The officer, Lieutenant Duane, was smooth, young, and personable. There was nothing in the least nonorganic about him.
"Meanwhile, I'd like to ask some questions, get into what we know about how the berserkers operate."
"Sure. Within the limits of security, of course."
"Of course. But I'm new to this business, and I can't help wondering: Is security really a problem in a war where neither side can really infiltrate the other?"
The officer's eyes, like those of a lot of other people, began to glaze over when security was questioned. If military people had doubts about the reality of the danger, they were not going to express them to an outsider. "I wouldn't say that can't happen. Goodlife really exist, you know. They're on just about every planet."
Certainly there were some, Jory thought to herself, a few deluded psychotics. But did they really represent a serious threat? Or was it mainly a means of whipping up enthusiasm that still seemed to flag in some people? The journalist, like many other people, had doubts on that point. But let that subject pass for now; she could debate it with someone else.
She was on the verge of springing the name of Hypo on Duane, just to see how he reacted. With the enthusiasm of one to whom any secret was a challenge, she was becoming more and more determined to probe into the nature and activities of that mysterious entity. From bits of information gathered here and there, she was beginning to suspect that the secret department had something to do with trying to solve berserker codes. Of course, none of these people on the cruiser, including Yamanim himself, would admit having anything to do with that.
She had seen Gift's reaction to the suggestion that he and his ship had been working for the mysterious Hypo. And she had seen Gift entering the secret headquarters.
Now Jory wanted to pursue the subject further, if possible, without bringing up the name. She feared the code word, if recognized, might have the effect of shutting down communication altogether.
"How often do the member machines of a berserker task force, those that are working together in some particular operation, change the code by which they communicate with one another?"
Her escort wrinkled his handsome brow. "That's a hard one. I don't think there is a single answer. A lot of other people share that opinion with me, and it's no secret. I'm sure some of our people could quote you different probabilities for different situations."
"Tell me something about berserker codes in general. When they come in to attack, what do we expect to be able to intercept?"
Duane didn't seem at all reluctant to talk about berserker communication codes; probably, Jory soon realized, because he knew practically nothing about the subject. The lecture on fundamentals continued: Berserkers in general have several kinds of communication code built in. By such means, machines long separated from one another, or even models of different generations, built according to divergent plans, could always communicate with each other.
Humans had long ago mastered these original codes, in their several simple variations, and were constantly monitoring for them. But very little berserker traffic was that simply encrypted any more.
"Radio, in which we may include all light-speed communications in any wavelength, taking place in normal space, is of course practical only over comparatively short distances. Two fleets, for example, separated by light-years in normal space, must exchange information by sending ships, or uncrewed couriers, back and forth. Naturally, those are practically impossible to intercept, just as our couriers are."
"Naturally." Jory had already known all this, but she continued listening patiently.
"Berserkers have a kind of chain of command," Duane was assuring her a few minutes later, "just as Solarian humans do, or any other coherent fighting force."
"If there is any third military power in the Galaxy."
"I don't know what it would be." The officer shrugged.
"But you're right. No coordination among units would be possible without some order of rank."
"So, when you say one of their computers outranks another—"
"We mean essentially the same thing we mean when discussing human command systems. The ranking computer has authority to give orders that override those issued by inferior machines."
Jory was struck by an intriguing thought. "Then is there, somewhere in the Galaxy, a grand berserker commander in chief? A generalissimo, field marshals? The counterpart of FM Yamanim?"
The questioner's imagination, unbidden, had called forth a sort of cartoon picture of a proud machine, bedecked with medals.
"The question has been much debated by our strategists." The dashing lieutenant was taking on the sound and look of a pompous general. "The majority opinion is against it. Of course, there has to be some automatic agreement among them as to which computer, or combination of computers, outranks the others."
"I don't suppose they ever worry about promotion."
"That I wouldn't know." Pause. "How about a drink? I've got something nice in my quarters."
"Maybe later."
Then they were inside the tencube, standing on the slightly yielding floor. The windowless, cubic chamber, ten meters by ten-by-ten, at the moment was cavernously empty.
To experience the chamber's full powers and effects, it was necessary on entering to put on helmets equipped with sensory and control feedbacks. Having done so, the display was awesome. The artificial gravity had been weakened within these rubbery walls, studded with projections of polyphase matter of various sizes. These outcroppings provided physical support when needed—the visitor could leap and climb about in almost perfect freedom and safety. Jory had been in a similar chamber before, and knew that when properly used, for matters astronomical, it could begin to give the viewer—more accurately, the participant—an awed sense of how big the Galaxy truly was.
The would-be dashing lieutenant continued obviously, though fairly subtly, trying to make it with her, but Jory remained intent on business and brushed him off. He was not easy to discourage, and she did not do so without regret. Privately she had to admit to herself that she did find a great many military men attractive.
It was obvious, thought Jory, when one looked at the display now coming into existence at her guide's command, that the center of Solarian power and influence had never moved very far from Sol System. The territory of colonization appeared as an irregular blob whose shape had changed, even as its size had increased, over the last few centuries. But Earth remained very near the center.
Little more than 5 percent of the Galaxy's volume had as yet been seriously explored by Solarian ships. And less than one in twenty of its billions of solar systems. Most of what those ships had looked at was along what was still called the Orion-Cygnus spiral Galactic arm, the name drawn from a system of constellations that had been ancient long before Solarians first ventured into space.
Several thousand standard years had passed since reaction engines had been superseded by more sophisticated devices, capable of the direct manipulation of spacetime. Space travel had graduated from its rocket-driven infancy. With the bonds of time and distance broken, at least up to the galactic scale, Solarians had moved out among the stars.
Even a berserker megamassacre that succeeded in sterilizing Earth would not, of course, destroy all chances for Galactic life. Life's champion, by default it seemed, the bellicose Earth-descended race, was now too widely dispersed to depend for its survival on any single strong point, any cluster of worlds, or any sector. But the obliteration of Earth as a home of life would very probably be the beginning of the end.
And any galaxy once thoroughly harrowed by berserkers would be left as lifeless as the interior of a sun.
Perhaps the most conspicuous feature of the view of the
Galaxy currently on display was the feature called the Gulf of Repose. This was an emptiness, outlined mainly by the scarcity within it of small sun symbols, which occupied several thousand light-years of space between two spiral arms, one of which contained the homeworld
s.
The Gulf region was so vast that it was still prominent when the Galactic model was shrunken down to tabletop dimensions. It was deceptively peaceful in appearance, a bland void containing little in the way of star clusters or nebular material.
Enlargement of the void in the display showed that the interstitial stars speckling its emptiness were few and mostly unremarkable. Meanwhile some spectacular Galactic components ranged along its flanks assured that space did not look empty to the voyager making the long crossing.
On one side of the Gulf, sprawled across the thickness of an adjoining arm, lay the hundred or so habitable planets, in more than a score of systems, which had come to be called the homeworlds. Sol System and Earth itself were near the center of this modest grouping. On the far side of the Gulf, very distant on this scale, lay what must now be conceded to have become berserker territory.
The premier of Earth and her advisers, eschewing any merely defensive claims, had already publicly vowed to win those lost systems back for Solarian humanity.
On the far side of the Gulf, it was possible to locate at least approximately the locale where the spy ship had been destroyed, leaving Spacer Gift as its sole survivor. When commanded, the display pointed out the spot with a small blinking beacon.
The bright sun of Uhao, and the peculiar, sunless object called Fifty Fifty, were both more than a thousand light-years out in the Gulf, with Fifty Fifty, despite its name suggesting a halfway point, being substantially closer to the other side.
"What does intelligence believe to be the ultimate object of all this recent enemy activity? Maybe ultimate is the wrong word. Of course, we know that their ultimate goal is to kill us all."
Jory, her body rising slowly through the midst of the display, knew that her guide was drifting, bobbing beside her in the gentle gravity, though she could not see him. "Right," his disembodied voice replied. A pointer of pure light sprang into existence in Jory's perception. "And it's obvious that the only way for the berserkers to achieve their goal is by an attack on our homeworlds." The pointer moved, grew brighter by way of lending emphasis. "On Earth itself."
"That's frightening."
"I'd say that's rather an understatement. We've been secure against attack here in the homeworlds for so long, or we were before the raid on Port Diamond, that most of us had come to think this sector was totally immune. Of course it's not, as the raid on PD demonstrated."
"A moment ago, you said 'ultimate goal.' That implies they have some intermediate, immediate objective—?"
"Right here." Once more the electronic pointer flickered.
About halfway across the Gulf lay a peculiar spacetime formation, an excrescence of naturally modified matter, some of it polyphase, which at one time or another had borne a variety of different names.
The current official designation was Fifty Fifty.
The fast battle cruiser, a vessel as long as a football field and half as broad, plunged on under skillful astrogation, drawing power from the currents of the Galactic sea around it, flickering routinely in and out of flightspace, carrying Field Marshal Yamanim and a few of his staff officers, along with chosen members of the media corps, to Fifty Fifty. The cruiser was rapidly closing in on its destination.
Jory was fully aware that Yamanim probably wanted to use her, the relatively naive beginner, to plant his ideas in the media.
Every time she and the field marshal encountered each other, in the small world of the cruiser's interior, he found a way to make some subtly flattering remark.
He wasn't buying himself anything, even if he thought he was. However she got there, she had to go where her job was waiting, and the action was.
Jory was pondering the various indications she had picked up, that human intelligence might have succeeded in breaking the berserker communications code. But how had we managed to intercept enough messages to make that possible?
Less than two days after her visit to the cruiser's tencube chamber, Jory was staring with fascination at the growing image of their destination on the onboard holostages.
The cruiser was coming within practical radio communication distance of the Fifty Fifty base.
Presently she abandoned the holostages, made her way to a cleared port, and looked out. She considered herself a veteran where space travel was concerned, but she had never seen anything like this before.
The approach to Fifty Fifty had very little in common with the comparatively routine experience of entering a normal solar system. Most obviously, there was no sun within a couple of light-years.
The visible, habitable portion of the object called Fifty Fifty had a shape between that of a football and a true sphere, more closely resembling the latter. The thing—it would have been wildly inaccurate to call it a planet—was only a few kilometers across, and its entire surface was vaguely, perpetually glowing with relatively dull light, kind and pleasant to the eyes. None of your usual sun glare here.
The Object, as some of the old charts still called it, was not essentially a gravitational radiant, though it had a kinship with that class of phenomena, and possibly a radiant, somewhere just around the corner and out of normal space, was associated with it. That could provide an imitation of bright sunlight.
All the guidebooks and the most elaborate tencube simulations assured the potential visitor that Solarian lungs breathing Fifty Fifty's artificially created atmosphere enjoyed what they found: Pressure and oxygen content normal for Earth at sea level. Once an atmosphere had been established, maintenance was comparatively easy. Walking feet—no special foot-gear needed here—crunched the surface as they would a sandy beach. But if the surface was examined closely, there were considerable differences.
The structure was only kept from collapsing to starlike density and minute size by the fact that part of it, by far the greater part, existed outside of normal space.
Gravity at the Object's surface tended to be of the same order of magnitude as that at the surface of the Earth, so closely matched as to be generally comfortable for unarmored Solarians, though the field strength varied from hour to hour and from place to place, sometimes changing substantially within a few hundred meters. Strong artificial-gravity generators, spotted strategically throughout the Object's volume, had proven necessary to maintain something like an Earth-normal value everywhere, for the safety and convenience of visitors.
After spending most of the trip talking to the field marshal and his staff officers, Jory was convinced that capture of Fifty Fifty by the berserkers, and the establishment of their own base on that strong point, would be the next logical and important step in their strategic assault on Earth and the other worlds that lay at the center of the human domain.
Over the centuries of Solarian space exploration, several other objects of a similar nature, frequently called atolls, had been discovered at locations scattered around the known Galaxy; such oddities tended to pop up in the gaps between spiral arms. They didn't radiate much of anything, as a rule, and so were very unlikely to be noticed at distances of a thousand light-years or more.
Making a close approach to any of these objects was a tricky business for spacegoing ship or machine, getting trickier as one drew nearer, though it never became virtually impossible, as in the case of a gravitational radiant. Objects like Fifty Fifty were not nearly as hard to assault as were the fortresses sometimes built surrounding Radiants, the latter being in effect steep gravitational hills; but still the physics of the situation gave the defenders some advantage.
Still it was possible—and the berserker threat had made it very desirable—to maintain a military base on this particular atoll. Ships using the proper precautions could land and take off. There was room and raw materials for shipyards to be conveniently constructed. Here ships or machines could be repowered, rearmed, and repaired.
Until very recently, at least, no Solarian would have called the Fifty Fifty strongpoint vital, to Earth or to any other human strategy or possession; but now the strange and isol
ated rock was suddenly beginning to assume an increased importance.
Extraordinary spacetime conditions in the middle of this phenomenon sometimes gave the visual appearance—when seen from an interplanetary distance on the order of hundreds of millions of kilometers—of a blue tropical lagoon, surrounded by a ring suggesting a coral reef, and containing two "islands" of irregular shape, of a flat, sandy appearance, representing the island's intrusion into normal space. The glare of unsettling pseudo-sunlight bathed it all.
On the tawny curves of these islands, signs of human habitation, mainly regular humps indicating shelters and shipyards, were readily visible, though not conspicuous.
SEVEN
It was standard Space Force policy that any enlistee or officer going home on leave could hitch a ride on military transport whenever space happened to be available. The cost of civilian transportation and the level of military pay being what they were, the great majority of servicemen and women on leave sought diligently to hitch rides on military ships.
Two standard days after Spacer Sebastian Gift's departure from Port Diamond, his progress toward Earth, with orders in his pocket calling for twenty days of convalescent leave, had brought him as far as one of the large artificial satellites forming a transportation hub in low orbit of the Cradle Planet.
Still, it seemed, his luck was holding; he had come this far very rapidly, on the fast cruiser bringing Admiral Bowman Earthward to plead, before the premier of Earth herself, the secret, special case for accepting the intelligence estimates from Hypo, and committing on that basis whatever Solarian forces could be mustered to try to save the world.
Not that Nifty knew anything about high-level conferences, or what gambles might be taken to save humanity. He knew only that the admiral had been in a hurry to get here, had ordered the cruiser parked in orbit, and had switched to a shuttlecraft to take his small party down to Earth, where presumably he had been summoned by high-ups for some momentous meeting. His arrival would be less conspicuous that way.
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