Aliens Alien Harvest - By Robert Sheckley Page 0,69

the little craft.

Stan just had time to secure himself into a command chair by magnetic clamps, then the pod was launched into the air like a rocket from a launcher. As it turned, Stan could see the land beneath the lander collapse, throwing the vehicle into a deep pit that suddenly yawned beneath it.

Glancing around, he saw that Julie was secured on a deceleration couch. A moment later the internal lighting went out.

The storm blazed at the pod's windows. There were long, stunning lines of force, outlined by a driving rain, lashing in at them. The pods spun around, its automatic stabilizers working hard to keep it on an even keel. The ground came up sickeningly below them, and the pod's jets blazed, avoiding the collision. They were airborne, and the sky through which they tore was colored ocher and purple. It was a world without stability, a place where titanic forces battled as though it were the beginning of time.

"Can't you get her down, Gill?" Stan called out above the deafening clatter.

"I'm trying, Doctor," Gill said, busy over the controls.

"You can do it, Gill!" Julie cried.

"We hope," Stan said.

Gill's long fingers played across the controls. The pod seemed to flutter and skitter like a crazed bat in the luridly lit space between the harsh ground below and the beetling thunderheads above. The little craft spun like a leaf driven by a storm. Julie had to shut her eyes tightly to control the vertigo and nausea that racked her as the pod trembled and shook and rattled like a riveting machine gone berserk.

For Stan the pain was almost unbearable as his tortured lungs strove to replace the air that the violent motions of the storm were driving out of him. He had never known such pain. And yet, paradoxically, he was also experiencing a moment of great exhilaration, a feeling of himself as a conquistador of the new age, persevering through pain and hardship as a new world and new opportunities came into sight.

Yes, he thought, it has all been worth it. The pain reminds me that I'm alive. This is the way to go. But I do wish it would stop!

And then, abruptly, they entered a space of quiet air and Gill was able to maneuver the controls. Suddenly the pod dropped thirty feet and hovered for a moment on its jets, bare inches above the ground. Then, with an almost grudging sigh - as though the insensate machine had enjoyed its experience of being airborne in the midst of fury - it settled to the ground.

Gill set the clamping system that secured the ship to the bedrock it had settled upon.

He said, "Last stop, Grand Central Station. All passengers prepare to detrain."

Stan unbuckled himself shakily. "Why, Gill, I didn't know you had a sense of humor."

"I don't," Gill said. "My words were for the purpose of helping you and the others keep your spirits up."

"Commendable," Stan said. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the blessed relief of relative silence and no motion. Then he asked, "Everyone okay? Then let's take stock."
Chapter 56-57
56

Red Badger and his people sat together on the semicircular couches that almost filled the main section of the pod. Red had remembered to bring aboard a carton of emergency rations, each in a self heating aluminoplex container. He passed these around now. Walter Glint had a half full canteen of raisin wine he'd brewed himself in the ship's locker room, before the hypersleep procedure, using copper tubing he'd liberated from the heat circulation system. He passed around the brew, and Min Dwin came up with some narcosmoke cigarettes. In a little while they were quite a cheerful bunch. If only they'd been able to raise some dance music! It was one hell of a party shaping up.

Badger liked to party as well as anyone. But the unfamiliar duties of command distracted him from really letting go. He turned to the little all wave radio receiver tucked away in one of the pod's storage compartments. He needed to keep his people content, because he was counting on them to see him safely through this.

Although he wouldn't let on to the others, Badger was more than a little disturbed by how things had gone so far. He had counted on seizing the Dolomite in his first attempt, when surprise had been in his favor. Back then, taking the initiative had seemed the thing to do.

That was not how matters had worked out, however. Now they were