Robert Sheckley - Alien Harvest

“I didn't know,” Gill muttered. “Androids don't have to make decisions. We just follow our conditioning.”

“Lucky androids,” Julie said.

“Gill, we're having some baggage lifted up from the space station,” Stan put in. “With it there will be a large packing case. Please see that it is handled gently.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When they arrive, get the crew bundled down in hypersleep. And get all the tourists off this ship. I want us ready to depart an hour after the crew is aboard and bedded down.”

Gill looked at Captain Hoban.

The captain nodded. “Accept his orders as if they were mine.”

The volunteers for the voyage of the Dolomite marched in single file under the watchful eyes of armed guards. They left the olive-drab prison lander and marched into the short connecting tube that led into the ship proper. As soon as they were aboard, they all burst into a cheer. The guards gave them hard looks, but put away their weapons and returned to the lander, accompanied by the two guards from the Dolomite . Their job was to see that the prisoners got aboard the ship; once aboard, they were no longer prisoners, though not quite free men, either. The arrangement was that they'd report to the proper authorities after returning from their voyage, and show their good-conduct papers signed by the captain, and receive either a commutation of sentence or a complete amnesty. In practice, many of them never bothered to return, and their names went on a wanted list, to which the authorities gave only minor attention.

There were always plenty of new criminals to deal with; no one had any time for the older ones.

They followed the signs that had been set up to guide them to their quarter. But Walter Glint, a short, dark-haired barrel-chested man from Natchez who was Badger's closest friend aboard, noticed that Red Badger wasn't even bothering to look where he was going.

“Hey, Red! You been on this ship before?”

“You bet I have,” Red Badger said. “I know her layout like the back of my hand.”

“How come you never said anything about it when that Hoban guy asked if you'd met before?”

Badger shrugged. “If he didn't remember, I wasn't going to remind him. It was a pretty bad time for him. I'll tell you about it later.”

They went into the crew's quarters. There was plenty of room. The Dolomite normally carried a crew of thirty-five, but Hoban had pared it down to the bare minimum after consulting with Stan. There was no trouble finding berths. Badger and Glint claimed their own corner, and were joined by their best friends from the federal facility. One of these, Connie Mindanao, was a diminutive woman, brown-skinned and black-haired and fierce looking, her features showing evidence of her mixed ancestry. She was the unlikely combination of a Moro from the Philippines and a Mohawk from New York's Iroquois Confederation.

The only thing the two peoples had had in common was a history of head-hunting. Of the other two, one was a big black man from California named Andy Groggins, and the second was a taciturn Laotian hill woman who didn't say much but whose actions were direct and sudden, and apt to be lethal; her name was Min Dwin.

There were others who were friendly with Badger, and some who downright hated him. They sorted out their sleeping arrangements accordingly.

Badger was used to being the center of attention.

A voice came over the loudspeaker. “All crew! Put away your gear and strip for hypersleep. Everybody must be on his acceleration couch in five minutes.”

Badger called out, “What's our destination?”

His voice was picked up by a wall monitor. “There'll be a full briefing immediately upon your awakening,” the loudspeaker voice replied.

“How long we going to sleep this time?” Badger asked.

“That information will be fed into the hypersleep machinery. No more questions, people! Get ready.”

Connie Mindanao said, “What are they trying to pull on us? I don't know if I'm going to stand still for this.” She looked at Badger. “What do you think, Red?”

“Relax,” Badger told her. “Nothing much we can do about it just now. The ship's sealed, and anyhow, the guards are still outside. We've got no chance of making a run for it.”

They all settled down onto their hypersleep couches. The lights dimmed.

The Dolomite left its geosynchronous orbit and proceeded slowly to jump point: a position in space well enough beyond Earth's orbit to permit subspace operation without peril to others. From there Hoban radioed for permission to disembark, and shortly thereafter received an okay from the Coast Guard monitoring station at L6.

Stan and his party strapped down. Hoban looked them over and asked, “All ready, Dr. Myakovsky?”

“Ready,” Stan said.

“All right,” Hoban said. “Mr. Gill — get us out of here!”

Gill's hands moved across the switches. The lights dimmed in response to the sudden power surge as the tachyonic converters whirled into action, compressing time and space, tighter, tighter, until the Dolomite suddenly vanished from normal space.

The voyage had begun.

Julie was used to the dark. It was friendly and warm, and she felt safe in it. Only in the dark had she found security and safety, shielded away from men's eyes and their motives. The dark was the place where she had trained, so many years ago, when she had learned those matters of stealth and suddenness that were her protection and her trademark. It was then that she learned to make the darkness her own.

And so it had been for all her young life. But it was different now. This darkness that surrounded her now felt sinister, evil. Maybe that was because she knew something lurked within it, something that was trying to get her.

She stopped for a moment in midstep, trying to get her bearings. Her hearing extended itself through the darkness, searching. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she made out vast shapes on either side of her. They were machines, made of dark, glistening metal, and they towered above her. Spots of white light from some unknown source winked off metallic surfaces, and reflected from coils and condensers. They didn't even look like objects. They were like the ghosts of objects because their shapes were indistinct, ambiguous, swathed in a darkness that had gradation and depth, and was textured with the layers of silence.

A voice crackled in the tiny radio bug implanted in her ear.

“Julie? Do you see him yet?” It was Stan Myakovsky, calling from the Dolomite's central control room. He wasn't far away, as distances go, but he could have been in another galaxy for all the good he could do her now.

“Not yet,” she answered. “But I know he's in here somewhere.”

“Be careful, huh?” Stan said. “I still think we should have, delayed this run. I'm still not entirely satisfied with Norbert's control system.”

Now was a hell of a time to tell her that. She decided to ignore it. Stan sounded agitated. Was he getting cold feet?

Or was he just having an ordinary attack of nerves?

She snapped on a tiny flashlight. Ahead of her, picked up in the thin beam, she could see more profound glooms, silent caves of blackness where awful things might lurk. Some of these horrors were caused by the power of her imagination, but she was afraid that some were not.

It was not imagination that told her something in this great dark place was tracking her. She knew it was there. But where was it? She strained her senses to the utmost, trying to pick up some clue. Nothing. But she could tell it was out there. She had a sense of presence, almost like a sixth sense. It was what a successful thief needed above all else, and Julie was an extremely successful thief.