The Stainless Steel Rat ssr-1 Page 5

  “But admiral… the hour!Everyone will be asleep…”

  I just growled, but it was enough. Rocca caught the idea from my expression and grabbed the car phone. The office doors were open when we got there.

  Normally I curse the paper tangles of bureaucracy, but this was one time when I blessed them all. These people had it down to a fine science. Not a rivet fell, but that its fall was noted—in quintuplicate. And later followed up with a memo, rivet, wastage,query. The facts I needed were all neatly tucked away in their paper catacombs. All I had to do was sniff them out. I didn’t try to look for firstcauses,this would have taken too long. Instead I concentrated my attention on the recent modifications, like the gun turret, that would quickly give me a trail to the guilty parties.

  Once the clerks understood what I had in mind they buried themselves into their work, urged on by the fires of patriotism and the burning voices of their superiors. All I had to do was suggest a line of search and the relevant documents would begin appearing at once.

  Bit by bit a pattern started to emerge.A delicate web-work of forgery, bribery, chicanery and falsehood.It could only have been conceived by a mind as brilliantly crooked as my own. I chewed my lip with jealousy. Like all great ideas, this one was basically simple.

  A party or parties unknown had neatly warped the ship construction program to their own ends. Undoubtedly they had started the program for the gianttransport, thatwould have to be checked later. And once the program was underway, it had been guided with a skill that bordered on genius. Orders were originated in many places, passed on, changed and shuffled. I painfully traced each one to its source. Many times the source was a forgery. Some changes seemed to be unexplainable, until I noticed the officers in question had a temporary secretary while their normal assistants were ill. All the girls had had food poisoning, a regular epidemic it seemed. Each of them in turn had been replaced by the same girl. She stayed just long enough in each position to see that the battleship plan moved forward one more notch.

  This girl was obviously the assistant to the Mastermind who originated the scheme. He sat in the center of the plot, like a spider on its web pulling the strings that set things into motion. My first thought that a gang was involved proved wrong. All my secondary suspects turned out to be simple forgeries, not individuals. In the few cases where forgery wasn’t adequate, my mysterious X had apparently hired himself to do the job. X himself had the permanent job of Assistant Engineering Designer. One by one the untangled threads ran to this office. He also had a secretary whose “illnesses” coincided with her employment in other offices.

  When I straightened up from my desk the ache in my back stabbed like a hot wire. I swallowed a painkiller and looked around at my drooping, sack-eyed assistants who had shared the sleepless seventy-two hour task. They sat or slumped against the furniture, waiting for my conclusions. Even President Ferraro was there, his hair looking scraggly where he had pulled out handfuls.

  “You’ve found them, the criminal ring?” he asked, his fingers groping over his scalp for a fresh hold.

  “I have found them, yes,” I said hoarsely.“But not a criminal ring.An inspired master criminal—who apparently has more executive ability in one ear lobe than all your bribe-bloated bureaucrats—and his female assistant. They pulled the entire job by themselves. His name, or undoubtedly pseudonym, is Pepe Nero. The girl is called Angelina…”

  “Arrest them at once! Guards… guards—“ Ferraro’svoice died away as he ran out of the room. I talked to his vanishing back.

  “That is just what we intend to do, but it’s a little difficult at the moment since they are the ones who not only built the battleship, but undoubtedly stole it as well. It was fully automated so no crew is necessary.”

  “What do you plan to do?” one of the clerks asked.

  “I shall do nothing,” I told him, with the snapped precision of an old space veteran. “The League fleet is already closing in on the renegades and you will be informed of the capture. Thank you for your assistance.”

  Chapter 6

  I threw them as snappy a salute as I could muster and they filed out. Staring gloomily at their backs I envied for one moment their simple faith in the League Navy. When in reality the vengeful fleet was just as imaginary as my admiral’s rating. This was still a job for the Corps. Inskipp would have to be given the latest information at once. I had sent him a psigram about the theft, but there was no answer as yet. Maybe the identity of the thieves would stir some response out of him.

  My message was in code, but it could be quickly broken if someone wanted to try hard enough. I took it to the message center myself. The psiman was in his transparent cubicle and I locked myself in with him. His eyes were unfocused as he spoke softly into a mike, pulling in a message from somewhere across the galaxy. Outside the rushing transcribers copied, coded and filed messages, but no sound penetrated the insulated wall. I waited until his attention clicked back into the room, and handed him the sheets of paper.

  “League Central 14—rush,” I told him.

  He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t ask any questions. Establishing contact only took a few seconds, as they had an entire battery of psimen for their communications. He read the code words carefully, shaping them with his mouth but not speaking aloud, the power of his thoughts carrying across the light-years of distance. As soon as he was finished I took back the sheet, tore it up and pocketed the pieces.

  I had my answer back quicklyenough,Inskipp must have been hovering around waiting for my message. The mike was turned off to the transcribers outside, and I took the code groups down in shorthand myself.

  “…xybb dfil fdno, and if you don’t—don’t come back!”

  The message broke into clear at the end and the psiman smiled as he spoke the words. I broke the point off my stylus and growled at him not to repeat any of thismessage, as it was classified, and I would personally see him shot if he did. That got rid of the smile, but didn’t make me feel any better.

  The decoded message turned out not to be as bad as I had imagined. Until further notice I was in charge of tracking and capturing the stolen battleship. I could call on the League for any aid I needed. I would keep my identity as an admiral for the rest of the job. I was to keep him informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my happiness from being complete.

  I had been handed my long-awaited assignment. But translated into simple terms my orders were to get the battleship, or it would be my neck.Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place.This is a heartless world we live in.

  This moment of self-pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed. Since my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well asleep.

  And waiting was all I could do. Of course there were secondary tasks, such as ordering a Naval cruiser for my own use, and digging for more information on the thieves, but these really were secondary to my main purpose.Which was waiting for bad news.There was no place I could go that would be better situated for the chase than Cittanuvo. The missing ship could have gone in any direction. With each passing minute the sphere of probable locations grew larger by the power of the squared cube. I kept the on-watch crew of the cruiser at duty stations and confined the rest within a one hundred-yard radius of the ship.

  There was little more information on Pepe andAngelina,they had covered their tracks well. Their backgrounds were unknown, though the fact they both talked with a slight accent suggested an off-world origin. There was one dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be a happy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meager findings, controlled my impatience, and kept the ship’s psiman busy pulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. The navigator and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing the positions in relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all the possible locations of the stolen ship. Some of the disasters and apparent accidents hit inside this area, but further investigation proved them all to
have natural causes.

  I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the danger area were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from a deep sleep, turning on the light and handing me the slip of paper. I blinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the action station alarm over my bunk. I’ll saythis,the Navy boys know their business. When the sirens screamed, the crew secured ship and blasted off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballs un-squashed back into focus I read it through, then once more carefully from the beginning.

  It looked like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnesses to the tragedy, but a number of monitor stations had picked up the discharge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation had led investigators to the spot where they found a freighter, Ogget’s Dream, with a hole punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. The freighter’s cargo of plutonium was gone.

  I read Pepe in every line of the message. Since he was flying an undermanned battleship, he had used it in the most efficient way possible. If he attempted to negotiate or threaten another ship, the element of chance would be introduced. So he had simply roared up to the unsuspecting freighter and blasted her with the monster guns his battleship packed. All eighteen men aboard had been killed instantly. The thieves were also murderers.

  I was under pressure now to act.And under a greater pressure not to make any mistakes.Roly-poly Pepe had shown himself to be a ruthless killer. He knew what he wanted—then reached out and took it.Destroying anyone who stood in his way.More people would die before this was over; it was up to me to keep that number as small as possible.

  Ideally I should have rushed out the fleet with guns blazing and dragged him to justice. Very nice, and I wished it could be done that way. Except where was he? A battleship may be gigantic on some terms of reference, but in the immensity of the galaxy it is microscopically infinitesimal. As long as it stayed out of the regular lanes of commerce, and clear of detector stations and planets, it would never be found.

  Then how could I find it—and having found it, catch it? When the infernal thing was more than a match for any ship it might meet. That was my problem. It had kept me awake nights and talking to myself days, since there was no easy answer.

  I had to construct a solution, slowly and carefully. Since I couldn’t be sure where Pepe was going to be next, I had to make him go where I wanted him to.

  There were some things in my favor. The most important was the fact I had forced him to make his play before he was absolutely ready. It wasn’t chance that he had left the same day I arrived on Cittanuvo. Any plan as elaborate as his certainly included warning of approaching danger. The drive on the battleship, as well as controls and primary armament had been installed weeks before I showed up. Much of the subsidiary work remained to be done when the ship had left. One witness of the theft had graphically described the power lines and cables dangling from the ship’s locks when she lifted.

  My arrival had forced Pepe off balance. Now I had to keep pushing until he fell. This meant I had to think as he did, fall into his plan, think ahead—then trap him. Set a thief to catch a thief. A great theory, only I felt uncomfortably on the spot when I tried to put it into practice.

  A drink helped, as did a cigar.Puffing on it, staring at the smooth bulkhead, relaxed me a bit.After all—there aren’t that many things you can do with a battleship. You can’t run a big con, blow safes or make burmedex with it. It is hell-on-jets for space piracy, but that’s about all.

  “Great, great—but why a battleship?”

  I was talking to myself, normally a bad sign, but right now I didn’t care. The mood of space piracy had seized me and I had been going along fine. Until this glaring inconsistency jumped out and hit me square in the eye.

  Why a battleship? Why all the trouble and years of work to get a ship that two people could just barely manage? With a tenth of the effort Pepe could have had a cruiser that would have suited his purposes just as well.

  Just as good for space piracy, that is—but not for his purposes. He had wanted a battleship, and he had gotten himself a battleship.Which meant he had more in mind than simple piracy.What? It was obvious that Pepe was a monomaniac, an egomaniac, and as psychotic as a shorted computer. Some day the mystery of how he had slipped through the screen of official testing would have to be investigated. That wasn’t my concern now. He still had to be caught.

  A plan was beginning to take shape in my head, but I didn’t rush it. First I had to be sure that I knew him well. Any man that can con an entire world into building a battleship for him—then steal it from them—is not going to stop there. The ship would need a crew, a base for refueling and a mission.

  Fuel had been taken care offirst,the gutted hull of Ogget’s Dream was silent witness to that. There were countless planets that could be used as a base. Getting a crew would be more difficult in these peaceful times, although I could think of a few answers to that one, too. Raid the mental hospitals and jails. Do that often enough and you would have a crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was, of course, too mean an ambition to ascribe to this boy. Did he want to rule a whole planet—or maybe an entire system?Or more?I shuddered a bit as the thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a plan like this once it got rolling? During the Kingly Wars any number of types with a couple of ships and less brains than Pepe had set up just this kind of empire. They were all pulled down in the end, since their success depended on one-man rule. But the price that had to be paid first!

  This was the plan and I felt in my bones that I was right. I might be wrong on some of the minor details, they weren’t important. I knew the general outline of the idea, just as when I bumped into a mark I knew how much he could be taken for, and just how to do it. There are natural laws in crime as in every other field of human endeavor. I knew this was it.

  “Get the Communications Officer in here at once,” I shouted at the intercom.“Also a couple of clerks with transcribers.And fast—this is a matter of life or death!” This last had a hollow ring, and I realized my enthusiasm had carried me out of character. I buttoned my collar, straightened my ribbons and squared my shoulders. By the time they knocked on the door I was all admiral again.

  Acting on my orders the ship dropped out of warpdrive so our psiman could get through to the other operators. Captain Steng grumbled as we floated there with the engines silent, wasting precious days, while half his crew was involved in getting out what appeared to be insane instructions. My plan was beyond his understanding.Which is, of course, why he is a captain and I’m an admiral, even a temporary one.

  Following my orders, the navigator again constructed a sphere of speculation in his tank. The surface of the sphere contacted all the star systems a day’s flight ahead of the maximum flight of the stolen battleship. There weren’t too many of these at first and the psiman could handle them all, calling each in turn and sending news releases to the Naval Public Relations officers there. As the sphere kept growing he started to drop behind, steadily losing ground. By this time I had a general release prepared, along with directions for use and follow-up, which he sent to Central 14. The battery of psimen there contacted the individual planets and all we had to do was keep adding to the list of planets.

  The release and follow-ups all harped on one theme. I expanded on it, waxed enthusiastic, condemned it, and worked it into an interview. I wrote as many variations as I could, so it could be slipped into as many different formats as possible. In one form or another I wanted the basic information in every magazine, newspaper and journal inside that expanding sphere.

  “What in the devil does this nonsense mean”“ CaptainSteng asked peevishly. He had long since given up the entire operation as a futile one, and spent most of the time in his cabin worrying about the effect of it on his service record. Boredom or curiosity had driven him out, and he was reading one of my releases with horror.

  “Billionaire to found
own world… space yacht filled with luxuries to last a hundred years,” the captain’s face grew red as he flipped through the stack of notes—“What connection does this tripe have with catching those murderers?”

  When we were alone he was anything but courteous to me, having assuredhimselfby not-too-subtle questioning that I was a spurious admiral. There was no doubt I was still in charge, but our relationship was anything but formal.

  “This tripe and nonsense,” I told him, “is the bait that will snag our fish.A trap for Pepe and his partner in crime.”

  “Who is this mysterious billionaire?”

  “Me,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to be rich.”

  “But this ship, the space yacht, where is it?”

  “Being built now in the naval shipyard at Udrydde.We’re almost ready to go there now, soon as this batch of instructions goes out.” Captain Steng dropped the releases onto the table,thencarefully wiped his hands off to remove any possible infection. He was trying to be fair and considerate of my views, and not succeeding in the slightest.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he growled. “How can you be sure this killer will ever read one of thesethings.And if he does—why should he be interested? It looks to me as if you are wasting time while he slips through your fingers. The alarm should be out and every ship notified. The Navy alerted and patrols set on all lanes—”

  “Which he could easily avoid by going around, or better yet not even bother about, since he can lick any ship we have. That’s not the answer,” I told him. “This Pepe is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That’s his strength—and his weakness as well. Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them.Which is what I’m going to do.”

  “Modest, aren’t you,” Steng said.

  “I try not to be,” I told him. “False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent. I’m going to catch this thug and I’ll tell you how I’ll do it. He’s going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be some kind of a periodical with my plant in it. Whatever else he is after, he is going to take all of the magazines and papers he can find. Partly to satisfy his own ego, but mostly to keep track of the things he is interested in.Such as ship sailings.”