Harry Harrison - SSR 03 - The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The

VIP免费

2024-12-19 0 0 218.93KB 75 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World

Chapter 1

"You are a crook, James Bolivar diGriz," Inskipp said, making animal

noises deep in his throat while shaking the sheaf of papers viciously in my

direction. I leaned back against the sideboard in his office, a picture of

shocked sincerity.

"I am innocent," I sobbed. "A victim of a campaign of cold, calculating

lies." I had his humidor behind my back and by touch alone--I really am good

at this sort of thing--I felt for the lock.

"Embezzlement, swindling and worse--the reports are still coming in. You

have been cheating your own organization, our Special Corps, your own buddies-

"Never!" I cried, lockpick busy in my fingers.

"They don't call you Slippery Jim for nothing!"

"A mistake, a childish nickname. As a baby my mother found me slippery

when she soaped me in the bath." The humidor sprang open, and my nose twitched

at the aroma of fragrant leaf.

"Do you know how much you have stolen?" His face was bright red now, and

his eyes were beginning to bulge in a highly unattractive manner.

"Me? Steal? I would rather die first!" I declaimed movingly as I slipped

out a handful of the incredibly expensive cigars destined for visiting VIP's.

I could put them to a far more important use by smoking them myself. I am

forced to admit that my attention was more on the purloined tobacco than on

Inskipp's tedious complaints so I did not at first notice the change in his

voice. Then I suddenly realized that I could barely hear his words--not that I

really wanted to in any case. It wasn't that he was whispering; it was more as

though there were a volume control in his throat that had suddenly been turned

down.

"Speak up, Inskipp," I told him firmly. "Or are you suddenly beset with

guilt over these false accusations?"

I stepped away from the sideboard, half-turning as I moved in order to

mask the fact that I was slipping about 100 credits' worth of exotic tobacco

into my pocket. He rattled on weakly, ignoring me, shaking the papers

soundlessly now.

"Aren't you feeling well?"

I asked this with a certain amount of real concern because he was

beginning to sound rather distant. He did not turn his head to look at me when

I moved but instead kept staring at the place where I had been, nattering away

in an inaudible voice. And he was looking pale. I blinked and looked again.

Not pale, transparent.

The back of his chair was very definitely becoming visible through his

head.

"Stop it!" I shouted, but he did not appear to hear. "What games are you

playing? Is this some sort of three-D projection to fool me? Why bother?

Slippery Jim's not the kind who can be footed, ha ha!"

Walking quickly across the room, I put out my hand and poked my index

finger into his forehead. It went in--there was slight resistance--and be did

not seem to mind in the least. But when I withdrew it, there was a slight

popping sound and he vanished completely while the sheaf of papers, now

unsupported, fell to the desktop.

" Whargh!" I grunted, or something equally incomprehensible. I bent to

look for bidden devices under the chair when, with a very nasty crunching

sound, the office door was broken down.

Now this was something I could understand. I whirled about, still in the

crouch, and was ready for the first man when he came through the door. The

hard edge of my hand got him in the throat, right under the gas mask, and he

gurgled and dropped. But there were plenty more behind him, all with masks and

while coals, wearing little black packs an their backs, either barefisted or

carrying improvised clubs. It was all very unusual. Weight of numbers forced

me back, but I caught one of them under the chin with my toe while a hard jab

to the solar plexus polished off another. Then I had my shoulders to the wall,

and they began to swarm over me. I smashed one of them across the back of the

neck, and he fell. And vanished halfway to the floor.

This was very interesting. The number of people in the room began to

change rapidly now as some of the men I hit snuffed out of sight. This was a

good thing that helped even the odds except for the fact that others kept

appearing out of thin air at about the same rate. I struggled to get to the

door, could not make it, then the club got me in the side of the head and

scrambled my brains nicely.

After that it was like trying to fight slow motion under water. I hit a

few more of them, but my heart wasn't really in it. They had my arms and legs

and began to drag me from the room. I writhed about a certain amount and

cursed them fluently in a half dozen languages, but all of this had just about

the results you would expect. They rushed me from the room and down the

corridor and into the waiting elevator. One of them held up a canister, and I

tried to turn my head away, but the blast of gas caught me full in the face.

It did nothing for me that I could feel, though I did get angrier. Kicking

and snapping my teeth and shouting insults. The masked men mumbled back in

what might have been irritated mumbles, which only goaded me to greater fury.

By the time we reached our destination I was ready to kill, which I normally

do not find easy to do, and certainly would have if I hadn't been strayed into

a gadgety electric chair and had electrodes fastened to my wrists and ankles.

"Tell them that Jim diGriz died like a man, you dogs!" I shouted, not

without a certain amount of slavering and foaming. A metal helmet was lowered

over my head, and just before it covered my face I managed to call out, "Up

the Special Corps! And up your--"

Darkness descended, and I was aware that death or electrocution or brain

destruction or worse was imminent.

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 heading 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 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 aftereffects 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, unreformed 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 unnamable 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."

Chapter 2

"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

printout that were chuntering and pouring out of the machine and piling up on

the flow.

"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 bunting 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 faceful 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. K

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 sec through it. The professor

was at a console, working the controls, reaching for a rather large switch.

Pulling it down . . .

Chapter 3

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 apeman'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, popeyed 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.

Something moved. I was tugged in a way that is impossible to describe and

moved in a direction I never knew existed before. The time-helix was beginning

to uncoil. Or perhaps it had been uncoiling all the while and the alteration

in time had concealed my awareness of it. Certainly some of the stars appeared

to be moving, faster and faster until they made little blurred lines. It was

not a reassuring sight, and I tried to close my eyes, but the paralysis still

clutched me. A star whipped by, close enough so that I could see its disk, and

burned an afterimage across my retina. Everything speeded up as my time speed

accelerated, and eventually space became a gray blur as even stellar events

became too fast for me to see. This blur had a hypnotic effect, or my brain

was affected by the time motion, because my thoughts became thoroughly muddled

as I sank into a quasi-state somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness that

lasted a very long time. Or a short time, I'm not really sure. It could have

been an instant, or it could have been eternity. Perhaps there was some corner

of my brain that remained aware of the terrible slow passage of all those

years, but if so, I do not care to think about it. Survival has always been

rather important to me, and as a stainless steel rat in among the concrete

passages of society I look only to myself for aid. There are far more ways to

fail than to succeed, to go mad than to stay sane, and I needed all my mental

energies to find the right course. So I existed and stayed relatively sane

during the insane temporal voyage and waited for something to happen. After an

immeasurable period of time something did.

I arrived. The ending was even more dramatic than the beginning of the

journey as everything happened all at once.

I could move again. I could see again--the light blinded me at first--and

I was aware of all the bodily sensations that had been suspended so long.

More than that, I was falling. My long-paralyzed stomach gave a twist at

this, and the adrenaline and like substances that my brain had been longing to

pour into my blood for the past 32,598 years--give or take three months--

pumped in and my heart began to thud in a healthily excited manner. As I fell,

I turned, and the sun was out of my eyes, and I looked out at a black sky and

down at fluffy white clouds far below. Was this it? Dirt, the mysterious

homeland of mankind? There was no telling, but it was still a distinct

pleasure to be somewhere and somewhen without things dissolving around me. All

my equipment seemed to still be with me, and when I touched the control on my

wrist, I could feel the tug of the grav-chute taking hold. Great. I turned it

off and dropped free again until I felt the first traces of thin atmosphere

pulling at the suit. By the time I came to the clouds I was falling gently as

a leaf, plunging feetfirst into their wet embrace. I slowed the rate of fall

even more as I dropped blind, rubbing at the condensation on the faceplate of

the space suit. Then I was out of the clouds, and I turned the control to

hover and took a slow look around at this new world, perhaps the home of the

human race, surely my home forever.

Above me the clouds hung like a soft wet ceiling. There were trees and

countryside about 3,000 meters below with the details blurred by my wet

faceplate, I had to try the atmosphere here sooner or later, and hoping my

remote ancestors were not methane breathers, I cracked the faceplate and took

a quick sniff.

Not bad. Cold and a little thin at this height, but sweet and fresh. And

it didn't kill me. I opened the faceplate wide, breathed deeply, and looked

down at the world below. Pleasant enough from this altitude. Rolling green

hills covered with trees of some kind, blue lakes, roads cutting sharply

through the valleys, some sort of city on the horizon boiling out clouds of

pollution. I'd stay as far away from that as possible for the time being. I

had to establish myself first, see about . . .

The sound had been pushing at my awareness, a thin humming like an insect.

But there shouldn't be insects at this altitude. I would have thought of this

sooner if my attention hadn't been on the landscape below. Just about the time

I realized this the humming grew to a roar and I twisted to look over my

shoulder. Gaping. At the globular flying craft supported by an archaic

rotating airfoil of some kind, behind the transparent sides of which there sat

a man gaping back at me. I slammed the wrist controller to lift and shot back

up into the protecting cloud.

Not a very good beginning. The pilot had had a very good look at me,

although there was always the chance that he might disbelieve what he saw. He

didn't. The communicators in this age must be most sophisticated, the

military's preparedness or paranoia equally so, because within a few minutes I

beard the rumble of powerful jets below. They circled a bit, roaring and

bellowing, and one even shot up through the clouds. I had a quick glimpse of

an arrowlike silver form; then it was gone, the clouds roiling and seething in

its wake. It was time to leave. The lateral control on a grav-chute isn't too

precise, but I wobbled off through the clouds to put as much room between

myself and those machines as I could. When I had not heard them for some time,

I risked a drop down just below the cloud level. Nothing. In any direction. I

snapped my faceplate shut and cut all the power.

The drop in free fall could not have taken very long, though it seemed a

lot longer. I had unhealthy visions of detectors clattering, computers

digesting the information and pointing mechanical fingers, mighty machines of

war whistling and roaring toward me. I rotated as I fell, squinting my eyes

for the first sight of shining metal.

Nothing at all happened. Some large white birds flapped slowly along,

veering off with sharp squawks as I plunged by. There was the blue mirror of a

lake below, and I gave a nudge of power that moved me toward it. If the

pursuit did show up, I could drop under the surface and out of detection

range. When I was below the level of the surrounding hills with the water

rushing up uncomfortably close below, I slammed on the power. I shuddered and

groaned and felt the straps cutting deep into my flesh. The grav-chute on my

back grew uncomfortably warm, though I began to sweat for a different reason.

It was still a long fall, to water hard as steel from this height.

When I finally did stop moving, my feet were in the water. Not a bad

landing at all. There was still no sign of pursuit as I lifted a bit above the

surface and drifted toward the gray cliff that fell directly into the lake on

the far side. The air smelted good when I opened the faceplate again, and

everything was silent. No voices, no sounds of machines. Nor signs of human

habitation. When I came closer to the shore, I heard the wind in the leaves,

but that was all. Great. I needed a place to hole up until I got my bearings,

and this would do just fine. The gray cliff turned out to be a wall of solid

rock, inaccessible and high. I drifted along its face until I found a ledge

wide enough to sit on, so I sat. It felt good.

"Been a long time since I sat down," I said aloud, pleased to hear my

voice. Yeah, my evil subconscious snapped back, about thirty-three thousand

years. I was depressed again and wished that I had a drink. But that was the

one essential supply I had neglected to bring, a mistake I would have to

rectify quickly. With the power cut the space suit began to warm up in the

sun, and I stripped it off, placing all the items of equipment against the

rock far from the edge.

What next? I felt something crunch in my side pocket and pulled out a

handful of hideously expensive and broken cigars. A tragedy. By some miracle

one of them was intact, so I snapped the end to ignite it and breathed deep.

Wonderful! I smoked for a bit, my legs dangling over the drop below, and let

my morale build up to its normal highly efficient level. A fish broke through

the surface of the lake and splashed back; some small birds twittered in the

trees, and I thought about the next step. I needed shelter, but the more I

moved around to find it, the more chance I had of being discovered. Why

couldn't I stay right here?

Among the assorted junk I had been draped with at the last minute was a

laboratory tool called a masser, I had started to complain at the time, but it

was hung on my waist before I could say anything. I considered it now. The

handgrip that contained the power source blossomed out into a bulbous body,

which thinned again into a sharp, spikelike prod. A field was generated at the

end that had the interesting ability of being able to concentrate most forms

of matter by increasing the binding energy in the molecules. This would crunch

them together into a smaller space, though they of course still had the same

mass. Some things, depending upon the material and the power used, could be

compressed up to one-half their original size.

At the other end the ledge narrowed until it vanished, and I walked along

it as far as I safely could. Reaching out, I pressed the spike to the surface

of the gray stone and thumped the button. There was a sharp crack as a

compressed slab of stone the size of my hand fell from the face of the cliff

and slid down to the ledge. It felt heavy, more like lead than rock. Flipping

it out into the lake, I turned up the power and went to work.

Once I got the knack of the thing the job went fast. I found I could

generate an almost spherical field that would detach a solid ball of

compressed stone as big as my head. After I had struggled to roll a couple of

these heavyweights over the edge--and almost rolled myself with them--I worked

the rock away at an angle, then cut out above this slope. The spheres would

crunch free, bang down onto the slope, and roll off the edge in a short arc,

to splash noisily into the water below. Every once in a while I would stop and

listen and look. I was still alone. The sun was close to the horizon before I

had a neat little cave in the rock face that would just hold all my goods and

myself. An animal's den that I longed to crawl into. Which I did, after a

quick floating trip down to the lake for some water. The concentrates were

tasteless but filling, so my stomach knew that I had dined, though not well.

As the first stars began to come out, I planned the next step in my conquest

of Dirt, or Earth, whichever the name was.

My time voyage must have been more fatiguing than I had thought because

the next thing I realized was that the sky was black and a great orange full

moon was sitting on the mountains. My bottom was chilled from contact with the

cold rock, and I was stiff from sleeping in a cramped sitting position.

"Come, mighty changer of history," I said, and groaned as my muscles

creaked and my joints cracked. "Get out and get to work." That was just what I

had to do. Action would bring reaction. As long as I holed up in this den, any

planning I might do would be valueless since I had no facts to operate with.

As yet I didn't even know if this was the right world, or the right time--or

anything else. I had to get out and get cracking. Though there was one thing I

could do--that I should have done first thing upon arrival. Mumbling curses at

my own stupidity, I dug through the assorted junk I had brought with me and

came up with the black box of the time energy detector. I used a small light

to illuminate it, and my heart thudded down on top of my stomach when I saw

that the needle was floating limply. Time was not being warped anywhere on

this world.

"Ha-ha, you moron," I called out loudly, cheered by the sound of the voice

I liked the most. "This thing would work a lot better if you tuned on the

power." An oversight. Taking a deep breath, I threw the switch.

Still nothing. The needle hung as limp as my deflated hopes. There was

still a good chance that the time trifles were around and just happened to

have their machine turned off at the present moment. I hoped.

To work. I secreted a few handy devices about my person and disengaged the

grav-chute from the space suit. It still had about a half charge in its power

pack, which should get me up and down the cliff a number of times. I slipped

my arms through the straps, stepped off the ledge, and touched the controls so

that my free fall changed to an arc that pointed in the direction of the

nearest road I had seen on the way down. Floating low over the trees, I

checked landmarks and direction constantly. The outsize and gleamingly

bedialed watch I always wear on my left wrist does a lot more things than tell

the time. A touch of the right button illuminated the needle of the radio

compass that was zeroed in on my home base. I drifted silently on.

Moonlight reflected from the smooth surface that cut a swath through the

forest, and I floated down through the trees to the ground. Enough light

filtered through the boughs so that I didn't need my flash as I made my way to

the road, going the last few meters with extreme caution. It was empty in both

directions, and the night was silent. I bent and examined the surface. It was

made of a single slab of some hard white substance, not metal or plastic, that

appeared to have tiny grains of sand in it. Most uninteresting. Staying close

to the edge, I turned in the direction of the city I had glimpsed and started

walking. It was slow, but it saved the power in the grav-chute.

What happened next I can attribute only to carelessness, tempered with

fatigue, and seasoned by my ignorance of this world. My mind wandered, to

Angelina and the children and my friends in the Corps, all of whom existed

only in my thoughts. They now had no more reality than my memory of characters

I had read about in a novel. This was a very depressing idea, and I brooded

over it rather than rejected it, so I was taken completely unaware by the

sudden roar of engines. At this moment I was rounding a turn in the road that

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheStainlessSteelRatSavestheWorldChapter1"Youareacrook,JamesBolivardiGriz,"Inskippsaid,makinganimalnoisesdeepinhisthroatwhileshakingthesheafofpapersviciouslyinmydirection.Ileanedbackagainstthesideboardinhisoffice,apictureofshockedsincerity."Iaminnocent,"Isobbed."Avictimofacampaignofcold,calculatingl...

展开>> 收起<<

Harry Harrison - SSR 03 - The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The.pdf

共75页,预览15页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Harry Harrison - SSR 03 - The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: