The routine of the journey had persisted for several days before Fourth Adventurer announced that he thought their trip would shortly be coming to an end. He said the thoughts of several of the guides gave him the strong impression that a destination was near at hand.
Branwen, piloting now, called in: “We’re approaching a system, Captain. I don’t think it’s on the charts.”
Rousing himself from dreams of Isabel to bitter wakefulness, Domingo looked at his detectors and presently saw that there was a white sun ahead. Evidently the star was only a small one, bordering on the white-dwarf classification.
“I’ll bet right now,” said Iskander, “that it’s not on the charts.”
The surmise proved accurate; the spectrum of the modest sun ahead could not immediately be identified with that of any known to exist within the nebula. But it was no real surprise to anyone; the Milkpail contained more than one star that had never made it to the charts.
* * *
The nuclear fire of the star ahead grew clearer and clearer through thinning mists of matter. At the same time the pace of the journey slowed down until the Pearl‘s guides and the ship herself had almost stopped.
The star ahead was not part of a binary or more complex system. Still it had no lack of dependent family. The Pearlwas drifting on the edge of a spherical domain a billion kilometers across in which the small white star was dominant and from which the star’s radiation pressure had cleared out most of the tenuous nebular material. This in itself was no surprise. About half of all the Milkpail stars, though generally not the ones with colonized planetoids, were surrounded by similar cleared spheres of space.
But this star had in orbit around it more bodies of measurable size than did most suns in the nebula. Within that gigantic rough sphere of cleared space at least two belts of minor planetoids were rotating, most likely representing the debris of more than one shattered planet. Those protoworlds must have been sizable, much larger than the usual colonized planetoid, when they were whole. And one small belt of this sun’s present crop of planetoids was in retrograde motion, prompting speculation among the ED crew that two counter-revolving planets might once have existed here and then collided. Comparatively minor collisions would necessarily be frequent in the system as they observed it now. It could hardly be very durable, on the scale of astronomical time, but then no solar system within the Milkpail was long-lived in terms of stellar chronology.
The Nebulons still had not completely halted their advance. They continued to creep on, moving ahead of the ship toward the sun but ever more slowly. To Simeon the slackening pace of their forward progress irresistibly suggested increasing caution.
The small swarm of Spacedwellers and the ED ship following them were now almost at the very edge of the cleared space.
The Carmpan, confirming Simeon’s instinctive thought, now reported hesitancy and a measure of disagreement in their guides’ ranks.
“Ask them to stop, Adventurer,” Domingo ordered. “I think we need a conference with them before we go on any farther.”
The message was passed along somehow. The slowly advancing swarm halted, and presently the drifting ship caught up with it.
Through the Carmpan’s mediation, the Nebulons communicated that the berserker project was here in this system, on one of the larger orbiting rocks. It was a planetoid well within the cleared space, away from the larger belts and fairly close to the sun. On that small orbiting body, the dead-metal-killers had established something.If the ED people wanted to know what that something was in terms they could understand, it appeared that they would have to go and see for themselves. Extreme danger lurked there, at least for Spacedwellers.
“If it’s permanently built into a rock, it must be some kind of a bloody base.” Domingo’s voice fairly quivered with excitement. Branwen could almost hear him thinking that he might now have Leviathan’s secret repair and maintenance base within his grasp.
The ED humans aboard the Pearl, having been told through translation the precise location of the berserker base, now did their best to observe it from this relatively distant vantage point. They had no immediate success, but Domingo decided to spend a few hours in surveying the whole system as thoroughly as possible from this position.
The initial lack of success in spotting a base did not necessarily mean that their guides were lying or mistaken about the location of the berserker project. Any base in the system was probably camouflaged to some extent, and almost certainly dug into rock. Traffic in and out ought to be observable, but it might be infrequent. Certainly no machines or recent trails were now observable from where the Pearlnow drifted almost passively, electronic senses busy.
Domingo at the controls eased his ship gradually and steadily closer to the sun and closer to the inner orbit of the planetoid on which the base presumably lay hidden. The captain was working to keep the Pearlconcealed as well as possible behind an intrusive wisp of electrically active particles, a tendril of nebular material that here wound its way into the sphere of space otherwise swept mostly clear by the radiation pressure of the small white sun.
The vast swirl of particles offered the ship some concealment, but it also made it difficult for the people aboard to see much of anything. After intensive and repeated efforts, instruments did confirm the apparent presence on one of the inner planetoids of some kind of base. And here and there along the perimeter of the cleared sphere, among the outer belts of planetoids, the relic trails of ships—or more likely of machines—oozed faint radio whispers.
Iskander had a suggestion. “Let’s take out the launch. It’s a lot smaller, and we ought to be able to get closer to the sun in it without really showing ourselves.”
The Nebulons, Fourth Adventurer reported, were duly surprised when the doors of the ship’s ventral bay opened, and the launch appeared.
Domingo decided to drive the launch himself, and he chose Branwen and Simeon to come with him.
The launch, with the captain at the controls, moved through thin concealment yet closer to the sun and got in among the outer orbital belts of the system, formations containing dust and fragments large enough to resist radiation pressure. In a belt with a density of one rock larger than one gram’s mass per hundred cubic kilometers, the little craft drifted for an hour, with everyone aboard busy making observations. From this vantage point it was possible to get a somewhat better look at the planetoid where the berserker facility supposedly had been established.
Now observation confirmed the Nebulons’ claims more definitely. There was a base of some kind there, all right.
It did not appear to be a large facility or suitable for the construction or repair of large fighting machines. Certainly it was not swarming with mobile spacegoing units of any kind. There was no certain connection between this facility and Old Blue. But on the other hand, such a connection might exist, and it was impossible to say that Leviathan never came here.
After their hour spent in data gathering, the people aboard the launch decided that they had seen enough. They eased their little craft out of its long orbit around the sun and back to where it was possible to signal the larger ship with little fear of detection. This effort, conducted cautiously, consumed another hour.
The people aboard the Pearlmaneuvered her a little closer, and the ship picked up the launch.
At a meeting to analyze the images that had been obtained, some people thought that a certain structural similarity was indicated between this lab and the previously visited wreck. When the Pearl‘s larger telescopes were focused now, they provided some confirming evidence for this idea.
The most obvious difference between this facility and the wreck was that this one showed no signs at all of combat damage. At this distance no weapons could be observed, but there was no doubt that the base would, at a minimum, have something with which to defend itself.
Why had the enemy chosen to establish a base here? It was certainly an out-of-the-way place, unlikely to be discovered by ED humani
ty. And someone aboard ship propounded a hard-to-follow theory that it might confer some advantage to a researcher in biology to operate in this kind of space, cleared by radiation pressure.
The debate was abruptly interrupted by a minor alarm. Instruments had just picked up a small burst of activity at or very near the biolab—if that was indeed its function—suggesting that the facility there might just have launched a missile, or alternatively sent out a robot courier of its own. Whatever it was had not been aimed at the Pearl.The base might well have decided to get off a message to its mechanical allies, wherever they were, reporting that it seemed to have been discovered by the human enemy and now faced a probable attack.
The Nebulons, through the Carmpan, confirmed that something of the kind had happened: a small dead-metal unit had just departed the planetoid at high speed.
The courier, if such it had been, had already left the system, evidently having tunneled off into the nebula on the far side of the cleared volume.
There appeared to be no time to waste. Domingo, with the help of Fourth Adventurer, made plans with the Nebulons as best he could. Then the captain hurriedly briefed his crew and prepared to take the Pearlin to the assault. The idea was to pacify the lab, to render it inactive if possible, without destroying it completely.
CHAPTER 20
Domingo was nothing if not decisive, and the time he spent in planning the attack was held to an absolute minimum. Simeon reflected that this had the advantage of not allowing anyone much time in which to become frightened; but in Simeon’s case that did not help. He had already discovered that he could be terrified in no time at all.
The captain was trying his best to synchronize his ship’s coming effort with one to be made by the Nebulons, and after the hasty plan was made, he had to wait for a signal from his translator. When word arrived through Fourth Adventurer that the Spacedwellers were moving to the attack, the Pearl, everyone aboard at battle stations with mental fingers on mental triggers, came hurtling out of what its crew hoped had been concealment toward the enemy installation.
The Spacedwellers were now about to fling their insubstantial bodies against whatever field barriers the berserker would be able to put up. Whatever fears the Nebulons had of approaching the berserker installation, they had managed to put aside in the hope of achieving a victory.
Defensive fire from the base opened up almost at once when the Pearlbroke cover, long before light could have borne the image of the moving ship in across the hundreds of millions of kilometers intervening between her and the base. The enemy had to be aiming and launching on subspace clues.
At least the barrage was not as heavy as might have been expected from a berserker base. The shields of the ship held up, though the hull rang with sound induced by the drumming of plasma wavefronts upon its outer surface, and the crew had something of the experience of being in an echoing metal room or barrel pounded on the outside by titanic hammers. Simeon had never before been under fire of anything like this intensity. He gritted his teeth and held on and did his job.
When the captain had the range he wanted, he calmly gave the order to return fire. Missiles were launched first, that their arrival on target might be simultaneous with the energies of the swifter destructive beams.
The first look at the results came long seconds later, when lagging light brought back to the ship the images of impact. The heavy fire from the ship had not immediately broken through the berserker station’s defensive fields. But it had succeeded in disrupting those barriers, so they were no longer able to hold the onrushing Nebulons at bay.
The Carmpan relayed the Spacedwellers’ telepathic shout of triumph.
The insubstantial swarm of Nebulons still could not be seen from the Pearl.But Fourth Adventurer reported them surging in through solid rock and metal, entering the facility. Once inside, as Fourth Adventurer reported, the Spacedwellers moved at once to disable the main destructor charges, whose probable locations Domingo had been able to guess successfully.
As the ship continued to close rapidly with its opponent, the Carmpan had another bit of news for his shipmates, this one unexpected.
“Captain, I am informed only now by Speaker that one of our allies’ people has been held a prisoner at this base for some lengthy though indeterminate time. Naturally enough, to rescue this prisoner is one of our guides’ chief objectives in making this attack.”
“Naturally. And they didn’t bother to tell us …” Domingo, intent on the tactical decisions he was going to have to make within another minute or two, sounded beyond surprise. “How the hell can even a berserker hold one of those things a prisoner? I’d like to know the trick.”
“It is a matter of creating special forcefields. No doubt you will be able to discover how to generate such fields, if you survive this fight.”
Simeon, holding his breath, thought that the chance of his personal survival was looking up. The berserker base, trying to fight off a Nebulon invasion, could not simultaneously cope very well with the superior firepower of the ship.
Domingo chose weapons, issued firing orders and observed results.
The berserker installation still fought back, but ever more feebly. After another exchange or two against Domingo’s missiles and beam weapons, the enemy defenses were obviously crumbling, and the Pearlmoved in closer still.
There were a few seconds of relative calm in which Fourth Adventurer issued a further report on Nebulon affairs. The prisoner had just been freed, but while in captivity had been the subject of horrible experiments, and the Carmpan had the impression that she or he might now be close to death, madness or both.
Soon after that the Carmpan was able to report that the main destructor charges on the installation had been effectively disabled.
Now the Pearlmoved even closer to the enemy.
Presently the berserker’s last defensive shields had been wiped out of space. Two more hits by beam-projector pulses on weapon clusters along its perimeter and the last of its return fire stuttered to a halt. At the moment the weapons of Domingo’s ship looked powerfully impressive.
Domingo called a cease-fire. A few moments later, with his ship gradually approaching the ruin below, the captain announced that he planned to board the enemy to look for information, clues to the location of Leviathan. He asked for one or two volunteers to accompany him.
No immediate answer came, at least not audibly. Simeon found himself having to repress hysterical laughter.
Iskander and Branwen finally volunteered to come along. There was something so utterly new and mad about this enterprise that the woman felt herself unable to resist it; and if she were going to learn any secrets about Domingo, this seemed like the most likely way to go about it.
Domingo decided that now, facing a defeated enemy, was a good time to practice fast-boarding techniques.
The Pearlrushed closer to the target planetoid, pulling back only at the last moment from a final ramming impact against the rock and metal of the enemy.
The launch, carrying the three boarders, came flying out of the ventral bay almost like a stone from a sling. The idea was to minimize the time of the little ship’s exposure in space to enemy fire. But this turned out to be a practice run; nothing struck at the launch. It appeared that this particular enemy had nothing left with which to strike.
The three invaders left the launch. The little craft, running on autopilot, hovered near the planetoid’s surface. Lugging heavy weapons and explosives, the three quickly got themselves down to the surface, which was still glowing with the heat of their own bombardment.
Protected by their armor, they quickly approached and crossed the broken outer ramparts of the enemy installation. Moving in, they blasted open doors and burned great holes through bulkheads. They were determined to leave themselves a clear and unblockable line of retreat as they forced their way in to the mysteries below.
The berserker had been unable to destroy itself or its central computing units or even to kill its prisoner, but
some of the commensal machines of the base were still active. The small maintenance machines, lacking in weapons, speed and tactics, tried to carry out harassing attacks but were blasted out of the way with relative ease.
The insubstantial bodies of the Nebulon attacking party, presumably including the rescued prisoner, came fluttering and wavering around the boarding party, then passed on, up and out to freedom.
“Good-bye, perhaps forever,” Iskander muttered, waving an arm toward the Nebulons, struggling to be funny. But the attitude no longer seemed to come naturally to him. He was giving a feeble imitation of his usual self.
This station was not as big, or the underground portion of it as elaborate, as the boarders had somehow been expecting. There were no large docks in sight. Certainly this could never have served as a major repair or construction base even for small fighting machines, let alone the huge killers of Leviathan’s class.
What appeared to be biological research gear, much of it intact or almost so, came into the boarders’ view as soon as they had penetrated underground. And here, as on the enemy unit they had previously boarded, the invading humans discovered a collection of complex field generators. These devices no doubt had served to create the prison walls and bars within which the Nebulon had been confined for study and experimentation.
Finally, a small chamber containing what had to be the central brain of the base was uncovered. “Some interesting-looking data banks here, Cap.” After that effort Iskander ceased to probe or even to talk. It was as if he had run out of energy.
For this expedition Domingo had equipped himself with hand-held gear that was supposed to be able to read most berserker data storage systems. A good portion of his wealth had gone to buy it. He clamped cables onto the memory units he could reach and connected the device to his headlink. He stood taking readings with intense concentration while his two crew members stood guard beside him.
“This unit …” the captain said finally and paused. A few moments later he spoke again. “What’s been going on at this facility … the machines here have been trying to determine what would be the most effective, the most deadly anti-ED human life form that could possibly be created.”
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