Robert Sheckley - Alien Harvest

” 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.

“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.

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 wonder 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?

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?”