“Excellent, Doctor. I’m glad that part of the operation is going according to plan.”
With his sharpened senses, Stan caught the note of uncertainty in his captain’s voice. “Is something the matter, Captain?”
“I’m afraid it is, sir. It concerns the flight recorder that we salvaged from the wreck I reported to you about. Before saying any more, let me play it for you, sir.”
“Okay, go ahead,” Stan said.
44
Stan, Julie, and Gill listened in attentive silence as the tape ran. They heard the exchange between Kuhn of the Valparaiso Queen and Potter of the Lancet. Although they knew the tape was going to reveal some kind of trouble, they were unprepared for the explosion of the Valparaiso Queen as she received the Lancet’s torpedo amidships.
“Let me just make sure I’ve got this straight,” Stan said, when the tape ended. “The recorder shows that Lancet blew up Valparaiso Queen?”
“There seems no doubt about that, sir,” Hoban said.
“Well, so what?” Stan said.
“There seems good reason to believe that Lancet is still in the vicinity.”
“And you think we are in danger?”
“Given Potter’s record of violence, it is entirely possible, sir. Even likely.”
“Let me point out, Captain, that we are not a defenseless freighter. We have the normal armament against piracy. If Lancet should attempt anything against us…”
“I will point that out, sir.”
“To whom?”
“The representative from the crew. They are sending him to ask what I intend doing about this situation.”
“Are you telling me that you played the tape for the crew?” Stan asked.
“No, sir. They took the liberty of listening to it before turning it over to me.”
“Well, damn their presumption.” Stan turned to Gill. “Have you ever heard anything like it?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Gill said. “The annals of space exploration are full of accounts of insubordinate crews.”
Stan said to Hoban, “You must point out to them that Lancet’s action was illegal and exceptional. Our situation is not more hazardous because an overzealous captain performed an illegal deed. Nevertheless, I think that in view of the men’s feelings we propose a special bonus to them.”
“I agree, Doctor,” Hoban said. “I was going to make the suggestion myself.”
“Do what you can with them, Captain. We’ll talk again later.” Stan signed off.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Julie asked.
Gill said, “Obviously there’s trouble. But I’m sure Captain Hoban can handle it.”
“I hope so,” Stan said. “We have a few problems of our own to take care of down here.”
He turned back to the screen. The others looked now, too. They were viewing the landscape of AR-32 through Norbert’s visual receptors. Norbert’s head was turning, checking out the landscape as he walked forward. Ahead of him, Mac suddenly started barking and ran toward a little hill. They heard Norbert say, “Come back, Mac. Wait for me!”
Then the view began to shake as Norbert broke into a run. For a moment they could see nothing but jagged brown-and-yellow lines. Norbert was watching the uneven ground, struggling to keep his balance. Then he went over a little rise. There was a sudden red-yellow explosion and his screen went into a wild array of colors and test patterns.
“Just what we needed,” Julie said. “Stan, can you clear up that view?”
“I’m working on it.” Stan turned the controls. “Gill, you got any ideas?”
“Let me just try this,” Gill said. His hand probed the front controls on the computer. “I think that’s getting it, sir. The view is beginning to come back…”
* * *
The confrontation on-board ship flared up suddenly. One moment Captain Hoban was talking with the crewmen and apparently getting somewhere, then the whole thing blew up.
Badger had rapped at the door to the control room. “Sir. Permission to speak to you about a grievance.”
“Now is not a very convenient time, Mr. Badger.”
“No, sir. But the union laws state that grievances of a serious nature are to be settled on the spot.”
“And who determines whether they’re serious?”
“A duly authorized ship steward, sir. Me.”
“All right,” Hoban said. “Come in. Let’s get this over with quickly.”
Badger entered the control room followed by Glint and four other members of the crew. They looked ill at ease in the officers’ area, with its soft lighting and flickering wall scanners. The helmsman stood alone in a little fenced-off enclosure to one side, scanning the ship. Two engine-room officers were also present. None of the officers was wearing sidearms. In the inquiry that later followed, Captain Hoban was faulted for this omission.
“What seems to be the problem?” Hoban asked.
“As you know, we took the liberty of viewing the ship’s log that I brought back from the rest. You’ve seen it, sir?”
“Of course,” Hoban said.
“What did you think, sir?”
“They caught Valparaiso Queen napping. They won’t find us so easy.”
“Yes, sir. But what has that got to do with us? We’re not soldiers, sir.”
“We are going about our peaceful and lawful business,” Hoban said, hoping it was true. “We aren’t out looking for trouble. But if it comes, they’ll find us ready. That is a perfectly normal situation in space, Mr. Badger.”
“Sure, a crew has to be ready for trouble. But it doesn’t have to go out of its way to find it.”
“We don’t have to run from it, either,” Hoban said. “But it is an unusual situation and additional compensation would not be out of order. I will make an announcement shortly, granting the crew extra hazard pay.”
“That’s not good enough,” Badger said. “We want some assurances now that this Potter isn’t going to blow us out of space.”
Hoban knew it was time to be firm. “I don’t care what you want, Mr. Badger. You’re a troublemaker. This situation will be resolved and we will let you know what our disposition of it is.”
“That is not good enough, Captain.”
“Well, it’s just going to have to be good enough! You are all dismissed.”
One of the engineers tugged at Captain Hoban’s sleeve, trying to get his attention. Hoban turned, and saw that Glint had sneaked over to the weapons locker and helped himself to some of its contents. He had pulled out a Gauss needler. This weapon, with its big side magazine of steel slivers, had not been allotted in the standard issue, where favor was given to primitive slug throwers and the newer beam weapons. Glint may just have been fascinated by the handgun’s deadly lines, and by the bulbous housing that contained the magnetic impulse equipment.
“What do you think you are doing?” Hoban shouted. “Put that down!”
One of the engineers reached for the weapon. Glint fired, perhaps by reflex. Steel splinters drove through the engineer’s left shoulder. There was a moment of shocked silence. And then all hell broke loose.
The second engineer was diving for the weapons locker even as the first was going down. The first thing his hand encountered was a Wilton tangler. He swung it at Glint and pressed the release stud.
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 something. “But where’ll we go after that, Red? There’s no civilization down there!”
“We’ll 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. “Anyhow, 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 homeworld, 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 chestburster,” 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 agreed. “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, Norber
t,” 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 bared—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.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 35