Robert Sheckley - Alien Harvest

And then something else came into the room behind the dog.

It came loping in on all fours, and at first glance it looked like a beetle the size of a rhinoceros. It was colored a shiny, unrelieved black. Its skull was very long and curved back over its shoulders. It was toothed like a fiend and taloned like the devil itself. It was Norbert. And he looked like he had just come from hell.

There was silence for one long straining moment.

And then pandemonium broke loose.

The crew scrambled to their feet and started running for the exits. Their work boots clattered on the metal deck as they surged toward the exit door, trying to push each other out of the way.

Stan grabbed the microphone and shouted, “Just stay where you are! Do not make any aggressive movements! Norbert will not harm you, but he is programmed to resist aggression. Just stay calm!”

It was not a calm-making situation. Yet even now catastrophe could have been averted. The crew was quieting down, coming out of its panic, starting to make jokes. Norbert was just standing there, making no sign that he was going to attack anyone. And then he was bending, slowly picking up the dog's rubber ball, throwing it back to him.

It could have ended right there. But there was always a wise guy around, someone who had to push things a little too far.

This time it was a crewman known as Steroid Johnny, an overmuscled hunk in a skimpy T-shirt, tight jeans, and lineman's boots, who carried an unlicensed pressor rod in his boot and liked to cause trouble.

Steroid Johnny saw his chance now. “Come on, Harris,” he said to a lean, grinning blond man lounging beside him. “Let's take this sucker down. Shouldn't be no aliens here anyhow.”

The two men advanced on the motionless robot alien. Steroid Johnny winked at Harris, who went slinking around to the right, picking up a crowbar from a toolbox as he went. The robot's head swiveled, keeping both men under surveillance. Johnny feinted to his left, then went straight in at Norbert. Five feet away he stopped and turned on his pressor beam. He directed it at Norbert's back-sloping head.

Norbert was pushed back hard — for a moment.

Then the big robot shrugged his way around the pressor beam, ducked under it, and was moving toward Johnny. Johnny backed up and tried to get the pressor beam into a blocking position, but Norbert moved faster, lunged forward, his jaws opened, the inner jaws shooting out of his mouth. The pressor beam fell to the deck. Johnny tried to get out of the way, but Norbert already had one big hooked claw clamped on his left shoulder.

Johnny screamed as he was lifted straight into the air by the skin of his shoulder. He hung there in Norbert's grip, screaming, struggling to break free. Norbert's inner jaws, impelled with all the energy of his powerful crysteel-mesh throat muscles, drove through Johnny's chest, splitting him like a side of beef. Norbert dropped the red dripping thing to the deck and turned, ready for the next one.

Harris, seeing the way things were going as he ran to attack Norbert, tried to pull up in midstride. Too late. Norbert swung around like a grotesque yet graceful ballet dancer and struck out with one of his taloned feet. The blow landed high on Harris's sternum. Norbert's talons made an audible hissing sound as they cut through the air, driven by the force of his heavy shoulder muscles. The talons ripped Harris apart from the left shoulder blade to his right hipbone. Harris opened his mouth to scream, but no sounds came out. His lungs had been punctured in the blow. He made an ugly squishing sound as he fell to the deck.

The rest of the crew took this in and froze in position. They had never seen anything move as fast as Norbert, when he was aroused.

Norbert halted, looking around. He seemed about to attack again. Just in time, Stan shouted out the shutdown order: “Priority override! Code Myrmidon!”

Norbert froze in position, awaiting further orders.

It was a moment of balanced possibilities. The crew seemed on the verge of panic, ready to run out of the control room screaming.

Captain Hoban gulped hard and felt nausea at the back of his throat, but he knew he had to control the men. He got hold of himself and said coldly, “Two of you there, get pails and mops and clean up that mess. See what comes of not following orders? This didn't have to happen. Now get a move on….”

There was an awkward, sullen moment, and then the crew obeyed. And the ship Dolomite hurtled on toward its rendezvous with AR-32.

Subdued, the crew returned to their quarters. The men seemed dazed, unsure of what to think. All of them except Min Dwin, the Laotian hill woman. She went directly to her bunk and pulled out her spacebag. From it she took out a long object in a flat leather sheath. She pulled it free. It was a machete, sharpened to a razor edge.

Badger said, “What are you up to, Min?”

“Those bastards killed Johnny,” Min said. “I'm going to get me some officer meat”

“With that? They'll cut you down before you get within ten feet of them.”

“Maybe I can pick up a gun. One of those that fires the softslugs. I'd like to see that weird doctor with the glasses take one in the gut.” She started toward the passageway leading back to the main ship's stations.

“Hold on a minute, Min,” Badger said.

She stopped and turned. “Yeah, what is it?”

“Johnny was your man, huh?”

“Yeah. It was a recent thing. Now it's over. What about it?”

“Come over here and sit down,” Badger said. Reluctantly she complied, sitting on a locker with the machete balanced on her knees.

“Min, I understand you're plenty pissed off. I am, too. I wasn't all that fond of Steroid Johnny, or his friend Harris, but I wouldn't have wanted what happened to them.”

“Right. So?”

“So this. It was Johnny's own fault, Min.”

“It would never have happened if that professor guy hadn't brought that thing along.”

“Sure. That thing he calls Norbert is obviously dangerous. But so what? We work around dangerous stuff all the time. That's what we volunteered for.”

“I know. But Johnny —“

“Johnny disobeyed a direct order. He thought he knew better. I hate to say it, Min, but him and Harris got what they deserved.”

“I never thought I'd hear you saying this, Red,” Min said. “Who's side you on, anyhow? You suddenly turned into a company man?”

“I'm just telling it like it is,” Badger said. “It's like somebody told Johnny not to stick his hand into a buzz saw, and he went and did it anyway. Who would you kill then?”

Min twisted her fingers together in an agony of indecision. “I don't know, Red. It doesn't seem right just to leave it.”

“You're right about that,” Badger said. “But now's not the time to do anything about it. You go walking out of here with that machete, they'll put you down fast and ask questions later.”

“Aren't we going to do anything?”

“Sure we are. But not now.”

“When, then?”

“Look,” Badger said, “don't push it with me. I know you're sad over Johnny. You'll get over it soon and find someone else. As for what we're going to do, we're going to wait and see how things develop. When we make a move — if we do — they won't be expecting it. Is that fair enough?”

“Yeah,” Min said. “I guess it is. You got any drugs on you, Red?”

“Walter here takes care of my supply. What have you got, Glint?”

Glint had a first-rate stock of assorted chemicals. He was the crew's supplier and he always had plenty to sell.

“Try this one,” he said, taking a pillbox out of his spacebag and shaking out two into his hand. “This'll make you forget Johnny ever existed. If you like them, I'll make you a good price for a hundred. But these two are on the house.”