As I started up the fifth flight I stopped, my foot halfway up a step.
Someone else was coming down, someone wearing the same kind of military boots. I found the door to the hall, opened it behind me and slipped through. There was a long hall in front of me lined with offices of some kind. I began to run the length of it, trying to reach a turning before the door behind me could open and those exploding slugs tear me in half. The hall seemed endless and I suddenly realized I would never reach the end in time.
I was a rat looking for a hole - and there was none. The doors were locked, all of them, I tried each as I came to it, knowing I would never make it. That stairwell door was opening behind me and the gun was coming up. I didn't dare turn and look but I could feel it. When the door opened under my hand I fell through before I realized what had happened. I locked it behind me and leaned against it in the darkness, panting like a spent animal. Then the light came on and I saw the man sitting behind the desk, smiling at me.
There is a limit to the amount of shock the human body can absorb. I'd had mine. I didn't care if he shot me or offered a cigarette - I had reached the end of my line. He did neither. He offered me a cigar instead.
"Have one of these, diGriz, I believe they're your brand."
The body is a slave of habit. Even with death a few inches away it will respond to established custom. My fingers moved of their own volition and took the cigar, my lips clenched it and my lungs sucked it into life. And all the time my eyes watched the man behind the desk waiting for death to reach out.
It must have shown. He waved towards a chair and carefully kept both hands in sight on top of the desk. I still had my gun, it was trained on him.
"Sit down diGriz and put that cannon away. If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it a lot easier than herding you into this room." His eyebrows moved up in surprise when he saw the expression on my face. "Don't tell me you thought it was an accident that you ended up here?"
I had, up until that moment, and the lack of intelligent reasoning on my part brought on a wave of shame that snapped me back to reality. I had been outwitted and outfought, the least I could do was surrender graciously. I threw the gun on the desk and dropped into the offered chair. He swept the pistol neatly into a drawer and relaxed a bit himself.
"Had me worried there for a minute, the way you stood there rolling your eyes and waving this piece of field artillery around."
"Who are you?"
He smiled at the abruptness of my tone. "Well, it doesn't matter who I am. What does matter is the organization that I represent."
"The Corps?"
"Exactly. The Special Corps. You didn't think I was the local police, did you? They have orders to shoot you on sight. It was only after I told them how to find you that they let the Corps come along on the job. I have some of my men in the building, they're the ones who herded you up here. The rest are all locals with itchy trigger fingers."
It wasn't very flattering but it was true. I had been pushed around like a class M robot, with every move charted in advance. The old boy behind the desk - for the first time I realized he was about sixty-five - really had my number. The game was over.
"All right Mr. Detective, you have me so there is no sense in gloating. What's next on the program? Psychological reorientation, lobotomy - or just plain firing squad?"
"None of those. I'm afraid. I am here to offer you a job in the Corps."
The whole thing was so ludicrous that I almost fell out of the chair laughing. Me. James diGriz, the interplanet thief working as a policeman. It was just too funny. He sat patiently, waiting until I was through.
"I will admit it has its ludicrous side - but only at first glance. If you stop to think, you will have to admit that who is better qualified to catch a thief than another thief?"
There was more than a little truth in that, but I wasn't buying my freedom by turning stool pigeon.
"An interesting offer, but I'm not getting out of this by playing the rat. There is even a code among thieves, you know."
That made him angry. He was bigger than he looked sitting down and the fist he shook in my face was as large as a shoe.
"What kind of stupidity do you call that? It sounds like a line out of a TV thriller. You've never met another crook in your whole life and you know it! And if you did you would cheerfully turn him in if you could make a profit on the deal. The entire essence of your life is individualism - that and the excitement of doing what others can't do. Well that's over now, and you better start admitting it to yourself. You can no longer be the interplanet playboy you used to be - but you can do a job that will require every bit of your special talents and abilities. Have you ever killed a man?"
His change of pace caught me off guard, I stumbled out an answer.
"No . . . not that I know of."
"Well you haven't, if that will make you sleep any better at night. You're not a homicidal, I checked that on your record before I came out after you. That is why I know you will join the Corps and get a great deal of pleasure out of going after the other kind of criminal who is sick, not just socially protesting. The man who can kill and enjoy it."
He was too convincing, he had all the answers. I had only one more argument and I threw it in with the air of a last ditch defense.
"What about the Corps, if they ever find out you are hiring half-reformed criminals to do your dirty work we will both be shot at dawn."
This time it was his turn to laugh. I could see nothing funny so I ignored him until he was finished.
"In the first place my boy, I am the Corps - at least the man at the top - and what do you think my name is? Harold Peters Inskipp, that's what it is!"
"Not the Inskipp that - "
"The same. Inskipp the Uncatchable. The man who looted the Pharsydion II in mid-flight and pulled all those other deals I'm sure you read about in your misspent youth. I was recruited just the way you were." He had me on the ropes and knew it. He moved in for the kill.
"And who do you think the rest of our agents are? I don't mean the bright-eyed grads of our technical schools, like the ones on my squad downstairs. I mean the full agents. The men who plan the operations, do the preliminary fieldwork and see that everything comes off smoothly. They're crooks. All crooks. The better they were on their own, the better a job they do for the Corps. It's a great, big, brawling universe and you would be surprised at some of the problems that come up. The only men we can recruit to do the job are the ones who have already succeeded at it.
"Are you on?"
It had happened too fast and I hadn't had time to think. I would probably go on arguing for an hour. But way down in the back of my mind the decision had been made. I was going to do it, I couldn't say no.
I was losing something, and I hoped I wouldn't miss it. No matter what freedom I had working with an organization, I would still be working with other people. The old carefree, sole responsibility days were over. I was joining the ranks of society again.
There was the beginning of a warm feeling at the thought. It would at least be the end of loneliness. Friendship would make up for what I had lost.
Chapter 4
I have never been more wrong.
The people I met were dull to the point of extinction. They treated me like just another cog going around with the rest of the wheels. I was coggy all right, and kept wondering how I had ever gotten into this mess. Not really wondering, since the memory was still quite vivid. I was carried along with the rest of the gears, their teeth sunk into mine.
We ended up on a planetoid, that much was obvious. But I hadn't the dimmest idea of what planets we were near or even what solar system we were in. Everything was highly secret and hush-hush, as this place was obviously the super-secret headquarters and main base of the Corps School too.
This part I liked. It was the only thing that kept me from cracking out. Dull as the cubes were who taught the courses, the material was something I could really sink my teeth into and shake. I began
to see how crude my operations had been. With the gadgetry and techniques I soaked up I could be ten times the crook I had been before. Pushing the thought firmly away helped for a while, but it had a way of sneaking back and whispering nastily in my ear during periods of depression and gloom.
Things went from dull to dead. Half my time was spent working at the files, learning about the numberless successes and few failures of the Corps. I contemplated cracking out, yet at the same time couldn't help but wonder if this wasn't part of a testing period - to see if I had enough sticktoitiveness to last. I swallowed my temper, muffled my yawns, and took a careful look around. If I couldn't crack out - I could crack in. There had to be something I could do to terminate this term of penal servitude.
It wasn't easy - but I found it. By the time I tracked everything down it was well into sleep period. But that was all right. In some ways it even made it more interesting.
When it comes to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed pointing a .75 caliber recoilless at my sternum.
"You should have more brains than that, diGriz," he snarled. "Creeping into my room at night! You could have been shot."
"No I couldn't," I told him, as he stowed the cannon back under his pillow. "A man with a curiosity bump as big as yours will always talk first and shoot later. And besides - none of this pussyfooting around in the dark would be necessary if your screen was open and I could have got a call through."
Inskipp yawned and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser unit above the bed. "Just because I head the Special Corps, doesn't mean that I am the Special Corps," he said moistly while he drained the glass. I have to sleep sometime. My screen is open only for emergency calls, not for every agent who needs his hand held."
"Meaning I am in the hand-holding category?" I asked with as much sweetness as I could.
"Put yourself in any category you damn well please," he grumbled as he slumped down in the bed. "And also put yourself out into the hall and see me tomorrow during working hours."
He was at my mercy, really. He wanted sleep so much. And he was going to be wide-awake so very soon.
"Do you know what this is?" I asked him, poking a large glossy pie under his long broken nose. One eye opened slowly.
"Big warship of some kind, looks like Empire lines. Now for the last time - go away!" he said.
"A very good guess for this late at night," I told him cheerily. "It is a late Empire battleship of the Warlord class. Undoubtedly one of the most truly efficient engines of destruction ever manufactured. Over a half mile of defensive screens and armament that could probably turn any fleet existent today into fine radioactive ash - "
"Except for the fact that the last one was broken up for scrap over a thousand years ago," he mumbled.
I leaned over and put my lips close to his ear. So there would be no chance of misunderstanding. Speaking softly but clearly.
"True, true," I said. "But wouldn't you be just a little bit interested if I was to tell you that one is being built today?"
Oh, it was beautiful to watch. The covers went one way and Inskipp went the other. In a single unfolding, concerted motion he left the horizontal and recumbent and stood tensely vertical against the wall. Examining the pic of the battleship under the light. He apparently did not believe in pajama bottoms and it hurt me to see the goose bumps rising on those thin shanks. But if the legs were thin, the voice was more than full enough to make up for the difference.
"Talk, blast you diGriz - talk!" he roared. "What is this nonsense about a battleship? Who's building it?"
I had my nail file and was touching up a cuticle, holding it out for inspection before I said anything. From the corner of my eye I could see him getting purple about the face - but he kept quiet. I savored my small moment of power.
"Put diGriz in charge of the record room for a while, you said, that way he can learn the ropes. Burrowing around in century-old, dusty files will be just the thing for a free spirit like Slippery Jim diGriz. Teach him discipline. Show him what the Corps stands for. At the same time it will get the records in shape. They have been needing reorganization for quite a while."
Inskipp opened his mouth, made a choking noise, then closed it. He undoubtedly realized that any interruption would only lengthen my explanation, not shorten it. I smiled and nodded at his decision, then continued.
"So you thought you had me safely out of the way. Breaking my spirit under the guise of 'giving me a little background in the Corps' activities.' In this sense your plan failed. Something else happened instead. I nosed through the files and found them most interesting. Particularly the C & M setup - the Categorizer and Memory. That building full of machinery that takes in and digests news and reports from all the planets in the galaxy, indexes it to every category it can possibly relate, then files it. Great machine to work with. I had it digging out spaceship info for me, something I have always been interested in - "
"You should be," Inskipp interrupted rudely. "You've stolen enough of them in your time."
I gave him a hurt look and went on - slowly. "I won't bore you with all the details, since you seem impatient, but eventually I turned up this plan." He had it out of my fingers before it cleared my wallet.
"What are you getting at?" he mumbled as he ran his eyes over the blueprints. "This is an ordinary heavy-cargo and passenger job. It's no more a Warlord battleship than I am."
It is hard to curl your lips with contempt and talk at the same time, but I succeeded. "Of course. You don't expect them to file warship plans with the League Registry, do you? But, as I said, I know more than a little bit about ships. It seemed to me this thing was just too big for the use intended. Enough old ships are fuel-wasters, you don't have to build new ones to do that. This started me thinking and I punched for a complete list of ships that size that had been constructed in the past. You can imagine my surprise when, after three minutes of groaning, the C & M only produced six. One was built for a self-sustaining colony attempt in the second galaxy. For all we know she is still on the way. The other five were all D-class colonizers, built during the Expansion when large populations were moved. Too big to be practical now.
"I was still teased, as I had no idea what a ship this large could be used for. So I removed the time interlock on the C & M and let it pick around through the entire history of space to see if it could find a comparison. It sure did. Right at the Golden Age of Empire expansion, the giant Warlord battleship. The machine even found a blueprint for me."
Inskipp grabbed again and began comparing the two prints. I leaned over his shoulder and pointed out the interesting parts.
"Notice - if the engine room specs are changed slightly to include this cargo hold, there is plenty of room for the brutes needed. This superstructure - obviously just tacked onto the plans - gets thrown away, and turrets take its place. The hulls are identical. A change here, a shift there, and the stodgy freighter becomes the fast battlewagon. These changes could be made during construction, then plans filed. By the time any one in the League found out what was being built the ship would be finished and launched. Of course, this could all be coincidence - the plans of a newly built ship agreeing to six places with those of a ship built a thousand years ago. But if you think so, I will give you hundred-to-one odds you are wrong, any size bet you name."
I wasn't winning any sucker bets that night. Inskipp had led just as crooked a youth as I had, and needed no help in smelling a fishy deal. While he pulled on his clothes he shot questions at me.
"And the name of the peace-loving planet that is building this bad memory from the past?"
"Cittanuvo. Second planet of a B star in Corona Borealis. No other colonized planets in the system."
"Never heard of it," Ins
kipp said as we took the private drop chute to his office. "Which may be a good or a bad sign. Wouldn't be the first time trouble came from some out-of-the-way spot I never even knew existed."
With the automatic disregard for others of the truly dedicated, he pressed the scramble button on his desk. Very quickly sleepy-eyed clerks and assistants were bringing files and records. We went through them together.
Modesty prevented me from speaking first, but I had a very short wait before Inskipp reached the same conclusion I had. He buried a folder the length of the room and scowled out at the harsh dawn light.
"The more I look at this thing," he said, "the fishier it gets. This planet seems to have no possible motive or use for a battleship. But they are building one - that I will swear on a stack of one thousand credit notes as high as this building. Yet what will they do with it when they have it built? They have an expanding culture, no unemployment, a surplus of heavy metals and ready markets for all they produce. No hereditary enemies, feuds or the like. If it wasn't for this battleship thing, I would call them an ideal League planet. I have to know more about them."
"I've already called the spaceport - in your name of course," I told him. "Ordered a fast courier ship. I'll leave within the hour."
"Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself, diGriz," he said. Voice chill as the icecap. "I still give the orders and I'll tell you when you're ready for an independent command."
I was sweetness and light because a lot depended on his decision. "Just trying to help, chief, get things ready in case you wanted more info. And this isn't really an operation, just a reconnaissance. I can do that as well as any of the experienced operators. And it may give me the experience I need, so that some day, I, too, will be qualified to join the ranks . . ."
"All right," he said. "Stop shoveling it on while I can still breathe. Get out there. Find out what is happening. Then get back. Nothing else - and that's an order."
By the way he said it, I knew he thought there was little chance of its happening that way. And he was right.
The Stainless Steel Rat Page 3
