The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You

an arc through the air, twenty meters or more. Graceful too. Landing with a horrible crunch that set my shock absorbers groaning. Dropping down crash onto the secretary’s desk which crushed nicely. Paws extended so that my claws sank through the secretary’s damp black hide. Picking him up and waving him about as he writhed and shouted.

“You’re mad. Let me down! I’m no more human than you are!”

That was what made my mind up. Up until this moment it had all been guesswork. The gray men were here, they must be disguised, and the only four-limbed creature other than myself was the secretary. In the position of power to run things, the only really organized alien I had yet encountered. But it was still just guesswork until he had spoken. Roaring with victory I hooked a recently sharpened claw into the front of his throat.

Dark liquid spurted out and he screamed hoarsely.

I gulped and almost hesitated. Was I wrong? Was I going to dismember the secretary of the War Council right in front of the council itself? I had a feeling they would not take that too well. No! It was for only a microsecond that I hesitated—then I tore on. I had to be right. I ripped out his throat, delicately sliced all around his neck—then tore his head off.

There was a shocked silence as the head bounced and squashed on the floor. Then a gasp from all sides. Inside the first head there was another head. A small, pallid, scowling human head. The secretary was a gray man.

While the council was shocked into immobility the gray man was not. He pulled a gun from a gill slit and leveled it at me. Which of course I had been expecting and I brushed it aside. I was not as quick when he grabbed out a microphone from his other gill and began shouting into it in a strange language.

I wasn’t as fast because this was just what I wanted him to do. I gave him more than enough time to get out the message before I grabbed away the microphone. Then he kicked out and got me in the stomach and I folded, gasping and unmoving as he vanished through a trapdoor in the floor.

Recovering quickly I waved away all offers of aid.

“Care not for me,” I croaked, “for the blow was mortal. Avenge me! Send out the alarm to grab all the other black ploppies like the secretary. Let none escape! Go now!”

They went, and I had to roll aside before I was trampled in the rush. Then I thrashed and expired, in case anyone was watching, and peeked through one half-closed eyelid until they were all gone.

Only then did I blow open the locked trapdoor and follow the gray man.

How could I follow him? it might be asked, and I will be happy to answer. During the struggle I had stuck a little neutrino generator into his artificial hide, that is how. A zippy neutrino can pass, undeflected and unstopped, through the entire mass of a planet. The metal of this city’s construction would surely not interfere with them in the slightest. Need I add that I had a directional neutrino detector built into my snout? I never go on a mission without a few simple preparations.

The illuminated needle pointed that way, and down. I went that way, and down at the first stairwell, because I wanted to find out just what the gray men were doing on this planet. My fleeing secretary would lead me to their lair.

He did one better than that. He led me to their ship.

When I saw light ahead I treaded more slowly, then peered from the darkness of the tunnel at a great domed chamber. In the center was a dark gray spacer. While from all sides the gray men were appearing. Some running, undisguised, others still hopping and splotching in their alien garb. Rats leaving a sinking ship. All my doing. The confusion across the planet would now be at its height—and the admirals would be rescued. All working according to plan.

Though I hadn’t thought to find their ship. From the look of it they were making a hasty withdrawal, and this was too good an opportunity to miss. How could they be traced? There were machines that could be attached to make following the ship easy but, just for a change, I didn’t have one on me. An oversight. Particularly since the smallest weighed about ninety kilos. So what could I do?

My mind was made up for me when the metal net dropped and they swarmed all over me.

I was fighting, and doing well, when someone started on my head with a metal bar. I couldn’t move it away and the alien head got crushed in.

Mine, too, an instant later.

Ten

I woke up, gasping for air, muffled, trapped, blind. With the super headache of all time. Where I was, what had happened—I had no idea. I thrashed and writhed ineffectually until it made my head hurt more and I had to stop.

Little by little I dropped the mad-panic approach and tried to figure out what the situation was. First off, I wasn’t really choking to death, it was just the soft fabric over my head that had made me feel that way. If I lifted my face and turned it I could breathe all right.

So what had happened? Through the waves of skull pain, memory finally returned. The gray men! They had trapped me in a net, then beat on my head until I had stopped moving. After that, blackout. What after that? Where did they have me?

It was only when I had tiptoed this far down memory lane that I realized where I was. I had been bashed and caught in my alien disguise. Apparently I was still bashed and caught in it. My arms were secured inside the mechanical arms, but by careful wriggling—and ignoring the effect this had on my head—I managed to get my right arm free and back inside the suit. With this I pulled the folds of plastic from in front of my face and realized that my head had slipped down inside the neck of the disguise. By wriggling and pushing even more I got my head further up near the optic unit and looked out at a metal floor. Very revealing. I tried moving my other arm and my legs but they twitched, nothing more. It was all very confusing and I was thirsty and sore and the aching head was still there.

Some bit of keen foresight had caused me to install a small spare tank next to the main water one. I found the nozzle for the water, drank all I needed, then threw the switch with my tongue that changed the liquid supply over to life-sustaining 110 proof whiskey. This woke me up quickly enough and, if it did nothing for the hammers in my head, it at least enabled me to ignore them a bit more easily. If I couldn’t move very much, at least I should be able to manipulate the eye controls. With some difficulty I got the one out on the stalk functioning and turned it around in a circle.

Interesting indeed. I very quickly saw that the reason I could not move was because heavy chains secured me solidly to the steel floor. They had been welded into place so there was little chance of escape. The room I was in was small and featureless, except for the rust on the metal and the fact that the ceiling was curved, concave. This reminded me of something and another suck at the whiskey unearthed the fact.

Spaceship. I was inside a spaceship. The spaceship I had seen just before the lights went out. The gray men’s ship and, undoubtedly, no longer grounded but in space and on the way somewhere. I had a good idea just where but I did not want to think about that depressing thought just yet. There was an unsolved question that had to be answered first. Why had they secured me inside my disguise?

“Because, dummy, they didn’t know it was a disguise!” I shouted. And instantly regretted it since my head echoed like a drum.

But it had to be true. The alien outfit was a good one designed to bear the closest inspection. They had jumped me and knocked me out. At no time had they any clue that I was other than what I pretended to be—just one more alien ugly. And they must have been in a big hurry; the crude welds that held the chain showed that. They had to leave the war planet before a couple of million slimy monsters dropped on them and ate them. Pack me aboard, weld me into place, blast off for an unknown destination, then take care of me later.

“Whoopee!” I shouted in the tiniest whisper. Then went to work to get out of the disguise.

It was a hard wriggle but I made it, crawling out through the open neck like a newborn moth from a chrysalis. I stretched and cracked my joints and felt much better. Better still when I had abstracted my needle gun from the disguise. Now, standing on the metal deck, I could feel the slight vibration of the drive. We were in space and going somewhere. Free of my chains, with a sturdy gun in my hand, I could face the fact I had ignored earlier. The odds