The Stainless Steel Rat for President

"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 ghip 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 wa[itf*fl riiinf"rl "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."

Chapter 27

If you're holding your breath, why then a day is a long time. But if you are trying to fix an election, then a day is no time at all. And a day was ail that we had left.

It is hard to admit defeat, particularly for one like myself who, if you will excuse me saying so, has never been defeated. Nor was I going to be this time!

"It won't work!" I announced loudly. "That putrid politico is not getting away with it. " They stood in awe of this statement, so forcefully and firmly declared. It was only after some hesitation that Bolivar asked the all-important question. "How are you going to stop him?" How indeed? I hadn't the slightest idea.

"That will be revealed tomorrow. It takes a bigger man than Zapilote to put the skids under Slippery Jim diGriz." I turned and marched resolutely away before there were any more embarrassing questions. What was I going to do? That vital question flickered about in my frontal lobes, and occasionally dropped into my temporal lobe, and once even into my cerebellum, without producing an answer. I returned to our suite where I bathed in perfumed water and scrubbed myself until every pore gleamed. Then I shaved, and brushed my teeth, took an upper-then a downer to get myself off the ceiling-and still no answer was forthcoming. As a last resort I tucked into a healthy breakfast, then washed it down with countless cups of black coffee. Followed by even more coffee laced with ancient ron. The results were no better.

"Face it, Jim," I said, sitting on the balcony and staring out at the view, "you have lost the election." It was almost a relief to come to that conclusion. It cleared the air. He who fights and pulls his freight, lives to fight another date. Count your losses and get out. Lick your wounds-then return. Because there was just no way that the 151 planet-wide election system could be fixed in a single day. As things stood now it really didn't matter how many people voted for Harapo. Their votes went in one end of the crooked voting machines and votes for Zapilote came out the other.