Alien Harvest (aliens)

by Robert Sheckley

  Glint managed to duck out of the way. The tangler bolt, with its rapidly expanding core of sticky plastic, soared over his head like a gray bat and wrapped itself around one of the crewmen behind him.

  The man screamed and tried to tear the stuff away from himself. The tangler held him tight and began to contract.

  He fell, still inextricably caught in the mess.

  Suddenly it seemed that everybody in the control room had picked up a weapon. Threads of light from beam throwers glanced off metallic surfaces and glowed against the Perspex windows. Solid projectile loads ricocheted off the ship's walls, darting around like angry hornets. Explosions rocked the control room, sending up dense, greasy clouds of acrid smoke.

  The second engineering officer had the presence of mind to bar the entry port, thus stopping any reinforcements coming from crew country.

  Hoban ducked down behind a spare-parts case bolted to the floor. The crewmen found shelter in various parts of the control room. The officers were dug in at various locations. Most of them had managed to pick up arms.

  For a while there was a strenuous exchange of small-arms fire, its intensity in that confined space enormous. Hoban thought it was like being inside a snare drum that some madman was attempting to play.

  45

  “It's gettin' too close for comfort!” Badger cried as his refuge in a corner of the room was zapped with blue-white flame.

  “You can say that again,” Glint said. “We better get out of here!”

  “I'm thinking about it,” Badger said. “We might need to regroup, reorganize….”

  Machine-gun bullets stitched across the ship's walls above their heads, showering them with fragments of metal. There was more noise as a concussion grenade, thrown by Hoban, landed just outside of effective range.

  “Okay,” Badger said. “Time we got out of here.”

  The normal egress port was barred, but an elevator to other areas stood with its doors open. Badger and Glint and the remaining crewmen beat a hasty retreat, and managed to shut the doors and get the elevator moving.

  Captain Hoban, wounded in the arm by a beam weapon, refused medical attention and led the pursuit.

  Most of the crew had not joined the rebellion. Those who had been wavering now decided they'd had enough.

  Only Badger and Glint and their close friends, Connie Mindanao, Andy Groggins, and Min Dwin, were irrevocably committed.

  All together now, they moved down one of the corridors, maintaining a rolling fire to keep the pursuing officers at a distance.

  Glint was saying, “Where we going, Red? What we going to do now?”

  “Shaddap,” Badger said. “I've got it all doped out.” He led them through the now deserted commissary and out to the rear hold. “Where we goin'?” Glint asked.

  Badger didn't answer.

  “There's no place to go!” Glint said.

  “Don't worry, I know what I'm doing,” Badger said. “We're going to get out of here.”

  “Out of here?” Glint looked puzzled.

  “Off this ship,” Badger said. “We'll take one of the escape pods and leave this death ship behind. We'll go down to AR-32.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Glint said. Then he thought of some-thing. “But where'll we go after that, Red? There's no civilization down there!”

  “Well then make contact with Lancet.”

  Glint turned it over in his mind. Lancet? Dimly he remembered that that was the name of the Bio-Pharm ship that had nuked the other ship, the Valparaiso something. The one they had gotten the flight recorder from.

  “Red, are you sure we want to do that? Those people are killers!”

  “Of course I'm sure. We're on their side now. They'll give us good money for turning our information over to them. They're going to be very interested to hear about Captain Hoban and the doctor and what they're up to. We'll be heroes.”

  “I don't know,” Glint said.

  “Trust me, “ Badger said. “Anynow, what else can you do?”

  “I guess you're right,” Glint said. You could tell from his voice that it was a load off his mind, letting Badger make the decisions for both of them.

  The others in the party weren't interested in asking questions. They wanted to be led, to be told what to do, and that was what Badger liked to do, lead people. It made him feel strong and good, until something went wrong, which, unfortunately, it did all too often. But not this time. This time he knew what he was doing.

  “Come on,” Badger said. “We've got to get the spare lander.”

  Andy Groggins said, “They're apt to be waiting for us there, Red.”

  “If they are,” Badger said, “then so much the worse for them.

  46

  Stan sat in the lander and watched through Norbert's viewing screen as the robot's view of AR-32 swayed precipitously and began to slide off the screen. The lander was still vibrating after its bobsled descent through AR-32's turbulent atmosphere. Stan felt battered and bruised: sitting at the controls trying to steer all that liveliness and power to a safe landing was like going fifteen rounds with the Jolly Green Giant. Stan still wasn't sure which had won.

  He fine-tuned the knobs on the viewing screen, trying to focus on the images Norbert was sending back from the surface of AR-32. The picture lurched with each of the robot's footsteps, and jumped in and out of focus.

  Stan hated out-of-sync pictures like that. They seemed to trigger some long-dormant primeval receptor in his brain stem. He found the oscillations of the picture upsetting his own psychic balance.

  He tried consciously to steady himself. He didn't want to go freaking out now, but the way that picture jumped was going to do it to him yet, and they'd have to scrape him off the wall.

  Then the picture stabilized and the focus locked in. Stan was looking at a pile of wind-polished boulders in various shades of orange and pink. When Norbert raised his head, Stan could see ahead of him a narrow valley of stone and gravel. The swirling clouds of dust made visibility difficult after about fifty feet.

  “Look at this place,” Stan remarked to Julie. “We haven't seen a green thing since we got here. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this place has no natural vegetation. None on the surface, anyhow.”

  “If plants won't grow here,” Julie remarked, “how are the aliens able to sustain themselves?”

  “I said there was no vegetation on the surface,” Stan said. “Belowground it could be a very different story. There's an ant species that practices underground gardening. The aliens might have followed the same course of evolution.”

  “This isn't their home world, is it?” Julie asked.

  “I doubt it very much. It's extremely unlikely that they evolved here. No one knows the location of their original home planet.”

  “So how'd they get here?”

  “I have no idea. But however they did, they must have brought their culture with them. And their nasty habits.”

  Norbert's picture began to bounce again.

  “He's going uphill,” Stan said. “Have you spotted Mac yet?”

  “He ran on ahead,” Julie said. “He's out of the picture now.”

  Gill said, “There's something in the viewer's top right quadrant.”

  Stan studied it. “Yes, there is. Norbert, magnify that quadrant.”

  Norbert did so. The object sharpened, resolving from a black dot to a blocky shape of lines and angles.

  Gill said, “It looks like a cow skeleton, Doctor.” Norbert walked over to it. Up close, it did turn out to be a cow skeleton, though the head was missing. Norbert panned the remains. Mac had found it, too, and had pulled loose a thighbone. The animal's rib cage had been exploded outward under great pressure from something inside.

  “What could have done that?” Julie asked.

  “Probably a chestburner,” Stan said, alluding to the young of the alien species.

  “I doubt that cow creature came here naturally,” Gill put in.

  “Of course it didn't,” Stan agree
d. “If those bones could speak, I think we'd find that cow and a lot of her sisters were brought to this planet from Earth.”

  “As hosts for the alien young?” Julie asked.

  “No doubt. That's what Neo-Pharm was up to back in those days. And as T-bone steaks for the crew of the Lancet.”

  “Speaking of Lancet,” Julie said, “I wonder when we're going to run into them?”

  “Soon enough, no doubt,” Stan said. He studied the image Norbert was sending. “Hello, what's that? Another cow skeleton?”

  “Lower left quadrant, Norbert,” Julie said, spotting it.

  Norbert turned obediently and walked over. Within twenty yards he came across the body of an alien.

  It lay facedown in the gravel, its long black form alternately concealed and revealed by the windows of dust that blew incessantly across the valley floor.

  At Stan's instruction, Norbert viewed it through an infrared scanner, and then an ultraviolet, to make sure the body wasn't booby-trapped.

  It appeared to be free of danger. He approached and bent over it, with Mac — hair bristling and teeth barred — coming along at his heels.

  “What can you see?” Stan asked.

  “It is an alien,” Norbert replied. “There is no doubt of that. It is perfectly motionless, but not dead. There is no sign of life, but also no sign of damage or decay. It looks almost as if it could be asleep, I'm switching to ultrasonic scanner to conduct a survey of the internal organs.”

  After a short delay Norbert reported again. “It's internal organs are functioning, but at a very slow rate. It's like it's asleep or unconscious. There are several more tests I could try —“

  Whatever Norbert had in mind, it didn't happen, because Mac chose that moment to sense movement on the other side of a nearby hill and ran there, barking. Norbert got up and followed.

  When he reached the crest of the hill and looked over, the first thing he noticed was the small, fatbellied little spaceship, resting on its supports, nose pointed skyward, ready for takeoff.

  The second thing he noticed was the aliens, a dozen or so of them, lying motionless on the ground, just like the one he had left.

  And the third thing he noticed were the humans, three of them, bending over the unconscious aliens.

  47

  For the men from Potter's ship, the Lancet, it had begun as a normal day's harvesting operation. This three-man work crew had been down on the surface of AR-32 for half of their five-hour shift.

  After relieving the previous crew, their first task had been to inspect the suppressor gun. It was mounted on top of the spaceship, where it could be powered by the ship's batteries.

  It was a jury-rigged contraption, thrown together by a clever engineer from Potter's ship, a man with a knack for coming up with useful inventions on the spur of the moment.

  Suppressors were a new technology in the continuing war against the aliens. They had resulted so far in small modules worn on a man's person. But Potter's engineer had taken the suppressor principle one step farther. He had theorized that the aliens would be susceptible to a stunning effect from certain vibratory impulses if they were narrow-band broadcast at sufficient intensity. He based this hunch on his study of alien anatomy. It seemed to him that the aliens had developed a great sensitivity to electrical cycling pulses. These could excite or stupefy them, depending on the velocity and amplitude of the waves broadcast. He experimented with electromagnetic bombardment.

  Now, from its mount on top of the spaceship, his cannon turned like a radar dish, blasting electronic impulses that kept the aliens stupefied while the crew of the Lancet milked them of their royal jelly.

  It was not difficult duty, as Des Thomas had remarked to Skippy Holmes, with whom he was working. “I mean, if you forget they're aliens, it's much the same as taking honey from bees.”

  “Big bees,” Skippy said.

  “Yeah, very big bees, but it's the same thing. Hey, Slotz!” Thomas called to the third man of their crew, who was on top of the spaceship, working with the bracing that held the suppressor in place. No matter how well you put those things up, the incessant wind eventually worried them loose.

  “What is it?” Slotz said, pausing with power wrench in hand.

  “You almost finished up there?”

  “I need some more bracing material. A flying rock tore some of the support away.”

  “We'll radio it to the ship. The next shift can bring the stuff out. We're nearly out of here.”

  Slotz turned back to his work. Holmes and Thomas took up positions around the recumbent alien. Together they heaved the big creature over on his side. Arnold took up the scraper, working quickly around a leg joint. He packed the sticky, light blue residue into a canvas bag. From here, it would be transferred to a glass container within the potbellied little harvester ship. As Des Thomas finished milking his alien he heard a barking sound and looked up. He was amazed to see a large brownish-red dog running over the top of the hill. Given the circumstances, he couldn't have been more amazed if it had been an elephant or a whale.

  “Come here, boy,” he called. “I wonder where your —“

  It was at that instant that Norbert came striding over the crest of the hill and down into the harvesting area. There was a brief tableau: three human crewmen frozen like dummies, Norbert striding forward like a fury from the deepest hell, and Mac, all innocence, barking and capering along like he was on an outing.

  Holmes came unfrozen first. “One of them's come awake!” he shouted. “Get that sucker!”

  Slotz got off the top of the spaceship rapidly. The three men dived for their weapons. These were always kept handy because, although no alien had woken up suddenly like this before, no one really trusted the new suppressor technology — especially when you took into account how goofy looking its inventor was.

  Holmes got his hands on the carbine he had propped against a rock outcropping. He slipped off the safety, aimed hastily, and pulled the trigger. A stream of caseless forty-caliber slugs streaked toward Norbert, who was no longer there to receive them.

  The threat toward him instantly pushed Norbert into predator mode. You could almost hear the new program click into place.

  Softslugs bouncing off his carapace, Norbert slid under the fusillade of projectiles from Des's Gauss needler. A fragmentation grenade bounced off his chest and exploded as it was bouncing away. Norbert was showered with white-hot fragments of metal, but they didn't have the force to penetrate his metallized hide.

  Although he wasn't hurt, Norbert was not pleased. Skippy Holmes was the closest, and the crewman just had time to scream as Norbert hooked his face at the temples with two curved talons and tore it off in one economical move.

  It was a moment of gratuitous horror, though Norbert didn't view it that way. Just doin' my job, sir.

  Skippy buried the raw meat of his face in his hands and fell to the ground, gurgling, blood bubbling from his shattered skin. He didn't suffer for long; Norbert's spurred foot hooked out the man's stomach and a good selection of his internal organs.

  Seeing this, Chuck Slotz gagged and took to his heels, sprinting toward the harvester's open entry port, closely followed by Des.

  Norbert came racing after them, and almost made the entry port. It closed in his face, and Norbert slammed into it with a force that shook the harvester on its six slender legs and caused the radarlike suppressor apparatus on its roof to topple over and fall to the ground in a crackle of sparks.

  Slowly, very slowly at first, the aliens lying on the ground began to stir.

  48

  Gill gasped as the scene of carnage was played over Norbert's visual receptors and relayed to the screen aboard the Dolomite's lander.

  Norbert, standing in front of the harvester's sealed door, was saying, “I am awaiting further orders, Dr. Myakovsky.”

  “Yes,” Stan said. “Just stand by for a moment.” He turned to Gill. “What's the matter? Why are you looking that way?”

  “I–I was
n't prepared for the violence, Doctor. I had no idea Norbert was programmed to kill.”

  “How could you have thought otherwise? What do you think we're out here for? A sight-seeing trip? Gill, we're all programmed to kill.”

  “Yes, Dr. Myakovsky. If you say so.”

  “You, too, are programmed to kill, are you not?”

  “In defense of human lives, yes, I suppose I am. It is just that I didn't know we were going to exercise that option so … lightly.”

  “We're here to get rich,” Stan said. “Whatever it takes. Right, Julie?”

  “That's right, Stan,” Julie said, then turned to the artificial man. “You'll share in the money we get, too. Even an artificial man can use money, right?”

  “All sentient beings need money,” Gill said dryly.

  “That's right,” Julie said. “Anyhow, we're in it now, and it's us or them. You know what Potter will do if he finds us? The same thing he did to the Valparaiso Queen.”

  Gill nodded but didn't answer.

  “Think about it, Gill,” Stan said. “Don't get humanitarian on us too soon.” He paused, then added, “If it's really against your principles, perhaps you'd like to wait in the back bay until this phase of the operation is over? I wouldn't want you to do anything foolish.”

  “Do not worry about me, sir,” Gill said. “I have no sentiment about matters of killing. Sentiment was not programmed into me. I was surprised, that is all, but now I understand. I am ready to do whatever is necessary to protect you and Miss Julie.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Stan wiped his forehead. He looked like he himself was having a little trouble getting used to killing. Only Julie showed no signs of upset.

  Gill hesitated. “Sir, we have no visual contact with the crew volunteers.”

  “Damn it!” Stan said. “Does everything have to go wrong at the same time? Norbert! Can you get into the harvester?”

  “The door is locked, Doctor,” Norbert said.

  “I doubt it's a very advanced locking mechanism. Give me a close-up of the lock.”