The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell by Harry Harrison Page A

pulling my thoughts together. Then memory struck hard.
    â€œAngelina? Where is she?”
    â€œNot in Hell,” James said. “That was the first question I asked Marablis when I put him under. He admitted that much under stress. Fought hard not to answer where she was, almost surfaced from the trance. I put him deep under to bring you two back from Hell. When you were back safe I was going to press him really hard for an answer. But—you know what happened. Sorry …”
    â€œNo sorry!” I shouted happily. “Angelina is not dead—but has been sent somewhere. Maybe Heaven. We’ll find out. Meanwhile, you got us back. Sorry is not the word to use. We’ll have to try and work out what happened, what all these puzzles and paradoxes mean. But not right now. There are two things that we must urgently do now. We have to get help. And we’ve been compromised enough. Slakey knew about Sybil and me when he knocked us out. Now he knows the whole family is after him. He might try and fight back so we have to stay away from the hotel room. And we must contact the Special Corps at once.”

    â€œAll I need is a phone,” Sybil said. “I have a local contact number that will be spliced through directly to Inskipp.”
    â€œPerfect. We outline what has happened. Tell him to order a tight guard around that church. No one is to go either in or out. Then tell him to get Professor Coypu here soonest. Anyone who can build a working time machine as well as many other scientific miracles certainly ought to be able to figure out just what is going on with these Hell and Heaven machines. We’ll stay out of sight until the professor has arrived—along with the Space Marines. Never forget—we have been to Hell and we came back. We’re going to find Angelina and get her back with us the same way.”
    Â 
    I suppose that I should have enjoyed the days of forced relaxation at the Vaska Hulja Holiday Heaven, but I had too much to worry about. Always lurking behind all the pleasures of swimming and sunbathing, drinking and eating, was the knowledge that Angelina was still missing. There was some reassurance in the fact that her kidnappers had admitted that she was alive, though not where she was. Small consolation; she was still gone and that could not be denied. A dark memory that would not go away. I knew that the twins shared these feelings, because behind all the horseplay and vying for Sybil’s attention was that same memory. I would catch a bleakness of expression when one of them did not know he was being watched.
    Nor was it all fun and games. We went to work. The first thing that we had done after checking into this hotel, with false identities, was to list everything we knew, had seen, had experienced. None of it seemed to make sense—yet we knew that it must. We forwarded all of this material to the Special Corps where, hopefully, wiser heads than ours might make sense of it.
    They did. Or it did, a wiser head I mean. Our little trip to Hell seemed to have had a scrambling effect on my brain so at times my thoughts would dribble away. I also kept looking in mirrors to see if I was turning red. After awhile I stopped doing this—but I still felt the base of my spine when I was showering
to see if I was growing a tail. Disconcerting. This feckless state of affairs ended next morning when I came down early for breakfast and saw a familiar figure at our table.
    â€œProfessor Coypu—at last!” I called out in glad greeting. He smiled briefly with his buckteeth popping out between his lips like yellowed gravestones.
    â€œAhh, Jim, yes. You’re looking fit, skin tanned but not red. Any signs of a tail?”
    â€œThank you, no, I have been keeping track. And you?”
    â€œFine, fine. On my way here I examined the remains of the destroyed machines at the church and have analyzed all your notes, examined the clothing you wore in Hell, thank