astrogational sphere. His ship’s C-plus drive was rapidly stretching a lot of timelike interval between itself and the Flamland system. Even if Holt was not enthusiastic about his mission, he was glad to be away from Flamland, where Mical’s political police were taking over.
“I wonder,” said the Second, and chuckled.
“What’s that mean?”
The Second looked over both shoulders, out of habit formed on Flamland. “Have you heard this one?” he asked. “Nogara is God—but half of his spacemen are atheists.”
Holt smiled, but only faintly. “He’s no mad tyrant, you know. Esteel’s not the worst-run government in the galaxy. Nice guys don’t put down rebellions.”
“Karlsen did all right.”
“That’s right, he did.”
The Second grimaced. “Oh, sure, Nogara could be worse, if you want to be serious about it. He’s a politician. But I just can’t stand that crew that’s accumulated around him the last few years. We’ve got an example on board now of what they do. If you want to know the truth I’m a little scared now that Karlsen’s dead.”
“Well, we’ll soon see them.” Holt sighed and stretched. “I’m going to look in on the prisoners. The bridge is yours, Second.”
“I relieve you, sir. Do the man a favor and kill him, Thurm.”
A minute later, looking through the spy-plate into the courier’s small brig, Holt could wish with honest compassion that his male prisoner was dead.
He was an outlaw chieftain named Janda, and his capture had been the last success of Karlsen’s Flamland service, putting a virtual end to the rebellion. Janda had been a tall man, a brave rebel, and a brutal bandit. He had raided and fought against Nogara’s Esteeler empire until there was no hope left, and then he had surrendered to Karlsen.
“My pride commands me to conquer my enemy,” Karlsen had written once, in what he thought was to be a private letter. “My honor forbids me to humble or hate my enemy.” But Mical’s political police operated with a different philosophy.
The outlaw might still be long-boned, but Holt had never seen him stand tall. The manacles still binding his wrists and ankles were of plastic and supposedly would not abrade human skin, but they served no sane purpose now, and Holt would have removed them if he could.
A stranger seeing the girl Lucinda, who sat now at Janda’s side to feed him, might have supposed her to be his daughter. She was his sister, five years younger than he. She was also a girl of rare beauty, and perhaps Mical’s police had motives other than mercy in sending her to Nogara’s court unmarked and unbrainwashed. It was rumored that the demand for certain kinds of entertainment was strong among the courtiers, and the turnover among the entertainers high.
Holt had so far kept himself from believing such stories, largely by not thinking about them. He opened the brig now—he kept it locked only to prevent Janda’s straying out and falling childlike into an accident—and went in.
When the girl Lucinda had first come aboard ship her eyes had shown helpless hatred of every Esteeler. Holt had been as gentle and as helpful as possible to her in the days since then, and there was not even dislike in the face she raised to him now—there was a hope which it seemed she had to share with someone.
She said: “I think he spoke my name a few minutes ago.”
“Oh?” Holt bent to look more closely at Janda, and could see no change. The outlaw’s eyes still stared glassily, the right eye now and then dripping a tear that seemed to have no connection with any kind of emotion. Janda’s jaw was as slack as ever, and his whole body as awkwardly slumped.
“Maybe—” Holt didn’t finish.
“What?” She was almost eager.
Gods of Space, he couldn’t let himself get involved with this girl. He almost wished to see hatred in her eyes again.
“Maybe,” he said gently, “it will be better for your brother if he doesn’t make any recovery now. You know where he’s going.”
Lucinda’s hope, such as it was, was shocked away by his words. She was silent, staring at her brother as if she saw something new.
Holt’s wrist-intercom sounded.
“Captain here,” he acknowledged.
“Sir, reported a ship detected and calling us. Bearing five o’clock level to our course. Small and normal.”
The last three words were the customary reassurance that a sighted ship was not possibly a berserker’s giant hull. Such Flamland outlaws as were left possessed no deep space ships, so Holt had no reason to be cautious.
He went back to the bridge and looked at the small shape on the detector screen. It was unfamiliar to him, but that was hardly surprising, as there were many shipyards orbiting many planets. Why, though, should any ship approach and hail him in deep space?
Plague?
“No, no plague,” answered a radio voice, through bursts of static, when he put the question to the stranger. The video signal from the other ship was also jumpy, making it hard to see the speaker’s face. “Caught a speck of dust on my last jump, and my fields are shaky. Will you take a few passengers aboard?”
“Certainly.” For a ship on the brink of a C-plus jump to collide with the gravitational field of a sizable dust- speck was a rare accident, but not unheard of. And it would explain the noisy communications. There was still nothing to alarm Holt.
The stranger sent over a launch which clamped to the courier’s airlock. Wearing a smile of welcome for distressed passengers, Holt opened the lock. In the next moment he and the half-dozen men who made up his crew were caught helpless by an inrush of metal—a berserker’s boarding party, cold and merciless as nightmare.
The machines seized the courier so swiftly and efficiently that no one could offer real resistance, but they did not immediately kill any of the humans. They tore the drive units from one of the lifeboats and herded Holt and his crew and his erstwhile prisoners into the boat.
“It wasn’t a berserker on the screen, it wasn’t,” the Second Officer kept repeating to Holt. The humans sat side by side, jammed against one another in the small space. The machines were allowing them air and water and food, and had started to take them out one at a time for questioning.
“I know, it didn’t look like one,” Holt answered. “The berserkers are probably forming themselves into new shapes, building themselves new weapons. That’s only logical, after the Stone Place. The only odd thing is that no one foresaw it.”
A hatch clanged open, and a pair of roughly man-shaped machines entered the boat, picking their way precisely among the nine cramped humans until they reached the one they wanted.
“No, he can’t talk!” Lucinda shrieked. “Don’t take him!”
But the machines could not or would not hear. They pulled Janda to his feet and marched him out. The girl followed, dragging at them, trying to argue with them. Holt could only scramble uselessly after her in the narrow space, afraid that one of the machines would turn and kill her. But they only kept her from following them out of the lifeboat, pushing her back from the hatch with metal hands as gently resistless as time. Then they were gone with Janda, and the hatch was closed again. Lucinda stood gazing at it blankly. She did not move when Holt put his arm around her.
After a timeless period of waiting, the humans saw the hatch open again. The machines were back, but they did not return Janda. Instead they had come to take Holt.
Vibrations echoed through the courier’s hull; the machines seemed to be rebuilding her. In a small chamber sealed off from the rest of the ship by a new bulkhead, the berserker computer-brain had set up electronic eyes and ears and a speaker for itself, and here Holt was taken to be questioned.
The berserkers interrogated Holt at great length, and almost every question concerned Johann Karlsen. It was known that the berserkers regarded Karlsen as their chief enemy, but this one seemed to be obsessed with him—and unwilling to believe that he was really dead.
“I have captured your charts and astrogational settings,” the berserker reminded Holt. “I know your course is to Nirvana, where supposedly the nonfunctioning Karlsen has been taken. Describe this Nirvana-ship used by the
