Гарри Гаррисон - To The Stars

It cleared the fence that ringed the farm, and fell with an immense thudding impact into the two-meter high Gammacorn, crushing it flat, vanishing from sight behind the screen of green leaves and arm-long, golden ears. At its thickest point the lumper was only a meter through, so it was completely hidden from the view of the other creature that rumbled toward it.

Neither of them had a brain. The six-tonne organic beast was controlled completely by the reflex arcs that it had been born with some centuries earlier. The metallic creature weighed twenty-seven tonnes, and was controlled by a programmed computer that had been installed when it was built. Both of them had senses — but were not sentient. Each was totally unaware of the other until they met.

The meeting was very dramatic. The great form of the harvester approached, clanking and whirring industriously. It was cutting a swathe thirty meters wide through the evenly aligned rows of corn that marched away to the horizon. In a single pass it cut the corn, separated the ripe ears from the stalks, chopped the stalks to small bits, then burnt the fragments in a roaring oven. The water vapor from this instant combustion escaped from a high chimney in white trails of vapor, the ash billowed out in a black cloud from between the clanking treads to settle back to the ground. It was a very efficient machine at doing what it was supposed to do. It was not supposed to detect lumpers hidden in the corn field. It ran into the lumper and snapped off a good two hundred kilos of flesh before the alarms brought it to a halt.

As primitive as its nervous system was, the lumper was certainly aware of something as drastic as this. Chemical signals were released to activate the jumping feet and within minutes, incredibly fast for a lumper, the muscles contracted and the beast jumped again. It wasn’t a very good leap though, since most of the alcohol had been exhausted. The effort was just enough to raise it a few meters into the air to land on top of the harvester. Metal bent and broke, and many more alarm signals were tripped to add to the ones already activated by the beast’s presence.

Wherever the gold plating of the harvester had been torn or scratched away the lumper found toothsome steel. It settled down, firmly draped over the great machine, and began placidly to eat it.

“Don’t be stupid!” Lee Ciou shouted, trying to make himself heard above the babble of voices. “Just think about stellar distances before you start talking about radio signals. Sure I could put together a big transmitter, no problem at all. I could blast out a signal that could be even received on Earth — someday. But it would take twenty-seven years to reach the nearest inhabited planet. And maybe they wouldn’t even be listening…”

“Order, order, order,” Ivan Semenov called out, hitting the table with the gavel in time to the words. “Let us have some order. Let us speak in turn and be recognized. We are getting nowhere acting in this fashion.”

“We’re getting nowhere in any case!” someone shouted. “This is all a waste of time.”

There were loud whistles and boos at this, and more banging of the gavel. The telephone light beside Semenov blinked rapidly and he picked up the handpiece, still banging the gavel. He listened, gave a single word of assent and hung the instrument up. He did not use the gavel again but instead raised his voice and shouted.

“Emergency!”

There was instant silence and he nodded. “Jan Kulozik — are you here?”

Jan was seated near the rear of the dome and had not taken part in the discussion. Wrapped in his own he was scarcely aware of the shouting men, or of the silence, and had been roused only when he heard his name spoken. He stood. He was tall and wiry, and would have been thin but for the hard muscles, the result of long years of physical work. There was grease on his coveralls, and more smeared on his skin, yet he was obviously more than just a mechanic. The way he held himself, ready yet restrained, and the way he looked toward the chairman spoke as clearly as did the golden cogwheel symbol on his collar.

“Trouble in the fields at Taekeng-four,” Semenov said. “Seems a lumper tangled with a harvester and knocked it out. They want you right away.

“Wait, wait for me,” a small man called out, fighting his way through the crowd and hurrying after Jan. It was Chun Taekeng, head of the Taekeng family. He was as ill-tempered as he was old, wrinkled, and bald. He punched one man who did not get out of his way fast enough, and kicked ankles of others to move them aside. Jan did not slow his fast walk, so that Chun had to run, panting, to catch up with him.

The maintenance copter was in front of the machine shop, and Jan had the turbines fired and the blade turning as Chun Taekeng climbed arthritically in.

“Ought to kill the lumpers, wipe out the species,” he gasped as he dropped into the seat by Jan. Jan did not answer. Even if there were any need, which there was not, wiping out the native species would be next to impossible. He ignored Chun, who was muttering angrily to himself, and opened the throttle wide as soon as they had altitude. He had to get there as soon as possible. Lumpers could be dangerous if they weren’t handled right. Most of the farmers knew little about them — and cared even less.

The countryside drifted by below them like an undulating and yellow specked green blanket. Harvesting was in its final stages so that the fields of corn no longer stretched away smoothly in all directions, but had been cut back in great gaps by the harvesting machines. Rising columns of vapor marked the places where the machines were working. Only the sky was unchanging, a deep bowl of unrelieved gray stretching from horizon to horizon. Four years since he had seen the sun, Jan thought, four endless and unchanging years. People here didn’t seem to notice it, but at times the unchanging half-light was more than he could bear and he would reach for the little green jar of pills.

“There, down there,” Chun Taekeng called out shrilly, pointing a clawlike finger. “Land right there.”

Jan ignored him. The shining gold hulk of the harvester was below them, half covered by the draped mass of the lumper. A big one, six, seven tonnes at least. It was usually only the smaller ones that reached the farms. Trucks and track-trucks were pulled up around it; a cloud of dust showed another one on its way. Jan circled slowly, while he put a call through on the radio for the Big Hook, not heeding Chun’s orders to land at once. When he finally did set down, over a hundred meters from the harvester, the little man was beginning to froth. Jan was completely unaffected; it was the members of the Taekeng family who would suffer.

There was a small crowd gathered around the flattened harvester, pointing and talking excitedly. Some of the women had chilled bottles of beer in buckets and were setting out glasses. It was a carnival atmosphere, a welcome break from the monotony and drudgery of their lives. An admiring circle watched while a young man with a welding torch held it close to the draping curtain of brown flesh that hung down the side of the machine. The lumper rippled when the flame touched it; greasy tendrils of foul-smelling smoke rose from the burnt flesh.

“Turn off that torch and get out of here,” Jan said.

The man gaped up slackly at Jan, mouth hanging open, but did not turn off the torch or move. There was scarcely any distance between his hairline and his eyebrows and he had a retarded look. The Taekeng family was very small and inbred.

“Chun,” Jan called out to the Family Head as he tottered up, wheezing. “Get that torch away before there is trouble.”

Chun shrieked with anger and emphasized his remarks with a sharp kick. The young man fled with the torch. Jan had a pair of heavy gloves tucked into his belt and he pulled them on. “I’ll need some help,” he said. “Get shovels and help me lift the edge of this thing. Don’t touch it underneath though. It drips acid that will eat a hole in you.”