Alien Harvest (aliens)

by Robert Sheckley

  Stan noticed that she had stopped and also halted.

  Gill stopped, too, peering upward, trying to make out what was the matter.

  As Julie waited, barely breathing, an ugly dark head with a long backward-sloping cranium poked out of the hole above her. Its fangs were clearly visible, gleaming white, impossibly sharp and packed together, dripping with green matter.

  Then the alien's muscular body came out slowly, foot by foot, and its claws grasped the spiraling track on which Julie and the others were standing. The alien began to descend, moving directly into their path.

  “I think it can't see me,” Julie said, praying that it was true. The indicator on her suppressor showed less than half an hour left in the batteries.

  Well, she thought, half an hour is a long time. But then she wondered, What if the gauge is simply stuck at the half-hour mark?

  The alien came right up to her, so close she could smell the acrid tang of its hide.

  Julie moved to the far edge of the narrow pathway.

  Taking a grip on one of the vines at the side, she leaned far over, giving the creature room to pass.

  Its ferocious blind-looking face passed within inches of her, its hard black flank brushed her side, and then it was past, descending toward the ground. Stan and Gill, below her, moved to give it room.

  Julie slipped into the opening at the top of the hive, the others following close behind. The passageway widened out to a tube about ten feet in diameter. It curved downward and to the left, and soon there was only a ghostly memory of light for them to see their way by.

  About twenty feet down, the tunnel widened into a cave. It was difficult to make out its dimensions in that shadow-infested place, perhaps fifty yards long by twenty wide, but it could have been twice that, the remaining dimensions lost in the gloom.

  There were things growing between the floor of the cave and its low ceiling. Then they moved into a wider area, where they could stand upright.

  Stan and his party paused here to redistribute their loads, make a final check of their weapons, take a drink of water, and have a last conference before plunging deeper into the hive.

  Stan was disturbed that Norbert had been unable to lay down an electronic trail. But he was too tired to worry about it much.

  He lay down on the uneven ground. He needed a moment to catch his breath. It was tough going, there was no doubt about that. His chest burned incessantly. It had been a long time since he'd had a dose of royal jelly. The case with the ampoules was still in his pocket; it felt comforting there. He wanted one now, badly. Anything to get out of this incessant pain, which seemed to radiate out from his chest and course down his arms and legs, following the pathways of his arteries and veins.

  He pulled out an ampoule and hastily swallowed its contents. And then he had to scramble to his feet as he heard sounds from somewhere in the tunnel.

  They had to depend on searchlights now to find their way, for the last of the natural light was cut off as they rounded another turn.

  And came face-to-face with another alien. It was moving toward them on all fours, its ugly head questing right and left, seeming to be sniffing the stale, earth-flavored air. It was clear that it had picked up a scent or cue, but apparently it couldn't tell where it was coming from. The creature slid past them like liquid black iron, and they moved on in silence.

  There was a sort of grim interminability about that nightmare journey into the hive. Julie felt that time itself was standing still as they proceeded into the silence of that awesome construction. She felt she was on a dream descent into depths that corresponded in some way that she didn't understand to the depths of her own being.

  Abruptly she came back to attention. Her searchlight picked out incomprehensible shapes as she moved ahead. There seemed to be huge things with tall stooped shoulders and folded wings towering above them. There were oval things scattered here and there, like ostrich eggs, only with a strange cross-hatched texture of fine lines. There were plants with wide, white faces, and they turned toward the searchlight beam as if it reminded them of something they had once known a very long time ago.

  Stan said, “This is some weird place, huh, Gill?”

  Gill shrugged. “I suppose this hive has been in existence for a long time. Centuries, maybe. It stands to reason that a lot of different life-forms would have tried to establish themselves here. It's one of the few places on this planet that's out of the wind.”

  “I wish I could get a videotape of this,” Stan said.

  “You planning to do a TV special?” Julie asked.

  “It would be a first. What's that up ahead?”

  By the light of Stan's searchlight, he saw that the floor of the cave abruptly declined and became a large hole. Stan approached it cautiously and played his light along it. The sides sloped down sharply for about five feet, revealing that the interior of the hole was filled with a mixture of substances. Stan's flashlight picked out bones and body parts, vegetables in advanced stages of rot or desiccation, bits of wood and rock, and other kinds of debris he couldn't make out.

  “What is it, Stan?” Julie asked.

  “It appears to be a midden. A garbage dump.”

  “Ugh!” Julie said.

  “No, it's really very interesting,” Stan said. “A midden can tell you all about the life of the hive. Look at all that stuff! Isn't that a cow carcass down there? And what's that over there…?”

  He focused the searchlight beam and looked again.

  “It looks like a dog collar,” he said at last.

  The three of them were silent for a moment. The memory of Mac the dog hung in the air like something evil, something they would have preferred to forget.

  “I suppose this is where they threw Mac when the queen was through with him,” Stan said. “That's certainly his collar with the suppressor attached. We can use that for ourselves.”

  He leaned over the pit to pick up the collar. Suddenly the ground crumbled beneath him. Stan scrambled for footing, fell backward, his arms windmilling wildly. Julie lunged for him and almost managed to grab his ankle, but lost her grip as Stan pitched over the edge with a bloodcurdling yell.

  For Stan, that moment of falling into the aliens' garbage pit was so intensely terrifying as to be almost pleasurable. In the split second a million things flashed in front of his eyes like high-speed movie images. Some residue of the royal jelly in his veins kicked in, and he had a moment of pure illusion.

  He dreamed in that instant that he was on a mountaintop, and on all sides of him were birds and beasts, waiting to hear what he had to tell them. Mac was there in his dream, sitting up on his hind paws begging, his tongue lolling out Stan himself seemed to be wearing a robe made out of a luminous golden material, and he was not entirely surprised to find a golden halo circling his brow, casting a mellow light of its own. He was about to address all of the birds and beasts, tell them it was all right, when he struck the bottom of the pit with a resounding jar.

  “Stan!” Julie cried. “Can you hear me?”

  Gill came up beside her. “Is he alive?”

  “I don't know yet, Stan!”

  Stan stirred, then fell back.

  “Stan! Call out if you can hear me,” Julie cried.

  Stan didn't answer, but something else did. Something that spoke in a sibilant hiss, with many overtones. It was not a single voice. It was many voices. The hissing voices were like the tumultuous waves of an acid sea. Julie tried to direct her light. Gill was beside her, his hand on her shoulder. Suddenly his grip tightened.

  “What is it?” she said, and then she saw it, too.

  There were passageways into the lower part of the midden. From them, heads peered; the characteristic heads of aliens. This was apparently a shortcut into a lower level of the hive. The aliens must have heard the noise Stan made while he was falling.

  The aliens had come out to investigate. It was like before when they had met the alien coming into the hive. Only this time something had cha
nged. It took Julie a moment to figure out what it was. Then she shuddered in horror.

  “Gill, my God!” she said. “The suppressor must have quit. They can see him!”

  61

  When Stan recovered consciousness, he had one delicious moment of thinking he was ten years old and had just awakened from a particularly terrifying dream. How grateful he was to find himself in his own bed! There, just across from him, was his computer, a good one, which his parents had bought for his last birthday. His floppy-eared toy puppy was there, though of course he was too old to play with it. Still, Mr. Muggs watched while Stan did his experiments.

  Now Stan stretched luxuriously and tried to think how he'd spend his day. There were some spiderwebs down near the brook that he wanted to investigate…

  His outstretched fingers touched something wet and sticky. He recoiled, turned his head, looked. It was Mac, dead. He had pushed his fingers into the sticky wound in Mac's throat. What he had thought was his computer was actually the skeleton of a cow. And there were aliens glaring at him, seeing him, and starting toward him….

  “Gill!” Julie screamed. “Start shooting! But for God's sake don't hit Stan!”

  Julie was firing as she spoke. She had unslung the plasma rifle she had been carrying by its strap over her shoulder. Red-orange flame lanced out from its muzzle, painting the garbage pit in lurid colors and huge dancing shadows.

  The concentrated fury of the plasma blast danced around the aliens, who had begun advancing on Stan from a passageway that led into the midden. Red, acetylenelike cutting flames poked and probed at them, lancing through their bodies, stabbing into arms and legs. Gill was firing simultaneously, caseless carbine rounds that blew the aliens off their feet, sending them halfway up the pit, to tumble back again in a welter of severed arms and heads.

  The plasma fire and the caseless rounds wove a dance of death around Stan's recumbent body. The fire approached him and then, almost delicately, backed away again.

  Julie ran around the circumference of the pit, firing to keep the aliens from coming up on Stan from behind. Gill held his position, blasting a way clear for Stan, who finally stumbled to his feet and made his way to the side of the pit. He tried feebly to climb back out.

  “Can you hold them, Gill?” Julie asked.

  “I think so,” Gill muttered.

  Julie slung her plasma rifle and reached out for Stan's hand. Their fingers touched and clasped. No sooner did Julie have a good grip than she heaved, putting into it every ounce of strength in her slender body. Stan seemed to fly into the air, landing on the edge of the pit.

  While he tried to catch his breath, Gill finished off the last of the aliens, scattering arms and legs everywhere. Then he turned to help Stan. Stan tried to get to his feet, then slumped again to the ground. Before anyone could grab him, he slid again into the pit.

  “Oh, no!” Julie said. “Hold my ankle, Gill, I'll get him.”

  They tried, but couldn't reach. Stan appeared to be on the edge of unconsciousness. His eyelids fluttered briefly behind his thick glasses, which miraculously had not been knocked off. His fingers clawed at the debris-strewn surface. From behind him, there was another hissing sound. An alien suddenly appeared, two others behind it.

  “Kill it!” Julie cried.

  “I can't!” Gill said. “Stan's in the way!”

  “He's in my way, too!” Julie began to run around the side of the pit, trying to get a clear shot.

  The leading alien looked somehow different to her from the others. But at first she couldn't determine how. Then Gill threw a phosphorus flare and she saw that the alien had half his shoulder chewed off. There was also damage to his midsection and head.

  But what she wasn't prepared for was the look of those wounds. Instead of flesh and blood, there appeared to be cable and metal fittings in the wound, and small humming servos.

  For a moment she couldn't process this information. Then she understood.

  “Norbert!”

  62

  Since they pulled him out of the midden, Stan had drifted into a different place. He seemed to be in a spaceless space and a timeless time. It was a world filled with little blue-and-pink clouds. There were stars in the background, and pools of water. He was not surprised to see Norbert standing in front of him. Nothing could be strange to Stan any longer. He had passed beyond weirdness, into a place where all effects were the same, all part of the great symphony of death, whose opening notes he could hear as though coming to him from a great distance, but getting louder, louder.

  This couldn't have been an illusion because it answered him.

  Norbert said, “Yes, I am here, Dr. Myakovsky. I am functioning at only twenty-seven percent of capacity.”

  Stan blinked and his vision cleared. He was in the alien garbage midden, lying on his back on mounds of refuge. In front of him, bending over, was Norbert.

  “It must have been quite a fight,” Stan said, surveying the robot.

  “I would say so, Doctor. I killed three of them in a running battle through the hive. Unfortunately, they did damage to me that I fear will prove terminal.

  “Are you afraid?” Stan asked.

  “Not in the personal sense, Doctor. By fear, I meant regret that I will no longer be able to serve you as you designed me.”

  “Can't you turn on your self-repair circuits?” Stan asked.

  “I tried that, Doctor. They are down. And you did not equip me with self-repair units for the self-repair units.”

  “In the future we'll have infinite backups for all systems,” Stan said. “Including human ones, I hope. Including mine.”

  “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  “I've definitely had better days,” Stan said. “My self-repair circuits aren't working right, either.” He felt something in his hand and held it up. “Look here! Mac's collar! I've got it!”

  “That's fine, Doctor,” Norbert said. “I have something, too.”

  “What is it?” Stan asked.

  “This.” Norbert reached into the gaping wound in his shoulder and drew out a gooey mass the color of honey.

  “What is it?” Stan asked.

  “Royal jelly from the queen's birthing chamber,” Norbert said. “I was unable to provide a proper container. I'm afraid it's gotten some oil on it, and some blood.”

  “Doesn't matter,” Stan said. He reached out and took the mass. It had a waxy consistency. He put it in his mouth, made himself chew and swallow it. He experienced no immediate effect.

  “Great work!” Stan said.

  Behind him he heard big objects move and slide around as something came from the interior of the hive.

  “Better get going, Doctor,” Norbert said. “They're coming. I'll cover your retreat as well as I can.”

  “I don't see how,” Stan grumbled.

  “I improvised a weapon. I hope it will suffice.”

  Stan pulled himself onto his hands and knees and worked his way toward the edge of the pit. Behind him he could hear sizzling energy beams as Norbert and the others fought off the aliens. Norbert was buying him time.

  Stan tried to pull himself up the side of the pit, but the crumbling structure gave way under him and he fell to the bottom again. Pain washed over him in great uncontrollable waves, and in each one he thought he might drown, only to come back again and again, each time more feebly, to the surface of consciousness.

  He felt Julie's hand in his, and then Gill's hand. He was lifted into the air. Below him he heard Norbert's battle still raging, and the shrill screaming sounds that the aliens made as they died in the violet-edged bolts that Norbert's impromptu weapon cast. But the aliens kept on coming, and as Julie and Gill pulled Stan out of the pit and beat a hasty retreat down a tunnel, they heard the sounds of Norbert being pulled down and torn apart.

  63

  Glint asked, “Is this the place?”

  Badger checked the crude map he had drawn following Potter's instructions. Yes, there were the two fan-shaped rocks, and ov
er there was the fissure cut like a curly S.

  “We're at the spot all right.”

  “Okay,” Glint said. “But where is he? Where's the rescue pod?”

  They were standing on a wide flat rock shelf. It stood practically under the shadow of the hive. The wind had died down for a moment. They could look out over the nearly featureless landscape. Toward the west there was a line of lime-green haze, possibly sent up by some natural circumstance. So much about a place like AR-32 was simply incomprehensible.

  Yet, even on Earth, despite his thousands of years of occupation, despite his long acquaintance with bird, fish, and fowl, things could still surprise man as well. Strange animals turned up every year. Mysteries abounded. Even the status of ghosts was still uncertain. No one had ascertained for sure whether or not the Yeti or the Jersey Devil really existed. Were there such things as werewolves and vampires?

  But on AR-32, the anomalous and the unexpected happened all the time.

  You tended to think of such things on a planet like AR-32. Mankind had known of the place for less than ten years. No genuinely scientific expedition had ever visited it. Only commercial vessels called, and for the sole purpose of stealing (though they called it collecting) the aliens' jelly. The men who went on such expeditions were as hard-bitten a lot as conquistadores of old Spain. Like them, they cared little for what lay below them or what it might mean in the scheme of things.

  It was not unusual that Badger and his men, who were as much of the conquistador type as the crewmen on the Lancet, were surprised but not absolutely astonished when a creature raised its head from behind a rock and looked at them. “What in hell is that?” Meg asked. Badger and the others turned. The creature was sitting there looking at them. It had a large head somewhat the size and shape of a hogshead. Eight little skinny legs came down from its sides, terminating in blunt claws. Something about the creature was reminiscent of a pig, right down to the way it snuffled and oinked at the crewmen. It had a small curly tail. It was colored pink, and it had a black saddle marking in the middle of its back.