Robert Sheckley - Alien Harvest

“What are you offering, then?” Stan said.

“Advice. Guidance.”

Stan couldn't help laughing. “Thanks, but we can do without it.”

“Can you really? You people from around here?”

“No, as a matter of fact.”

“That's pretty clear. You want to walk out of here alive? You'd better buy a pass.”

Stan looked around. There seemed to be nothing much happening on the street. It all looked safe enough. Yet something about her tone of voice chilled him, and he said, “Just out of curiosity, what happens if we don't take a pass?”

She shrugged. “What usually happens to people who stray onto other people's turf?”

“But I'm standing in a public street!”

“It's turf all the same. You're in the territory of the Red Kings. I can sell you a pass that'll keep you out of trouble, or you can take your chances.”

Julie had been standing by, listening, letting Stan handle it, but she was getting impatient. “For heaven's sake, Stan, give her something and let's get on with it!”

“I guess I'll take two passes,” Stan said. “How much are they?”

Her price of ten dollars didn't seem too bad. Stan paid with a twenty and waited for change.

“For the other ten I'll sell you some advice,” the woman said.

Stan hesitated, then decided not to argue. “Okay. What's your advice?”

“When you go into the soup kitchen,” she said, “don't forget your pail.” And then she turned and walked away.

Stan looked at the pass in his hand. It was a playing card, the five of diamonds. Turning it over, he saw a fine looping scrawl in red Magic Marker. He couldn't read it, but it looked just like graffiti.

“Hey, kin I help?” a voice asked.

It was a vagrant in a shapeless graycloth hat who had spoken to them. He looked fat and stupid and evil.

Julie said to him, “Buzz off, buster.”

The man looked for an instant as though he was prepared to take umbrage at the remark. Then, warned perhaps by a sixth sense that told him when he was outmatched, he mumbled something and walked on.

“I should be doing the protecting,” Stan said.

“Don't get all bent out of shape over it,” Julie said. “I can take care of bums and wise guys, but I don't know how to build robots. It all evens out in the end.”

“Yeah, I guess it does,” Stan said. “Here we are.”

They walked up the crumbling steps of a rotting tenement. An odor of roach repellent fought with the smell of crushed roaches. There was not much to choose between them. Dim yellow light bulbs burned overhead as they climbed to the third floor.

Stan found the right door and knocked. No answer. He knocked again, louder.

Julie said, “Maybe we should have phoned.”

“No telephone.” Stan hammered on the door. “I know he's in there. There's a light on under the door. And I can hear the TV.”

“Maybe he's shy,” Julie said. “I think we can fix that.” With one well-placed kick, she shattered the lock. The door swung inward.

Within, there was a dismal-looking apartment that might have been pretty nice along around the time Rome was founded. It was a hideous place of ancient wallpaper and mildew, and the sound of a toilet running.

Smell of frying kelp patties from other apartments overlay the basic odors. There was an overflowing garbage pail, with two cardboard cartons of garbage beside it.

For furniture, there was an old wooden kitchen table. Sitting at it in a straight-backed chair was a strongly made, sad-faced, middle-aged man with iron-gray hair.

This man looked up as they came in. He seemed startled by what he saw, yet uncaring, as if it didn't matter what the world threw at him next. There was a small black-and-white TV on the table, and he turned it off.

“Hello, Captain Hoban,” Stan said.

Hoban took his time about answering. He seemed to be reorienting himself in the real world, after a long trip to some unimaginable place, perhaps to the time of his trouble in the asteroids.

At last he said, “It is you, isn't it? Why, hello, Stan.”

“Hi,” Stan said. “I want you to meet my friend Julie.”

Hoban nodded, then looked around. He seemed aware for the first time of the apartment's appearance.

“Please, sit down, miss. You, too, Stan. I'll get you some tea…. No, I'm sorry, there isn't any left. No extra chairs, either. If I'd known you were coming, Stan …”

“I know, you would have had lunch catered,” Stan said.

“Lunch? I can fry you a kelp patty….”

“No, sorry, just kidding, Captain. We're not staying. We're getting out of here, and so are you.”

Hoban looked surprised. “But where are we going?”

“There's got to be a café near here,” Stan said.

“Someplace we can talk.”

Hoban looked around again, grinned sheepishly. “I guess this place isn't too conducive to conversation.”

“Especially not a business talk,” Stan said. “Have you got a coat? Let's go!”

Danziger's was a Ukrainian café on the next block. It had big glass windows, always misty with steam. There were vats of water perpetually at the boil for the pirogis in ersatz flour gravy that were the specialty of the place. Stan, Julie, and Hoban took a small booth in the rear. They drank big mugs of black coffee and talked in low voices.

Stan was concerned about Hoban's condition. It had been a while since he had last seen the captain, back when Hoban had been captain of the Dolomite and Stan had bought the ship. Stan had liked the taciturn, serious-minded captain and had kept him in charge.

Hoban was one of the old breed, a straight-shooting captain, always serious and controlled, whose interests were exclusively in intergalactic navigation and exploration, and who could be counted on to follow orders. Stan had bought the Dolomite during his flush period, when the royalties were rolling in from his various patents, before his troubles with Bio-Pharm and the government. In those golden days, it had looked like the sky was the limit. After the asteroid incident, when Hoban had lost his license, Stan had pulled some strings and managed to get him a temporary captain's ticket. They had all been quite close then, Stan and Hoban and Gill, the android, who was second-in-command. But then Stan's problems with Bio-Therm had begun, and the lawsuits had started flocking in like flies to a flayed cow.

A hostile holding company had taken over the Dolomite , and their first act had been to dismiss Hoban, who was known for his loyalty to Stan. They accused the captain of various peccadilloes. That was really a laugh, with a man of Hoban's known probity, but mud sticks when you fling enough of it hard enough, and the licensing board had lifted Hoban's temporary ticket pending an investigation.

The captain had taken it hard. He was reduced in the course of one terrible day from a man who commanded his own little empire to a penniless derelict who couldn't find any work better than washing dishes.

Now they sat together in a Ukrainian café, with the late-afternoon sun streaming in through the windows, and Stan said, “I'm going back into space, Captain, and I want you with me.”

“It's good of you to say so,” Hoban said. “But no employer would have me without a license.”

“I still want you,” Stan said. “As for your license, we'll claim it's still in force.”

“But it won't be,” Hoban said.

“You can't be sure of that,” Stan said. “Money talks. I think the courts will find for you, if it comes to an actual trial. And I'll get your case reopened after this trip.”

“Can you really do that?” Hoban asked. A ray of hope lightened his heavy features for a moment, then his expression darkened again. “But I have no ship, Dr. Myakovsky. Or do you want me to pilot something other than the Dolomite?