The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You ssr-4

by Harry Harrison

  I wasn’t as fast because this was just what I wanted him to do. I gave him more than enough time to get out the message before I grabbed away the microphone. Then he kicked out and got me in the stomach and I folded, gasping and unmoving as he vanished through a trapdoor in the floor.

  Recovering quickly I waved away all offers of aid.

  “Care not for me,” I croaked, “for the blow was mortal. Avenge me! Send out the alarm to grab all the other black ploppies like the secretary. Let none escape! Go now!”

  They went, and I had to roll aside before I was trampled in the rush. Then I thrashed and expired, in case anyone was watching, and peeked through one half-closed eyelid until they were all gone.

  Only then did I blow open the locked trapdoor and follow the gray man.

  How could I follow him? it might be asked, and I will be happy to answer. During the struggle I had stuck a little neutrino generator into his artificial hide, that is how. A zippy neutrino can pass, undeflected and unstopped, through the entire mass of a planet. The metal of this city’s construction would surely not interfere with them in the slightest. Need I add that I had a directional neutrino detector built into my snout? I never go on a mission without a few simple preparations.

  The illuminated needle pointed that way, and down. I went that way, and down at the first stairwell, because I wanted to find out just what the gray men were doing on this planet. My fleeing secretary would lead me to their lair.

  He did one better than that. He led me to their ship.

  When I saw light ahead I treaded more slowly, then peered from the darkness of the tunnel at a great domed chamber. In the center was a dark gray spacer. While from all sides the gray men were appearing. Some running, undisguised, others still hopping and splotching in their alien garb. Rats leaving a sinking ship. All my doing. The confusion across the planet would now be at its height—and the admirals would be rescued. All working according to plan.

  Though I hadn’t thought to find their ship. From the look of it they were making a hasty withdrawal, and this was too good an opportunity to miss. How could they be traced? There were machines that could be attached to make following the ship easy but, just for a change, I didn’t have one on me. An oversight. Particularly since the smallest weighed about ninety kilos. So what could I do?

  My mind was made up for me when the metal net dropped and they swarmed all over me.

  I was fighting, and doing well, when someone started on my head with a metal bar. I couldn’t move it away and the alien head got crushed in.

  Mine, too, an instant later.

  Ten

  I woke up, gasping for air, muffled, trapped, blind. With the super headache of all time. Where I was, what had happened—I had no idea. I thrashed and writhed ineffectually until it made my head hurt more and I had to stop.

  Little by little I dropped the mad-panic approach and tried to figure out what the situation was. First off, I wasn’t really choking to death, it was just the soft fabric over my head that had made me feel that way. If I lifted my face and turned it I could breathe all right.

  So what had happened? Through the waves of skull pain, memory finally returned. The gray men! They had trapped me in a net, then beat on my head until I had stopped moving. After that, blackout. What after that? Where did they have me?

  It was only when I had tiptoed this far down memory lane that I realized where I was. I had been bashed and caught in my alien disguise. Apparently I was still bashed and caught in it. My arms were secured inside the mechanical arms, but by careful wriggling—and ignoring the effect this had on my head—I managed to get my right arm free and back inside the suit. With this I pulled the folds of plastic from in front of my face and realized that my head had slipped down inside the neck of the disguise. By wriggling and pushing even more I got my head further up near the optic unit and looked out at a metal floor. Very revealing. I tried moving my other arm and my legs but they twitched, nothing more. It was all very confusing and I was thirsty and sore and the aching head was still there.

  Some bit of keen foresight had caused me to install a small spare tank next to the main water one. I found the nozzle for the water, drank all I needed, then threw the switch with my tongue that changed the liquid supply over to life-sustaining 110 proof whiskey. This woke me up quickly enough and, if it did nothing for the hammers in my head, it at least enabled me to ignore them a bit more easily. If I couldn’t move very much, at least I should be able to manipulate the eye controls. With some difficulty I got the one out on the stalk functioning and turned it around in a circle.

  Interesting indeed. I very quickly saw that the reason I could not move was because heavy chains secured me solidly to the steel floor. They had been welded into place so there was little chance of escape. The room I was in was small and featureless, except for the rust on the metal and the fact that the ceiling was curved, concave. This reminded me of something and another suck at the whiskey unearthed the fact.

  Spaceship. I was inside a spaceship. The spaceship I had seen just before the lights went out. The gray men’s ship and, undoubtedly, no longer grounded but in space and on the way somewhere. I had a good idea just where but I did not want to think about that depressing thought just yet. There was an unsolved question that had to be answered first. Why had they secured me inside my disguise?

  “Because, dummy, they didn’t know it was a disguise!” I shouted. And instantly regretted it since my head echoed like a drum.

  But it had to be true. The alien outfit was a good one designed to bear the closest inspection. They had jumped me and knocked me out. At no time had they any clue that I was other than what I pretended to be—just one more alien ugly. And they must have been in a big hurry; the crude welds that held the chain showed that. They had to leave the war planet before a couple of million slimy monsters dropped on them and ate them. Pack me aboard, weld me into place, blast off for an unknown destination, then take care of me later.

  “Whoopee!” I shouted in the tiniest whisper. Then went to work to get out of the disguise.

  It was a hard wriggle but I made it, crawling out through the open neck like a newborn moth from a chrysalis. I stretched and cracked my joints and felt much better. Better still when I had abstracted my needle gun from the disguise. Now, standing on the metal deck, I could feel the slight vibration of the drive. We were in space and going somewhere. Free of my chains, with a sturdy gun in my hand, I could face the fact I had ignored earlier. The odds were at least ten to one that we were going home. To the planet of the gray men.

  That was not a very nice prospect—but the odds were also good that I could do something about it. Now, well before we landed and before someone came to see how I was doing. They would be tired, bashed about after their escape, possibly off guard. What I had to do must be done soonest. Which was fine by me. I switched the needle gun from “explosive” to “poison”– then on to “sleep.” While I was sure that the gray men deserved killing a thousand times over I just could not do it in cold blood.

  No executioner I. Knocking them out would do just as well for now. If I captured the ship I could chain them all and lock them up. If I didn’t win, the number of enemies remaining would make little difference.

  “Onward, Slippery Jim diGriz, savior of mankind,” I said to cheer myself up. Then was instantly depressed again when I tried the handle on the small door and found it securely locked. “Thermite, of course, how could I be so forgetful,” I chided, and went back to the alien outfit. The dispenser still worked and a grenade plopped out and dropped to the deck. Then it was simply a matter of activating the sticky molecules on the end, pressing it to the lock—and setting it off. It burned nicely, filling the small room with a ruddy glow and plenty of dense smoke. Which would have started me coughing if I had not grabbed my adam’s apple and squeezed. Gasping, gurgling and turning purple I kicked the still glowing door with my boot and it swung open. I dived right after it, through and rolled and fell flat and p
oked the gun about in all directions. Nothing. An empty corridor, dimly lit. I permitted myself a single strangled cough which made me feel much better. Then I used the gun barrel to push the door shut again. Only a small warping of the lock on the outside revealed anything wrong. And a closed door might give me the extra moments I needed.

  Which way? There were numbers stenciled on the doors and, if this were like a normal spacer, they would get lower in the direction of the bow and the control compartment. I went that way, toward the safety door in the bulkhead which opened as a man stepped through. A gray man. He looked up at me, eyes wide and mouth wider as he started to call out. My needle got him in the throat and he folded nicely. I crouched, ready, but the corridor beyond was empty. So far so good.

  Pulling him through and closing the door again took but a moment. Now where should I stow the body? While puzzling over this one I quietly opened the nearest door and peeked into an even more dimly lit sleeping cabin. And that’s just what they were doing, a good dozen of the gray men, snoring away like troopers. They slept even more soundly after I had shot them. I dragged the original sleeping beauty in from the corridor and dumped him on a pile of discarded black alien disguises.

  “Rest nice,” I told them as I shut the door. “You have had a long day, which is going to be even longer before I get you all back for trial.”

  I could not have been unconscious very long. The discarded disguises and snoring men indicated that we had not been spaceborne for more than a few hours. There would be a crew manning the ship and the rest would be pounding the pillow. Should I try and find them all and put them into a sounder sleep? No, too dangerous, since there was no way of knowing how many there were aboard. And I could be surprised at any time and the alarm sounded. Far better to take the control room as soon as I could. Seal it off from the rest of the ship, then head for the nearest League station and call for help. If I could let them know where I was I could always immobilize the ship and hold out until the cavalry arrived. Great idea. Put it to work.

  Gun ready, I tramped the corridors to the control end of the ship. There was a door labeled “communications,” and I opened it and said good night to the man at the companel. He slumped and slept. Then the last door was before me. I took a deep breath. My flanks and rear were secured. The end of the job was in front of me. I let the breath out slowly, then opened the door.

  The last thing I wanted was a shoot-out since the odds certainly were not in my favor. I stepped in and closed the door and locked it behind me before I counted the stations. Four of them—and all four occupied. Two necks were visible and I needled them and their owners relaxed. I stepped forward silently. The man in the flight engineer’s position looked around and caught a needle for his trouble. One remaining. The commander. I didn’t want to needle him since I wanted some conversation. Slipping the gun into my belt I stepped forward on tiptoe and reached for his neck.

  He turned at the last moment—warned by something—but he was a little too late. I got the grip and my thumbs dug deep. His eyeballs bulged quite charmingly as he thrashed and kicked about for some seconds before going limp.

  “Score sixteen to one for the good guys!” I cackled with pleasure, then did a little war dance around the room. “But finish the job, you daring devil, before celebrating too much.”

  I was right, and I usually gave myself good advice. A drawer in the engineer’s desk yielded up a strong roll of wire which I used to secure the commander’s wrists and ankles, then added some more turns to tie his wrists to a pipe far from any controls. The other three men I laid out in a neat row beside him, before I tapped some questions into the computer.

  It was a nice computer that worked hard to be cooperative. First it gave me our course and destination, which I memorized, and wrote down inside my wrist in case I forgot. If this destination was what I thought it was, then it had to be the home planet of these nasties. The Special Corps would be eager to know just where it was. They had a lot coming to them and I looked forward to helping deliver it. Then I asked for League bases, found the nearest, punched for a course, set it in and relaxed.

  “Two hours, Jim, two short hours. Then the warpdrive cuts out and we will be within radio distance of the base. One brief radio message and that is the end of the gray men. Whoopee and chortle, chortle!”

  Something itched my neck, someone looking at me, and I turned and saw that the commander was awake and glowering in my direction.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked. “Or should I repeat it?”

  “I heard you,” he said, in a drab, dull voice. Empty of emotion.

  “That’s good. My name is Jim diGriz.” He remained silent. “Come, come, your name. Or do I have to look at your dogtags?”

  “I am Kome. Your name is known to us. You have interfered with us before. We will kill you.”

  “How nice to know that my reputation goes before me. But don’t you think your threat has an empty ring?”

  “In what manner did you discover our presence?” Kome asked, ignoring my question.

  “If you really want to know, you gave yourselves away. You people may be nasty but you have little imagination. The wrist-chopping-off routine works well—I should know!—so you keep on using it. I saw the marks on one of the admiral’s wrists.”

  “You did this alone?”

  Who was questioning whom? But I might as well be polite considering our positions. “If you must know I am all alone now. But in a few hours the League will be onto you. There were four of us back there with the goppies. All of whom I am sure have escaped now, along with the admirals you treated so badly. They will report what has happened so you will have a nice reception committee waiting when you arrive. You and your people have not been very nice.”

  “You are telling the truth?”

  I lost my temper at this and treated him to some words he had never heard before. I hope.

  “Kome, my friend, you are making me lose my temper. I have no reason to lie to you since I hold all the cards. Now if you will shut up and stop asking me questions I will ask you some of my own because there are things I would dearly like to know. Ready?”

  “I think not.”

  I looked up startled, because he had raised his voice for the first time. Not in a shout, there was no anger or feelings in the words. He just spoke loudly, commandingly.

  “This farce is at an end. We have found out what we need to know. You may all come in now.” It was very much like a nightmare come alive. The door opened and gray men began to shuffle in slowly. I shot them but they kept coming. And the three officers I had placed on the floor stood up and came toward me as well. I emptied the gun, threw it at them and tried to run.

  They grabbed me.

  Eleven

  Good as I am at dirty fighting, hand-to-hand combat and general closeup nastiness, there is a limit. The limit being an apparently inexhaustible supply of the enemy. To make matters worse they really weren’t very good fighters. About all they did was grapple. It was enough. I knocked back the first two, slugged the next few, chopped a couple more—and they kept on coming. And, frankly, I was beginning to get tired. In the end they simply swarmed over me and overwhelmed me and that was that. Shackles were clicked into place around my wrists and ankles and I was tossed onto the control room floor. The sound led the battered away and the officers went back to their positions at the controls. Changing my course back to the original one, I noted with dark depression. When he had done this, Kome turned his chair about to face me.

  “You tricked me,” I said. Not a bright remark but something that might get the conversation rolling.

  “Of course.”

  Laconic was the name of the game with the gray men. Never use a word when none would do. I pressed on, mainly out of a feeling of slight hysteria since I knew I was trapped and trapped well.

  “You wouldn’t mind telling me why? If you can spare the time, that is.”

  “I thought it would be obvious. We could of course use our norma
l mind control techniques on you, and this is what we originally planned to do. But we needed answers to some important questions at once. We have worked among the aliens for years and they have suspected nothing. We needed to know how you had discovered our presence. We of course have psychocontrol techniques for all races. It was when we were preparing brain attachments that we discovered your real identity. Metal skulls do not exist in nature. Your disguise was revealed. Your face resembled very much that of someone we have been searching for for many years. That was when I determined to use this ruse. If you were the man we were looking for we knew that your ego would not permit you to think that you had been tricked.”

  “Your mother never met your father,” I sneered. A feeble response but the best I could do at the moment. Because I knew that he was right. I had been fooled right down the line.

  “I knew that if you thought you had the upper hand you would answer questions that might take days to get out of you by other means. And we needed some instant answers. So we arranged the scene you played so well. Your hand weapon was charged with sterile needles. Everyone acted his role well. You best of all.”

  “I bet you think you’re smart,” was all I could come up with since, at that moment, I was feeling very defeated.

  “I know I am. I have been organizing our field operations for many years—and they have only failed twice. You were to blame each time. Now that you have been captured your interference is at an end.” He signaled to two of his men, who picked me up. “Lock him away until we land. I do not wish to speak with him any longer.”

  Low? Up until that moment I had never known what low was. Depressed, dispirited, out-thought, out-fought, it was enough to bring out the suicidal in anyone. Except me, of course. Where there is life there is hope. Eureka! I was even more depressed after this minor surge of rebellion because I knew this time there was just no hope at all.