Harry Harrison - The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World

The place had been designed by a madman. I know that is literally true, but you didn't have to know He to get the message. Corridors and stairs, twisted chambers, angled walls, even one spot where we had to crawl on our hands and knees under the low ceiling. This was where we had our first casualty. Five of us were clear of this room before the ceiling silently and swiftly descended and crushed the rear guard before he could even make a sound. We all were sweating harder. The enemy we met were not armed for the most part and either fled or were dropped by our needle guns. It was speed and silence now, and we moved as fast as we could between the bizarrely decorated walls, finding it easy to avoid looking at the incredible paintings that seemed to cover every square meter of available space.

"Just one moment," Angelina panted, pulling me to a stop as we came through a high archway to a staircase that spiraled out of sight below, each stone step being a different height from the others. "Do you know where we are going?"

"Not exactly," I panted in return. "Just penetrating the establishment to get ahead, of the fighting, while spreading a bit of confusion."

"I thought we had bigger ambitions. Like finding He."

"Any suggestions how we might go about that?" I am forced to admit that I snapped a bit as I said that. Angelina responded with saccharine sweetness.

"Why, yes. You might try turning on the time energy detector you have slung around your neck. I believe that is the reason we brought it."

"Just what I was going to do anyway," I said, lying to conceal the fact that I had forgotten completely about it in the white heat of the rampaging attack.

The needle swung about and pointed with exact precision to the floor beneath our feet.

"Down and down we go," I ordered. "Where the time-helix coils there will be found the He whom I am about to make into mincemeat." I meant it too since this was the third and last try. I had constructed a special bomb on which I had painted his name. It was a hellish mixture of a curdler—guaranteed to coagulate all protein within five meters—an explosive charge, a load of poisoned shrapnel, and a thermite bomb theoretically to cook the curdled, coagulated, poisoned body of He.

After this the fighting picked up. Some sort of flame-thrower below sent a wave of roiling smoke and fire up the stairs toward us that we could not pass. Singed and smoking, we went out through a hole I blasted in the wall and dropped into a laboratory of sorts. Row after row of bubbling retorts stretched away in all directions, hooked to a maze of crystal plumbing. Dark liquids dripped, and valves hissed foul-smelling steam. The workers here weren't armed, and they dropped before us. We were trotting slower now and gasping for breath.

"Ugh!" Angelina said, making a twisted face. "Have you seen just what is in those jars?"

"No, and I don't want to. Press on." Anything that could bother the ice-cool Angelina was something I had no desire to see at all. I was glad when we left this area behind and found another stairwell.

We were getting close. Resistance kept firming up, and we had to battle most of the way now. Only the fact that the defenders were haphazardly armed allowed us to get through at all. Apparently most of the weapons were at use on the walls because these people came at us with knives, axes, lengths of metal, anything and everything. Including their bare hands if that was all they had. Screaming and frothing, they rushed to the attack and slowed us just by the weight of their numbers. We had our next casualty when a man with a metal spike dropped from some cranny above and stabbed one of the Martians before I could shoot him. They died together, and all we could do was leave them and push on. I took a quick look at my watch and broke into a tired trot again. We were running out of time.

"Wait!" Diyan called out hoarsely. "The needle, it no longer points."

I waved everyone to a stop in a wide passage we were traversing, and they dropped, covering the flanks. I looked at the time energy detector that Diyan had been carrying.

"Which way was it pointing when you looked at it last?"

"Straight ahead, down the corridor. And there was no angle to the needle at all, as though this machine it points to were on this level."

"It only works when the time-helix is operating. It must be off now."

"Could He have gone?" Angelina asked, speaking aloud the words I was trying to keep out of my thoughts.

"Probably not," I said with mock sincerity. "In any case we have to push on as long as we can. One last effort now, dead ahead."

We pushed. And had another casualty when we attempted to cross a layer of writhing branches that were covered with thorns. Tipped with poison. I finally had to burn the stuff with our last thermite grenade. Ammunition and grenades were running very short. There was a brisk firefight at the next corridor junction that emptied my needle gun. I tossed it aside and kicked the heavy door that barred any more progress in this direction. It would have to be blown open, and my grenades were exhausted. I turned to Angelina just as a communication plate next to the door lit up.

"You have lost, the final time," He said, grinning wickedly at me from the screen.

"I'm always willing to talk," I said, then spoke to Angelina in a language I was sure He did not speak. "Any concussion grenades left?"

"I am talking, you will listen," He said.

"One," Angelina told me.

"I'm all ears," I said to him. "Take that door out," I said to her.

"I have dispatched all the people I need to a safe place in the past where we will never be found. I have sent the machines we will need, I have sent everything that will be needed to build a time-helix as well. I am the last to go, and when I leave, the time machinery will be destroyed behind me."

The grenade exploded, but the door was thick and remained stuck in the frame. Angelina sprayed it with explosive bullets. He talked on as though this weren't happening.

"I know who you are, little man from the future, and I know where you come from. Therefore I shall destroy you before you have a chance to be born. I will destroy you, my only enemy; then the past and the future and all eternity will be mine, mine, mine!"

He was screaming and slavering before he finished, and the door went down, and I was the first one through.

My bullets were exploding in the delicate machinery of the time-helix as my He-bomb arced through the air.

But he had already actuated the time-helix. Its green glow was gone; He was gone, the machinery left behind no longer needed. My hell-bomb exploded in empty air and was more of a danger to us than to the vanished one it had been intended for. We dropped to the floor as death whizzed overhead, and when we looked next, the machinery was dissolving and smoking.

He spoke again, and the muzzle of my gun locked for him.

"I made this recording in case I had to leave abruptly, so sorry." He chuckled insanely at his own bad humor. "I have gone now; you cannot follow me, but I can follow you through time. And destroy you. But you have other enemies with you, and I wish them to feel my vengeance, too. They will die, you will all die, everything will die; I control worlds, eternity, destroy worlds. I will destroy this Earth. I leave you only enough time to consider and suffer. You cannot escape.

"In one hour every nuclear weapon on this planet will be triggered.

"Earth will be destroyed."

There was very little satisfaction to be gained from blowing up the recording machine that had He's hateful voice coiled in its guts, but I did it anyway, one shot. The thing exploded in a cloud of plastic bits and electronic components, and the insane laughter was cut off in mid-cackle. Angelina patted my hand.