The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell Read Online Free PDF Page B

operating basis will be the same.”
    â€œWhat is that?”
    â€œI haven’t the slightest idea. You’ll have to work it out as you go along.”
    â€œAnd we search in the past as well as the future,” James said. “There is no reason that this church should be confined to just this one planet, and every reason to believe that it isn’t.”
    â€œToo right,” Bolivar agreed. “That goes into the search plan.”

    I was proud of my boys. They were taking over, plowing ahead without a moment lost. As for me, I wasn’t that rusty an old rat-not yet.
    But it was nice to see a couple of shiny young ones sharpening their teeth.
    They started at once, putting the search operation into ef fect. Dividing up the planets between them and working out in an ever-expanding sphere of communication and interrogation. I left them to it. Found a cold beer, took it to my study and whistled at my computer terminal to turn it on. I sipped the beer while I surfed through various data bases, zeroing in on Religion. I needed to know more about this Heaven and Hell business. I found what I needed under Eschatology. It was all about future life after death and was all very confusing. Down through the ages there have been a bewildering variety of beliefs held by an even more bewildering variety of social groups. Sometimes future life was seen as a continuation of present life, under more or less favorable conditions. Though at other times retribution for sins or evil deeds made this future life the very opposite of the one we know. I boned up on Heaven and Paradise, then went on to Hell, Hades, and Sheol. All very complex and very much at loggerheads, one religion with the other. Though not all of them. A lot of them were very derivative and borrowed bits and pieces from each other. My head was beginning to ache.
    But out of all the confusing theorizing and philosophizing one thing was very clear. This was very heavy stuff. A matter of life-and then death. The earliest religions were obviously pre-science. They had to be because they made no attempts to consider reality, but were based purely on emotions. A desire to find some solutions to the problems of existence. When science finally appeared on the scene these religions should have been replaced by observation and reason. That they were not was sure proof of mankind’s ability to believe two mutually exclusive things at the same time.
    It had been a very long day and I found my eyes first glazing then closing as the multicolored aspects of future life passed
before me. Enough! I yawned and headed for bed. A well-rested rat would be of far more use than an exhausted one with wilting whiskers.
    I crashed and ten seconds—or ten hours—later I blinked up blearily at the figure shaking my shoulder.
    â€œJames … ?”
    â€œIt’s Bolivar, Dad. We’ve found another Temple of Eternal Truth.”
    I was wide awake and standing next to the bed, almost in eyeball contact. “Not under the same name?”
    â€œNowhere close. This one is The Seekers of the Way. No names, books, or characters are the same as in the Temple of Eternal Truth. But they are identical if you do a semiotic comparison.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œNot that far. Planet named Vulkann. Mining and heavy industry for the most part. But it does have an attractive tropical archipelago that is devoted only to holiday making and retirement homes. Apparently so fascinating that it draws customers from all the nearby star systems.”
    â€œWe leave—”
    â€œAs soon as you’re packed. Tickets waiting at the shuttle flight. One hour to liftoff.”
    I checked my wallet and credit cards. “I’m packed. Let’s grab some passports and go.”

CHAPTER 3
    EVER CAUTIOUS, WE TRAVELED UNDER new names with new passports; I had dozens of them, all genuine, locked away in the safe. The only equipment we took was a brace of electronic