46

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So how’d they get here?”

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

Norbert’s picture began to bounce again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What could have done that?” Julie asked.

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

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

“Of course it didn’t,” Stan 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, Norbert,” Julie said, spotting it.

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

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

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

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

“What can you see?” Stan asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

47

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Big bees,” Skippy said.

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

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

“You almost finished up there?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

48

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

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

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

“I—I wasn’t prepared for the violence, Doctor. I had no idea Norbert was programmed to kill.”

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

“Yes, Dr. Myakovsky. If you say so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gill nodded but didn’t answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Norbert leaned forward, focused on the locking mechanism and switched to the X-ray mode.

Stan studied the picture for a moment “It looks like pretty standard stuff. Tell you what, just rip off the keypad and you’ll be able to turn the handle manually.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Better hurry up about it. It would be best to prevent those guys from getting in touch with Potter.”

49

Inside the harvester, Slotz and Thomas fell over each other getting to the radio. Thomas got there first and flipped the transmission switch.

“Lancet? Come in, Lancet !”

Slotz, standing just behind Thomas, heard a banging sound on the entry port and made sure he had his carbine.

“Hurry up, Thomas! I don’t know if the door will hold him!”

“I’m trying,” Thomas said. “But I’ve come up with nothing so far.”

“The antenna!” Slotz said. “It came down with the suppressor gun when the alien slammed into the ship.”

“That’s just great,” Thomas said. “So we can’t transmit. And it’s two hours before the next shift comes down.”

“Maybe we can hold out.” Slotz found a fresh magazine in his pocket, ejected the spent one from his carbine, and snapped the new one into place.

The hammering suddenly stopped. The men heard a sound of metal ripping. “He’s tearing off the lock cover!” Slotz cried. “Nobody can do that,” Thomas said.

“Trust me,” Slotz muttered. “He’s doing it.”

There was silence for a moment. Then a clicking sound.

“He’s through the cover! He’s working the unlocking mechanism!” Slotz shouted.

“Whaddaya want me to do about it?” Thomas said. Into the radio’s dead transmitter he shouted, “Mayday, Mayday!”

Then the door slammed open with great force and Norbert was coming in, a towering black fury. Slotz tried to level the carbine, managed to get off one round that glanced off Norbert’s shoulder and ricocheted around the cabin like an angry bee. Then Norbert was on him. The robot alien caught the back of Slotz’s head, leaned forward, mouth open, second jaws extending through his slavering mouth. Slotz, eyes wide and wild, tried to pull himself out of the way, but there was no budging Norbert’s grip. The second jaws shot out like a piston and smashed through Slotz’s open mouth and continued through, snapping the man’s spine like a dry stick.

Seeing what had happened, Thomas scrambled away from the radio. He had a pulse rifle in his hand and he triggered it. A tongue of brilliant light licked out against Norbert’s chest. It had no apparent effect on the robot, but at that close range the heat was reflected back into Thomas’s face. He shrieked as his hair caught fire. And then Norbert was on him, two taloned hands on his shoulders, hind legs raking the man’s middle with razor-sharp claws. Simultaneously fried and eviscerated, Thomas fell to the floor, dead before he landed.

In the ensuing silence, Mac came trotting into the harvester, looked around, seemed unimpressed by the blood and gore that coated the walls, and trotted up to Norbert.

The robot alien patted him once on the head, then said, “That’s all for now, Mac. I have to report.”

The interior of the harvester was a shambles. There were bits and pieces of crewmen scattered all over the struts and inner bracing members. Bright arterial blood lay in puddles on the metal floor. Blood lapped at the corners of the room, and the self-cleaning units were clogged with it.

Mac sniffed around, whimpered, then barked excitedly. He was getting a lot of mixed signals. Finally he decided something was wrong, but he’d have to let somebody else figure it out. He found a corner and lay down with his muzzle on his paws. Norbert came along behind him, stopped, and surveyed the damage he had caused.

Stan, back on the lander, was following visually. His voice was low. He was coaching Norbert.

“You’re doing fine, Norbert. We want to check out the whole ship for possible damage. You’re really quite violent once you get started, aren’t you?” “Not intentionally, Doctor.”

Julie leaned over Stan’s shoulder. “What’s that in the background, Stan?”

“I’m not sure… Norbert, make a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and do a slow pan. That’s it. Now freeze. And magnify. Okay, freeze it right there. And correct the color. Good!”

Julie said, “Plastic storage units. Each of them would hold—what? Five liters?” “More like seven,” said Gill. “There are hundreds of them stacked there,” Stan said. “More on the other side of the hold.”

“Are they royal jelly?” Julie asked. “Can we be absolutely sure of that?”

Stan replied, “There really seems no doubt. What else would they be filled with? Cloverleaf honey? The harvester is packed with the stuff. They must have been just about ready to take off back to Lancet.”

“Good thing we got here when we did.” Julie laughed. “They’ve done our work for us, Stan. We’re rich!”

Stan grinned. “We’d better not start trying to spend it just yet. Norbert, have you completed your assessment of the damage yet?”

“Yes, Dr. Myakovsky.”

“Any problems?”

“I’m afraid that in the fight this unit here was destroyed.” Norbert indicated the interior suppressor gear, which was strewn around the cabin, most of it broken into fragments of crystal and plastic.

“Ah well,” Stan said, “Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, as some famous man once remarked. Do you know who said that, Gill?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Gill said.

“And here I thought you knew everything. Well, well…” Unexpectedly he began to giggle.

“Stan,” Julie said, “what’s the matter?”

Stan pulled himself together. “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. I don’t suppose you know who said that, either. Well, never mind. Of all the stuff you could have destroyed, Norbert, I’m afraid you picked the worst I think that’s the interior equipment for the ultrasonic suppressor.”

“Are you certain?” Julie asked. “How can we know for sure?”

“There ought to be a serial number here somewhere.” Stan examined the bits of twisted metal. “Yes, as I thought. Now we need to go to the next step.”

“Is that difficult?” Julie asked.

“Easy enough … Norbert, give me a picture through one of the portholes.”

Outside, Stan could see a yellowish-brown haze with dark shapes moving through it. Half the aliens were up, the others were reviving swiftly. They moved sluggishly at first, then with increasing vigor, toward the harvester.

“Clear up the focus,” Stan snapped.

“Sorry, Doctor …” With the focus cleared, Stan could see the distinct dark alien shapes milling around outside the ship.

“Okay,” Stan said. “The suppressor is kaput and the aliens are awake. That’s okay. Basically, our job is over. We’ve got the harvester. It was a little messy, but we got it. We need only pilot it up to the Dolomite and get out of here. Norbert, check the controls.”

The robot alien moved to the control panel. After a moment he said, “I’m afraid we’ve got trouble, Doctor.”

Stan could see for himself through Norbert’s visual receptors. The battle inside the harvester had wrecked some of the controls.

“Oh, Stan,” Julie said, “can Norbert fly that thing out of there?”

“Sure, if conditions were right,” Stan said. “But I’m afraid it’s not going to be as easy as that The controls are all screwed up.”

“Can’t he fix them?”

Stan shook his head. “Sure, given time, but we don’t have much of that. First we’re going to have to get into communication with the Dolomite again. Gill, have you had any luck in raising Captain Hoban?”

“I haven’t gotten him yet, sir,” Gill said. “Something serious seems to have happened to the Dolomite.”

“That’s just great,” Stan said. “I wish he’d call.”

“He will,” Gill affirmed. “I know Captain Hoban. He would make contacting us his first priority.”

“Well, it gives us a little time. A chance to do something I’ve long wanted to do.”

Julie looked at him. “Stan, what are you talking about?”

“I want to take a look inside that hive.” He looked hard at Gill, as if daring him to challenge him. Gill felt momentarily uncomfortable and glanced at Julie, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug. Gill reminded himself that it was difficult to assess the situation and impossible to pass judgment on humans.

“Just as you say, sir,” Gill said at last.

“Norbert, are you standing by?” Stan demanded. “I am, Dr. Myakovsky.”

“Okay. I take it all your systems are functioning properly?”

“All my readings are in the green,” Norbert reported.

“Is your suppressor working properly?”

Norbert checked. “It is, sir.”

“And Mac’s ?”

Norbert bent over the dog. “It is functioning correctly.”

“Then turn it off and open the harvester port.”

“Sir?”

“Norbert, are you having synapse failure? Didn’t you hear me?”

“It is such an unusual order, Doctor, that I wanted to be certain I understood it correctly. When I turn off Mac’s collar, that will render him visible to the aliens.”

“That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Stan said. “We’re going to make the aliens a little present of Mac.”

“Give him to the aliens?”

“That’s right. You aren’t going soft on me, are you, Norbert?”

“No, sir. But is it necessary?”

“Of course it is. They’ll probably take Mac directly to the queen. They give the queen all the best stuff first, don’t they?”

“I think so, sir. So it is reported in the literature.”

“That’s right,” Stan said, with a laugh. “For a moment I forgot you weren’t one yourself.”

Gill and Julie looked at each other. Gill frowned slightly and looked away. Julie pursed her lips. She didn’t much like what was happening. But what the hell, it was no business of hers.

Stan explained. “Mac will represent food to them. A tasty little morsel fit for a king. Only in this case it’s a queen. That’s who they’ll take Mac to. And you, my dear robotic friend, will follow them. Protected by your own suppressor, they won’t even see you. Without suspecting a thing, they’ll lead you through the labyrinth to the royal birthing chamber. Through your eyes I’ll get the first pictures ever taken of the queen of this hive. I’ll be doing a unique service to science. That’s worth any number of little dogs like Mac. He’s just a common mutt. But you, Norbert, are unique.”

Stan turned to face Julie and Gill. Light glinted off his glasses. His face was drawn. His voice, high and strained, rose as he asked, “Does anyone here have any objections?”

Gill looked away and didn’t answer. Julie looked faintly annoyed as she said, “Give them Mac or a kennelful of mutts, it makes no difference to me. But would you mind telling me, just to satisfy my own curiosity, why are you doing this?”

“It’s the only way I can’be sure of getting Norbert into the hive quickly without him having to spend God knows how long looking for a way in. The outside of the nest is sealed against the weather, as you might have noticed. Did you check that out? The aliens must have a whole system of tunnels for getting in or out There must be a hundred miles of tunnel in something that big. This way I’ll have Norbert lay down an electronic path.”

Gill said, “What purpose will that serve, Doctor?”

“Two at least,” Stan said. “First, with Norbert videotaping as he goes, we’ll provide science with an invaluable record of life inside an alien hive. And second, we can come back here whenever we like to collect more jelly.”

“Now you’re talking, Stan,” Julie said. “I knew you weren’t just antidog.”

“Of course not. As a matter of fact, I’ll have Norbert try to rescue Mac when they’ve reached the queen’s chamber.”

“That might not be possible,” Gill said.

Stan shrugged. “Let’s get going. Norbert, do it!”

50

“Nope,” Morrison said. “I can’t get a reading.”

“Let me try,” said Larrimer. He fiddled with the controls. But it showed no trace of the first pod, the one with Norbert and Mac aboard.

Almost as soon as the five volunteers from the crew had entered the second pod, they lost visual contact with the first, and found themselves flying blind into a whirling sandstorm. Overhead, purple-black ranks of clouds had formed, and soon their visibility was further cut by heavy, driving rain. After the rain let up, the ground below steamed, and a thick mist arose from the land.

Definitely not flying weather. But the pod was equipped with autopilot and a landing program. Their direction finder was slaved to the first pod’s beacon. All they had to do was sit tight and the pod would take them to Norbert.

In theory.

In practice, the autopilot was unable to compensate for the driving wind, a wind that roared loudly enough to be heard inside the pod. The autopilot’s little computer had all it could do to keep them from piling up on the ground below. It brought them down safely, then the comedy of errors began.

First Larrimer, who had been entrusted with the radio, found out that it would not transmit or receive. Not enough power, maybe, or maybe interference from the electrical storm overhead. Maybe it had even taken one bang too many during their hectic descent.

“Well,” Morrison said, “they can probably find us even if we can’t find them.”

“Are you sure of that?” Skysky rubbed his bald head nervously.

“Sure I’m sure.” Morrison spoke with a confidence he didn’t feel. They’d want to retrieve the pod, anyhow. Those things cost money.”

Eka Nu looked up. “No,” he said. “Pods are considered expendable. So are crew, sometimes.”

Not a cheering thought.

“Anyhow,” Morrison said, “all we have to do is find Norbert. The professor is not about to abandon his favorite toy.”

That cheered them up a little. Morrison brought out an electron detector and tried to tune it to the trail Norbert was supposed to leave. The little machine buzzed steadily, but showed no sign of a direction. Morrison turned it in every direction. It still didn’t indicate anything.