The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection

by Harry Harrison

  Silently and smoothly we lifted, floating up and away from the noisy little group, arrowing back toward my lakeside retreat. Their companion’s vanishing act would be singularly mysterious, and even if they reported it to the authorities, it would accomplish nothing. I was going to hole up with my dozing companion for a few days and learn the speech of this land. My accent was sure to be of the lowest, but that could be corrected later. My retreat gaped its welcoming mouth at me, and I zipped in, dropping my limp burden ungracefully on the stone.

  By the time he came groaning back to awareness I was completely prepared and had all the equipment laid out. I puffed pleasurably on a cigar from my pocket humidor and said nothing while he went through a painful series of adjustments. There was plenty of lip smacking before he opened his eyes and sat up – only to moan and clutch at his head. My sleepgas does have some painful after-effects. But memory of his knife aimed at me did much to steel me to his suffering. Then came the wild look around, the eye boggling at me and my equipment, the crafty look at the black opening of the entrance and the apparently accidental way he got his legs beneath him. To spring out of the opening. To land smash on his face as the cable that secured his ankle to the rock brought him down.

  ‘Now the games are over and we get to work,’ I told him, not unkindly as I sat him back against the wall and tightened the device about his wrist. I had rigged it while he slept, and it was simple but effective. It contained a blood pressure and skin resistance gauge with readouts on the control box that I held before me. A basic form of lie detector. It also contained a negative reinforcement circuit. I normally wouldn’t use this technique on a human being – it was usually reserved for training laboratory animals – but this present human being was an exception. We were playing by his rules, and this shortcut would save a lot of time. When he began shouting, what I am sure were obnoxious insults, and started to tear at the box, I pressed the reinforcement button. He shrieked and thrashed about enthusiastically as the electric current hit him. It wasn’t really that bad; I had tried it on myself and set the level at slightly painful, the sort of pain one could easily endure but would prefer not to.

  ‘Now we begin,’ I said, ‘but let me prepare myself first.’

  He looked on in wide-eyed silence while I adjusted the metal pads of the memorygram on my temples and activated the circuit.

  ‘The key word is’ – I looked at my companion – ‘ugly. Now we begin.’

  There was a pile of simple objects at my side, and I picked up the first one and held it out before me so he could see it. When he looked at it, I said ‘rock’ loudly, then was silent. He was silent as well, and after a moment I triggered the reinforcement circuit and he jumped at the sudden burst of pain and looked around wildly.

  ‘Rock,’ I repeated in a quiet, patient voice.

  It took him a while to get the idea, but he learned. There was a shock for cursing or saying anything irrelevant and a double shock when he tried to lie about a word; my polygraph kept me informed about that. He had enough of this quite quickly and found it easier to supply the word I wanted. We quickly ran through my supply of objects and shifted to drawings and acted-out motions. I accepted the phrase ‘I don’t know,’ as long as it wasn’t used too often, and my store of words grew. Under the pressure of the microcurrents of the memorygram the new vocabulary was jammed into my cortex, but not without some painful side effects. When my head began to throb, I took a pain pill and went on with the word games. It didn’t take long to file away enough words to switch to the second part of the learning process, grammar and structure. ‘What is your name?’ I thought to myself and added the code word ‘ugly’.

  ‘What … name?’ I said aloud. A very unattractive language indeed.

  ‘Slasher.’

  ‘Me … name …Jim.’

  ‘Lemme go, I ain’t done nuttin’ to you.’

  ‘Learn first … leave later. Now tell, what year?’

  ‘What year what?’

  ‘What year now, dum-dum?’

  I repeated the question in different ways until realization of what I was asking finally penetrated the solid bone of his skull. I was beginning to sweat.

  ‘Oh, the year. It’s 1975. June the nineteenth, 1975.’

  Right on target! Across all those centuries and millennia the time-helix had snapped me with precise accuracy. I made a mental note of thanks to Professor Coypu and the other vanished scientists, and since they lived on only in my memory, this was probably the only way to send the message. Much cheered by this information, I got on with the language lesson.

  The memorygram clutched onto everything he said, organized it, and jammed it deep into my bruised synapses. I stifled a groan and took another pain pill. By sunrise I felt I had enough of a command of the language to add to it by myself and switched off the machine. My companion fell over asleep and clunked his head on the rock without waking. I let him sleep and disentangled us both from the electronic equipment. After the nightlong session I was tired myself, but a stimtab took care of that. Hunger growled plaintively in my gut, and I broke out some rations. Slasher awoke soon after and shared my breakfast, eating one of the bars only after he saw me break off the end and consume it myself. I belched with satisfaction, and he echoed eructatingly. He eyed me and my equipment for some time before he made a positive statement.

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘You’re from Mars, dat’s what.’

  ‘What’s Mars?’

  “The planet, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, you might be right. It don’t matter. You gonna do what I said, help me get some loot?’

  ‘I told you, I’m on parole. If I’m grabbed, they’ll throw the key away.’

  ‘Don’t let it bug you. Stick with me and they won’t lay a finger on you. You’ll be rolling in bucks. Do you have any of these bucks? I want to see what they look like.’

  ‘No!’ he said, and his hand went to a bulge in a flap of material affixed to his lower garments. By this time I could detect his simple lies without my equipment.

  Sleepgas quieted him, and I worked a sort of hide envelope from his clothing that contained flimsy scraps of green paper, undoubtedly the bucks he had referred to not having. To look at them was to laugh! The cheapest copying machine could turn out duplicates of these by the barrelful – unless there were hidden means of authentication. To check I went over them with the most delicate equipment and found no trace of chemical, physical, or radioactive identification. Amazing. The paper did appear to contain short threads of some kind of substance, but a duplicator would print replicas of these on the surface which would do fine. If only I had a duplicator. Or did I have a duplicator? Toward the end there they were hanging every kind of equipment on me that they could. I rooted through the pile, and sure enough, there was a tiny desk model duplicator. It was loaded with a block of extremely dense material that was expanded in some cellular fashion inside the machine to produce a sheet of smooth white plastic on which the copies were made. After a number of adjustments I managed to reduce the quality of the plastic until it was as rough and crumpled as the bucks. Now when I touched the copy button, the machine produced a buck that appeared a duplicate of the original. The largest denomination Slasher had was a ten-buck note, and I made a number of copies of this. Of course, they all had the same serial number, but my experience has been that people never look very closely at the money they accept.

  It was time to move into the next phase of my penetration of the society on this primitive planet, Earth. (I had discovered that Dirt was not correct and had another meaning altogether.) I arranged about my person the equipment I might need and left the remainder in the cave with the space suit. It would be here whenever I needed it. Slasher mumbled and snored when I floated him back across the lake and low over the trees toward the road. There was more traffic on it now during the day, I could hear the vehicles rumbling by, so I once more dropped down into the forest. Before waking Slas
her, I buried the grav-chute with a radio transponder that would lead me back to it if need be.

  ‘What, what?’ Slasher said, sitting up as soon as the antidote took effect. He looked around uncomprehendingly at the forest.

  ‘On your hooves,’ I told him. ‘We gotta move out of here.’

  He shambled after me, still half-asleep, though he woke up rather quickly when I ruffled the wad of money under his nose.

  ‘How do these bucks look to you?’

  ‘Great – but I thought you didn’t have any bread?’

  ‘I got enough food, but not enough money. So I made these. Are they OK?’

  ‘A-OK, I never seen better.’ He flipped through them with the appraising eye of the professional. ‘The only way you can tell is that the numbers are all the same. This is high-class green.’

  He parted with them only reluctantly. A man of little imagination and no compunction; just what I needed. The sight of the bucks seemed to have driven all fear of me from him and he actively joined in planning to obtain even more money as we trudged along the road.

  ‘That outfit you’re wearing, it’s OK from a distance, like now, no one in the cars notices nuttin’. But we gotta get you some threads. There’s kind of a general store foot of this hill. You wait away from the road while I go in and buy what you need. In fact, maybe we get some wheels before that; my feet are killing me. There’s some kind of little factory there with a parking lot. We’ll see what they’re selling.’

  The factory proved to be a squat, squarish building with a number of chimneys that were puffing out smoke and pollution. An assortment of multicolored vehicles were arranged to one side, and following Slasher’s example, I bent low as we moved quickly to the nearest one in the outside row. When he was sure we were unobserved, my companion released a catch on a swollen purple thing, with what appeared to be a row of metal teeth at one end, and lifted a large lid. I looked in and gasped at the excessively complex and primitive propulsion engine it contained. I was indeed in the past. In response to my questions, Slasher described it as he shorted some wires that seemed to control the ignition.

  ‘An intoinal-combustion engine we call it. Almost new, should be three hundred horses there. Climb in and we’ll make tracks out of here before anybody sees us.’

  I made a mental note to inquire later about the theory behind this intoinal combustion. From earlier conversation I had understood that horses were rather large quadrupeds, so perhaps it was an animal miniaturizing process to get a large number of them into the machine. But primitive as the device looked, it certainly moved quickly enough. Slasher manipulated the controls and twisted the large wheel, and we shot out onto the road and were away – apparently without being detected. I was more than satisfied to let Slasher drive while I observed this world that I had arrived on.

  ‘Where is all the money kept? You know, like the place where they lock it up.’

  ‘You must mean the banks. Places with thick walls, big vaults, armed guards. They got at least one in every town.’

  ‘And the bigger the town, the bigger the bank?’

  ‘You’re catchin’ on.’

  ‘Then drive on to the nearest big town and find the biggest bank. I need plenty of bread. So we’ll clean it out tonight.’

  Slasher gaped in awe. ‘You can’t mean it! They got all kinds of alarms and stuff.’

  ‘I laugh at their Stone Age gadgets. Just find the town, find the bank, then find some food and drink. Tonight I’ll make you rich.’

  FIVE

  In all truth I have never robbed a bank more easily or cracked a simpler crib. The establishment I selected was in the center of a city with the improbable-sounding name of Hartford. It was severely constructed of gray stone, and all the openings were covered with thick metal bars – but these defenses were negated by the fact that there were other buildings joined to the bank on both sides. A rat rarely enters by the front door. It was early evening when we set out, and Slasher was jittery and nervous despite the large quantity of low-quality alcoholic beverage he had consumed.

  ‘We oughta wait until later,’ he complained. ‘There are still plenty of people in the street.’

  ‘Just how I want it. They won’t pay no attention to a couple more. Now park this heap around the corner where we planned and bring the bags.’

  I carried my tools in a small case while Slasher followed me with the two large pieces of luggage we had purchased. The building ahead, on the left of the bank, was dark, and the outer door was surely locked. No trouble. I had looked at the lock earlier in the day and had determined that it presented no problem at all. The device in my left hand neutralized the alarm while I inserted the lock pick with my right. It opened so easily that Slasher did not even have to stop but went right on by me with the bags. Not a soul in the street paid us the slightest attention. A corridor led to some more locked doors, which I passed through with the same ease, until we reached an office in the rear.

  ‘This room should share a wall with the bank. Now I’m gonna find out,’ I said.

  I whistled under my breath as I went to work. This was by no means my first bank robbery, and I had no intention of making it my last. Of all the varied forms of crime, bank robbery is the most satisfactory to both the individual and to society. The individual of course gets a lot of money, that goes without saying, and he benefits society by putting large amounts of cash back into circulation. The economy is stimulated, small businessmen prosper, people read about the crime with great interest, and the police have a chance to exercise their various skills. Good for all. Though I have heard foolish people complain that it hurts the bank. This is arrant nonsense. All banks are insured, so they lose nothing, while the sums involved are minuscule in the overall operation of the insuring firm, where the most that might happen is that a microscopically smaller dividend will be paid at the end of the year. Little enough price to pay for all the good caused. It was as a benefactor of mankind, not a thief, that I passed the echo sounder over the wall. A large opening on the other side; the bank without a doubt.

  There were a number of cables and pipes in the wall, power and water I presumed, along with some that were obviously alarms. I marked their positions on the wall until the pattern was clear. There was one area that was free of all obstructions that I outlined.

  ‘We go in here,’ I said.

  ‘How we gonna break the wall down?’ Slasher swung between elation and fear, wanting the money, afraid he would be caught. He was obviously a petty criminal, and this was the biggest job he had ever been on.

  ‘Not break, dum-dum,’ I said, not unkindly, holding up the masser. ‘We just convince it to open before us.’

  Of course he had no idea what I was talking about, but sight of the gleaming instrument seemed to reassure him. I had reversed the device so instead of increasing the binding energy of molecules, it reduced their attraction close to zero. With slow precision I ran the point of the device completely over the chosen area of wall, then turned it off and stowed it away.

  ‘Nuttin’ happened,’ Slasher complained.

  ‘Somethin’ will now.’ I pushed the wall with my hand, and the entire area I had prepared fell away with a soft whoosh, sliding down like so much fine dust. Which it had become. We looked through into the brightly lit interior of the bank.

  We were invisible from the street when we crawled through and crept along behind the high counter where the tellers normally sat. The builders had thoughtfully put their vault in the lower depths of the building and out of sight of the street, so once down the steps, we could straighten up and go about our task in comfort. In rapid sequence I went through a pair of locked doors and a grille made of thick steel bars. Their locks and alarms were too simple to discuss. The vault door itself looked more formidable, yet proved the simplest of them all.

  ‘Look at dat,’ I called out enthusiastically. ‘There is a time lock here that opens automatically sometime tomorrow.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Slasher wailed.
‘Let’s get out before the alarms go off ….’

  As he ran for the stairs, I tripped him and put one foot on his chest while I explained.

  ‘That is what they call good, dum-dum. All we have to do to open the thing is to advance the clock so it thinks it is the morning.’

  ‘Impossible! It’s sealed behind a couple of inches of steel!’

  Of course, he had no way of knowing that an ordinary serviceman’s manipulator is designed to work through casings of any kind. When I felt the field engage the cogs, I rotated it, and the dials whirled, and his eyes bulged – and the mechanism gave a satisfied click, and the door swung open.

  ‘Bring da bags,’ I ordered, entering the vault.

  Whistling and humming gaily, we packed the two bags solid with the tightly wrapped bundles of crisp notes. Slasher closed and sealed his first, then mumbled impatiently at my slowness.

  ‘What’s da rush?’ I asked him, closing the case and assembling my tools. ‘You gotta take the time to do things the right way.’

  As I put the last of my instruments away, I noticed a needle jump, then hold steady. Interesting. I adjusted the field strength, then stood with it in my hand and looked around. Slasher was on the other side of the vault, fumbling with some long metal boxes.

  ‘And what are you doing?’ I asked in my warmest voice.

  ‘Takin’ a shufty to see if maybe there are some jewels in these safe-deposit boxes.’

  ‘Oh, that is what you are doing. You shoulda asked me.’

  ‘I can do it myself.’ Surly and cocksure.

  ‘Yes, but I can do it without setting off the silent alarm to the police station.’ Cold and angry. ‘As you have just done.’