Berserker (Collection) Page 20

  Karlsen opened his eyes. In his belief a single human being was of more importance 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 this 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 retreat within himself. 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 an arm’s length 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 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. 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 his thought 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 planet.

  He had been through a lot even before falling here, and sleep overtook him. The next thing he knew 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 fringes and tails, like an artist’s speed-lines made solid. The figures were substantial 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 shame in their 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 berserker-ship from inside he should be able to open this one. But he decided it would be a waste of ammunition.

  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 still had his “coffin,” and might choose a long sleep—but no thanks, 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 of subjective time while a few years passed outside. He knew there were people who would try to find him and save him if there was any hope.

  From being 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 was viewing 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-bye, and then went walking away, headed out toward the blue-white 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 space boat 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 dragon-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 deadly 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, waiting, having no more to say. He knew the berserker-ship would have boats aboard, and that it could build its killing machines into the 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 weapons had settled around it, hiding it and all the forceline behind it from Karlsen’s view. Oh, if only he could believe that these were men …

  They gestured energetically, and lettered some more.

  OUR 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 h
is eyes and prayed. After a long time he opened his eyes again. His visitors and their boats 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 and crouching against his glass wall.

  After taking half a minute more to check his own helmet and suit, Karlsen bled out his cabin air and 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.

  ACE® Books

  by

  Fred Saberhagen

  The Berserker Series

  The Berserker Wars

  Berserker Base (with Poul Anderson, Ed Bryant, Stephen Donaldson, Larry Niven, Connie Willis, and Roger Zelazny)

  Berserker: Blue Death

  Berserker Throne

  Berserker’s Planet

  The Dracula Series

  The Dracula Tapes

  The Holmes-Dracula Files

  An Old Friend of the Family

  Thorn

  Dominion

  A Matter of Taste

  The Swords Series

  The First Book of Swords

  The Second Book of Swords

  The Third Book of Swords

  The First Book of Lost Swords: Woundhealer’s Story

  The Second Book of Lost Swords: Sightblinder’s Story

  The Third Book of Lost Swords: Stonecutter’s Story T

  he Fourth Book of Lost Swords: Farslayer’s Story

  The Fifth Book of Lost Swords: Coinspinner’s Story

  The Sixth Book of Lost Swords: Mindsword’s Story

  Other Books

  A Century of Progress

  Coils (with Roger Zelazny)

  Earth Descended

  The Mask of the Sun

  A Question of Time

  Specimens

  The Veils of Azlaroc

  The Water of Thought

  An ACE Book

  Berserker

  Copyright © 1967 by Fred Saberhagen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by Michael Whelan

  First Ace printing: September 1967

  Manufactured in the United States of America