Part 15 (1/2)

”d.a.m.n sure beat us to the punch.” Harry's fellow survivor had roused enough to murmur that, in a voice that seemed to drift along the edge of consciousness.

Harry grunted an agreement. He had to admire, with professional appreciation, the craftsmans.h.i.+p of the attack. Then he went dozing away again . . .

Only to be jarred awake. ”How are you feeling, sir?” a new voice asked him softly.

FOURTEEN.

Recalled from interior drifting, Harry turned his head sharply to the right, as far as he could make it move. Then he needed half a minute to recognize Satranji's proclaimed wife, the robot Dorijen, who was standing before him in the role of a poster child for the problem of collateral damage. There was no reason to think the berserkers had been trying to destroy her-they had no essential quarrel with robots-but everything about Dorry except her voice was altered drastically. The drab servant's uniform had been almost entirely torn and seared away, and a lot of artificial skin and flesh and hair had gone the same route, bloodlessly revealing some fine interior examples of the art of the robotics engineer. Dorry's left arm was entirely gone, and several chunks, including a couple of fingers, were missing from the right.

One breast had been violently amputated, the other crushed, and the once-lovely face was ruined. Only one eye still appeared to be functioning.

But none of this mayhem appeared to have discouraged Dorijen. ”Can I be of any help to you, sir?” the robot asked Harry cheerfully.

Harry glanced toward his fellow survivor of a few minutes ago, who now appeared to be dead. ”Sure.

Just get these clamps off my arms and legs.”

The mangled right hand called attention to itself with a slight movement. ”I regret, sir, that my capabilities in mechanical manipulation are much reduced.”

”Yeah, yeah. All right. Never mind the clamps. What happened to you?”

”Mister Satranji had deposited me in a storeroom, sir, on the level below this one, and I was there, when the enemy detonated an explosive sterilization device nearby. It was not that they were trying to destroy me, but-”

”Yeah. Okay. They have now certified you as free of the Galactic disease called life. I will be awarded my certificate shortly. So how about telling me a funny story? I could use a laugh.”

”I will endeavor to recall one, sir.” There was a brief pause. ”Many humans find the following anecdote amusing. It seems that three purveyors of amus.e.m.e.nt products entered a bar at the same time, and began to dispute as to which of them should be served before the others. The first one-”

”Never mind. Forget the story. Just shut up.”

”Yes, sir.”

”No, scratch that. If you really want to be helpful, you could get me a drink.” With most of his helmet gone, his suit tank was no longer accessible.

”I a.s.sume, sir, that you mean water?”

”Do I look like I'm asking for a motherless champagne c.o.c.ktail?”

”No, sir.” There followed a hesitation. Unusual for a robot, but Dorry was obviously not working at top form ”Sir, there is another matter that I find I must-”

”Whatever it is can wait. First get me some water.”

”Yes sir.” After another brief hesitation, Dorijen turned and shuffled away, her battered legs working with some difficulty.

Harry's pinioned arms and legs were starting to cramp. He was surrounded by death and ruin, and worst of all n.o.body was going to talk to him. He would probably never hear another human voice. There had been a lot of times in his life when he would have considered that a blessing.

Obviously the artificial gravity units under the deck were still working, and evidently the air loss from the punctured living s.p.a.ce had been stopped by some emergency sealing, because Harry at least was still breathing. But d.a.m.n, it was starting to get cold.

Harry wondered again, as if he were interested in some vague and abstract problem, what might have happened to Winston Cheng's other s.h.i.+ps. It seemed to Harry there was a reasonable chance that in addition to Gianopolous's craft, at least one of the two armed yachts might have got away. Even if it was only running on autopilot with no one on board, an escaping vessel could carry to the s.p.a.ce Force, or to the nearest Templar base, an effective warning of disaster.

But there would be no warning carried anywhere, thought Harry, by the s.h.i.+p with Winston Cheng on board. Not if the old man had anything to say about it. Cheng wouldn't be running off anywhere to cry for help. He still had a s.h.i.+p, or maybe even two or three, and he'd be making a kamikaze charge right into the Gravel Pit, going straight for the d.a.m.ned berserker's heart, just as he'd intended all along. His almost nonexistent chances of success would be marginally improved while at least some of the enemy's fighting machines were out here at 207GST, busy mopping up the results of their own attack.

There was still only the one sizable berserker machine to be seen through the cleared port, and it was still hovering about a hundred meters from the dock. That berserker had not gone chasing after any escaping ED s.h.i.+ps-of course, for all he could tell, it might have sent a smart missile or two to do the job.

Harry's mind, with nothing else to do, became focused on studying the winner of the just-concluded skirmish, the conqueror of WW 207GST. A few of the bad machine's small army of auxiliaries kept coming and going from the dock. How many different models of berserker device were included in this attacking force? He certainly hadn't caught a glimpse of any Type A, the kind that everyone agreed had done all the kidnapping. Nor had he seen anything like Type B, either. That was not surprising, the enemy had currently in use somewhere around a hundred different more-or-less standard styles of s.p.a.cegoing hardware. But Harry couldn't quite fit the thing he was watching into any of those berserker categories.

Maybe the oxygen was a trifle low, because he still kept drifting out of consciousness and back again.

Yes, he had to give this particular enemy high marks for tactics. All in all, a cla.s.sic surprise attack, carried out with the meticulous attention to detail so beloved by the humans who wrote textbooks on how to fight a battle. But even so, in a larger sense, this was no surprise at all. It was simply that the inevitable end was coming a little earlier than expected.

Harry's body was quite helpless, unable to put up any further resistance, but still some part of his mind refused to surrender. Instead, it went on casting about for some last effort, a try to trick the enemy or disable it, even though he knew that whatever he came up with must be hopeless.

Anyway, he wasn't able to come up with anything. And now it was too late. Because here came another unit of the conqueror. This one was human-sized and nearly man-shaped, and it had locked its lenses on Harry, and was walking through wreckage toward him.

Harry understood that the dead or dying man in the berserker's path meant nothing at all to the machine, except as one more random object on the deck. He realized full well that it was not out of cruelty that the berserker happened to step right on him. His face was just the logical place to plant the metal foot. A sheer coincidence, and nothing more, that a human nose was located there. Harry could plainly hear the faint crunch of cartilage and thin bone. The ugly machine came straight on without a pause, to stand, on its two almost-human legs, about two steps in front of Harry.

”You are Harry Silver,” the berserker said to him in a surprisingly clear voice. This killing machine was equipped with an airspeaker, he realized, as if it had come prepared to communicate directly with human ears in breathable atmosphere.

That was unusual. Harry grunted, thinking how odd it was, the things that a man noticed at a time like this, in his last moments. The berserker's voice was not the usual sc.r.a.ping, squeaking noise that its kind made when they bothered to communicate anything in words to mere life-units. Still, this sound would hardly have pa.s.sed as a normal human utterance-but there was something oddly familiar in its tones.

”Who wants to know?” he got out, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. But of course, even as he asked the question, he thought he knew the answer. So far, Harry had been unconsciously a.s.suming the berserker that was about to kill him was the same mysterious kidnapper he and his teammates had been planning to attack.

The d.a.m.ned thing had somehow detected their presence, way out here on the approaches to the Gravel Pit, and had prudently decided to get in the first blow.

But of course, now that he came to think about it, there was no reason why the freshly triumphant conqueror of 207GST had to be the kidnapper. There was a discouragingly large number of berserkers scattered around the Galaxy, and among them was one other unit, a special one, that logically might have a unique likelihood of showing up at this particular wanderworld.

Harry's immobilized hands were trembling, the suit's overworked servos making its still powerful but useless arms s.h.i.+ver a little in sympathy. There didn't seem to be anything Harry could do about the shaking. Well, he wasn't going to let it worry him. Now was not the time for putting on a macho demonstration. Who would he be trying to impress?

No doubt his body was afraid, but his mind seemed to be running off in the other direction, away from fear. There was an odd thread of comfort to be found in the thought that very soon he would be, in some sense, reunited with Becky and their child.

Becky . . . down at the bottom of her heart, Harry knew, his wife had always been a Believer, despite the roughness of the life she'd sometimes led. In his imagination he could hear her praying for him now . .

The machine in front of him was talking to him again, in its naggingly, mystifyingly familiar voice. Its speech was calm, and, for a berserker, not that much different from human utterance.

It said: ”Harry Silver, you may have already learned of my existence. I am the machine designed and built for the specific purpose of ending your life.”

”Yeah, that possibility had dawned on me.” His throat was really going dry. ”I was kind of wondering why it took you so long to catch up with me.” After a pause, Harry added: ”So what're you going to do, talk me to death?”

”No,” said the berserker.