Aliens (№2) - Alien Harvest

The most recent ingestion of Xeno-Zip had taken Stan’s spirit far away, into the limitless perspectives that were the psychic environment of the drug. He was traveling through a place of pure light and color, and he smiled at the friendly shapes around him.

Julie stared at him almost in awe. She knew that Stan was moving down the visionary trail in some impossible dreamtime, walking down a hall of memory filled with all the images of everything that had ever been or would be. And these images were melting like wax in the warmth of the soul’s embrace. Stan was a sorcerer forcing time itself to stand still and be accountable to the moment. He had found eternity in an instant, and he was balancing it on a needlepoint. He was in his own time now, a time that had no duration and no limit. He was in a place she could never get to. But, she wondered, out here in the world of solid objects and fiery forces, how much time did he have left? How much time was at Julie’s disposal, for that matter? Could Stan see their time lines in that strange place where he was?

“Stan,” she whispered to him, “what are you dreaming about? Am I in the dream with you? Are we happy?”

Stan mumbled something but she couldn’t catch the words. She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. His eyes snapped open, as if he had been waiting for this signal. She watched his face tense as pain returned to his consciousness. Then he had himself under control and said, “Julie … What is it?”

“Captain Hoban wants to speak to you again. He’s pulled a flight recorder from that wreck.”

“Okay, fine.” Stan sat up, then got somewhat unsteadily to his feet. Julie’s slender, hard arm was around him, supporting him, her warm fragrant hair was at his shoulder, and he breathed her fragrance gratefully.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Hey, dont mention it. We’re a team, aren’t we?”

He looked at her. Her eyes were enormous, brilliant, with dark pools at the center. He felt himself melting into them. A wave of emotion came over him.

“Julie …”

“Yes, Stan, what is it?”

“If you’re doing this for my sake … please don’t stop.”

36

The voices on the flight recorder were very clear.

“What ship is that?”

“This is the Valparaiso Queen, Captain Kuhn commanding, thirty-seven days out of Santiago de Chile. To whom am I speaking?”

“This is Potter of the Bio-Pharm ship Lancet. Do you realize you are trespassing?”

“I think you exaggerate, Captain. There’s no trace of your claim in the recent issues of StarSwap.”

“We haven’t chosen to go public with it just yet. But there are electronic warnings posted at the beginning of the quadrant. Surely you intercepted those warnings?”

“Oh, those!” Captain Kuhn laughed. “An electronic warning hardly constitutes a legal claim! No, Captain Potter, unless you publish your intent with the federal Department of Interplanetary Claims, it can’t be said to exist. I have as much right here as you.”

Potter’s voice was low, and hoarse with menace. “Captain Kuhn, I am a man of little patience. You have already used up my entire store. You have about one second to go into retrofire and get your ship, out of there.”

Kuhn replied, “I do not take kindly to peremptory orders, Captain, especially from one who has no legal right to give them. I will leave this vicinity in my own time, when I’m good and ready. And you may be sure I will file a complaint with InterBureau over your attitude.”

“You will have more to complain about than an attitude, Captain Kuhn, but I doubt you will ever file that report.”

“Do not try to intimidate me!”

“The time for words is past. The torpedo that puts paid to your pretensions is now coming toward you at a speed well below that of light, but fast enough, I think you’ll find.”

“Torpedo? How dare you, sir! Number two! Full power to the screens! Take evasive action!”

And then Badger had to turn down the volume as the recorded sound of the explosion shook the walls of Workshop D.

37

“What’s the latest on the storm?” Stan asked.

Gill looked up, his long melancholy face half in a green glow from the ready lights on his control panel. On the screen above him, data waves danced in long wavering lines, the numbers changing with a rapidity that would defy the computational abilities of any but a synthetic man with a math coprocessor built into his positronic brain. Gill was such a man, and his computational abilities were enhanced by the rock-steadiness of his mind, which was not subject to the neurotic claims of love, duly, family, or country. Yet he was not completely emotionless. It had been found that intelligence of the highest order presupposes and is built upon certain fundamental emotional bases, of which the desire to survive and continue is the most fundamental of all. The designers of artificial men would have liked to have stopped there. But the uncertain nature of the materials they were using—in which minute differences in atomic structures eventually spelled big differences in output, as well as the inherent instability of colloidal structures—made this impossible. Gill was standard within his design parameters, but those parameters expressed only one part of him.

“The storm is abating,” Gill said. “There’s been a twenty-percent diminution in the last half hour. Given the conditions here, I think that’s about the best we’re going to get. In fact, it’s apt to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Stan said. He turned to Norbert, the big robot alien, who still crouched patiently in a corner of the lander. Mac the dog, growing impatient, whined to be put down, and Norbert obliged. The dog investigated the corners of the little lander and, finding nothing of interest, returned to curl up at Norbert’s taloned feet.

“You ready, Norbert?”

“Of course, Dr. Myakovsky. Being robotic, I am always ready.”

“And Mac?”

“He is a dog, and so he is always ready, too.”

Stan laughed, and remarked to Julie, “I wish now I’d had more time to talk with Norbert. His horrible appearance belies his keen intelligence.”

“You are responsible for my appearance, Dr. Myakovsky,” Norbert said.

“I think you’re beautiful,” Stan said. “Don’t you think so, Julie?”

“I think you’re both pretty cute,” she said.

38

In the forward cabin of the lander, the five volunteer crew members were sitting as comfortably as they were able in the cramped confines. Morrison, big and blond, an Iowa farmboy, had unwrapped an energy bar and was nibbling at it. Beside him, Skysky, fat and balding with a walrus mustache, decided to eat an energy bar of his own and fumbled it out of his pocket. Eka Nu, a flat-faced Burmese with skin a shade lighter than burned umber, was mumbling over the wooden beads of his Buddhist rosary. Styson, his long face as mournful as ever, was playing his harmonica, monotonously repeating one phrase over and over. And Larrimer, a city boy from New York’s south Bronx, was doing nothing at all except licking his dry lips and brushing his long lank hair out of his eyes.

They had been excited when they volunteered. It was a chance for some action, after the confines of the ship. They’d heard stories about the aliens, of course, but none of them had seen one. They hadn’t even been born at the time of the alien occupation of Earth. Aliens now seemed an exotic menace, a weird kind of big bug that would fall easily to their guns. Morrison was fiddling with his carbine. He decided to insert a new feed ramp. He stripped the receiver and replaced the ramp, then snapped the connector into place. The ramp toggled through a diagnostic code and then clicked into place. He shoved a magazine into the carbine, touched the bolt control, and cycled a round into the firing chamber. The magazine’s counter showed an even one hundred antipersonnel rounds ready to go.

“Hey, farm boy,” Skysky said, “you planning to shoot something?”

“If I get the chance,” Morrison said, “I’m going to bag me one of them aliens and bring home his horns.”

Eka Nu looked up from his rosary. “Aliens no got horns.”

“Well, whatever they got, I want to bring a piece of it home. A piece of skull maybe. Wouldn’t that look good mounted over the mantel?”

Styson said, “You better just hope one of them critters doesn’t nail your hide up over the mantel.”

“What’re you talking about?” Morrison asked. “Them creatures ain’t civilized. They ain’t got mantels.”

Just then Stan’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “You men! Get ready to embark into a pod. Check your weapons.”

“Okay,” Morrison said, getting to his feet. “Time we had ourselves a little hunting.”

The men were all on their feet, checking their weapons and talking excitedly. They were clumsy, some of them seeing modem weaponry for the first time. Morrison—who was their natural leader due to his size and self-confidence, though he was of the same rank as the rest of them—had to show Styson how to release the safeties. He was beginning to won-der if the guys would be all right, but he figured as long as they knew which end to point and what to pull, they’d be fine. What creature could stand up against military caseless ammunition?

39

The number-one lander had three escape pods. These were used for close-up maneuvering, in order not to jeopardize the lander itself by piloting it around poorly mapped ground features. This standard-model pod was shaped like an enormous truck tire. Its circular form allowed for the miles of complex wiring that took up most of its interior and allowed it to ride the planet’s electromagnetic currents with some success.

Norbert fitted himself in, and Mac nestled up to his chest.

“Comfortable?” Stan asked, peering in.

“The question has no relevance for me,” Norbert replied. “When your body is electronically operated, one posture is as good as another. But Mac is fine, Dr. Myakovsky.”

“Glad to hear it,” Stan said. “Good luck, Norbert. I’ll be sending down the five crew volunteers in a separate pod. This moment brings us to the whole point of this operation—getting you and Mac and the men to the surface of AK-32 near the alien hive. Have you got all the stuff you’ll need? Did you remember to check the charge in the inhibitors?”

“Of course, Dr. Myakovsky. They should give me enough time to do what I have to do.”

“Okay,” Stan said. “Good-bye, Mac. You’re a nice little dog. I hope I see you again one of these days.”

“Not likely, Doctor,” said Norbert.

Suddenly Stan was furious.

“Just get the hell out of here!” he said, slamming the pod’s hatch shut. “I don’t need your comments. Did you hear that, Julie?”

“Take it easy, Stan,” Julie said. “Norbert didn’t mean anything. He only states facts. Anyway, what’s the big deal?”

Norbert’s voice came over the radio. “I am ready for the descent, Dr. ‘Myakovsky.”

Stan turned to Gill. “Cut the pod loose. And then get the volunteers into their own pod.”

Gill, seated at the control panel, turned a switch. The pod came loose from the landing platform with a soft explosive sigh of power. It ejected straight into the air, dipped for a moment then its electromagnetic receptors came up to full and the pod darted across the stormy landscape of AR-32 toward the distant hive.

40

Badger and Glint left the workshop and entered crew country from the corridor into the crew’s commissary. A wave of sound and smell hit them. The sound was of fifteen men and women, mostly young, celebrating their arrival at AR-32 with song and booze, hamburgers and pizza (these latter accounting for the smell), and a level of noise that had to be heard to be believed.

Celebrating landfall was an old custom among ship’s crews. Columbus’s men had celebrated in the same way, their arrival in the New World offering them a good excuse for a spree. That’s what the arrival at AR-32 meant to the crew of the Dolomite, too: a chance to cut loose and tie one on in the secure surroundings of the commissariat, where officers were not permitted and where scanning procedures were prohibited by the strong Spacemen’s Union.

Here the men could say what they wanted, and there were no ship’s officers nearby or at the end of an electronic listening device ready to take their names and report them for summary discipline. The union wouldn’t allow it, and Red Badger had counted on that when he made his entry.

Long Meg, a wiper third class from Sacramento back on Earth, slapped Badger on the back and pushed a bulb of beer into his face. “Where you been, Red? Not like you to miss a spree!”

“I been out to the wreck,” Red said.

“What wreck? They didn’t tell us about no wreck.”

“No, they didn’t,” Red said. “That’s very like them, isn’t it?”

Meg pushed her face close to Badger’s. “None of your bullshit. What wreck are you talking about?”

Badger grinned at her easily. “That’s what the captain sent me and Glint here to investigate. It showed up on the radar and he sent me to get the flight recorder.”

“Oh. Is that all?” Meg asked. “I guess the captain will tell us what was on it all in good time.”

“I don’t think so,” Badger said. “If we knew what was on that recorder, it might change our minds about a few things.”

“Come out with it, Red! What are you talking about?”

“Suppose that flight recorder showed a freighter just like ours, poking around here just like we are, then being blasted to hell by someone who didn’t want them here? What about that, huh?”

“That would be serious,” Meg admitted, and several other crewmen nodded agreement. “Are you saying that’s what it said?”

“I’m not saying nothing,” Badger said. “You can decide for yourselves.”

“You took the flight indicator?”

“I listened to it in the workshop. And now I’m going to play it for you. Once you’ve heard it, you can come to your own conclusions.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Red,” Meg said. “I’m sure the captain is expecting you to give that to him immediately.”

“Don’t worry,” Badger said. “The message on it is pretty short.”

41

The pod, with Norbert and Mac aboard, was dancing around like a leaf in a storm. Norbert had lost contact with the other pod containing the five volunteers. Wind force threw his pod up into the air, and crosscurrents spun it like a top. Mac howled, and Norbert just clung tight.

“Hang on, boy!” Norbert called. Mac, cradled in his arms, was whimpering, his eyes rolling, in a paroxysm of fear.

Norbert had brought along some extra equipment in case of distress to the dog. The trouble was getting to it. Norbert was practically compressed into the space of the pod, and his size made him take up more room than an Earthman. The little ship was swinging around violently, but Norbert did not suffer from vertigo. He managed to reverse one of his wrist joints and grabbed a large piece of felt he had brought along. He managed to wrap this around Mac, cushioning him. The dog gave a little yelp as the cloth came around him, but he seemed to appreciate it. His spastic movement became calmer, and he began to adjust to the violent movements.

The pod, descending on automatic, danced and veered in the wind. Norbert was tempted to manually override the pod’s controls and see if he could ease out the movements. But he decided against it. The pod’s autopilot had been designed with a program that softened out its jerks and slides. He couldn’t hope to do better. He concentrated instead upon providing a firm platform for Mac and keeping the felt wrapped around the shivering beast without smothering him. Norbert himself didn’t breathe, and he had to remind himself that all other creatures did.

The ground was coming up fast now to meet them. Wind shear, this close to the ground, added another factor to the dangerous uncertainties of the descent. (The pod’s own pulsar beams had to slow them and absorb the shock as the ground rushed up to meet them.) Then they were bouncing across it, and finally, spinning, they came to a halt.

Then Dr. Myakovsky’s voice: “Norbert, are you all right?”

“Perfectly all right, Doctor. And so is Mac.”

“Was the landing very difficult?”

Norbert had something new in his vocabulary, learned from Julie, and he hastened to use it now. “A piece of cake, Doctor. A walk in the park.”

“Hurry up and get the job done,” Stan said. “We want to get rich and get out of here.”

42

After Badger played the recorder for the crew, there was an utter silence for a brief moment. Spaceship crews, with their volatile mix of people from all walks of life, tend to have low boiling points. The crew of the Dolomite was no exception, particularly since it included a high percentage of criminals.

“What the hell does it mean?” Meg asked.

“It means that a ship like ours was fired upon and destroyed. If they did it to them, then why not to us?”

“Wait a minute!” one of the crew said. “They aren’t allowed to do that!”

“What does it matter what they’re allowed?” Badger said. “People with power do what they please.”

The crew began quarreling among themselves. Badger waited for them to sort it out. He was pretty sure what conclusion they’d come to. And if, by a remote chance, they didn’t, he’d steer them toward it.

He knew that cons were always open to the charge that they were being exploited, a supposition that had proven true too many times in the past. The crew had listened to the flight recorder from the Valparaiso Queen and, aided by Badger’s comments, came to their own conclusions.

It was obvious that there was danger out there. Danger that Captain Hoban would soon know about. Danger that impinged directly on the lives of the crew. So what would Hoban do about it?

After a while the first babble of talk died down, and Walter Glint said to Badger, “Captain Hoban will see this soon. What do you think he’s going to do about it?”

“I’ll tell you what he’ll do,” Badger said. “Nothing, that’s what hell do! Hoban is paid by the crazy doctor. The one who’s always zonked out on fire. The one who’s got the robot alien that killed two of our shipmates. Hoban will do what the crazy doctor tells him to do, because he’s gettin’ paid plenty to take the risks. But what risks are you being paid to take? Tell me that, huh?”

It was easy to get a spaceship crew angry, less so to drive them to action. Excited and desperate though they were, it still required work to goad them into taking the law into their own hands. But they were halfway there, Red thought.

Badger was starting a rebellion, but he didn’t know quite what he would do next. The quirks of his own mind had perplexed him since childhood. Although he was starting this revolt, paradoxically he felt a strong sympathy for Captain Hoban. At one time he had thought he was going to help him. After all, Hoban had gotten him out of prison. But that was before he saw the tapes, before he realized the extent of the danger they were running, before he decided to do what he could to prevent it.

It’s necessary to get them moving, Badger thought Before there are more deaths.

43

“Dr. Myakovsky? This is Captain Hoban. Do you read me?”

“The atmospherics are difficult, Captain, but I am able to understand you. Please note that just a few minutes ago we launched the pods containing Norbert and Mac and the volunteers. We have them now in distant visual range.”

“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 situa-tion.”

“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 shop 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 needier. 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 effec-tive 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.