The Return of The Stainless Steel Rat

"It won't let us. The Mark 2500. All of the ports were sealed and we can't get near the satellite. And there are over three hundred passengers trapped inside. You must save them, diGriz! Their lives are in your hands..."

"Not yet they're not! They are still in your hands, which is why you are here - and why you are worrying so. You're all sweating - and I think I know why. This delegation represents the corporation that owns the satellite?"

Reluctant nods.

"And you also represent the insurance company that insures the satellite?"

Heads nodding like crazy now.

"So not only do you have a humanitarian interest in those poor souls trapped inside your hunk of space iron-mongery - but you have a financial interest as well."

Chins dropped to chests and a wave of financial despair sighed through the room. I smiled and shook my clenched fists over my head.

"Despair not gentlemen - diGriz will save you! I will turn off your kooky computer and save your prisoners!"

I waited until the cheers and shouts of joy had died down before I put the boot in.

"But, like you, I am a business man as well as a humanitarian. My reasonable and very low fee for the job will be the miserly sum of two million credits..."

I turned away and lit a cigar while their moans of pain and cries of anguish echoed from the chamber walls. Then I puffed out expensive smoke and raised my hand for silence.

"For shame," I chided. "You'll get that sum back within a few days of operation." My voice grew cold. "But if you don't get back into operation and if the relatives of the people you have allowed to be destroyed by that mad machine decide to sue you..."

Temporary interruption by wails of despair.

"...why, you will have to pay out billions. You have sixty seconds to decide. The fee will be payable one million on signing and one million upon delivery of the main fuse from the crackpot computer. Fifty-five seconds."

"How will you do it?" Someone called out.

"I'll tel you as soon as you have paid. A computer with sick circuitry is as nothing to the man who saved the universe. Twice."

Which meant that I had no idea how I was going to do it, but that was my business and not theirs. Just as their business was earning money and mine stealing it.

"Thirty-one seconds."

"It's robbery - but we agree. We have no choice."

Nor did they. Which was why I had made the fee so large. As soon as the money had been credited to my account, I threw them all out and spread out the technical reports. This was not going to be easy. I forced away the nagging realization that it was not only hard but completely impossible. Never say die! The Rat marches on. There had to be a way.

Except that three weeks later, in a shuttle floating in orbit about the insane satellite, I still hadn't found it. Nor was the captain of the shuttle any help.

"You're number five," he said, in an exceedingly gloomy voice. "You'll never make it either. Croaked or crunched like the other four. That cockamamie computer will let you aboard all right. Like a fly into a web. Then..."

"Then it is my worry. And I can do without your pep talk. I'm suiting up now and I want to be launched as soon as this ancient machine of yours comes up with the orbital calculations I asked for."

"Suicide..." was the last word I heard as I sealed shut the helmet of my modified suit. Modified in that all of the metal parts had been sprayed with an insulating foam. The Mark 2500 was very free with its shortcircuits and two of my predecessors had been electrocuted. I had no desire to be fried for my efforts even before I was inside the renegade satellite.

My plan for getting aboard the thing was simple enough, although once I was sitting alone on the nosecone of the shuttle I began to have doubts about it. Because to make the plan work I had to trust the computer aboard the shuttle. And I was not very happy about computers at the moment. I felt the ship stir behind me, then the steady pressure on my back as it accelerated. This lasted a few seconds - then ended as the breaking jets close beside me puffed out clods of gas. The shuttle decelerated. I didn't. The spaceship fell behind me as I continued on in what I hoped was the correct orbit. Aiming for the spot in space where the satellite would be. Optimistically launched not only in the direction of Stanyan VI, but also moving outward in a course that would bring me down right on top of an emergency exit. I hoped.

But it worked. Despite my fears I watched the satellite get closer and closer until it filled the entire sky. I knew the thing had no missiles or guns - but it could use its deceleration fields to launch something heavy in my direction. That's how one of my predecessors had bought it. But I was coming in on the side away from the landing bays. I hoped.