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 else. 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.
“I’m getting some strange signals,” he told Stan.
“Where are they coming from?”
“That’s what’s strange. I can’t get a fix. They keep on shifting.”
“Can you derive any information as to their production?” Stan asked.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Is someone making these signals, or are they natural phenomena?”
“At this stage I can’t tell,” Hoban said. “We have no definite data on any other ships in the area.”
“There’s a lot of solar debris around, though,” Stan said. “No telling yet what it might be.”
Gill punched up another set of numbers. “The weather down there on the surface is even worse than you expected, Dr. Myakovsky.”
Julie came into the control room. She had already changed into a plasteel landing outfit. The cobalt-blue plastic formfitting clothing with its orange flashes looked stunning on her. Stan’s heart was in his mouth as he watched her.
“Are we ready to go down?” Julie asked.
Captain Hoban said, “I wouldn’t recommend it, Miss Lish. The surface phenomena are worse than we were led to believe. Perhaps if we give the weather time to settle down a little…”
Julie shook her head impatiently. “T
here’s no time for that. If our worst peril is from the weather, Captain, we’re doing very well indeed!”
“I suppose that’s true,” Hoban said. He turned to Gill. “Are you ready to accompany the party, Gill?”
“I am, of course, ready,” the synthetic man said. “I have taken the liberty of asking for volunteers for this. There are five of them, and they are waiting for your orders.”
He stood up from the control panel. He was tall, and even with his mismatched features, he was good-looking. If he had been a true man, you would have said there was something haunted about his expression. Since he was only a synthetic, you had to figure there’d been something amiss with his facial mold.
“Captain Hoban,” said Stan, “can you show us our target in more detail?”
Hoban nodded and fine-tuned the controls. AR-32’s surface sprang up into high magnification. Fractal-mapped shapes blew up in size and complexity. Hoban adjusted the magnification again. A tiny dot on the landscape grew quickly, until, at extreme magnification, it turned into a low dark earthen dome that rose up from the flat plain, showing up well against the rugged landscape.
“That’s the hive,” Hoban said. “Not easy to miss it. It’s the biggest thing in this part of the planet.”
“Looks pretty quiet,” Stan mused.
“We’re still a long way from the surface,” Gill reminded him. Things could change by the time we get there.”
“True enough,” Stan said. “But what the hell, this is what we’ve come for. Julie? Are you ready?”
“Ready, Stan,” Julie said. “It’s going to be a walk in the park.”
Stan wished he shared her confidence.
“Why are you going to the surface?” Hoban asked. “I thought we were coming to look for an orbiting wreck.”
“All in good time,” Stan said. “Right now we’ve got the hive below us and no sign of life around it. If we can get a load of royal jelly from there, we can take care of the freighter later.”
“Right on,” Julie said. “Let’s go for all the marbles.”
Stan felt encouraged by the beautiful thief’s cheerfulness and determination. Maybe this thing was going to go all right, after all.
29
The number-one lander was in its own bay, stacked parallel to the backup lander, just behind the big hold where Julie had made her last training run with Norbert. Now Norbert walked behind Stan and Julie, holding Mac the dog in his arms. There was something doglike about the robot’s posture; in a sense he was a mechanical watchdog, ferocious when challenged, utterly loyal to his master, Stan. Behind Norbert, and keeping their distance, were the five volunteers for the landing party. They had been promised a sufficient bonus for this undertaking, enough for avarice to overcome common sense. But, of course, if they’d had common sense, they wouldn’t have been in space on the Dolomite in the first place.
Captain Hoban, who was already at the number-one lander waiting for them, initiated the hatch-opening procedure. The lander, nestled in its bay, was almost a hundred feet long. It contained a miniature laboratory and was fully equipped with the telemetry needed for the mission.
Norbert was proceeding to the hatch when Mac the dog came streaking out of the corridor, the rubber ball in his jaws. He raced into the lander just ahead of Norbert.
“We’d better get that dog out of there,” Hoban said.
“Let him stay,” said Stan. “He may be of some use accompanying Norbert once we’re on the surface.”
“Just as you wish, sir,” Hoban said. “I wish I were going with you.”
“I wish you were, too,” said Stan. “But we need you here on the Dolomite. If anything goes wrong, we’re absolutely dependent on you for backup.”
“Don’t worry, Stan, nothing’s going to go wrong,” Julie said. Her smile was brilliant. “Don’t you agree, Gill?”
“Optimism has not been factored into me,” Gill said. “I am constructed to understand situations, not to have feelings about them.”
“You’re missing the best part,” Julie said. “Having feelings about stuff is what it’s all about.”
“I’ve often wondered about that,” Gill said.
“Maybe someday you’ll find out. Are we ready?”
“After you,” Stan said.
She made a mocking little salute and stepped into the lander. The others followed. Captain Hoban waited until he heard Stan report on the voice channel that the lander was well sealed and all systems were on-line. Then he returned to the control room and initiated the takeoff procedure.
The lander fell away from the Dolomite’s hull and dropped toward the swirling surface of AR-32. Stan adjusted his restraining harness and called out, “Everybody secure?”
The five volunteers from the crew were strapped down in the forward cabin. They were carrying weapons that had been issued to them by Gill: pulse rifles and vibrators. All had been given suppressors. These state-of-the-art electronic machines, about a meter long and weighing less than a pound, were clipped to their belts. The suppressors emitted a complex waveform that confused an alien’s vision, rendering the wearer invisible.
Julie and Gill were lying on deceleration couches in the main cabin behind Stan. Norbert was crouched all the way in the rear, holding a stanchion in one clawed hand and cuddling Mac with the other. There was no seat aboard the lander large enough to hold the big robot alien. But his strength was such that it was likelier the stanchion would move than his grip be torn loose.
Then Captain Hoban’s face appeared on the screen. “Dr. Myakovsky, are you ready for release?”
“Ready, Captain,” Stan said. “Open up and turn us loose.”
There was a powerful humming noise from the Dolomite’s interior motors, a noise that could be felt inside the lander as vibration. The Dolomite’s bay doors slid open revealing the star-studded sky as seen from AR-32’s upper atmosphere. There was a click as the doors locked in the open position. Then a bright green telltale on Stan’s control board came to life.
“You’ve got control, Stan.”
Stan felt his stomach turn over as the lander pulled away from the Dolomite. G-forces twisted at his gut. Sudden sharp flashes of pain went through his chest. A haze of pinkish red enclosed his vision, with blackness beginning to form on the edges.
“Stan!” Julie called out. “We’re coming down pretty fast.”
Gill said, “Hull ionization is beginning to be a factor.”
Stan got himself under control. His fingers danced on the controls. “Okay, I’ve got it. Gill, give me a landing vector.”
They were deep into AR-32’s atmosphere. Long, thin, ragged yellow clouds, twisting and turning into fantastic shapes, whipped past the Perspex viewing window. There was a rattle of hailstones striking the hull as they passed through a temperature inversion layer in the atmosphere.
The image of Captain Hoban jumped in and out of focus on the screen. But his voice was steady as he said, “Dr. Myakovsky, this planet has a heavy radiation belt. Better kick on through it at best speed.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Stan gritted. “Sightseeing?”
“Are you all right, Doctor?” Hoban asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“I feel great,” Stan said through gritted teeth. Black dots were swimming behind his eyes as he fought to hang on to consciousness. His chest burned with a familiar agony. He could feel the straps of the restraining harness tug at his shoulders as he cut down power and started to bring up the ship’s nose. The atmosphere lightened and darkened as they went through more cloud layers. On the computer screen, the flight path for their landing came in glowing amber.
Gill said, “We’re on the final approach now. Good going, Stan.”
Stan forced himself to concentrate, though he was none too sure he could remain conscious. The g-forces eased as he pulled the lander into position for its landing run.
There was more visibility near the ground. In the tawny yellow light Stan could see house-sized boulders
strewn across a tilted plain. They were fast approaching an old riverbed, wide and level, and that seemed a good place to make the final landing.
Stan adjusted the trim tabs and began the landing procedure. The lander put her nose up and steadied. Wind gusts shook the ship just as it touched down. There was a crunch as they smacked the ground, then a bad moment as the lander soared into the air again. Then it came down again, hard, and this time it stayed down.
When the lander had come completely to a stop, Julie looked around and said, “Welcome to AR-32, everyone. It may not look like much, but this planet is going to make us rich.”
“Or dead,” Stan muttered, but to himself.
30
Back on the Dolomite, Captain Hoban watched the lander spin away on the viewscreen. He felt hollow, useless. There was nothing for him to do at the moment. Gloomy thoughts began to invade his mind.
Captain Hoban had continued to think about suicide. This didn’t surprise him. He only found it strange that he hadn’t thought of it before, during all the bad days of the trial.
He shook his head. Back then, something had buoyed his spirits, some belief that he was going to come out of this all right. And then his opportunity had seemed to arrive when Stan visited him in Jersey City and made his offer, and here he was in space again. But he had a bad feeling about it. His thoughts were full of foreboding images, and the men torn apart by Norbert hadn’t helped his mood any. He suspected there would be a lot more deaths ahead, maybe even his own. Maybe he wouldn’t have to commit suicide after all.
On the other hand, he could do it now. Gill could handle the ship all right. Stan and Julie didn’t really need him…
Somewhere in his mind, Hoban knew this was a crazy line of thinking. He was a valuable person with reasons for living. He had nothing to be ashamed of. And yet the shame was there, constantly bubbling up from the depths of his mind, a seemingly automatic process that he couldn’t shut off.
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