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    John Betancourt
    John Betancourt
    John Betancourt
    Ebook28 pages23 minutes

    John Betancourt

    By John Betancourt

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    About this ebook

    When you're a human who has been modified to look like a giant rat, and you dabble on the questionable side of the law, you sometimes have the strangest adventures. That's what the Rat discovers when he accepts one of Hairy Jack's delivery jobs. He really, really should have known better!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWildside Press
    Release dateMay 29, 2022
    ISBN9781667639581
    John Betancourt

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      Book preview

      John Betancourt - John Betancourt

      Table of Contents

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

      THE RAT ALOFT, by John Gregory Betancourt

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1990 by John Gregory Betancourt.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

      A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

      This story is set in the same universe as my novels Johnny Zed and Rememory (and a few other standalone stories), but farther in the future. It predates the steampunk genre, but definitely belongs there!

      —John Betancourt

      THE RAT ALOFT,

      by John Gregory Betancourt

      Rats are not scared of heights. It’s a known fact. I’m a rat; ipso facto, I’m not scared of heights.

      I risked a glance out the plane’s front viewport and gulped. The sprawling Ohio grasslands, lush and green and two miles straight down, were enough to make my heart palpitate and my head throb. Leaning back, pressing my eyes shut, I groaned and felt like throwing up. Rat or not, I hated high places.

      Fortunately it was overcast today. I banked up and into a cloud. With the windows masked in vapor I could imagine myself safely back on Earth, in a simu-chamber, and navigate strictly by instruments. Less than two hundred miles to go. I studied a sky chart. I might even make it.

      Cutting power, I let us glide, saving the batteries. It was overcast and the solar cells on the wings wouldn’t be sopping up the power like they should be. I found the deathly silence eerie; I heard only the faintest whisper of wind. I didn’t like flying, especially not in toy solar planes like the Madonna. Why did I keep imagining myself in a tailspin, plunging Earthward at a hundred-and-eighty-odd miles per hour?

      Fool, I called myself. It didn’t help. I’d been cursing my stupidity for hours now. I knew

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