“We’d better go and look for those rats,” interrupted Chip, scrambling to his feet.
The bats located the portly rat and Doll not seventy yards away, in a neat little hideaway that Fal had plainly organized. He and Doll were still lying on Chip’s jacket, their tails entwined. Chip hadn’t even noticed that the rat had stolen the jacket. The two were alive, and intact . . . it was just their wits that seemed to have gone begging.
For once even the fat rat was at a loss for words. And the brassy Doll’s voice quivered when she finally found it. Her first question was addressed to Fal. “Art thou not hurt i’ the groin?”
Fal just stared wide-eyed. Finally he shook himself. “I’ faith that was bad timing!” The fat rat shook his head, untwisted his tail, stood up, and stared at the broken glass. ” ‘Tis a great waste,” he mourned.
Pistol poked him in the gut. “Your waist is very great—but just what did you do to those whoreson Maggots?”
Fal paid the questioning Pistol no attention, and instead scrabbled among the rocks. “My lighter! It’s got to be here somewhere.”
Chip leaned over and picked up a pseudo-antique zippo. The gadget was designed for rats: smaller, overall, than the human version, but with an oversized striker to suit the relatively clumsy “fingers” of a rat’s forepaws. It was inscribed: Ours is not to do or die, ours is but to smoke and fly. In some ways, rats were sticklers for tradition.
“That’s mine!” cried Fal.
“And that is my jacket you swiped for your little bit of private whoopee-nest,” said Chip, grimly. “Now, let’s have the story.”
“Gimme.”
“Story.” Chip held the lighter up, out of reach, and then, when Fal bared his teeth, he tossed it to the fluttering Bronstein.
“All right,” muttered Fal. “Give it and I’ll tell you. That’s a genuine heirloom, that lighter.”
Chip jerked his jacket out from under Doll. “After he’s told us, hey, Bronstein.”
“If ever,” said the bat.
The plump rat glowered at them. “All right. Well, we just slipped off for a bit of . . . privacy, and I was just lighting up, after, when this Maggot stuck his face in. Well, I thought we were dead. . . . Doll threw my bottle of 160 proof.” Fal looked at her reproachfully. “She missed. It hit that rock over there, broke and showered over the Maggot. The falling liquor was slow enough to go through the thing’s slowshield, obviously. Then I must have lost my grip on my lighter.”
“Panicked and threw it when he was trying to get up and run,” interpolated Doll, obviously feeling more like her usual obstreperous self again.
“WOOF . . . next thing the Maggot took off like . . .”
“Like its tail was on fire.”
“Exactly. Now can I have my lighter back?”
“I guess. So you’re giving up drinking, Fal? Now that you’ve seen one run?” Bronstein asked.
The rat’s whiskers drooped. He looked mournfully at the broken glass. “For now I am.”
* * *
There were easily twice as many Maggots this time. They took one look at the quarry and, even with Chip playing bait, did not enter it but set off around. Chip and the rats and bats had to flee, the trap unsprung.
“They knew,” said Bronstein, clinging to Chip’s shoulder again.
Chip shook his head. “But how? We killed every single one, last time”
“Comms,” the bat said, quietly.
“But they don’t carry anything.” It was true enough. By comparison the naked bats and rats were overdressed. They carried small packs and bandoliers. No Maggot lugged any hardware at all.
Bronstein gave the bat equivalent of a grimace. If anything, it improved that face. “Not that we’ve seen, anyway.”
“Where could they hide them? I mean between you and the rats you’ve eaten whole Maggots. If there was anything there you’d have found it.” Chip grinned wryly. “The rats would have shat it out by now. Like they do the slowshields.”
“Maybe they’re built into the slowshields,” she said pensively, rubbing her chest over the spot where her own slowshield was implanted. “Ours don’t have anything like that, but . . .”