The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge

As soon as we had landed and our baggage had been disgorged, a robocab took us to the Dosadan-GIup Robotnik. This was the local branch of a planet-wide chain of hotels that specialized in non-human service. Everything was mechanized and computerized. Human beings presumably visited them once in a while to check the gauges and empty the tills, but I had never seen one although I had used these hotels quite often, for many obvious reasons. I had occasionally seen other guests entering or leaving but we had avoided each other's gaze like plague carriers. The Robotniks were islands of privacy in a sea of staring eyes. They had certain drawbacks, but I had long since learned to cope with these. To the Robotnik we went.

The front door opened automatically when we approached and a sort of motorized-dolly robot slipped out of its kennel and sang to us.

"World famous since the day we opened,

The Dosadan-GIup Robotnik welcomes you.

I am here to take your luggage —

Order me and I'll help you!"

This was sung in a rich contralto voice to the accompaniment of a 200 piece brass band; a standard recording of all the Robotnik hotels. I hated it. I kicked the robot back, it was pressing close to our ankles, and pointed to the robocab.

"Luggage. There. Five pieces. Fetch."

It hummed away and plunged eager tentacles into the cab. We entered the hotel.

"Don't we have four pieces luggage?" Vaska asked, frowning those beetling eyebrows in thought.

"You're right, I must have miscounted." The luggage robot caught up and passed us, with our suitcases and the back seat torn out of the cab. "We have five now."

"Good evening… gentlemen," the robot at the desk murmured, with a certain hesitation before the final word as it counted us and compared profiles in its memory bank. "How may we serve you?"

"The best suite in the house," I said as I signed a fictitious name and address and began to feed 100 boginje bills into the pay slot on the desk. Cash in advance was the rule at the Robotnik with any balance returned upon departure. A bellboy robot, armed with a key, rolled out and showed us the way, throwing the door wide with a blare of recorded trumpets as though it were announcing the second coming.

"Very nice," I said and pressed the button labeled ftp on its chest which automatically deducted two boginjes from my credit balance.

"Order us some drinks and food," I told the flight-major, pointing to the menu built into the wall. "Anything you wish as long as there are steaks and champagne."

He liked that idea and he was busily punching buttons while I arranged the luggage. I also had a bug-detector strapped to my wrist which led me unerringly to the single optic-sonic bug. It was in the same place as every other one I had found, these hotels really were standardized, and I managed to move a chair in front of it when I opened my suitcase.

The delivery door dilated and champagne and chilled glasses slid out. Vaska was still ordering away on the buttons and my credit balance, displayed in large numbers on the wall, was rolling rapidly backwards. I cracked the bottle, bouncing the cork off the wall near him to draw his inebriated attention, and filled the glasses.

"Let us drink to the Space Armada," I said, handing him his glass and letting the little green pellet fall into it at the same time.

"To Space Armada," he said, draining the glass and breaking into some dreary chauvinistic song that I knew I would have to learn, all about shining blast-tubes, gloaming guns, men of valor, burning suns. I had enough of it even before he began.

"You look tired," I told him. "Aren't you sleepy?"

"Sleepy…" he agreed, his head bobbing.

"I think it would be a good idea for you to lie down on the bed and get some rest before dinner."

"Lie down…" His glass fell to the rug and he stumbled across the room and sprawled full length on the nearest bed.

"See, you were tired. Go to sleep and I'll wake you later."

Obedient to the hypnodrug, he closed his eyes and began snoring at once. If anyone were listening at the bug they would detect nothing wrong.

Dinner arrived, enough food to feed a squad—my money meant nothing to good old Vaska—and I ate a bit of steak and salad before going to work. I snared open the kit and spread out the materials and tools.

The first thing was of course an injection that acted as a nerve block and numbed all sensation in my face. As soon as this took effect I propped the snoring flight-major up and trained the reading light full in his face. This would not be a hard job at all. We both had about the same bony structure and build, and the resemblance did not have to be perfect. Just close enough to match the prison-camp picture on his ID card. The quality of this picture was what one learns to expect from an identification photo, looking more like a shaven ape than a human.