The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection Read Free

hasn’t. Send him back to Mooney’s Bar. I plead guilty to all charges and throw myself on the mercy of this merciless court.’
    He drew in his breath with a shuddering sigh and I decided to ease off a bit before he had a stroke and collapsed. Then there would be a mistrial and more time would be wasted.
    ‘I’m sorry, Judge.’ I hung my head to hide an unrepressed smile. ‘But I donewrong and I will have to pay the penalty.’
    ‘Well that’s more like it, Jimmy. You always were a smart lad and I hate to see all that intelligence going to waste. You will go to Juvenile Correction Hall for a term of not less than …’
    ‘Sorry, Your Honour,’ I broke in. ‘Not possible. Oh, if only I had committed my crimes last week or last month! The law is firm on this and I have no escape. Todayis my birthday. My seventeenth birthday.’
    That slowed him down all right. The guards looked on patiently while he punched for information on his computerterminal. The reporter for the
Bit O’Heaven Bugle
was working just as hard on the keys of his own portable terminal at the same time. He was filing quite a story. It didn’t take the judge long to come up with the answers. He sighed.
    ‘That istrue enough. The records reveal that you are seventeen this day and have achieved your majority. You are no longer a juvenile and must be treated as an adult. This would mean a prison term for certain – if I didn’t allow for the circumstances. A first offence, the obvious youth of the defendant, his realisation that he has done wrong. It is within the power of this bench to make exceptions, to suspenda sentence and bind a prisoner over. It is my decision …’
    The last thing I wanted to do was hear his decision now. Things were not going as I had planned, not at all. Action was required. I acted. My scream drowned out the judge’s words. Still screaming I dived headlong from the prisoner’s dock, shoulder-rolled neatly on the floor and was across the room before my shocked audience could evenconsider moving.
    ‘You will write no more scurrilous lies about me, you grubbing hack,’ I shouted. As I whipped the terminal from the reporter’s hands and crashed it to the floor. Then stamped the six-hundred buck machine into worthless junk. I dodged around him before he could grab me and pelted towards the door. The policeman there grabbed at me – then folded when I planted my foot in his stomach.

    I could probably have escaped then, but escape at this point wasn’t part of my plan. I fumbled with the door handle until someone grabbed me, then struggled on until I was overwhelmed.
    This time I was manacled as I stood in the dock and there was no more ‘Jimmy-my-boy’ talk from the judge. Someone had found him a new gavel and he waved it in my direction as though wishing to brain me with it.I growled and tried to look surly.
    ‘James Bolivar diGriz,’ he intoned. ‘I sentence you to the maximum penalty for the crime that you have committed. Hard labour in the city jail until the arrival of the next League ship, whereupon you will be sent to the nearest place of correction for criminal therapy.’ The gavel banged. ‘Take him away.’
    This was more like it. I struggled against my cuffs andspat curses at him so he wouldn’t show any last moment weaknesses. He didn’t. Two burly policemen grabbed me and hauled me bodily out of the courtroom and jammed me, not too gently, into the back of the black Maria. Only after the door had beenslammed and sealed did I sit back and relax – and allow myself a smile of victory.
    Yes, victory, I mean that. The whole point of the operation was toget arrested and sent to prison. I needed some on the job training.
    There is method in my madness. Very early in life, probably about the time of my Get-Stuffed successes, I began to consider seriously a life of crime. For a lot of reasons – not the least of which was that I
enjoyed
being a criminal. The financial awards were great; no other job