Free The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection by Harry Harrison Page A

locked and secure until themorning when other armed guards would be present when it opened. I pushed the radio fuse into the explosive, then retreated across the room until I was out of the line of fire along with the others.
    Every loose object in the room was bouncing in time with the music now while dust rained down from the ceiling. It still wasn’t time. I used the opportunity to rip out the phones by their roots. Notthat anyone would be talking on a phone until after the concert.
    There it was – almost there! I had the musical score in my mind’s eye and at the instant when the galaxies finally impacted I pressed the radio actuator.
    The front of the safe blew off in silent motion. I was stunned by the musical catastrophe way up here in the office – not by the explosion – and I wondered how many of the audiencehad gone deaf in the name of art. My wondering didn’t stop me from shovelling all the buck bills from the safe into my instrument case. When it was filled I tipped my hat to my prisoners, one wide-eyed, one unconscious, and let myself out. The black mask went back into its pocket and I went out of the theatre by an unwatched emergency exit.
    It was a brisk two-block walk to the underpass entranceand I was just one other figure hurrying through the rain. Down the steps and along the corridor, to take the turning that led to the station. The commuter trains had left and the corridor was deserted. I stepped into the phone booth and made my unobserved identity change in exactly twenty-two seconds,precisely the rehearsed time. The black covering of the case stripped away to reveal the whitecovering of the case inside. The flared bell-shape went too, that had been shaped from thin plastic that crunched and went into a pocket with the black cover. My hat turned inside out and became white, my black moustache and beard disappeared into their appointed pocket so that I could shed the coat and turn it inside out so that it too, that’s right, became white. Thus garbed I strolled into thestation and out of the exit along with the other arriving passengers, to the cab rank. It was a short wait, the cab rolled up and the door opened. I climbed in and smiled appreciatively at the shining skull of the robot driver.
    ‘Mah good man, tay-ake me to thu Arbolast Hotel,’ I said in my best imitation Thuringian accent – since the Thuringia train had arrived at the same time I had.
    ‘Messagenot understood,’ the thing intoned.
    ‘Ar-bo-last Ho-tel, you metallic moron!’ I shouted. ‘Ar-bowb-bo-last!’
    ‘Understood,’ it said and the cab started forward.
    Just perfect. All conversations were stored in a molecular recorder for one month in these cabs. If I were ever checked on, the record would reveal this conversation. And my hotel reservation had been made from a terminal in Thuringia.Perhaps I was being too cautious – but my motto was that this was an impossibility. Being too cautious, I mean.
    The hotel was an expensive one and tastefully decorated with mock arbolasts in every corridor and room. I was obsequiously guided to mine – where the arbolast served as a floor lamp – and the robot porter glided away smarmily with a five-buck coin in his tip slot.
    I put the bag inthe bedroom, took off the wet coat, extracted a beer from the cooler – and there was a knock on the door.
    So soon! If that was The Bishop he was a good tail, because I had not been aware of being followed. But who else could it be? I hesitated, then realised that there was one certain way to find out. With smile on face, in case it was The Bishop, I opened the door. The smile vanished instantly.

    ‘You are under arrest,’ the plainclothes detective said, holding out his jewelled badge. His companion pointed a large gun at me just to make sure that I understood.

CHAPTER NINE

    ‘What … what …’ I said, or something very like this. The arresting officer was not impressed by my ready wit.
    ‘Put on your coat. You are coming