The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection by Harry Harrison

in a news channel – would be unaware of it. The entire world would know what had happened. And they would know as well that The Bishop had done it because I would leave his calling card on the spot.
    The last traces of drink slurped up my straw and my eyes unfocused and I slowly returned to the garish reality of Macswineys. And before my eyes was a poster. Ihad been staring at it, without seeing it, for some time. Now it registered. Laughing clowns and screaming children. All rapt with joy in slightly faulty 3-D. While above their heads the simple message was spelled out in glowing letters:
    SAVE YOUR COUPONS!! GET THEM WITH EVERY
PURCHASE!!
FREE ADMISSION TO LOONA PARK!!
    I had visited this site of plastic joys some years before – and had dislikedit even as a child. Horrifying rides that frightened only the simple. Rotating up-and-down rides only for the strong of stomach; round-and-round and throw up. Junk food, sweet candy, drunk clowns, all the heady joys to please the very easily pleasable. Thousands attended Loona Park every day and more thousands flooded in at weekends – bringing even more thousands of bucks with them.
    Bucks galore!All I had to do was clean them out – in such a very interesting way that it would make the top news story right around the planet.
    But how would I do it? By going there, of course, and taking a good hard look at their security arrangements. It was about time that I had a day off.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    For this little reconnaissance trip it would be far wiser for me to act my age – or less. With all the makeup removed I was a fresh-faced seventeen again. I should be able to improve upon that; after all I had taken an expensive correspondence course in theatrical makeup. Pads in my cheeks made me look more cherubic, particularly when touched up with a bit of rouge. I put on a pairof sunglasses decorated with plastic flowers – that squirted water when I pressed the bulb in my pocket. A laugh a second! Styles in dress had changed which meant that plusfours for boys had gone out of fashion, thank goodness, but shorts were back. Or rather a reprehensible style called short-longs which had one leg cut above the knee, the other below. I had purchased a pair of these done inrepulsive purple corduroy tastefully decorated with shocking-pink patches. I could scarcely dare look at myself in the mirror. What looked back at me I hesitate to describe, except that it looked very little like an escaped bank robber. Around my neck I slung a cheap disposable camera that was anything but cheap, disposable – or only a camera.
    At the station I found myself lost in a sea of lookalikesas we boarded the Loona Special. Screaming and laughing hysterically and spraying each other with our plastic flowers helped to while away the time. Or stretched it to eternity in at least one case. When the doors finally opened I let the multichrome crowd thunder out, then strolled wearily after them. Now to work.
    Go where the money was. My memories of my first visit were most dim – thank goodness!– but I did remember that one paid for the various rides and diversions by inserting plastic tokens. My father had furnished a limited and begrudging number of these, which had been used up within minutes, and of course no more had been forthcoming. My first assignment then was to find the font of these tokens.
    Easily enough done for this building was the target of every pre-pubescent visitor.It was a pointed structure like an inverted icecream cone, bedecked with flags and mechanical clowns, topped with a golden calliope that played ear-destroying music. Surrounding it at ground level and fixed to its base was a ring of plastic clown torsos, rocking and laughing and grimacing. Repellent as they were they provided the vital function ofseparating the customers from their money. Eagerjuvenile hands pushed buck bills into the grasping palms of the plastic Punchinellos. The hand would close, the money vanish – and from the