The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Misplaced Battleship, by
Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

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Title: The Misplaced Battleship

Author: Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

Illustrator: Schoenherr

Release Date: September 8, 2007 [EBook #22541]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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