The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You

back the formula and, after a certain amount of lethal experimentation, had learned to produce a potable imitation. I wrapped my lips around the helmet drinking tube and poted. Good indeed. I admired the brilliant stars, the nearby satellite, recited poetry to myself and the hours flew by.

Just five minutes before the important event was to happen, I was aware of a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see another spacesuited figure floating nearby. Seated on a two-meter-long rocket- shaped object. I whipped out my pistol, I had insisted on bringing it since I had no idea what I would be facing, and pointed it at the newcomer.

“Keep your hands in sight and turn so I can see you. This gun is loaded with explosive shells.”

“Put it away, stupid,” the other said back still turned to me while he worked on the control panel of the rocket. “If you don’t know who I am no one does.”

“Me!” I said, trying not to gape.

“No, I. Me is you, or some such. Grammar isn’t up to this kind of thing. The gun, blockhead!”

I closed my jaw with a clack and slid the pistol back into its holster.

“Would you mind explaining?”

“I had better since you, or I, didn’t have enough brains to think of this in the first place so a second trip had to be made. To bring this spacewarp leech along.” He looked at his watch, or I looked at my watch or something like that, then he (I?) pointed. “Keep the eyes peeled—this is really going to be good.”

It was. Space beyond the satellite was empty—then an instant later it wasn’t. Something large, very large, appeared and hurtled toward the satellite. I was aware of a dark, knobbed, elongated form, that suddenly split open in the front. The opening was immense, glowing with a hellish light, gaping like a planet-consuming mouth lined with pinnacles of teeth.

“The teeth!” my radio crackled loudly, the single message from the lost—or to-be- lost satellite, then the great mouth was chomping shut and the station vanished from sight in the instant. A streak of fire seared my vision and the white form of the spacewarp leech hurled itself forward at the attacker. None too soon, because there was the sudden shimmer of an operating warp field about the giant shape—then it was gone again.

“What was it?” I gasped.

“How do I know,” I said. “And if I did I wouldn’t tell you. Now get back so I can get back or you can, I mean— the hell with it. Move.”

“Don’t bully,” I muttered. “I don’t think I should talk to myself this way.” I triggered the switch on the case of the return time-helix. And, uncomfortably, returned.

“What did you find out?” Inskipp asked as soon as my helmet was opened.

“Mainly that I have to go back a second time. Order up a spacewarp leech and I’ll be happy to explain.” I decided against going to the trouble of getting out of the suit and putting it on again. So I leaned against the wall and took a long drag on my bourbon pacifier. Inskipp sniffed the air loudly.

“Are you boozing on the job?”

“Of course. It is one of the things that makes the work bearable. Now, kindly shut and listen. Something really big appeared out of warpspace, just seconds away from the satellite. A neat bit of navigation that I did not think was possible but which obviously is. Whatever it was opened its shining mouth, all lined with teeth, and swallowed the admirals, space stations and all…”

“It’s the drink, I knew it!”

“No it’s not and I can prove it because my camera was going all the time. Then, as soon as the thing had had lunch, it zipped back into warpdrive and was gone.”

“We must get a spacewarp leech onto it.”

“That’s just what I told myself who came back with said object and launched it in the right direction.” Right on cue the leech was rolled in. “Great. Come on, Coypu, get me and this thing back to five minutes before zero hour and I will be able to get out of this suit. By the way, you were an hour out in my first arrival and I expect better timing on this run.”

Coypu muttered over the recalibration, set dials to his satisfaction, I grabbed onto the long white form of the leech and off I went again. The scenario was the same as the first time, only from a different point of view. By the time I had returned from the second trip I had had enough of time travel and wanted nothing more than a large meal with a small bottle of wine and a soft bed for afters. I got all of these, including more than enough time to enjoy them, for almost a week went by before a report came in about the spacewarp leech. I was with Inskipp when the message arrived and he did a certain amount of eye-boggling and squinting at the sheet as if rereading would change it.

“This is impossible,” he finally said.

“That’s what I like about you, Inskipp, ever the optimist.” I plucked the message from his soggy fingers and read it myself, then checked the coordinates on the chart behind his desk. He was right. Almost.

The spacewarp leech had done its job well. I had fired the thing off in time and it had homed on the satellite gobbler and attached itself to whatever the thing was. They had zipped off together into warpspace where the leech simply held on until emerging into normal space again. Even if there had been multiple jumps the leech was programmed to stay close until it either detected atmosphere or the mass of a planet or a space station. At which point it had come unglued and drifted away; it was wholly nonmetallic and virtually undetectable. Once it had arrived it used chemical rockets to leave the vicinity of its arrival while it checked for a League beacon. As soon as it found the nearest one it had warped there and announced its arrival. Needless to say it had taken photographs in all directions when it arrived at its original target area. At that point the computers chortled over the star sights and determined the point in space from which they had been taken. Only this time the answer they came up with was impossible.

“Or very improbable,” I said, tapping the chart. “But if the location is correct I have the nasty feeling we are in for some trouble.”

“You don’t think it was just a coincidence that it was the admirals who got kidnapped?”

“Ha-ha.”

“Yes, I thought you would say that.”

To understand our problem you have to ponder the physical nature of our galaxy for a moment. Yes, I know it’s boring stuff, and best left for the astrophysicists and other dull sods who enjoy this sort of thing. But explanation is necessary. It if helps, think of the galaxy as being shaped like a starfish. It isn’t really, but that’s good enough for this kind of simplistic stuff. The legs and center of the starfish are groups of stars, with some other stars in between the legs, along with space gas and random molecules and such. Hope I haven’t lost you because I know I’m confusing myself. Anyway, all of the League stars are situated in one arm right up at the top there, sticking straight up. A few other surveyed suns are near the hub and a scattered few more in the arms to the left and right. Got that? Okay. Now it seems that our toothy satellitenapper had come from the way down in the lower left leg.

Well why not, you might say, it’s all part of the same galaxy. Well, aha, I say right back. But it is a part of the galaxy we have never been to, have never contacted, have never explored. There are no inhabited planets way down there.

Inhabited by human beings, that is. In all the thousands of years that mankind has been hurtling around the galaxy we have never found another intelligent life form. We have found traces of long-vanished civilizations, but millions of years separate us from them. During the days of colonial expansion, the Stellar Empire, the Feudal Follies and such bits of nonsense, ships went off in all directions. Then came the Breakdown and the bustup of communications for many thousands of years. We are coming out of that now. Contacting planets in all states of civilization—or lack of it. But we’re not expanding. Maybe we will again, someday, but meanwhile the League is busy picking up the pieces from the first expansion.

Except now there is a new ball game.

“What are you going to do?” Inskipp asked.

“Me? I’m going to do nothing except watch you issue orders to investigate this interesting situation.”

“Right. This is order one. You, diGriz, get out there and investigate.”

“I’m overworked. You have the resources of a thousand planets to draw upon, entire navies, albeit minus the admirals usually in charge, agents galore. Use some of them for a change.”