The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World (12 page)

17

BLAM! IT WAS like falling into a steam bath—and falling was the right word for it. Hot clouds of vapor rushed past us, and the invisible surface could be ten meters or ten miles below us.

“Switch on your grav-chute,” I shouted. “Mine’s back in the nonexistent nineteenth century.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have shouted because Angelina turned the thing on at full lift and slithered up out of my fond embrace like an oiled eel. I clutched madly and managed to grab one of her feet with both hands—whereupon the boot part of the one-piece space suit promptly came off her foot.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she called down to me.

“I agree with you completely,” I answered incoherently through tight-clamped and grating teeth.

The suit stretched and stretched until the leg was twice its normal length and I bobbed up and on down as though I were on the end of a rubber band. I took a quick look, but there was still only fog visible below. Space suit fabric is tough, but it was never designed to take a strain like this. Something had to be done.

“Cut your lift!” I called out, and Angelina responded instantly.

We were in free fall, and as soon as the tension was relieved, the leg fabric contracted and snapped me back up to Angelina’s waiting arms.

“Yum,” I said.

She looked down and shrieked and hit the grav-chute power again. This time I wasn’t ready and I slipped right down and out of her embrace and was falling toward the solid-looking landscape that had suddenly appeared below.

In the small fraction of a second left to me I did what little I could. Twisting in the air, spreading my arms and legs wide, trying to land square on my back. I had almost succeeded when I hit.

Everything went black, and I was sure I was dead, and darkness overwhelmed my brain as well, and my last thought flashed before me. Not only did I regret anything I had ever done, but there were a few things I wished I had done more often.

I could not have been unconscious more than a few instants. There was foul-tasting mud in my mouth, and I spluttered it out and rubbed even more of it from my eyes and looked around me. I was floating in a half-liquid sea of mud and water from which large bubbles rose and broke with slow plops. They stank. Sickly-looking reeds and water plants grew on all sides.

“Alive!” I shouted. “I am alive.” I had struck flat out on the syrupy surface, dividing the blow over the entire back surface of my body. There were some aches and bruises, but nothing seemed to be broken.

“It looks very nasty down there,” Angelina said, hovering a few feet above my head.

“It’s just as nasty as it looks so, if you don’t mind, I would like to get out of it. Can you sort of drop down so I can grab your ankles, which will permit you to drag me out with a wet sucking sound?”

It was a large wet sucking sound as the decaying quagmire fought to hold onto me, parting only reluctantly with a slobbering sigh. I hung from my love’s ankles as we drifted over an apparently endless swamp which vanished in the fog in all directions.

“There, over to the right,” I called out. “Looks like a channel with running water. I think a wash and brushup are in order.”

“Since I am upwind of you, I couldn’t agree more.”

The current was moving slowly, but still moving as I could tell by a tree trunk that drifted by. In the middle of the sluggish stream was a golden sandbar that seemed made for us. I dropped as Angelina came low, and even before she had settled down herself, I was out of the noisome clothes and scrubbing the muck off in the water. When I bobbed up, spluttering, I saw that she had peeled off the sweltering space suit and was combing out her long hair, which happened to be blond at the present moment. Very lovely and I was thinking the most romantic thoughts when fierce fire pierced my gluteus maximus, and I shot straight up out of the water, yiping like a dog whose tail has been caught in the door. As attractive and feminine as she was, Angelina was still Angelina, and the comb vanished to be replaced by a gun, and almost before I touched the sand, she had fired a single well-aimed shot.

While she was applying a bandage to the double row of toothmarks in my derriere, I looked at the fish, half blown apart but still twitching, that had mistaken me for lunch. Its gaping mouth had more teeth than a dental supply house, and there was a definitely evil look in its rapidly clouding eye. Grabbing it by the tail to evade its still-gnashing jaws, I threw it far out into the water. This started a tremendous flurry of action under the surface, and from the size of some of the things that leaped out and smacked back down I saw that I had been attacked by one of the smaller ones.

“Twenty thousand years has done no good at all to this planet,” I said.

“Finish rinsing off that mud, and I’ll stand guard. Then we’ll have some lunch.” Ever the practical woman.

While I scrubbed, she shot up the pescatorial predators who came after me, including one large fish with fat flanks and rudimentary legs that waddled out of the water in an attempt to have me for lunch. We had it instead; the flanks concealed some fine thick filets that roasted well over a low-set heat projector. Angelina had had the foresight to bring a flask of my favorite wine, which made the meal a memorable one. After which I sighed, eructated, and wiped my lips with satisfaction.

“You have saved my life more than once in the last twenty thousand years,” I said. “So I no longer am brimful of anger for being whisked to this steambath world rather than back to the Corps. But can you at least tell me what happened and what Coypu told you?”

“He tends to mumble a good deal, but I got the gist of it. He has been working on his time tracker or whatever he calls it and followed your jumps through time, as well as someone he referred to as the enemy, the one you call He. The enemy did something with time, created a probability loop that lasted about five years, then terminated. Then He left this collapsing loop—and you didn’t. That’s why Coypu sent me back, to the minutes just before it ended, to bring you out. He gave me the setting for the time-helix that would enable us to follow He to this time. I asked him what we were supposed to do here but he kept muttering, ‘Paradox, paradox,’ and wouldn’t tell me. Do you have any idea of what is supposed to happen?”

“Simple enough. Find He and kill him. That should put paid to the entire operation. I’ve had two tries at him, shooting once and thermite bombs the second, and haven’t succeeded. Maybe this will be lucky three.”

“Perhaps you ought to let me take care of him,” Angelina said sweetly.

“A fine idea. We’ll blast him together. I have had just about enough of this temporal paper chase.”

“How do we find him?”

“Simplicity itself, if you have a time energy detector with you.” She did, Coypu’s foresight, and passed it over. “A simple flick of this switch and the moving needle points to our man.”

The switch flicked but did nothing more than release a little condensed water that ran out into my palm.

“It doesn’t seem to be working,” Angelina said, smiling sweetly.

“Either that or they are not using the time-helix at this particular moment.” I rummaged in my equipment. “I had to leave my space suit and some other things back in 1807, but Slippery Jim is never without his snooper.”

I was proud of the gadget and had designed it myself, and it was one of the few things He hadn’t taken from me. Rugged, it could resist almost anything except being dropped into molten metal. Compact, no bigger than my hand. And it could detect the weakest of flickerings of radiation across a tremendous range of frequencies. I turned it on and ran my fingers over the familiar controls.

“Most interesting,” I said, and tried the radio frequencies.

“If you don’t enlighten me quick, I’ll never save your life again.”

“You have to because you love me with an undying passion. I get two sources, one weak and very distant. The other can’t be too far and is putting out on a number of frequencies, including atomic radiation and energy transmission, as well as a lot of radio. And something of more pressing urgency. Get out the sunburn cream—solar ultraviolet radiation is right up at the top of the scale. You can bet I’ve been well cooked already.”

We creamed and, despite the heat, put on enough clothing to shield us from the invisible radiation that was pouring out of the clouded sky.

“Strange things have happened to the Earth,” I said. “The radiation, this soggy climate, the wildlife in this river. I wonder—”

“I don’t. After completing the mission, you can do your paleogeologic research. Let’s kill He first.”

“Spoken like a pro. I hope you don’t mind if I rig a harness so we can share the benefit of the grav-chute equally this time?”

“Sounds like fun,” she said, loosening the straps.

The airborne Siamese twin arrangement lifted and took us low over the sea of gunk in the direction of all the activity. Mud and swamp continued for a boringly long time, and I was beginning to chafe in the straps and worry about the power supply when the higher land finally appeared. First some rocks sticking up out of the water, then sheer cliffs. It took more juice to lift us up the side of these, and the indicator on the power pack dropped quickly.

“We are going to have to walk soon,” I said, “which is at least better than swimming.”

“Not if the land animals match those in the water.”

Ever optimistic my Angelina. As I was phrasing a witty and scathing reply, there was a flash of light from the rampart of rocks ahead, followed instantly by an intense pain in my leg.

“I’ve been shot!” I shouted, more in surprise than pain, reaching for the grav-chute controls and finding that Angelina had already killed the power.

We dropped toward a wicked jumble of rocks, slowing and stopping only at the last minute. I hopped on one leg to the shelter of an overhanging slab and was thinking of digging out my medikit when Angelina sprayed antiseptic on the wound, tore my pants leg half away, injected instant painkiller in my thigh, and probed the gory opening. She was ahead of me with everything, and I didn’t mind in the slightest.

“A neat penetrating wound,” she announced, spraying on surgifoam. “Should heal quickly, no problems, keep your weight off it; now I have to kill whoever did it.”

All the drugs had slowed me down, and before I could answer, she had her gun in her hand and had faded silently into the rocky landscape. There is nothing like having a loving and tender wife who is a cool and accomplished killer. Maybe I wore the pants in the family—but we both wore guns.

Not too long after this there was the sound of explosions, a great clattering in the rocks above and, soon after that, some hoarse screams that soon ended in silence. It is a tribute to Angelina’s prowess that I never for a second was concerned about her safety. In fact, I dozed off under the assault of the drugs coursing through my bloodstream and woke only when I was aware of tugging on the grav-chute harness. I yawned and blinked at her as she buckled in beside me.

“Am I allowed to ask what happened?” I said. She frowned.

“Just one man up there; I couldn’t find any others. There is a farm building of sorts, some machinery, crops growing. I must be slipping. I knocked him out, then could not bring myself to shoot him while he was lying there unconscious.”

I kissed her as we rose.

“A conscience, my sweet. Some of us are born with them; yours was surgically implanted. The results are the same.”

“I’m not really sure I like it. There was a certain freedom in the old days.”

“We all have to be civilized some time.” She sighed and nodded, then gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

“I suppose that you are right. But it would have been so satisfying to blow him into small pieces.”

We were over the last of the tumbled scree now and ascending a small cliff. There was a plateau here on top of which was a low building made of cemented-together stones. The door was open, and I hobbled through it, leaning on Angelina’s shoulder. Inside, the dim light through the small windows revealed a large and cluttered room with two bunks against the far wall. On one of them a bound man lay twisting and turning, mumbling and growling into the gag that sealed his mouth.

“You get into the other bed,” Angelina said, “while I see if I can get any intelligence out of this awful creature.”

I had actually taken the first steps toward the bunk before reason penetrated my soggy thoughts and I stopped dead.

“Beds. Two of them? There must be someone else around the place.”

Whatever answer was on her lips was never spoken because a man appeared in the doorway behind us, shouting noisily and firing an even noisier weapon.

18

HE WAS SHOUTING mainly because the weapon was blown from his hands even as he triggered it, and an instant later he was blown back out of the doorway. I saw all this as I dived and rolled and had my gun out just as Angelina was putting hers away.

“Now that is more like it,” she said, apparently addressing the silent pair of boots in the doorway. “Civilized conscience or no, I find that shooting in self-defense still comes easily. I saw this one out among the rocks, stalking us as we came in, but I never had a clear shot. Everything should be quieter now. I’ll make some nice warm soup and you take a nice nap. . . .”

“No.” I doubt if a firmer “no” had ever been spoken. I popped out a pair of stimtabs and chewed them as I continued my monologue in the same tone of voice. “There is a certain retrogressive pleasure in being cared for and treated like an idiot child—but I think I have had enough of it. I have tackled He before this and chased him out of two of his lairs and I intend to finish him off now. I know his ways. I’m in charge of this expedition, so you will follow, not lead, and will obey orders.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered with lowered eyelids and bowed head.

Did this cover a mocking smile? I did not care. Me boss.

“Me boss.” It sounded even better said aloud in a firm and declaratory tone.

“Yes, boss,” she said and giggled prettily while the man on the bed writhed and chomped and the boots in the doorway were silent.

We went to work. Our prisoner slavered noisily in an unknown tongue when I took out the gag and tried to bite my fingers when I restored it. There was a rough-looking radio on a shelf that produced only grating broadcasts in the same language when I turned it on. Angelina’s outdoor investigations were far more productive than mine, and she pulled up by the door in an impossibly ugly conveyance that looked like a scratched, purple, plastic bathtub slung between four sets of wheels. It burbled and hissed at me when I hobbled up to examine it.

“Very simple to operate,” Angelina said, showing off her technical skill. “There is only one switch and that turns it on. And two handles, one for the bank of wheels on each side. Forward to speed them up, back to brake them. . . .”

“And neutral in the middle,” I said to demonstrate
my
technical skill, as well as the fact that I was a male chauvinist pig and this was my show. “And this lead-covered lump in the rear must be a nuclear generator. Unshield a chunk of radioactive material, heat up the surrounding liquid, a heat exchanger here, secondary liquid to turn this electric generator, motors in each wheel, ugly and crude but practical. Where do we go in it?”

She pointed. “There seems to be a road or trail of sorts going off through that cultivated field there. And unless memory fails—and I
know
you will be quick to correct me—that seems to be the same direction as the radio signals you detected earlier.”

A mild blow struck for femlib, and I ignored it. Particularly since she was right as the snooper soon confirmed.

“Off we go then,” I said, in command once again.

“Going to kill the prisoner?” she asked hopefully.

“Thank you, no. But I’ll take his clothes since mine have reached the old rag stage. If we break up the radio, he’ll have a hard job telling anyone we’re coming. He’ll chew through his gag and ropes in a couple of hours, so we can leave the burial arrangements of his associate to him. We will load our gear and be on our way.”

The firmness of authority was dimmed slightly by the
krets krets
of my fingernails inside my tattered shirt scratching at the rapid red-blooming growth of my sunburn. While Angelina stomped the radio, I put on more cream. A few minutes later we were bumping along the well-worn tract that twisted across the high plateau.

There was less fog and haze at this altitude, not that there was anything more to see. The rough landscape was quarried with gullies that carried away the water from the frequent rainstorms, also removing what little topsoil still remained. Tough-looking plants clung to the rocks for protection in the sheltered spots. Occasionally we passed a branching off of the wheel marks, but the direction finder on the snooper kept us on the right track. The hard bucket seats were hideously uncomfortable, and I welcomed the gathering darkness of sunset—though of course I didn’t say this aloud—and turned off behind a jumbled hill of great rocks for the night.

In the morning I was stiff but feeling more fit. The growth and healing drugs had whipped my cells into a frenzy of growth that had half healed my various wounds and given me a raging appetite. We dined and drank from the meager supplies that Angelina had brought—eked out by some coarse bread and dried meat liberated from the homicidal farmers. Angelina took the wheel and I rode shotgun, not liking the look of the decomposing landscape at all. The track now wandered down from the hills as the highlands turned into a vertical escarpment of rock. Then there were more swamps and some very nasty-looking jungle into which the road dipped. Creepers hung low enough to brush our heads and the soggy trees touched overhead. The air, which did not seem possible, became even more humid and hotter.

“I don’t like this place,” Angelina said, steering around a boggy spot that slopped across the track.

“I don’t like it even less,” I said, gun in hand and a clip of explosive cartridges in the butt. “If the wildlife here is anything like that in the river, we could have some fun and games in store.”

Ever alert, I looked ahead, behind, right and left and wished my eyeballs grew on stalks. There were numberless suspicious dark shapes among the trees and occasional heavy crashings could be heard, but nothing appeared to threaten us. That I could see. Of course the one spot I wasn’t watching was the surface of the road, and that is where the imminent danger lay.

“That tree has fallen right across the road,” Angelina said. “Just bump over it—”

“I wouldn’t!” I said, just a little bit too late as our wheels trundled over the green trunk that lay across the track and vanished into the jungle on both sides.

Our center wheels were on it when it shuddered and heaved upward in a great loop. The vehicle turned over, and Angelina and I were hurled clear. But not clear enough. I hit the ground and tucked my head in and rolled and came up with the gun ready. A good thing too. The pseudo tree trunk was writhing nicely, while out of the foliage across the track appeared the front end of the thing.

A snake. With a head as big as a barrel, gaping mouth, flicking tongue, beady eyes, hissing like an exploding boiler. While right under those widespread jaws was Angelina, sitting up and shaking her head dizzily and totally unaware of what was happening. There was time for one shot, and I wanted it to be a good one. As that demonic head came down, I held my wrist with my left hand to steady the gun and squeezed off a round right into the thing’s mouth. With a muffled thud its head was blown off in a cloud of smoke.

That should have been the end of it—except for a gigantic spasm that went through the entire length of that muscular body. Before I could get out of the way, a shuddering thrashing loop struck me, bowled me over, and hurled me into the trees. This time there was no fancy roll and dive but a simple crunch splintery bang as I crashed through the branches, and one got me on the side of the head, and with a nice white explosion of pain that was that.

A period of time passed that I was not aware of. It was the ache in my head that drew me reluctantly back to consciousness, plus a new and sharper pain in my leg. I opened one bleary eye and saw something small and brown with a lot of claws and teeth that was tearing an opening in my pants leg in order to make lunch out of my thigh. The first hungry bite was what had woken me, and before it could go on to a second course, I kicked it with my boot. It growled and screeched at this and showed me all its teeth but reluctantly slipped away into the foliage when I attempted another weak kick in its direction.

Weak was the word for everything I felt. It took me some time to do more than lie there and gasp and try to remember what had happened. The road, the snake, the wreck. . . .

“Angelina!” I shouted hoarsely and struggled to my feet, ignoring the waves of pain that washed through me. “Angelina!”

There was no answer. I pushed through the shrubbery to witness a singularly nasty sight. A churning row of brown animals, relatives of the one who had nibbled me, were working on the carcass of the snake and had already reduced great sections of it to neatly polished rib cage. And my gun was gone. I turned back and searched where I had fallen, but it was not there. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the shrill voice of panic was beginning to keen in the back of my head.

As long as I stayed clear of them, the carrion eaters ignored me, so I made a wide circle across the road. The car was gone as well. And so was Angelina.

This required cogent thought which was impossible with the aches and pains that were crippling me. And I had to do something about the insects that were buzzing about the wound in my head. My medikit was still in its pocket and that was next in the order of business. In a few minutes I was soothed, depained, stimulated, and ready for action. But where was the action? Wherever the car was, my clicking thoughts responded. Its tracks were clear enough in the muddy ground—which also revealed the mystery of Angelina’s disappearance. There were at least two sets of large, ugly masculine footprints around the churned area where the vehicle had been righted. As well as another set of car tracks. Either we had been followed or a chance bunch of tourists had arrived on the scene after the snake incident. Spatters of mud and bent grass showed that both cars had carried on in the original direction we had been going. I went that way myself, in a ground-eating trot, trying not to think about what might have happened to Angelina.

This trotting didn’t last long. The heat and fatigue slowed me to a shambling walk. A stimtab took care of one, and I just sweated out the other. The tracks were clear, and I followed. In less than an hour the road had wound its way up out of the jungle and into the dry hills. Coming around a turn, I had a quick glimpse of one of the cars pulled up ahead and I drew quickly back.

A plan was needed. My gun had vanished, so shooting down the kidnappers was slightly out of the question. The few remaining devices in my clothing were nonlethal, though I did have a wrist holder full of grenades that Angelina had given me. This was the answer. A handful of sleepgas bombs to drop the kidnappers before they could shoot me. And maybe a couple of explosive grenades in the other hand just in case any of the enemy were not near Angelina and needed more dramatic means of disposal.

Thus armed and ready, I crept forward from rock to rock, took a deep breath, and jumped into the clearing where both vehicles waited.

And caught the wooden club in the side of my head, wielded by the guard who had been waiting quietly for someone to pull this kind of stunt.