She was watching Harry, trying to calculate, still not understanding. She was just not very good at listening. None of these people seemed to be.

The escaped prisoners continued to follow Harry back toward the sounds of sporadic fighting.

One of them pushed forward to demand of Harry: "Why are we going this way, toward the fighting?"

Now that he was moving again, with a definite goal, he felt not quite so desperate. "Because there's nowhere else to go. The only ships we know about are here. Probably they're all wrecked, but at least one of them ought to have lifeboats that are still working. Maybe there'll even be a launch."

They had gone only a little farther when Harry called a halt, in a s.p.a.ce that he thought seemed as sheltered as anything they were likely to find. When his faithful following had shuffled into a kind of ring around him, he announced: "This is as far as I can guide you, people. I'm going ahead and scout."

Most of his entourage looked alarmed. One demanded: "What should we do?"

"d.a.m.ned if I know what to tell you, except that this way would seem to be the only way out. I shouldn't have to remind you that whatever way you go, it's going to be very chancy. Don't know where a safe spot is, or what's going to happen next." When he started to move again, and everyone came right with him, Harry stopped to warn them: "Better not stay too close to me. There's liable to be shooting, with me as a target, and your suits puncture pretty easily."

That got Harry enough s.p.a.ce for the time being, and in another moment he had turned his back and was moving away. Taking a quick glance back he could see that at least three or four of the people were still following, though now at a more respectful distance, staying thirty or forty paces back. Claudia Cheng continued to be a bit ahead of the others, still towing Winnie who hobbled with difficulty in his awkward suit. Harry felt sorry for the kid, who was going to need a guardian angel to get through this alive. Angel, h.e.l.l, say a couple of archangels.

'He thought the young woman looked slightly puzzled behind her faceplate, probably because he still had given her no guarantee of special treatment.

Harry had traversed this section of the berserker base only once before, going in the opposite direction and under very different conditions. There was actually more light now, eerie pulsating glows of different colors, alternating with a flicker here and a flicker there, emanating from damaged forcefields, as well as various sites where metal and other materials had been heated to incandescence. Harry found it hard to be sure of distances and directions, but instinct suggested that he was getting close to the docks, and very close to where the ships were reported to have come crashing down, one after the other.

He was also entering an area where combat had very recently taken place. The heavy structural members nearby were scorched and marked with spots and patches of still-glowing slag; and fragments of berserker fighting machines lay strewn about. It was impossible to tell if these bits of wreckage had once served the rogue or the a.s.sa.s.sin.

Harry continued working his way back through the half-ruined fortress of research, until he found himself again walking in vacuum, traversing a region that was still being effectively walled off by microfields, restraining molecules of air while allowing larger objects to pa.s.s freely.

Easing his way slowly forward, Harry peered over an obstacle to spot the upper portion of a human body that was sitting on the deck, facing toward him. A moment later he had recognized the Lady Laura by her distinctive suit of heavy combat armor. She was leaning back awkwardly against a wall, her carbine leaning beside her. A flickering of bluish light reflecting from the overhead created the momentary illusion that she was moving, but when Harry had taken another step he could see that her suit was badly smashed, crushed and punctured in a way that hurt to look at. Its occupant could not be anything but dead.

Another armored figure was lying with its helmet in the lady's lap. Around the fallen couple were strewn pieces of shattered metal, what appeared to be the remains of more than one berserker unit. As Harry crept still closer, Winston Cheng feebly raised his head to look at him. The weapon Cheng had dropped, a heavy handgun, lay a few centimeters from the metal gauntlet covering his outstretched hand. Most of the arm above the hand was gone, armored sleeve and all, and the suit had been seriously punctured in several other places. Harry swiftly abandoned any thoughts of trying to give medical a.s.sistance. Now Harry was close enough to see that inside the Lady Masaharu's helmet a tiny telltale damage signal was flashing regularly. n.o.body was going to answer the phone on that one.

Cheng twitched again, and his airspeaker made a faint sound. "Harry . . ."

Holding the carbine ready, Harry turned to brace his back against the wall, so nothing could come at him from behind. Then he let himself down, awkward in his heavy suit, to sit beside the tyc.o.o.n and his dead lady.

The old man's eyes were open, and he began to speak, as if he and Harry were already in the middle of a conversation.

". . . and how could a man trust the d.a.m.ned thing to keep to any bargain that was arranged? Hey?

Remember that, Silver." Gasp. "Remember that . . ."

"Yeah. I will. I'll write that down, soon as I get a chance. It's hard to find a partner you can trust."

Harry kept his airspeaker's volume very low. "Listen to me, Cheng. Your Claudia and Winnie are still alive. They're all right. They may be along here at any moment."

There was the sound of a long, indrawn breath. "Ah . . . Harry. We were right to come after them. Alive.

Alive ." Behind the statgla.s.s helmet plate, Cheng's face was totally transfigured, mouth open and eyes staring.

Turning his head, Harry saw that the two people had come into sight. The boy looked grotesque in his oversized suit, but the childish face was clearly visible.

The old man's faint voice rasped: "Winnie and Claudia . . . Harry, I promised you . . . a great reward. I meant it. Half of everything I own is yours."

Harry was keeping his eyes raised, probing the background, watching and listening for the stalking approach of death. He said, absently: "That's very generous."

"Everything . . ." The word came out in a fading whisper.

Claudia had come very close. Now she crouched down, almost pouncing, almost sitting on Winnie to hold him in one place. For the first time Harry heard real fear in her voice. "Grandfather, you're badly hurt, you don't know what you're saying."

Cheng's eyes were half closed, and he seemed unconscious, drifting. Harry studied the woman beside him, considering. Then he offered: "I think you heard the same thing I did. Your dear grandfather says he owes me a new ship."

"A ship?" The heiress considered. Relief set in abruptly. "Yes, I believe that's what he said. Certainly. A ship. One ship. Any kind of ship."

"That's not what Grandpa said," Winnie offered helpfully. He had discovered the way to turn his airspeakers back on.

"Yeah it is." Harry was dogmatic.

"I want a new ship, too."

After repeating his warning to Claudia, more sternly this time, that she and the kid had better not stay close to him, Harry moved on, toward the crashed and stranded ships.

A glance back showed him that at least some of the other escapees were also following him, but at a slightly greater distance than before. The scene of carnage must have made a strong impression.

Turning his back on the Cheng family, Harry had advanced only a few more meters when he ran into trouble.

Fortunately his sensitive airmikes picked up the sound of the first a.s.sailant's steady advance before the thing detected him, and he got off the first shot. The return blast, a riposte a fifth of a second too late and a touch off-target, only melted a hole halfway through Harry's breastplate, and knocked him off his feet.

Shakily he observed to himself that this was probably not precisely the kind of combat for which these berserker units had been designed.

Regaining his feet, examining the freshest bits of wreckage in the immediate vicinity, he had no way to tell if it was one of the a.s.sa.s.sin's units that he had just killed, or one of the rogue's. Except that if the machine had been under the rogue's control, it would have warned him . . . wouldn't it?

As soon as he dared take the time to look around again, he noted that Claudia, who had armed herself with Lady Laura's fallen weapon, had still been keeping herself and Winnie within twenty-five or thirty meters of him, despite his warnings. Even as Harry watched, the woman turned aside, dragging her child with her, and crawled out of Harry's line of vision. He had the impression that she had spotted some cubbyhole or spot that offered at least the illusion of safety, and was dragging Winnie into a place where they could hide until the fight had been decided. He had no idea whether it would turn out to be a lucky move or not.

Moving on again, Harry observed that some components of the wreckage littering this area didn't look like berserker material at all. The look of several of the fragments suggested they might have come from the a.s.sault machines hurled into combat by the Lady Laura, and spoken of contemptuously by the rogue.

Harry remembered that all of those devices had been somewhat larger than human beings, even human beings in armored suits. But the size constraints imposed by the small ship meant that none of the mechanical warriors could be as large as an ordinary groundcar. In the planning stages, of course, no one had known just what sort of opposition they might face when they reached the small berserker base, except that it would be formidable. And so it had proved to be.

At last Harry had regained territory that was at least half familiar. And now he was getting close enough to the crash scene to begin to have some hope of seeing what had happened.

The heaviest part of the yacht's thick armored hull, the prow, was actually embedded in the relatively thin wall of the rogue's base. Studying the situation, Harry decided that it ought to be possible for suited people to climb from one place to the other-provided, of course, that there were no berserkers around to kill intruders on sight.

He had to advance a little farther, and look out and up through a new gash in the overhead, before he could see what had happened to theSecret Weapon . It had also rammed the base, very close beside the yacht, but had not broken through. After squinting at it a while, Harry decided that its main airlock had been clamped on to the yacht's airlock, in such a way that people ought to be able to go back and forth.

Of course, the Lady Laura, arriving on theWeapon , would have wanted to get into the yacht at once, to be beside the man she had loved and served for so many years. This suggested that theWeapon could possibly still be s.p.a.ceworthy-unless it had been shot up on its final approach. Harry wouldn't be able to tell that until he could get inside.

That left theChewing Pod , a.s.suming any such ship really existed, still unaccounted for. Harry got on radio. "Rogue? Answer me! Give me whatever you've been able to find out about my people. And where's Satranji?"

Waiting for an answer, Harry wondered where would Satranji, a.s.suming he had not been warned by the rogue, expect him, Harry, to be at this moment? The goodlife rat-t.u.r.d would seem to have no reasonnot to suppose Harry Silver dead with the rest of Cheng's a.s.sault team, back at 207GST. It was going to be something of a jolt, to discover him armed and waiting.

It almost seemed that the rogue had been reading Harry's thoughts, for presently it was back in communication, telling him: "I have no further information on your people. The goodlife unit Satranji is alone, less than a hundred meters from you. No doubt you are now seeking to revenge yourself upon this enemy."

Harry grunted. "Right now I still don't want to meet him-unless he has my people with him-?"

"I have just told you he does not."

"Then I'll be happy to go around him. I've got to get myself somehow up into theChewing Pod , if there is such a ship, and find out . . ." He couldn't say the words.

"Of course there is such a ship. My base defenses, which as you know were never very strong, have been damaged in the fighting, and my powers of detection at a distance are inferior. But I believe the Chewing Pod is now no more than ninety kilometers from us and closing. It will dock here, if that is Satranji's intention, in approximately three minutes."

"I've got to get aboard it."

"I a.s.sumed that that would be your intention. I will try to guide the Satranji-unit in another direction, and arrange it so the two of you do not meet-just yet."

Harry maneuvered a little closer to the place where the yacht's hard prow had punctured the relatively thin outer wall of the base at a vulnerable spot. The designer of this base, no doubt the rogue itself, had made no provision in his plan for any viewports, but the a.s.sa.s.sin had been carrying armament heavy enough to correct that deficiency.

Harry had his choice of gaping holes through which to inspect the situation, and clinging to the jagged edge of one of them he could clearly see thePod , which was positioned just as the rogue had described it.

It was hardly more than spitting distance away, preparing to attach somehow-from here, he couldn't see exactly how-to theWeapon on the opposite side from the yacht. Harry was certain he could reach it, perhaps reach it easily, by pa.s.sing through the two other ships. Satranji, or his autopilot, had arranged to have his s.p.a.cegoing wh.o.r.ehouse near, to afford him ready access to whatever valuable cargo might be on board. As soon as he judged the right moment had arrived, he would want to quickly extract from it the gifts he meant to offer to the rogue.

Harry pushed on in silence, getting into position for the climb out of the base's artificial gravity, along the hull of theShip of Dreams to a place where a large, ripped opening suggested entrance would be possible. Maybe the rogue was setting him up to be ambushed. Or maybe it was Satranji who would get a nasty surprise-or the weird machine might be just playing games with both of them. Harry couldn't guess.

A faint tremor, as of some minor impact, came through the deck beneath his feet. Suddenly the odd berserker's voice was back, the rogue observing that theChewing Pod had just arrived, touching down by attaching itself to theSecret Weapon on the opposite side from Cheng's flagship yacht.

"Then there really is such a ship."

"Of course." The rogue still seemed determined to be cooperative. "Had I any mobile units to spare, I could try sending one of them to find a way into theChewing Pod, and rescue your people if they are there. Unfortunately, I have no units available just now."

"You'd rescue them."

"Certainly. Have you and I not become allies? Both in search of the great truths of the Universe?"

"I've told you what I'm in search of. While you're computing what you ought to do next, I'm going to do what I can." There was still one more factor to be accounted for, and Harry looked around for the vehicle that he had ridden here. "What's happened to the a.s.sa.s.sin's transporter?"

The rogue replied that that machine was now drifting in nearby s.p.a.ce, apparently dead, after exchanging fire with the ground defenses, and then touching down. During the brief duration of that contact, its boarding machines had leapt aground, blasted their way into the rogue's interior architecture, and started dealing out destruction. But in only a few seconds they had been met and their a.s.sault stalled by a powerful counterattack.

"Thanks for the information. And for the help. So far you're doing a good job of keeping me alive."

"There are many details of your life that I would discover, Harry Silver. Therefore it is my intention that you should not die for many years." Eventually, the rogue went on to admit, it would find a duel between the two skillful ED humans fascinating. But right now its highest priority and overriding need was to get rid of the a.s.sa.s.sin.

Harry jumped as his airmikes brought him the sound of a small, familiar voice coming from only a few meters away. He turned to see the battered robot Dorijen standing there, politely calling for his attention.

TWENTY-THREE.

Having already been told that the a.s.sa.s.sin's transporter had touched down briefly on the rogue's docking s.p.a.ce, Harry was not surprised to see that Dorijen had used the opportunity to come aground.

He said: "Greetings, kid. How's my old buddy, the a.s.sa.s.sin? Any message for me?"

"I am currently carrying no message."

Dorry explained that at the moment when the s.p.a.cegoing machine touched down, she had made a quick decision and moved as briskly as she could to get out of the transporter and into the berserker base. The a.s.sa.s.sin had ignored her movements, and for all she could tell it might have forgotten her completely-no doubt it was too fully occupied with launching its attack, all its resources stretched too thin for it to know or care what the tame robot might be up to.

Her overall objective on entering the base was to locate whatever human life might still exist within its walls, and offer whatever help might be possible. She concluded: "Have you reason to expect such a communication?"

"Probably not." Harry gave a twisted grin. "It's just that the a.s.sa.s.sin must be a bit unhappy with me-ready to a.s.sa.s.sinate."

"I do not understand."

Harry quickly explained the reasoning that had led him to treacherously switch sides, and his current tentative arrangement with the rogue.

Dorry indicated her understanding. "I must inform you, sir," she went on, "that I am now willing to a.s.sign a higher probability to the hypothesis that you are not truly goodlife, that your offers of cooperation to these berserkers are made only with an intention to mislead the enemy. Had I your a.s.surance that this revised interpretation is correct, that might be sufficient to tip the balance of my computations in your favor."

"Yeah? And when your balance tipped-?"

"That would allow me to place myself once more under your command."

It sounded to Harry like convoluted uncertainty, arrived at through a process of pure logic. He knew that the thinking machines were rarely any good at picking up on such subtleties asWhen is a human lying ?-unless the contradictory facts were plainly visible. Dorry evidently understood her own weakness in this regard.

"Good," he said. "Consider yourself rea.s.sured. Yes, I'm lying to both the d.a.m.ned machines, and hoping for some kind of miracle, that my people are still alive and I can help them. I do indeed have in mind a glorious plan, by which the cause of life will ultimately triumph. Can't tell it to you now, because the enemy might be listening."And also , he thought to himself,because I really have no idea what the h.e.l.l it is .

Having announced her intention to be of service, Dorry followed close on Harry's heels as he worked his way up out of the base's artificial gravity, then swung himself in weightlessness from one precarious handhold to another, along the slightly crumpled flank ofShip of Dreams . Briefly he had considered sending the robot on ahead, but decided against it, not wanting to alert any enemies who might be waiting there.

Soon Harry gained a position that afforded him his first real look at thePod , a bulbous shape intermediate in size between the two ships to which it was now attached. The sight of it gave him another jolt. Any human who might have been inside when that happened had certainly been at risk; the damage he had earlier observed looked even worse from this angle. Obviously the a.s.sa.s.sin as well as the yacht had been firing to suppress the rogue's modest ground defenses, and obviously the attempt had not been entirely successful. Return fire from the ground had blasted a sizable hole in this new intruder's hull. Harry could chalk up another ship that couldn't be used to get away. But the third ship's presence opened up new possibilities for the discovery of usable launches and lifeboats. And if he could reach the ship, he ought to have no trouble making his way inside it.

He could see enough to decide that clambering the whole distance along the outside of the smooth-hulled ships was not going to be possible. Harry's only way to get into thePod would be to pa.s.s first through theShip of Dreams , and then traverse theSecret Weapon .

In a few moments he had enteredShip of Dreams -this was the first time Harry had been aboard Cheng's prize yacht, and things were somewhat unfamiliar. The pa.s.senger compartments were still airtight, and its internal gravity still worked. But the vessel had been emptied of people and of purpose.

Harry encountered nothing that surprised him. A quick look into the control room confirmed the discouraging fact that the main drive was dead, and other internal damage had been extensive.

Leaving Dorry aboardDreams to check on the status of launch and lifeboats, Harry himself pressed on, looking for the airlock that would connect him to the next vessel, the more familia.r.s.ecret Weapon .

With some difficulty he made his way on, through the mated hatchways, to board the smaller vessel.

Here too, signs of extensive damage were immediately apparent.

On entering the first small interior chamber on theWeapon , Harry paused to listen. In a moment his airmikes, tuned to great sensitivity, picked up the sound of faint, rapid breathing in the control room, the next compartment forward.

He was well aware that this could be some berserker trick. But he was going to have to look and see.