Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  His orbit, he guessed, must be roughly the size of Earth’s path around Sol. But judging by the way the surface of clouds was turning beneath him, he would complete a full circuit every fifteen minutes or so. This was madness, to outspeed light in normal space—but then of course space was not normal here. It could not be. These insane orbiting threads of dust and rock suggested that here gravity had formed itself into lines of force, like magnetism.

  The orbiting threads of debris above Karlsen’s traveled less rapidly than his. In the nearer threads below him, he could distinguish individual rocks, passing him up like the teeth of a buzzsaw. His mind recoiled from those teeth, from the sheer grandeur of speed and distance and size.

  He sat in his chair looking up at the stars. Distantly he wondered if he might be growing younger, moving backward in the time of the universe from which he had fallen . . . he was no professional mathematician or physicist, but he thought not. That was one trick the universe could not pull, even here. But the chances were that in this orbit he was aging quite slowly compared with the rest of the human race.

  He realized that he was huddling in his chair like an awed child, his fingers cramping painfully inside their gauntlets with the intensity of his grip on the chair arms. He forced himself to try to relax, to begin thinking of routine matters. He had survived worse things than this display of nature, if none more awful.

  He had air and water and food enough, and power to keep recycling them as long as necessary. His engine was good for that much.

  He studied the line of force, or whatever it was, that held him prisoner. The larger rocks within it, some of which approached his bubble in size, seemed never to change their relative positions. But smaller chunks drifted with some freedom backward and forward, at very low velocities.

  He got up from his chair and turned. A single step to the rear brought him to the curve of glass. He looked out, trying to spot his enemy.

  Sure enough, following half a mile behind him, caught in the same string of space-debris, was the berserkership whose pursuit had driven him here. It was a machine fastened on one purpose—Karlsen’s death. Its scanners would be fixed on his bubble now and were probably able to see him moving. If it could get at him it would do so. The berserkercomputers would waste no time in awed contemplation of the scenery, that much was certain.

  His bubbleboat was unarmed, but the berserker wasn’t. Why wasn’t it firing?

  As if to answer his thought the flare of a beam-weapon struck out from the launch. But the beam looked odd and silvery, and it plowed only ten feet or so among exploding rocks and dust before fizzling away like a comic firework. It left added dust in a cloud that seemed to be thickening around the berserker. Probably the machine had kept on firing at him all along, but this weird space would not tolerate energy weapons. Missiles, then?

  Yes, missiles. He watched the berserker launch one. The cylinder made one fiery dart in his direction, then disappeared. Where had it gone? Fallen in toward the hypermass? At invisible speed, if so.

  As soon as he spotted the first flare of another missile, Karlsen on a hunch turned his eyes quickly downward. He saw an instant spark and puff in the next lower line of force, a tooth knocked out of the buzzsaw. The puff where the missile had struck flew ahead at insane speed, passing out of Karlsen’s sight almost at once. His eyes were drawn after it, and he realized he had been watching the berserker-ship not with fear but with something like relief, as a distraction from facing . . . all this.

  “Ah, God,” he said aloud, looking ahead. It was a prayer, not an oath. Far beyond the slow-churning infinite horizon, there were monstrous dragon-head clouds rearing up. Against the blackness of space their mother-of-pearl heads seemed to be formed by matter materializing out of nothingness to plunge toward the hypermass. Soon the dragons’ necks rose over the edge of the world, rainbow purls of matter, dripping and falling with unreal speed down into the hypermass. And then the dragonbodies, clouds throbbing with bluewhite lightning above the red bowels of hell.

  The vast ring, in which Karlsen’s thread of rocks was one component, raced like a circular sawblade toward the prominences. As they came flying over the horizon they rose up far beyond Karlsen’s level. They twisted and reared like mad horses. They must be bigger than planets, he thought, yes, bigger than a thousand Earths or Esteels. The whirling band he rode was going to be crushed between them—and then he saw that even as they passed they were still enormously distant from him on either side.

  Still standing, Karlsen let his eyes close for a time. If men ever dared to pray, if they ever dared even to think of a Creator of the universe, it was only because their tiny minds had never been able to visualize a thousandth part . . . a millionth part . . . there were no words, no concepts, for sights like these.

  And what of men who believed only in themselves, or in nothing? What might it do to them to look nakedly at such odds as these?

  Karlsen opened his eyes. In his belief a single human was more important to the Creator than any sun of whatever size. He made himself watch the scenery. He determined to master this almost superstitious awe.

  But he had to brace himself again when he noticed for the first time how the stars were behaving. They were all blue-white needles, the wavefronts of their light jammed together in a stampede over the cliff of gravity. And his speed was such that he saw some stars moving slightly in parallax shifts. He could have depth perception in light-years, if his mind could stretch that far.

  He stepped back to his chair, sat down and fastened himself in. He wanted to dig himself a tunnel, down into the very core of a huge planet, where he could hide . . . but what were even the biggest planets? Poor lost specks, hardly bigger than this bubble.

  Here he faced no ordinary spaceman’s view of infinity. Here there was a terrible perspective, starting with rocks just outside the glass and drawing the mind on and out, rock by rock and line by line, step by inescapable step, on and on and on—

  All right. At least this was something to fight against, and fighting something was better than sitting here and rotting. To begin with, a little routine. He drank some water, which tasted very good, and made himself eat a bite of food. He was going to be around for a while yet.

  Now for the little job of getting used to the scenery without going mad. He faced in the direction of his bubble’s flight.

  Half a dozen meters ahead of him the first large rock, massive as the bodies of a dozen men, hung steadily in the orbit-line of force. With his mind he weighed this rock and measured it and then moved on to the next notable chunk, a pebble’s throw further. The rocks were each smaller than his bubble, and he could follow the string of them on and on, until it was swallowed in the converging pattern of forcelines that at last bent around the hypermass, defining the full terror of distance.

  His mind hanging by its fingertips swayed out along the intervals of grandeur . . . like a baby monkey blinking in jungle sunlight, he thought. Like an infant climber who had been terrified by the size of trees and vines, who now saw them for the first time as a network of roads that could be mastered.

  Now he dared to let his eyes grab hard at that buzzsaw rim of the next inner circle of hurtling rocks, to let his mind ride it out and away. Now he dared to watch the stars shifting with his movement, to see with the depth perception of a plant.

  He had been through a lot even before his ship had fallen here, and sleep overtook him. Suddenly loud noises were waking him up.

  He came full awake with a start of fear. The berserker was not helpless after all. Two of its man-sized machines were outside his glassy door, working on it. Karlsen reached automatically for his handgun. The little weapon was not going to do him much good, but he waited, holding it ready. There was nothing else-to do.

  Something was strange in the appearance of the deadly robots outside; they were silvered with a gleaming coating. It looked like frost except that it formed only on their forward surfaces and streamed away from them toward the rear in little f
ringes and tails, like an artist’s speed-lines made solid. The figures were solid enough. Their hammer-blows at his door . . . but wait. His fragile door was not being forced. The metal killers outside were tangled and slowed in the silvery webbing with which this mad rushing space had draped them. The stuff damped their laser beams, when they tried to burn their way in. It muffled the explosive they set off.

  When they had tried everything they departed, pushing themselves from rock to rock back toward their metal mother, wearing their white flaming surfaces like hoods of defeat.

  He yelled relieving insults after them. He thought of opening his door and firing his pistol after them. He wore a spacesuit, and if they could open the door of the berserkership from inside he should be able to open this one. But he decided that it would be a waste of ammunition to even try.

  Some deep part of his mind had concluded that it was better for him, in his present situation, not to think about Time. He saw no reason to argue with this decision, and so he soon lost track of hours and days—weeks?

  He exercised and shaved, he ate and drank and eliminated. The boat’s recycling systems worked very well. He happened to have aboard a device that would let him freeze himself into suspended animation—but no thanks, at least not yet. The possibility of rescue was in his thoughts, mixing hope with his fears of Time.

  He knew that on the day he fell down here there was no ship built capable of coming after him and pulling him out. But ships were always being improved. Suppose he could hang on here for a few weeks, or months, while a few years passed outside. He knew he was important to many important people, and that an attempt to save him would be made if it looked at all possible.

  From being awed, almost paralyzed by his surroundings, he passed through a stage of exaltation and then quickly reached—boredom. The mind had its own business and turned itself away from all these eternal blazing miracles. He slept a good deal.

  In a dream he saw himself standing alone in space. He viewed himself at the distance where the human figure dwindles almost to a speck in the gaze of the unaided human eye. With an almost invisible arm, himself-in-the-distance waved good-by and then went walking away, headed out toward the bluewhite stars. The striding leg movements were at first barely perceptible and then became nothing at all as the figure dwindled, losing existence against the face of the deep . . .

  With a yell he woke up. A spaceboat had nudged against his crystal hull and was now bobbing a few feet away. It was a solid metal ovoid, of a model he recognized, and the numbers and letters on its hull were familiar to him.

  He had made it. He had hung on. The ordeal was over.

  The little hatch of the rescue boat opened, and two suited figures emerged, one after the other, from its sheltered interior. At once these figures became silver-blurred as the berserker’s machines had been, but these men’s features were visible through their faceplates, their eyes looking straight at Karlsen. They smiled in steady encouragement, never taking their eyes from his.

  Not for an instant.

  They rapped on his door and kept smiling while he put on his spacesuit. But he made no move to let them in; instead he drew his gun.

  They frowned. Inside their helmets their mouths formed words: Open up! He flipped on his radio, but if they were sending, nothing was coming through in this space. They kept on gazing steadily at him.

  Wait, he signaled with an upraised hand. He got a slate and stylus from his chair and wrote them a message.

  LOOK AROUND AT THE SCENERY FOR A WHILE.

  He was sane, but maybe they thought him mad. As if to humor him, they began to look around them. A new set of dragons’-head prominences were rising ahead, beyond the stormy horizon at the rim of the world. The frowning men looked ahead of them at dragons, around them at buzzsaw rainbow whirls of stone; they looked down into the sullen depths of the inferno, they looked up at the stars’ poisonous blue-white spears sliding visibly over the void.

  Then both of them, still frowning uncomprehendingly, looked right back at Karlsen.

  He sat in his chair, holding his drawn gun and waiting, having no more to say. He knew that the berserker-ship would have had boats aboard and that it could build its killing machines into rough likenesses of men. These were almost good enough to fool him.

  The figures outside produced a slate of their own from somewhere.

  WE TOOK BERS. FROM BEHIND. ALL OK & SAFE. COME OUT.

  He looked back. The cloud of dust raised by the berserker’s own useless weapons had settled around it, hiding it and all the force-line behind it from Karlsen’s view. Oh, if only he could believe that these were men . . .

  They gestured energetically and lettered some more.

  SHIP WAITING BACK THERE BEHIND DUST. SHE’S TOO BIG TO HOLD THIS LEVEL LONG. And again:

  KARLSEN, COME WITH US!!! THIS YOUR ONLY CHANCE!

  He didn’t dare read any more of their messages for fear he would believe them, rush out into their metal arms and be torn apart. He closed his eyes and prayed.

  After a long time he opened his eyes again. His visitors and their boat were gone.

  Not long afterward—as time seemed to him—there were flashes of light from inside the dust cloud surrounding the berserker. A fight to which someone had brought weapons that would work in this space? Or another attempt to trick him? He would see.

  He was watching alertly as another rescue boat, much like the first, inched its way out of the dustcloud toward him. It drew alongside and stopped. Two more spacesuited figures got out and began to wear silver drapery.

  This time he had his sign ready.

  LOOK AROUND AT THE SCENERY FOR A WHILE.

  As if to humor him, they began to look around them. Maybe they thought him mad, but he was sane. After about a minute they still hadn’t turned back to him—one’s face looked up and out at the unbelievable stars, while the other slowly swiveled his neck, watching a dragon’s head go by. Gradually their bodies became congealed in awe and terror, clinging to his glass wall.

  After taking half a minute more to check his own helm and suit, Karlsen opened his door.

  “Welcome, men,” he said, over his helmet radio. He had to help one of them aboard the rescue boat. But they made it. END

  1967

  INTRODUCTION (Berserker: The Beginning)

  I, third historian of the Carmpan race, in gratitude to the Earth-descended race for their defense of my world, set down here for them my fragmentary vision of their great war against our common enemy.

  The vision has been formed piece by piece through my contacts in past and present time with the minds of men and of machines. In these minds alien to me I often perceive what I cannot understand, yet what I see is true. And so I have truly set down the acts and words of Earth-descended men great and small and ordinary, the words and even the secret thoughts of your heroes and your traitors.

  Looking into the past I have seen how in the twentieth century of your Christian calendar your forefathers on Earth first built radio detectors capable of sounding the deeps of interstellar space. On the day when whispers in our alien voices were first detected, straying in across the enormous intervals, the universe of stars became real to all Earth’s nations and all her tribes.

  They became aware of the real world surrounding them—a universe strange and immense beyond thought, possibly hostile, surrounding and shrinking all Earthmen alike. Like island savages just become aware of the great powers existing on and beyond their ocean, your nations began—sullenly, mistrustfully, almost against their will—to put aside their quarrels with one another.

  In the same century the men of old Earth took their first steps into space. They studied our alien voices whenever they could hear us. And when the men of old Earth began to travel faster than light, they followed our voices to seek us out.

  Your race and mine studied each other with eager science and with great caution and courtesy. We Carmpan and our older friends are more passive than you. We live in different environmen
ts and think mainly in different directions. We posed no threat to Earth. We saw to it that Earthmen were not crowded by our presence; physically and mentally they had to stretch to touch us. Ours, all the skills of keeping peace. Alas, for the day unthinkable that was to come, the day when we wished ourselves warlike!

  You of Earth found uninhabited planets, where you could thrive in the warmth of suns much like your own. In large colonies and small you scattered yourselves across one segment of one arm of our slow-turning galaxy. To your settlers and frontiersmen the galaxy began to seem a friendly place, rich in worlds hanging ripe for your peaceful occupation.

  The alien immensity surrounding you appeared to be not hostile after all. Imagined threats had receded behind horizons of silence and vastness. And so once more you allowed among yourselves the luxury of dangerous conflict, carrying the threat of suicidal violence.

  No enforceable law existed among the planets. On each of your scattered colonies individual leaders maneuvered for personal power, distracting their people with real or imagined dangers posed by other Earth-descended men.

  All further exploration was delayed, in the very days when the new and inexplicable radio voices were first heard drifting in from beyond your frontiers, the strange soon-to-be-terrible voices that conversed only in mathematics. Earth and Earth’s colonies were divided each against all by suspicion, and in mutual fear were rapidly training and arming for war.

  And at this point the very readiness for violence that had sometimes so nearly destroyed you, proved to be the means of life’s survival. To us, the Carmpan watchers, the withdrawn seers and touchers of minds, it appeared that you had carried the crushing weight of war through all your history knowing that it would at last be needed, that this hour would strike when nothing less awful would serve.

  When the hour struck and our enemy came without warning, you were ready with swarming battlefleets. You were dispersed and dug in on scores of planets, and heavily armed. Because you were, some of you and some of us are now alive.