THE ANNIHILATION OF ANGKOR APEIRON

The battle was a long one for deep space, lasting well over a standard hour, and as fierce as any fight in which the losing side can have no expectation of survival. Commander Ridolfi had fought his heavy cruiser, the Dipavamsa, with a desperate skill that twice in a matter of minutes forestalled instant destruction by the berserker's missiles, and each member of his crew performed superbly well in making such combat decisions as could be handled slowly enough to let human brains cooperate with their slave computers.

The human crew of course faced death or worse if they should lose. And the berserker, their unliving foe, faced its own analogue of death and worse-than-death. To lose would mean destruction-which was nothing to a berserker if destruction could bring victory. But destruction in defeat meant certain failure to achieve any further progress toward its programmed goal, the annihilation of all life, whenever and wherever it could be attacked.

Aboard the Dipavamsa there were only four civilian passengers, including Otto Novotny, who in his long life had never come close to taking part in a battle before and who felt a great deal too old and paunchy for such endeavors now. Nevertheless he was more alert than any of the other civilians, and had begun to don his requisite suit of space armor as soon as the Battle Stations klaxon sounded, while the other three were still wondering aloud if it was only practice.

Ten seconds later the first berserker missile blew against the cruiser's defensive screens, a mere kilometer from her hull, and they all knew better.

Dipavamsa was fighting for her life several light years from any star, along a trade route where in these last few standard months no unarmed vessels had dared to try to pass. The berserker machine, a sphere some forty or fifty kilometers in diameter, all armor and combat computers and heavy weapons and drive, had waited like a spider in the midst of the net of detectors it had planted in subspace. The region where its detectors existed was conterminous to one in normal space where a strait of hard vacuum bent between two nebulae, forming a bottleneck only a few billion kilometers wide in which a reasonably fast passage could be achieved. When a manned ship dared to try the strait-heavy cruiser or not-the berserker jumped to the attack.

Locked together with their armaments of fields and counterfields like grappling ocean ships of old, the contending metallic giants rolled into normal space, there to remain until the issue was decided. After the first enemy missile-blast reverberated through the cruiser's hull, Novotny thought that the battle would probably be over one way or the other before he could get himself completely into the unfamiliar armor. His efforts were complicated by a sudden lack of artificial gravity; every erg of the cruiser's energies was suddenly needed for more important things than maintaining a rightsideup.

But he persevered, working with the same methodical speed with which he usually solved problems of quite a different kind, and finally got the armor on. No sooner had he sealed its last seam and begun to wonder what to do next, when Dipavamsa's hull was breached by blast and beam. Hatches slammed to seal compartments, but the air in their compartment could not be held and Novotny saw the lives of his companions who had been too slow snuffed out like candle flames.

After that the battle became a scrambling confusion of largely physical effort for the humans who took part in it. For Novotny especially, who had less idea of what to expect than did any of the cruiser's crew and who was not in as good shape as they were either. Now the berserker chose to hurl some of its auxiliary machines across the narrow no-man's-land of space to try to board the cruiser. It could use the ship if it could capture it still reasonably intact, and probably it wanted living prisoners.

Prisoners of course were useful for interrogation, after which a berserker generally killed them quickly; it was programmed only to pursue death, not suffering, though of course it was quite willing to apply judicious torture to extract information of value in advancing the cause of death. And prisoners were needed for experiments that the berserkers carried on extensively, in an effort to learn what made Homo Sapiens, a species now spread across this part of the Galaxy, such a resistant life-form to their relentless program of sterilization.

The berserkers were automated warships, made by an unknown race to fight in an interstellar war that had been over ages since; they had outlasted their original enemies and their makers as well, having been programmed and equipped to rebuild and reproduce themselves. Still trying to carry out their originally programmed task, they had made an age-long progress across the spiral arms, leaving nothing living in their wake.

While following the motions of the Commander's arms, which were gesturing to shovel suited people from one wrecked-looking compartment to another, Novotny had a chance to look out through the holed hull to catch his first glimpse of the enemy. The monstrous spherical hull of the berserker was visible by the cherry-glow of craters that the cruiser's weapons had pocked across its armor hide. One crater flared anew while Novotny watched, flamed with some power that seemed to be eating like a cancer into the enemy's metal bowels. But again the cruiser was rocked and shaken in its turn. Novotny and Commander Ridolfi were picked up by the same invisible hand and slammed together into a bulkhead, saved only by their suits from broken bones.

Now some of the berserker's boarding machines, which were a little bigger than men and of diverse shapes, managed to get aboard Dipavamsa, and Novotny had a chance to see the enemy at close range. Men, some of whom were hardened veterans, were screaming around him in terror, but his own unconsciously-maintained attitude was that under conditions like these one could hardly spare the time to be frightened. Vaguely he thought of this situation as resembling an impossible editorial deadline-one thing that could never help was panic. He followed as best he could the Commander's waved and shouted orders, and kept alert. At last he got his own chance to blaze away at the foe, with a small recoilless rifle he had snatched up from a fallen crewman's hands.

By that time-as Novotny confusedly understood, from scraps of combat jargon that came into his helmet-Commander Ridolfi had ordered his Second Officer and a picked crew to leave the cruiser in an armed launch that could take shelter among the drifts and waves of nebular material in space nearby, darting through where the bulky berserker could not pass at speed. It was a feigned acknowledgement of defeat, intended to make the enemy think they were abandoning ship, a battle tactic to lure the damaged enemy in where a sharp counterattack might still destroy it.

Ridolfi himself, as the cruiser's commanding officer, and Novotny, as more or less useless baggage, were among those who stayed aboard her and tried to fight a delaying action through her corridors. The vacuum around Novotny's helmet continued to buzz and sing with the strange energies of this battle; he clutched his recoilless rifle and continued to fire it toward the enemy's boarding machines whenever he caught a glimpse of one of them. He could not have said whether or not his shots were doing any good. He also tried to stay close to Ridolfi's side; whether he felt in slightly less hopeless danger there, or was hoping thus to improve his chances of being useful, he did not pause to consider. Ridolfi indeed kept snapping orders, but they were meant for members of his crew.

The two of them were still together, trying to defend the central control room of the ship, when Death struck closer to them than at any moment yet.

It came very suddenly. One moment Novotny was still looking toward Ridolfi for a hint of what they might try to do next-and the next moment a berserker machine that looked like a cross between a centipede and a crab had thrown itself upon them and they were prisoners. Steel claws that moved with the force of atomic power effortlessly tore Novotny's rocket launcher away and wrenched the Commander's sidearm from his hand. The berserker shifted its grip then, holding each pair of human arms helpless with a single claw-and then machine and men went down together in a tangle as a new force slammed at the cruiser from outside. The Second Officer and his picked crew, in their fresh and undamaged launch, had begun their counterattack.

The crab-centipede was wrecked, sheared almost in two, as the launch sent something like the Angel of the Lord passing almost invisibly through the embattled ship, cutting selectively, passing over fragile human bodies and machinery that it could somehow identify as human property.

The mass of his late captor, and its tenacious grip which had not relaxed with the destruction of its computer-brain, pinned Novotny in an angle between deck and bulkhead, surrounded by wreckage. Beside him Ridolfi grunted and struggled in similar difficulties. Then they abruptly ceased their efforts to get free, simultaneously ceased even to breathe-another berserker machine was entering the damaged control room.

If it was aware of them, it did not turn. It moved straight to one of the panels before which a human astrogator normally sat, and with a startling delicacy began to remove the panel from its mounting. Neatly-almost timidly, it seemed-it probed for the panel fasteners, teasing and tickling at them with grasping devices that could have ripped the panel free like so much tissue paper.

… it was working so carefully, and now it almost had what it was after. It reached inside and pulled out… very slowly…

… a small metal case…

That burst into a flaming snowball even as the berserker oh so gently tugged it free of its connections, a blaze that here in free fall sent out its flames in a sunburst of straight radii, a wad of radiant glory that the enemy instantly hurled away. Without pause the enemy turned to snatch up a small bundle of paper printout that writhed weightlessly across the deck. It shoved this inside itself, door slamming shut protectively across the orifice-and the machine was gone, lunging with inhuman speed out of the room again.

"Novotny." The two of them gasped for breath again and once more struggled against the dead claws that held them prisoner. "Look-can you shift your weight this way? Lean on it here, maybe I can get a hand out of this claw…"

After a minute or two of cooperative effort both of them were free. From some comparatively great distance the shocks and slams of battle were still coming to them through the hull. "Novotny, listen to me." The Commander talked while looking for his pistol, which he at last grabbed from a turning swirl of other weightless debris that drifted in the middle of the room. "It was going after our astrogational databank just then. After that thing that burst into flame?"

"I saw."

"It didn't get what it wanted, because the bank's destructor charge worked when it was pulled out. But it must need astrogational information badly, or it wouldn't have sent a machine after it, before the battle's even over. Maybe its own banks have been shot up."

Novotny moved his head inside his helmet, showing that he understood so far.

The Commander had his pistol back, held absently in his right hand, and his left hand clamped briefly on Novotny's suited arm. "I believe you have in your quarters something it could use as a substitute. I understand you're traveling with the whole new edition of Encyclopedia Galactica in microstorage-and the EG gives galactic coordinates for all inhabited systems, right?"

Novotny agreed again. Now that he had been almost immobile for a little while, his muscles were starting to stiffen from the unaccustomed workout. He could hear the wheezings from inside his own chest, and his body was beginning to feel like so much fluid lead. If they weren't in free fall he would certainly be dizzy and have to sit down. Decades at a senior executive's desk had left him too fat and old for this kind of nonsense.

But he was moving again now, keeping up with the agile Commander as they picked their way out of the ruined control room, which now looked not in fit shape for controlling anything.

"Then we've got to get to your quarters," the Commander was saying, "while there's still a chance. You've got just the one copy of the encyclopedia there?"

"Yes."

"We must see that it's destroyed."

They had started down a corridor, and there came a glimpse of a machine moving ahead of them, and the vibrations of its massy passage came through the bulkheads to their gripping hands. Taking shelter together in a doorway, they waited for it to get out of their way.

The Commander kept trying to make contact with his Second Officer by suit radio, but seemed unable to get any reply. Maybe, thought Novotny, it's only that the space between is far too noisy…

"Commander," he asked, when there was a momentary opportunity, "What sector are we in now? Of the Galaxy, I mean, in Revised Galactic Coordinates?"

Ridolfi's eyes came to full focus on him for what might have been the first time. "Omicron Sector, Ring Eleven-what does it matter? Oh, you mean you want to know which volumes of your set it will be most important to destroy. Good thinking.

That damned machine will be too shot up itself to get out of Omicron without help. I don't think it'll be able to catch another ship, even if one should come along. It'll be trying to find an undefended planet nearby, within a light year or two if possible, preferably an inhabited one where there'll be machines it can take over and some ready-made materials that it can use to repair itself."

"And my encyclopedia is now the only means by which it can locate such a planet?"

"That's the way I read the situation. It can't just go visiting stars at random, the chance of success is far too small… remember that printout it picked up from the control room floor? That was a copy of what we call the Military Information Sheet, which we got when we filed our flight plan. Among other things it contains a list of all the defended planets along our projected course-all the places where we might be able to look for help in case of an emergency. I suppose it'll go for one of them if it can't find anything better. But in your reference book it's likely to get the address of some undefended one… the war's a recent thing in this neck of the galactic woods, remember?"

Novotny's face bore a doubtful look, but the Commander was no longer watching him.

"Coast's clear, Novotny. Let's move." Then the two of them were in motion again, diving and scrambling in free fall. For the moment their luck held; no more berserkers came in sight as they reached the stateroom corridor and swam along it to the door of Novotny's cabin. The door had been jammed shut by some warping of the battered ship around it, and it took the men an agonizing moment or two to force it free.

Then they were inside. "Where is it?"

"There on the table, Commander. Already plugged into the reading machine. But wait." A new anxiety had come into Novotny's voice. "I'm not sure that destruction is our wisest move."

Commander Ridolfi only looked at him. "Get back."

But Novotny had not moved when a third figure suddenly joined them in the little cabin; the crab-centipede's cousin, which raised a multitude of claws.

The Commander aimed his gun again, but not at the berserker. He thought his own life and battle now lost anyway, and more important than perhaps damaging one more of the berserker's machines would be denying it this information on new targets. He aimed at the reading machine that sat like some dull sculpture on the table.

Novotny reached out deliberately and knocked Ridolfi's arm aside.

The berserker, on the verge of killing both of them, hesitated fractionally as it observed their struggle. Did one of these life-units wish to become goodlife, a willing ally of the cause of Death? Such conversions had happened before, more than a few times, and a goodlife could be very useful. And what on the table was so important that a life-unit struggled to destroy it-?

From the armed launch came the next phase of counterattack. The cabin was nearly ripped apart. The berserker lashed out at Ridolfi, and the Commander saw that his pistol was gone again, before it could be fired, and his arm gone with it almost to the shoulder. The suit will seal itself around the wound, he thought, in sudden massive shock that made all things seem trivial. He saw the reading machine snatched up from the table in the claws of the berserker, and the launch's weapons struck again. A fresh gust of escaping atmosphere whirled through the cruiser from a newly-ruptured compartment, and with the last glow of his consciousness the Commander could see stars.

His first feeling when his wits came back was sheer astonishment at being still alive. Astonishment deepened when he realized that he had somehow been brought on board the armored launch. All four bunks in its tiny sick bay were full of wounded, and men and women and machines were steadily at work, passing back and forth continually in the small space between the bunks.

The Second Officer came in to report, relief dawning on his face when he saw that Ridolfi was getting up and evidently in shape to resume his command. Shock and loss of blood had been treated, pain blocked, and bandages sealed the wound from which a new arm could one day be made to grow.

The Second made his report concisely. The launch was now some half a million kilometers within the nebula, its defenses alertly repelling or safely detonating-so far-all the torpedoes that the berserker had sent after it. The battle had ground to a halt, otherwise, in mutual though incomplete destruction. What was left of the cruiser had now been abandoned by both con-tending forces. Before pulling back deep within the nebula, the launch had dared to delay long enough to follow distress signals and pick up two suited survivors who had, it seemed, somehow been blown clean away from the embattled cruiser in the last stages of the fighting. One of the survivors was Commander Ridolfi himself. The other…

"That makes nineteen people on the air and food," the Second Officer mused, as they stood looking down at the collapsed shape of Otto Novotny, slumped in total exhaustion in a corner of the small dayroom where there hardly seemed room for his gross form. "Still, we should be able to recycle, and make supplies last until we're eventually picked up…"

"I don't know if there'll be nineteen or not, for very long." Ridolfi's voice was hard as that of one just going into battle, not coming out of it, and his eyes were welded on the fat civilian.

"Sir?" The Second didn't get it at all, not yet.

"I mean, Mister, that unless I get some questions answered by this man here, and answered damn fast, I'm going to convene a formal court and press charges against him of voluntarily aiding a berserker."

There were only six people in the dayroom when the first informal inquiry began; the Commander didn't want to prejudice possible jurors if the thing came to a formal trial, which he was empowered to give even civilians when in space and in the face of the enemy.

As Novotny, by now somewhat recovered though still slow of movement and blinking a bit bewilderedly, was ushered in and shown to the seat across the table from him, the Commander was simultaneously handed a note from the other side. It informed him that the berserker had just been observed dropping out of normal space in the area of the battle. Instruments showed it departing the local area, having evidently completed such emergency repairs as it could manage on the spot. A reading on the subspace signals of its departure gave a vector for its probable destination that deepened the lines carved down through Ridolfi's cheeks.

A silence grew in the room, until Ridolfi spoke. "This is not yet a trial, Mr. Novotny. But I warn you that there may be one before we get back to a planet, if we ever do; or are picked up by another human ship, if we ever are. If there is a trial, you will be charged with voluntarily aiding a berserker, and conviction will carry an almost certain penalty of death."

Exhaustion and puzzlement seemed to be absorbed almost at once within the layers of fat as Novotny pulled himself together. "Ah. I stand ready, of course, Commander, to answer any questions on my behavior that you may have."

"That's good. Frank answers will be required." Ridolfi tried to keep his one hand from fidgeting before him on the table. "On board the cruiser, in a combat situation, you deliberately interfered with my attempt to destroy the databank containing your encyclopedia. Do you deny it?"

Novotny was sitting very still, as if he feared that movement might land him in further trouble of some kind. He thought before answering, and his face maintained a frown. "No, I do not deny that, Commander."

The Commander paused, then put his arm out on the table, fingers opened, elbow straight, a dominating gesture. "You do not. Very well. My intention in destroying that data, sir, was to prevent its use as an astrogational aid by the berserker. If you wanted to save it, it was surely not for yourself. Did you expect that the berserker might accord you some favorable treatment if you…"

Novotny was shaking his head. "I very seriously doubt that the data in the encyclopedia will do the enemy the least bit of good, in this case. Nor did I wish to help the enemy."

The Commander's voice was relentlessly unchanged. "On the cruiser, you and I both saw the berserker going after the astrogational databank, which it evidently needed but didn't get.

"We also know the enemy is severely damaged, which means it will be looking for some comparatively near planet where it can commandeer machinery and materials to repair itself; in addition, of course, to wiping out as many unprotected human lives there as it can reach. Because we fought it to a standstill here in space doesn't mean it won't be able to poison an atmosphere and depopulate a planet, if it comes on one only lightly defended or takes one unaware. Is all this news to you?"

"I think I understand all this, Commander."

"Let those who are here with us be witness that you do." Ridolfi glanced briefly round at the faces of the others, all of them staring now at the accused. "Because so far you are answering yourself right into a trial, Mister Novotny. There are only two things, basically, that a berserker ever wants or needs: victims, and facilities for repair and refitting. And you've shown this one where to go for both of them."

Novotny slumped a little in his chair and closed his eyes. But when he opened them his voice was as steady as before. "Commander, if I am indeed on trial for my life, or likely to be, then I would like to hear the charges and the evidence as fully as possible before I try to answer them. Go on."

"Very well." Ridolfi nodded grimly. "You came on board the Dipavamsa with two copies of your new edition, one of which was subsequently and routinely stowed aboard this launch, along with some other baggage not immediately in use. That copy is still here and available, and since going off combat alert I've fed it into our computer and asked for a readout-as the berserker can readily do with the copy you gave it-of all inhabited planets within seven light years of where our battle was fought. That's about as far as that berserker is going to get without repairs; and extending the radius another light year or so brings no new planets in."

The Commander had a paper which he now consulted. "There are seven inhabited planets to be found, according to the Encyclopedia Galactica, within that radius. They are Angkor Apeiron, Comparettia, Epirus, Francavilla, Han Kao, Reissner, and Yang Ch'i. Exact coordinates, RGC, are given for each." He put one piece of paper on the table and took another from a pocket of his shirt. "I have here part of a spare copy of the Military Information Sheet given us when we filed our flight plan before departing on this trip. Among other things, it lists the six inhabited planets in this same region that have notable ground defenses, or fleet units standing by, or both. As one more bit of evidence, Mr. Novotny, let me state now that you were also a witness with me that a copy of this list of the six defended planets was also seized by the berserker. Any denials yet?" Ridolfi's fingers were shaking and he put the second paper down.

"Not yet, Commander."

"Though whether you understood the full implications of that seizure at the time…"

"I had… some idea, I suppose, of what the implications were. Proceed."

Ridolfi read: "The six defended planets on the military list for this region are: Comparettia, Epirus, Francavilla, Han Kao, Reissner, and Yang Ch'i. Notably missing from this military list is Angkor Apeiron." The Commander pushed his second paper out on the table beside the first, where anyone who wished might look them over, and then produced a third.

He went on: "According to the latest census figures, as given in this EG article, this world has about eleven million, six hundred thousand inhabitants. Its chief export industries are crystal growing and natural honey. The spaceport is small, but probably the berserker could plunder it for useful machines and materials after it has wiped out what appears to be an undefended populace.

The Commander needed a moment before he could continue. "Angkor Apeiron was discovered by Chang Izanagi, of Hathor, in 7626 CE… first colonized only ten standard years later." His voice was starting to shake a little like his hand. "I suppose your reference work is quite reliable in these particulars? I mean, about there being eleven million people there, especially?"

Novotny paused for thought, began to speak, then stopped and shook his head and tried again. "The EG is the most reliable general reference work in human history, Your Honor-Commander-whatever I am to call you now-"

" 'Commander' will still do."

"-when it is used for the purposes for which it is intended. Which is to say that it was never meant to serve as a manual of do-it-yourself medicine, or law, or astrogation either. It is a means by which one can verify, or learn, a fact; check a date or name; obtain entree to almost any field of knowledge, and learn where to go for further…"

"Yes. Spare us the sales talk, we're not in the market for a set right now." Nobody cracked a smile. "Now here in your reliable reference work, which you gave the enemy as a present, are the precise coordinates for the Apeiron system: Sector Omicron 111.254, Ring Eleven 87.58, Galactic Latitude 7.54 North. These figures are correct, are they not? Hasn't the EG a competent editorial staff, with the technical and scientific knowledge.

"The staff at the home office is more than competent, Commander. It is very good indeed. I speak from personal experience."

The Commander leaned forward. "Then what, Mr. Novotny, is going to save the inhabitants of Angkor Apeiron from the consequences of your action?"

Novotny leaned back, somewhat haughtily, as if he had at last taken affront. "Only the fact, Commander, that the inhabitants of Angkor Apeiron do not exist."

There was a silence in the dayroom, as if each person who looked at the speaker were waiting for his last words to somehow clear themselves out of the air, or for some great hand to reach in from outside the little ship and mend the broken spring of sanity.

The Commander, his shakiness shocked away, was the first to reply: "You mean…you claim to have some knowledge… that the planet has already been evacuated, or wiped out?"

"I mean, sir, that the star Apeiron has no planets. It has never had any. When the berserker arrives there it will find no victims and no material help; and if your estimate of its damaged condition is as accurate as I would like to believe, before it can go on to some other world it will have died, if that is the proper word, of the injuries your crew has so gallantly inflicted on it."

"But…" The Second Officer was starting a disbelieving protest.

Novotny rounded on him sharply. "Why do you suppose the military authorities protected six settled planets in this region and ignored a seventh?"

"Lack sufficient forces…"

"Bah. Correct me if I am wrong, Commander, but would not the general or admiral in charge be more likely to spread his forces thinner, and not leave eleven million people totally undefended, since this sector has become a combat zone? Of course his forces are probably spread all too thin already, which is why I thought it good to direct our late antagonist to a desert system, rather than letting it go challenge some of them."

Ridolfi had recovered, or almost. "Desert system? But this EG entry… you claim your encyclopedia is the most reliable…"

Novotny was holding up a pudgy, magisterial hand, and his face had eased into something that approached a smile. "I will explain, as I have promised. But to do so I must briefly go far afield from berserkers and space warfare."

His accuser had not yet relaxed a bit. "Do so. Go as far as you like. But be sure that you come back."

Novotny took another moment to marshall his thoughts before he spoke. "Suppose… suppose that you, Commander, are a ruthlessly good businessman, back on Earth or one of the other crowded worlds. And you decide that there is money to be made in purveying information to the public, even as EG makes money. You decide that you will compile and sell a general reference work. Or perhaps one more specialized-on galactography, let us say, listing and describing all the inhabited and explored planets as well as other bodies in the Galaxy that are for some reason interesting.

"You decide that you will put a great deal less work into your encyclopedia than we put into ours, and therefore be able to sell yours for a great deal less money, while including the same information we include. How? The most direct expedient is of course to copy all your articles verbatim from ours; but this the laws and courts, alas for your enterprise, are never going to allow. You are forced to the inconvenience of at least rewriting our material somewhat as you crib.

"Given a little computer help, to rearrange the syntax and replace words with their synonyms, this will not be such an arduous task as might at first appear. Even our several billions of words might be rehashed and reprinted, in slightly different format, in a quite reasonable time. Behold! And Commander Ridolfi's Encyclopedia of All Knowledge is available for the home databank, at a much lower fee than ours… never mind that you will not provide your customers with the constant updating service that ours receive.

"So! Even with much rewriting, your basic idea is still illegal, still infringes upon our copyrights, does it not? Well, now the answer is no longer quite so clear-cut. But believe me, our lawyers will try, have tried in similar cases, to sue you for a bundle, as soon as they find out what you have done.

"Now you show up for trial, and are on the witness stand, though not with your life at stake of course… Commander Ridolfi, I the prosecuting attorney ask you: Is it true or not, that you have compiled your so-called reference work virtually entirely from EG? Now think carefully, for on your answer your whole defense will stand or fall.

"Of course it is not true! you answer ringingly. You used the Merchant Astrogation banks, you used periodicals and the records from dusty archives, you looked in books, you queried eminent authorities in many fields, just as does the great EG itself.

"Ohh? I ask, and now my voice is of the softest, and I cast an eye toward the jury. Then tell me, sir, which of these many indispensable sources did you use to cross-check your information on the planet Angkor Apeiron?"

There was another silence in the dayroom, a different sort of silence this time, and death that had all along seemed close was suddenly light years off again, at one with the berserker's wake that faded in subspace.

Novotny felt the difference and began to sag. "Because you see, sir, we have made this entry up, population, industries, discovery date and all, as encyclopedists have made up entries for the same reason from very ancient times. We made it up to catch such plagiaristic fish as you, and put it as bait for you within the great EG, and nowhere else in the great universe of worlds or information storage does Angkor Apeiron exist…there are a number of other baits like this one, Commander, among our forty million entries. Quite a few, like this one, I had a hand in making up myself; but how many there are altogether I do not know; no one man or woman knows them all. The ordinary user is of course never going to hear of Angkor Apeiron anywhere and is therefore never going to look it up. If he comes upon it while browsing at his reading machine, he is only treated to a dull and minor fantasy that he will soon forget."

Novotny let himself sink back into a chair that no longer seemed to be a dock above the edge of death. Then he turned his head to a wallscreen showing space, and looked off into the nebular cloudbanks of the Deep. "I wonder if it can even wonder how it was tricked, or how it tricked itself… I know that it could never understand."

There are times when no weapon less strong and direct than the truth will serve. But, to use the truth, one first must find it out.

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