Rat Trap

by Michael J. Daley

  Rat tried to play fair to keep the boy happy, but fair was hard for her to understand. It belonged to the world of games. Maybe with her nestmates, a long time ago, she had played games for fun.

  Air drag slowed Rat to a standstill near the center of the room. A mistake. She hadn’t pushed off with enough force. Dumb. This might be play, but mistakes were always bad.

  Rat gripped the control valve. A brief squeeze, and gas hissed from the metal bottle, puffing her toward a blue triangle. Rat bumped into it and stuck. Her emergency escape route was behind this panel: an air vent big enough for a rat with a clunky cast. Rat glanced at the boy. He was busy setting the alarm that would warn them if anyone came.

  Good boy. Serious before play. Rat, too.

  A flick of her toe sent her drifting behind the panel. She reached her front paw through the grate of the air vent. Two plastic clips on the inside edge held it shut. Rat plucked them off. She stowed them in a pocket of her spyvest. Even though the vent was hidden from view, Rat never left the grate open. The fix-it robots would notice a grate that was supposed to be closed. They might tell someone who might guess that Rat was still alive.

  Everything on the space station had a function and was supposed to be shipshape. This was important, Rat knew. Because just beyond the metal walls was the black airlessness of space—deadly as the needle the scientists used on failures.

  A good reason to keep vents closed.

  A good reason never to chew wires.

  With a tiny shove, the grate swung into the vent. Click! It stuck to the magnet she had glued to the wall. Rat peered into the dark duct and saw in her mind its length, the many curves and twists, the interconnections that led to a dozen, a hundred, a thousand more pathways. If anyone surprised them, this was her secret way out. It would be a long, slow journey, dragging the heavy cast all the way back to the boy’s room.

  Rat moved around to the front of the blue triangle. The boy finished adjusting the control panel, then tugged on the door handle to bring his feet into contact with an orange diamond accelerator panel. The rebound reaction threw him straight at her.

  Rat casually drifted toward the green square next to the blue triangle.

  When the boy was halfway across the room, she touched it lightly with a forepaw. The acute-angle reaction sent her sailing in a wall-hugging circle around the room. She flattened her ears against the rush of air.

  The boy smacked a red square to go shooting off toward an end wall. He’d never catch her, going that way. But then he managed to get a toe on a yellow octagon. It pirouetted him into the same wall-hugging arc as Rat. He was closing fast.

  Rat lashed a brown rectangle with her tail. The reaction peeled her out of danger in a widening spiral. The boy sailed to the other side of the room. Hit. Stuck.

  Rat stuck, too. She smoothed a few ruffled lavender hairs on her shoulder.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, breathing hard. “I’ve practiced for weeks. You’ve had only a few days. But you know all the neatest panels. How come?”

  “Because you do not study,” Rat signed, but he could not read her paw signals from so far away.

  Rat was lucky. A map of the strange room existed in her head along with the map of the space station. She only had to travel a path once, to feel the effect of a rebound panel once, and it became part of her brain. But the boy needed to study.

  Rat noticed his knees flex, readying for a spring.

  She kicked off.

  Stupid cast! It made her a fraction late. The boy got the angle. His grasping fingers reached toward her. Closer. She could see the pattern of his fingerprints. The hands of all the scientists who’d ever eached into her cage appeared in her mind. Hands in the gloves that stank of rubber. Hands with needles and probes …

  She wrenched the jetpak control. Gas hissed. The boy missed.

  “Cheater!” He was not watching where he was going. Smack! The rebound panel tossed him head over heels.

  Rat fired the jetpak a few times. She hovered in the middle of the room while the boy bounced out of control around her.

  The boy finally used his own jetpak to come to a stop near her. They floated nose to nose. The boy was annoyed. “Why do you do that? You play chess by the rules. Why not this game? Huh?”

  She signed, “Hands.”

  The boy glanced at his hand, puzzled. “But you let me touch you all the time now.”

  “Not you,” Rat signed. “Scientists.”

  “Oh, Rat, I’m sorry.”

  Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

  The warning alarm. Someone was coming!

  Rat squeezed the jetpak control hard. A great belch of gas erupted. Her body jerked forward. The broken leg, with its heavy cast, was slower to accelerate. It lingered behind, stretching weak muscles backward.

  A stab of pain. Rat lost her grip on the control and went flying in crazy zigzags. She yanked the useless leg in close to her body. The pain lessened. She could steer again. Without even needing to look, she aimed for the blue triangle. Twisting the control to maximum, she rocketed into the air vent.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHO’s COMING?

  Nanny!

  Jeff squeezed the control valve on his jetpak. The burst of gas rocketed him away from the door. But then his brain caught up with his reflexes: It couldn’t be Nanny. They’d seen the pieces and the dark eye just an hour ago.

  Another burst of gas brought him to a standstill.

  The captain? The captain was fat. He liked the low-gravity parts of the space station best. You couldn’t get any lower than the Zero-G room.

  Jeff had managed to avoid the captain since damaging Nanny. It was ridiculous. A poke in the eye with liverwurst shouldn’t have stopped a super ninja robot like Nanny. It only happened because Nanny’s head wasn’t screwed on right. The captain himself had made that mistake.

  The door whirred. Jeff glanced at the blue triangle to make sure Rat was completely hidden, then squared his shoulders as the door slid open.

  “Dad!”

  “Hi, Jeff.” Dad looked around the big empty space. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Playing.”

  “By yourself?”

  Careful!

  “I make things up,” Jeff said. “You know, my own games.”

  Dad nodded. He rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair. Dad did that when he was nervous. A good sign during chess, but now it made Jeff nervous. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes—no—I mean …” Dad shifted his grip on the door handle. “I just found out. About the shuttle.”

  “Don’t tell me we’re not going home!”

  “No, calm down, nothing like that.…”

  “Then what?” Jeff wondered.

  “There’s a passenger on the shuttle.”

  Is that all? “Too bad for them. This place stinks.”

  Actually, no matter how much cleaning the gobblers did, the space station always smelled a little sour, like a locker room. But it also stank because he hated it here. Used to, Jeff corrected himself. So much had changed because of Rat.

  “Jeff, please. Listen,” Dad said. “The passenger is an investigator from a company called Rodengenics. I thought you should know right away.”

  Rodengenics … rodere … rodent … rat … oh, no!

  Jeff looked at the blue triangle. Did Rat hear that?

  When he looked back, Dad met his eye with stone-faced disapproval, just like when Jeff made a stupid move playing chess. He’d goofed, somehow … then it hit him. He’d given away Rat’s hiding place!

  So what? Obviously, Dad knew already, or he wouldn’t have come to warn them. But someone else …

  Dad waited, arms crossed. Small forces acting on his body made it rotate. Dad grabbed the door handle to stop the motion, ended up lying sideways in mid-air. He lounged there, patient as a spider.

  My move, Jeff realized.

  The secret stretched uncomfortably between them. All Jeff had to do was ask, and they could face this
threat together. His palms went sweaty. Everything depended on his choice. If he made the wrong one, there would be no way to pick up the pieces and play another game.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DON’T RUN!

  Rodengenics!

  The word went straight from Rat’s ears to her three good paws.

  Run! Run!

  Every cell in her body screamed: Get into the vent!

  But Rat clung to the grate, rigid, in control. She must hear everything. She needed to know every detail to meet this sudden threat.

  The father and the boy were silent.

  Why?

  Don’t move. Don’t peek.

  Wait and think!

  Who would Rodengenics send? Dr. Vivexian? Was Rat that important? She hoped not. Dr. Vivexian would make a very good investigator. He knew all of Rat’s tricks for sneaking and hiding and hacking. He had taught them to her!

  “That investigator has come a long way for nothing. I told you, Nanny surely killed the rat.”

  Good boy. He was keeping Rat secret.

  “Okay. We’ll play it your way.” The father’s voice grew faint. He must be moving into the corridor. Good. Go away. Leave us alone.

  Something brushed her farthest-back left-side whisker. Rat jerked her head into a cloud of tiny black—flies? No! Insulation bits.

  How? Where?

  Then she saw the wire going into the back of the blue triangle and the neat rows of paired gouges where her own teeth had nibbled it.

  Stupid teeth!

  Stupid Rat, not paying attention. Those teeth needed minding, or whenever she was stressed, the bad habit came back.

  The bits of insulation were moving, pushed by a gentle current of air coming through the vent. They were moving toward the outlet. Soon they would float into the Zero-G room …

  The father might see them. Did that matter? Maybe not. But the bits might get into the machines. Clog something. Show the captain that Rat was still alive!

  Only one thing to do.

  Rat snatched and swallowed. And she might have gotten them all, except that somewhere in the twisting maze of ductwork, a blower came on. The rush of air whisked them into the Zero-G room.

  Rat almost chased after them, but the father spoke again. Still here! Grabbing the grate, Rat jerked to a stop.

  “You’ve got three days until the shuttle docks,” the father said. “And Jeff—both of you are going to have to be a lot more careful.”

  She heard the door close, then the boy’s shout, “Rat!”

  The boy did not say another word as they chased down the scattered pieces of insulation. It got even harder once the bits started hitting the panels, ricocheting every which way. The Zero-G room filled with the hiss of their jetpaks. Rat swooped and gulped. The boy darted and snatched.

  Snagging the last bit, the boy pivoted in mid-air. He dove for Rat. He stuffed her roughly into the jump suit. He had never handled her like that before.

  Rat could not blame him. The boy had done his part, lying to the father. But there was no avoiding the truth: She had been careless.

  What if the investigator had been out there?

  Back in the boy’s room, out of her spyvest, Rat lay sprawled on the bed, panting hard.

  “An investigator! Coming here!” The boy was shouting. “Look at this place! Liverwurst wrappers everywhere!”

  He shed the jump suit, then began rushing around trying to clean up. Poor boy. He did not understand. The investigator would bring sniffers. Sniffers would be able to tell if Rat lived in this room, messy or not.

  Rat looked at the hollow carefully trampled into her pillow. Little shreds of crackly paper showed here and there between a mat of lavender hairs, only recently layered to just the right thickness. But this nest was no good anymore. Once the boy’s room had been the safest place for Rat. Now she could not stay here.

  Leave the boy? Who would sign with her and play chess with her and stroke her from the tip of her nose to that itchy spot between her ears?

  Silly Rat. Soft Rat. What kind of thoughts were these? She could rub her head against a warm pipe. It had always been good enough before …

  The room seemed to spin. Rat felt as if she was falling. As if the space station had suddenly let her go. She vomited up the bits of insulation.

  “Hey! Are you okay?” The boy’s hot hand scooped her away from the edge of the bed. He grabbed a book and fanned her with it. “How’s that?”

  The pulses of cool air felt wonderful.

  The boy stroked her gently. “Better now?”

  Actually, it did not bother Rat to throw up. She was trained to swallow things and regurgitate them at will. A useful skill. It gave her a secret pocket, perfect for hiding things. Small bombs, for instance.

  “All better,” Rat signed, nosing the boy’s hand away. The boy set her on the floor. The cast forced her to sit lopsided. She braced a forepaw on his knee for balance.

  “Oh, Rat, what are we going to do?”

  The shock of the news had worn off. Everything was clear now. Rat must stay with the boy. And not for any silly reasons. The boy meant food and shelter. He was the way back to Earth.

  The scientists had taught her more than just how to run away, how to hide. It was time to use those things.

  She signed, “Rat will kill the investigator.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  RAT’S LAW

  Jeff stared into the glass-bead blackness of Rat’s eye cocked so confidently up at him. Echoes of campfire horror stories about rats killing babies in the night came to him. Not Rat. No.

  He said, “You can’t do that!”

  “Can,” Rat signed, finishing the motion with an almost too-fast-to-see swipe at his knee. Jeff jerked the knee away, but it was already too late. There was a pop, then a slicing spike of sharper pain.

  “Yee-ouch!” He circled the knee with his fingers, pressing hard against the sting. Five tiny beads of blood welled up, shiny and dark as Rat’s eyes.

  “Hey, what’s the idea?” Rat had hurt him before by mistake, but this swipe had been on purpose!

  “Sharp toes. Sharp teeth.” Rat splayed her toes and bared her four long, curved teeth for inspection. “Good for fighting.”

  A misunderstanding, Jeff realized. Rat thought he was questioning her fighting abilities, so she demonstrated them.

  “Toes, teeth, no use.” Rat gestured at the broken leg. “Need gun.”

  “A gun?”

  “Special gun. For spyvest.”

  Rat spread the homemade spyvest flat. She smelled it all over, checking each pocket and strap. Rat tapped the jetpak canister. “Needs gas.”

  She nosed the flashlight. “Needs batteries.”

  Jeff leaned forward. He brushed his finger slowly up the long length of Rat’s head from the tip of her nose to between her ears. She pressed hard into the stroke, then went back to business.

  “Gun here.” Rat pointed to a three-inch sleeve on the right side of the spyvest. “Thin like tail. Burn holes in vents. Burn people.”

  “Rat, you can’t just shoot someone. It’s murder.”

  “Scientists kill rats,” she signed. “Rat kills scientists. Fair.”

  “Fair?” Oh, boy.

  “People sent sniffers; sent Nanny; sent you to kill me.”

  Jeff looked away, feeling queasy. Once, he himself had hunted down and almost killed Rat just to get Mom and Dad’s attention.

  “We were wrong. Killing the investigator would be wrong, too.”

  Rat pointed at the computer.

  Jeff slipped a hand under her belly. He lifted her, then settled her good leg in his other hand. The velvet-skinned toe pads pressed warm and wonderfully alive against his palm. A fierceness bloomed hot all through his chest. He hugged Rat to his belly.

  Rat squirmed. Relaxing his hug, Jeff set her on the desk.

  “Don’t squish,” she signed, then reached for the keys. She typed: YOU KNOW ONLY SCIENTISTS WHO TAKE PRETTY PICTURES OF THE SUN. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY
.

  Rat was right. He knew nothing about scientists who would create someone like Rat, then teach her to hack computers and shoot guns.

  “You won’t find a gun like that here. That’s super-advanced technology. Maybe even military stuff. Was Rodengenics connected with the military?”

  Rat ignored him. She was busy tapping into the space station’s supply list. Searching for her gun. Was she part of some top-secret project? Jeff wondered. A ninja rat?

  Rat had taught him the special sign language of the lab mostly by asking him questions. Lots about outdoors. Tough ones. What did dirt smell like? He learned practically all the signs trying to explain how dirt under a pine tree smelled compared to hot sand at the beach.

  Rat hadn’t been as thorough when answering his questions. Now he wondered: Were there things she didn’t want him to know?

  A tickle on his wrist. Jeff flinched. But Rat just wanted him to look at the screen. It displayed a technical drawing. The label read: PHOTONICS PRIMARY IMPULSE LASER SOURCE.

  “Photonics …” Jeff had heard that word before, on the day he and his parents arrived. There was a reception. Nobody paid any attention to him except a little old lady. She sat crumpled in a wheelchair as if the gravity was dragging her down. She only stayed long enough to invite Jeff to visit the Photonics lab. Somehow Nanny had never fit a visit into the schedule.

  “That’s part of a light computer,” Jeff said, studying the drawing. “Some kind of artificial intelligence project.”

  The scale markings showed the egg-shaped laser was only two inches long, but the megawatt rating put it in the same power range as a gun. Uh-oh! Rat had found something that might actually work.

  The printer hummed and spat out a small note with the location of the Photonics Lab: Ring 5, section S, compartment 12. Ring 5 was a good place for an old person. It had only half the gravity of Ring 9.

  “Go there,” Rat signed. “Get laser.”

  “They’ll never let me have that.”

  “Not ask. Take.”

  “That’s stealing.”

  “So?” Rat tilted her head to fix one black eye on him. “You take food.”