Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition) — page 95: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SCAVENGERS 93 subsonic and circled back. It hung motionless over the settlement. From the projector under its nose the radia- tion again flared out; this time it was maintained for full two seconds, then the ship settled slowly towards the ground. That second dose was unnecessary, Spence thought, as the surface ex- panded below them. It was merely another added precaution. There was not a race known in the galaxy immune to that radiation. It really was the nearest thing to the Perfect Weapon ever discovered; it did not harm the body at all, but struck directly at the brain in such a way that the mind affected was rendered completely unconscious, all the volun- tary muscles were paralyzed, and the metabolic rate was slowed to almost nothing. Its beauty lay in the fact that it was reversible. If you potted a friend by mistake, he could be revived. On the other hand, if it was an enemy, you could come back at leisure and burn him, or blow holes in him—he was helpless. The eas way was just to leave him and he’d starve to death. The trend of the captain’s thoughts was becoming too morbid. He pulled himself out of it to find the ship about to touch down. He started doing rapid, complicated things with the controls before him. When he looked up they were down and he hadn’t felt it. “Locks One to Six open. Holds A and B ready for loading,” he an- nounced crisply, “Go to it, Mr. Bennett.”” He sat back tiredly. For the time being he had nothing to do. Up to this moment the servomech officer had been little more than a passenger, but now he went to work. A stream of robots, functionally spe- cialized, began to walk, roll, or fly out of the opened locks. Some were merely camera pickups, others con- sisted of a cluster of extensible grabs — of various sizes mounted on cater- pillar treads, the rest were simply remote-controlled wheelbarrows. The grabs spread out, each trailed by an attentive trio of barrows. When they came to a limp alien, it would be lifted, dumped into a barrow, which would whisk it back to the ship where other types of special ma- _chinery would stow it carefully away “where it would be sure to keep. Meanwhile, the grab had moved on to the next alien, and ‘the first barrow, now empty, hurried back to wait for a refill. At various heights above all this activity hovered the camera pickups, constantly sending pictures and per- tinent data back to the semicircle of screens around Bennett’s control panel. And Bennett, by glancing at a screen and fiddling with a few knobs, would send several tons of highly-complex machinery where it would do the most good. The robots were almost fully automatic, needing only the minimum of guidance, but keeping his eyes on over fifty of the things was a nerve-racking job. The captain, watching with ap- proval, thought how efficient it was, and how quick. Bennett was good at this. Suddenly he started forward and snapped a reproof. “Careful there. Take it easy. What do you think you’re doing? They’re not sacks of flour, you know. Watch i One of the grabs in dropping a Crawler into a barrow had misjudged. Its flaccid burden had fouled a sharp- edged projection on its way in. A great, three-foot gash appeared in its side and the treacly goo it used for blood welled out, making a dirty, ever-widening stain on the beautiful, iridescent fur. Connicloooks.<@ im