Several weeks had passed since his grim and unproductive visit with Winston Cheng, and three days since his encounter with Paddy. Harry was up early in yet another cheap hotel room, greeting a late, modestly spectacular sunrise on yet another world. This planet was more thickly populated than Cascadia and, according to the latest crime statistics, less marred by strong-arm robbery. At least he thought the local sunrise modestly spectacular, because it had hues and shadings, and a way of seeming to stick to the horizon, that he found unfamiliar.
The billions of stars in the ten percent or so of the Galaxy so far more or less explored by Earth-descended humans were known to support hundreds of very Earth-like planets, with new ones frequently turning up. The philosophers among Harry's restless ED race, as well as those from branches of Galactic humanity less devoted to physical exploration, endlessly debated the reason for this profusion of comfortable places. Some thought it was due to sheer blind luck, the vagaries of quantum fluctuation from which the Universe had been born, while others saw commendable foresight on the part of the universal Designer. Either way, one consequence of such a respectable number of very similar worlds was that Earth-descended human travelers sometimes tended to lose track of just where they were.
Having redeemed a somewhat restless night with a reasonably good breakfast, Earth-descended Harry this morning was pondering whether he should try to make one more run with his leased ship, carrying a partial cargo that at best could be only marginally profitable, and might actually lose money—or if it would be better to formally terminate the lease and just leave the vessel sitting where she sat.
He was practically certain that he could get some kind of a piloting job before too long—and also pretty sure that it would not be the kind of job that he enjoyed. Nor would it allow him to get home anytime in the near future.
Thinking back to his meeting with Cheng, he was reflecting on his own state of mind, then and now. Harry wanted to find out if he was really tempted, on any level, to change his mind and accept the old man's offer. Of course it might already be too late to do that. But the sheer, out-and-out craziness of the plan made it dangerously attractive to some part of Harry's nature. If only . . .
But no. Forget it, he warned himself sternly. Let him sign up for any such scheme, and Becky would certainly kill him, if somehow the Gravel Pit's berserkers—if any were lurking there—and its chaotic flying rocks failed to do a thorough job.
Harry hated to admit it to himself, but there were moments when it seemed to him that what he needed was not really a ship at all but just a ticket home. If a powerful genie were to appear at such a moment, offering to grant him just one wish, he might burn that wish—or three wishes, if they came in package deals—simply to get back to Becky and Ethan.
He sighed. None of this was getting him anywhere with his immediate problem, which was what to do about the leased ship. Trying to make up his mind on that boring subject, he walked half a kilometer to the spaceport. On arrival he stood on the ramp, regarding from a little distance the undistinguished and unprofitable mass of metal, basically a blunt cone, as big as several houses, standing on its base. Nothing wrong with it, really, as a means of transportation. It was good enough to haul people and modest loads of freight from here to there among the stars. But that was about it.
Actually Harry was glad this pile of mediocre technology didn't belong to him. It was somewhat bigger than his old Witch, but nowhere near in the same class for performance—or for comfort, either.
. . . someone was calling his name.
Turning, he looked a hundred meters or so across the flat and level ramp, to see a couple of men approaching steadily on foot. One of them was wearing spacefarer's garb, the other some kind of local uniform. The spaceman, to Harry's surprise, soon came into focus as Hank Aragon, an old friend and former Space Force officer. Aragon was raising an arm in salute, hailing Harry.
Harry grinned and waved in answer. The grin faded slowly when he saw the look on his friend's face as he drew near. Both Aragon and the uniformed stranger, who did not appear to be a cop, looked seriously grim. The stranger was wiping sweat from his face, though the morning was brisk.
The first thing that Hank Aragon said was: "We've been trying to find you for a while. This fellow's with the Port Authority."
"Hello." By now Harry's smile had faded entirely, and he could feel the beginning of an inward chill. "What is it?"
The two men, taking turns, were explaining that they had traced Harry's whereabouts through the police record of his fight with the robot.
So?
"Harry." Aragon's voice was that of a man who didn't know how to say what he had to say, but was compelled to make a stab at it anyway. Finally the words came out. "It's your family."
"What?" No. Anything else but that.
"It came in the official courier, coded, but thoroughly verified, I hate like hell to say. Someone's trying to keep it quiet at the other end, and the newsorgs don't seem to have it yet, but there's no doubt . . . your wife and son . . . they've been caught, taken. By berserkers."
Harry had been trying to brace himself, to take the bad news of some kind of accident, but not this. This was simply crazy. He felt an impulse to lash out, to knock some of the big white ugly teeth right out of Hank Aragon's mouth, because the man must have gone insane, trying to make up a joke on such a subject. But at the same time, Harry knew he wasn't going to hit anyone.
Now they were telling him irrelevancies. The bad news had been transmitted through the local Space Force office. The story sounded to Harry like some crazy kind of demonic echo. Harry's own wife and child had joined the small roster of berserker captives, the only other members being Winston Cheng's two relatives. But nobody now was mentioning Claudia Cheng and her son. Evidently the news of that kidnapping was still being suppressed, despite the fact that leaders of both the Force and the Templars had been told early on about Cheng's loss.
Harry had to hear the story of his own disaster a few more times, the impossible truth phrased in a couple of different ways, before it truly started to sink in. Then it was as if he'd had an arm or leg suddenly hacked off, the deadly shock that drained your life before the true pain started. His core vitality seemed suddenly to have been exhausted.
Now Harry's informants were telling him, as if it mattered, as if anything could matter, how the people at Space Force sector headquarters had been unable to come up with more than a few isolated records of anything like these bizarre captures happening before, to anyone, anywhere in the Galaxy. Berserkers killed—that was what they did, the task the damned machines had been created to perform. They had no craving to kidnap victims, and they never did—except on very rare occasions and to serve some special purpose.
Some portion of Harry's mind still functioned, in a way. At least a few people at Space Force headquarters, he realized, must now be aware of both kidnappings. There were some shrewd folks there, and they would undoubtedly be trying to discover some kind of link—and some kind of link there had to be.
As far as Harry could see, his meeting with Winston Cheng, their brief consultation on the subject of Kidnapping One, formed the sole connection between himself and the tycoon. It was also the only link between their two families. But why should a simple meeting have provoked a copycat crime? There must be some hidden depth to the series of events, some links in the chain that Harry could not yet see . . .
For a moment he literally couldn't see anything at all, because the world was turning gray in front of him, and it seemed that he was likely to pass out. He tried to tell himself that it was all a bad dream, and soon he would come out of it.
While he was waiting to wake up, Harry stumbled and stuttered: "How could that have happened? They were home on Esmerelda . . ." Of course no world was ever totally safe; but everyone liked to think that their own chosen sanctuary might be the glorious exception.
"They weren't snatched there," his friend's reluctant voice was telling him.
"Then where? What . . . ?"
Patiently, Aragon repeated the few sketchy details that he'd been handed. The local authorities at the site of the kidnapping had managed to reconstruct a partial record of Becky's actions over the preceding few days. People she had talked to on the trip said she spoke of having suddenly, unexpectedly, come into a substantial sum of money. No one could remember her saying anything about just where this inheritance had come from. But Harry was nodding vaguely; this part of the story did not astonish him. He was aware that his wife had a couple of elderly grandparents, and Becky had given the impression that the old folks could be well off.
Hank and his companion were shoving several printouts under Harry's nose.
"Harry. This is what we got. This is all we know."
He read it, trying to make sense. According to the report, or the message, she and the boy had taken ship to come to see Harry, planning to surprise Daddy with the good news that suddenly they had lots of money! And wasn't that wonderful!? Knowing Becky, Harry thought she had probably used up half the windfall, whatever the amount, just in celebration and travel. It was just the kind of impulsive thing she was likely to do. And what made her think she could be sure of finding him, when his business kept him on the move . . .
Somewhere in the course of their travels, changing ships at a system that served as a minor transport hub, she and Ethan had boarded a small shuttle. Just a simple ordinary vessel, one that would have seemed no more dangerous than any of a thousand others . . . but before the simple journey was half over, something, some damned thing, darting from the outer darkness of deep space had pounced on it . . .
Harry could remember vividly the recordings shown him by the old man, Cheng, driven into a controlled craziness by his own grief. Harry wasn't sure at what moment he had decided to sit down on the ramp, or exactly why it had seemed like the thing to do. But here he was, his bottom on the ground. The people who had come to inform him of the end of the world were standing over him awkwardly, looking down at him across a gulf. Some kind of shadowy world might still be going on, up there where these other people lived. But the universe that Harry inhabited had come to a crashing halt.
The two men standing over him talked at him for a while longer without his really hearing anything they said. Then Hank Aragon had him by one arm, and was tugging. "Harry. Come on, old man. On your feet. I'm sorry, God how sorry. You've got to walk a bit."
Why there should be any need for him, or anyone, to walk was beyond Harry's understanding. But then, if someone wanted him to stand up, why not? Getting to his feet again was a difficult process, the details hard to work out; and when he had accomplished the move he found it didn't make a bit of difference. Emptiness, light-years deep, still stretched out from him in every direction . . .
He was walking, and there were people at his elbows, guiding him. Now and then the men who were with him spoke, but the words just went by Harry, leaving no impression. At last he did hear someone say they were going to the spaceport's operations building. Harry couldn't imagine why, but he went along because it made no difference.
It turned out there was some kind of a medic on duty in operations, a nurse. After the people with Harry had talked to her, and she had tried to talk to him, she bared his arm and gave him a shot of something . . .
As soon as Harry could move and think again, and even talk a little, he had no problem in deciding what action he ought to take. His only remaining goal in life was to find out exactly what had happened to his wife and son, recover them if possible or die in the attempt.
The shot in the arm had brought him out of it a little, enough to realize that hours had passed since he was hit with the shock of the bad news. He was wondering dully why none of the news vultures had yet managed to track him down, when he received another message, this one bearing all the remembered earmarks of a note from Winston Cheng.
The nightmare was going on. Another echo from the recent past. Like something coming true that had been predicted in a dream. He had never known while he was dreaming it just how bad a nightmare, and how endlessly long, it was going to turn out to be . . .
Hank Aragon had been spending the whole day hovering near, and now he closely watched Harry's face as Harry pulled the little capsule open. "Not more bad news? Is it?"
"No." Harry's voice was clear and firm. He could answer that question with flat confidence, even before he'd read the message. The truth was that nothing that could happen anywhere, in the Galaxy or beyond, nothing imaginable, was going to register as bad news with Harry Silver. Because Harry Silver had already been destroyed.
It took him a couple of readings before the meaning of this latest note came through. In a sense, one strange little sense, the news was even good. It was about as good as anything could be to a dead man, because it fell right in with what Harry had already decided he was going to have to do.
Harry—
Have just learned of your tragedy. The courier bringing this message is at your disposal. Can we talk again?Winston Cheng
Harry still had the prepaid reply form that Cheng had given him, and without even waiting for the relative numbness brought on by the medic's shot to start to wear off, he took advantage of it. The words seemed to form themselves, while Harry only had to watch his hand do the writing.
Personal to Winston Cheng—
If offer still open, I accept.Silver.
Then he crumpled the form and threw it away. No sense in sending a message when he was going to be on the courier himself.
Just before boarding one of Winston Cheng's ships for the third time, Harry, meaning to study en route whatever data he could obtain, called up a standard news source to show him all available information about recent kidnappings in this sector, in which robots of any kind had played some part, while screening out the common types of paddy robbery. Only a few such crimes fit the narrowed classification, and in none of them was there any suggestion of berserker action. He tried a second newsorg, and then a third, all with the same result.
Before even leaving the operations building, Harry had hastily requested and signed forms disposing of his leased ship, and had received and read an urgent letter from one of Becky's elderly grandparents, who, still very much alive, had learned that something bad had happened to her grandchild, but had not been able to discover exactly what. It was a polite message, with overtones of desperation, and Harry answered that he was investigating and would talk to them later.
Then, following a kind of instinct to see that loose ends were tied up, he dispatched a message to a caretaking agency on Esmerelda regarding his small property there. That last communication went much more slowly and inexpensively. Now there was no one and nothing that he had to worry about.
None of the civilian crew of the half-familiar courier ship were people Harry had met before, but they were all respectful, and attentive to his wishes. Without surprise he noted that he seemed to be the only passenger.
As soon as the courier was under way, Harry retired to the elegant, small suite assigned as his cabin. There he began to study such evidence as was so far available, from the Space Force and the sources connected to Winston Cheng, regarding what had happened to his family.
The available facts were meager, but they were enough. A brief study left Harry with no room for reasonable doubt: Becky and Ethan, joyfully proclaiming that they were on their way to join Daddy, had been among a group of half a dozen people, all passengers on the same small shuttle, who had been mysteriously carried off. Harry could recognize that, according to witnesses, the technique of abduction was practically identical with that earlier employed to snatch Winston Cheng's people. Again, a Type-A berserker, coming seemingly out of nowhere, had struck, and got away.
There was one notable variation, this time. The nearby ship that had recorded the incident was lightly armed, and had succeeded in getting one turret into action and potting one of the enemy boarding machines before return fire shut the turret down. Semi-intact wreckage had been retrieved from nearby space, and identified as true berserker technology, providing convincing proof that the odd incident had not been faked.
Again, none of the local authorities as much as mentioned the similar tragedy that had so recently befallen the Cheng family. Harry took this as a sure sign that the first crime was still being kept under wraps.
Again, as in the earlier kidnapping, no ransom demand had been made on any of the victims' relatives. In this case there seemed no reason to think that any of them were spectacularly wealthy.
The list of witnesses to the latest outrage included one combat veteran who gave every indication of being a shrewd observer. He and all the others were unanimously convinced that they had seen a genuine berserker in action.
This time the indications were even somewhat clearer that the escaping kidnapper's destination had been the peculiar solar system called the Gravel Pit.
Harry kept staring at the words before him, trying to force them into making sense. So, Becky and Ethan had been carried off to the same crazy place that had already swallowed up Winston Cheng's granddaughter and great-grandson. The Gravel Pit, the solar system considered by most travelers as too dangerous to enter, where neither Space Force nor Templars thought it worth their while to risk lives and expend precious resources in a hopeless search for a berserker base that might or might not exist—where one of the wealthiest humans in the Galaxy was already planning a secret attempt to rescue people who, if they were lucky, had already been dead for many days.