The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection

by Harry Harrison

  “What do you mean,” he said angrily, looking at the screen in front of him. The girl caught wise first. She spun around and pointed.

  “He’s here!”

  They both stared, gaped at me, caught off guard and completely unprepared.

  “You’re under arrest, crime-king,” I told him. “And your girlfriend.”

  Angelina rolled her eyes up and slid slowly to the floor. Real or faked, I didn’t care. I kept the gun on Pepe’s pudgy form while he picked her up and carried her to an acceleration couch against the wall.

  “What … what will happen now?” He quavered the question. His pouchy jaws shook and I swear there were tears in his eyes. I was not impressed by his acting since I could clearly remember the dead men floating in space. He stumbled over to a chair, half dropping into it.

  “Will they do anything to me?” Angelina asked. Her eyes were open now.

  “I have no idea of what will happen to you.” I told her truthfully. “That is up to the courts to decide.”

  “But he made me do all those things,” she wailed. She was young, dark and beautiful, the tears did nothing to spoil this.

  Pepe dropped his face into his hands and his shoulders shook. I flicked the gun his way and snapped at him.

  “Sit up, Pepe. I find it very hard to believe that you are crying. There are some Naval ships on the way now, the automatic alarm was triggered about a minute ago. I’m sure they’ll be glad to see the man who …”

  “Don’t let them take me, please!” Angelina was on her feet now, her back pressed to the wall. “They’ll put me in prison, do things to my mind!” She shrank away as she spoke, stumbling along the wall. I looked back at Pepe, not wanting to have my eyes off him for an instant.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” I told her. I glanced her way and a small door was swinging open and she was gone.

  “Don’t try to run,” I shouted after her, “it can’t do any good!”

  Pepe made a strangling noise and I looked back to him quickly. He was sitting up now and his face was dry of tears. In fact he was laughing, not crying.

  “So she caught you, too, Mr. Wise-cop, poor little Angelina with the soft eyes.” He broke down again, shaking with laughter.

  “What do you mean,” I growled.

  “Don’t you catch yet? The story she told you was true—except she twisted it around a bit. The whole plan, building the battleship, then stealing it, was hers. She pulled me into it, played me like an accordion. I fell in love with her, hating myself and happy at the same time. Well—I’m glad now it’s over. At least I gave her a chance to get away, I owe her that much. Though I thought I would explode when she went into that innocence act!”

  The cold feeling was now a ball of ice that threatened to paralyze me. “You’re lying,” I said hoarsely, and even I didn’t believe it.

  “Sorry. That’s the way it is. Your brain-boys will pick my skull to pieces and find out the truth anyway. There’s no point in lying now.”

  “We’ll search the ship, she can’t hide for long.”

  “She won’t have to,” Pepe said. “There’s a fast scout we picked up, stowed in one of the holds. That must be it leaving now.” We could feel the vibration, distantly through the floor.

  “The Navy will get her,” I told him, with far more conviction than I felt.

  “Maybe,” he said, suddenly slumped and tired, no longer laughing. “Maybe they will. But I gave her a chance. It is all over for me now, but she knows that I loved her to the end.” He bared his teeth in sudden pain. “Not that she will care in the slightest.”

  I kept the gun on him and neither of us moved while the Navy ships pulled up and their boots stamped outside. I had captured my battleship and the raids were over. And I couldn’t be blamed if the girl had slipped away. If she evaded the Navy ships, that was their fault, not mine.

  I had my victory all right.

  But I wasn’t too happy about it. I had a premonition that I wasn’t finished with Angelina yet.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Life would have been much sweeter if my uneasy hunch hadn’t proven to be true. You can’t blame the Navy for being taken in by Angelina—they were neither the first nor the last to underestimate the mind that lay behind those melting eyes. And I try not to blame myself either. After my first mistake in letting Angelina slip out I tried not to make a second. I wasn’t completely convinced yet that Pepe was telling the truth about her. The entire story might be a complicated lie to confuse and throw me off guard. I have a very suspicious mind. Playing it safe, I kept the muzzle of my gun aimed exactly between his eyes with my fingers resting lightly on the trigger. I kept it there until a squad of space marines thundered in and took over. As soon as they put the grab on Pepe I sent out an all-ships alarm about Angelina, with a special take-all-precautions priority. Even before all the ships had acknowledged receipt her scout rocket was sighted on the detector screen.

  I sighed with a great deal of relief. If she did turn out to be the brains of the operation I didn’t want her slipping away. She, Pepe and the battleship made a nice package to turn over to Inskipp. There was no chance of her escaping now, with ships closing in on her from every direction. They were experienced at this sort of thing and it was only a matter of time before they had her. Turning over the battleship to the navy, I went back to the luxury yacht and tapped the stores for a large glass of Scotch whisky (that had never been within twenty light-years of Earth) and a long cigar. Sitting comfortably in front of the screen I monitored the chase.

  Angelina wriggled painfully on the hook, making high-G turns to avoid capture. She’d be black and blue from head to foot after some of those 15-G accelerations. It was all for nothing because in the end they still caught her in a tractor web and closed in. All the thrashing around had just gained her a little time. None of us realized how important this time really was until the boarding party cracked into the ship.

  It was empty of course.

  Fully ten days went by before we pieced together what had really happened. It was ruthless and ugly, and even if the psych docs hadn’t assured me that Pepe had told the truth, I would have recognized the manner in which the escape was carried out. Angelina was one step ahead of us all the way. When she had escaped from the battleship in the scout rocket she had made no attempt to flee. Instead she must have gone at full blast to the nearest navy ship, a twelve-man pocket cruiser. They of course had no idea what had really happened aboard the battleship, as I hadn’t put out the general alarm yet. I should have done that as soon as she had escaped. If I had, twelve good men might still be alive. We’ll never know what story she told them, but it was obvious they weren’t on their guard. Probably something about being a prisoner and escaping during the fighting. In any case she took the ship. Five of the men were dead of gas poisoning, the others shot. We discovered this when the cruiser was later found drifting and inert, parsecs away. After capturing the cruiser she had set the controls on the scout ship for evasion tactics and launched it. While we were all merrily chasing it she simply let her ship drop behind the chase and vanished from the fleet. Her trail blurs there, though it is obvious she must have captured another ship. What this ship was, and where she went in it, was a complete mystery.

  Back in Corps headquarters, I found myself trying to explain this all to Inskipp. He had a cold eye and hardened manner and I found myself trying to justify my actions.

  “You can’t win them all,” I said. “I brought home your battleship and Pepe—may his personality rest in peace now that it has been erased. Angelina tricked me and got away, I’ll admit that. But she did a much better job of fooling the boys in the navy!”

  “Why so much venom?” Inskipp asked in an arid voice. “No one’s accusing you of dereliction of duty. You sound like a man with a guilty conscience. You did a good job. A fine job. A great job … for a first assignment….”

  “You’re doing it again!” I howled. “Prodding my conscience to see how soft it is. Like k
eeping him around.” I pointed to Pepe Nero who was sitting near us in the restaurant eating slowly, mumbling to himself with vacant-eyed dullness. His old personality had been stripped from his mind and a new one implanted. Only the body remained of the old Pepe who had loved Angelina and stolen a battleship.

  “The psychs are working on a new theory of body-personality,” Inskipp said blandly, “so why not keep him around here under observation? If any of his criminal tendencies should develop in the new personality we’ll be in a wonderful spot to recruit him for the Corps. Does he bother you?”

  “Not him,” I snorted. “After the massacres he pulled for his psychotic girlfriend you could grind him into hamburger for all I care. But he does remind me that she is still out there somewhere. Free and planning new mischief. I want to go after her.”

  “Well you’re not,” Inskipp said. “You’ve asked me before and I have refused before. The topic is now closed.”

  “But I could …”

  “You could what?” He gave me a nasty chuckle. “Every law officer in the galaxy has a pic of her and there is a continual search going on. How could you possibly do more than they are already doing?”

  “I couldn’t, I guess,” I grumbled. “So the hell with it, as you say.” I pushed my plate away and stood and stretched as naturally as I could. “I’m going to get a large jug of liquid refreshment and go to my quarters and nurse my sorrows.”

  “You do that. And forget Angelina. Come to my office at 0900 hours tomorrow and you better be sober.”

  “Slave driver,” I moaned, going out the door and turning down the hall towards the residence wing. As soon as I was out of sight I took a side ramp that led to the spaceport.

  That’s one lesson I had already learned from Angelina. When you have a plan put it into action instantly. Don’t let it lie around and get stale and have other people start thinking about it themselves. I was putting myself up against the shrewdest man in the business now, and the thought alone was enough to make me sweat. I was going against Inskipp’s direct orders, walking out on him and the Corps. Not really walking out, since I only wanted to finish the job I had started for them. But I was obviously the only one who would look at it that way.

  There were tools, gadgets and a good deal of money in my quarters that would come in very handy on this job. I would just have to do without them. When Inskipp started to think about my sudden conversion to his point of view I wanted to be well away in space.

  A mechanic with a drag-robot was pulling an agent’s ship into place on the launching ramp. I stamped over and used my official voice.

  “Is that my ship?”

  “No, sir—it’s for Full Agent Nielsen, there he is coming up now.”

  “Check with central control, will you? It’s going to be rush no matter how we handle it.”

  “New job, Jimmy?” Ove asked as he came up. I nodded and watched the mechanic until he vanished around the corner.

  “Same old business,” I said. “And how’s your tennis game coming?” I asked, lifting my hand with an imaginary racket.

  “Getting better all the time,” he said, turning his head to look at his ship.

  “I’ll teach you a new stroke,” I said, bringing my hand down sharply and catching him on the side of the neck with the straightened edge. He folded without a sound and I lowered him gently to the deck and dragged him out of sight behind a row of lubrication drums. I gently pried the box with the course tapes from his limp fingers.

  Before the mechanic could return I was in the ship and had the lock sealed. I fed the course tape into the controls and punched the tower combination for clearance. There was a subjective century of waiting, during which eternal period of time I produced a fine beading of sweat all over my head. Then the green light came on.

  Step one and still in the clear. As soon as the launching acceleration stopped I was out of the chair and attacking the control panel with the screwdriver ready in my hand. There was always a remote control unit here so that any Corps ship could be flown from a distance. I had discovered it on my first flight in one of these ships since I have always maintained that there is a positive value to being nosey. I disconnected the input and output leads, then dived for the engine room.

  Perhaps I am too suspicious or have too low an opinion of mankind. Or of Inskipp, who had his own rules on most subjects. Someone more trusting than I would have ignored the radio controlled suicide bomb built into the engine. This could be used to scuttle the ship in case of capture. I didn’t think they would use it on me except as a last resort. Nevertheless I still wanted it disconnected.

  The bomb was an integral part of the engine mounting, a solid block of burmedex built into the casing. The lid dropped off easily enough and inside there was a maze of circuits all leading to a fuse screwed into the thick metal. It had a big hex-head on it and I scraped my knuckles trying to get a wrench around it and turn it in the close quarters. With a last grate of bruised flesh and knuckle bones I twisted it free. It hung down from its wire leads, a nerve drawn from a deadly tooth.

  Then it exploded with a loud bang and a cloud of black smoke.

  With most unnatural calm I looked from the cloud of dispersing smoke back to the black hole in the bermedex charge. This would have turned the ship and its contents into a fine dust.

  “Inskipp,” I said, but my throat was dry and my voice cracked and I had to start again. “Inskipp, I get your message. You thought you were giving me my discharge. Accept instead my resignation from the Special Corps.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  My most overwhelming feeling was one of relief. I was on my own again and responsible to no man. I actually hummed a bit as I dropped the ship out of warpdrive long enough to slip in a course tape chosen at random from the file. There would be no chance of an intercept this way and I could cut a tape for a new course once I was well clear of the headquarters station.

  A course to where? I wasn’t sure yet. That would require a bit of research, though there was no doubt about what I would be doing. Looking for Angelina. At first thought it seemed a little stupid to be taking on a job the Corps had refused me. It was still their job. On second thought I realized that it had nothing to do with the Corps now. Angy had pulled a fast one on me, pinned on the prize-chump medal. That is something that you just don’t do to Slippery Jim diGriz. Call it ego if you like. But ego is the only thing that keeps a man in my profession operating. Remove that and you have removed everything. I had no real idea of what I would do with her when I found her. Probably turn her over to the police, since people like her gave the business a bad name. Better to worry about cooking the fish after I had caught it.

  A plan was necessary, so I prepared all the plan producing ingredients. For one terrible moment I thought there were no cigars in the ship. Then the service unit groaned and produced a box from some dark corner of the deep freeze. Not the recommended way to store cigars, but much better than having none at all. Nielsen always favored a rare brand of potent akvavit and I had no objections to drinking it. Feet up, throat lubricated and cigar smoking, I put the thinkbox to work on the project.

  To begin with, I had to put myself in Angelina’s place at the time of her escape. I would like to have gone back physically to the scene, but I’m not that thick. There was guaranteed to be a trigger-happy navy ship or two sitting there. However this is the kind of problem they build computers to solve, so I fed in the coordinates of the space action where it all had happened. There was no need for notes on this—those figures were scratched inside my forehead in letters of fire. The computer had a large memory store and a high speed scan. It hummed happily when I asked for the stars nearest to the given position. In under thirteen seconds it flipped through its catalogs, counted on its fingers and rang its little computation-finished bell for me. I copied off the numbers of the first dozen stars, then pressed the cancel when I saw the distance were getting too great to be relevant anymore.

  Now I must think like Angelina. I had t
o be hunted, hurried, a murderess with twelve fresh corpses of my own manufacture piled around me. In every direction rode the enemy. She would have the same list, ground out by the computer on the stolen cruiser. Now—where to? Tension and speed. Get going somewhere. Somewhere away from here. A glance at the list and the answer seemed obvious. The two nearest stars were in the same quadrant of the sky, within fifteen degrees of each other. They were roughly equidistant. What was more important was the fact that star number three was in a different sector of the sky and twice as far away.

  That was the way to go, toward the first two stars. It was the sort of decision that can be made in a hurry and still be sound. Head toward suns and worlds and the lanes where other ships could be found. The cruiser would have to be gotten rid of before any planets were approached—the faster the better since every ship in the galaxy would be looking for it. Then meet another ship—ship X—and capture it. Abandon the cruiser and … do what?

  My tenuous line of logic was ready to snap at this point so I strengthened it with some akvavit and a fresh cigar. With my eyes half closed in reverie I tried to rebuild the flight. Capture the new ship and—head for a planet. As long as she was alone in space Angelina was in constant danger. A planetfall and a change of personality were called for. When I looked up those two target stars in the catalog the planetary choice was obvious. A barbaric sounding place named Freibur.

  There were a half dozen other settled planets around the two suns, but all eliminated themselves easily. Either too lightly settled, so that a stranger would be easily spotted, or organized and integrated so well that it would be impossible to be around long without some notice being taken. Freibur shared none of these difficulties. It had been in the league for less than two hundred years, and would be in a happily chaotic state. A mixture of the old and new, pre-contact culture and post-contact civilization. The perfect place for her to slip into quietly, and lose herself until she could appear with a fresh identity.