The Android Kill

By JOHN JAKES

The android slaves, insipid pieces of metal, plastic and skin, were constructed to work and work and help men like Caffrey relax. But someone, somewhere, made this batch too perfect. Caffrey, big tough Caffrey laughed out loud at the tremendous irony of the joke as he pondered sending his ravaged ship into the burning maw of the sun.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Caffrey slammed the great steel doors and walked forward through the gym. His bare feet slapped on the mats and the cane of iron-hard Venus jungle wood swung lightly in one hand. He wore only dirty white trousers. Sweat stood shiny on him under the glow of the ceiling lights. He cursed the ship silently for being old and run down and without any cooling units.

His beefy face moved from side to side, watching. The black eyes took in every bit of movement. He saw all that went on. It was his ticket out of the stinking world of frozen-starred space, of Class nine freighters and unholy cargos.

The slender blue-gray androids were exercising. They vaulted on the parallel bars, dangled from the rings, worked with the pulleys. Even the women and the children exercised. They did not sweat, because their bodies were not made for perspiration, but Caffrey could see their muscles twisting and shivering under the slate hides, developing.

A strange kind of noise filled the vast gym. Muted gruntings, whispers of breath, solid slaps of hands and bodies on bars and mats. The androids did not look at Caffrey. They were accustomed to slavery. They knew they had been dead when they were born.

Caffrey stopped walking. Near the left wall, two android males were conversing. They leaned indolently, tiredly, against the brown wooden bars. Caffrey's face lost its flabbiness, becoming stripped of everything but purpose.

He walked toward them, conscious of his own strength. The exercising of the others went on around him. Slap and soft wind of breath and creak of apparatus. The heat was a nearly-tangible cloud.

"Why aren't you two working out like the rest?" Caffrey asked slowly.

One of the androids said in a weary voice, "I'm tired. I can't when I'm tired."

Caffrey's fingers tightened on the stick. They had to be in perfect shape! Had to be! This was his last shipload, and by God....

He swung the stick up over his shoulder and brought it down in a blurring arc. There was a flat smacking sound. The android choked. Caffrey struck the other one, and the anger came up from his stomach like fire boiling over. He screamed at them and beat them. Again the stick fell, again, again, again....

Finally he stood back, feeling the sweat running down him. He tilted his head and gulped air. "Now," he said very quietly, "now, you inhuman sonsofslate, start working...."

The two of them watched from the gray mats where they were crouched. Brief resentment was in their eyes.

Caffrey bunched his muscles and kicked. The android's head snapped backward against the bars. He grunted. Then both of them got up and walked over to the pulleys. They began to exercise, rapidly.

Caffrey laughed and walked on through the gym, not watching them any more. He went through the next bulkhead and spun the lock wheel, then padded down the corridor under the ceiling lights that shone like foggy blue eyes.

Dillman, his astrogator, a young kid with yellow hair and an aggressive jaw, was in the chart room. He was working with the course computer. Dillman had been a student at the University of Venus, Cloud City, when he killed an officer of the Control Police in a fight over a girl. Dillman was good in the slave game. Dillman was getting hard.

Caffrey closed the door. It clanged loudly. Dillman looked around.

"Hello, Captain," he said. "We're right on course. Mars in six hours, fourteen minutes."

Caffrey nodded, slumping down into a thickly padded shock chair. Beyond the wide observation window, space made endless black, and stars hung there like pieces of a broken diamond. The swollen ball of the sun burned above the ship, and Mars lay scarlet, just ahead. Distant rumbling from the old corroded jet tubes filled the room.

"How's everything?" Caffrey asked. "Engines?"

"All right," Dillman said, leaning against the astrogation table. "Few pieces of stuff failed to fission awhile back, but everything's okay now."

Caffrey waved his hand. "Get out the bottle."

Dillman grinned and pulled open a green metal wall cabinet. He filled two tumblers with the syrupy swamp wine and handed one of the glasses to Caffrey. The captain of the ship drank half, breathed loudly, and emptied the glass.

He hunched deeper into the shock chair, resting. "I'll be glad when it's over, Dillman. Really glad."

"Do you mean that, sir?"

"Hell yes, I mean it. In this business you've got to be tough. But I'll be damned if a man can go on kicking people around all the time. Someplace, he's got to stop. Well, this trip'll make my pile and I can stop. Got a job waiting, shuttling passengers to the Temple Ruins west of Red Sands on Mars."

"This isn't any party," Dillman admitted. "Slavery's a funny thing. I thought it went out a long time back, but everybody on Earth is making such mental advances ..." he pointed at his skull and grinned wryly "... that they just haven't got any time to do any real work. And of course, these poor wastrels we've got on board aren't really human beings. How do they make them, Cap?"