THE MACHINERY OF LIES

I.

Tanya Serafeddin, peering through the forward windows of the ground-crawling shuttle in which she was the only passenger, scanned the flat kilometers of concrete ramp under the endless curve of blue sky striped with bars of varicolored cloud. Within the cloud-bars turbulence made many shapes, suggesting and animating one form after another, some familiar, some fantastic. But Tanya, long accustomed to the show, ignored it. She was trying to see or at least to guess successfully which of the parked interstellar spaceships dotting the broad expanse was the Lady Blanqui's yacht. The problem was complicated by the tendency of starships of any kind to have basically the same shape. The generic resemblance did not extend to color schemes, but Tanya had no idea of what to look for there. Ahead and on both sides of the shuttle she observed a collection of spheres, or near-spheres, ranging in size from launches and personal craft even smaller than a small house to liners and military ships the size of office buildings.

Now passing on the right was a freighter which had probably been a month in subspace, voyaging with exotic cargo from some remote world far outside the Tallart Cluster. And there on the left, in the opposite row, a hundred meters from the freighter, squatted a white-hulled Templar warship, bristling with weapons. The fighter would be poised to leap into space, Tanya supposed, as soon as the next rumor reached Malawi of a berserker's presence anywhere within range of a two- or three-day patrol.

When at last the automated shuttle stopped and opened its right-side door for its only passenger, Tanya felt vaguely disappointed. The Lady's yacht, called the Golden Hind, was remarkably ordinary in appearance, and definitely in the small house range of size rather than that of office buildings. Though Tanya did not consider herself expert on space armaments, drives, or detection/astrogation systems, she was able to deduce something in each of those categories from the outward appearance of the craft. And nothing she deduced about the yacht particularly impressed her either.

Walking briskly across the sunlit, windswept ramp between the shuttle and the ship, carrying her single modest piece of luggage, she ascended a small retractable ramp from ground level to the nearest entry hatch. The hatch was closed, so it was necessary to stand waiting for some person or machine inside to acknowledge her arrival.

The delay was brief. "Name, please?" inquired a definitely human-sounding voice from an invisible speaker somewhere in the hull.

"Tanya Serafeddin."

A door defined itself in the smooth metal, opening just far enough to let the small man standing inside scan her face to face. Presumably this was only a final inspection, meant to compliment some kind of security matching already accomplished without her being directly aware of the process.

"Come in, please," the small man invited a moment later, standing back with a shallow bow as the door swung wide. Not quite as tall as Tanya, he was dark, of indeterminate age, and dressed in a plain dark tunic. His overall appearance and behavior suggested to Tanya that he was a servant rather than a crew member or colleague of the Lady.

He said to the visitor in a firm voice: "You will wait for the Lady in the lounge. This way, please." And he gestured down a short passage.

The lounge was an oval chamber somewhat bigger than Tanya had expected in a ship of the yacht's modest size; a dozen or fifteen people might have socialized in it comfortably. The center of the room was dominated by an octagonal marble table surrounded by eight chairs of white wood, one taller than the others. The room's other furnishings were eclectic, looking pleasant and comfortable enough but giving no hint of the awesome wealth that would be at the disposal of any Lady of the Mercantile Worlds.

This lack of ostentation was Tanya's first surprise—a rather mild one—on coming aboard. Her second was somewhat greater and slightly more disagreeable.

For some reason she had expected to be the only passenger besides the lady herself. But the lounge was already occupied, by a chubby, youthful man in casual dress with a coppery glint in his brown hair, who did not look the part of servant or crew member. A traveling bag sat on the carpeted deck beside him.

On seeing Tanya this gentleman rose politely from his chair. "Welcome aboard!" he boomed out. His expression and tone suggested that he too was somewhat startled to find that he had company.

"Uh, thank you." Tanya hesitated, swinging her single piece of luggage in one strong hand. "I was expecting the Lady Blanqui—" she began tentatively.

"I'm waiting for her myself, but she's not back from town yet." The youngish man bowed lightly. "I'm Carl Skorba, and I'll be aboard at least as far as Damaturu, trying to get in some business discussions with Her Ladyship. Are you an old friend of hers, or—?"

"Tanya Serafeddin." Their hands met in the traditional gesture of greeting. "No, I've only just met her today. The Lady has said that I can interview her, and invited me along as far as Damaturu."

"Oho. Reporter?"

"No, not exactly. My job's a little less immediate than that. There's a book I'm trying to write. But you seem to be equipped to practice journalism yourself." This was a reference to the media machine Skorba was carrying, or wearing, slung on a shoulder strap. It was a roughly tubular black device as long and thick as a man's forearm, with lenses clustered at its front and a bewildering variety of controls around the rear handgrip. Tanya had seen similar gear before, and knew its functions would include those of camera, recorder, computer and communications tool.

The stout young man looked down at the weapon-like thing almost in surprise, as if he might have lived with it so long that he'd forgotten its existence. "Equipped? Well, I do seem to have the hardware. But not otherwise. Not mentally, I'm afraid." He let himself fall back into his chair. "Help yourself to a seat. Order a drink or a chewie. The steward's not very conversational, but it has a skilled touch with the comestibles."

Tanya unslung her single piece of luggage from her shoulder, dropped it beside a chair facing Skorba's, and sat down. Catching the steward's glassy eye—it was a squat robot that had slid half a meter out from the tapestried bulkhead on overhearing a suggestion that it might be wanted—she indicated with a negative gesture that she required no service at the moment.

Skorba, sitting opposite, was frowning at her thoughtfully. Then he crossed his casually-shod feet and smiled. It was a kind of generic smile, Tanya thought, not revelatory of anything in particular. He suggested: "First names?"

Tanya thought a moment and returned the smile. "Looks like it's going to be close quarters for several days. Of course. Carl, I think you said?"

"I did. Good. Look, Tanya, it is as you say going to be close quarters. And it seems we each have something we want to talk to the Lady about. We don't want to be getting in each other's way. Is your interview with her going to be—very extensive? I'm afraid that mine might have to go on through several lengthy sessions."

"In my case it's really hard to say."

"Yeah, and also none of my business, huh? You're right." Skorba sighed, looked mildly worried, and scratched his head.

A brief silence fell. Without leaving her chair, Tanya examined what she could see of the lounge of the Golden Hind. What she saw confirmed her first impression. Everything was nice enough, pleasant to the eye and to the touch, nothing really splendid. This yacht had to be far from the most impressive ship that the enormously wealthy Lady had at her command. No, this couldn't be even the eighth or tenth most imposing. Rather it was a vehicle she'd use when she felt like being inconspicuous.

Turning to a small set of standard controls beside her chair, Tanya dialed a viewscreen to get a look outside. There was the next crawler-shuttle, just coming into view in the distance, working its way along the kilometers of parking ramp. Perhaps it was bringing the Lady back from her business in town to join her guests. Except for the shuttle, the sprawling scene at the moment was almost devoid of movement. The only spaceport on the world of Malawi was almost quiet under the strange sky. Nothing like the busier spaceports of the Galaxy's known portion, the small slice explored and settled by Earth-descended humanity—or at least nothing like the few Tanya had seen.

Malawi was only a small dot, if that, on most of the computer-expandable travel charts that showed the whole slice. Even the Tallart Cluster of a few thousand suns, in which Malawi's system lay, was of only minor importance in the overall scheme of Earth-descended civilization. This world's population had never exceeded a few hundred thousand, and the operations of its only spaceport tended to be rather informal.

Skorba was still studying her, though not so intently as to seem offensive. Now he spoke again. "How'd you happen to meet our gracious hostess, anyway? If you don't mind my asking?"

Tanya shrugged. "There's no secret about it. I'm a psychologist, working toward an advanced degree at Malawi University. There's a better job waiting for me once I get the degree.

"My field, as I say, is psychology. My research specialty is the mechanisms of deception."

"Interesting! Verr-y interesting! So, how'd you happen to meet Lady B?"

Before Tanya could reply, the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of a third person into the lounge. This was a youthful-looking man, of dark complexion, powerful physique and stern manner. Dressed in a plain white tunic, he appeared unannounced in one of the two interior doorways. Pausing there, he gazed with a forbidding expression at the two people who were in the process of rising from their chairs to greet him. A moment later, without saying anything, the youth had turned abruptly and disappeared in the direction from which he had come.

As they slowly resumed their seats, Tanya and her companion exchanged puzzled glances. Skorba asked her: "Any idea who that was?"

"Not really. Neither a servant nor a member of the flight crew, would be my guess."

"Mine too—wait. I've heard that Lady Blanqui seldom goes anywhere without a certain young attendant—or friend, or companion—to whom she's particularly attached. The only name I’ve heard for him is 'Yero'."

"That may be. I really know very little about her, beyond a few obvious things—some of which may not be true, of course."

Skorba was giving her a narrow-eyed look, as if he sought some hidden meaning in her words. He asked: "Always on the lookout for deception, hey?"

Smiling at him, Tanya continued: "Really, eight hours ago I had no idea that I was ever going to meet our gracious hostess, much less be about to ride away in her ship. Someone in town told me that her yacht was sitting in our spaceport, and I hastened to track her down. That wasn't hard to do; we have only one financial institution of any interstellar importance on Malawi, and I found the Lady talking to its president."

"And she invited you to go on a jaunt."

"Yes, actually—when I explained to her my reasons for wanting to interview her. She seemed to find my topic interesting."

Carl Skorba was nodding thoughtfully. "As for me, I've been trying to catch up with her for quite a while. I've got a business proposition that I don't think she's going to be able to turn down. But I never met the Lady either until a few hours ago, here in your delightful city."

A thought had occurred to Tanya. "Perhaps I should make it clear that I'm interested in interviewing Lady Blanqui, not because I think she practices deception—more than any of the rest of us—but because I consider her at least potentially an authority on how to discover it. Anyone of her wealth and standing must be continually beset with people seeking to relieve her of some of her property."

"Oh. Oho." Carl grinned. "Then maybe you'd like to interview me? I've promoted a lot of deals in my time. And come across a lot of dirty tricks. They don't take me in very often, I can tell you."

Tanya, who was finding her new companion interesting if not entirely believable, answered non-committally. The conversation shifted to the tourist attractions of Malawi. The strange sky with its peculiar clouds was moderately famous among interstellar tourists. Tanya and Carl were still on the subject when the Lady herself entered the lounge at last, coming through the passage from the main hatch.

Lady Blanqui was tall and elegantly dressed, lean and gray and undoubtedly elderly, though well-preserved. She had hardly finished greeting her guests, when the dark and glowering Yero silently re-entered the lounge to welcome her with a wordless hug—as if perhaps he had been waiting somewhere just out of sight, listening for her voice. The two of them held each other in a momentary hard embrace, during which Tanya observed that Lady Blanqui closed her eyes.

Then the pair separated, and the lady made introductions. "My friends, Serafeddin, Skorba—this is Yero, who is my companion. Yero, my dear, these people are traveling with us, as far as Damaturu at least."

The grim-looking youth favored each with a silent nod. Then he bowed to the Lady and in another moment he was gone.

The Lady shifted her attention back to her invited guests, making no explanation or apology on Yero's behalf. She looked at Skorba somewhat superciliously, and demanded: "Have you any baggage?"

"Only this. And this." He raised the small traveling bag from the deck beside his chair, and gestured at the media machine. Tanya in turn demonstrated her lack of any great physical encumbrance.

"Very well. I assume you can see to the disposal of your things yourselves ... so, you are both coming along to Damaturu with me."

"I certainly appreciate the opportunity," Skorba put in.

"Yes, well . . . I've decided it's time I talked to people more." The Lady inspected him critically. "I make one condition: neither of you are to make any video or audio recordings—of myself, my ship, or anyone aboard—until I give specific permission. Is that agreeable?"

"Perfectly," said Tanya. She had brought a small recorder in her bag.

"Completely." And Skorba here unslung his media machine from his shoulder, then pushed it a centimeter or two farther from him on his chair, as if to demonstrate his willing renunciation.

Their hostess appeared satisfied. "We shall be two or three days en route to Damaturu, proceeding unhurriedly. I assume both of you will be able to provide your own passage from there, wherever you choose to go?"

"Of course, Lady Blanqui."

"Of course."

"Until dinner, then."

With that the Lady retired from the lounge, presumably going to her own quarters.

A moment later the man who had admitted Tanya to the ship appeared. Introducing himself now as Stanhill, and settling himself more firmly into the character of a servant, he escorted her and her fellow passenger to their respective staterooms, which turned out to be adjoining. The passengers carried their own luggage. Tanya found her cabin expectably small but comfortable. The only remotely ostentatious touch was the bed's four tall corner posts, actually stanchions running solid from deck to overhead. There was a door connecting with Skorba's quarters. Tanya made sure that her side was bolted.

Very shortly after she had reached her cabin, liftoff was announced on intercom, and presently it was accomplished without incident.

Tanya had lived almost her entire life on Malawi, where she had been born. When she'd heard that the Lady Blanqui's yacht had dropped in on some kind of surprise business visit, she had reacted swiftly, getting what information she could out of the available data banks on the Lady and the civilization of the Mercantile Worlds from which she came. What she found had confirmed her previous impression, that in those worlds any female of Lady status had something of the status of a princess, and was certain to be immensely wealthy.

Skorba, meeting his fellow passenger in the lounge again a few minutes after liftoff, was naturally interested in their hostess too. "Just what sort of business was this great person proposing to conduct on Malawi? Or shouldn't I ask?"

"You probably shouldn't ask. Perhaps more to the point, there's practically nothing I can tell you. Really, I think the Malawi bankers were as surprised as anyone else by her visit. What she talked about with them I have no idea.''

Carl ruminated for a time. At last he said: "I can tell you this much. Yours is not the only world she's stopped at in the Tallart Cluster. I've been chasing her across Tallart, trying to catch up with her, for almost a standard month."

Tanya nodded slowly. She wondered in passing if the Lady might be even now eavesdropping electronically on what her guests were saying in the lounge. But why should such an eminent person care what they thought? And it served eavesdroppers right if they heard something they didn't like—that was Tanya's usual attitude toward such intrusions.

She speculated: "I wonder where she's going after Damaturu? And what this long trip of hers is all about?"

Her companion shook his head. "I wish I knew. If I did I might have been able to intercept her instead of hurrying to catch up. And I've got a question for you, too."

"Fire away."

"Why does she travel in a modest ship like this?"

"Trying to be inconspicuous . . .oh."

"Exactly. Why then does she want to talk to interviewers?"

Evidently the human crew aboard the modest yacht was small, though possibly some of its members were keeping out of sight. During the first few hours of the voyage, Tanya, exploring the more or less public areas of the ship, caught glimpses of a female flight engineer, an unimpressive male captain—both in rather sloppy uniforms—and one female servant in addition to Stanhill. None of these people impressed her as congenial. None except Stanhill introduced themselves. And none including Stanhill were disposed to converse with passengers beyond a few grudging monosyllables.

Carl and Tanya found themselves, more or less by default, keeping each other company. "Do they sleep together, do you suppose?" Tanya speculated to her fellow passenger, referring to their hostess and her evidently beloved young male companion.

Skorba appeared to give the question serious thought. No doubt anything he could work out about the Lady's psychology might be of some advantage to him when he talked business with her.

"I rather doubt it," he said at last. "Though I'm not sure why I say that."

"I agree." Tanya nodded slowly. "There's some very powerful bond between them. But what it is. . . ."

No hint yet of when she'd be able to get down to interviewing Lady Blanqui.

Like most people, Tanya found travel in subspace boring. She had taken only four interstellar journeys before this one, but within two standard hours she was already bored. Most of the time there was no way of looking out, in any meaningful sense, from a starship in full flight; and in me intervals when looking out was possible, most observers, Tanya among them, found the sensation quite unpleasant. She agreed with the usual comparison, of gazing through an infinite wall of distorting lenses, toward a few distant and uncertain sources of dazzling light.

No effort had been made to adjust ship's time for the new passengers. The clock aboard appeared to be running several hours later than that of the Malawi spaceport town, and so, from the newcomers' viewpoint, dinner was delayed.

When the meal was served at last, by capable machines—and the female servant, who proved surprisingly inept—it was something of a disappointment. Routine machine cooking, adequate to sustain life, even enjoyable if you were hungry, but certainly not memorable. Well, thought Tanya, they ought to have been warned by their hostess's lean frame and ascetic manner. Miserliness had not been mentioned in the data banks as one of the Lady's notable attributes, but Tanya supposed that if you were rich and powerful enough the data banks tended to be kind.

The two invited guests dined with Lady Blanqui at the central table in the lounge. Everyone else aboard, including Yero, appeared to be dining elsewhere. And if the Lady's wish, as she had expressed it, was really to talk more with people, she gave little sign of being ready to start now.

Both Skorba and Serafeddin, somewhat deterred by the forbidding presence of their hostess, hesitated to bring up the subjects that had brought them aboard. Conversation tended to drag a little.

What talk there was began to turn philosophical.

And then it was broken off, abruptly wiped out by the almost-deafening shriek of the ship's alarms.

II.

There was no need for the occupants of the lounge to engage in a physical scramble to discover what had set off the alarms. Without prompting, the ship's own electronic brain quickly altered the lighting in the lounge, and simultaneously illuminated screens and display stages that showed the situation outside the hull.

These viewing devices presented schematic views of surrounding subspace, from which an eye skilled in such interpretations could extract much information. The inexperienced Tanya could make little sense of the displays at first, and turned to Skorba, whose intent expression indicated that he was having more success.

"What's happening?"

"We're about to pop out into normal space, for one thing. I don't know why—we can't be anywhere near Damaturu yet. Could be we're being urged along."

"Urged along? By what? By who?"

Carl didn't answer. In a few moments he added: "There's some kind of a—system—near where we're going to come out. Not a real sun, though. Much smaller. An infra-red source that looks like a marginal brown dwarf. Dead rocks revolving around a bigger rock."

Lady Blanqui had manually turned off the alarms, then for the next minute remained silent while staring at the displays. Then she began a crisp, terse dialogue with her ship. Tanya could not understand much of what was said on either side, but the jargon the Lady used indicated that she was no novice in technical matters.

Shortly after the alarms fell silent, the official captain of the Golden Hind came bursting, scrambling into the lounge, noticeably late in reacting to the signal. He had obviously just pulled on his formal tunic and was still trying to fasten the collar as he appeared. "My Lady, my Lady, there is an attacker—"

"Be quiet. I can see things for myself."

Tanya's gaze flew back to the nearest display. The symbol in the center, if the thing was going to make any sense at all, had to stand for the yacht. Now, amid the steady flow of other indications, another image of somewhat greater size was struggling to establish itself solidly, holding a steady position relative to the yacht.

"Whatever it is, it looks too big for us to deal with," Skorba was muttering softly. Glancing toward her companion, Tanya noted that he was now clinging with both hands to the nearest leg of the bolted-down table. As if, she realized, he was preparing himself against a possible slight disturbance in the artificial gravity. Slight, because anything more than slight, at space velocities, would slosh fragile human bodies like soup around the interior of the room.

So far the gravity was just fine, holding standard normal, the lounge as quiet and steady as a room built on Malawi bedrock. But Tanya carefully took a double grip on the tableleg nearest her—just in case. Glancing at their hostess, she observed that Lady Blanqui disdained such precautions.

Turning back to Carl Skorba, Tanya asked him some questions about the displays. With a few quick explanations from her fellow passenger, she began to find the presentations easy enough to interpret, at least in their essentials. A single unidentified craft, somewhat larger than the yacht, had sprung out seemingly from nowhere as if in deliberate ambush. Such tactics were feasible in certain realms of subspace; one such was this part of the Tallart Nebula, where practical routes of travel were much constricted by dark matter and gravitational fields.

The unknown craft had closed in on the Golden Hind and grappled her with forcefield weapons. The yacht, as its electronic brain was even now reporting to its owner, had already tried to pull free, but had failed against superior force. Now the unidentified attacker was slowly but steadily forcing the yacht to a standstill relative to the nearest local system. In this case that meant the imminent emergence of both vessels into normal space.

The nominal captain of the Golden Hind, having made his report—and having been put in his place by his Lady's contemptuous response—stepped back from the table and remained standing at attention, his face inscrutable. Within a few moments of his arrival in the lounge, the rest of the human crew and servants came straggling in one at a time. Only Yero was still absent. Like their mistress, the staff seemed to be bearing the shock of sudden and mysterious danger with relative calm and considerable fortitude. Perhaps they were trained to take the cue for all their responses from her. The robotic steward continued to fuss about the table, getting ready to offer everyone refreshments, until the Lady ordered it back to its place against the tapestried bulkhead.

Tanya turned back to Carl Skorba. "Pirates?" she asked hopefully.

She knew perfectly well that human piracy had never been really widespread in the Tallart Cluster. And for centuries now it had been on the wane. But surely there was a chance, there must be, that the attackers were only human pirates—perhaps amenable to bargaining, to reason, to letting people go in exchange for ransom—

"I doubt it," Skorba responded tersely. And her heart sank.

The only likely alternative to human pirates was something that no one would want to consider. Not until there was no other choice.

Tanya, like everyone else on Malawi during the past year, had heard rumors about berserker sightings in the Tallart. Surely the Lady and her people must have heard them also? If so, she had to admire their fortitude.

Looking up, she saw that Yero had at last come into the lounge. Now everyone aboard was gathered here. Moving slowly and with dignity, the dark and savage-looking young man approached his mistress until he was standing close beside her chair. There he remained, silent as before, resting one hand on the chair's high back, and gazing around fiercely at the other people present.

For once the Lady hardly seemed aware of her dear one's presence. Her attention remained riveted on the displays, and now and then she exchanged a few words of technical jargon directly with the electronic intelligence of her ship. Have we no weapons? Tanya wondered suddenly. Is there nothing at all for us to do?

The near-silence in the lounge held for what seemed to her an endless time. And then it was broken by a loud voice. Tanya had never heard such a voice before, except from an entertainment stage, or in one of the few authentic recordings. Not many humans had heard the real thing and survived to describe the experience. This voice, now, spoke from the attacking craft in the traditional tones of a berserker's squeaking, disjointed utterance, coming clearly through the speakers in the lounge. Stories said that the berserkers made voices for themselves by splicing together syllables from the recorded speech of long-dead human prisoners.

"Badlife, any further attempt at escape or resistance will be punished. Resistance is futile. Prompt surrender will be rewarded. I repeat, badlife attitudes and behavior will be punished."

The sound of that utterance struck Tanya like a blow. It is to be death, then. My death. Not someday, when I am old and perhaps will be ready. But extinction here and now, in the days of my youth.

"No such good luck as pirates," someone whispered. She needed a moment to realize that the whisperer was herself.

In the age-long war of Earth-descended humanity against berserkers mere had been hardly any bargaining. No treaties made, or even attempted, with such an enemy, an unliving enemy programmed inexorably to achieve death, death for all life wherever and whenever encountered. No mercy on either side, and no exchange of prisoners. The first berserkers had been designed by living beings as an ultimate weapon, meant to win a savage interstellar war. They were machines, self-replicating, self-repairing, launched upon their course of slaughter by a shadowy and almost unknown race, ages before anyone on Earth had built or even imagined starships.

In her despair Tanya turned her head, seeking hope. Beside her, Skorba had his eyes closed; his face was calm, his hands still gripped the table. Across the table, Lady Blanqui seemed as firmly in control of herself as ever. She has little to lose, Tanya thought, knowing a flash of vicious envy. Her life must be nearly at an end in any case.

Another figure stirred. "My Lady. Should we—?"

Lady Blanqui cut off her captain's tentative question with a contemptuous motion of her hand.

The display screens and stages changed dramatically, and all at once. Now both spacecraft, still bound together by the attackers' forcefields, were emerging into normal space at what must be an admissible local velocity.

That terrible voice came once more, resonating in the ears and in the souls of me people in die lounge. "Resistance will not bring quick death. Thoughtful cooperation is the only hope of that."

"Ship," said me Lady in a clear, steady voice. "I wish to speak directly to our attacker. Surely you can establish some kind of two-way communications link?"

There was a click from the speakers, a burst of noise, and then the voice of the yacht's own electronic control system. "The link is established, Lady."

Lady Blanqui wasted no time. "Who are you?" she demanded in an imperious croak. "And what do you want?"

The berserker voice croaked back: "Badlife, no subterfuge will succeed. You know what I am. My power is overwhelming. Much greater than that of your small ship."

And before the Lady could respond to that, the enemy craft had demonstrated a powerful weapon, to good effect.

The display screens and stages flared with a brief violence of light. A few seconds later, one of the smaller and nearer rocks making up the dead system nearby had disappeared in an explosion. And even with such a drain of power, the grip of the forcefields had not slackened.

"Penalties will be imposed, upon each of you individually, if resistance is prolonged further."

"Cut our drive," Lady Blanqui commanded her ship immediately. "Cease all efforts to escape." Then she gave voice to a great sigh.

Moments later, it was obvious even to Tanya, watching the displays, that the ship's speed relative to the nearby rocks was slowing. Now in a state of abject surrender, the yacht was soon brought very nearly to a complete stop relative to the local system. Skorba in a low voice noted that the nearest sizable member of that system, big as a minor planet, was only a few hundred thousand kilometers away.

Once again the squeaky voice issued orders. "Stand by to receive a boarding party. Resistance will result in prolonged punishment."

"It never gets tired of saying that," Carl Skorba muttered, "does it?" He looked at Tanya with an expression of rueful sympathy, and suddenly reached out for her hand.

Tanya took his hand, gratefully, stung even in her despair by the idea that everyone aboard was braver than herself.

"There will be no resistance to the boarding party," commanded the Lady, raising her head and voice sharply, glaring at them all. "I will speak, as best I can, for all of us."

None of her shipmates raised any argument.

Tanya recalled her own earlier, admittedly inexpert, impression that the weaponry, offensive and defensive, aboard the yacht seemed rather light and indeed inadequate for a craft that presumably had planned to cruise through some risky places. Well, it was too late now to worry about that.

Resistance, however hopeless and indeed suicidal, might be the standard reaction of choice against berserkers. But as far as Tanya could tell, there was at this point literally no chance to do anything in the way of fighting for survival.

"Haven't we any weapons?" she burst out defiantly, while they waited.

Skorba was soothing. "Not much along that line, I think. Anyway, whatever the ship does carry probably couldn't be brought to bear at this point."

Invisible forces maintained their grip upon the yacht, inexorably binding her in the same position relative to her captor.

Yero continued to stand close to Lady Blanqui at this critical time. Still they hardly touched each other.

When Tanya pulled her hand away from Skorba's, he at last let go of the table completely. He folded his arms and sat back in his chair, watching the Lady and wearing an expression of grim resignation.

The displays in the lounge now showed what looked like a small launch detaching itself from the enemy, and quickly approaching the Golden Hind. Only seconds elapsed before the sounds of docking came carrying ominously through me hull.

"Aren't you going to at least lock the door on them? Do we all just sit here, like—like—"

Tanya's outburst was ignored. As if hypnotized, everyone remained in place and watched a hatch, outlined by a pattern in the carpeted deck, swing up and open.

She held her breath.

The object that appeared first in the opening resembled a grotesquely enlarged human head, or a space helmet, but in fact it was part of a machine. As this machine climbed into full view the watchers could see that it was roughly manlike in its shape, and only slightly larger than an average human adult; its fellow, which followed close behind it, was only slightly smaller.

Both devices, as they took up standing positions one on either side of the open hatch, looked very formidable. Their bodies were thickly studded with what might have been ray-projectors or missile-throwers of one kind or another. Their formidable, claw-like grippers were empty, but looked capable of effortlessly rending mere human flesh into bloody rags. There were other peculiar features about the devices, features whose purpose Tanya could not readily identify, and that appeared all the more ominous to her for that.

The machines had hardly taken up their stations when they were followed into view by a couple of very scruffy, wretched-looking humans. So these are goodlife, thought Tanya, gazing at the worn-looking man and woman, both of indeterminate age. Goodlife was a term coined long ago by the berserkers themselves, and applied to deserters from the human side. People who became worshippers of death, servants of death, and so were tolerated for a time by the machines of death. Such people were useful to the machines for study and experiment, valuable as spies and secret agents, helpful in learning the mysterious ways of this so-stubborn variety of active protoplasm that called itself Earth-descended humanity.

"This everyone?" asked the goodlife man. He was unarmed, clad in a worn and unwashed coverall, and boots with broken fastenings. His voice was sharp though not loud, and he indicated the people in the lounge with a jerky gesture of one hand.

The Lady, who was somehow still managing to retain her regal calm, looked around her unhurriedly. Tanya could feel her own courage buoyed by this example.

The woman in the tall chair said: "Every living person on this ship, both crew and passengers, is now assembled here. I am the Lady Blanqui."

"Is that so. Who're you?" The male intruder was squinting now at Skorba. Skorba introduced himself, giving name and occupation—"financial adviser"—in a flat voice. Then it was Tanya's turn, and she did the same.

Then it was Yero's turn. Lady Blanqui spoke for him. "He is dumb. But don't worry, he understands. And he will do what I tell him."

"He'd better. And you'd better tell him the right thing."

Yero uttered a whispery growl at the invaders. Though the youth's body hardly moved, he gave the impression that he might have hurled himself violently at them were it not for the Lady's gently restraining hand that touched and held his hand. It was almost as if she were holding back a savage dog.

Next the goodlife man turned to the larger of the two boarding machines standing near him. Bowing his head, speaking now in a low, actually reverent tone, he asked the thing whether he and his fellow goodlife should conduct a search for weapons.

The answer came directly from the machine this time; it was the same voice, though at a lower volume, that had earlier issued from the speakers in the lounge. "Such an effort would only waste time. No badlife will be able to use a weapon while under our surveillance."

At this point the goodlife woman suddenly spoke up for the first time, addressing the Lady on her tall chair. The intruder was bright-eyed and spontaneous, and it was as if her thoughts had been racing on ahead: "Ever see anyone skinned alive, Your Ladyship? People don't really have the skill in their fingers, the fine control of tools, to do it properly. The machines do, though. They can do it perfectly. But we don't need that kind of thing to happen. If you do have any weapons hidden about here, don't try to use them. You'd never be quick enough, with the machines watching."

And the goodlife man, on catching sight of Skorba's media machine which lay now on the wide table, within easy reach of its owner "Whether that thing's a weapon or not, young lad, don't grab it up in a hurry. In fact you'd best not touch it at all."

As the male intruder spoke, a lens-turret on one of the death-machines swiveled smoothly in its socket to look directly at Skorba. The pudgy young man hastily hitched his chair back, moving himself half a meter farther from his broad-band recording device. "Not the kind of weapon you have to worry about," he muttered.

"What's that you say?"

"Nothing. I was speaking in a political context. I said it was not the kind of weapon you have to worry about."

The Lady Blanqui still had not stirred out of her chair. She had let go of Yero's hand and was paying him no attention. Now she spoke, in a manner that made it clear she had assumed the role of spokesperson for everyone on her yacht.

In the same loud, clear voice that she had used before, the Lady said to me scruffy man: "You are evidently goodlife." A judgment had been passed—contemptuously—and was not subject to comment. "What is your name?"

The man raised his eyebrows at her, then glanced quickly at the larger of the two nearly motionless machines beside him. After a moment's pause, as if he read in the berserker's silence permission to speak for himself, he turned his own gaze, as contemptuous as hers, back to the old woman.

"Aye, little Hinna here and I are goodlife—whereas you're no longer life at all."

Little Hinna, the goodlife woman, made a choking, throaty sound, that might have been a laugh.

Her male companion paused, looking around at his grim-faced badlife audience, as if to give them a chance to think over what he had just told them. None of his audience spoke. Among them only the Lady herself seemed to be breathing at the moment.

The goodlife man, disgust in his voice, continued: "None of ye. Your bodies will soon be free of life's infection. Only question now be the manner of your coming purification. And that depends entirely on how willingly ye go along with what it wants. Master"—and here he nodded in the direction of the tall machine—"sees no good in making pain for the sake of pain. It only wants your death, the cleansing that ends all hurts. Could be done in much pain, very slow, or could be quick and easy. No difference to master."

"We shall see about that," said the Lady, and again Tanya had to marvel at the older woman's firm control of voice and body. "I have asked you your name."

"Wirral, my Lady." The scrawny figure of the goodlife spokesman made her a mocking bow. "Though we are all of us upon the brink of being done with names."

"Wirral, then—you who take it upon yourself to be the spokesman of Death—a Death, who, like the rest of us it seems, must struggle and strive to overcome the problems of this world—what do you say to a bargain?"

"Bargain?" The man frowned, his face taking on an utterly witless expression. He might never have heard the word before. He squinted at the Lady as if she were hard to see. Again he looked humbly at the machine beside him, and again his god remained silent.

Lady Blanqui said patiently: "By a bargain I mean a trade. Our lives here—those of myself, all my crew and passengers—in exchange for wealth. Wealth is the thing I have to bargain with."

"Wealth?" Wirral still looked bemused. He sounded scornful. "What use do you think my master has for—"

"Wait." The inhuman voice from the machine interrupted him: "I will hear the badlife female." Lenses on both standing machines were swiveling now toward the owner of the yacht. "What amount of wealth do you have to bargain with?"

"What do you know of human values? How can I translate them to you? I speak of riches greater than all these together"—her gesture swept across the other humans present—"could hope to gather into their hands in a long lifetime. And yet of no more than I could readily obtain, on a planet very near where we are now, and put into your hands within a standard day. In a compact form. Easily negotiable. Acceptable to any human in the Galaxy. Easily—"

"What form precisely?"

Lady Blanqui drew a deep breath. "I am speaking of santana stones. If you, death-machine, are not familiar with gemstones and their value among those you call bad-life, perhaps one of your trusted goodlife can explain to you the—"

"I am familiar with the concept of wealth. Proceed to outline your terms, in detail."

Tanya was holding her breath again. Only once in her life had she seen a genuine santana stone. The jewels appeared in nature—very, very rarely—in a variety of colors, each more beautiful than the last. Their origin was uncertain, but they were thought to have been formed in the heart of certain stars, and no human cleverness had yet devised a way of creating them artificially.

While Wirral looked on, with a sullen expression suggesting that he would, if he dared, be outraged at this turn of events, the Lady proceeded to detail her plan. If the machines would allow her to go on to the planet Damaturu, with one companion—her usual bodyguard, she assumed—she could obtain a satchel full of the stones from her banker there, even on such short notice. Then she would bring the stones back, and hand them over, in exchange for human lives.

The Lady ignored the gaping sneers of the two goodlife, and bore up under the steady unliving gaze of the machines. She did not appear to have lost any of her customary arrogance in the intimidating presence of Death itself.

She concluded by repeating her description of what she offered. "An attaché case full of such gems—vast wealth indeed. Wealth, I repeat, in a form that is easy to carry and to transfer, acceptable by any Earth-descended humans, anywhere in the Galaxy, as wealth."

Lenses swerved to Wirral. "Comment," demanded the machine.

Wirral admitted, with obvious reluctance, that he had heard of the Lady Blanqui. So had a great many people. There was no doubt that a life-unit in her special position would have the power to deliver such wealth as she was promising.

"But I see no reason to trust her, master. Surely you will not trust—"

"I will search our data bank," said the machine.

"Try under 'Mercantile Planets'," suggested Hinna, the goodlife woman. Wirral glared at her. The machine said nothing.

Through all this the Lady herself had remained calm. When the larger machine turned its lenses at her, she said: "I am an old woman, and probably have only a short time left to live in any case. But I have a great responsibility to these people who are with me on my ship."

Suddenly the goodlife man seemed to remember something; eyes gleaming with triumph, he crept close to the nearest embodiment of his mechanical master, and whispered into a spot on the metal skull.

"Then it is agreed," said the machine. "The life-unit Blanqui may go on to Damaturu, to procure wealth."

The Lady looked up. "Yes. You may rely on us to return. I shall—"

"But the life-unit you call Yero must stay here as hostage for your good behavior."

The Lady was silent for a full ten seconds. When she spoke again, her voice had turned querulous. "But why should I believe you? That if I bring back the gems you'll keep your bargain and let us live?"

"Because I do nothing without logical reason. I allow the goodlife to survive, for a time, because they are useful tools. In themselves they represent only a small amount of life. By using them, I can purify much greater amounts of matter from the life-disease.

"Similarly," continued the machine, "wealth such as you have promised can be a tool of great value. But I can use such a tool only in secrecy, a fact that will operate to assure your safety—provided you keep your part of the bargain."

"I am not sure," said the Lady, "that I understand."

Tanya had a momentary impression that the lenses were glaring at this obstinate, impertinent badlife. Then the voice of the berserker spoke again. "At least three of you who are now my captives, are prominent people, whose disappearance would immediately draw attention among the badlife of nearby worlds. Especially if your vanishing followed hard upon the Lady's unexplained withdrawal from her store of a vast sum of wealth. Some of my badlife enemies might connect the two events and deduce the truth. Steps might be taken to prevent my use of the tool of wealth.

"So when I have your wealth in hand, you will all go free; go free and say nothing of our encounter here, or of our bargain. Because for any of you to speak, to tell of your cooperation with what you call Death, would be to condemn yourselves as goodlife."

Tanya muttered something.

"You may discuss it among yourselves," said the machine.

She turned to Skorba, whispering to prevent the glowering goodlife, if not the enemy machine, from hearing. Carl confirmed her thoughts: once crew and passengers went along with such a scheme they would be goodlife themselves, in the eyes of interplanetary law. To argue that they had acted under duress would be no defense. And it would be hard to find, in the whole Galaxy, any human society where any other crime was considered more vile, or punished more severely.

"What do we do, then?"

Skorba shrugged. "We go along. We don't really have a choice."

"I think I understand why it wants wealth."

"I think I do too. But there's nothing we can do about it at the moment, is there?"

The purpose that Tanya had deduced for the berserker was indeed horrible. But if the berserker's present captives could survive, reach the surface of an inhabited planet still alive, there would be something they could do—even if it meant condemning themselves in the process. It seemed to Tanya now that any human punishment, no matter how harsh, would be preferable to—

The Lady was saying: "Then it is agreed between us. I am to be allowed to go on to Damaturu—or taken there, somehow—"

"You will be taken there aboard a launch, a vessel you have not yet seen. You and one other life-unit, since it appears to be your custom to travel thus escorted. If you do not return with the promised amount of santana stones, those life-units you leave here, and one of them in particular, will be skinned—"

The Lady's hands flew up to shield her ears. Her eyes were closed, as if she could already feel the pain in her own flesh. "Stop! I will come back, I will. If—if Yero is allowed to go with me, I can answer for it that he will come back too."

"The man called Yero will remain here—"

"He must come with me!" the Lady screamed, all her control suddenly in tatters. "He must—"

Effortlessly the mechanical voice amplified itself to override mere human pain, to blast all other sounds aside. "THE LIFE-UNIT CALLED YERO WILL REMAIN HERE AS HOSTAGE FOR YOUR RETURN. UNDER THOSE CONDITIONS I AM CONFIDENT THAT YOU WILL COME BACK WITH THE JEWELS."

Silence.

The Lady, shuddering, clinging to the arms of her chair, appeared even more deeply shaken than before. For a few moments she seemed cowed.

But when she raised her head again she was not yet ready to give up. Her voice was quietly stubborn. "I need Yero's help. And it will be thought strange by the people of Damaturu, even suspicious perhaps, if I appear on their world without my usual companion."

"Study of my data banks reveals that you must be virtually a stranger on Damaturu." The squeaky voice was as stubborn as only a machine could be. Tanya thought that the relentless enemy's data base must be rather extensive. "Another man will go with you. Now I will hear no further arguments."

Carl Skorba stood up suddenly. "I volunteer!" When everyone stared at him, he hastily added: "Let me point out to you, machine, that your goodlife people, if these two are a fair sample, look entirely too scruffy to appear in a bank without at least arousing some unwelcome curiosity." He paused again. "Do you understand what I mean by 'scruffy'?"

The machine swiveled lenses at him. But it ignored his question and posed one of its own. "Why should you be willing to come back?"

Lady Blanqui tried to interrupt, swearing that if her escort must be Skorba, she would compel him to come back.

Now Tanya stared at the man beside her, as if she had never seen him before. Skorba ignored her. He was grinning, and looked elated.

"Why should I come back? I'll tell you. Because I want to see this deal go through, just the way you describe it. Because you couldn't keep me away from the next deal. I mean the one the Lady and I are on the verge of concluding. The one we're going to have between us when we walk away from this alive." Seeing the way that Lady Blanqui and the others looked at him, he smiled boldly at her. "Oh, I know, you haven't even heard the details of this fabulous deal yet. Just take my word for it, when you hear them you'll feel you can't say no." He swept his gaze around over the rest of his audience, including the two machines.

"What you just told us, machine, it all works out. If fits, it feels right. You want the wealth, because—of what you want it for. I can see that. And you're absolutely right, once you have it, your best move is to let us go. We aren't going to talk, any of us. And the Lady and I—we're going to do business."

Summoning the small ship to carry two passengers on to Damaturu was going to take a little time, the berserker told them, more time than the passengers would really need to prepare themselves. Meanwhile the prisoners were free to move about the yacht as they liked. Tanya and Skorba, encountering each other in the little passage outside their cabins, had a brief chance to talk alone.

"What are you doing?" Tanya demanded in an urgent whisper.

He returned her gaze boldly. "Just what I told everyone I was going to do. Have you got a better idea?"

"I was ready to fight them, to die fighting. But no one else was. Now—no, I have nothing better than your plan to suggest. But you understand, don't you, the only reason a berserker would want wealth?"

Carl Skorba sounded calm and matter-of-fact about it. "Actually there are a couple of reasons I can think of. The first is bribery, of course. Acting through their goodlife agents, to get to someone who's playing a vital part in the defense of some planet."

Tanya had thought of that. "You said there might be a second reason?"

"Well, to purchase weapons."

"Purchase them? But berserkers build their own weapons, or capture them. Everyone knows—"

"Sure, sure. But sometimes it's hard to build or capture just what you want. There might be some special bit of hardware, a space inverter for example, that takes some very special tools and skills to put together. There are people who would sell weapons to goodlife, to berserkers. People who'd do anything for money."

Present company, she thought, included. And again she thought: If this man is lying, he's doing it very skillfully.

Aloud she asked him: "And are you really intending to come back?"

He made a playful gesture. "You heard my little speech. You bet your life I'm coming back. Once we're officially goodlife, all of us are going to have to be very friendly with each other. Lady Blanqui's one of the wealthiest people in the Galaxy, and she's going to have to be very friendly to us all."

III.

The launch that had conveyed the boarding party of machines and goodlife to the yacht now separated from the larger vessel, carrying away Wirral and Hinna as well as one of the boarding machines. Within a few minutes its place at the docking hatch had been taken by another small craft, bringing Wirral back alone. The goodlife man, reappearing in the lounge, announced in a grim voice that his unliving master had assigned him the task of piloting the two prisoner-messengers to Damaturu and back. He appeared to have no relish for the job.

Then he added: "Before we go, master wants to look at your ship's master controls."

The mistress of the ship protested. "You don't mean to strand us here!"

"We'll scramble a few connections to the drive, the shields, the weapons. Nothing that can't be fixed in an hour's time. Want to be sure you'll do nothing foolish when master lets you go, that's all." Wirral still seemed of the opinion that letting anyone go alive was a big mistake.

The roughly man-shaped robot pointed with an imperious claw.

"Yes, master," Wirral muttered, and ordered the Lady to precede them through the short, curving corridor that led from the lounge directly to the bridge. Wirral followed her closely, and the machine stalked after him. Tanya, tagging along warily at a little distance, got close enough to look into the bridge. It was a considerably smaller compartment than the lounge, most of its space taken up by three or four heavily padded chairs and what seemed to her an excess of equipment. Wirral, under his master's watchful gaze, poked about among some of the controls with his human fingers, activating displays and testing functions until the berserker had evidently been satisfied. Tanya could see that certain connections were now hanging loose.

In a few minutes they were all back in the lounge of the Golden Hind, where Wirral again took notice of Skorba's media machine.

"It looks like it might be a weapon," said the goodlife intruder suspiciously. "A communications device at the very least."

"It is certainly a communications device," said Skorba. "Does your master therefore forbid me to bring it to Damaturu?"

Both men turned to look at the metal guardian that had returned with them to the lounge, where it continued to dominate the scene. The thing's lenses stared back at them implacably. It made no comment.

"All right, then," Wirral conceded. "Bring your gadget along. But you know better than to use it when you're planetside, don't you, laddie?"

"Once planetside, I'll be surrounded by communications devices anyway, and free to use them if I wish. But I'll have no need of them. As I told you, I'll come back to this vessel willingly. It's just that I'll be a more convincing escort for the Lady on the planet if I'm carrying some hardware."

Wirral made an indecisive gesture. "Aye, then, take the damned thing along. You're right, to play the role of her bodyguard, you'd best not go altogether emptyhanded. To my mind you don't look the part."

A few minutes later, Lady Blanqui and her youthful, rather pudgy companion were on their way. Skorba was wearing a very thoughtful expression as he bade Tanya a terse goodbye. The Lady, elegantly dressed to see her banker, was carrying an empty attaché case.

Tanya watched the pair of them disappear, following Wirral down through the deck of the lounge; someone closed the carpeted hatch from above. Moments later, everyone heard the sounds of the launch separating. The machine stood silent sentry.

Only then did Tanya turn to confront the Lady's now-leaderless people: Yero, Stanhill, the captain, the flight engineer, the female servant. Some of them did not meet her eyes at all. Others glanced at her reluctantly, and then looked away.

It seemed to Tanya that she and the Lady's folk were never going to have anything to say to each other.

Tanya returned to her cabin briefly, then roamed restlessly about the ship, feeling almost that she had to assert her right to be aboard. The Lady's absence made little if any difference in the attitude of her crew and servants toward Tanya. They continued to avoid eye contact as much as possible, and never spoke with her unless she confronted them directly. A certain inexplicable hostility seemed to be hanging in the air—as if the disastrous captivity that had befallen them had been in some way Tanya's fault.

Yero alone occasionally glowered at her as if he were on the verge of angry speech; but then, he glowered at everything and everyone except his mistress. The captain was incommunicative as always, but no worse than that.

Well, let them sulk and glower if they wished. Tanya soon found herself too busy thinking to pay them much attention. A small uncertain seed of hope had recently been planted in her mind. And the more she thought about it. . . . But the aura of antagonism among her present shipmates was so palpable mat she made no attempt to communicate her thoughts.

Aboard the launch, submerged in subspace and well on its way to Damaturu, Carl Skorba and his elderly companion had the small passenger compartment all to themselves. Before they had been allowed aboard, Wirral had locked and sealed himself away forward in the control cabin.

When a quarter of a standard hour had passed in silence for the passengers, Skorba suddenly asked his fellow traveler: "Do you think the machine always trusts them?"

The Lady Blanqui had seated herself, eyes closed, arms folded, beside a port, its cover now closed. She opened her eyes now to stare at her questioner, seated beside her. "The goodlife? I shouldn't think so. But I suppose it must have reason to trust the one it sends as pilot on such a mission as this."

"I suppose."

After a moment the Lady voiced a question of her own: "Are you growing curious about goodlife? Now that we are, at least nominally, about to join their ranks?"

"Yeah, I'm curious as to what the real ones are like," Skorba admitted. "Aren't you?"

The Lady sighed, and seemed to suppress a shudder. "Not really."

"Do you know," the young man pursued, "what I wonder most about them?" Perhaps doubting that his companion was going to reply, he pressed on without granting her much time to do so. "Do they ever decide that becoming goodlife was all a mistake, and want to quit? Who could choose to live with a berserker?"

The Lady's thin lips set in a sharp line. "I very much doubt it. Why? Were you thinking of trying to bribe our pilot, possibly? Persuade him to defect?"

"No. . . ."

"Such a detestable little man. And even if he were bribable, what could he do to help us?"

"No—no, really, nothing like that. I meant what I said back on the yacht, I'm going along with the machine's plan, I'm in this for the whole ride. I was just wondering about them. How their minds work."

Again there was an interval of silence. By now their former shipmates of the Golden Hind, along with Hinna and her dark masters, had fallen an astronomical distance behind the speeding launch. Skorba and the Lady were virtually alone in subspace—except of course for the uncommunicative pilot, who might possibly be listening to everything they said. And of course some machine component might be listening as well.

The next time Carl spoke, it was to assure Lady Blanqui that her beloved Yero was doubtless still in good health. But if his remarks were meant to be comforting, the effort backfired. The Lady suddenly looked ill-at-ease.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have reminded you of Yero's difficult situation."

She scowled at the young man in silence. Then she suddenly demanded: "You are really not planning an attempt to escape when we land?"

He shook his head patiently. "I'll say it again. What I announced to everyone, back there on your yacht, I meant. I've spent a good part of my life working and struggling to get a chance like this. Now I've got it, I'll bet my life on it."

Lady Blanqui's thin lips curved in a wicked smile. "A chance to blackmail someone as rich as I am? You'd be putting your own neck in a noose, don't forget, if you were to reveal your part in this."

He gave her a glittering smile in return. "Look at it that way if you want. I'll take the chance, if I have to, of being accused as goodlife myself."

"So will I," murmured the Lady.

"Ah. But you have someone you want to protect, and that gives me a certain advantage."

"And you have no one."

"Not any more. I won't be piggish, understand, you'll profit too. But I don't intend to let my opportunity slip away. You and I are going to do business. Wait'll you hear my sales pitch."

What had seemed a zestful readiness for combat on the Lady's part now faded into uncertainty. "Once Yero is safe, I'll hear you out."

"All right. I can wait until he's safe—from the berserker. When we've concluded our deal with the machine, and he's out of danger—for the time being—you'll be better able to concentrate on business."

"Thank you. I imagine we'll be able to do business as you say. I'll make you a wealthy man." The Lady sounded abstracted.

The next time she spoke, her voice had grown somewhat querulous. Suddenly her age was showing, in terms of fatigue. "Then you can believe that a berserker will honor its pledges?" The question came out somewhere between a rough demand for the truth, and a plea for reassurance.

Skorba frowned judicially. "You know, I really believe this one will, this time. I think the machine was just laying out the facts logically when it told us what it planned to do. With the pile of jewels you're going to hand over to it, it can buy the chance to exterminate a great many more human lives than the little handful we represent."

"And that doesn't bother you? Such a mass extermination?" She watched him warily.

"Lady, it's that kind of a galaxy." The pudgy one now seemed to be considering her almost with amusement. "You understand that, and I understand that. The idea of people you don't know, strangers, being exterminated doesn't bother you all that much, does it? Those same people would sell us out in a moment, if the positions were reversed."

"All those thousands, perhaps millions, who will be slain?" The old woman seemed unable to let go of the subject. Her eyes probed at the young man. "Perhaps the attack will be launched against some world where you have relatives. Loved ones. Do you know what it is to love someone?"

The young man shook his head, dismissing all such concerns. "Come off it, Your Ladyship. You didn't make your money by worrying all that much about the ants in an anthill somewhere. You and I have a business deal going now, right? Or we very soon will, when we can sit down somewhere and start to work out the details." Suddenly he yawned. "I don't know about you, but I've been awake a long time. I'm going to get some sleep." He adjusted his reclining seat, lay back, and closed his eyes.

The Lady registered a very slow, very faint change of expression. It was a smile again, but this time not a challenge. Then she toasted her companion, with a cup of water—that was the only beverage provided passengers by the meagre facilities on the launch. She said, in a soft voice that did not appear to disturb the sleeping man: "I think we may be able to do business."

Meanwhile, back on the yacht, Tanya slept for a few hours also. When she awoke she lay quietly for a time, staring at the overhead. Her thinking had brought her to a certain conclusion. Hopeful, yes. Risky, though—if only she dared to trust her own deductions!

At the same time, the continued rudeness, the barely muffled hostility of the Lady's people, cemented her determination to reveal nothing she had discovered until Skorba and the Lady returned—assuming that they did.

Planet fall and landing on Damaturu were uneventful. Skorba, noting the overall smoothness of the approach, decided that Wirral was allowing the autopilot to handle almost everything. Nothing out of the ordinary in that, for goodlife or bad.

The business of traversing the atmosphere was, as always, time-consuming. The Lady and Skorba agreed that if all went smoothly they were going to spend hardly more than a standard hour actually on the surface of the planet.

The formalities of clearing the port were minimal, and promptly concluded without the pilot ever having to leave his sealed cabin, or confront directly any of the local officials.

Ground transport on this world was cheap and efficient. While Wirral remained out of sight in the ship, Skorba accompanied the Lady into the nearby city. This city, which Skorba could remember visiting once, years earlier, was somewhat larger than the spaceport town on Malawi. Once in the city, they went directly to the bank of Lady Blanqui's choice, exchanging a minimum of conversation on the way.

This bank, the largest financial establishment on the planet, occupied an imposing building on the south side of the city's central plaza. The only local structure rivalling it in height was the planet's Templar headquarters, a white tower crowned with conspicuous antennas on the north side of the plaza. The numerous antennas, besides serving practical communication functions, symbolized the Templars' sworn vigilance against the Galactic peril of the berserkers.

Just inside the bank's outer lobby, Skorba's elderly companion turned to him and said: "Wait here. My private banker here is a suspicious man—no, I'm not quite such a stranger on Damaturu as the one who sent us here believed."

"Ah?"

"Trust me, I know this man, this banker, and he will have fewer misgivings if I do not appear in his office accompanied by a stranger."

Skorba looked at her. "I trust you, Lady Blanqui," he said, seriously, after a moment. She nodded a crisp acknowledgment and turned away.

Skorba watched her out of sight. She was carrying her empty attaché case under one arm as she vanished through a dramatically tall archway. According to a discreet sign, that way led to me executive offices on the upper floors.

The young man settled himself mentally to wait. Physically he kept moving restlessly about, passing in and out of the building several times. Very briefly he left the lobby to breathe the open air, to look at the grass and trees of the square, to gaze thoughtfully upon all the unsuspecting people. None of his absences from the lobby were long enough to make it possible that he should miss the Lady, at whatever moment she might reappear.

When at last Lady Blanqui did emerge from the dramatic archway, she was carrying the attaché case in such a way that Carl Skorba could see that it was notably heavier than before.

But the Lady's spirits were definitely lighter; and she appeared relieved to find her escort waiting for her patiently, like a tourist or an unobtrusive, authentic bodyguard. He was still carrying, tucked under his arm, the machine that might have been a recorder or a weapon, or both.

He asked her: "Everything go all right?"

Silently the Lady indicated her satisfaction.

In a matter of minutes the pair were back at the spaceport, where their little borrowed ship was waiting, Wirral still locked into its control cabin. Nothing in the dull inconspicuousness of the small craft gave any indication of who—or what—controlled it.

As soon as they were aboard, Wirral repeated Skorba's question over the intercom; when the pilot's query had been answered in the affirmative the outer hatch closed and sealed itself behind the two passengers. Presently the artificial gravity came on, and the passengers could hear the shriek of thinning atmosphere, falling rapidly behind and below the hurtling launch.

* * *

In a few hours the launch had brought them back to their approximate point of departure.

In the hours since the launch had departed, the configuration of the waiting ships had changed. The Golden Hind still hung, as before, in normal space on the fringe of the rocky, undoubtedly lifeless minisystem. And the larger berserker craft remained disconnected from the yacht; but now it was several kilometers farther away. The brown dwarf at the system's center was visible only as a dull distant glow of infrared, and only if you looked for it with instruments.

Wirral, giving no explanation and making no comment over intercom, steered clear of the yacht and jockeyed the launch into a preliminary docking configuration with the berserker; then he let the autopilot take over, to complete the maneuver smoothly.

Skorba drew breath, as if he were about to launch a protest against not being taken back to the yacht—but then he sighed, shrugged helplessly, and said nothing.

As soon as docking had been accomplished, a man-sized machine—whether it was the same one that had been on the yacht or not, neither human passenger could tell— entered the launch.

Lady Blanqui was clinging more tightly than ever to her attaché case.

The machine said, in its metallic voice: "Give it to me." And with a snap of metal it thrust a gripper forward.

The Lady protested in a high thin voice: "I demand, first, to see that Yero is unharmed."

"Give it to me. Resistance will entail punishment."

Making a helpless little sound, she allowed the case to be pulled from her stiffened fingers.

With the attaché case firmly in its control, the machine turned to me other passenger. "Life-unit Skorba."

"Huh?" The man sounded surprised.

"You will now come aboard my craft. You are to serve, temporarily, as hostage for the good behavior of the other badlife. If all goes well, you will be released unharmed in a few days."

The young man, looking surprised and miserable, began a protest, which he abandoned after a few words.

"Remember," the Lady chided him, "you said that you believed in the machine's plan."

"I did say that, didn't I?" He brightened minimally. "Logically, I still think so." On his way out of the launch, following the machine, he paused, gazing earnestly at his fellow captive. "Give my regards to Tanya. Tell her to keep her chin up. Maybe she'll be surprised and I'll see her again sometime. And I'll see you as soon as possible."

"I shall tell her."

In a moment Wirral, coming grimly through the compartment from the forward control cabin, looked at Lady Blanqui without a word, and went on into the mother ship. Presently the sounds of undocking came, and she listened to them hopefully.

Her hopes were realized; in less than a minute the launch, now running entirely on autopilot, delivered her back to her yacht.

As soon as she had climbed back up into the familiar lounge, she stood up straight and looked around. Most of her own people were present in the room, and her young female passenger was at the table, being served food by the robotic steward. One of the crudely man-shaped boarding machines, practically indistinguishable from the one that had just robbed the Lady, was standing guard close by the hatch. Otherwise there was no immediate enemy presence.

"Yero? Where is he?" the Lady demanded.

"Where are the gems?" Tanya asked her in the same instant, pushing back her chair and getting to her feet. "And what about Skorba?"

A moment later Yero appeared in the background, on the other side of the octagonal table.

"He's not been harmed," said Tanya. "None of us have. Now, what happened to—"

Yero came hurrying to Lady Blanqui, and they embraced delicately.

The launch that had just delivered Lady Blanqui was already undocking again; the familiar sounds came drifting through the hull.

Freeing herself from Yero's embrace, the Lady turned to Tanya. "The machine told me that it was taking Skorba hostage; it said that he would be released in a few days. I wouldn't worry about him, dear; I think you'll see him before you've had a chance to miss him."

"Perhaps I will—did you bring back the santana stones? You're not carrying your attaché case."

"It has already been taken from me. Taken aboard the other ship."

"I see." Tanya seemed to find the answer important. "Lady Blanqui, I've got to talk to you at once. It's extremely urgent."

The Lady lifted an eyebrow elegantly. "Indeed?" She glanced around at her assembled people. "All of you may go about your business," she informed them.

In a matter of moments, she and Tanya were alone, save for the machine that stood guard over the lounge. "And now, my dear?"

Tanya said: "You've been swindled."

The Lady blinked. "Of course, if you mean—"

"I don't mean what you think." Turning aside, Tanya marched directly toward the machine. The man-shaped thing turned smoothly to confront her as she came near, but she did not hesitate, even when the machine began to raise its arms.

Sidestepping the extended grippers at the last moment, she reached with both hands for the metal body. She caught the machine under one armpit, bent slightly and heaved with all her strength.

The mechanical terror teetered off balance, then crashed to the deck with a loud noise. It lay on die lounge carpet, all four limbs moving slightly, ineffectually.

Tanya stood back. She announced simply, and quite unnecessarily: "This is not a real berserker."

IV.

The Lady said nothing.

She was standing still, hands clasped in front of her, mouth compressed into a tight line as she gazed upon the fallen idol. Tanya thought that she had never seen such iron control, in the face of what must have been overwhelming surprise.

The younger woman took a step toward the older. Tanya began an explanation. "Don't you see? They're not really berserkers and goodlife, they're swindlers, con men, after your wealth from the start. They—"

The Lady wasn't listening. Instead she was looking at me display stages, where the swift-moving image of another small vessel had appeared. Once more a launch was approaching from the large craft which hung in space a couple of kilometers away.

Tanya continued. "I doubt they'll be bringing Skorba back. The way I see it, he's one of them, and he wanted to be present when the loot was divided up. That's why he was 'taken hostage'. As I read the situation, they're not kidnappers or murderers, they're the type of criminals who pride themselves on staying clear of physical violence.

"Probably they're sending the empty launch back here now on autopilot to pick up their dummy machine—they've been too busy counting up their gains to notice what I did to the dummy just now. If they did notice, they'd just leave it here. They've got your gems and they can just take off—Lady Blanqui?"

Ignoring Tanya completely, the Lady was issuing crisp orders into an intercom station, summoning her people back to the lounge. Stanhill was first to arrive. Even as he entered, the Lady went with her head high to the table and seated herself in her tall chair. Yero came in carrying a lap robe which he tenderly tucked around her legs. The human crew and servants came straggling in.

"What are you planning to do?" Tanya asked their mistress.

The Lady continued to ignore her. Already the launch was docking.

The hatch in the deck swung up and open, and Tanya fell back a step in surprise. The launch had not been empty after all. An angry little mob of more than half a dozen people, most of whom she had never seen before, came bursting up into the lounge. None of these intruders did more than glance at the toppled metallic fraud. Wirral, with Hinna at his elbow, was at their head. Just behind Hinna and Wirral, Skorba was being dragged along by a couple of scruffy strangers. Some at least of the group's anger seemed to be directed at the pudgy man.

Wirral's earlier expression of docility and feeble cunning had been replaced by a glare of alert and lively rage. He was gripping the attaché case in one hand as he stalked forward to the octagonal table. The pseudo-berserker happened to lie athwart the man's path, and as he stepped over the thing it waved a spastic claw as if in some parody of a salute.

Wirral halted directly opposite the Lady in her tall chair. A little behind him, Skorba, struggling and cursing at those who would have continued to hold his arms, managed to jerk them free. The other men and women who had just arrived, Hinna among them, all of them as shabby and unkempt as Wirral himself, milled about. The members of the little mob were muttering among themselves, arguing and cursing in low voices. The subject of their angry debate, as far as Tanya could make it out, was whether they ought to take violent action against the old woman who controlled this ship, against whoever had seen through their scheme and tried to turn the tables on them.

The chief object of their wrath remained perched on her throne-like chair, a soft robe now tucked around her legs as if she were an invalid, observing this invasion calmly.

Seemingly speechless with anger, Wirral flung down the attaché case upon the table, so violently mat the container popped open on impact. Out across the marble surface spilled the weighty bundle of computer printout that had been its only contents. The mass of paper was obviously the cheap kind that could be readily generated at any public terminal.

For a moment there was silence in the lounge. The Lady gazed at the intruders, and at the spilled paper, with no readable expression. Skorba, rubbing his freed arms, glanced in Tanya's direction, and she thought he was relieved to see she was unhurt—or possibly he was still acting.

Wirral still seemed unable to find words to express his outrage.

"You, old woman!" The speaker this time was a black-bearded man among the newcomers. Pushing his way forward, he bellowed an obscenity. "If you think you can bloody well cheat us, well, you can't!" He pointed at Skorba. "You've got some kind of a game going with him!"

"I assure you I do not." Lady Blanqui's tone was icily remote.

"Never mind!" From inside his jacket Blackbeard pulled out a handgun, and waved it at the imperturbable, imperious object of his wrath. "We're taking this ship—"

The Lady's right hand moved slightly, half-concealed beneath her laprobe. Blue fire spat through the robe's upper fold, a precise jet aimed just above the table at the shouting man. Blackbeard looked incredulously at the old woman on her tall chair, even as his own weapon slid from his dying fingers to the deck. A moment later his lifeless body had crumpled on top of it.

Showing a fine instinct for survival, three of the surviving intruders turned in an instant, diving, scrambling for the open hatchway and their launch that waited just below it. The remainder of the band, consisting of Skorba, Wirral, and Hinna, appeared to have been frozen momentarily into statues.

Tossing her robe aside, Lady Blanqui stood erect, revealing her own handgun. "Stop them from getting out!" she cried. She fired one more shot, poorly aimed, after the escapees. A jolt of energy seared some decorations from the lower portion of a bulkhead, revealing a patch of inner hull. Some of the Lady's people ducked for cover, others were caught as flat-footed as her remaining enemies. Yero tried to obey her shouted command, but he was too late; the carpeted hatch slammed down in his face. Moments later the two vessels had separated.

Shouting again at her people, issuing commands in a jargon incomprehensible to Tanya, the Lady sent some of them, including the captain, running from the lounge.

Meanwhile Skorba had stooped over Blackbeard's body, as if in an attempt to render aid. Suddenly the young man straightened, Blackbeard's weapon in his hand. But even as he started to turn toward the Lady, he was borne to the deck by Yero's flying tackle.

Carl Skorba was evidently quicker and stronger than his appearance at rest had suggested. But Stanhill too had been watching him alertly, and Skorba was quickly pinned by two opponents.

"Do not kill him!" the Lady cried, as the gun was wrenched out of Skorba's grasp.

Tanya, with mixed feelings, satisfaction still dominant, saw the three would-be swindlers who were still aboard herded away at gunpoint to be locked up. Skorba's arms were now secured behind his back with handcuffs.

"Lock them in somewhere," the Lady called after her retainers. "A temporary arrangement will do. And hurry back!"

When the offenders and their guards were out of sight, the Lady at last turned back to Tanya, who responded to the older woman's expression of triumph with a smile of her own.

Then Tanya suddenly demanded of her hostess: "Did you actually realize it before I did?"

"Realize what, child?"

That response cooled whatever Tanya was feeling in the way of a nascent sense of kinship with this woman. "I must insist, Lady Blanqui, that I am not your child, or anyone's."

"Ah? Oh? Are you not?" For a moment the Lady peered at her uncertainly; for a moment, senility was showing. "What was your question?"

"I was asking you at what point you first realized the truth about those people and their machines. Was it before I gave my little demonstration?" Confronted by a strangely blank expression, Tanya thought she had to be more specific. "When I tipped over the robot. Showing that there had been no real berserker, no real goodlife here on your ship."

The Lady Blanqui made no answer, except that for several moments she continued to watch the younger woman intently. Something about this silent gaze struck Tanya as eerie; she had the odd feeling that she was being pitied.

Having locked herself in the cabin a few minutes later, Tanya stood considering the bolted door in the side bulkhead. A moment later, she had quietly slid back the bolt.

One of the decorative tall corner posts of Carl Skorba's bed, which was similar to Tanya's, had been run through the space between his bound arms and his body; he was sitting on the bed and leaning back against the post when Tanya entered.

He raised his head to stare at her. "Well," he said. "I had hopes from the beginning of our voyage, when I left my side of the door unbolted. A good thing, too."

She stood frowning down at him. "Can I get you a drink of water? Anything like that?"

"Some water would be great for a start."

When she had held a drink for him, and he had thanked her politely, he asked: "Satisfied? No gems lost to the con men. Half of the evildoers, including me, locked up, ready to be delivered to the proper authorities."

"Pretty much satisfied," Tanya answered slowly.

"But not completely? Something in the situation doesn't seem quite crystal clear? That gives me hope. Tell me, was it you who tipped the dummy over?"

"It was."

"Deliberately?"

"Of course."

"So, you had deduced that the people pretending to be goodlife were fraudulent, and so was their hardware. And that I was in league with them. Very intelligent of you."

"In my place, I suppose, you would have made the deduction sooner."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to sound patronizing. I don't know whether I would have made those particular discoveries or not, in your place." Skorba paused. "As a matter of fact I was busy making a different one."

"Some great revelation, for which you are now preparing me? And which, when you’ve convinced me of its truth, will require me to turn you loose?"

"Only if you value your life."

"Does this revelation—let me guess—does it concern the Lady, and her crew—?"

"It does indeed. Have you wondered what kind of people routinely carry handcuffs?"

"Police, certainly."

"That's only one category. Not the right one."

Tanya started to speak, then paused, looking around. "What was that?"

Some component of the sudden distraction had been sound; but a larger part had been a strange, slight ripple in the field of the yacht's artificial gravity.

Skorba gave her a sickly smile. "That would be her Ladyship, at last using some of the yacht's weapons. She's trying, if I'm not mistaken, to keep my three former associates who made it back to our ship from getting away—trying to keep their ship here in normal space, until—"

"Now she wants to make a fight of it?"

"She had no need to do so, earlier. No one was trying to leave."

"I don't understand you, Skorba—if that's your real name."

"It'll do."

"We know our lives aren't really in danger from three frightened confidence men. If we just let them run away—"

He gave a little groan, as of fear and sympathy combined. "The Lady's people didn't kill me right away, but when I consider their motives I don't feel grateful. Please get me loose? Somehow?"

"Can you give me one good reason why I should?"

"I can and will, as soon as I think there's a fair chance that you'll believe me. Look, Tanya, my media machine is in that drawer. Get it, and I'll show you how to turn on such modest destructive power as it can generate. This bedpost is very solid—I expect it'll take the beam a few minutes to cut through the chain on these cuffs. I strongly urge you to start it working as soon as possible. As soon as it's working I'll start talking, and if you don't like what I say you can always turn the beam off again."

Tanya stood up and went to the indicated drawer, opened it and lifted out the device, which felt unexpectedly heavy.

She turned back to the prisoner. "I don't think you're really physically dangerous, and anyway I'm now armed. So I'll start as you suggest. You start talking."

"Here I go—tell me, student of deception, what convinced you that my colleagues and I were fakes? When did you first suspect?"

"Oh. You'll believe my story, and then I'll feel a duty to believe yours, is that it?"

"We're wasting time."

"All right," Tanya said. "My conviction that you were a liar crept up on me gradually."

"Lock the black button and the red one, at the same time—that's it." A stubby flame appeared, projecting five centimeters or so at right angles to the gadget's length. "Now if you can aim the beam against the chain—try not to fry my arm—tell me how you deduced my associates were frauds."

With the beam in operation, Tanya continued. "Certain things that the supposed berserker said, things that when I thought about them didn't seem right. Once it talked about 'our' data bank. It mentioned 'prominent people', instead of life-units. There were probably more; enough to subliminally alert me.

"Then there was the way Wirral walked ahead of the machine when they went to the bridge. And the way it let him check the controls when they got there—I suppose its grippers are really pretty clumsy. Finally I decided that the formidable-looking machine standing watch in the lounge had to be rather maladroit and probably quite harmless. Its voice had to be that of a person hidden on your ship, using some kind of voice-changing audio to play the part of Oz the great and powerful."

"You became willing to bet your life that you were right."

"Eventually I felt completely convinced, or at least enough to take that chance. Want to hear what I considered the final proof?"

"Tell me quickly."

"When you and your fellow crooks took the attaché case aboard your own ship, so you could open it together!"

The almost invisible beam was still burning steadily at the handcuff chain. So far the metal a few centimeters away wasn't getting particularly hot.

"That was an exciting moment," Skorba acknowledged dryly. "You'd have enjoyed watching."

"Of course real goodlife, serving a real berserker, wouldn't have done that. They'd have been worried about other things instead."

"Such as what?"

"Well, suppose the Lady had brought back a bomb instead of jewels? Or some other kind of effective weapon? A real berserker would have made sure that the attaché case was opened somewhere outside its own hull."

As Skorba listened, the expression on his face suddenly altered. His shoulders moved; the last weakened thread of metal broke with a snap, and he brought his arms around in front of him.

Tanya stood up alertly, and turned off the jet of flame from the device in her hands. Then she staggered and almost fell. This time the disturbance had come more violently than before, making a loud noise, sending a shudder through space within the cabin, bouncing people, furniture and decorations. The bed, supported by four solid stanchions, stayed put.

"What's that?"

"Must be my three non-violent associates in our ship, shooting back at us in self-defense. If the Lady insists on fighting it out with them, this tub isn't going to last long. They've got great shields, and one damned powerful gun. That hardware is what this whole game is all about, you see."

"What d'you mean?"

"It's a long story. If our ship over there had a decent combat control system to go with her firepower, they'd have vaporized this yacht on the first shot."

Tanya was backing away from him. "I think your friends aboard are locked in the next cabin. Set them free if you can, in case we all have to abandon ship. I'm going to talk to our crazy mistress!"

"Wait! There's something I've got to tell you first—"

But Tanya, having thrown down Skorba's multipurpose gadget, was already running out of his cabin and down the corridor.

In another moment she came rushing into the lounge, where she stumbled to an abrupt halt.

Very strange things indeed were going on.

Lady Blanqui was installed like a queen in her tall chair, at her side the control console that allowed her to command her ship directly. She was surrounded by her crew and servants, and all of them for once were jubilant.

Exultantly she called to Tanya: "Come, dear; come, my lovely child, and see!"

Following the Lady's gaze, Tanya observed the new image that was even now taking shape in the display stages. A moving disturbance, approaching very swiftly from a relatively great distance, was hurtling nearer through the troubled half-reality of subspace. It looked significantly larger than the swindlers' ship, even though not all of this new presence was visible. It was as if the newcomer were doing something that had the effect of obscuring its own image. Tanya, feeling the hair trying to rise on the back of her neck, was inescapably reminded of a shark's fin cleaving surface water.

And now the old woman, once more ignoring Tanya, was standing up from her tall chair, stepping to one side, and now she was slowly lowering her aged body to the deck. A chant was beginning to rise from half a dozen throats. And now the other people, those who had been playing the parts of Lady Blanqui's crew and her beloved, were also making ritual obeisance, kneeling, bowing, prostrating themselves face down at the foot of me stage across which glided that darkly ominous shape, the image of their terrible god.

She who had pretended to be a Mercantile princess rose to her knees and turned a transfigured countenance to Tanya. "You see my dear, you were very much mistaken. There are real goodlife aboard my ship!"

"And soon," said the youth who had played the role of Yero, kneeling beside her, speaking in a loud triumphant voice: "a real berserker!"

V.

Tanya could hear herself screaming as she recoiled in horror from that image—and from the triumphant nightmare figures around her, people who had suddenly revealed themselves as monsters.

By now she could interpret the stage displays well enough to see how the onrushing image of armored death reached out with grappling forcefield weapons for the craft that had once pretended to be a berserker. That vessel was fighting back, splashing flares of energy across the berserker's shields. At the moment both combatants seemed to be ignoring the yacht.

And that was all Tanya allowed herself to see of events outside the hull. Momentarily ignored by the exultant goodlife around her, beneath their notice in this moment of their epiphany, she retreated quietly from the lounge and fled back down the short corridor to the door of Skorba's cabin.

The cabin door was closed but not locked. She wrenched it open to discover that he was no longer inside.

In a moment she heard him calling to her. He was leaning out of another doorway, just down the corridor, beckoning urgently with an arm still clasped at the wrist by a disconnected metal cuff.

Tanya hurried to the next cabin. Wirral and Hinna were both there, unshackled, both looking dazed. Wirral leaned against a bulkhead, while the woman stood close to Skorba, staring at him as if she didn't know whether to attack him or beg for his help. Both of the pseudo-goodlife looked fearfully at Tanya as she came rushing up.

Tanya grabbed Skorba by the sleeve, so that he had to juggle his media machine to his other hand to keep from dropping it. "Carl, Carl, they're goodlife! The Lady and all her people. They're out there now—"

Skorba tore his arm out of her grip. "That's what I was trying to tell you when you ran out. I'm trying to convince these clowns, and they still won't believe me."

Tanya, on the edge of panic, hardly heard what he was saying, "—and there's a real berserker coming. Not coming, it's here now, attacking your ship. I saw it on the displays."

Skorba didn't seem surprised at the news. "That means we don't have much time."

Hinna, astonished by Tanya's report, took her turn at grabbing Skorba by the arm. "If the people on this ship are goodlife," she demanded, "why haven't they killed us already?"

"Probably because their master wants to talk to us before our bodies are purified."

Wirral, emerging from his daze, moved forward cursing. "You son of a bitch. How long have you known about them? I've known you for ten years, and you couldn't tell me?"

Suddenly enraged, Tanya lunged forward and shoved the bogus goodlife violently, sending him staggering back against the bulkhead again, shocking him into momentary silence.

She drew a deep breath and turned back to Skorba. "All right, at last all three of us believe you. The Lady and her people are goodlife. What do we do?"

"Are they all in the lounge?"

"Every one."

Skorba gestured fiercely with his machine. "Then we stop wasting time and take control of the bridge while they're giving us the chance. Explanation later, if there's time."

In a moment the four of them were out of the cabin, moving down a curving corridor in the direction of the bridge.

"Well, we saw the old bitch kill Pikuni with her handgun," Wirral muttered under his breath. "I guess I can believe you."

"I say it served him right for waving a gun around," Hinna murmured. "But if she's not genuine goodlife, she's sure as hell mean enough, she'll do until the real thing comes along. Now we've got to fight her, but we have no weapons."

Everyone ignored that difficulty for the moment. At Skorba's urgent gesture the other three stepped up their pace.

Crossing an intersecting corridor, they could hear loud, exultant chanting coming from the direction of the lounge. Tanya was thinking that the two factions now about to contend for control of the yacht were approximately equal in numbers. But the goodlife had to be much better armed; all that the badlife had going for them was desperation and some advantage of surprise.

By great good fortune the bridge was still deserted, its interior hatches standing open. Skorba and Wirral hurried in, Tanya and Hinna just behind them. They were able to seize control without opposition. Both hatches leading to the ship's interior corridors were immediately dogged shut.

Wirral immediately seated himself in one of the great padded command chairs, nominally the captain's, beside the console where he had earlier made some disconnections, and got to work. In a matter of moments Hinna had located the bridge's emergency tool kit and brought it to him.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Tanya demanded, as he dug rapidly into the circuitry with tools and fingers.

"I was a flight engineer once," Wirral answered abstractedly. "Turn up the light a little brighter."

She did as she was told.

Meanwhile Skorba had seated himself in another of the three command chairs, and established contact with the ship's electronic brain.

"Master controls are almost always on the bridge," he muttered to Tanya. "With a little luck we may be able to do this without her Ladyship even realizing for a while what's happened."

As soon as Skorba had gained control over the ship's electronic brain, he ordered it not to accept commands from anywhere in the ship except the bridge. Also to report to him any attempt from elsewhere to exert control. "Next," he ordered it, "show me what kind of armament we've really got."

Hinna was incredulous. "You're going to fire at the berserker?"

"I'd love to, but I can't fire at anything until Wirry gets our guns up and working."

"Not even then," Wirral said firmly. "Drive gets connected first. Then we get the hell out of here." He grunted and swore, dropping a small part to the deck. Hinna swooped to pick it up for him.

Skorba swore back at him. "Get everything reconnected! And do the weapons and shields first!"

Wirral shot his old comrade a dark glance, but chose not to waste time and energy in arguing. His hands worked on.

"What're they up to now in the lounge?" Tanya wanted to know.

"They're just watching the show, as far as I can tell from the displays. Not much else they can do, while the drive and weapons are still disabled."

Hinna, frowning, poked him in the shoulder, then pointed at a display stage. She said: "Skorb, it looks like the berserker's determined to take over our old tub in one piece. Why in hell should it want to do that?"

Skorba didn't answer her question. He called everyone's attention to another fact now visible when he adjusted the displays. "The berserker looks damaged. Maybe not enough to slow it down much, but it's been through a fight."

Wirral spoke without looking up from his task. "Maybe it's stopped trying to cloak itself. Considers its present opponents unworthy of such caution."

"It's not having that easy a time of it," Skorba commented. "You see, it doesn't have guns or shields to match those on our old tub."

"What?" Tanya couldn't believe that.

"True, we outfitted specially for this con. What the berserker does have is a much better, in fact a superb, combat control system. Look at it maneuver, in and out. Our people, using our system, can't get a good shot at it."

Tanya looked. She was reminded of an agile spider dancing, darting in and out, attacking some stronger but clumsier insect, slowly smothering and binding.

"Once we start using either drive or weapons," Tanya commented, "her Ladyship won't be slow in reacting."

The reaction from the lounge came even more swiftly than she had predicted. Before either the yacht's weapons or drive were operational again, the people there had somehow discovered that they were no longer in control.

"Repeated commands are now being given to me in the lounge," the ship's pleasant voice reported on the bridge. "I am ignoring them, in accordance with your overriding orders."

"Continue to do so. Reply to no one in the lounge. And blank out all displays in the ship, everywhere but on the bridge."

Less than a minute passed before there came a heavy pounding on one of the hatches giving access to the bridge. Someone out there in the corridor was shouting. The four people who had bolted themselves in ignored the sounds, and they soon ceased.

Very soon afterward the Lady's face, transformed by rage and somehow almost youthful, appeared on all the intercom panels of the bridge. Her voice, cracking out of control for once, screamed at the people there: "You will unbolt the hatches immediately! Prolonged punishment will be administered if you refuse!"

Skorba sighed, and shook his head. No one else on the bridge wanted to reply, or comment. In a moment Hinna had reached for a switch and cut off the image of the screaming woman.

Now Skorba turned to confront the man in the next chair. “What's taking so long getting things reconnected? It didn't take you that long to pull 'em apart."

"Of course it didn't. It's coming. Gimme a break, I haven't been at it ten minutes yet. And as soon as I get the drive working, we're getting out of here!"

This time Skorba accepted the challenge. "There are three people, who we know pretty well, over there on our old ship. We're not pulling out and leaving 'em. So reconnect our weapons first."

"Are you crazy?" Wirral's voice was threatening to crack. "They're dead already. That thing's a berserker, for God's sake!"

At that moment the pounding assault was resumed on one of the interior hatches. Tanya comforted herself by recalling the thick solidity of that locked slab of metal. The blows resounded more powerfully than before, but were still unavailing. The goodlife enemy were effectively shut out for the time being.

"Think," Hinna was exhorting her three companions, "we've got to think ahead. It doesn't seem like they can break in the way they're trying it now. What're they going to try next?"

"What would we do," Tanya asked, "in their place . . . ?" In the next moment the answer hit her, and she screamed it out: "The lifeboats!"

All three stared at her, momentarily petrified. "Where are they?" several voices cried out together.

The boats were stowed, naturally enough, in the lifeboat bay—a compartment accessible from several places on the ship, including the lounge and—by means of a plainly marked hatch in the deck—the bridge.

Hinna ran to this hatch and started to unbolt and open it. "WeVe got to get to the boats before they do!"

"Wait," Tanya called. "What are you—"

But Hinna was already lifting the hatch. Even as she did, the beam of a small energy weapon, fired from below, glanced off the angled lower surface and splashed in silent, deadly brilliance across the bridge. The ray scorched pads and fabric, evoking glaring momentary highlights from glass and metal. Hinna howled and slammed the hatch down into place. In a moment Tanya, kneeling beside it, was sliding home the heavy bolts.

Hinna's right forearm, and a spot on her chin, where some reflected component of the beam had touched her, were blistering already. She sat on the deck making little moaning sounds, which quieted as Tanya brought the first aid kit, read directions and began to administer treatment.

It was plain that the lifeboats—Skorba and Wirral were virtually certain there would be two on board—were already in the control of the enemy.

That meant Lady Blanqui and her people were also in possession of the emergency radio equipment going with the boats—and once more able to communicate with the berserker.

Tanya quickly suggested a countermove: the people on the bridge should pretend to be goodlife and radio to the master that they needed no help, though a couple of pesky badlife had got loose. But Skorba pointed out that the berserker would not recognize the people on the yacht's bridge as known loyal life-units.

There was no way for the people holding only the bridge to prevent a lifeboat launching.

Skorba barked at the man beside him: "Which can you get hooked up faster? Weapons, drive, or shields?"

"All right, weapons," Wirral capitulated. "If those boats launch and then come back to ram us—"

Watching on the display stages of me bridge as the swindlers' ship continued to undergo a battering, and a gradual entanglement in the forcefields woven by the berserker, Tanya asked: "How long can they hold out over there?"

The pudgy man in the captain's chair shook his head. "They'd have been dead long ago, except the berserker happens to consider our powerful weapons and shields very valuable hardware, and is determined to capture them in one piece if at all possible."

"It looks that way, but how do you know?"

"Look at the way it's behaving. Trust me. As I think I told you once before, that hardware is what this whole game is all about." He looked at his two old comrades. "You remember the way we acquired that stuff?"

"Not likely to forget it." Hinna shook her head. Wirral was silent, working desperately.

"Tell me," said Tanya.

Skorba turned to her almost eagerly. "To run a con like this one, we couldn't use just any ship. We really needed to look like a berserker, right? To intimidate people; the last thing we wanted was a real battle. So we needed a big weapon, to demonstrate how tough we were. Also we had to be able to latch onto a yacht like this one and drag it to a halt. That kind of tough military hardware's not so easy to find. It meant bribing someone who had access to a military stockpile that was poorly guarded and poorly managed." Skorba paused. "Finally we succeeded. And we were pleased, because most of the hardware we picked up was berserker works. Parts of a machine that someone had salvaged after it was destroyed in battle."

"I thought the Templars routinely took charge of that kind of material."

"They do whenever they can. But other military organizations don't always cooperate with them. In this case someone was willing to sell the stuff, under the counter."

"Guns ready!" Wirral announced suddenly. His fingers clicked shut a small metal cover inside the console he was working on. "Fire at those lifeboats if they're launched."

Skorba studied the display stage in front of his command chair. "What about shields?"

"Not up yet—I'm working on 'em."

The ship's brain broke in to confirm, in its pleasant imperturbable voice, that the main battery was ready to use. "Weapons accumulators fully charged."

"Then we're going to hit the berserker," Skorba murmured. "Or its shields anyway. Try and buy a little time—ready—"

Wirral's angry argument was interrupted by sound indicating that both lifeboats had been launched from the yacht; a moment later the ship's brain confirmed the fact.

Tanya watched the nearest display stage as the two little images popped into view, then went pitching and rolling about uncertainly within a few hundred meters of the yacht. Obviously neither boat was under the control of an expert pilot.

"So," said Hinna, "the old bitch's sent out volunteers—"

"Yes, but to do what?" Tanya asked.

"One boat's heading for the berserker—look—"

"So it is, but why?"

"Look out! The other one's looping back—"

Around Tanya a confused outcry was going up. "We're near the center of the ship. It's not going to reach us—"

"It will if it comes right back in through the lifeboat bay!"

The nearest of the darting little images on the stage flared brightly and disappeared. Skorba, controlling the yacht's guns, had cooly blasted the kamikaze lifeboat into vapor before it could achieve its suicidal purpose.

"The other one's going to the berserker."

"Why?"

"I can think of several reasons, none of them good."

Once more human conversation on the bridge was interrupted by the calm, urbane voice of the ship's electronic brain, this time reporting that power to the yacht's main weapons had just been cut off.

Skorba sat stunned for a moment. Then he cursed and jiggled controls and indicators, all to no avail. "Have we at least got the shields up yet?"

"Hell no!" Wirral shouted back. "We never will, if the power's cut off to them too. The damned goodlife must have got into the engine room, reached the power lamps."

Emergency power supplies would continue to provide life support throughout the ship for some hours at least, and to keep the electronics going on the bridge. And the artificial gravity was still holding up, but for how long—

On the stages the second lifeboat could be seen reaching the berserker, and disappearing against that terrible dark shape. Only a minute or two later the image of the small boat reappeared. The little craft had separated itself from the berserker and was heading back toward the yacht.

Wirral paused wearily in his work. "What now? We're dead. Whether it decides to ram us, or brings over a real boarding machine."

"Maybe not. The accumulators in the weapon system have some pop left in them. Maybe enough to burn one more small boat—"

Skorba waited until the lifeboat was within a hundred meters, and then tried.

"We hit it!"

Not with full power, this time, though. The target was not vaporized. Solid debris clanged off the yacht's hull an immeasurable fraction of a second after the explosion at close range.

Relief on the bridge was shortlived. Within a minute after the blast, the goodlife leader was back on intercom, gleefully taunting her enemies with the claim that a berserker boarding machine had been on the lifeboat, and had managed to reach the yacht intact.

The four badlife survivors stared at each other, not knowing whether to believe the claim or not.

Skorba reached out and switched off the intercom, cutting off their triumphant enemy in mid-sentence.

A few moments later a new noise intruded on the bridge, coming from outside the same hatch through which the refugees had entered, and where the ineffectual battering had earlier taken place. Growing steadily louder, it suggested to Tanya the highspeed whine of power tools.

Minutes passed. Wirral completed the job of reconnecting the control circuits for the shields and drive. There was no rejoicing; those systems were going to remain useless as long as the power was cut off.

At irregular intervals the yacht's hull sang under the impact of wavefronts of radiation, as weapons flared aboard the berserker and the swindlers' ship, transmitting violence far beyond the human scale. On the display stages it was easy to see that gradually—but only gradually—the berserker was asserting its mastery over its powerful but relatively clumsy opponent. Only a combination of especially good defensive shields and a formidable offensive weapon could have allowed the three terrified humans on the other ship to survive combat as long as this.

The sound of power tools eating at the hatch had ceased for the time being. The four people on the bridge of the yacht could think of nothing to do but wait. And talk to each other, from time to time.

Wirral, still resentful, demanded of Skorba. "How did you discover these marks we picked out were really good-life? How long have you known?"

"The idea crept up on me gradually," he answered drily, and glanced at Tanya. "You know how that is."

She was silent.

He went on: "I wasn't entirely sure until I went with the old lady to Damaturu. Some things she said when we were alone in the launch clinched it for me. I knew then we weren't going to be coming back with real gems." He showed a lopsided grin. "I think she was contemplating recruiting me for the cause."

"Still you came back," Tanya said.

"I had my reasons."

"What reasons?" demanded Wirral incredulously, scowling at him. "You knew there was a real berserker coming, and you still came back?"

"You don't believe I'd do that."

"No, I don't. So you couldn't have known they were really goodlife until later. All right, you're off the hook on that one, pal. About not telling us."

Once more Skorba looked at Tanya. He asked: "Can you see now why she invited both of us on the voyage?"

"You tell me."

"Wherever we got off, we'd talk about our trip, spread the word of her presence. She wanted to make sure me people who were planning to swindle Lady Blanqui knew her exact location in the Cluster, just where she was traveling in her small unescorted ship. So the goodlife knew we were after the Lady—probably they arranged somehow to warn the real one off."

"And they also knew," said Tanya, "somehow, that your ship was carrying the hardware they wanted for their god, for the berserker."

There was a lull in the conversation. All was quiet except for the distant, ghostly ringing of the hull under an avalanche of radiation.

"Why aren't we trying to do something?" Hinna demanded suddenly.

The others looked at her. "What would you suggest?" asked Wirral.

"How about trying to get the power lamps turned back on?"

"The only place to do that is in the engine room. But we're unarmed, and—"

"If only we had weapons—!"

There was a dull, despairing silence, suddenly broken.

"Of course!" Tanya shouted at her shipmates.

The three of them goggled at her, ready to hear anything.

"We're all idiots!" she screamed at them. "Any ship owned and outfitted by goodlife, by people who equip themselves with handcuffs, is going to have weapons on board. Isn't it?"

"All right!" Hinna shouted back. "But where are they? The goodlife have them all."

"Are you sure? I'll bet they don't. What's the most likely place aboard ship to store weapons, for people who want to have them handy? How about the bridge?"

Hinna sat motionless for a moment. Then she flew to pull open storage cabinets next to the one in which she had found the emergency toolkit. Neatly stowed on racks inside the first receptacle she opened were several handguns, along with two or three shoulder weapons, and some dark, fist-size lozenges. The latter were labeled with warnings about the danger of explosions, and some of them came equipped with protruding wires.

Wirral and Skorba sprang from their chairs to go through the treasure eagerly.

Skorba, checking a shoulder weapon's charge, murmured: "I don't know how much good this stuff is going to do against a berserker's boarding machine. But now we've a chance. There are things we can try."

Outside the hatch through which the badlife had entered the bridge die sounds of assault resumed. Battering, crunching impacts alternated with the noise of power drilling. Beyond the hatch in the opposite bulkhead, all was silent.

"We're not going to be able to keep a boarding machine locked out," said Skorba.

"Then we'll have to welcome it in." Wirral began to gather up the explosive lozenges, tugging at their wires, frowning at their labels.

The assaulted hatch was not going to hold much longer. Merciless smashing impacts, driven by far more than human strength, were starting to bend in the heavy metal.

"Welcome it in," Wirral repeated, "while we get out." He seated himself again in the captain's chair, this time with grenades clustered in his lap. Once more he opened the control console.

Skorba crouched beside him. "Use this," he volunteered, and handed over his media machine. "If it hasn't saved us by now, it isn't going to."

The other man accepted the offering, then hesitated. "If we put a booby trap here on the master controls," he muttered. "We won't be able to use the ship afterward."

"Anywhere on the bridge might have same effect, and using the ship afterward is the least of our worries. This's the only place they're certain to put their hands on. Hurry!"

The women watched while the two men, evidently both experienced in such matters, worked together. In less than a minute several of the explosive lozenges, wired together, were hidden beneath the captain's chair. The improvised detonator, a small component Skorba had extracted from one of the firearms, was concealed just under the casually arranged communication device.

Skorba made the last connection and then with great delicacy pulled his hands away. Very carefully Wirral edged himself out of the chair.

"That's it," he whispered. "All we can do now." He turned and gestured toward the silent hatch, in the opposite bulkhead from the noisy one.

Everyone moved that way. It represented the only possible way out. Trying to flee into the lifeboat bay would be suicidal, because that compartment had been open and airless since the boats were launched.

Already the hatch being attacked by the boarding machine was on the point of giving way. Now Wirral, standing clear of the aperture and with an armed grenade in hand, jerked open the hatch opposite.

The enemy had not left his escape route unguarded. At once a silent flare of gunfire splashed in across the bridge, a beam that broke things open and made them smoke. The badlife were all standing back and no one was hit.

Skorba and Wirral flipped grenades out through the opening.

The double explosion reverberated through whatever compartment or corridor lay beyond, cleansing it with fire.

An instant later Wirral, gun in hand, had plunged out recklessly. Hinna scrambled immediately after him, and Skorba after her. Tanya, last to evacuate the bridge, found herself almost falling into a scorched compartment filled with stinging fumes from the grenades, littered with broken furniture and machinery. A crumpled, bloody body on the deck, dimly recognizable as that of Yero, stirred feebly and cried out for its mother. Even as Tanya cleared the opening she could hear the other hatch, behind her on the far side of the bridge, give way at last under the berserker's onslaught.

Skorba slammed shut the hatch the instant she was through it. She scrambled to her feet, trying to help him—but there was no way to bolt or lock the door from this side.

Four seconds later an irresistible mechanical arm struck the portal from the bridge side, banging it fully open, hurling away both of the humans who had been trying to keep it closed.

And at that same moment one of the goodlife, rushing to take full control of the ship, must have grabbed up Skorba's communication device from where it lay across the captain's chair obstructing the captain's console.

Even for the four who had fled into the next compartment, the blast was deafening and stunning.

The man-shaped berserker was blown through the hatchway it had just started to open, launched like a projectile into the bulkhead opposite. There it was stopped, smashed in a crushing impact, because that bulkhead was backed up by the hard strength of the ship's outer hull.

Amid a renewed clamor of ship's alarms, Tanya went crawling about dazedly. Yero was now lying still. Parts of the broken boarding machine still twitched, and Skorba was trying to incinerate them with a shoulder weapon.

Having realized that she herself was still alive, she sank for a time into unconsciousness.

The lapse must have been brief. Tanya regained her senses to find that her three companions were still alive. But the fight had left the Golden Hind permanently crippled, without lifeboats, drifting helplessly in the immediate presence of a berserker which was undoubtedly going to gobble it up as soon as it had completed some more urgent business.

The dazed survivors crawled about, deafened, shocked, in a compartment half-choked with fumes.

Skorba kept grabbing his surviving shipmates one after another, shaking them, reassuring them that the goodlife were all dead, and help was on the way.

Wirral, his voice totally exhausted, said: "You're babbling. There's still the berserker, the big one. As soon as it's finished stripping our old ship of the hardware it wants, it'll come after us. It won't forget us."

Skorba looked at his own wrists, each still clasped by a metal cuff. "What time is it?"

"Time? Were you hit in the head? What does the time matter?"

"I tell you help is on its way. It'll be here any moment now."

"You 're delirious."

"No." Skorba looked about, and coughed. "Let's try to get to the lounge. Maybe the fumes won't be so bad there."

Helping one another through smoke-choked corridors, amid a ceaseless babble of alarms, the four surviving badlife made their way back to the lounge. Here one, at least, of the display stages was still functioning. Skorba tried to establish communication with the ship's electronic brain, but could elicit no response.

Hinna was rubbing her bandaged arm. "When it comes for us I don't want to be taken alive."

"It's not coming for us. Look."

On the stage had suddenly appeared three new shapes, those of sizable spacecraft approaching from three different directions. New violence erupted, vastly greater than before.

"What—?"

"They're Templar fighters," Skorba said, "from Damaturu."

Around him the others stared, afraid to believe. The swindlers' old ship drifted, inert but free, defensive shields still flickering, not quite dead. The damaged berserker was surrounded, trapped, being pummeled from long range. It tried to fight back but was outgunned. The hull of the yacht sang a rising polyphonic paean of shielded radiation.

"They're fighters, all right," admitted Wirral. "How do you know they're Templars? How d'you know where they're from?"

"Because I ordered them."

"You what? When? How?"

"When I was on Damaturu. Have you ever been there, in the plaza near the Templars' tower? When I had a chance to play tourist, I stood there and aimed my media machine at those big antennas and sent them a signal. I packed in our coordinates here, and enough information to give them a good idea of the situation."

"The Templars wouldn't launch three ships on the strength of one message coming in from a stranger, out of the blue!"

"It didn't exactly come from a stranger—it had the identity code of one of their agents attached to it."

"One of their agents?"

"Me." Skorba paused.

Skorba's old comrades stared at him as if he had suddenly revealed himself to be a robot. Tanya began to giggle strangely; under ordinary circumstances such a sound would have been considered unhealthy. Skorba looked at her, then continued: "You wondered why I came back when I knew the Lady was a fake, and there was a real berserker coming. I was hunting it, that's why. So I was sure the Templars had launched." He paused. "Reasonably sure."

Tanya was letting herself slide into hysterics. She did a thorough job of it, devoting several minutes to the task and creating a lot of noise.

Beginning to recover, she listened to some more of Skorba's explanations. "You see, my gadget had been steadily emitting a beacon signal since shortly after the Golden Hind left Malawi. That was its real purpose. The Templars gave it to me when I volunteered to work for them."

"Why'd you do that?" asked Hinna in a small dreamy voice.

"Because," the pudgy man said, "I don't like berserkers. One of them once—did something—to someone I. . . ."

He shook his head and faced back to Tanya. "All the chatter between myself and Wirral about the device was mainly to draw attention away from our imitation berserker, standing mere by the hatchway like a clothing dummy.

"And the signal was rather special, consisting of tagged neutrinos. They're not shielded by the hull of an ordinary ship like this one."

"And no one realized you were transmitting a signal like that?"

Skorba shook his head patiently. "Everyone detected it. That was my intention."

"We picked up the signal in space near Malawi," Wirral said. "So we knew Skorba had managed to get himself aboard the yacht. We had an easy time following her and closing in."

Skorba resumed. "I'm sure our hostess picked up the signal too. But she wasn't going to say anything about it to her passengers. She must have been delighted to realize that she had me actually on board—one of the swindling scoundrels whose vessel she was trying to trap. All she had to do was cruise along, waiting for my pals in their fake berserker to home on my signal.

"Once safely away from Malawi, the real goodlife radioed to their master what was happening. It must have followed the yacht at a distance, ready to pounce on the fake berserker as soon as it showed up. The real berserker was hanging back at extreme range to avoid detection, so the pouncing took several hours.

"And shortly after I came back from Damaturu, three Templar warships were in space following my signal too."

* * *

Up through the deck of the lounge, audible above the continuous alarms, came the familiar sounds of a launch docking.

Minutes later, on board a Templar launch, and on their way to safety, the four survivors got plenty of clean air to breathe, and medical attention. Another launch was removing survivors from the other ship.

A Templar officer in white space-combat gear informed the survivors from the yacht that her people had come looking for a berserker as quickly as they could after getting Skorba's message and checking his verification code. She was sorry it had taken them so long to close in, but they had been compelled to hang back at long range until they were sure they had the berserker surrounded.

"Where's the berserker now?" asked Tanya.

"We're somewhere near the middle of it." The killing machine now existed only as a radiant and swiftly expanding nebula of gas.

The officer looked at Skorba with grudging admiration. "I admit I didn't think you were going to pull it off. By the way, the real name of the old woman who commanded this yacht was Dala Clonmel. She and the rest of the good-life with her had quite a reputation and a record. So do you and your pals, I know—but I expect we can arrange to let you walk away after debriefing." Templars had neither authority nor interest concerning criminals other than goodlife.

"Thanks," said Skorba numbly.

The officer switched her attention to Tanya. Now her tone was more cautious. "I don't believe you're someone we were expecting to find on board the yacht, ma'am. Who are you?"

Tanya didn't answer right away.

"Is there something wrong?"

Tanya laughed again. When she spoke, her words were hard to understand. "How do I know you're really Templars?"

Her hysterics were coming back.