The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (149 page)
‘Relax!’
The words emerged from my throat with a singularly nasty,
grating sound. ‘From what you have said it sounds like
I
started the whole attack on the Special Corps by altering the setting on the time-helix that sent He to the world where he launched his campaign to destroy the Corps.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
‘Is there any other? The way I see it He just bounces in a circle in time forever. Running from me, chasing me, running from me …. Arrrgh!
When was he born? Where does he come from?’
‘Those terms are meaningless in this sort of temporal relationship. He exists only within this time loop. If you wish to say it, though it is most imprecise, it would be fair to state that he was never born. The situation exists apart from time as we normally know it. Such as the fact that you returned here with the information to be sent to yourself
about the settings on the atomic bombs. Where did this information
come from originally? From yourself. So you sent it to yourself in order to send it to yourself to inform yourself about the settings on the bombs in order …’
‘Enough!’ I groaned, reaching for the bottle with trembling hand. ‘Just mark the mission as being accomplished and put me in for a fat bonus.’
I refilled all the glasses
and only when I came to Angelina’s did I realize she was no longer present. She had slipped away without a word while I was suffering over having instigated the whole time war, and I was just beginning to miss her and wondered where she had gone when she returned
‘They are fine,’ she said.
‘Who, who?’ I said in my best owl imitation. But when I saw the narrowing of Angelina’s eyes, I knew I
had made a big mistake and I racked my time-trodden brain until understanding burst upon me. ‘Who indeed! Ho-ho-ho! You must excuse the small joke. Who is fine, you say. Why, our twin, cherubic, gurgling babies are fine. With true maternal instinct you have rushed to their side.’
‘They are here with me.’
‘Well, wheel the pram in!’
‘The babies,’ she said as they entered, with what I detected
as a strong note of irony.
They were going on six years of age, a little fact that I had neglected to remember. They moved easily, solid chaps with the disconcerting knack of walking in step with each other. Well muscled, their father’s firm heritage, I am happy to say, with a tempering of their mother’s looks.
‘You’ve been away a long time, Dad,’ one of them said.
‘Not by choice, James. The
universe isn’t saved in a day.’
‘I’m James, he’s Bolivar. Welcome back.’
‘Well, thanks.’ Did I kiss them or what? They settled this by sticking out their hands, and I shook them each quite seriously. Good grips. This family thing was going to take some getting used to. Angelina beamed proudly, and I
melted under that look and realized that it was all probably worth it.
‘Angelina, I think you
have finally convinced me. The joys of married life seem to be worth the price of giving up the happy and carefree occupation of freelance thief ….’
‘Thief is the correct word,’ a nauseously familiar voice cried out. ‘And crook, con man, blackmailer, briber, and more.’ Inskipp stood in the doorway waving his florid face and a sheaf of papers in my direction. ‘Five years I have been waiting for
you, diGriz, and this time you are not getting away. No excuses like time wars now. You crook, you steal from your own buddies,
urggh!’
He said
Urggh!
because Angelina had popped a sleep capsule under his nose, and he folded over while the boys – good reflexes there – stepped forward and eased him gently to the floor. Angelina relieved him of the sheaf of papers while he went by.
‘After five
years I need you more than this nasty old man does. Let’s burn this file and steal a ship before he comes to. It will be months before he can find us, and by that time something else will have happened that will need straightening out badly, and he will have to put us back to work again. Meanwhile, we can have a lovely crooked second honeymoon.’
‘Sounds great – but what about the boys? This is
not the sort of trip one takes children on.’
‘You’re not leaving without us,’ Bolivar said. Where had I seen that unshakable scowl before? In the mirror I guess. ‘Where you go, we go. If it’s a matter of money, we can pay our own way. See.’
I saw indeed as he extended a great bundle of credits that could pay his way right across the galaxy. But I also had a quick glimpse of a familiar golden
wallet.
‘Inskipp’s money! You robbed that poor old man while you should have been helping him.’ I flicked a quick look at James. ‘And I suppose you will be able to tell time during the trip with his wristwatch that I see suddenly on your arm?’
‘In their father’s footsteps,’ Angelina said proudly. ‘Of course they come with us. And don’t concern yourself with expenses, boys. Daddy can steal enough
for all of us.’
It was too much. ‘Why not!’ I laughed. ‘Here’s to crime!’ I raised my glass.
‘Here’s to time,’ Coypu said, getting in the spirit of the thing.
‘Here’s to time crime!’ we cried together and drained our glasses and broke them against the wall, and Coypu smiled avuncularly after us as we grabbed the children’s hands and leaped lightly over Inskipp’s snoring body and were out the
door and away.
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Stainless Steel Rat
1.
The Stainless Steel Rat
(1961)
2.
The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge
(1970)
3.
The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World
(1972)
4.
The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You!
(1978)
5.
The Stainless Steel Rat for President
(1982)
6.
A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born
(1985)
7.
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted
(1987)
8.
The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the
Blues
(1994)
9.
Stainless Steel Visions
(1992)
10.
The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell
(1996)
11.
The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus
(1999)
Bill, the Galactic Hero
1.
Bill the Galactic Hero
(1965)
2.
Bill the Galactic Hero and the Planet of Robot Slaves
(1989)
3.
Bill the Galactic Hero
and the Planet of the Bottled Brains
(1990) (with Robert Sheckley)
4.
Bill the Galactic Hero
and the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure
(1990) (with David Bischoff)
5.
Bill the Galactic Hero
and the Planet of the Zombie Vampires
(1991) (with Jack C Haldeman, II)
6.
Bill the Galactic Hero
and the Planet of the Hippies from Hell
(1991) (with David Bischoff) (aka
The Planet of Ten Thousand Bars
)
7.
Bill the Galactic Hero
:
The Final Incoherent Adventure
(1992) (with David Harris)
To the Stars
1.
Homeworld
(1980)
2.
Wheelworld
(1981)
3.
Starworld
(1981)
Eden
1.
West of Eden
(1984)
2.
Winter in Eden
(1986)
3.
Return to Eden
(1988)
Stars and Stripes
1.
Stars and Stripes Forever
(1998)
2.
Stars and Stripes in Peril
(2000)
3.
Stars and Stripes Triumphant
(2001)
Deathworld
1.
Deathworld
(1960)
2.
Deathworld Two
(1964)
3.
Deathworld Three
(1968)
Hammer and the Cross
1.
The
Hammer and the Cross
(1993)
2.
One King's Way
(1994)
3.
King and Emperor
(1996) (with John Holm (Tom Shippey))
Other Novels
Planet of the Damned
(1962) (aka
A Sense of Obligation
)
Plague from Space
(1965)
The Man from P.I.G.
(1968)
The Technicolor Time Machine
(1968)
Captive Universe
(1969)
In Our Hands, the Stars
(1970) (aka
The Daleth Effect
)
The Jupiter Legacy
(1970)
Spaceship Medic
(1970)
Montezuma's Revenge
(1972)
Tunnel Through the Deeps
(1972) (aka
A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!
)
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died
(1972) (with Leon E Stover)
Queen Victoria's Revenge
(1974)
Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
(1974)
The Men from P.I.G. and R.O.B.O.T.
(1974)
The California Iceberg
(1975) (with James E Barry)
The Lifeship
(1976) (with Gordon R Dickson) (aka
Lifeboat
)
Skyfall
(1976)
The QEII Is Missing
(1980)
Planet of No Return
(1981)
The Jupiter Plague
(1982)
Invasion: Earth
(1982)
A Rebel in Time
(1983)
The Turing Option
(1992) (with Marvin Minsky)
Harry Harrison (1925 - 2012)
Harry Harrison was born Henry Maxwell Dempsey in Connecticut, in 1925. He is the author of a number of much-loved series including the Stainless Steel Rat and Bill the Galactic Hero sequences and the Deathworld Trilogy. He is known as a passionate advocate of
Esperanto
, the most popular of the constructed international languages, which appears in many of his novels.
He has been publishing novels for over half a century and is perhaps best known for his seminal novel of overpopulation,
Make Room! Make Room!
, which was adapted into the cult film
Soylent Green
. He died in 2012.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Harry Harrison 2012
A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born
Copyright © Harry Harrison 1985
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted
Copyright © Harry Harrison 1987
The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues
Copyright © Harry Harrison 1994
The Stainless Steel Rat
Copyright © Harry Harrison 1961
The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge
Copyright © Harry Harrison 1970
The Stainless
Steel Rat Saves the World
Copyright © Harry Harrison 1972
All rights reserved.
The right of Harry Harrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H
9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 12265 9
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without
the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.