BERSERKER BASE

"… it's not a berserker. Not…"

"What?" The face of Naxos looming over Lars, demanding answers, was the first thing that Lars saw when his perception returned to his immediate surroundings. He was pinned flat on his back, but not by berserkers this time. Naxos and Dorothy Totonac were holding down his arms, while Pat hovered over them all.

Lars repeated what he had just discovered: "Not a berserker. This machine we're riding in." There was no doubt that they were riding in it, spaceborne—the artificial gravity wavered crazily, so that his body sometimes rose right off the deck, along with those of the people who were trying to restrain him. To Lars, who now had a more-than-intellectual feeling for just how badly damaged their transportation was, the sensation was terrifying.

"You're crazy," Naxos told him flatly.

"No, I'm not. It was a berserker, but it isn't now. Tell you the details later," Lars raised his voice. "Gage, say something reassuring to these people."

The breathy, wheezy voice came from a speaker somewhere nearby: "I'm busy. But I'll try to think of something; meanwhile you'd better all keep those suits on." Lars, who had partially removed his, scrambled to get it on again and sealed.

Gage's 'very human-sounding voice (which was after all a human voice recorded) went on: "I'm going to open a door for you people; I think you'll be marginally safer if you go through it."

And nearby a hatchway opened.

Lars led the way. The others hesitated, then scrambled after him as if afraid of being left behind. Here was a room barely big enough to hold them all, a cell of the kind so many berserkers had, ready to carry goodlife or unwilling prisoners when such were computed to be useful.

Those who had expected to meet their host here looked around uncertainly.

Pat nudged Lars. "If he's human., where is he?"

"He's recorded. A computer program."

She blinked at him. Slowly understanding came. "God."

"'But be was a human being once, and he still composes poetry. The Carmpan or some of their more gifted allies could reach him, telepathically, through verse. They kept trying to bring him into touch with me directly, and it almost drove me crazy—"

The disembodied voice of Gage returned, explaining tersely how he had managed their getaway. His landing had been unopposed. The central berserker brain of the base, overworked with tactical decisions, had not investigated this strange damaged fighting unit as closely as it might have otherwise.

Nor did it take note that the telepathic prisoners were being spirited away. Then, with the third of his tripartite brain that was still more or less pure berserker. Gage had signaled the repair facility that his most urgent repairs had been completed—as indeed the most urgent of them had—and that he was spaceworthy.

Now there was a brief silence, interrupted by booming voices, different voices, also definitely human. Local radio traffic was being patched into the former prisoners' quarters by Hilary Gage.

It was evident that the Adamant navy along with other hostiles were heavily engaged in attacking the berserker base.

Jameson cheered them on, and gave some further explanation of how the attack had come about. "There're some people called the Cotabote, who think Adamant ought to be held responsible for everything in the universe. They live on a rock you probably never heard of, called Botea—"

"Oh."

"—and they suddenly started complaining to us of nightmares, of all damn things. Strange bad dreams about people sealed-up in rock—"

"Oh," said Lars again.

"Well, one thing led to another. Your chunky partners here, as I say, were sending out a lot of calls. We'd been wanting to find this base, and we were almost here when we ran into two other fleets that had the same idea in mind. One was a whole armada from around Adam. The other almost as big, from Nguni. Various non-ED people in contact with 'em all, and we got together. We'd have had to turn back otherwise, when we saw the size of this base."

Space pinged and twitched around them with the energies of weapons, lancing and hammering, from swarming ships down at the world below, and from that world back out at the attacking fleets. You could feel the energies through armor, you could feel them through anything.

Pat asked: "What are the Carmpan doing now?"

"I get the feeling that they're making an intense effort to get the attacking human fleets to lay off this particular berserker."

She shuddered. Maybe she hadn't expected that.

There was a greater twitch in space, a dart and flash somewhere nearby. There were no screens in this prison room from which to watch the battle, but Lars had sensed something like that dart and flash before. Not through his own eyes. "Qwib-qwib," he murmured.

"What's qwib-qwib?"

"Another story that I'll tell you sometime." Lars wondered if the last qwib-qwib in the universe had got its factory up and running somewhere before going kamikaze. He supposed it had.

The plucking and thrumming of space became gradually less noticeable. Gage, too damaged to do much fighting, was fleeing the battle as best he could. Gradually Lars began to believe that he, that all of them, might survive.

Someone in the jammed compartment started up a song.