Skeleton Crew

"Not on this world." The burn settled again. The trader was now clearly canted. There was a low groan as the struts took more weight.

"Leave it!" the captain bawled at Dud. "Leave it, leave it! Gee-yat! Come-me-for-Cry!" Dud came, leaving the andy to walk face-down in the sand.

"What a balls-up," the captain muttered.

He and Dud engaged in a conversation spoken entirely in a rapid pidgin dialect which Shapiro was able to follow to some degree. Dud told the captain that Rand had refused to come.

The andy had tried to grab Rand, but with no force. Even then it was moving jerkily, and strange grating sounds were coming from inside it. Also, it had begun to recite a combination of galactic strip-mining coordinates and a catalogue of the captain's folk-music tapes. Dud himself had then closed with Rand. They had struggled briefly. The captain told Dud that if Dud had allowed a man who had been standing three days in the hot sun to get the better of him, that maybe he ought to get another First.

Dud's face darkened with embarrassment, but his grave, concerned look never faltered.

He slowly turned his head, revealing four deep furrows in his cheek. They were welling slowly.

"Him-gat big indies," Dud said. "Strong-far-Cry. Himgat for umby."

"Umby-him far-Cry?" The captain was looking at Dud sternly.

Dud nodded. "Umby. Beyat-shel. Umby-for-Cry." Shapiro had been frowning, conning his tired, frightened mind for that word. Now it came. Umby. It meant crazy. He's strong, for Christ's sake. Strong because he's crazy. He's got big ways, big force. Because he's crazy.

Big ways... or maybe it meant big waves. He wasn't sure. Either way it came to the same.

Umby.

The ground shifted underneath them again, and sand blew across Shapiro's boots.

From behind them came the hollow ka-thud, ka-thud, kathud of the breather-tubes opening. Shapiro thought it one of the loveliest sounds he had ever heard in his life.

The captain sat deep in thought, a weird centaur whose lower half was treads and plates instead of horse. Then he looked up and thumbed the communicator.

"Gomez, send Excellent Montoya down here with a tranquilizer gun."

"Acknowledged." The captain looked at Shapiro. "Now, on top of everything else, I've lost an android worth your salary for the next ten years. I'm pissed off. I mean to have your buddy."

"Captain." Shapiro could not help licking his lips. He knew this was a very ill-chosen thing to do. He did not want to appear mad, hysterical, or craven, and the captain had apparently decided he was all three. Licking his lips like that would only add to the impression... but he simply couldn't help himself. "Captain, I cannot impress on you too strongly the need to get off this world as soon as poss—"

"Can it, dronehead," the captain said, not unkindly.

A thin scream rose from the top of the nearest dune.

"Don't touch me! Don't come near me! Leave me alone! All of you!"

"Big indies gat umby," Dud said gravely.

' 'Ma-him, yeah-mon," the captain returned, and then turned to Shapiro. "He really 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.