The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You

“We’re within communication distance now,” I a

“We are ready,” came the loud but unemotional response.

“Good luck, then. On suits, my crew.”

I climbed into my alien outfit and Angelina got into hers. James was in one robot disguise, Bolivar in the other. They waved, then clanged the tops shut. I zipped my neck and turned on the communicator.

“My darling Sleepery Jeem returned from the grave!” a repulsive thing with claws and tentacles rattled and gurgled at me from the screen.

“I do not know you, ugly sir,” I simpered. “But you must have made the acquaintance of my twin. I am her sister, Sleepery Bolivar.” I actuated the trigger that released a large and oily tear that trickled down my lengthened eyelashes and splashed to the deck. “Back on Geshtunken we heard of her noble death. We have come for vengeance!”

“Welcome, welcome,” the thing gurgled and writhed. “I am Sess-Pula, the new commander of all the forces. Join me at once and we will have great stinking banquet!”

I did as ordered, joining our ships and rolling to his rotten welcome with Angelina at my side. I had to sidestep neatly to avoid Sess’s wet embrace and he squashed to the deck instead.

“Meet A

The party rolled into high gear at once, and more and more of the ship’s officers came to join us until I wondered who was flying the thing. Probably no one. “How goes the war?” I asked.

“Terrible!” Sess moaned, draining a flagon of something green and bubbly. “Oh, we have the alien crunchies on the run all right, but they won’t stop and fight. Morale runs low since all of our soldiers are fed up with war and want only to return to the sticky embraces of their loved things. But the war must go on. I think.”

“Help is on the way,” I cried, slapping him on the back, then wiping off my hand on the rug. “My ship is filled with bloodthirsty volunteers all lusting for war and victory and vengeance. In addition to being great fighters and having good senses of smell, my troops are great navigators and fire control officers, watchkeeping officers and cooks.”

“By Slime-Gog we can use them!” Sess gurgled aloud. “Do you have many troops with you?”

“Well,” I said coyly. “We might just have enough to spare one for each of your battleships, and each battleship can lead a fleet, and if the officers of the fleet want advice or morale boosting they are welcome to talk to my people who work night and day and are sexy to boot.”

“We are saved!” he screamed.

Or lost, I thought to myself, smiling toothily at the disgusting revelry on all sides. I wondered how long it would take for my brainscrambling saboteurs to get the job done.

Not long, not long at all. Since the aliens had had to be convinced to go to war in the first place, were fed up in the second place, they were ripe for subversion in the third place. The rot spread and it was only a few days later that Sess-Pula slithered up to me in the navigation room where I was making sure, by rotten navigation, that we didn’t catch up with the fleeing human fleet. He looked gloomily at the screen with a halfdozen blood-shot eyestalks.

“Not sleeping too well lately?” I asked, flicking one of his rudy orbs with a claw. He sucked it back in unhappily.

“You can say that again, bold Woleevar. It is all too depressing, the fleet seems to be getting away, back in my home hive last year’s crop of virgins will be approaching estrous. I keep asking myself what I am doing here.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. My heart has gone out of this war.”

“Fu

“You’re right!” he slobbered. “I never thought of that before. What can we possibly do?”

“Well…” I said, and for all apparent purposes that was that. Ten hours later, after a lot of radioing back and forth among the ships, the mightiest fighting armada the galaxy had ever seen was cutting a great arc in space. Turning, reversing, going back to the creepy places from whence they had come.

In the drunken party that evening that celebrated the victorious end of the war—they had rationalized it that way with some help—I and Angelina clutched claws and looked around at the disgusting sights on all sides.

“They are really sort of sweet when you get used to them,” she said.

“I wouldn’t go quite as far as to say that. But they are rather harmless once they abandon all the war plans.”

“Rich, too,” the James robot said, pouring something nasty into my glass.

“We have been doing a little investigating,” Bolivar said, rolling up on the other side. “In their various operations they have captured ships and planets and satellites. They emptied all the bank vaults since they knew that we valued their contents, though they didn’t know why. They do not have money as we have it.”

“I know,” I said. “They have the Eckh Unit, which is best left undescribed.”

“Right, Dad,” James said. “So when they raided all the treasuries they sent the stuff here to the command battleship, hoping something would figure out what to do with it. What they did do with it was to store it all in one of the holds.”

“Let me guess,” Angelina said. “The hold is now empty?”

"You’re always right, Mom. And the transport ship is sort of full.”

“We’ll have to return the loot to the sources from whence it came,” I said, and was pleased at the two shocked robotic looks and one alien stare of despair.

“Jim…!” Angelina gasped.

“Do not worry. I have all my senses. I mean we’ll have to return the alien loot that we found…”

“…but we didn’t recover very much.” She finished the sentence for me.

Something heavy, greenish-brown, tentacled and clawed, quashed down noisily next to me.

“To victory!” Sess-Pula shouted. “We must drink to victory! Silence, everyone, silence, while the pulchritudinous Sleepery proposes a toast.”

“I shall!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. Aware of the sudden silence and the fact that every eyepad, eyestalk, optic tentacle, not to mention six human eyeballs, was fixed upon me.

“A toast,” I called out, raising my glass on high so enthusiastically that some of the drink slopped out and burned a hole in the carpet.

“A toast to all the creatures that live in our universe, large and small, solid and sloppy. May peace and love be their lot forever more. Here’s to life, liberty—and the opposite sex!”

And thus we rushed down the light years toward a far, far better future.

I hope.