The Stainless Steel Rat

It was a humiliating but true fact that she had outmaneuvered me all the way down the line. She had stolen the battleship from under my nose, torn a wide swath through galactic shipping, then escaped neatly right under my gun. What made the situation most embarrassing was that she had set a trap for me—when I thought I was hunting her. Hindsight is a great revealer of obviousities and this one was painfully clear now. While escaping from the captured battleship she had not been hysterical in the slightest. That role had been feigned. She had been studying me, every bit of my face that could be seen, every intonation of my voice. Hatred had seared my picture in her memory, and while escaping she must have considered constantly how I would be thinking when I followed her. At the safest and least obvious spot in her flight she had stopped—and waited. Knowing I would come and knowing that she would be more prepared for the encounter than I was. This was all past history. Now it was my turn to deal the cards.

All kinds of schemes and plans trotted through my head to be weighed and sampled. Top priority—before anything else was attempted—would be a complete physical change for me. This would be necessary if I wanted to catch up with Angelina. It was also required if I were to stay out of the long reach of the Corps. The fact had not been mentioned during my training, but I was fairly sure the only way one left the Special Corps was feet first. Though I was physically down and out there was nothing wrong with the old think box and I put it to use. Facts were needed, and I gave a small endowment to the city library in the form of rental fees. Fortunately there were filmcopies of all the local newspapers available, going back for years. I made the acquaintance of an extremely yellowish journal endearingly called “HOT NEWS!!” Hot News!! aimed at a popular readership—with a vocabulary I estimated at approximately three hundred words—who relished violence in its multiform aspects. Most of the time these were just copter accidents and such, with full color photos of course. But very often there were juicy muggings, sluggings and such which proved the quieting hand of galactic civilization still hadn’t throttled Freibur completely. In among these exaggerated tales of violence lay the murky crime I was searching for.

Mankind has always been capricious in its lawmaking, inventing such intriguingly different terms as manslaughter, justified homicide and such, as if dead wasn’t dead. Though fashions in both crime and sentencing come and go, there is one crime that will always bring universal detestation. That is the crime of being a bungling doctor. I have heard tell that certain savage tribes used to slaughter the physician if his patient died, a system that is not without merit. This single-minded loathing of the butchering quack is understandable. When ill, we deliver ourselves completely into the doctor’s hands. We give a complete stranger the opportunity to toy with that which we value most. If this trust is violated there is naturally a hotness of temper among the witnesses or survivors.

Ordinary-citizen Vulff Siftemitz had formerly been the Highly Esteemed Doctor Siftemitz. Hot News! Explained in overly lavish detail how he had mixed the life of Playboy and Surgeon until finally the knife in his twitching fingers had cut that instead of this and the life of a prominent politician had been shortened by a number of no doubt profitable years. We must give Vulff credit for the fact that he had made an attempt to sober up before going to work, so that it was D.T.’s not drunkenness that caused the fatal twitch. His license was removed and he must have been fined most of his savings since there were later references to his having been involved in more sordid medical affairs. Life had treated Vulff hard and dirty; he was just the man I was looking for. On my first rubber-legged trip out of my room I took the liberty of paying him a professional call.

To a person of my abilities tracking down a pseudo-legal stranger in a foreign city on a far planet presents no problems. Just a matter of technique and I am rich in technique. When I hammered on the stained wooden door in the least-wholesome section of town I was ready to take the first step in my new plan.

“I have some business for you, Vulff,” I told the bleary-eyed stewie who opened the door.

“Get the hell lost,” he said and tried to close the door in my face. My carefully placed shoe prevented this and it took almost no effort at all to push in past him.

“I don’t do any medical work,” he mumbled, looking at my bandaged arm. “Not for police stoolies I don’t, so get the hell lost.”