Atsog—a planet closer to Sol than the enemy had been thought to be. It was Sol they were coming for, all right. They must know it was the human center.
More people were at the cabin door. Hemphill stepped aside for the Venerian, Admiral Kemal. Mr. Salvador, hardly glancing at Mitch, followed the admiral in.
“You have heard the news, High Commander?” Salvador began. Kemal, just ready to speak himself, gave his political officer an annoyed glance, but said nothing.
“That Atsog is attacked, yes,” said Karlsen.
“My ships can be ready to move in two hours,” said Kemal.
Karlsen sighed, and shook his head. “I watched today’s maneuvers. The fleet can hardly be ready in two weeks.”
Kemal’ s shock and rage seemed genuine.” You’ d do that? You’d let a Venerian planet die just because we haven’t knuckled under to your brother? Because we discipline his damned Esteeler—”
“Admiral Kemal, you will control yourself! You, and everyone else, are subject to discipline while I command!”
Kemal got himself in hand, apparently with great effort.
Karlsen’s voice was not very loud, but the cabin seemed to resonate with it.
“You call hangings part of your discipline. I swear by the name of God that I will use every hanging, if I must, to enforce some kind of unity in this fleet. Understand, this fleet is the only military power that can oppose the massed berserkers. Trained, and unified, we can destroy them.”
No listener could doubt it, for the moment.
“But whether Atsog falls, or Venus, or Esteel, I will not risk this fleet until I judge it ready.”
Into the silence, Salvador said, with an air of respect: “High Commander, the courier reported one thing more. That the Lady Christina de Dulcin was visiting on Atsog when the attack began—and that she must be there still.”
Karlsen closed his eyes for two seconds. Then he looked round at all of them. “If you have no further military business, gentlemen, get out.” His voice was still steady.
Walking beside Mitch down the flagship corridor, Hemphill broke a silence to say thoughtfully: “Karlsen is the man the cause needs, now. Some Venerians have approached me, tentatively, about joining a plot—I refused. We must make sure that Karlsen remains in command.”
“A plot?”
Hemphill did not elaborate.
Mitch said: “What they did just now was pretty low—letting him make that speech about going slow, no matter what—and then breaking the news to him about his lady being on Atsog.”
Hemphill said: “He knew already she was there. That news arrived on yesterday’s courier.”
There was a dark nebula, made up of clustered billions of rocks and older than the sun, named the Stone Place by men. Those who gathered there now were not men and they gave nothing a name; they hoped nothing, feared nothing, wondered at nothing. They had no pride and no regret, but they had plans—a billion subtleties, carved from electrical pressure and flow—and their built-in purpose, toward which their planning circuits moved. As if by instinct the berserker machines had formed themselves into a fleet when the time was ripe, when the eternal enemy, Life, had begun to mass its strength.
The planet named Atsog in the life-language had yielded a number of still-functioning life-units from its deepest shelters, though millions had been destroyed while their stubborn defenses were beaten down. Functional life-units were sources of valuable information. The mere threat of certain stimuli usually brought at least limited cooperation from any life-unit.
The life-unit (designating itself General Bradin) which had controlled the defense of Atsog was among those captured almost undamaged. Its dissection was begun within perception of the other captured life-units. The thin outer covering tissue was delicately removed, and placed upon a suitable form to preserve it for further study. The life-units which controlled others were examined carefully, whenever possible.
After this stimulus, it was no longer possible to communicate intelligibly with General Bradin; in a matter of hours it ceased to function at all.
In itself a trifling victory, the freeing of this small unit of watery matter from the aberration called Life. But the flow of information now increased from the nearby units which had perceived the process.
It was soon confirmed that the life-units were assembling a fleet. More detailed information was sought. One important line of questioning concerned the life-unit which would control this fleet. Gradually, from interrogations and the reading of captured records, a picture emerged.
A name: Johann Karlsen. A biography. Contradictory things were said about him, but the facts showed he had risen rapidly to a position of control over millions of life-units.
Throughout the long war, the berserker computers had gathered and collated all available data on the men who became leaders of Life. Now against this data they matched, point for point, every detail that could be learned about Johann Karlsen.
The behavior of these leading units often resisted analysis, as if some quality of the life-disease in them was forever beyond the reach of machines. These individuals used logic, but sometimes it seemed they were not bound by logic. The most dangerous life-units of all sometimes acted in ways that seemed to contradict the known supremacy of the laws of physics and chance, as if they could be minds possessed of true free will, instead of its illusion.
And Karlsen was one of these, supremely one of these. His fitting of the dangerous pattern became plainer with every new comparison.
In the past, such life-units had been troublesome local problems. For one of them to command the whole life-fleet with a decisive battle approaching, was extremely dangerous to the cause of Death.
The outcome of the approaching battle seemed almost certain to be favorable, since there were probably only two hundred ships in the life-fleet. But the brooding berserkers could not be certain enough of anything, while a unit like Johann Karlsen led the living. And if the battle was long postponed the enemy Life could become stronger. There were hints that inventive Life was developing new weapons, newer and more powerful ships.
The wordless conference reached a decision. There were berserker reserves, which had waited for millennia along the galactic rim, dead and uncaring in their hiding places among dust clouds and heavy nebulae, and on dark stars. For this climactic battle they must be summoned, the power of Life to resist must be broken now.
From the berserker fleet at the Stone Place, between Atsog’s Sun and Sol, courier machines sped out toward the galactic rim.
It would take some time for all the reserves to gather. Meanwhile, the interrogations went on.
“Listen, I’ve decided to help you, see. About this guy Karlsen, I know you want to find out about him. Only I got a delicate brain. If anything hurts me, my brain don’t work at all, so no rough stuff on me, understand? I’ll be no good to you ever if you use rough stuff on me.”
This prisoner was unusual. The interrogating computer borrowed new circuits for itself, chose symbols and hurled them back at the life-unit.
“What can you tell me about Karlsen?”
“Listen you’re gonna treat me right, aren’t you?”
“Useful information will be rewarded. Untruth will bring you unpleasant stimuli.”
“I’ll tell you this now—the woman Karlsen was going to marry is here. You caught her alive in the same shelter General Bradin was in. Now, if you sort of give me control over some other prisoners, make things nice for me, why I bet I can think up the best way for you to use her. If you just tell him you’ve got her, why he might not believe you, see?”
Out on the galactic rim, the signals of the giant heralds called out the hidden reserves of the unliving. Subtle detectors heard the signals, and triggered the great engines into cold flame. The force field brain in each strategic housing awoke to livelier death. Each reserve machine began to move, with metallic leisure shaking loose its cubic miles of weight and power freeing itself from dust, or ice, or age-old mud, or solid rock—then rising and turning, orienting itself in space. All converging, they drove faster than light toward the Stone Place, where the destroyers of Atsog awaited their reinforcement.
With the arrival of each reserve machine, the linked berserker computers saw victory more probable. But still the quality of one life-unit made all of their computations uncertain.
