“See anything, Bukai?”
“No.”
“Anyone on the roof?”
“No. Shall I come back inside?”
Well done, diGriz. The enemy outwitted again, you clever devil.
“No. Walk along the roof and look.”
They were machines, not men. Any intelligent man would not have ventured out on that icy roof. He would have known better.
Any intelligent man would not have found me. These machine-minded morons just followed instructions until they succeeded.
The slitherings and gruntings grew closer and closer—and my rope twitched as someone pulled at it. I looked up into the expressionless features of the searcher as he leaned over the end of the roof.
Fifteen
This was it. My eyes were adjusted to the starlight so that I saw his head jerk when he spotted me. Saw him sit up and turn his head about and open his mouth to shout.
“Ahiru.”
Then he slipped. And for the first time I saw expression on the face of a gray man. Horror. He grabbed for the nail holding the rope. And missed. His fingers slapped hard on the roof. Then he slid away. Faster and faster. I could hear the sound of his sliding, but he made no other sound. Nothing. Then he was gone and I covered my ears because I did not want to listen to what happened below.
What next? The chill seeped into my bones as I hung there in the night and waited. There were muffled voices inside the building. I couldn’t make out the words, then someone else joined the other man in the open trapdoor.
“Did Bukai say anything?”
“He spoke my name.”
“As he slipped and fell?”
“Yes.”
“That is not good.”
“It is not. He is better dead. A man who shows emotion like that.” Then the trapdoor closed.
What nice people. Bukai sure had friends. I suppose I felt sorrier for him than they did. Moral Philosophy! Before my fingers froze completely I pulled myself back up the rope and took a careful look. Trapdoor closed, roof empty. Back onto the peak and a slow and careful slither back. This was no time to slip and join the much-mourned Bukai.
After that I waited a long and frigid ten minutes, counting the seconds, until I was sure the room below would be empty. Or hoped it would be. The chill of the cold metal was biting through my insulated suit before I let myself pull at the door. My teeth chattering so hard I was sure they could hear them on the ground below. The room below was dark; they were gone.
There is a limit to the amount of stress a body can take and mine must have felt that it had had more than enough for the night. So when I rested on the floor for a bit while I thought about what to do next I instantly fell soundly asleep. So soundly that when I woke up, an unmeasurable amount of time later, I had no idea how long I had been sleeping. A minute or a day; there was no way to tell. What if everyone was awake? I would be trapped in here until nightfall. But how long were the days? I muttered curses at myself for falling asleep as I picked the lock as silently as I could. Opening the door with slow patience. The hall was empty. And the window across from the door was still black with night.
“Lucked out again, diGriz. Or maybe your subconscious timer is doing a better job than your conscious mind. Back to work.”
The sleep had refreshed me and I tiptoed through the building, senses, alert. All the doors were closed and I assumed that students and staff were sleeping off the strenuous affairs of the day. There was a light on in the headmaster’s office so I put my eye to the crack as I opened it. He was sitting in the chair, awake, waiting for me. I slid through and closed it behind me.
“It is you,” he said, and I saw that he had a glass of water raised to his lips. He set it down carefully on the desk.
“If that’s water I’ll have some,” I said, reaching for it. “It has been a thirsty night.”
“It is poison,” he said tonelessly as I picked it up. I put it right back down.
“Suicide?”
“Yes. If I had to. I had no idea who would walk through the door first.”
“Then they’re all gone?”
“Yes. They found nothing. One of them fell off the roof and was killed. Are you responsible for that?”
“Only indirectly. But I saw him fall.”
“They assume now that you have frozen to death in the snow. In the morning they will search for your body. It will not be a very stringent search because there is also some thought that you may have gone into the ocean.”
“I almost did. But now that this evening’s exhausting adventures are over I think we ought to go back to the topic under discussion when all the fun began.”
“Getting a message to the League.”
“That’s it. In the quieter moments tonight I have been giving it some thought. I have an idea that might just work. Are you tired?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good. Then I want to work in the electronics lab tonight. Can I do that—undisturbed?”
“It can be arranged. What do you want to do?”
“Dial up the library and get a diagram for a warpdrive detector. I assume you have enough parts and supplies here for me to build one?”
“We have the unit itself in our supplies. It is part of the training.”
“Even better. Let’s get to the lab and get started and I will show you what I want to do.”
With Hanasu doing the fetching and me doing the assembly my device soon took shape. When it was completed I stood it on the bench and stepped back to admire it. A metal tube a meter long, streamlined on the top, open at the bottom, with two metal vanes running the length of it.
“A work of art,” I said.
“What is its function?” Manasu asked, a realist to the end.
“It gets attached to one of your spacers—and that will be our next problem. If I place it carefully it will never be noticed because it is a duplicate of the standard flare ejector that all ships carry. Only this one doesn’t have flares—it has these.” I held out one of the carefully constructed cylinders of plastic. “Inside the plastic is a power source and a solid state radio transmitter. I have made ten of these radios, which should be enough. Here is what happens. Every time the ship reenters normal space its warpdrive will cut off. When this happens the receiver in the nose detects the fact—and it launches one of the radios. There is a built-in time lag of a half an hour. More: than enough time for the spacer to get on its way again. Then the radio switches on and begins broadcasting a strong signal on the League emergency wavelength. The signal contains my code identification and the location of this planet. And a call for help. Once the message gets through we simply sit back and wait for the space cavalry to arrive.”
“Very ingenious. But what if there is no receiver nearby when the ship emerges from warpdrive?”
“I thought you might ask that. We’re playing the law of averages. Most pilots use major navigation points most of the time. And most of these stars have a League station nearby. And most voyages make at least three downspace checks. One of the radio messages will have to be received.”
“Hopefully. But it is better than nothing. Suicide is still possible.”
“That’s right. Always always look on the sunny side.”
“How will you affix it to the spacer?”
“With an atomic welder.” I held up my hand as he started to speak. “I know, no more funnies. That was a joke, chuckle-chuckle. I must find a way to get near one of the spacers unseen. It won’t take more than a few minutes to do the job. Is the spacefield guarded?”
“There is a chainlink fence around it as you must know. And some guards at the gate. That is all I remember.”
“Should be easy to get by that setup. Then I’ll need your help with two things. I want to know when the next ship is leaving. And I’ll need transportation to the spaceport.”
“The information will be easy to supply. The earlier bulletin announced that the Takai Cha is going at 0645 hours today…”
Hanasu blinked farsightedly at his watch and finally made out the numbers. “O-three-one-one,” he said.
“Can you get transportation? Get me there in time?”
He had to think about this for awhile before reluctantly nodding. “Normally, no. I have no reason to take the car out. But tonight I could report that I am volunteering for the search. They will probably say yes.”
“We can only try.”
The ploy worked. Within ten minutes we were bouncing over the iron-hard snow in an electrically powered, ski-mounted, propeller driven bone-breaker of an unsprung vehicle. No luxuries here. The heater was nonexistent, as were cushions on the seats. These people carried the hairshirt business entirely too far. My newly built radio-ejector was fitted with a strap so I could sling it over my shoulder. All the tools I might need were in a bag beside it. I looked out at the snowflakes whipping through the beams of the headlight and tried to plan ahead.
“How close can you get me to the fence?” I asked.
“As close as you like. There are no roads or marked tracks as you can see. The radio direction finder is followed from point to point.”
“That’s good news. Here is the plan. You drop me off at the fence and keep going. But mark the spot. Come back in exactly one hour. If you see any excitement or hear any alarm on the radio stay away.”
“That is good. There will be enough time then for me to get back to the school and take the poison.”
“Have it instead of breakfast, right. But don’t do anything until you are sure they have me. There may be trouble, but they will not have an easy time grabbing hold of me.”
“You have skied before?”
“I’m a champion.”
It was a piece of cake. Twice we saw the lights of other cars, but they kept their distance. There was a good deal of rushing about this night. Then we were among dark buildings, bouncing over the ruts and doing suicide slides around corners. Hanasu was a real cold-nerved hotrod driver. The fence appeared and we paralleled it. The lights of a gate were visible ahead, then suddenly blotted out by a swirl of snow.
“I bail out here,” I shouted. “Look at your watch and keep moving.”
I threw my gear out into the snow and dived after it. The car was moving even before I landed, the blast from the propeller enveloping me in a sudden blizzard. It was dark, cold, miserable—and perfect cover. I took a detector from the toolbag and cautiously approached the fence.
There was absolutely nothing to it. I could have neutralized the simple alarm and cut my way through that fence with one eye closed, standing on one leg with my right hand behind my back. In fact, since I have always felt that a little bit of the old personal braggadocio does no harm, I closed my eye, stood on one leg, grabbed the back of my neck with my hand—and did the job that way. Only when the links had been cut did I use both hands, holding the opening wide with one and pushing my oddments through with the other. Then it was the work of a moment to close the links with the molecular welder, put on the skis and slide off into the darkness. Behind me my tracks were already filling in. The first part of the job was done.
There was no problem in finding the spacer. In the darkness of the spaceport the ship was lit up brighter than day. I slithered towards it, staying close to the darkened buildings until I was behind the last one and looking out across the pad.
What a lovely sight. Lights burned brightly on towers, hissing when the snow blew against them. Men and vehicles scurried about servicing the tall spire of the ship. And there, prominent on the tailfin, was the name, Takai Cha. This was the ship; it would be leaving soon just as planned.
Only how was I ever going to get close enough to fix my gadget into place?
Sixteen
That was a problem that obviously had but one solution. I was not going to get near the ship dressed as I was. But I could go there and work on the hull unremarked if I looked like one of the servicemen. So—I had to put the grab on one of the service men.
It was easy enough to find a dark corner behind some bins to stow my gear. But the kidnapping proved a good deal harder. I prowled around the fringes of the lit area like a wolf around a campfire, but with little result. No one left, no one arrived. The laborers labored on with Kekkonshikian plod, slowly and carefully with no display of emotion. I was displaying enough for all of them. Hanasu’s watch tripped through the seconds and minutes—and then the hour. I had missed my appointment. What was worse I had not done the job I had come for. In less than an hour more the spacer would be taking off and there was still no way of getting near it.
My patience was gone, I was frothing slightly, and thinking up and rejecting one suicidal plan after another, when one of the servicemen decided to leave. He climbed down from the service gantry and walked slowly through the accumulated snow toward one of the buildings. I had to zip around the back, slither on my belly past some lit windows, then dash to the front again. It worked because I was just in time to see him enter a door marked “BENJO” in large letters. I whisked in right behind him and saw what a benjo was.
Being a respecter of certain rights I restrained myself and let him finish his communion with the gods of the watercloset before I decked him. This also made sure that his fingers were busy with zips and buttons. He never knew what hit him. I knew, it was the edge of my hand. After that it was off with his coveralls, zip-zip with the wire on ankles and wrists, another bit around his head to hold the gag into place, then back into the john. I wired him to the plumbing and locked him into the cubicle. I could have left him out in the snow to freeze to death, but this went very much against my own moral philosophy that I had been preaching to Hanasu. I also happened to believe in it. All would go well as long as he wasn’t discovered until after the spacer took off. Which would not be long now.
His coveralls were a tight fit but I doubted if anyone would notice the difference. His safety helmet covered my head and, with the collar turned up, very little of me was visible. Now for the final step.
I felt very conspicuous marching out under the lights with the tube under one arm, the tool bag slung casually in the other. And I had to walk slow, slog along when I wanted to run. This was hard to do, but my only safety lay in looking normal. Slow and steady. No one looked up, no one seemed to care about anything except his own work. I still sighed deeply when I reached the cab of the mobile gantry and threw in my things. The controls were simple enough. Slowly and carefully I drove around the base of the ship, out of sight of any of the servicemen for the moment. But there might be men watching who I could not see in the darkness so I still moved at the sluggish pace of the others. Onto the gantry with my equipment, then slowly up beside the fin to the top, the standard location of the flare ejector.
Of course there wasn’t one there. This made little difference since I was now taking the place of one of the only people who might spot my addition. It had to go on and on it went. The molecular welder hummed happily and the metal of the holddown fins was joined irrevocably to the metal of the hull. It would not be visible from the ground in the still driving snow.
“Do the job, baby,” I said, patting it affectionately. Then back down and a quick vanishing act.
This time I didn’t risk the walk but drove the gantry away instead, parking it in the shadow of the nearest building. Ten minutes to go. A car rolled out with the crew who stamped stolidly aboard. The other cranes and platforms were pulling away as well and it was getting very close to takeoff time.
“Why is that gantry here?” a voice behind me asked.
“Remstma?” I said in a muffled voice, not turning my head. Footsteps approached.
“I can’t hear you. Repeat.”
“Can you hear this?” I said as he got close, whipping about and getting both hands around his neck. His eyes popped, then closed as I banged his skull against the metal frame of the door. With the fate of worlds hanging in the balance I was not gentle. While I was tying him up the spacer took of
f. It was perhaps the nicest sound I had ever heard.
“You’ve done it, Jim, done it again,” I congratulated myself since there was no one around to do it for me. “Countless generations yet unborn will bless your name. Countless Kekkonshikians will curse it daily, which is just too bad. The evil era of the gray men is drawing to a close.”
There was a dark doorway nearby into which I dragged the latest unconscious body. As I dropped him, not too gently, inside the archway I saw that there was a very large and complex lock on the door. Why? The sign next to it revealed the reason– and at the same moment gave me the idea about what I had to do next.
Armory—authorized personnel only. Locked and forbidding—and what a perfect place to hide out. But only after a little misdirection. Easily enough done. I found my skis, put them on, then slid close to the lighted pad and waited for someone to see me.
These were the dullest and most unobservant people I had ever met. I slithered back and forth for five minutes without being spotted. It was really getting very boring and I was tried as well. In the end I swooped within ten meters of two of them and actually had run into some metal drums before they noticed me. When they looked up, I put my arm over my face, hunched over, shivered, stumbled, then shot away into the darkness. All that was missing was a white arrow pointing at my back. They didn’t react, of course, but I at least hoped they would remember me and the direction I had gone. Which was straight back to the fence. This time I made a big enough hole to drive a tank through, and left it open as well. Picking up speed I slid off into the darkness, heading for the wide open spaces, leaving a clear trail. Using my light at the same time to see if I could find a way to confuse it. The opportunity came soon enough. A car was grinding along, almost paralleling my own course, so I slanted over to join it. The thing was much faster than I was and was well past when I slid into its tracks. But I didn’t go too far this way, just far enough to show our tracks merging and cutting back and forth across each other’s.
When this had been well established I planted my poles and did a reverse turn that would have had my instructors glowing with pride. Up, over and down into the track of the other car ski. Landing cleanly in its track. Then sliding off in the opposite direction, no poles to leave marks, just kicking along well past the point where our tracks had merged.
The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You ssr-4 Page 12