The Stainless Steel Rat for President

Chapter 26

"How does it look?" I said, leaning out of the car window and calling up to Bolivar who sat on the roof above me with the high-power binoculars.

"They're sealing the loading hatch now, so they should be ready for takeoff soon. Wait—yes—one of the crew has just come down and disconnected the power leads, which means that the ship is on internal power. The ground crew is driving away."

"Perfect. Get into the car and we go into action."

He hit the pavement and bounced into the front seat. Bolivar put the car into motion the instant the door was closed. I sat in the back and admired Angelina, sitting at my side, clearly visible as soon as we had pulled out of the darkness of the hangar into the glare of the spaceport lights.

"You're adorable! I just love your kinky white nurse's outfit. If only you had brought a white whip with you."

"Do you really like it?" she asked, ignoring the crude flagellation funny. "The skirt isn't too short?"

"Very short—and very nice," I said, patting the neat turn of white thigh between skirt and knee. "The idea is to distract these people while we work our will upon them. And you are the most distracting thing on this planet."

"You're not to shabby yourself with that uniform and curly moustache."

I twisted the ends of this hirsute object, then gave the rows of medals on my chest a jingle, "Everyone respects authority. So the more authoritarian you look the more respect you get. All right team, here we are. Operation Medico will now swing into action."

We climbed from the car at the foot of the gangway and I led the way up to the entrance, light gloaming from my high-peaked cap and pristine uniform. Nurse Angelina followed and the boys brought up the rear, white-suited and lugging a great white case. The crewman, on guard at the ship's airlock, gaped in appreciation, then grew resolute and barred our way.

"You can't go in here. Due for takeoff in a couple of minutes." I looked him up and down slowly with the same expression on my face that would have been there if he had just wriggled out from under a flat rock. As a worried look crossed his features I took out a scroll and let it drop open before him. It was covered with fine black and red printing and sealed with a great gold seal. My voice was most stern.

"Do you see this? It is a quarantine document issued by the Board of Health. There is a medical emergency and you will take me to your captain at once. Now—lead the way."

He led. It had really been quite easy. As soon as a turn in the corridor blocked any view he might have had of Bolivar and James, they sealed the airlock behind us. The captain looked up, shocked, when we entered the control room.

"What is going on here! Get out at once…"

"You are Captain Ciego de Avila. I have here a quarantine notice from the Board of Health. Your men must be examined before this ship can leave."

"What are those morons in Primoroso trying to do to me?" he protested. "My schedule, do they ever think of that? I have a launch window coming up in less than thirty minutes."

"You will launch on time, I guarantee you. For our sake as well as yours." How true! "We are trying to contain an outbreak of a rare disease brought here from another planet. Perrotonitis…"

"I've never heard of that."

"That shows you how rare it is. The first symptoms are fever, slavering and growling like a dog. We have reason to believe that one of your crew is infected."

"Which one?"

"That one," I said pointing at the crewman who had led us here. He whinnied and shied away. "Nurse, examine bis throat."

He reluctantly opened his mouth and Angelina pushed down his tongue with a wooden depressor. "His throat is very irritated," she said.

"I'm not sick!" the man wailed, saliva forming at the corners of his mouth as he spoke. He wiped it away with the hot skin of his hand. "Not sick..." he growled—then barked twice.

"He has it!" I shouted. "He'll be wagging his tail next! Grab him men and I'll administer the cure!"

Barking and yapping, with Bolivar hanging from one arm and James from the other, he was immobilized so I could give him the injection. Which not only knocked him out but neutralized the reactive agents that he had absorbed through the mucous membranes in his mouth—put there by the tongue depressor.

"Caught in time," I said, looking down at the unconscious body while I put the hypodermic back into its case. "He will recover after he regains consciousness. Now, Captain, order the rest of your crew here at once for examination. If it is done quickly you will make your launch on time."

It was done quickly. Within five minutes most of the crew had developed symptoms and were stretched unconscious on the deck. It was not by chance that only a skeleton engine and control room crew remained. I nodded approval, then took out a large pistol and pointed it at the captain.

"I am now taking over your ship. Long live the revolution!"

"You can't do this-you're mad!"

"No we are not mad, just incredibly vicious. We represent the Black Friday-afternoon Revolutionary Party and we will kill you to make you free. We fear nothing. You will operate this ship in its normal manner or we will murder your crew one by one until you agree to cooperate."

"You're all nut cases! I'm calling the police…"

He reached for the radio but I moved faster. Seizing him by the arms and spinning him about. "Kill the first one," I called out.

"Freedom and liberty!" Bolivar shouted as he pulled a large butcher knife out from under his jacket. He leaped upon the unconscious figure at the far end of the row, kneeling on the man's chest.

Then he bent forward and cut the man's throat with a single vicious swipe of the sharp knife. There was a gurgling cry as the blood spurted out of the awful wound. It was very realistic.

"Take the body away!" I shouted, and turned back to the captain. If I had been impressed—even though I knew that the flesh-colored apparatus filled with blood had been fixed to the front of the man's neck, that the shriek came from an apparatus in the knife—well, you can imagine the effect this had on the captain. He staggered and the blood drained from his space-tanned face. I had made my point.

There were no problems after that. Both captain and crew cooperated to the best of their ability. We cleared for takeoff with spaceport control and lifted into orbit. As we were jockeying into position near the first satellite, the boys opened the crate and extracted one of the self-powered interrupters. I had been studying the wiring diagram of the satellite and had pinpointed the place where it should be connected. The wire leads were color-coded; there would be no problems. "I'll suit up now," I said.

"Let one of the boys go," Angelina said. "Your ribs aren't healed yet."

"Healed enough to get this job done. There'll be enough work for all of us if we are to install these on every satellite. I want to put the first one in myself in case there are any problems."

"You just want the glory—and the fun of a spacewalk."

"I couldn't agree more. Without a little excitement life would be so dull."

And it was indeed fun. The blue globe of Paraiso-Aqui floated serenely below me, clear and sharp. I admired it briefly, then jetted over to the communication satellite, ducking under the outstretched arms of solar cells and up to the pitted central structure. It was the work of a moment to find the right plate and to swing open the hatch in the thick insulating skin. The carefully constructed cannister slid into the opening, while a few touches of the plasma iron sealed the connecting wires into place.

"Ready for testing," I said into the radio.

"Right, testing now." Nothing was visible since all of the operating mechanisms were solid state and it is not easy to see electrons slipping through circuits. "Works fine. Cuts in and out just like it should."

And so it went. The installation of the interrupter devices was not difficult or time-consuming, but matching orbits was. The ship's computer flashed its little numbers, which were translated into orbital positions, then into firing increments for the jets. The entire job took almost four days to complete and we were all getting more than a bit tired by the end.

"There are dark little satchels under your eyes," Angelina said, pushing the bottle of ron in my direction. "Which in a way rather balances the bloodshot condition of the eyes themselves."

"Well we're just about done. And we can rest when we get back."

We had just eaten so a single little ron should do me no harm. Might even help. It had been an exhausting job, because in addition to the work the crew had to be watched and guarded at all times. The boys looked as tired as I did. Only Angelina, who had labored as hard as any of us, showed no sign of stress. Eternal youth! The ron tasted good.

"I wonder how the election campaign is going?" she asked.

"Slowly, I'm sure. But the marquez is holding the fort and issuing press releases every day-even if no one knows about them. Which situation will change as soon as we get back and put this new system into operation."

"It's still unnerving to be out of touch with things for so long." She poured a tiny ron for herself and sipped it.

"We had no other choice. If the forces of evil knew what we were doing up here they would blast this ship out of the sky. They'll never think that anything is wrong here as long as we stick to routine transmissions, with the radio closed down the rest of the time. What's to worry? The election is still a month away. By election day we will have ninety-nine percent of the voters lined up behind us and it will be a landslide."

"You're right, of course. It must be the fatigue that is putting all these strange fears into my head. After we all have had a bit of rest I'm sure that I'll be all right. I think." She scowled in my direction. "Now don't laugh, Jim diGriz or I'll break both your arms. But I have an intuition that something is very wrong." She looked at me very closely and I fought down any tendency to laugh, giggle or find fault with her in the slightest. In fact I had no such tendency at all. I shook my head and searched the bottom of the ron glass for an answer.

"Don't you laugh either," I said. "But something is bothering me too. The lack of contact I suppose. Though I can't imagine what could possibly go wrong at this time."

"We'll know in a few hours," she said, most practically. "Now get down to the brig and send James up for his food." As she was saying this the spacesuited Bolivar clumped in, his helmet in his hand.

"Done!" he announced. "The last one is in place. Now Harapo has but to speak and the whole world will listen. Dig out that moth-eaten beard again, Dad, because you're going on camera!"

"Best news I ever heard. We're heading home!" The captain, who still thought we were a gang of killers, was immensely relieved when he was asked to compute a landing orbit. Though from the look of fear on his face when I popped the gas capsule under his nose he must have thought it was the end. It wasn't. Just sleep gas to keep them all quiet while we landed the ship. The coded message had been sent and now it was up to me to bring the ship in for what could be a difficult landing.

"I laugh at difficult landings," I muttered as I punched the new coordinates into the computer.

Our orbit brought us out of the night into a golden dawn, down through a thin layer of clouds towards the ground below. Where no spaceport was visible.

"I hope they followed your directions about the hole," Angelina said, scowling attractively into the viewscreen.

"It will be there. We can count upon de Torres."

I was right. The dark mouth of the opening yawned in the middle of the field near the castle. A radio beacon guided us in, but I cut it off when we were two hundred meters up and made the delicate part of the landing myself. Jets flaring, my attention on the radar and lower screens, I dropped the ship down into the immense hole in the ground. We touched with the slightest of bumps and I killed all the power.

"Done," I announced. "When the dummy barn is put over the hole this spaceship will have disappeared. Until after the election. Though the crew will not have their freedom I am sure they will appreciate the hospitality here."

We were climbing up to the bow port while I talked. It swung open at the touch of a button and sunlight streamed in. A construction crane was just swinging a gangway into place so we could make a graceful exit. We strolled across it to greet the marquez himself, who was waiting at the far end. But instead of joy and welcome his face was a study in darkest gloom.

"It is terrible," he said. "A painful tragedy. The end is upon us."

Angelina and I exchanged a single glance. Had our premonitions of doom been right? "What's wrong?" I asked.

"You wouldn't know, you were out of touch. All the work—wasted, ruined!"

"You wouldn't like to tell me why?" I grated through clenched teeth.

"The election. Zapilote has declared a state of emergency and changed the date. It is taking place tomorrow morning. There is nothing we can possibly do in the little time remaining. He is sure to be re-elected again."