Rat Trap

by Michael J. Daley

  “Come back!” The mother! Rat froze. What was the matter with the mother, scaring her like that? She would have kept running, but she must return for the supplies. Rat struggled through the narrow pipe for the third time, emerging to glare at the mother.

  “Oh,” the mother said, “what a beautiful coat.”

  Rat turned to show her full profile and lifted her chin charmingly as she shouldered out of the jetpak harness. She got to work replacing the spent fire-foam canister.

  The mother said, “I probably shouldn’t be here.…”

  Perceptive, Rat thought as she found free pockets for the magnetic disk and the pin-probe.

  “… but I needed to thank you. I understand you saved my project. So thank you, for myself and all humanity.”

  Humanity? Rat cocked her head, studying the mother. If Rat did it for anyone beside herself, she did it for the boy. She signed, “Tell boy: Rat will win. Promise.”

  That curious but uncomprehending look again. Bother. Another ignorant one! Rat nibbled the message into the boy’s note and passed it to the mother.

  “Jeff will really appreciate this,” she said after scanning the message. Now she studied Rat. “You really are an extraordinary creature, aren’t you?”

  It made Rat uncomfortable, being noticed by the mother. Nothing good ever came of being noticed by scientists. With a flick of her tail, she dove into the pipe. Almost immediately it opened into a broader shaft. This time Rat did not go quietly. She even allowed the tanks to clank against the shaft walls.

  Her toes sensed a vibration. It might just be another fix-it, but she hoped not. Switching to her three-legged gait, she slipped the screwdriver from its pocket. She braced the end under a strap, leaving the point sticking out like a spear. After several more strides, she switched on the flashlight.

  The light gleamed on the naked steel jaws of a sniffer. It was coming at her fast, tubes snuffling and eye stalks quivering excitedly. This had to be one of Nanny’s sniffers. All of C-10’s sniffers were gathering at the Zero-G room.

  Gripping the screwdriver firmly, Rat squeezed the jetpak control. The boost swept her off her feet, turning her into a steel-pointed missile. Even before she slammed into the sniffer, the scrambler froze its brains and stopped its jaws. The screwdriver went right through its body, smashing its insides, destroying it for good. Rat braked to a stop, then pulled the screwdriver loose with satisfaction: One down, eight to go!

  More vibrations, faint, far away. She had gotten Nanny’s attention.

  With the fire foam spluttering behind her, Rat raced at top speed through the narrow shafts, laying trails to the Zero-G room. Nanny knew Rat’s fire-foam trick. Rat hoped Nanny would reason the rat was trying to hide its trails, trying to get away. She did not want Nanny to suspect she was setting a trap.

  Rat came to the air vent behind the blue triangle, her old escape route. After shutting off the fire foam, she pulled the grate inward and—click—it stuck to the magnet on the shaft wall. The vibrations were very strong now. She heard the whine of motors at full speed.

  Hurry!

  Scrambling to the front of the panel, she kicked off to sail across the room to the control box. She turned on the rebound panels, setting the game to expert level, maximum kick. This was her hope for defeating Nanny’s sniffers. Nanny did not know how to play any games, the boy had told her, and that meant Nanny’s sniffers would not know either.

  Waiting, Rat recalled her very first visit to the Zero-G room with the boy. How strange this room had seemed! What a surprise the first time she touched a panel—it had been that green square, just beside the control box. How she had tumbled and spun and twisted, learning the special character of each of the panels. And how the boy’s laughter had filled the room as he watched her!

  She wanted to hear that laugh again.

  An eyestalk peeked over the blue triangle, then a snuffling sniffer tube. The eyestalk quivered; the tube drew deeper; the jaws started snapping. Then it flung itself into the room, trailing a slimy stream of foam that hung like clouds in the air. More sniffers followed. Rat watched and waited, counting: one, two … yes! All eight of Nanny’s remaining sniffers were in the room. Every one. Now the battle could begin. Her powerful haunches bunched. She kicked off.

  The battle was surprisingly brief. Rat knew all the angles, and the sniffers did not have brains enough to learn how the panels worked. With a kick here, a nudge there, a poke with the screwdriver, or a blast of gas, Rat set the sniffers on a collision course that first banged each one against an accelerator panel. Moving almost faster than Rat could see, the eight sniffers came together with a tremendous crash and shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Rat floated in the center of the room, a haze of sniffer parts drifting around her.

  C-10 emerged from behind the blue panel. Its strange building-block body gripped the edge of the triangle with sniffer jaw feet. A swarm of individual sniffers poured out behind it. They spread over the panels, hundreds of them, obscuring the shapes and colors.

  “Warning. Nanny is coming,” C-10 said. It thrust off toward Rat, ballooning into a loosely connected ball. Other sniffers moved to join the ball once Rat slipped inside.

  But something was wrong. The ball was not solidifying. In a stuttery, barely understandable voice, C-10 droned, “Error … malfunction … error … no protection.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IN THE FRAY

  Jeff stared in horror at the big screen in the conference room. The jittery, uneven mass of sniffers surrounding Rat looked more like a wiffle ball than an armored shield. He caught a glimpse of lavender through the gaps. If he could see Rat, Nanny certainly would!

  C-10’s voice stuttered over the communicator in Dr. Vivexian’s hand. “Malfunction. Error. Scrambler … Scrambler …”

  The scrambler! Oh, no! They needed to tell Rat to turn it off, but how?

  Dr. Vivexian yelled into the communicator, “Get my rat out of there! Retreat! Run!”

  “Unable to comply. Nanny comes. Danger!”

  The hatch to the Zero-G room opened and Nanny flew in, shooting. A flare of light erupted from the screen, followed by the ear-grating zizzzzzzzzzz of a laser beam. The automatic emergency system blared: “Alert! Alert! Weapons fire central core Zero-G room.”

  Not wanting to, but having to, Jeff watched Nanny flying straight toward C-10, a tail of white thruster gas streaming behind it. The ball began to wobble and rotate to make it harder for Nanny to hit the gaps. C-10 still had some brains, but it was a desperate and feeble tactic.

  Spare sniffers flew into Nanny’s path. Nanny blasted them. Zizzzzzzz. “Alert! Alert! Weapons fire—”

  Zizzzzzzz. “Alert! Alert! Weap—” The system couldn’t keep up as the white-hot lances of light exploded sniffer after sniffer.

  Zizzzzzz. Zizzzzzz. Zizzzzzz. Jeff gasped. Everyone gasped. Did that last one get through?

  “A—A—A—” the system stuttered, a mocking reminder of Rat’s favorite Morse code.

  The captain bellowed, “Shut that stupid thing off!”

  “NO!” Jeff shouted. “Use it!”

  “Of course!” The captain slapped the intercom button so hard Jeff thought he might smash it through the table. “Control! Public address from here! Go, boy!”

  “Rat! Scrambler! Shut it off!” In every corner of the space station Jeff’s voice blared from the speakers. It echoed in corridors and vibrated the walls in cabins, forcing people to cover their ears. Now if only Rat was still alive to hear it.

  All eyes were glued to the screen. The looseness of C-10 suddenly formed a sphere about the size of a beach ball. The walls solidified, several layers deep with interlocking sniffers, closing all the gaps. Nanny’s laser beams bounced off harmlessly.

  “Hooray!” Dad cheered.

  Jeff sank into a chair, too overcome with relief to speak. The captain laid a hand, heavy as lead, on his shoulder. “Good job.”

  Nanny stopped its attack. It hovered several y
ards from C-10, the green eye pulsing in battle mode. Through the communicator, they heard the robots talking.

  Nanny: “The rat is mine. This space station is mine. You are an intruder. Go away.”

  C-10: “Negative. My mission is to protect this specimen and deactivate you.”

  Nanny: “My mission is to kill the rat. Top priority.”

  C-10: “Contradiction. A cannot if B is. Simple logic. One of us must fail.”

  Nanny: “Nanny never fails.”

  C-10: “Inaccurate. You failed before.”

  Nanny: “Nanny was … interrupted. Nanny will complete the mission now.”

  C-10 made an electronic raspberry, then answered. “Interrupted! A bit of liverwurst stopped you. This unit is superior to liverwurst in every way. You will fail again.”

  Nanny: “Liverwurst, liverwurst, liverwurst. No one must know about the liverwurst. Nanny will destroy you!”

  C-10: “Try it!”

  Nanny surged forward. C-10 swooped backward. At the same time, its sniffers swarmed Nanny. Dozens of them thrust off from where they clung to the walls, like bats leaving an attic. They dove at Nanny from every angle. Nanny’s laser blazed like a machine gun, but it couldn’t get them all. The survivors stuck to its body like barnacles.

  Several gripper arms emerged from Nanny. They flailed at the sniffers, smashing and plucking them off. But there were too many. The blue dentures were gone and the steely jaws worked in a frenzy, snapping control cables, chewing at elbow bearings, gnawing at the tubing. One gripper broke clean off to go spinning gruesomely around the Zero-G room along with the growing cloud of smashed and blasted sniffers.

  The armored ball carrying Rat flowed toward the chaos.

  “This is it,” the chief said. “The clench.”

  Jeff tensed, gripping Rat’s note hard in his hand. C-10 was moving Rat back into danger. He watched the insect-like sniffers chewing away at Nanny and felt … something, a mix of sad and sorry and disappointed. He’d thought Nanny would put up a better fight. Not that he wanted it too, but still …

  C-10 was just a couple of feet away when Nanny suddenly started to spin. A gripper flailed out, whacking C-10 and sending it into the wall like a z-ball. It hit an orange octagon and went spiraling off. White jets of gas sprouted all over it as it tried to recover from the blow.

  That had to hurt! Jeff hoped Rat had a good grip inside there.

  Nanny spun faster and faster. They heard the roar of gas from its thruster jets. Faster and faster. The green eye flashed around and around until it became a blur of light, like a green halo. Sniffers started losing their grip. Faster still, and the whole mass clinging to Nanny shattered and flew apart, flung with tremendous force outward toward the rebound panels. The sniffers careened off the panels, hopelessly out of control. They smashed together, and a few laser blasts eliminated the ones that had escaped destruction by impact.

  Jeff stared in open-mouthed shock. Nanny wasn’t defeated at all! Nanny was free. It had used the same centrifugal force that the space station used. And it had used Rat’s trick, too.

  C-10 was all alone.

  Nanny swooped and slammed into C-10. Grippers flailed. Bit by bit, Nanny began to tear the ball apart.

  Jeff had to look away, and when he did, he discovered that Dr. Vivexian was gone. His designer booties, with the fancy double helix emblem up the sides, were stuck fast to the carpet—empty!

  So much noise! Sounds slammed Rat’s sensitive ears like hammer blows: thruster blasts, the crash and rattle of flailing grippers, the zizzzzzz of the laser, the explosions, and the steady chew-chew-chew of the sniffers gnawing away at Nanny.

  Rat wanted to cover her ears but couldn’t. All four paws clung fiercely to eyestalks and sniffer tubes to keep her from being thrown around inside C-10 as it maneuvered in a violent dance with Nanny, readying for the clench.

  A tremendous blow struck C-10, then a rebound that sent the world spinning. All around Rat, thrusters gasped. C-10 was having trouble recovering stability. Rat just hung on and ducked the scrambler that whizzed around loose inside the ball.

  Rat wished she could see what was going on! She could hear the whine and roar of Nanny’s thrusters. Now a shrill whistle of air. Something was spinning very fast. A clatter of metal raked over C-10, sending shudders through the ball.

  Suddenly a window the size of a dinner plate opened right next to Rat. For a second, Rat saw Nanny, its body bristling with grippers and the green eye flashing in battle mode. Where were all C-10’s other sniffers?

  Nanny slammed against C-10. Grippers flailed at the armor, smashing and plucking. The armor wouldn’t last long. They had to shut Nanny down now!

  C-10 rolled against Nanny, shifting the window over the grid of pinholes next to the rogue port. Sniffers chewed a grip into Nanny’s body, meshing the robots together. Rat pulled the magnetic grapple from its pocket and wrapped the loop around her forepaw. She slapped the grapple next to the rogue-port lock. Nanny jerked as its sensors noted the touch. It realized what Rat was up to. A new series of flails and flips threatened to twist her wrist right off! Her body flopped like a ribbon tied to an air vent, banging hard against the inner walls of the ball.

  Rat tightened her grip. With her other forepaw, she grabbed the pinprobe from the spyvest. But Nanny wasn’t just frantically thrashing around. It was a sensible robot kind of panic that made it extremely difficult for Rat to get the pinprobe into the tiny hole. She couldn’t keep her free paw steady enough to hit the right ones. She shifted the probe into her mouth, then seized a sniffer tube in her forepaw. With one paw in the grapple loop and one holding a sniffer, she was able to hold her body steady. Now she let her head flow with the shifting forces, zeroing in and then … jab. There! The first code. Three to go.

  A gripper smashed through C-10’s damaged armor. It snagged Rat’s tail in its pincer-like claw. The pain nearly made Rat let go. The gripper yanked, stretching her flat and hauling her away from the grid. She couldn’t finish the code!

  In desperation, she shoved the probe back into its pocket, then shifted her grip on the magnetic grapple to her hind leg. The contortion strained her tendons to the breaking point. She curled back on herself and with one powerful snap of her teeth, she bit clean through the flesh and bone of her tail.

  Like the two ends of a broken rubber band, the gripper sprang free and Rat unfolded. The shock went beyond pain. Blood spurted from her tail and formed into tiny spheres that floated around her. No time to worry about that! The gripper might break through again. Snatching the probe back into her mouth, she squirmed her body into position.

  The pounding and laser pulses and jerking increased as Nanny redoubled its efforts, but now Rat had a technique. Bracing herself, she jabbed quickly: code two, code three, code four. With a sharp snick, a two-inch square door slid open, exposing the rogue port. The hardlink shot out of C-10 like an arrow and connected. The inside of the ball flashed with green light as Nanny’s head spun. Its voice spilled out, “Nanny, nanny, nann-nan-na-na-n-naaa-naaa …”

  Ppphphpht. The green eye went dark. The thrusters gave a last gasp. The gripper arms twitched once more, then froze. Deep inside Nanny, the throbbing vibration of power faded, then went out altogether.

  At last, Nanny was gone.

  C-10’s sniffers stopped chewing. A hush settled in the Zero-G room. The only sound was the patter of sniffer parts and the bump, bump, bump of the scrambler drifting around inside C-10. Rat blinked, then loosed her grip on the grapple. She pushed away from the dead hulk.

  The little spheres of blood floating around her reminded Rat of just how close she and C-10 had come to losing the battle. She ripped a strip of cloth from the spyvest. Gripping the inside of C-10 with a hind paw, she flicked her tail up against her chest. Poor tail! It used to reach to her nose. With tooth and paw, she tied the cloth tight near the bloody stump.

  “Excellent, C-10. Now bring her to me.”

  Rat’s hind leg exploded her toward the window, b
ut too late. Sniffers shifted, closing the opening, trapping Rat inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  HIJACKED!

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where Dr. Vivexian was headed, so Jeff took an elevator that stopped one section beyond the Zero-G room. He hoped to double back and surprise Dr. Vivexian. If he had guessed wrong, it wouldn’t matter. He would be where he needed to be, ready to help Rat any way he could. If he could.

  The elevator door opened onto silence. Good sign? Bad sign? Jeff bit his lip and launched into the corridor. He wall-crawled, pulling himself along pipes. A sound like rain hitting a tin roof gradually grew louder as he approached the bend leading directly to the Zero-G room.

  Dr. Vivexian floated in the door, his back to Jeff and his feet firmly planted in the footholds. Good sign. He wouldn’t do that if the battle still raged. He was settling a gauntlet on his right arm. The gloved part gleamed metallic. Jeff drifted to the ceiling, then carefully, quietly, shimmied closer, squinting: Yes, the glove was biomechanical, each finger pistoned with hydraulics. Dr. Vivexian would need something like that to match Rat’s incredible strength and for protection from her teeth and razor toes.

  Rat must be here. She must be alive. But Dr. Vivexian was going to break the truce!

  “Excellent, C-10. Now bring her to me.”

  Oh, no! How could Jeff save Rat if she was still inside C-10? His only chance would be during the moment of transfer. He wall-crawled closer. He needed to see the robot. Get the angle. Be ready to dive between them.

  At last, he saw past Dr. Vivexian. A haze of smoke and drifting sniffer parts filled the Zero-G room. Nanny wandered like a dark star, the eye dead, stubs of grippers bristling from the body, once sleek, now streaked with gouges. In the middle of the room, the tidy beach ball of C-10 moved steadily closer to Dr. Vivexian.

  Careful not to make a sound, Jeff placed his feet on a pipe, gripped it on either side with his hands, then pulled himself into a compact crouch, tensed for launch.

  C-10 shuddered as if heaved by an earthquake. It squawked, “Malfunction! Malfunction!”