The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World (14 page)

21

WE DRIFTED UP the black face of the rock like a slow elevator, sitting ducks for anyone with a good gun and a keen eye. It was uncomfortable to say the least. I had to lift off gradually so our harness wouldn’t buckle, but I speeded up as fast as I could until we were on maximum lift. A visible aura of heat began to radiate from the grav-chute as it struggled against all our dead weight. It would be highly uncomfortable if it failed now.

Then deep-cut windows flashed by, happily unoccupied, and the black stone changed to dark wall and the crenellated top of the parapet was ahead. I angled toward it and cut the power completely just before we reached the edge. Our acceleration carried us up and over in a high arc, and after that, things happened at an incredibly rapid pace.

There were two guards on the wall, both surprised, angry, armed, about to fire. But Angelina and I fired first. We were using the needle guns now in order to remain undetected as long as possible. The guards crumpled in silence, their faces and necks suddenly bristly as pincushions, and I hit the power on for the landing.

Landing! There was no courtyard or solid roof below! We were coming down on a domed and transparent cover over a large workship, a canopy made of what appeared to be glass panels held in a tangled web of rusty metal braces. We looked at it, horrified, as we rushed toward it, and I had the power on to the last stop. We groaned at the sudden acceleration, and the harness groaned as well and creaked and bent. The dome was too close, and we were just not going to stop in time.

It was lovely. A silent, secret attack, flitting gray ghosts in the dawn. Six pairs of boots hit at the same instant, and about five thousand square meters of glass were kicked out. The supporting framework twanged and bent, and some of the rusty supports snapped free. For one shuddering instant I thought we were going to follow all the glass that was now crashing and clashing into the chamber below with a hideously loud cacophony. Then the grav-chute gave its all with one shuddering last blaze of energy, halting our forward motion, then burst into flame as well.

“Grab the supports!” I shouted, tearing at the buckles that held the grav-chute to our harness. It resisted, searing my hand, then finally dropped free. Straight down into the hall with its screaming occupants below, where it promptly exploded. I sighed and dropped some smoke and flare bombs as well to add to the confusion.

“Our presence is now known,” I said, inching back toward safety. “I suggest we get off this precarious jungle gym and back on the job.”

Moving carefully, sending more glass crashing down as our weight bent the frame out of place and the panes slipped free, we crept back to the safety of the parapet.

“Get on the radio,” I told Diyan as he climbed up next to me. “Tell your troops to pull back their attack if they haven’t broken in but to keep up the firing.”

“They have been repulsed on all sides.”

“Then tell them to cut their losses. We’ll do the blitz from the inside.”

We moved out. Angelina and I on the point where we could blast any resistance that appeared, while the others protected our flanks and rear. Forward at a sweaty trot. We had to move fast, sow discord as we went—and find He. The first door opened onto a great circular staircase that seemed to spiral down to infinity. I didn’t like the looks of it, so I rolled some concussion grenades down it, and we pressed on across the roof.

“Where to?” Angelina asked.

“That tangle of turrets and buildings up ahead seems to be larger and more functional than most of this place. As good a guess as any.” Something exploded on the tiles nearby, and Angelina picked the sniper out of a window above with a single snap shot from the waist. We ran a bit faster, then pressed against the wall above a straight drop to the valley below while I blew out a locked door. Then we were in.

The place had been designed by a madman. I know that is literally true, but you didn’t have to know He to get the message. Corridors and stairs, twisted chambers, angled walls, even one spot where we had to crawl on our hands and knees under the low ceiling. This was where we had our first casualty. Five of us were clear of this room before the ceiling silently and swiftly descended and crushed the rear guard before he could even make a sound. We all were sweating harder. The enemy we met were not armed for the most part and either fled or were dropped by our needle guns. It was speed and silence now, and we moved as fast as we could between the bizarrely decorated walls, finding it easy to avoid looking at the incredible paintings that seemed to cover every square meter of available space.

“Just one moment,” Angelina panted, pulling me to a stop as we came through a high archway to a staircase that spiraled out of sight below, each stone step being a different height from the others. “Do you know where we are going?”

“Not exactly,” I panted in return. “Just penetrating the establishment to get ahead of the fighting, while spreading a bit of confusion.”

“I thought we had bigger ambitions. Like finding He.”

“Any suggestions how we might go about that?” I am forced to admit that I snapped a bit as I said that. Angelina responded with saccharine sweetness.

“Why, yes. You might try turning on the time energy detector you have slung around your neck. I believe that is the reason we brought it.”

“Just what I was going to do anyway,” I said, lying to conceal the fact that I had forgotten completely about it in the white heat of the rampaging attack.

The needle swung about and pointed with exact precision to the floor beneath our feet.

“Down and down we go,” I ordered. “Where the time-helix coils there will be found the He whom I am about to make into mincemeat.” I meant it too since this was the third and last try. I had constructed a special bomb on which I had painted his name. It was a hellish mixture of a curdler—guaranteed to coagulate all protein within five meters—an explosive charge, a load of poisoned shrapnel, and a thermite bomb theoretically to cook the curdled, coagulated, poisoned body of He.

After this the fighting picked up. Some sort of flamethrower below sent a wave of roiling smoke and fire up the stairs toward us that we could not pass. Singed and smoking, we went out through a hole I blasted in the wall and dropped into a laboratory of sorts. Row after row of bubbling retorts stretched away in all directions, hooked to a maze of crystal plumbing. Dark liquids dripped, and valves hissed foul-smelling steam. The workers here weren’t armed, and they dropped before us. We were trotting slower now and gasping for breath.

“Uggh!” Angelina said, making a twisted face. “Have you seen just what is in those jars?”

“No, and I don’t want to. Press on.” Anything that could bother the ice-cool Angelina was something I had no desire to see at all. I was glad when we left this area behind and found another stairwell.

We were getting close. Resistance kept firming up, and we had to battle most of the way now. Only the fact that the defenders were haphazardly armed allowed us to get through at all. Apparently most of the weapons were at use on the walls because these people came at us with knives, axes, lengths of metal, anything and everything. Including their bare hands if that was all they had. Screaming and frothing, they rushed to the attack and slowed us just by the weight of their numbers. We had our next casualty when a man with a metal spike dropped from some cranny above and stabbed one of the Martians before I could shoot him. They died together, and all we could do was leave them and push on. I took a quick look at my watch and broke into a tired trot again. We were running out of time.

“Wait!” Diyan called out hoarsely. “The needle, it no longer points.”

I waved everyone to a stop in a wide passage we were traversing, and they dropped, covering the flanks. I looked at the time energy detector that Diyan had been carrying.

“Which way was it pointing when you looked at it last?”

“Straight ahead, down the corridor. And there was no angle to the needle at all, as though this machine it points to were on this level.”

“It only works when the time-helix is operating. It must be off now.”

“Could He have gone?” Angelina asked, speaking aloud the words I was trying to keep out of my thoughts.

“Probably not,” I said with mock sincerity. “In any case we have to push on as long as we can. One last effort now, dead ahead.”

We pushed. And had another casualty when we attempted to cross a layer of writhing branches that were covered with thorns. Tipped with poison. I finally had to burn the stuff with our last thermite grenade. Ammunition and grenades were running very short. There was a brisk fire fight at the next corridor junction that emptied my needle gun. I tossed it aside and kicked the heavy door that barred any more progress in this direction. It would have to be blown open, and my grenades were exhausted. I turned to Angelina just as a communication plate next to the door lit up.

“You have lost, the final time,” He said, grinning wickedly at me from the screen.

“I’m always willing to talk,” I said, then spoke to Angelina in a language I was sure He did not speak. “Any concussion grenades left?”

“I am talking, you will listen,” He said.

“One,” Angelina told me.

“I’m all ears,” I said to him. “Take that door out,” I said to her.

“I have dispatched all the people I need to a safe place in the past where we will never be found. I have sent the machines we will need, I have sent everything that will be needed to build a time-helix as well. I am the last to go, and when I leave, the time machinery will be destroyed behind me.”

The grenade exploded, but the door was thick and remained stuck in the frame. Angelina sprayed it with explosive bullets. He talked on as though this weren’t happening.

“I know who you are, little man from the future, and I know where you come from. Therefore I shall destroy you before you have a chance to be born. I will destroy you, my only enemy; then the past and the future and all eternity will be mine, mine,
mine!
”

He was screaming and slavering before he finished, and the door went down, and I was the first one through.

My bullets were exploding in the delicate machinery of the time-helix as my He-bomb arced through the air.

But he had already actuated the time-helix. Its green glow was gone; He was gone, the machinery left behind no longer needed. My hell-bomb exploded in empty air and was more of a danger to us than to the vanished one it had been intended for. We dropped to the floor as death whizzed overhead, and when we looked next, the machinery was dissolving and smoking.

He spoke again, and the muzzle of my gun looked for him.

“I made this recording in case I had to leave abruptly, so sorry.” He chuckled insanely at his own bad humor. “I have gone now; you cannot follow me, but I can follow you through time. And destroy you. But you have other enemies with you, and I wish them to feel my vengeance, too. They will die, you will all die, everything will die; I control worlds, eternity, destroy worlds. I will destroy this Earth. I leave you only enough time to consider and suffer. You cannot escape.

“In one hour every nuclear weapon on this planet will be triggered.

“Earth will be destroyed.”

22

THERE WAS VERY little satisfaction to be gained from blowing up the recording machine that had He’s hateful voice coiled in its guts, but I did it anyway, one shot. The thing exploded in a cloud of plastic bits and electronic components, and the insane laughter was cut off in mid-cackle. Angelina patted my hand.

“You did your best,” she said.

“But just not good enough. I’m sorry I got you involved in this.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way. What happens to us happens together.”

“This sounds like something very terrible will be done to your people,” Diyan said. “I am very sorry.”

“Nothing to feel sorry about. We’re all in the same boat.”

“In one sense, yes. One hour from now. But Mars is saved, and we who die here know that we accomplished at least that much. Our families and our people will live on.”

“I wish I could say the same,” I said with utmost gloom, borrowing his gun and picking off two of the enemy who tried to rush in through the broken door. “When we lost here, we lost for all time. I’m surprised we are still around at all, should have snuffed out like candles.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Angelina asked. I shrugged.

“Nothing I can think of. You can’t outrun H-bombs. The time-helix equipment is kind of melted, so that is out. What we need is a new time-helix, which we are not going to get unless one appears out of thin air.”

In echo to my words there was the sudden crack of displaced air above, and I rolled and ducked, thinking it was a new attack. It wasn’t. It was a large green metal case that hung, unsupported in midair. Angelina looked at me in the strangest manner possible.

“If that is a time-helix you must tell me how you did it.”

For once in my outspoken life I was silent, even more so when the box began to drift down before us, and just before it grounded, I read the lettering on the side.

“Time-helix—open with care.”

I didn’t move. It all seemed too unbelievable. The two grav-chutes strapped to the top of the case, the timing device that had caused them to lower the whole thing to the floor, the small recording apparatus also fixed to the case with the boldly lettered words “Play me” lettered across it. I boggled and gaped and it was ever-practical Angelina who stepped forward and pressed the starting button. Professor Coypu’s rotund voice rolled out to us.

“I suggest you get moving rather quickly. The bombs, you know, go off quite soon. I have been asked to tell you, Jim, that the bomb control apparatus is concealed in a cabinet on the far wall behind the dehydrated rations. It has been disguised to look like a portable radio because it really is a portable radio. With additions. If mishandled, it will set all the bombs off now. Which would be uncomfortable. You are to set the three dials to the numbers six six six, which, I believe, is the number of the beast. Set them in sequence from right to left. When they have been set, press the
off
button. Now turn me off until you have done that. Be quick about it.”

“All right, all right,” I said, irritated, and switched him off. He had quite a commanding tone for an individual who wouldn’t be born for another 10,000 years or so. And how come he knew so much? I complained, but I went and did the job, hurling the dehydrated rations to the floor, where they obviously belonged. They looked like lengths of yellowish-green desiccated octopus tentacles. Suckers and all. The radio was there. I did not attempt to move it but set the dials as instructed and pressed the button. Nothing happened.

“Nothing happened,” I said.

“Which is just the way we want it,” Angelina said, standing on tiptoe to give me an appreciative kiss on the cheek. “You have saved the world.”

Feeling very proud of myself, I swaggered back to the recorder before the admiring gazes of the Martians and switched it on again.

“Don’t think you have saved the world,” Coypu said. Party pooper. “You have just averted its destruction for approximately twenty-eight days. Once activated, the bombs wait that period, then self-destruct. But your Martian associates can profit from this delay. I believe they have supply ships on the way?”

“Due in fifteen days,” Diyan said, hushed awe in his voice at the disembodied oracular powers before him.

“Fifteen days, more than enough time. The Earth will be destroyed, but when its present condition is considered, this is more of a blessing than a tragedy. It is time to open this case now. On top of the controls is a molecular disrupter. If this is pointed at the outside wall, where the small windows are high up, and angled downward at fifteen degrees, it will cut a tunnel that will exit outside the walls. I suggest this be done as soon as possible. The Martians can get out that way. Now press button A, and the time-helix will form. James, Angelina, strap on the grav-chutes and leave as soon as the ready light comes on.”

Still partially unbelieving I did as instructed. The time-helix crackled into existence and groaned and sparked as it wound itself up. Diyan stepped forward, his hand out to take mine.

“We will never forget you or what you have done for our world. Generations yet unborn will read your name and about your exploits in their schoolbooks.”

“Are you sure you have the spelling right?” I asked.

“You make light of this because you are a great and humble man.” First time I have ever been accused of
that
. “A statue will be erected with ‘James diGriz, World Saver’ inscribed upon it.”

Each Martian shook my hand in turn; it was very embarrassing. There was an admiring gleam in Angelina’s eye as well, but women are simple creatures and enjoy basking even in reflected attention. Then the ready light came on, and after a few more good-byes, we put on the grav-chutes as directed and—for the last time I sincerely hoped—were bathed in the cool fire of the time force. Our contact must have triggered the apparatus because before I could make the very apropos remark that was on my lips everything went
zoinng
.

No worse than any other time trip, certainly no better. This was one kind of transportation I would never get adjusted to. Stars like speeding bullets, spiral galaxies whirling around like fireworks, movement that was no movement, time that was no time, all the usual things. The only thing that was good about the trip was its ending, which was in the gymnasium of the Special Corps base, the largest open chamber there. We floated in midair, my Angelina and I, smiling madly at each other and oblivious to the cries of amazement from the sweating athletes below. We held hands in the simple happiness of knowledge that the future still lay ahead of us.

“Welcome home,” she said, and that was really all there was to say.

We floated down, waving to our friends and ignoring their questions for the moment. Coypu and the time lab first, to report. There was a quick feeling of unhappiness that He had escaped me and the hope that this time, when he was tracked through time, a few very large bombs could be sent in the place of me or any other volunteer.

Coypu looked up and gaped. “What are you doing here?” he said. “You are supposed to be eliminating this He person. Didn’t you get my message?”

“Message?” I asked, blinking rapidly.

“Yes. We made ten thousand metal cubes and sent them back to Earth. Sure you would get one of them. Radio direction and such.”

“Oh,
that
old message. Received and acted upon, but you are a little out of date. What is that doing here?” I’m afraid my voice rose a bit on this last as I pointed with vibrating finger at the compact machine across the room.

“That? Our Mark One compact folding time-helix? What else should it be doing? We have just finished it.”

“You’ve never used it?”

“Never.”

“Well, you are now. You have to strap a couple of grav-chutes to it—here, use these—a recorder and a molecular disrupter and shoot it right back to save Angelina and me.”

“I have a pocket recorder, but why. . . .” He took a familiar looking machine from his lab coat.

“Do it first, explanations later. Angelina and I are about to be blown up if you don’t do this right.”

I grabbed some paint and wrote “Play me” on the recorder, then “Time-helix—open with care” on the machine. The exact moment when He had left Earth was determined by the time tracer and the arrival for this cargo set for a few minutes later on the big helix. Coypu dictated the tape under my instruction, and it wasn’t until the whole bundle was whisked back into the past that I heaved a grateful sigh of relief.

“We are saved,” I said. “Now for that drink you promised me.”

“I didn’t promise. . . .”

“I’ll have it anyway.”

Coypu was muttering to himself and scratching on a pad while I prepared some hefty drinks for Angelina and myself. We clunked glasses and were baptizing our throats when he came over, smiling genially.

“I needed that,” I said. “It must be
ages
since I last had a drink.”

“It is all coming clear at last,” Coypu said, tapping his protruding teeth with contained excitement.

“Is it all right if we sit while we listen? It’s been a busy couple of hundred thousand years.”

“Yes, by all means. Let me retrace the course of events. A time attack was launched upon the Corps by He, a most successful one. Our numbers were quite reduced. . . .”

“Yes, like down to two. You and me.”

“Quite right. Though as soon as I had dispatched you to the year 1975, I found that all things were as they had been. Most sudden. All alone one instant, the next the laboratory full of people who never knew they had been gone. We put a lot of work in on improving the time-tracking techniques, took almost four years to get it the way we wanted.”

“Did you say
four
years?”

“Nearer five before we got it operational. The trails were distant and hard to follow, most tangled as well.”

“Angelina!” I cried with sudden realization. “You never told me you had been here alone for five years.”

“I didn’t think you liked older women.”

“I love them as long as they are you. You were lonely?”

“Hideously. Which is why I volunteered to go after you. Inskipp had another volunteer, but he broke his leg.”

“My darling—I’ll bet I know how that happened!” She is not the blushing type, but she did lower her eyes at the thought.

“We are getting ahead in sequence,” Coypu said. “But that is what happened. We traced you from 1975 to 1807—and traced He and his minions as well. There was a loop in time there, an anomaly of some kind that eventually sealed itself off. We could tell that it was about to collapse with you sealed inside of it and succeeded at last in forcing enough power into the helix to penetrate the sealed time loop just before it went down. That is when Angelina went back with the coordinates for your next skip in time, the long twenty-thousand-year jump after He. You had to go after him because the time paths were there to prove that you had followed him. Though of course history was clear by that point, and we knew how it would all end.”

“You
knew
?” I asked, feeling I had missed the point somewhere.

“Of course. The entire nature of the attack was clear, though you all of course had to fulfill your destined roles.”

“Could you spell it out again? And slower.”

“Of course. You managed to destroy He’s operation twice in the remote past and eventually reset his machine and sent him forward to the twilight days of Earth. Here he spent an immense amount of time, almost two hundred years, climbing his way to power and uniting all of the planet’s resources. He was a genius, albeit a mad one, and could do this. He also remembered you, Jim, fading memories and half-insane ones after two hundred years, but he remembered enough to know you were the enemy. Therefore he launched a time war to destroy you before you could destroy him, trapping you as he thought on a planet about to be destroyed by atomic explosion. From there he returned to 1975 to attack the Corps. You came after him and he fled to 1807 to lay the time loop trap for you. I don’t know where he planned to go from there, but his plans appear to have been altered, and he went instead twenty thousand years ahead.”

“I did that, altered the setting on his machine just before he left.”

“That is all there is to it. We can relax now that it is over, and I do believe I’ll join you in that drink.”

“
Relax!
” The words emerged from my throat with a singularly nasty, grating sound. “From what you have said it sounds like
I
started the whole attack on the Special Corps by altering the setting on the time-helix that sent He to the world where he launched his campaign to destroy the Corps.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Is there any other? The way I see it He just bounces in a circle in time forever. Running from me, chasing me, running from me. . . . Arrrgh! When was he born? Where does he come from?”

“Those terms are meaningless in this sort of temporal relationship. He exists only within this time loop. If you wish to say it, though it is most imprecise, it would be fair to state that he was never born. The situation exists apart from time as we normally know it. Such as the fact that you returned here with the information to be sent to yourself about the settings on the atomic bombs. Where did this information come from originally? From yourself. So you sent it to yourself in order to send it to yourself to inform yourself about the settings on the bombs in order. . . .”

“Enough!” I groaned, reaching for the bottle with trembling hand. “Just mark the mission as being accomplished and put me in for a fat bonus.”

I refilled all the glasses and only when I came to Angelina’s did I realize she was no longer present. She had slipped away without a word while I was suffering over having instigated the whole time war, and I was just beginning to miss her and wonder where she had gone when she returned.

“They are fine,” she said.

“Who, who?” I said in my best owl imitation. But when I saw the narrowing of Angelina’s eyes, I knew I had made a big mistake and I racked my time-trodden brain until understanding burst upon me. “Who indeed! Ho-ho-ho! You must excuse the small joke. Who is fine, you say. Why, our twin, cherubic, gurgling babies are fine. With true maternal instinct you have rushed to their side.”