Aliens Alien Harvest - By Robert Sheckley Page 0,10

make money that way." "That's the result, of course. But when you work in the upper echelon of crime, you don't go in and hold up a candy store. And you don't knock off a bank, either.

Those are not what I was trained for. You never asked what kind of thief I was, Stan. Well, I'm telling you now. I'm a high society jewelry thief. I knock off only the best people. I work at political conventions, movie openings, awards ceremonies, great sports events, things that bring together crowds of people with lots of money. But that requires a setup. Otherwise I'd have to spend too long just trying to dope out how to do it. I buy a ready made plan from an expert in the field. It comes high. But it's guaranteed to bring me to large amounts of money and jewelry."

"How much does a plan like that cost?"

"If you buy one from an expert like Gibberman, it can cost plenty. I'm going to use your money to win more money so I can pay Gibberman to give me one of his great plans. It may sound like a roundabout way to you, but name me any other profession where you can go from a thousand dollars to around a million in less than three days."

"Sounds interesting," said Stan. "Can I come along?"

"Well, of course you can, at least for some of it, but you have to be real cool. You mustn't even act like you're with me. You see, gambling is hard work. I'm going to have to give it all my attention. Then, assuming I win, there's the next part of the operation, which calls for even more attention."

"Yeah? What's that?"

That's walking out of the gambling place with your money, Stan."
Chapter 5-6
5

At first Stan didn't want to show his robot alien to Julie. On the one hand, he thought it was the best piece of work he had ever done. But would she realize that? What would her reaction be?

It didn't matter what she thought, of course, Stan told himself logically. Yet all the time he knew it did matter, very much. He realized he wanted Julie to think well of him. He had been alone too long, and he had hidden from everyone, including himself, just how lonely and desperate he had been. It would have been too much to have realized that earlier. But now that Julie had come into his life, he could no longer bear being without her. He wanted to make sure that never happened.

He didn't know what was going to happen. He was scared. But he was also strangely happy. Over the last few days the individual moments of his life felt better than they had for a long time. Maybe he'd never felt so good.

He was thinking about this while he showered and put on clothes fresh from the dry cleaners. He shaved with special care, and he laughed at himself for doing all this, but that didn't stop him. He saw Julie over breakfast. She was looking radiant, her hair sparkling in the sunshine.

After breakfast, Stan showed her his lab.

After that, it was time to show off his robot alien.

He kept it in a special temperature controlled room behind a locked door. The door was to keep people out, not to keep the robot in, he told Julie. It stood perfectly immobile, since it was not presently activated.

Its black, heavily muscled body seemed ready to lunge. Yet Julie did not hesitate when Stan took her hand and peeled back the robot's lips to show its gleaming rows of needle sharp fangs.

"Your pet looks like evil incarnate," Julie said.

"As a matter of fact, he's suprisingly gentle. I hope I haven't made a mistake in the circuitry. He may need to be trained to fight."

"I can be of some help there," Julie said.

6

In Jersey City, lying on a rank bed with a filthy mattress, Thomas Hoban stirred uneasily in his sleep. The dreams didn't come so of ten, but they still came. And always the same ...

Captain Thomas Hoban was seated in the big command chair, viewscreens above him, clear steel glass canopy in front. Not that you get to see much in space, not even in the Asteroid Belt. But even the biggest spaceship is small in terms of space for humans, and you get to appreciate even a view of nothingness. It's better than being sealed up in a duralloy cocoon without any vision except for what the