Stainless Steel Visions

He wielded a wicked needle. I swear the point hit bone a couple of times. With aching arms I stumbled around looking for my room, got lost, got put right by passing attendants, finally found it. The door locked when I closed it and a few minutes later the lights began to dim. I fumbled off my clothes, fumbled on the sickly orange pajamas, dropped onto the bed, and was just pulling up the covers when the lights went out.

This was it. End of the line. Purgy. The purgatory before hell. Fed and healed to make the stay that much longer. The sentence with only one end.

Oh yeah! I said silently to myself, and permitted a wide grin to brush my lips under the cover of the blankets. My back itched under the transparent plastic patches and I scratched them happily. They were invisible to the eye, but coated with a lead-antimony alloy that blocked X rays. I had gambled on the fact that this place would not have expensive tomographs or such — and had won. On the two-dimensional X-ray plates the plastic patches on my legs looked like metal pins, on my skull dark staples. They had done their job, would dissolve and vanish the next time I washed.

I had done it! The first part of this operation was complete. Finding out about this hospital-prison had been the hardest part. It took a lot of risky work getting into planetary-government files before I managed to track it down. Risky but interesting. Guiding the twins in their successful semilegal careers had kept Angelina and me pretty busy. Now that they were successful, and rich I must add, we had been enjoying what might be called semiretirement. This suited Angelina quite well since she was happy with all those pleasure planets and luxury cruises. I, as you might very well imagine, loathed it. If I hadn't been able to polish off the occasional bank or lift a lucrative space yacht I might have gone around the twist. But it wasn't real work. Then this wonderful opportunity had revealed itself. A tiny item in the nightly news. I printed it out and brought it to Angelina. She read it swiftly, put it down in silence.

"We ought to do something," I had said.

"No" was her quick response.

"I think we owe him something — or at least you do."

"Nonsense. A grown man makes his own decisions."

"Yes, of course. I still want to find out where they have sent him."

When I had tracked him down and discovered the secret location of Terminal Penitentiary, I told Angelina of my plan. Her eyes narrowed as I spoke, her face grew grim. When I had finished speaking she nodded slowly.

"Do it, Jim. It is dangerous and looks suicidal — but you are probably the only man in the galaxy who could pull it off. With my help, of course."

"Of course. Your first task will be to find a bent but professionally competent doctor."

"Not a problem. Did you ever hear of a doctor — or a lawyer — bent or not, who could resist the continual flutter of bank notes onto a tabletop?"

"Now that you mention it — no. How is our expense account?"

"Running a little low. We could use a few million more. Why don't you knock off a really juicy bank while I line up the medic."

"Music to my ears."

But almost a year went by before the preparations were complete. There would be no rushing in, guessing or taking chances. Because if every detail were not worked out to the last decimal point I was going to be spending an awful lot of time behind bars.

Angelina came to pick me up at the clinic — and recoiled in horror.

"Jim — you look awful!"

"Thank you. It was quite an effort. Losing weight was easy enough, as well as skin aging, hair dyeing, all the usual things. It's the muscles I miss the most."

"Me too. Your gorgeous figure—"

"Wasted away with enzymes. No choice. If I am going to pass for an ancient crock I have to look like one. Don't worry, a few months of bodybuilding when this is over and I'll be as good as new."

A tear glistened in her eyes and she gave me a warm hug. "And you're doing this for me."

"Of course. But for him as well — and for Jim diGriz so I can look at myself in the mirror. Not that I really want to just now."

And that had been that. Pulling off an inept jewel robbery and getting nicked had been the easy part. I just made sure that the crime was committed on Heliotrope-2, the site of the original news report that had started this entire thing rolling.

It had rolled well. Here I was in Purgy and I had one week to acquaint myself with the layout, the alarms and videoscanners, before the operation went into phase two. It was time well spent. At breakfast next morning I looked around at all the bald heads and gray polls of my fellow inmates and found him at once. And stayed away. Time enough to renew an old acquaintance at the proper moment. As I spooned up the purple gruel I took everything in. And started with surprise.