The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection

by Harry Harrison

  Nothing happened, and the helmet was raised again, and one of the attackers gave me another shot in the face from a canister, and I felt the overwhelming anger draining away as fast as it had arrived. I blinked a bit at this and saw that they were freeing my arms and legs. I also saw that most of them had their masks off now and were recognizable as the Corps technicians and scientists who usually puttered about this lab.

  ‘Someone wouldn’t like to tell me just what the hell is going on, would they?’

  ‘Let me fix this first,’ one of them said, a gray-haired man with buckteeth like old yellowed gravestones caught between his lips. He hung one of the black boxes from my shoulder and pulled a length of wire from it that had a metal button on the end. He touched the button to the back of my neck where it stuck.

  ‘You’re Professor Coypu, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am.’ The teeth moved up and down like piano keys.

  ‘Would you think me rude if I asked for an explanation?’

  ‘Not at all. Only natural under the circumstances. Terribly sorry we had to rough you up. Only way. Get you off-balance, keep you angry. The angry mind exists only for itself and can survive by itself. If we had tried to reason, to tell you the problem, we would have defeated our own purpose. So we attacked. Gave you the anger gas as well as breathed it ourselves. Only thing to do. Oh blast, there goes Magistero. It’s getting stronger even in here.’

  One of the white-coated men shimmered and grew transparent, then vanished.

  ‘Inskipp went that way,’ I said.

  ‘He would. First to go, you know.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, smiling warmly, thinking that this was the most idiotic conversation I had ever had.

  ‘They are after the Corps. Pick off the top people first.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  I heard my teeth grating together but managed to keep my temper. ‘Would you kindly explain in greater detail or find someone who can make more sense of this affair than you have been doing.’

  ‘Sorry. My fault entirely.’ He dabbed at a beading of sweat on his forehead, and a whisk of red tongue dampened the dry ends of his teeth. ‘It all came about so fast, you know. Emergency measures, everything. Time war, I imagine one might call it. Someone, somewhere, somewhen, is tampering with time. Naturally they had to pick the Special Corps as their first target, no matter what other ambitions they might have. Since the Corps is the most effective, most widespread supranational and supraplanetal law enforcement organization in the history of the galaxy, we automatically become the main obstacle in their path. Sooner or later in any ambitious time-changing plan they run up against the Corps. They have therefore elected to do it soonest. If they can eliminate Inskipp and the other top people, the probability of the Corps’ existence will be lowered and we’ll all snuff out, as poor Magistero did just then.’

  I blinked rapidly. ‘Do you think we could have a drink that might act as a bit of lubricant to my thoughts?’

  ‘Splendid idea, join you myself.’

  The dispenser produced a sickly sort of green liquid that he favored, but I dialed for a large Syrian Panther Sweat, most of which I drained with the first swallow. This frightening beverage – whose hideous after-effects forbade its sale on most civilized worlds – did me nothing but good at this moment. I finished the glass, and a sudden memory popped up out of the tangled jumble of my subconscious.

  ‘Stop me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I hear you lecture once about the impossibility of time travel?’

  ‘Of course. My specialty. Smoke screen, that talk, I think you might call it. We’ve had time travel for years here. Afraid to use it, though. Alter time tracks and all that sort of trouble. Just the kind of thing that is happening now. But we have had a continuing project of research and time investigation. Which is why we knew what was happening when it began to happen. The alarms were going off, and we had no time to warn anyone – not that warnings would do any good. We were aware of our duty. Plus the fact that we were the only ones who could do anything at all. We jury-rigged a time-fixator around this laboratory, then made the smaller portable models such as the one you are wearing now.’

  ‘What does it do?’ I asked, touching with great respect the metal disk on the nape of my neck.

  ‘Has a recording of your memory that it keeps feeding back to your brain every three milliseconds. Telling you you are you, you see, rebuilding any personality changes that time line alterations in the past may have shifted. Purely a defensive mechanism, but it is all we have.’ Out of the corner of my eye I saw another man wink out of sight, and the professor’s voice grew grim. ‘We must attack if we are to save the Corps.’

  ‘Attack? How?’

  ‘Send someone back in time to uncover the forces waging this time war and destroy them before they destroy us. We have a machine.’

  ‘I volunteer. Sounds like my kind of job.’

  ‘There is no way to return. It is a one-way mission.’

  ‘I withdraw the last statement. I like it here.’ Sudden memory – restored no doubt three milliseconds earlier – grabbed me and a prod of fear pumped a number of interesting chemical substances into my blood.

  ‘Angelina, my Angelina! I must speak to her ….’

  ‘She is not the only one!’

  ‘The only one for me, Prof. Now stand aside or I’ll go through you.’

  He stepped back, frowning and mumbling and tapping his teeth with his fingernails, and I jabbed the code into the phone. The screen beeped twice, and the few seconds crawled by like lead snails before she answered the call.

  ‘You’re there!’ I gasped.

  ‘Where did you expect me to be?’ A frown crossed her perfect features, and she sniffed as though to get the aroma of booze from the screen. ‘You’ve been drinking, and so early too.’

  ‘Just a drop, but that’s not why I called. How are you? You look good, great, not transparent at all.’

  ‘A drop? Sounds more like a whole bottle.’ Her voice chilled, and there was more than a trace left of the old, un-reformed Angelina, the most ruthless and deadly crook in the galaxy before the Corps medics straightened out the knots in her brain. ‘I suggest you hang up. Get a drive-right pill, then call me back as soon as you are sober.’ She reached out for the disconnect button.

  ‘Don’t! I am cold sober and wish I weren’t. This is an emergency, red A top priority. Get over here now as absolutely fast as you can and bring the twins.’

  ‘Of course.’ She was on her feet instantly, ready to go. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The location of this lab, quick!’ I said, turning to Professor Coypu.

  ‘Level one-hundred and twelve. Room thirty.’

  ‘Did you get that,’ I said, turning back to the screen.

  Which was blank.

  ‘Angelina ….’

  I jabbed the disconnect, tapped her code on the keys. The screen lit up. With the message ‘This is an unconnected number.’ Then I ran for the door. Someone clutched at my shoulder, but I brushed him aside, grabbed the door and flung it open.

  There was nothing outside. A formless, colorless nothing that did strange things to my brain when I looked at it. Then the door was pulled from my hand and slammed shut, and Coypu stood with his back to it, breathing heavily, his features twisted by the same unnameable sensations I had felt.

  ‘Gone,’ he said hoarsely. ‘The corridor, the entire station, all the buildings, everything. Gone. Just this laboratory left, locked here by the time-fixator. The Special Corps no longer exists; no one in the galaxy has even a memory of us. When the time-fixator goes we go as well.’

  ‘Angelina, where is she, where are they all?’

  ‘They were never born, never existed.’

  ‘But I can remember her, all of them.’

  ‘That is what we count upon. As long as there is one person alive with memories of us, of the Corps, we stand a microscopic chance of eventual survival. Someone must stop the time attack. If
not for the Corps, for the sake of civilization. History is now being rewritten. But not forever if we can counterattack.’

  A one-way trip backward to a lifetime on an alien world, in an alien time. Whoever went would be the loneliest man alive, living thousands of years before his people, his friends, would even be born.

  ‘Get ready,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’

  TWO

  ‘First we must find out where you are going. And when.’

  Professor Coypu staggered across the laboratory, and I followed, in almost as bad shape. He was mumbling over the accordion sheets of the computer print-out that were chuntering and pouring out of the machine and piling up on the floor.

  ‘Must be accurate, very accurate,’ he said. ‘We have been running a time probe backward. Following the traces of these disturbances. We have found the particular planet. Now we must zero in on the time. If you arrive too late, they may have already finished their job. Too early and you might die of old age before the fiends are even born.’

  ‘Sounds charming. What is the planet?’

  ‘Strange name. Or rather names. It is called Dirt or Earth or something like that. Supposed to be the legendary home of all mankind.’

  ‘Another one? I never heard of it.’

  ‘No reason you should. Blown up in an atomic war ages ago. Here it is. You have to be pushed backward thirty-two thousand five hundred and ninety-eight years. We can’t guarantee anything better than a plus or minus three months at that distance.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll notice. What year will that be?’

  ‘Well before our present calendar began. It is, I believe, A.D. 1975 by the primitive records of the aborigines of the time.’

  ‘Not so aboriginal if they’re fiddling with time travel.’

  ‘Probably not them at all. Chances are the people you are looking for are just operating in that period.’

  ‘How do I find them?’

  ‘With this.’ One of the assistants handed me a small black box with dials and buttons on it, as well as a transparent bulge that contained a free-floating needle. The needle quivered like a hunting dog and continued to point in the same direction no matter how I turned the box.

  ‘A detector of temporal energy generators,’ Coypu said. ‘A less sensitive and portable version of our larger machines. Right now it is pointing at our time-helix. When you return to this planet Dirt, you will use it to seek out the people you want. This other dial is for field strength and will give you an approximation of the distance to the energy source.’

  I looked at the box and felt the first bubbling and seething of an idea. ‘If I can carry this, I can take other equipment with me, right?’

  ‘Correct. Small items that can be secured close to your body. The time field generates a surface charge that is not unlike static electricity.’

  ‘Then I’ll take whatever weapons or armament you have here in the lab.’

  ‘There is not very much, just the smaller items.’

  ‘Then I’ll make my own. Are there any weapons technicians working here?’

  He looked around and thought. ‘Old Jarl there was in the weapons sections. But there is no time to fabricate anything.’

  ‘That’s not what I had in mind. Get him.’

  Old Jarl had taken his rejuvenation treatments recently so he looked like a world-soiled nineteen-year-old – with an ancient and suspicious look in his eye as he came closer.

  ‘I want that box,’ I said, pointing to the memory unit on his back. He whinnied like a prodded pony and skittered away, clutching at the thing.

  ‘Mine, I tell you mine! You can’t have it. Not fair to even ask. Without it I’ll just fade away.’ Tears of senile self-pity rose to his youthful eyes.

  ‘Control yourself, Jarl! I don’t want to fade you out; I just want a duplicate of the box. Get cracking on it.’

  He shambled away, mumbling to himself, and the technicians closed in.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Coypu said.

  ‘Simple. If I am gunning after a large organization, I may need some heavy weapon. If I do, I’ll plug old Jarl into my brain and use his memories to build them.’

  ‘But – he will be you, take over your body, it has never been done.’

  ‘It’s being done now. Desperate times demand desperate measures. Which brings us to another important point. You said this would be a one-way trip through time and that I couldn’t return.’

  ‘Yes. The time-helix hurls you into the past. There will be no helix there to return you.’

  ‘But if one could be built there, I could return?’

  ‘Theoretically. But it has never been tried. Much of the equipment and materials would not be available among the primitive natives.’

  ‘But if the materials were available, a time-helix could be built. Now who do you know that could build it?’

  ‘Only myself. The helix is of my own construction and design.’

  ‘Great, I’ll want your memory box, too. Be sure you boys paint your names on the outside so I don’t hook up with the wrong specialist.’

  The technicians grabbed for the professor.

  ‘The time-fixator is losing power!’ one of the engineers shouted in a voice filled with rising hysteria. ‘When the field goes down, we die. We will never have existed. It can’t be ….’ He screamed this, then fell over as one of his mates gave him a face full of knockout gas.

  ‘Hurry!’ Coypu shouted. ‘Take diGriz to the time-helix, prepare him!’

  They grabbed me and rushed me into the next room, shouting instructions at one another. They almost dropped me when two of the technicians vanished at the same moment. Most of the voices had hysterical overtones – as well they might with the world coming to an end. Some of the more distant walls were already becoming misty and vague. Only training and experience kept me from panicking too. I finally had to push them away from the emergency space suit they were trying to jam me into in order to close the fastenings myself. Professor Coypu was the only other cool one in the whole crowd.

  ‘Seat the helmet, but leave the faceplate open until the last minute. That’s fine. Here are the memories, I suggest the leg pocket would be the safest place. The grav-chute on your back. I assume you know how to operate it. These weapon canisters across your chest. The temporal detector here ….’

  There was more like this until I could hardly stand. I didn’t complain. If I didn’t take it, I wouldn’t have it. Hang on more.

  ‘A language unit!’ I shouted. ‘How can I speak to the natives if I don’t know their language?’

  ‘We don’t have one here,’ Coypu said, tucking a rack of gas containers under my arm. ‘But here is a memorygram—’

  ‘They give me headaches.’

  ‘—that you can use to learn the local tongue. In this pocket.’

  ‘What do I do, you haven’t explained that yet? How do I arrive?’

  ‘Very high. In the stratosphere, that is. Less chance of colliding with anything material. We’ll get you there. After that – you’re on your own.’

  ‘The front lab is gone!’ someone shouted, and popped out of existence at almost the same instant.

  ‘To the time-helix!’ Coypu called out hoarsely, and they dragged me through the door.

  Slower and slower as the scientists and technicians vanished from sight like pricked balloons. Until there were only four of them left and, heavily burdened, I staggered along at a decrepit waddle.

  ‘The time-helix,’ Coypu said, breathlessly. ‘It is a bar, a column of pure force that has been warped into a helix and put under tension.’

  It was green and glittered and almost filled the room, a coiled form of sparkling light as thick as my arm. It reminded me of something.

  ‘It’s like a big spring that you have wound up.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. We prefer to call it a time-helix. It has been wound up … put under tension, the force carefully calculated. You will be placed at the outer end and the restraining latch released.
As you are flung into the past, the helix will hurl itself into the future where the energies will gradually dissipate. You must go.’

  There were just three of us left.

  ‘Remember me,’ the short dark technician called out. ‘Remember Charli Nate! As long as you remember me, I’ll never …’

  Coypu and I were alone, the walls going, the air darkening.

  ‘The end! Touch it!’ he called out. Was his voice weaker?

  I stumbled, half fell toward the glowing end of the helix, my fingers outstretched. There was no sensation, but when I touched it, I was instantly surrounded by the same green glow, could barely see through it. The professor was at a console, working the controls, reaching for a rather large switch.

  Pulling it down ….

  THREE

  Everything stopped.

  Professor Coypu stood frozen at the controls with his hand locked on the closed switch. I had been looking in his direction, or I would not have seen this because my eyes were fixed rigidly ahead. My body as well – and my brain gave a flutter of panic and tried to bounce around in its bony pan as I realized that I had stopped breathing. For all I knew, my heart wasn’t beating either. Something had gone wrong, I was sure of that, since the time-helix was still tightly coiled. More soundless panic as Coypu grew transparent and the walls behind him took on a definitely hazy quality. It was all going, fading before my eyes. Would I be next? There was no way to know.

  A primitive part of my mind, the ape-man’s heir, gibbered and wailed and rushed about in little circles. Yet at the same time I felt a cold detachment and interest; it isn’t everyone who is privileged to watch the dissolving of his world while hanging from a helical force field that may possibly whip him back into the remote past. It was a privilege I would be happy to pass on to any volunteers. None presented themselves, so I hung there, pop-eyed and stiff as a statue while the laboratory faded away around me and I was floating in interstellar space. Apparently even the asteroid on which the Special Corps base had been built no longer had any reality in this new universe.