most
successful one. Our numbers were quite reduced ….’

‘Yes, like down to two. You and me.’

‘Quite right. Though as soon as I had dispatched you to the year 1975, I found that all things were as they had been. Most sudden. All alone one instant, the next the laboratory full of people who never knew they had been gone. We put a lot of work in on improving
the time-tracking techniques, took almost four years to get it the way we wanted.’

‘Did you
say four
years?’

‘Nearer five before we got it operational. The trails were distant and hard to follow, most tangled as well.’

‘Angelina!’ I cried with sudden realization. ‘You never told me you had been here alone for five years.’

‘I didn’t think you liked older women.’

‘I love them as long as they
are you. You were lonely?’

‘Hideously. Which is why I volunteered to go after you. Inskipp had another volunteer, but he broke his leg.’

‘My darling – I’ll bet I know how that happened!’ She is not the blushing type, but she did lower her eyes at the thought.

‘We are getting ahead in sequence,’ Coypu said. ‘But that is what happened. We traced you from 1975 to 1807 – and traced He and his minions
as well. There was a loop in time there, an anomaly of some kind that eventually sealed itself off. We could tell that it was about to collapse with you sealed inside of it and succeeded at last in forcing enough power into the helix to penetrate the sealed time loop just before it went down. That is when Angelina went back with the coordinates for your next skip in time, the long twenty-thousand-year
jump after He. You had to go after him because the time paths were there to prove that you had followed him. Though of course history was clear by that point, and we knew how it would all end.’

‘You
knew?’
I asked, feeling I had missed the point somewhere.

‘Of course. The entire nature of the attack was clear, though you all of course had to fulfill your destined roles.’

‘Could you spell it
out again? And slower.’

‘Of course. You managed to destroy He’s operation twice in the remote past and eventually reset his machine and sent him forward to the twilight days of Earth. Here he spent an immense amount of time, almost two hundred years, climbing his way to power and uniting all of the planet’s resources. He was a genius, albeit a mad one, and could do this. He also remembered you,
Jim, fading memories and half-insane ones after two hundred years, but he remembered enough to know you were the enemy. Therefore he launched a time war to destroy you before you could destroy him, trapping you as he thought on a planet about to be destroyed by atomic explosion. From there he returned to 1975 to attack the Corps. You came after him and he fled to 1807 to lay the time loop trap
for you. I don’t know where he planned to go from there, but his plans appear to have been altered, and he went instead twenty thousand years ahead.’

‘I did that, altered the setting on his machine just before he left.’

‘That is all there is to it. We can relax now that it is over, and I do believe I’ll join you in that drink.’