Aliens Alien Harvest - By Robert Sheckley Page 0,48

into them. A wave of emotion came over him.

"Julie ..."

"Yes, Stan, what is it?"

"If you're doing this for my sake ... please don't stop."

36

The voices on the flight recorder were very clear.

"What ship is that?"

"This is the Valparaiso Queen, Captain Kuhn commanding, thirty seven days out of Santiago de Chile. To whom am I speaking?"

"This is Potter of the Bio Pharm ship Lancet. Do you realize you are trespassing?"

"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.

37

"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.
Chapter 38-41
38

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