Aliens Alien Harvest - By Robert Sheckley Page 0,18

around with. The first thing we're going to need is a spaceship driver."

"I'd love to talk about it," Julie said. "But first I need a bath. And I'm famished! Sometimes stealing can be hard work. Oh, by the way, here's a present." She tossed the dagger onto the bed.

Stan picked it up and admired the gleaming narrow blade and the rhino handle. "Where'd you get this?"

"Just a little trinket I picked up during the evening."

12

Over the next two weeks, Julie converted the loot from Khalil's apartment to cash, and Stan lost no time putting it to work. There was information to buy, people to bribe, and round the clock work by hired technicians to put Norbert into full working condition.

Two weeks to the day after Julie's theft at the Plaza, she met Stan for lunch at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Since it wasn't a workday for her, she permitted herself a cocktail.

Stan was looking pretty well. A shade paler than usual, but still not bad for a man dying of cancer and sustaining himself on heavy doses of the most addicting narcotic substance known to man. His eyes were a little dreamy, but his voice was firm enough as he said, "Julie, we're ready to make our move."

"Today?"

"That's right. Are you ready?"

She gave him an exasperated look. "Of course. You really don't have to ask me that" "Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it." Her voice softened. "No, I'm sorry, Stan. I don't mean to snap at you. It's the waiting. It's hard on my nerves."

"Well," Stan said, "it'll soon be over. If this plan works, we'll have ourselves a pilot." "And if it doesnt work?" "We could be dead." "Fair enough. Where are we going?" "To look up an old friend of mine and make him an offer he can't refuse."
Chapter 13
Jersey City, even in its best days, had been a city many people found objectionable.

It hadn't improved much since the days before the Human Alien Wars and the human reoccupation. On the day Stan and Julie went there, half of the streets downtown were awash due to a burst water main from a week before, and the city's repair crews still hadn't gotten around to capping it.

Ragged, mean looking men and women hung around every street corner. They looked like down and outers, but there was something sly and dangerous about them, too. There were soup kitchens set up here and there, and the buildings looked old and delapidated. Even the newly built sections of the city were starting to show wear, their poor construction materials already crumbling. Packs of wild dogs slinked in and out of back alleys; nobody had gotten around to getting rid of them yet.

"It's pretty bad," Stan said, like he was apologizing for it.

"Hey, I've seen worse," Julie said. "Not that I want to hang around this place ..."

At Central Station, Stan found them a motorized pedicab. The driver was a gnarled old brute, dressed nearly in rags, with a shapeless felt hat on which, incongruously, was the glittering bright medallion that let him legally operate a for hire vehicle.

Stan peered inside the three wheel pedicab. Some of these drivers had been known to hide accomplices inside, the better to rob the customers, or so it was said. Stan didn't really know what to expect. He hadn't been outside New York City in years.

He gave the driver the address, and the man grunted. "You sure you want to go there, mister?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Why do you ask?"

"You're going to the heart of the old Gaslight District.

Where the space derelicts and the chemheads hang out."

"Yes, I know."

"No place for a lady, either."

"Shut your face and get moving," Julie said.

"Long as you know what you're getting into." The pedicab operator started up the hand cranked washing machine motor that ran his little vehicle. Stan and Julie settled back.

Once the driver got up to speed, he gave them a dashing ride. He wove in and out of traffic on Jersey City's wide boulevards, the pedicab dodging in and out of the debris that the striking garbage collectors would get around to picking up once they settled their contract with the city. The street was like an obstacle course, filled with boxes, packing cases, mattresses, wrecked vehicles, even the carcass of a horse. There were also plenty of vehicles, driven by kamikaze drivers who were hell bent on getting somewhere, anywhere, rushing around and dodging in and out of each other's way like