Berserker's Star Read online

  Fortunately, a robotic observatory had been in orbit around Twinkler, and signs of the explosion had been detected early, in the form of a veritable avalanche of precursor neutrinos. Particles with virtually no mass, traveling as fast as light, had been picked up within minutes by automatic sensors, while the blast front of the explosion itself was still fulminating within the outer layers of a star suddenly gone berserk; neutrinos passed through that barrier, as they did through almost everything else, as if it were not there at all. The warning, rushed on by superluminal robot courier, had reached Hong’s World in time to allow for evacuation.

  Fortunately, as it had turned out, the population of the single habitable planet in Hong’s system had never been much higher than one million people. And within a matter of days more than a thousand ships, summoned by swift couriers from other relatively nearby systems, had been mobilized for the job of getting them away. Between the Space Force and the Templars, there was every reason to believe that the job of evacuation was going to be successfully accomplished.

  All of which was a notable relief to Harry Silver. He shuddered inwardly at the thought of having to pack his Witch of Endor with refugees, like fish in a freezer. He would like to get off the planet before the authorities changed their collective mind and decided they had better pack his ship with people after all.

  Packing his ship to maximum capacity with people would have meant dumping his expensive cargo of freight right here on the ramp, just abandoning it to be stolen or destroyed, accepting dead economic loss. As matters stood, he could still nurse hopes of being able to sell the specialized machinery on some other world.

  Harry was beginning to wonder whether the authorities might have overshot the mark a bit in their effort to prevent panic. The likelihood of everyone being safely evacuated was so well established that it even left some people room for argument as to whether the whole thing was necessary.

  One of these, a fellow actually carrying a placard, had stopped to confront the little group of four—probably because everyone else in sight was obviously too busy to listen to him.

  At the moment the fibers in the smart material of his sign were showing bold black letters on a white background, reading: WE ALL BELONG TO HONG. Even as Harry watched, the message changed, translating itself into another language. Maybe, Harry thought, the protester believed this lovely planet harbored similar feelings of loyalty toward him.

  In keeping with an ancient tradition having to do with prophecies and prophets, the placard-carrying man had wrapped himself in a white cloth sheet that was seemingly his only garment, except for a pair of sandals that had a handmade look. The prophet’s voice was melodious, loud, and commanding. Maybe, thought Harry, what had decided the fellow to take up this line of work was just the opportunity to show off his voice and bearing. The volume of his voice was boosted, and the tones rendered rich and full, by an invisible amplifier that Harry thought must be buried somewhere in his beard.

  His physical presence was not as commanding as he evidently thought it was. But whatever impression he might have made on people in ordinary times, at the moment few were paying him any attention.

  The burden of the prophet’s argument seemed to be that there were, after all, deep shelters, dug out early in the settlement process, in anticipation of a berserker attack that had never materialized.

  “They are deep indeed, a thousand kilometers down in living rock. We should be down there now, letting Mother Hong shield and protect her children.”

  Glad to see that he had the attention of Harry and his group, the protester pointed with a full extension of his arm, a winning, dramatic gesture. “The stars look all right to me. Twinkler looks the same as ever.”

  Lily and the two men flanking her were still awaiting Harry’s answer, but he kept being distracted by the show going on behind them. Now another had appeared, a contrarian demonstrator who stopped to complain about the way the evacuation was being handled. This fellow had chosen white for his prophetic garment also, in the form of a long coat formally buttoned.

  The burden of the message urged by Prophet Number Two was that everything would be all right if only the problem could be managed in accordance with the precepts and techniques of science. In fact, he had calculated that everyone on the side of the world away from Twinkler could survive.

  “I have developed overwhelming proof on my computer. Also, if the Great Light was really coming, it would be here now.”

  Glad of an audience, if only a small one and annoyed, Prophet Two pressed on. And if, he was saying, for safety’s sake, it really might be better to get everyone off this planet, then the matter should be approached scientifically. And if some group really insisted on staying, well, it would improve the gene pool of the race to let them have their way.

  Harry wondered if uniformed caretakers were going to show up at the last moment and drag the white-clad pair away to some hospital ship for their own good. But that was quite unlikely. All of this world’s caretakers were on their way out, along with everybody else.

  One and Two now seemed to have reached some measure of agreement. One chimed in: “Well, I mean it might be possible to leave some kind of sensors, to measure and record how great an effect the explosion actually does have when it reaches this planet. Then when it’s all over, and people come back, we can see just how much of a danger it actually represented.”

  Harry put on a thoughtful expression and looked around. “You know, that never occurred to me. And you know what else? I’d say there’s been a sharp drop in the price of local real estate. There must be some terrific bargains waiting to be snapped up.”

  Prophet Two seemed ready to take him seriously. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he answered. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has been doing just that. This whole panic could have been started for that very purpose.”

  Two drew a deep breath, having built what seemed an excellent foundation from which to launch a speech. After all, everything, everything in the human universe, came down to a matter of money. The whole business of evacuation was a hoax, a scheme, set in motion by certain corporations interested in real estate.

  Prophet One chimed in, disputing details. The argument between them was degenerating into a haggling over costs. And taxes, especially taxes. There was no understanding a government that forced rich people to pay them. This had something to do with the fact that the evacuation was all a government plot, hatched by socialists who intended to seize the people’s property.

  Meanwhile, Harry had some business to conclude. Loudly he broke in, “But that’s a lovely idea, about recording the explosion.” He might almost have been sincere. His voice dropped to an undertone, as if he were speaking to himself: “I wonder I didn’t think of it—there are days when I have ideas like that.” More loudly: “Where will you mount your recording devices and sensors?”

  Prophet Number Two was ready to carry the argument forward—maybe it was worthwhile having your world destroyed if that gave you grounds for such a delicious protest. He looked about him at the solid paving of the esplanade, the sprawling hectares of the spaceport, almost empty, on one side. “Would it matter that much where you put them? Some of them on the surface, of course. How about right here? And bury the others deep.”

  Harry appeared to find that an impressive insight. “Hey, you’re right. It wouldn’t matter. Could put ‘em right here, or over there. Or even bring all the sensors down in your deep shelter with you.”

  “No, you couldn’t—”

  “How deep is this wonderful shelter? Maybe twenty thousand kilometers?”

  Prophet Two looked at him almost pityingly; he thought Harry had his numbers all scrambled, just didn’t understand. “Sir, the planet is only twelve thousand kilometers in diameter. The deep shelters, the ones that are available right now, and have room to save us all, are a full thousand kilometers underground.”

  “And no berserker is going to dig that deep—you hope. But one thousand kli
cks is too shallow to do us any good today, and twelve thousand would be no better. Because a few hours from now, when Twinkler’s blast front hits this world, it’ll turn every centimeter of that to flying atoms.”

  Harry took a step closer, as if the argument had turned personal. “You clodpate, we’re talking about a Type Three supernova, less than a full light-month from where we’re standing. Maybe you should put your sensors on the surface of Hong’s Sun. It’ll be the only thing in this system that survives, and it’ll be seriously roughed up.”

  One of Harry’s potential customers was applauding. Lily’s cute little face had lit up with something like enthusiasm. The two businessmen just stood there looking sour, waiting for this babble to be over.

  Prophets One and Two, united at last, were regarding the four of them as if they were all entirely crazy.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Later, Harry could never remember the exact words with which the fateful contract had been concluded, but at some point he had found himself agreeing to carry Lily where she wished to go. Then, having committed himself, he thought he might as well bring the businessmen along. Now all four of them were walking briskly toward Harry’s ship.

  Calm-voiced messages, meant to be reassuring, were being broadcast almost continuously over the public communication system. There were plenty of ships available, and so forth. Few people seemed to be paying much attention. One of the details being casually mentioned in passing, though certainly not emphasized, was the fact that berserkers were known to be in an adjoining sector of the Galaxy. No problem. The evacuation ships would be taking everyone in the opposite direction.

  Both Templars and Space Force were doing more than simply commanding and enforcing evacuation, carrying refugees away. Several billion kilometers from here, they were also deploying fighting ships to try to intercept the anticipated berserker attack.

  Even as Harry and his new clients trudged along, they could watch one of the big evacuation vessels lifting off, looking huge though it was kilometers away. It was packed, Harry was certain, with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human beings, and whatever personal belongings they were being allowed to take.

  At that moment, some anonymous Templar with an imperious voice, made all the more commanding by amplifiers in a passing groundcar, was ordering all owners of private ships to stand by, delaying liftoff until further notice. All cargo space aboard ships still on the ground was being commandeered for priority freight salvage.

  Harry’s arm snapped up in a crisp salute, acknowledging the order, the suggestion of instant obedience somewhat spoiled by the gesture’s being delivered left-handed. Otherwise he kept moving without breaking stride, shepherding his three clients with him.

  “How much of a problem is that going to be?” Dietrich asked, looking back over his shoulder at the groundcar as it slowly cruised away.

  Harry kept going. “None at all, as long as we ignore it.”

  Prophets One and Two, once more arguing fiercely with each other, had vanished in the passing throng. Everywhere heads were bobbing up and down as people kept looking up at the gradually darkening sky, as if they might be able to see the great doom coming before it got here. Pointless, of course, but Harry caught himself repeatedly doing the same thing.

  Here on the balmy surface of Hong’s World, it was still a warm, clear evening. A well-dressed woman, trudging along with her children in the same direction, was trying to explain to her young teenager that yes, all the stars would continue to look just fine, until the star in question started to look a little strange, about an hour before the arrival of the blast front.

  The children all nodded, wide-eyed. They were ready to be taken care of, as they had been for all of their short lives.

  Then abruptly the young girl turned to Harry, who happened to be walking beside her, because, he supposed, his boots and coveralls might make him look like some kind of an authority. He hoped it wasn’t simply the way he walked that would give people that impression.

  The girl asked: “Are the berserkers doing it?” Her voice, her look, held a hint of fear.

  Harry needed a couple of seconds to decide that the question wasn’t really all that crazy. “Even berserkers can’t fire up a nova at will. Though they’re probably working on it.”

  The mother was looking at him now. “But other people say the Twinkler is actually going to explode.”

  “Not ‘going to,’ lady, it already has.” Let someone like the recent demonstrator get to this woman, and she might refuse to leave. Her choice, but the threat to the children bothered Harry.

  He said: “What you now see in the sky is like a recording of Twinkler’s last few hours of peaceful life. Get your kids on that ship. Don’t let any of these loonies talk you into staying.”

  Over the next few years, here in this relatively crowded stellar neighborhood, the blast wave of Twinkler’s nova was going to totally wipe out several solar systems, purge them not only of existing life but also of seedbed planets that could conceivably produce new generations. All of their orbiting rock would go, everything that was smaller than the stars themselves. When the coming wavefront really hit, planets as massive as Jupiter would disappear, like seeds blown off a thistle in a gale.

  That thought brought lines of poetry popping into mind. When Harry had first heard of the disaster, he’d talked to his ship about it, and the Witch, as she sometimes did, had come up with an appropriate quotation:

  When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

  Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

  Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

  Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

  It was supposedly from some ancient work called “The Secret Rose,” by one William Butler Yeats. Harry wasn’t sure just what a “smithy” was supposed to be.

  His thoughts jumped back to the protester’s plan of somehow recording the disaster. Humanity, of course, enjoyed the advantage of having ships and robotic couriers that could effectively move much faster than light, were capable of jumping out of harm’s way in a small fraction of a second. Still, it would be very hard to record the advancing wavefront, or even look at it, this close to its source, so soon after the explosion. There were only a few premonitory signals. The thing propagated so fast that there was no seeing it until it had arrived. Only later, months or years later, would it be possible to stand off and watch from a safe distance.

  Even though no human eye had yet beheld it, the wavefront of destruction was rushing on at the speed of light, engulfing every second a vaster volume of space. With the advantages of superluminal travel, people would still be able, for years to come, to see those ruined stars and planets as they had been, when life swarmed in their systems.

  The trick, thought Harry, would be to have your robot ship emerge from flightspace immediately behind the blast front, in an area of normal space through which the front had just passed— except that, when things got as bad as it seemed they were going to get, the continuous outpouring in that region of several kinds of radiation would quickly overwhelm even the most heavily shielded ships, first smothering the sensors and then vaporizing them, so that little or nothing could be seen or recorded. But still it was likely that someone would send a robot ship to try.

  Running an eye over his new customers, as they all kept moving on, Harry once more took note of their small packs. “You people have any additional baggage you want to bring?”

  Redpath and Dietrich shook their heads no. Lily said, “I have everything I need, thank you, Mr. Silver. How long will the flight to Maracanda take?”

  “Can’t say until I consult with my ship’s data bank. But with a little luck, I’ll get you where you want to go.”

  “Actually,” Lily observed, “Alan would tell you that what you call luck will have little to do with our prospects of success.”

  “Oh?”

  “No, he’d say that our fates are in the hands of great Malakó.” She walked in silence
for a few strides. “Alan’s been looking all his life for something—something real and permanent. Maybe he’s found it at last.”

  Harry looked at her sideways. “A great truth provided by his kidnappers.”

  Lily shook her head. “Every system of belief has its fanatics, people who carry things too far. I’m hoping that most of the people in this Malakó thing will be comparatively sane.”

  “You can always hope.” Harry kept walking, but turned his head. “Haven’t heard of the great Malakó. Is she—or he—the one in charge of seeing that the stars burn steadily?”

  “If I were already a believer, Mr. Silver, I would find your flippancy offensive. If my husband were here, I don’t know what would happen.”

  Harry blinked at her mildly. “I’m not trying to be offensive. It just comes naturally.”

  She gave him a brief and thin-lipped smile. “In any case, the answer to your question is actually yes. My husband, according to the note he left me, is now solemnly convinced that Malakó is in charge, as you put it, of all the stars and all the worlds and all the life within the Galaxy.” She paused. “Maybe I will come to believe also.”

  In fact, Harry had heard the name of Malakó before. About all he knew about it was that there was a cult, or religion, whose members deified and worshiped the Galaxy—just as, in olden times, there had been those who found Earth’s little sun to be god enough, and more than enough, for them.

  Whether any god could be blamed for it or not, Twinkler’s great explosion had already happened, there could be no argument about that.

  Now another huge ship was lifting off from the nearby field, and shortly after it yet one more. Harry was thinking that most of the towns, the settlements, isolated estates, all across Hong’s World, would be deserted now. A lot of work and planning gone for nothing.

  ” ‘All that calm Sunday, that goes on and on,’ ” said Harry in a musing voice.