“Yeah, that is funny,” Glint said. “But there's a notice there.”

Badger said, “I can see it, dummy. General assembly in twenty minutes. The captain and the owner's gonna talk to us.”

Glint said, “You've been on these ships longer than I have. That's not the way they usually do it, is it, Red?”

“Nope.” Badger scratched his jaw. “I'll bet they're up to something. This might be interesting, Glint.”

The loudspeaker said, “All crew! Assemble at once in the main theater.”

Stan and Julie walked out onto the raised stage. The crewmen looked up attentively when he rapped a pointer on the lectern to get their attention.

“Our destination is not far away now,” Stan said. “It is a small O-type star named AR-32 in the standard catalog. Around it revolves a single planet, with several good-sized moons to keep it company. These moons create violent and unpredictable weather currents on the planet, which has been named Vista. Captain Hoban, do you know anything about this planet?”

Hoban had been sitting to one side of the stage. He cleared his throat now and said, “I have heard of the place, sir. They used to call it the Festerhole, back when there were still a lot of pirates and privateers operating in the space lanes. There was once a jelly-gathering operation there involving one of the bionationals. That was some years ago. To the best of my knowledge it has been deserted since.”

Stan thought, “Good old honest Hoban telling the crew more than they need to know!” Still, they'd have to find out sometime what this mission really involved.

The crew stirred and looked at each other. This talk of the Festerhole was making them uneasy. What was this assignment, anyhow? What was it the powers wanted them to do this time? No one had spoken about a bug-hunting expedition. That called for extra pay!

There was a rising murmur of protest from the crew. The greatest menace of recent times were the aliens, those big black monsters who had been pushed off Earth with difficulty, and elsewhere continued to show their murderous abilities in the face of everything Earth had been able to throw against them.

Badger rose to his feet and said, “Sir, this wouldn't by any chance be a bug-hunting expedition, would it?”

“Not exactly,” Stan said.

“Then what exactly is it… sir?”

Stan ignored the red-haired crewman's insolent tone. “This is basically a salvage operation,” he said. “We'll be taking a load of royal jelly off a wrecked freighter.”

“Yes, sir,” Badger said. “And aren't the bugs going to have something to say about that?”

“Our information is that there are no bugs on the wreck. We'll go in fast, take what we need, and be out of there again. There's also the possibility we'll find an abandoned hive on the planet. The jelly in that could be worth millions.”

Walter Glint said, “Nothing was said about bugs when we volunteered, sir.”

“Of course not,” Stan said. “My information is secret. If I told you back on Earth, half the freelance salvagers from Earth and the colonies would be there now.”

“Bugs can be dangerous,” Glint said.

“Not when you take precautions,” Stan quickly put in. “You were warned that this was hazardous duty. You're not getting time off your sentences for sitting around in some holiday spot. And remember, there's bonus pay in this for all of you. It could come to quite a lot, if the salvage is as rich as I think it is.”

“How much?” Badger asked.

“That's impossible to calculate before we have it,” Stan said. “Don't worry, there is a standard formula for crew shares. I intend to double it.”

The men cheered. Even Badger smiled and sat down. This was interesting, he thought. He wondered what would come next.

26

Stan rapped for attention. But before he could get started again, a door opened and a man came in. He moved rapidly and with a strange grace, a cross between a glide and a lope. His face was expressionless. Although all of his individual features were human, the total result was not human at all. The crew knew at once, even before the introduction, that this man was a synthetic. Captain Hoban's introduction clinched the matter.

“People, this is Gill, an artificial man from the Valparaiso People Factory. He's the second-in-command.”

“Sorry to be late, Dr. Myakovsky,” Gill said. “I just finished the energy readings.”

“No problem, Mr. Gill. Take a seat.”

Gill sat down by himself in the back of the room.

Gill was a solitary. In recent years the People Factory in Valparaiso, Chile, where many of the better synthetics were produced, had been doing an improved job on skin colors and texturing. Gone was that old look of damp putty that had once characterized synthetic people and had provided a basis for so many jokes by bad comedians. Now the only reliable visual gauge for detection of an android was the speed of their comprehension responses. That and a certain mechanical jerkiness to their movements, since the final stage of fairing the input levels and ranges of the synthetics' operating systems was a slow, expensive process, and many employers didn't care if a synthetic's hand trembled as long as he didn't drop the test tube or light stylus — or whatever.

Despite their artificial origins, synthetic men were full-fledged members of human society, with voting rights and a sexual program.

Stan was about to go on. But just at that moment, from an outer corridor, Mac the dog came trotting into the room. He had a bright blue rubber ball in his mouth, and he looked around expectantly.

Someone in the crew laughed. “Fetch it here, boy!”

And then something else came into the room behind the dog.

It came loping in on all fours, and at first glance it looked like a beetle the size of a rhinoceros. It was colored a shiny, unrelieved black. Its skull was very long and curved back over its shoulders. It was toothed like a fiend and taloned like the devil itself. It was Norbert. And he looked like he had just come from hell.

There was silence for one long straining moment.

And then pandemonium broke loose.

The crew scrambled to their feet and started running for the exits. Their work boots clattered on the metal deck as they surged toward the exit door, trying to push each other out of the way.

Stan grabbed the microphone and shouted, “Just stay where you are! Do not make any aggressive movements! Norbert will not harm you, but he is programmed to resist aggression. Just stay calm!”

It was not a calm-making situation. Yet even now catastrophe could have been averted. The crew was quieting down, coming out of its panic, starting to make jokes. Norbert was just standing there, making no sign that he was going to attack anyone. And then he was bending, slowly picking up the dog's rubber ball, throwing it back to him.

It could have ended right there. But there was always a wise guy around, someone who had to push things a little too far.

This time it was a crewman known as Steroid Johnny, an overmuscled hunk in a skimpy T-shirt, tight jeans, and lineman's boots, who carried an unlicensed pressor rod in his boot and liked to cause trouble.

Steroid Johnny saw his chance now. “Come on, Harris,” he said to a lean, grinning blond man lounging beside him. “Let's take this sucker down. Shouldn't be no aliens here anyhow.”

The two men advanced on the motionless robot alien. Steroid Johnny winked at Harris, who went slinking around to the right, picking up a crowbar from a toolbox as he went. The robot's head swiveled, keeping both men under surveillance. Johnny feinted to his left, then went straight in at Norbert. Five feet away he stopped and turned on his pressor beam. He directed it at Norbert's back-sloping head.

Norbert was pushed back hard — for a moment.

Then the big robot shrugged his way around the pressor beam, ducked under it, and was moving toward Johnny. Johnny backed up and tried to get the pressor beam into a blocking position, but Norbert moved faster, lunged forward, his jaws opened, the inner jaws shooting out of his mouth. The pressor beam fell to the deck. Johnny tried to get out of the way, but Norbert already had one big hooked claw clamped on his left shoulder.