Skeleton Crew

is bad off, isn't he?' Shapiro shuddered. 'You don't know. You just—' The burn settled again. The struts were groaning louder than ever. The communicator crackled. Gomez's voice was thin, a little unsteady.

'We have to get out of here right now, Cap!'

'All right.' A brown man appeared on the gangway. He held a long pistol in one gloved hand. The captain pointed at Rand. 'Ma-him, for-Cry. Can?' Excellent Montoya, unperturbed by the tilting earth that was not earth but only sand fused to glass (and there were deep cracks running through it now, Shapiro saw), unbothered by the groaning struts or the eerie sight of an android that now appeared to be digging its own grave with its feet, studied Rand's thin figure for a moment.

'Can,' he said.

'Gat! Gat-for-Cry!' The captain spat to one side. 'Shoot his pecker off, I don't care,' he said. 'Just as long as he's still breathing when we ship.' Excellent Montoya raised the pistol. The gesture was apparently two-thirds casual and one-third careless, but Shapiro, even in his state of near-panic, noted the way Montoya's head tilted to one side as he lined the barrel up. Like many in the clans, the gun would be nearly a part of him, like pointing his own finger There was a hollow fooh! as he squeezed the trigger and the tranquilizer dart blew out of the barrel.

A hand reached out of the dune and clawed it down.

It was a large brown hand, wavery, made of sand. It simply reached up, in defiance of the wind, and smothered the momentary glitter of the dart. Then the sand fell back with a heavy thrrrrap. No hand. Impossible to believe there had been. But they had all seen it.

'Giddy-hump,' the captain said in an almost conversational voice.

Excellent Montoya fell on his knees. 'Aidy-May-for-Cry, bit-gat come! Saw-hoh got belly-gat-for- Cry!—' Numbly, Shapiro realized Montoya was saying a rosary in pidgin.

Up on the dune, Rand was jumping up and down, shaking his fists at the sky, screeching thinly in triumph.

A hand. It was a HAND. He's right; it's alive, alive, alive—

'Indie!' the captain said sharply to Montoya. 'Cannit! Gat!' Montoya shut up. His eyes touched on the capering figure of Rand and then he looked away. His face was full of superstitious horror nearly medieval in quality.

'Okay,' the captain said. 'I've had enough. I quit. We're going.' He shoved two buttons on his dashboard. The motor that should have swiveled him neatly around so he faced up the gangplank again did not hum; it squealed and grated. The captain cursed. The burn shifted again.

'Captain!' Gomez. In a panic.

The captain slammed in another button and the treads began to move backward up the gangplank.

'Guide me,' the captain said to Shapiro. 'I got no fucking rearview mirror. It was a hand, wasn't it?'

'Yes.'

'I want to get out of here,' the captain said. 'It's been fourteen years since I had a cock, but right now I feel like I'm pissing myself.' Thrrap! A dune suddenly collapsed over the gangway. Only it wasn't a dune; it was an arm.

'Fuck, oh fuck,' the captain said.

On his dune, Rand capered and screeched.

Now the threads of the captain's lower half began to grind. The mini-tank of which the captain's head and shoulders were the turret now began to judder backward.

'What—' The treads locked. Sand splurted out from between them.

'Pick me up!' the captain bawled to the two remaining androids. ' 'Now! RIGHT NOW!' Their tentacles curled around the tread sprockets as they picked him up—he looked ridiculously like a faculty member about to be tossed in a blanket by a bunch of roughhousing fraternity boys. He was thumbing the communicator.

'Gomez! Final firing sequence! Now! Now!' The dune at the foot of the gangplank shifted. Became a hand. A large brown hand that began to scrabble up the incline.

Shrieking, Shapiro bolted from that hand.

Cursing, the captain was carried away from it.

The gangplank was pulled up. The hand fell off and became sand again. The hatchway rise closed. The engines howled. No time for a couch; no time for anything like that. Shapiro dropped into a crash-fold position on the bulkhead and was promptly smashed flat by the acceleration. Before unconsciousness washed over him, it seemed he could feel sand grasping at the trader with muscular brown arms, straining to hold them down—Then they were up and away.

Rand watched them go. He was sitting down. When the track of the trader's jets was at last gone from the sky, he turned his eyes out to the placid endlessness of the dunes.

'We got a '34 wagon and we call it a woody,' he croaked to the empty, moving sand. 'It ain't very cherry; it's an oldy but a goody.' Slowly, reflectively, he began to cram handful after handful of sand into his mouth. He swallowed... swallowed... swallowed. Soon his belly was a swollen barrel and sand began to drift over his legs.

 

 

The Reaper's Image