Aliens (№2) - Alien Harvest

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 changed. 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 over 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.

“What do you suppose that thing is?” Glint asked. Badger said, “It’s some critter indigenous to this planet, I think. Boys, I’ll bet we’re the first ones ever to look at this thing.”

“G’wan!” Meg said. “One of the Lancet people might have seen it first.”

“No way to prove that,” Badger said. “But this thing could be rare, and never take to hanging around the places where humans live and work. Like the bobcat and the wolverine on Earth. If there’s animals like that on Earth, why not here?”

“Here, fella,” Meg called. “Why’ncha come over here?”

The piglike thing lifted its little triangular ears and stared at them with bulbous blue eyes. It lifted a forepaw and pawed the ground. Then it trotted over to Meg.

“Hey, ain’t that nice?” said Meg. She reached over and scratched the creature above its ears. It made a high-pitched grunting sound that had about it a tone of approval. No mistaking that sound for a cry of pain.

The others crowded around. “Cute, ain’t it?” said Glint, who had raised hogs in Arkansas.

Meg said, “I wonder why it came to us?”

“Can’t tell about alien life-forms,” Badger said. “I wonder if we should take this fellow along with us. Back on Earth sell him to a circus, make a lot of money off’n him. I wonder what he eats?”

“I’m sure he’d tell us if he could,” Meg said, scratching the creature’s back. “Where do you come from, fellow?”

The creature cocked its head at them as if it were trying to understand. It seemed to be listening to something. Or for something. It was hard to tell which.

Badger listened, too. And after a few moments he heard a high-pitched buzzing sound, like locusts, only heavier somehow, meaner. As he listened the sound changed. It turned into a heavy thumping, as if a thousand bass drums were advancing up the ridge. Then Badger realized that the two noises were going on simultaneously. He wondered what it could be, and suddenly he didn’t want to know.

“Lock and load!” he shouted to the men. “I don’t like the sound of this!”

The creatures came over the top of the little hill, a couple dozen of them, though of course that was only the first wave. They were different from the creatures they had seen before. They were the size of large dogs, and their heads were big and shaped like raptor birds. They had no feathers, however, just two tails apiece, and those tails appeared to be barbed. Their mouths were filled with long sharp teeth—that seemed to be a rule here on this planet—and they were making a buzzing sound as they came.

Behind them came another group of creatures, a little smaller than the others, about the size and general shape of wopdchucks, and colored a lime green with bluish features. They all had mustaches, like walruses. They made a booming sound as they walked, but Badger couldn’t see how they produced it. They came on, all of them, and they didn’t look friendly.

“Hit ‘em with it!” Red shouted, and he and his three buddies began to pour in fire. They had the caseless carbines going so fast that the firing mechanisms began to grow hot, but they ignored the pain and kept on firing.

One thing was plain from the first: these creatures were hard to hit. They weren’t coming on fast, but their dodging and swerving made them difficult targets. Nevertheless, Red scored a hit, and had the satisfaction of seeing one of the woodchuck blow up like an overinflated beach ball.

Meg scored, and then Glint, who shouted in triumph.

Then one of the raptor-headed creatures got under the one of his fire and grabbed his foot. It bit, twisted.

Glint’s foot came off at the ankle. He stared at the stump, too surprised to feel pain yet, and tried to take a step away. But he toppled over and they were on him, a dozen of them, biting and tearing. One longnecked creature buried his head in Glint’s belly. Glint screamed and tried to tear it away, but the bird-thing was stronger. It got its head deep inside Glint’s belly, and then pulled the rest of itself in. Lying on the ground, Glint went into convulsions.

Badger dropped his empty carbine and picked up a plasma rifle. He turned it to full fire and sprayed the area. He caught Meg, out on the periphery, with his blast and saw her wither and collapse before he could turn it off her.

“Damn it, sorry, Meg!” he shouted. It was just the sort of unfortunate thing that happens sometimes in combat.

Meanwhile, Min Dwin, firing from the hip, was seized from behind by an alien. It caught her by her long hair, and she turned, still firing, and put four rounds into the creature’s head, had the satisfaction of seeing it blow apart. But it still held her hair in its dying claw, and from its ruined head a gout of acid sprayed, catching her full in the face.

“My eyes!” she screamed, and fell to the ground, clawing at her face. She writhed for a moment, then lay still. The acid had penetrated to her brain.

Andy Groggins tried to turn his carbine to face an alien that had just come up on his side. His feet were yanked from under him. An alien had him by the ankles, another seized his arms. They tugged in opposite directions, and Andy triggered off his entire magazine, spraying the area and nearly catching Badger, who had to dive to escape the blasts. Then Andy roared as his left leg was ripped off at the hip.

The alien who had been pulling his feet fell backward. The other caught its balance and came at him. Badger triggered off a burst and blew the creature away. Groggins was dead before the carbine’s reverberations died away.

Looking around, Badger saw that he was alone. The others were dead. The original beast, the barrel-shaped thing, was nearby, sitting on its haunches and watching expectantly.

“Damn you, you Judas goat!” Badger said, and blew it away with a short burst.

The area was a shambles of blood and gore. All Badger’s people were dead, and he expected to go next, but the attack had ended. There were no aliens in sight now except dead ones, and no other creatures, either.

Badger stood there, sobbing with fatigue and anguish, and saw a shadow appear as if from nowhere. He looked up.

There it was, Potter’s ship, the Lancet, and he had a chance to get out of this. “Drop a line! Pick me up!”

They were down level with him, and he saw four of the crew watching him from one of the big glassite windows. He screamed at them, and finally they opened a hatch and threw out a rope ladder. Badger scrambled up with his remaining strength and collapsed inside the ship.

“Did you get all that on tape?” Potter asked.

“Yes, sir,” the second-in-command said.

“The scientists will be interested in these creatures,” Potter commented.

“Yes, sir,” the second-in-command said. “But the killing of all those men was a little gruesome, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, edit that part out,” Potter scoffed. “And mark it in the log that we didn’t reach the surface in time to save the rest of the mutineers.” He turned to go, then stroked his chin. “Not that one ever really wants to rescue mutineers. They set a bad example for the rest of the crew. But don’t put that in.”

“Yes, sir.” The second-in-command saluted and began to walk off. “We did pull one of them out.”

“Take him to the medics,” Potter said. “We’ll get his story later.”

“Yes, sir.” The second saluted and left the control room.

“And now, Dr. Myakovsky,” Potter said to himself, “It is time to deal with you.”

64

Stan and his group went through a maze of pathways. They found no sign of Norbert’s electronic trail. No sign of Norbert, either. He had dropped behind, after making a gallant stand against the aliens. Stan had last seen him submerged under a writhing mound of black alien bodies.

Stan’s breathing was laboring, he could hardly drag himself along. When was the royal jelly going to kick in? Julie and Gill helped him all they could, but they needed to keep their hands free to use their weapons. Because now more and more aliens were appearing, coming out of different turnings in the tunnels. They came in ones and twos, no mass attack yet, but it was probably only a matter of time.

It was clear that the suppressors were no longer doing their job. Stan, Julie, and Gill had to be constantly on the alert, because the creatures were attacking silently, suddenly springing out of the shadows.

Julie was leading the way. Her searchlight beam probed ahead into the profound darkness. She thought she had never seen such darkness before. Even the darkness she saw when she closed her eyes was not as deep as this. This was the darkness of evil, the darkness that cloaked a place where unspeakable creatures performed horrifying rituals. This was the darkness of childhood terrors. This was the darkness out of which monsters swarmed, the place where they tortured little children, and ate them, and then spit them up to make them live again so they could kill them anew.

Glancing back, Julie saw Gill falling back to help Stan, fighting half turned around to keep the aliens from running up their backs. He showed no expression when the searchlight beams occasionally illuminated his long, serious face. The android did his work methodically, but then he wasn’t really human, it was all the same to him, he had no feelings, not really. He’d act just the same if he were on an assembly line screwing down machine parts. He’s lucky, Julie thought, because it’s not all the same to me, no matter how hard I try to make it so.

And Stan? In a way he was lucky, too. Too exhausted to care any longer, and in too much pain, to judge from his twisted features and the sweat that dripped from his face. She felt so sorry for him, and yet, in a way, she envied him. He was too far gone to feel the terror that engulfed her mind and turned her legs to jelly.

Gill plodded along, an efficient machine doing what it was supposed to do. His peripheral vision was enormously extended, and when he caught movement at the outer edges, he wheeled and fired in a single economical movement. When a group of three or more aliens came at him, he switched to the small thermite bombs he carried in a pouch on his left side, setting the proximity fuse with his thumb just before he let them go.

It was like a dance—turn, swing, fire—the only dance he had ever done. Turn, wheel, extend the arm. Boom! Blam! Turn again, gracefully duck, turn, fire, fire again, then go forward…

He heard Stan gasp and slip. Gill scooped him up and put him back on his feet. “Can you go on?”

“Yes. Thanks …” Stan was saving his breath.

Gill was worried about the doctor. That dose of pure royal jelly hadn’t seemed to help any. He knew how much Stan had been expecting to find some sort of divine elixir that would cure his cancer. Gill had no particular hope that this would happen. It was illogical. The royal jelly was not a cure; it served merely to diminish the pain. Why should a pure strain do more than the other, adulterated strains?

He knew that humans liked to entertain farfetched notions. All of the humans, in a way, were like those Spanish conquistadpres he had learned about during his hypnopaedic learning sessions, those men in armor who had painfully trekked across the American plains, searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola, imaginary places that had never existed outside the dreams of mythographers.

Stan’s belief in a cure for his disease was like that. It was forlorn, even silly. No android would be capable of such folly. Yet Gill didn’t think that made him better than Stan. Quite the contrary, it made him subhuman, because he could not participate in the delusions, both the pathetic and the sublime, that made the human race what it was.

The aliens were massing behind them. Gill had to slow down more and more to flight rearguard actions.

Julie pressed on ahead, hoping that the turns she took were leading them toward the outside of the hive rather than deeper into it.

Gill switched the plasma rifle to automatic fire and laid down a sheet of flame as half a dozen aliens came crawling out of a pit and, rearing to their feet, loped toward him.

Stan stumbled and fell, and lay still. Gill scooped him up and draped him over one shoulder, leaving one arm free to aim and fire the heavy plasma rifle.

By now the aliens were coming from side turnings as well as from behind. The little party wasn’t surrounded yet, but it looked imminent. Gill threw his last thermite grenade, shifted Stan higher onto his shoulder, and noted that the charge in the plasma rifle was almost depleted. He turned, ready to fight to the end.