The marines lay like dragon’s teeth seeded in the dark, strapped into the padded acceleration couches that had been their bunks, while the psych-music tried to lull them, and those who were Believers prayed. In the darkness Mitch listened on intercom, and passed on to his men the terse battle reports that came to him as marine commander on the ship.
He was afraid. What was death, that men should fear it so? It could only be the end of all experience. That end was inevitable, and beyond imagination, and he feared it.
The preliminary bombardment did not take long. Two hundred and thirty ships of life held a single trapped enemy in the center of their hollow sphere formation. Listening in the dark to laconic voices, Mitch heard how the berserker fought back, as if with the finest human courage and contempt for odds. Could you really fight machines, when you could never make them suffer pain or fear?
But you could defeat machines. And this time, for once, humanity had far too many guns. It would be easy to blow this berserker into vapor. Would it be best to do so? There were bound to be marine casualties in any boarding, no matter how favorable the odds. But a true combat test of the boarding scheme was badly needed before the decisive battle came to be fought. And, too, this enemy might hold living prisoners who might be rescued by boarders. A High Commander did well to have a rocklike certainty of his own rightness.
The order was given. The Spot and two other chosen ships fell in toward the battered enemy at the center of the englobement.
Straps held Mitch firmly, but the gravity had been turned off for the ramming, and weightlessness gave the impression that his body would fly and vibrate like a pellet shaken in a bottle with the coming impact. Soundless dark, soft cushioning, and lulling music; but a few words came into the helmet and the body cringed, knowing that outside were the black cold guns and the hurtling machines, unimaginable forces leaping now to meet. Now—
Reality shattered in through all the protection and the padding. The shaped atomic charge at the tip of the ramming prow opened the berserker’s skin. In five seconds of crashing impact, the prow vaporized, melted, and crumpled its length away, the true hull driving behind it until the Solar Spot was sunk like an arrow into the body of the enemy.
Mitch spoke for the last time to the bridge of the Solar Spot, while his men lurched past him in free fall, their suit lights glaring.
“My panel shows Sally Port Three the only one not blocked,” he said. “We’re all going out that way.”
“Remember,” said a Venerian voice. “Your first job is to protect this ship against counterattack.”
“Roger.” If they wanted to give him offensively unnecessary reminders, now was not the time for argument. He broke contact with the bridge and hurried after his men.
The other two ships were to send their boarders fighting toward the strategic housing, somewhere deep in the berserker’s center. The marines from the Solar Spot were to try to find and save any prisoners the berserker might hold. A berserker usually held prisoners near its surface, so the first search would be made by squads spreading out under the hundreds of square kilometers of hull.
In the dark chaos of wrecked machinery just outside the sally port there was no sign yet of counterattack. The berserkers had supposedly not been built to fight battles inside their own metallic skins—on this rested the fleet’s hopes for success in a major battle.
Mitch left forty men to defend the hull of the Spot, and himself led a squad of ten out into the labyrinth. There was no use setting himself up in a command post—communications in here would be impossible, once out of line-of-sight.
The first man in each searching squad carried a mass spectrometer, an instrument that would detect the stray atoms of oxygen bound to leak from compartments where living beings breathed. The last man wore on one hand a device to blaze a trail with arrows of luminous paint; without a trail, getting lost in this three-dimensional maze would be almost inevitable.
“Got a scent, Captain,” said Mitch’s spectrometer man, after five minutes’ casting through the squad’s assigned sector of the dying berserker.
“Keep on it.” Mitch was second in line, his carbine ready.
The detector man led the way through a dark and weightless mechanical universe. Several times he paused to adjust his instrument and wave its probe. Otherwise the pace was rapid; men trained in free fall, and given plenty of holds to thrust and steer by, could move faster than runners.
A towering, multi-jointed shape rose up before the detector man, brandishing blue-white welding arcs like swords. Before Mitch was aware of aiming, his carbine fired twice. The shells ripped the machine open and pounded it backward; it was only some semi-robotic maintenance device, not built for fighting.
The detector man had nerve; he plunged straight on. The squad kept pace with him, their suit lights scouting out unfamiliar shapes and distances, cutting knife-edge shadows in the vacuum, glare and darkness mellowed only by reflection.
“Getting close!”
And then they came to it. It was a place like the top of a huge dry well. An ovoid like a ship’s launch, very thickly armored, had apparently been raised through the well from deep inside the berserker, and now clamped to a dock.
“It’s the launch, it’s oozing oxygen.”
“Captain, there’s some kind of airlock on this side. Outer door’s open.”
It looked like the smooth and easy entrance of a trap.
“Keep your eyes open.” Mitch went into the airlock. “Be ready to blast me out of here if I don’t show in one minute.”
It was an ordinary airlock, probably cut from some human spaceship. He shut himself inside, and then got the inner door open.
Most of the interior was a single compartment. In the center was an acceleration couch, holding a nude female mannikin. He drifted near, saw that her head had been depilated and that there were tiny beads of blood still on her scalp, as if probes had just been withdrawn.
When his suit lamp hit her face she opened dead blue staring eyes, blinking mechanically. Still not sure that he was looking at a living human being, Mitch drifted beside her and touched her arm with metal fingers. Then all at once her face became human, her eyes coming from death through nightmare to reality. She saw him and cried out. Before he could free her there were crystal drops of tears in the weightless air.
Listening to his rapid orders, she held one hand modestly in front of her, and the other over her raw scalp. Then she nodded, and took into her mouth the end of a breathing tube that would dole air from Mitch’s suit tank. In a few more seconds he had her wrapped in a clinging, binding rescue blanket, temporary proof against vacuum and freezing.
The detector man had found no oxygen source except the launch. Mitch ordered his squad back along their luminous trail.
At the sally port, he heard that things were not going well with the attack. Real fighting robots were defending the strategic housing; at least eight men had been killed down there. Two more ships were going to ram and board.
Mitch carried the girl through the sally port and three more friendly hatches. The monstrously thick hull of the ship shuddered and sang around him; the Solar Spot, her mission accomplished, boarders retrieved, was being withdrawn. Full weight came back, and light.
“In here, Captain.”
QUARANTINE, said the sign. A berserker’s prisoner might have been deliberately infected with something contagious; men now knew how to deal with such tricks.
Inside the infirmary he set her down. While medics and nurses scrambled around, he unfolded the blanket from the girl’s face, remembering to leave it curled over her shaven head, and opened his own helmet.
“You can spit out the tube now,” he told her, in his rasping voice.
She did so, and opened her eyes again.
“Oh, are you real?” she whispered. Her hand pushed its way out of the blanket folds and slid over his armor. “Oh, let me touch a human being again!” Her hand moved up to his exposed face and gripped his cheek and nec
k.
“I’m real enough. You’re all right now.”
One of the bustling doctors came to a sudden, frozen halt, staring at the girl. Then he spun around on his heel and hurried away. What was wrong?
Others sounded confident, reassuring the girl as they ministered to her. She wouldn’t let go of Mitch, she became nearly hysterical when they tried gently to separate her from him.
“I guess you’d better stay,” a doctor told him.
He sat there holding her hand, his helmet and gauntlets off. He looked away while they did medical things to her. They still spoke easily; he thought they were finding nothing much wrong.
“What’s your name?” she asked him when the medics were through for the moment. Her head was bandaged; her slender arm came from beneath the sheets to maintain contact with his hand.
“Mitchell Spain.” Now that he got a good look at her, a living young human female, he was in no hurry at all to get away. “What’s yours?”
A shadow crossed her face. “I’m—not sure.”
There was a sudden commotion at the infirmary door; High Commander Karlsen was pushing past protesting doctors into the QUARANTINE area. Karlsen came on until he was standing beside Mitch, but he was not looking at Mitch.
“Chris,” he said to the girl. “Thank God.” There were tears in his eyes.
The Lady Christina de Dulcin turned her eyes from Mitch to Johann Karlsen, and screamed in abject terror.
“Now, Captain. Tell me how you found her and brought her out.”
Mitch began his tale. The two men were alone in Karlsen’s monastic cabin, just off the flagship’s bridge. The fight was over, the berserker a torn and harmless hulk. No other prisoners had been aboard it.
“They planned to send her back to me,” Karlsen said, staring into space, when Mitch had finished his account. “We attacked before it could launch her toward us. It kept her out of the fighting, and sent her back to me.”
Mitch was silent.
Karlsen’s red-rimmed eyes fastened on him. “She’s been brainwashed, Poet. It can be done with some permanence, you know, when advantage is taken of the subject’s natural tendencies. I suppose she’s never thought too much of me. There were political reasons for her to consent to our marriage … she screams when the doctors even mention my name. They tell me it’s possible that horrible things were done to her by some man-shaped machine made to look like me. Other people are tolerable, to a degree. But it’s you she wants to be alone with, you she needs.”
“She cried out when I left her, but—me?”
“The natural tendency, you see. For her to … love … the man who saved her. The machines set her mind to fasten all the joy of rescue upon the first male human face she saw. The doctors assure me such things can be done. They’ve given her drugs, but even in sleep the instruments show her nightmares, her pain, and she cries out for you. What do you feel toward her?”
“Sir, I’ll do anything I can. What do you want of me?”
“I want you to stop her suffering, what else?” Karlsen’s voice rose to a ragged shout. “Stay alone with her, stop her pain if you can!”
He got himself under a kind of control.” Go on. The doctors will take you in. Your gear will be brought over from the Solar Spot.”
Mitch stood up. Any words he could think of sounded in his mind like sickening attempts at humor. He nodded, and hurried out.
“This is your last chance to join us,” said the Venerian, Salvador, looking up and down the dim corridors of this remote outer part of the flagship. “Our patience is worn, and we will strike soon. With the De Dulcin woman in her present condition, Nogara’s brother is doubly unfit to command.”
The Venerian must be carrying a pocket spy-jammer; a multisonic whine was setting Hemphill’s teeth on edge. And so was the Venerian.
“Karlsen is vital to the human cause whether we like him or not,” Hemphill said, his own patience about gone, but his voice still calm and reasonable. “Don’t you see to what lengths the berserkers have gone to get at him? They sacrificed a perfectly good machine just to deliver his brainwashed woman here, to attack him psychologically.”
“Well. If that is true they have succeeded. If Karlsen had any value before, now he will be able to think of nothing but his woman and the Martian.”
Hemphill sighed. “Remember, he refused to hurry the fleet to Atsog to try to save her. He hasn’t failed yet. Until he does, you and the others must give up this plotting against him.”
Salvador backed away a step, and spat on the deck in rage. A calculated display, thought Hemphill.
“Look to yourself, Earthman!” Salvador hissed. “Karlsen’s days are numbered, and the days of those who support him too willingly!” He spun around and walked away.
“Wait!” Hemphill called, quietly. The Venerian stopped and turned, with an air of arrogant reluctance. Hemphill shot him through the heart with a laser pistol. The weapon made a splitting, crackling noise in atmosphere.
Hemphill prodded the dying man with his toe, making sure no second shot was needed. “You were good at talking,” he mused aloud. “But too devious to lead the fight against the damned machines.”
He bent to quickly search the body, and stood up elated. He had found a list of officers’ names. Some few were underlined, and some, including his own, followed by a question mark. Another paper bore a scribbled compilation of the units under command of certain Venerian officers. There were a few more notes; altogether, plenty of evidence for the arrest of the hard-core plotters. It might tend to split the fleet, but—
Hemphill looked up sharply, then relaxed. The man approaching was one of his own, whom he had stationed nearby.
“We’ll take these to the High Commander at once.” Hemphill waved the papers. “There’ll be just time to clean out the traitors and reorganize command before we face battle.”
Yet he delayed for another moment, staring down at Salvador’s corpse. The plotter had been overconfident and inept, but still dangerous. Did some sort of luck operate to protect Karlsen? Karlsen himself did not match Hemphill’s ideal of a war leader; he was not as ruthless as machinery or as cold as metal. Yet the damned machines made great sacrifices to attack him.
Hemphill shrugged, and hurried on his way.
“Mitch, I do love you. I know what the doctors say it is, but what do they really know about me?”
Christina de Dulcin, wearing a simple blue robe and turbanlike headdress, now reclined on a luxurious acceleration couch, in what was nominally the sleeping room of the High Commander’s quarters. Karlsen had never occupied the place, preferring a small cabin.
Mitchell Spain sat three feet from her, afraid to so much as touch her hand, afraid of what he might do, and what she might do. They were alone, and he felt sure they were unwatched. The Lady Christina had even demanded assurances against spy devices and Karlsen had sent his pledge. Besides, what kind of ship would have spy devices built into its highest officers’ quarters?
A situation for bedroom farce, but not when you had to live through it. The man outside, taking the strain, had more than two hundred ships dependent on him now, and many human planets would be lifeless in five years if the coming battle failed.
“What do you really know about me, Chris?” he asked.
“I know you mean life itself to me. Oh, Mitch, I have no time now to be coy, and mannered, and every millimeter a lady. I’ve been all those things. And—once—I would have married a man like Karlsen, for political reasons. But all that was before Atsog.”
Her voice dropped on the last word, and her hand on her robe made a convulsive grasping gesture. He had to lean forward and take it.
“Chris, Atsog is in the past, now.”
“Atsog will never be over, completely over, for me. I keep remembering more and more of it. Mitch, the machines made us watch while they skinned General Bradin alive. I saw that. I can’t bother with silly things like politics anymore, life is too short for them. And I no longer fear
anything, except driving you away … ”
He felt pity, and lust, and half a dozen other maddening things.
“Karlsen’s a good man,” he said finally.
She repressed a shudder. “I suppose,” she said in a controlled voice. “But Mitch, what do you feel for me? Tell the truth—if you don’t love me now, I can hope you will, in time.” She smiled faintly, and raised a hand. “When my silly hair grows back.”
“Your silly hair.” His voice almost broke. He reached to touch her face, then pulled his fingers back as from a flame. “Chris, you’re his girl, and too much depends on him.”
“I was never his.”
“Still … I can’t lie to you, Chris; maybe I can’t tell you the truth, either, about how I feel. The battle’s coming, everything’s up in the air, paralyzed. No one can plan … ” He made an awkward, uncertain gesture.
“Mitch.” Her voice was understanding. “This is terrible for you, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll do nothing to make it worse. Will you call the doctor? As long as I know you’re somewhere near, I think I can rest, now.”
Karlsen studied Salvador’s papers in silence for some minutes, like a man pondering a chess problem. He did not seem greatly surprised.
“I have a few dependable men standing ready,” Hemphill finally volunteered. “We can quickly—arrest—the leaders of this plot.”
The blue eyes searched him. “Commander, was Salvador’s killing truly necessary?”
“I thought so,” said Hemphill blandly. “He was reaching for his own weapon.”
Karlsen glanced once more at the papers and reached a decision.
“Commander Hemphill, I want you to pick four ships, and scout the far edge of the Stone Place nebula. We don’t want to push beyond it without knowing where the enemy is, and give him a chance to get between us and Sol. Use caution—to learn the general location of the bulk of his fleet is enough.”
“Very well.” Hemphill nodded. The reconnaisance made sense; and if Karlsen wanted to get Hemphill out of the way, and deal with his human opponents by his own methods, well, let him. Those methods often seemed soft-headed to Hemphill, but they seemed to work for Karlsen. If the damned machines for some reason found Karlsen unendurable, then Hemphill would support him, to the point of cheerful murder and beyond.
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