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The Misplaced Battleship

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Title: The Misplaced Battleship

Author: Harry Harrison

Illustrator: John Schoenherr

 
Release date: September 8, 2007 [eBook #22541]
 Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22541

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Stephen Blundell
 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
 https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISPLACED BATTLESHIP ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Stephen Blundell
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net

 THE MISPLACED BATTLESHIP

 By HARRY HARRISON

 _It might seem a little careless to lose track of something
 as big as a battleship ... but interstellar space is on a
 different scale of magnitude. But a misplaced battleship--in
 the wrong hands!--can be most dangerous._

 Illustrated by Schoenherr

When it comes to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master.
The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum
that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that
door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard
me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed pointing a .75
caliber recoilless at my sternum.

"You should have more brains than that, diGriz," he snarled. "Creeping
into my room at night! You could have been shot."

"No I couldn't," I told him, as he stowed the cannon back under his
pillow. "A man with a curiosity bump as big as yours will always talk
first and shoot later. And besides--none of this pussyfooting around in
the dark would be necessary if your screen was open and I could have got
a call through."

Inskipp yawned and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser
unit above the bed. "Just because I head the Special Corps, doesn't
mean that I _am_ the Special Corps," he said moistly while he drained
the glass. "I have to sleep sometime. My screen is open only for
emergency calls, not for every agent who needs his hand held."

"Meaning I am in the hand-holding category?" I asked with as much
sweetness as I could.

"Put yourself in any category you please," he grumbled as he slumped
down in the bed. "And also put yourself out into the hall and see me
tomorrow during working hours."

He was at my mercy, really. He wanted sleep so much. And he was going to
be wide awake so very soon.

"Do you know what this is?" I asked him, poking a large glossy pic under
his long broken nose. One eye opened slowly.

"Big warship of some kind, looks like Empire lines. Now for the last
time--go away!" he said.

"A very good guess for this late at night," I told him cheerily. "It is
a late Empire battleship of the Warlord class. Undoubtedly one of the
most truly efficient engines of destruction ever manufactured. Over a
half mile of defensive screens and armament, that could probably turn
any fleet existent today into fine radioactive ash--"

"Except for the fact that the last one was broken up for scrap over a
thousand years ago," he mumbled.

I leaned over and put my lips close to his ear. So there would be no
chance of misunderstanding. Speaking softly, but clearly.

"True, true," I said. "But wouldn't you be just a _little_ bit
interested if I was to tell you that one is being built today?"

Oh, it was beautiful to watch. The covers went one way and Inskipp went
the other. In a single unfolding, in concerted motion he left the
horizontal and recumbent and stood tensely vertical against the wall.
Examining the pic of the battleship under the light. He apparently did
not believe in pajama bottoms and it hurt me to see the goose-bumps
rising on those thin shanks. But if the legs were thin, the voice was
more than full enough to make up for the difference.

"Talk, blast you diGriz--_talk_!" he roared. "What is this nonsense
about a battleship? Who's building it?"

I had my nail file out and was touching up a cuticle, holding it out for
inspection before I said anything. From the corner of my eye I could see
him getting purple about the face--but he kept quiet. I savored my small
moment of power.

"Put diGriz in charge of the record room for a while, you said, that way
he can learn the ropes. Burrowing around in century-old, dusty files
will be just the thing for a free spirit like Slippery Jim diGriz. Teach
him discipline. Show him what the Corps stands for. At the same time it
will get the records in shape. They have been needing reorganization for
quite a while."

Inskipp opened his mouth, made a choking noise, then closed it. He
undoubtedly realized that any interruption would only lengthen my
explanation, not shorten it. I smiled and nodded at his decision, then
continued.

[Illustration]

"So you thought you had me safely out of the way. Breaking my spirit
under the guise of 'giving me a little background in the Corps'
activities.' In this sense your plan failed. Something else happened
instead. I nosed through the files and found them most interesting.
Particularly the C & M setup--the Categorizer and Memory. That building
full of machinery that takes in and digests news and reports from all
the planets in the galaxy, indexes it to every category it can possibly
relate, then files it. Great machine to work with. I had it digging out
spaceship info for me, something I have always been interested in--"

"You should be," Inskipp interrupted rudely. "You've stolen enough of
them in your time."

I gave him a hurt look and went on--slowly. "I won't bore you with all
the details, since you seem impatient, but eventually I turned up this
plan." He had it out of my fingers before it cleared my wallet.

"What are you getting at?" he mumbled as he ran his eyes over the
blueprints. "This is an ordinary heavy-cargo and passenger job. It's no
more a Warlord battleship than I am."

 * * * * *

It is hard to curl your lips with contempt and talk at the same time,
but I succeeded. "Of course. You don't expect them to file warship plans
with the League Registry, do you? But, as I said, I know more than a
little bit about ships. It seemed to me this thing was just too big for
the use intended. Enough old ships are fuel-wasters, you don't have to
build new ones to do that. This started me thinking and I punched for a
complete list of ships that size that had been constructed in the past.
You can imagine my surprise when, after three minutes of groaning, the C
& M only produced six. One was built for self-sustaining colony at

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