Alien Harvest (aliens)

by Robert Sheckley

  “Is my condition terminal?”

  “Yes.” The doctor nodded gravely. “In fact, you don't have much time left. The condition, as I'm sure you know, is incurable. But its progress can be slowed, and we can ease some of the symptoms. You already have the medicine we prescribe for such cases. And there is also this.”

  The doctor held out a small plastic box. Within it, packed in foam rubber, were a dozen ampoules of a bluish liquid.

  “This is royal jelly. Have you heard of it?”

  Stan nodded. “If memory serves, it is produced by the aliens.”

  “That is correct,” Dr. Johnston said. “I must tell you it's no cure. But it should relieve the symptoms. It could be just what you're looking for.”

  “Does it have much in the way of side effects?”

  The doctor smiled grimly. “It has indeed. That's why it hasn't received government approval yet, though many people use it. Indeed, it has become the most-sought-after consciousness-altering substance in existence. It gives some an intense feeling of well-being and competence. Others experience levels of their own being not normally perceived. Still others have an orgasm that seems to go on forever.”

  “At least I'm going to die happy,” Stan said.

  But of course there were also the bad side effects. Some people had been known to go berserk on the drug, or to undergo personality changes so great that their own families didn't recognize them. Could that be happening in his case?

  And then he forgot his concern as the images swept him up again. There was so much to look at! So many memories, all nicely staged and lighted, waiting for him, the sole audience, to put them into motion. It was like owning all of the theaters in the world, and in each of them a different movie was playing, and each movie starred himself, Stan Myakovsky, in all the scenes of his life. He glided past them, a ghostly presence in his own memories.

  25

  Red Badger was one of the first crewmen revived from hypersleep. He stretched and yawned, then carefully unplugged the leads that connected him to the central sleep inducer. He looked around. The rest of the crew was starting to revive. Cheerful music was playing over the PA system. There were sounds of coughing and spitting as men cleared their throats for the first time in almost a month.

  Coffee was available at a little table. Crew were always given coffee mixed with a new amphetamine upon first awakening. It was needed to help them throw off the effects of hypersleep.

  Badger sipped at a black sweetened cup of coffee and felt his head clear.

  “You okay, Red?” It was Walter Glint, his sidekick.

  “Yeah, I'm fine.”

  “Min?”

  The Laotian hill woman grunted her assent.

  “Connie?”

  “I'm great, Badger,” Connie Mindanao said. “You figure this might be a bonus run?”

  “For extra-hazardous duty? They haven't said yet.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Why?”

  “I've got a ranch house in Bangio I'm trying to pay off.”

  “There just might be easier ways,” Badger said. He looked around. “That's funny.”

  “What's that, Red?”

  “They usually post the ship's destination in the crew quarters. But look for yourself — the board's empty.”

  “Yeah, that is funny,” Glint said. “But there's a notice there.”

  Badger said, “I can see it, dummy. General assembly in twenty minutes. The captain and the owner's gonna talk to us.”

  Glint said, “You've been on these ships longer than I have. That's not the way they usually do it, is it, Red?”

  “Nope.” Badger scratched his jaw. “I'll bet they're up to something. This might be interesting, Glint.”

  The loudspeaker said, “All crew! Assemble at once in the main theater.”

  Stan and Julie walked out onto the raised stage. The crewmen looked up attentively when he rapped a pointer on the lectern to get their attention.

  “Our destination is not far away now,” Stan said. “It is a small O-type star named AR-32 in the standard catalog. Around it revolves a single planet, with several good-sized moons to keep it company. These moons create violent and unpredictable weather currents on the planet, which has been named Vista. Captain Hoban, do you know anything about this planet?”

  Hoban had been sitting to one side of the stage. He cleared his throat now and said, “I have heard of the place, sir. They used to call it the Festerhole, back when there were still a lot of pirates and privateers operating in the space lanes. There was once a jelly-gathering operation there involving one of the bionationals. That was some years ago. To the best of my knowledge it has been deserted since.”

  Stan thought, “Good old honest Hoban telling the crew more than they need to know!” Still, they'd have to find out sometime what this mission really involved.

  The crew stirred and looked at each other. This talk of the Festerhole was making them uneasy. What was this assignment, anyhow? What was it the powers wanted them to do this time? No one had spoken about a bug-hunting expedition. That called for extra pay!

  There was a rising murmur of protest from the crew. The greatest menace of recent times were the aliens, those big black monsters who had been pushed off Earth with difficulty, and elsewhere continued to show their murderous abilities in the face of everything Earth had been able to throw against them.

  Badger rose to his feet and said, “Sir, this wouldn't by any chance be a bug-hunting expedition, would it?”

  “Not exactly,” Stan said.

  “Then what exactly is it… sir?”

  Stan ignored the red-haired crewman's insolent tone. “This is basically a salvage operation,” he said. “We'll be taking a load of royal jelly off a wrecked freighter.”

  “Yes, sir,” Badger said. “And aren't the bugs going to have something to say about that?”

  “Our information is that there are no bugs on the wreck. We'll go in fast, take what we need, and be out of there again. There's also the possibility we'll find an abandoned hive on the planet. The jelly in that could be worth millions.”

  Walter Glint said, “Nothing was said about bugs when we volunteered, sir.”

  “Of course not,” Stan said. “My information is secret. If I told you back on Earth, half the freelance salvagers from Earth and the colonies would be there now.”

  “Bugs can be dangerous,” Glint said.

  “Not when you take precautions,” Stan quickly put in. “You were warned that this was hazardous duty. You're not getting time off your sentences for sitting around in some holiday spot. And remember, there's bonus pay in this for all of you. It could come to quite a lot, if the salvage is as rich as I think it is.”

  “How much?” Badger asked.

  “That's impossible to calculate before we have it,” Stan said. “Don't worry, there is a standard formula for crew shares. I intend to double it.”

  The men cheered. Even Badger smiled and sat down. This was interesting, he thought. He wondered what would come next.

  26

  Stan rapped for attention. But before he could get started again, a door opened and a man came in. He moved rapidly and with a strange grace, a cross between a glide and a lope. His face was expressionless. Although all of his individual features were human, the total result was not human at all. The crew knew at once, even before the introduction, that this man was a synthetic. Captain Hoban's introduction clinched the matter.

  “People, this is Gill, an artificial man from the Valparaiso People Factory. He's the second-in-command.”

  “Sorry to be late, Dr. Myakovsky,” Gill said. “I just finished the energy readings.”

  “No problem, Mr. Gill. Take a seat.”

  Gill sat down by himself in the back of the room.

  Gill was a solitary. In recent years the People Factory in Valparaiso, Chile, where many of the better synthetics were produced, had been doing an improved job on skin colors and texturing. Gone was that old look of
damp putty that had once characterized synthetic people and had provided a basis for so many jokes by bad comedians. Now the only reliable visual gauge for detection of an android was the speed of their comprehension responses. That and a certain mechanical jerkiness to their movements, since the final stage of fairing the input levels and ranges of the synthetics' operating systems was a slow, expensive process, and many employers didn't care if a synthetic's hand trembled as long as he didn't drop the test tube or light stylus — or whatever.

  Despite their artificial origins, synthetic men were full-fledged members of human society, with voting rights and a sexual program.

  Stan was about to go on. But just at that moment, from an outer corridor, Mac the dog came trotting into the room. He had a bright blue rubber ball in his mouth, and he looked around expectantly.

  Someone in the crew laughed. “Fetch it here, boy!”

  And then something else came into the room behind the dog.

  It came loping in on all fours, and at first glance it looked like a beetle the size of a rhinoceros. It was colored a shiny, unrelieved black. Its skull was very long and curved back over its shoulders. It was toothed like a fiend and taloned like the devil itself. It was Norbert. And he looked like he had just come from hell.

  There was silence for one long straining moment.

  And then pandemonium broke loose.

  The crew scrambled to their feet and started running for the exits. Their work boots clattered on the metal deck as they surged toward the exit door, trying to push each other out of the way.

  Stan grabbed the microphone and shouted, “Just stay where you are! Do not make any aggressive movements! Norbert will not harm you, but he is programmed to resist aggression. Just stay calm!”

  It was not a calm-making situation. Yet even now catastrophe could have been averted. The crew was quieting down, coming out of its panic, starting to make jokes. Norbert was just standing there, making no sign that he was going to attack anyone. And then he was bending, slowly picking up the dog's rubber ball, throwing it back to him.

  It could have ended right there. But there was always a wise guy around, someone who had to push things a little too far.

  This time it was a crewman known as Steroid Johnny, an overmuscled hunk in a skimpy T-shirt, tight jeans, and lineman's boots, who carried an unlicensed pressor rod in his boot and liked to cause trouble.

  Steroid Johnny saw his chance now. “Come on, Harris,” he said to a lean, grinning blond man lounging beside him. “Let's take this sucker down. Shouldn't be no aliens here anyhow.”

  The two men advanced on the motionless robot alien. Steroid Johnny winked at Harris, who went slinking around to the right, picking up a crowbar from a toolbox as he went. The robot's head swiveled, keeping both men under surveillance. Johnny feinted to his left, then went straight in at Norbert. Five feet away he stopped and turned on his pressor beam. He directed it at Norbert's back-sloping head.

  Norbert was pushed back hard — for a moment.

  Then the big robot shrugged his way around the pressor beam, ducked under it, and was moving toward Johnny. Johnny backed up and tried to get the pressor beam into a blocking position, but Norbert moved faster, lunged forward, his jaws opened, the inner jaws shooting out of his mouth. The pressor beam fell to the deck. Johnny tried to get out of the way, but Norbert already had one big hooked claw clamped on his left shoulder.

  Johnny screamed as he was lifted straight into the air by the skin of his shoulder. He hung there in Norbert's grip, screaming, struggling to break free. Norbert's inner jaws, impelled with all the energy of his powerful crysteel-mesh throat muscles, drove through Johnny's chest, splitting him like a side of beef. Norbert dropped the red dripping thing to the deck and turned, ready for the next one.

  Harris, seeing the way things were going as he ran to attack Norbert, tried to pull up in midstride. Too late. Norbert swung around like a grotesque yet graceful ballet dancer and struck out with one of his taloned feet. The blow landed high on Harris's sternum. Norbert's talons made an audible hissing sound as they cut through the air, driven by the force of his heavy shoulder muscles. The talons ripped Harris apart from the left shoulder blade to his right hipbone. Harris opened his mouth to scream, but no sounds came out. His lungs had been punctured in the blow. He made an ugly squishing sound as he fell to the deck.

  The rest of the crew took this in and froze in position. They had never seen anything move as fast as Norbert, when he was aroused.

  Norbert halted, looking around. He seemed about to attack again. Just in time, Stan shouted out the shutdown order: “Priority override! Code Myrmidon!”

  Norbert froze in position, awaiting further orders.

  It was a moment of balanced possibilities. The crew seemed on the verge of panic, ready to run out of the control room screaming.

  Captain Hoban gulped hard and felt nausea at the back of his throat, but he knew he had to control the men. He got hold of himself and said coldly, “Two of you there, get pails and mops and clean up that mess. See what comes of not following orders? This didn't have to happen. Now get a move on….”

  There was an awkward, sullen moment, and then the crew obeyed. And the ship Dolomite hurtled on toward its rendezvous with AR-32.

  27

  Subdued, the crew returned to their quarters. The men seemed dazed, unsure of what to think. All of them except Min Dwin, the Laotian hill woman. She went directly to her bunk and pulled out her spacebag. From it she took out a long object in a flat leather sheath. She pulled it free. It was a machete, sharpened to a razor edge.

  Badger said, “What are you up to, Min?”

  “Those bastards killed Johnny,” Min said. “I'm going to get me some officer meat”

  “With that? They'll cut you down before you get within ten feet of them.”

  “Maybe I can pick up a gun. One of those that fires the softslugs. I'd like to see that weird doctor with the glasses take one in the gut.” She started toward the passageway leading back to the main ship's stations.

  “Hold on a minute, Min,” Badger said.

  She stopped and turned. “Yeah, what is it?”

  “Johnny was your man, huh?”

  “Yeah. It was a recent thing. Now it's over. What about it?”

  “Come over here and sit down,” Badger said. Reluctantly she complied, sitting on a locker with the machete balanced on her knees.

  “Min, I understand you're plenty pissed off. I am, too. I wasn't all that fond of Steroid Johnny, or his friend Harris, but I wouldn't have wanted what happened to them.”

  “Right. So?”

  “So this. It was Johnny's own fault, Min.”

  “It would never have happened if that professor guy hadn't brought that thing along.”

  “Sure. That thing he calls Norbert is obviously dangerous. But so what? We work around dangerous stuff all the time. That's what we volunteered for.”

  “I know. But Johnny —“

  “Johnny disobeyed a direct order. He thought he knew better. I hate to say it, Min, but him and Harris got what they deserved.”

  “I never thought I'd hear you saying this, Red,” Min said. “Who's side you on, anyhow? You suddenly turned into a company man?”

  “I'm just telling it like it is,” Badger said. “It's like somebody told Johnny not to stick his hand into a buzz saw, and he went and did it anyway. Who would you kill then?”

  Min twisted her fingers together in an agony of indecision. “I don't know, Red. It doesn't seem right just to leave it.”

  “You're right about that,” Badger said. “But now's not the time to do anything about it. You go walking out of here with that machete, they'll put you down fast and ask questions later.”

  “Aren't we going to do anything?”

  “Sure we are. But not now.”

  “When, then?”

  “Look,” Badger said, “don't push it with me. I know you're sad over Johnny. You'll get over it soon and find someone el
se. As for what we're going to do, we're going to wait and see how things develop. When we make a move — if we do — they won't be expecting it. Is that fair enough?”

  “Yeah,” Min said. “I guess it is. You got any drugs on you, Red?”

  “Walter here takes care of my supply. What have you got, Glint?”

  Glint had a first-rate stock of assorted chemicals. He was the crew's supplier and he always had plenty to sell.

  “Try this one,” he said, taking a pillbox out of his spacebag and shaking out two into his hand. “This'll make you forget Johnny ever existed. If you like them, I'll make you a good price for a hundred. But these two are on the house.”

  “Thanks, Walter,” she said.

  “Hey, what are friends for?” said Walter Glint.

  28

  Gill sat at the control board, his fingers playing sensitively over the buttons. A telltale above his head gave a readout on orbit and showed a digital display of gravity vectors. Another telltale showed electromagnetic activity. AR-32, the planet itself, had come up rapidly and now filled most of another larger screen.

  The planet was colored a dusty yellow and gray, with occasional black and purple markings indicating barren mountain ranges. Large livid splotches showed dead seabeds. A faint shadow darkened the upper right hand corner of the screen; it was cast by Ingo, second largest moon of AR-32, made of nearly seventy-percent telluric iron.

  While Gill set up the orbiting procedure, Captain Hoban slid into a control chair beside him and ran up a readout on electrical and solar phenomena on the planet's surface. His sad face creased into a puzzled frown.