“As hosts for the alien young?” Julie asked.
“No doubt. That's what Neo-Pharm was up to back in those days. And as T-bone steaks for the crew of the
“Speaking of
“Soon enough, no doubt,” Stan said. He studied the image Norbert was sending. “Hello, what's that? Another cow skeleton?”
“Lower left quadrant, Norbert,” Julie said, spotting it.
Norbert turned obediently and walked over. Within twenty yards he came across the body of an alien.
It lay facedown in the gravel, its long black form alternately concealed and revealed by the windows of dust that blew incessantly across the valley floor.
At Stan's instruction, Norbert viewed it through an infrared scanner, and then an ultraviolet, to make sure the body wasn't booby-trapped.
It appeared to be free of danger. He approached and bent over it, with Mac — hair bristling and teeth barred — coming along at his heels.
“What can you see?” Stan asked.
“It is an alien,” Norbert replied. “There is no doubt of that. It is perfectly motionless, but not dead. There is no sign of life, but also no sign of damage or decay. It looks almost as if it could be asleep, I'm switching to ultrasonic scanner to conduct a survey of the internal organs.”
After a short delay Norbert reported again. “It's internal organs are functioning, but at a very slow rate. It's like it's asleep or unconscious. There are several more tests I could try —“
Whatever Norbert had in mind, it didn't happen, because Mac chose that moment to sense movement on the other side of a nearby hill and ran there, barking. Norbert got up and followed.
When he reached the crest of the hill and looked over, the first thing he noticed was the small, fatbellied little spaceship, resting on its supports, nose pointed skyward, ready for takeoff.
The second thing he noticed was the aliens, a dozen or so of them, lying motionless on the ground, just like the one he had left.
And the third thing he noticed were the humans, three of them, bending over the unconscious aliens.
47
For the men from Potter's ship, the
After relieving the previous crew, their first task had been to inspect the suppressor gun. It was mounted on top of the spaceship, where it could be powered by the ship's batteries.
It was a jury-rigged contraption, thrown together by a clever engineer from Potter's ship, a man with a knack for coming up with useful inventions on the spur of the moment.
Suppressors were a new technology in the continuing war against the aliens. They had resulted so far in small modules worn on a man's person. But Potter's engineer had taken the suppressor principle one step farther. He had theorized that the aliens would be susceptible to a stunning effect from certain vibratory impulses if they were narrow-band broadcast at sufficient intensity. He based this hunch on his study of alien anatomy. It seemed to him that the aliens had developed a great sensitivity to electrical cycling pulses. These could excite or stupefy them, depending on the velocity and amplitude of the waves broadcast. He experimented with electromagnetic bombardment.
Now, from its mount on top of the spaceship, his cannon turned like a radar dish, blasting electronic impulses that kept the aliens stupefied while the crew of the
It was not difficult duty, as Des Thomas had remarked to Skippy Holmes, with whom he was working. “I mean, if you forget they're aliens, it's much the same as taking honey from bees.”
“Big bees,” Skippy said.
“Yeah, very big bees, but it's the same thing. Hey, Slotz!” Thomas called to the third man of their crew, who was on top of the spaceship, working with the bracing that held the suppressor in place. No matter how well you put those things up, the incessant wind eventually worried them loose.
“What is it?” Slotz said, pausing with power wrench in hand.
“You almost finished up there?”
“I need some more bracing material. A flying rock tore some of the support away.”
“We'll radio it to the ship. The next shift can bring the stuff out. We're nearly out of here.”
Slotz turned back to his work. Holmes and Thomas took up positions around the recumbent alien. Together they heaved the big creature over on his side. Arnold took up the scraper, working quickly around a leg joint. He packed the sticky, light blue residue into a canvas bag. From here, it would be transferred to a glass container within the potbellied little harvester ship. As Des Thomas finished milking his alien he heard a barking sound and looked up. He was amazed to see a large brownish-red dog running over the top of the hill. Given the circumstances, he couldn't have been more amazed if it had been an elephant or a whale.
“Come here, boy,” he called. “I wonder where your —“
It was at that instant that Norbert came striding over the crest of the hill and down into the harvesting area. There was a brief tableau: three human crewmen frozen like dummies, Norbert striding forward like a fury from the deepest hell, and Mac, all innocence, barking and capering along like he was on an outing.
Holmes came unfrozen first. “One of them's come awake!” he shouted. “Get that sucker!”
Slotz got off the top of the spaceship rapidly. The three men dived for their weapons. These were always kept handy because, although no alien had woken up suddenly like this before, no one really trusted the new suppressor technology — especially when you took into account how goofy looking its inventor was.
Holmes got his hands on the carbine he had propped against a rock outcropping. He slipped off the safety, aimed hastily, and pulled the trigger. A stream of caseless forty-caliber slugs streaked toward Norbert, who was no longer there to receive them.
The threat toward him instantly pushed Norbert into predator mode. You could almost hear the new program click into place.
Softslugs bouncing off his carapace, Norbert slid under the fusillade of projectiles from Des's Gauss needler. A fragmentation grenade bounced off his chest and exploded as it was bouncing away. Norbert was showered with white-hot fragments of metal, but they didn't have the force to penetrate his metallized hide.
Although he wasn't hurt, Norbert was not pleased. Skippy Holmes was the closest, and the crewman just had time to scream as Norbert hooked his face at the temples with two curved talons and tore it off in one economical move.
It was a moment of gratuitous horror, though Norbert didn't view it that way.
Skippy buried the raw meat of his face in his hands and fell to the ground, gurgling, blood bubbling from his shattered skin. He didn't suffer for long; Norbert's spurred foot hooked out the man's stomach and a good selection of his internal organs.
Seeing this, Chuck Slotz gagged and took to his heels, sprinting toward the harvester's open entry port, closely followed by Des.
Norbert came racing after them, and almost made the entry port. It closed in his face, and Norbert slammed into it with a force that shook the harvester on its six slender legs and caused the radarlike suppressor apparatus on its roof to topple over and fall to the ground in a crackle of sparks.
Slowly, very slowly at first, the aliens lying on the ground began to stir.
