The Sirian Pearl, along with the other ships of the Shubran civilian relief squadron, had seen no actual fighting and had sustained no damage while shuttling from one disaster to another. Such minor refitting as was required to get her perfectly ready for action had already been taken care of at the base. The Space Force had been eager to help with the maintenance. Gennadius wanted every human ship in the nebula to be as fully armed and equipped and ready for combat as possible.
More combat was expected soon, though with berserkers you never knew. Anyway, it was certain to come eventually.
The Pearl was almost alone in the docks, except for a few Space Force ships, a couple of them undergoing routine maintenance, a couple of others being held in reserve as transport and for defense in the unlikely event of a berserker attack on the base itself. Four Twenty-five had truly awesome ground defenses. From the enemy's point of calculation, there had to be more tempting targets out there in the nebula, colonies only lightly defended now after the years of relative peace and quiet.
Domingo's ship was solidly down in dock, with Gujar Sidoruk and Iskander Baza walking and climbing over and around her, giving everything on the outside a looking over, probing with tools and fingers into missile-launching ports and tubes, field projectors, the snouts and nozzles of beam weapons. The checkout was really unnecessary, but Gujar at least was nervous enough to need something to do. Iskander had come along, and they talked while they conducted an extra inspection.
Iskander, hands on hips, stood tall on the uppermost curve of hull. He said: "You know, Sid?"
"What?"
"I'm really looking forward to taking this ship into action." He sounded more serious than usual.
Gujar straightened up from a beam nozzle and looked about restlessly, swinging his electronic probe in one huge hand. He responded that he himself was not looking forward to anything. Going after Leviathan was just something he had to do, and he wanted to get it over with.
Sidoruk was not as familiar with this ship as the other crew members were. He had a few questions to ask about the new weapons and systems Domingo had insisted on having built into his ship.
Gujar had been taking it for granted that the Pearl's armaments were adequate for the formidable task Domingo was planning. But now it seemed to him that, in answer to a couple of his questions, Iskander was slyly trying to raise some doubt in his mind, as if just for fun.
Gujar was still frowning in vague puzzlement when the two men heard footsteps approaching, clomping up a flexible ladder that curved around the curve of hull. Presently Polly Suslova's head and shoulders came into sight. She greeted the two men and asked, "Where's the captain?"
Baza smiled at her. "He's aboard. I looked in half an hour ago and he was sleeping."
Despite the smile, she had the feeling that this man was hostile to her, that somehow he felt possessive about the captain. Baza, as far as she was aware, had had no family anywhere, even before the Shubran massacre.
"Good," she said. "I'll let him sleep. He needs the rest." She looked at Gujar, who was leaning against the railing of the curving stair, gazing glumly into space. He didn't appear to be listening to the conversation, but it was hard to tell.
Polly faced back to Iskander, as the second-in-command asked her: "You think the captain's unhealthy? I don't."
"Have you seen him like this before?"
"Like what?" Polly could read no feeling in Iskander's smooth voice. "He's ready to hunt berserkers. If that makes him crazy, there're a lot of lunatics around."
"I'm sure there are. The point is that until a few days ago he wasn't one of them."
"He'll be all right, when he gets Leviathan." The broad-shouldered man sounded very confident.
That woke up Gujar. "If he can get it."
"He can."
Sidoruk turned around, frowning. "I thought you were just telling me our weapons might not be good enough."
Polly asked Iskander: "Do you think that's what Domingo needs?"
"He thinks so." Baza started to move past her to the ladder. "Excuse me, ma'am. It's time I went to operations and took a look at things."
Polly moved out of Iskander's way, but she had another question for him before he left. "You've known the captain a long time. Were you with him when that crash almost wiped out his family ten years ago?"
"I was. But you'd better ask him about that." And with a lightly mocking little salute, Iskander was gone.
Gujar Sidoruk had roused from his unhappy reverie enough to pay attention to Polly's latest question. "What do you want to know about the crash?"
"I was wondering if berserkers were involved in that, too." Ships disappeared, sometimes, in every part of space, even without berserkers' help.
"Yes, I remember it well. It wasn't just berserkers. It was the same damned one."
Thinking of Domingo, Polly let out a little wordless moan of empathic pain. She sat down on the curve of hull—carefully; the metal tended to be slippery and there was a considerable drop. "Tell me."
"Well. His wife—her name was Isabel—and two of their three kids were on a ship coming back from somewhere, I forget where, to Shubra. The ship managed to send off a courier before she crashed. Her captain thought Leviathan was chasing them, and the courier message said he was just about to take some risky evasive action. That was all that anyone ever heard from that ship. Either the berserker got them, or he wrecked his ship trying to get away from it. Tried to go too fast in a cloud, or whatever. No lifeboats ever showed up anywhere. No survivors."
"I see," Polly murmured again.
Again someone's feet were clanging solidly up the ladder. In a few moments Simeon's head came into view. "There you are—some of you, anyway. There's news. One of Gennadius's squadrons is supposed to be straggling back in here to the base, all shot up. They tightbeamed a message ahead, saying they've just fought a battle."
"And?"
"Mixed results, apparently."
Polly grabbed for the ladder. "Coming, Gujar?"
He shook his head slowly. "You go ahead. I want to look over a few more things here. Whatever the news is, I expect we'll be launching before long."
Polly descended the ladder quickly. There was someone else who would certainly want to hear the latest combat news the instant it became available. Iskander had said that Domingo was asleep. She debated briefly with herself, then opened the nearest convenient hatch and entered the ship.
The captain was not in his berth. Well, she supposed it had been foolish to look for him there, no matter what Iskander had said. She found Domingo in the common room again, sitting slumped over and motionless at the console beside his computer model, almost on top of it. His face, with the reflected colors of the glowing model playing over it, was turned toward Polly as she entered and she was worried for a moment; he looked absolutely dead.
A closer look reassured her. Domingo was breathing deeply and comfortably, getting what was probably one of his first real sleeps since the disaster. But Polly, sure that he would want to know the news, decided to wake him anyway. She shook him by the shoulder.
The captain's eyes opened at once, and he saw her without apparent surprise. He was glad to be awakened for the news, grim as it was, and was on his feet at once. Pausing only to shut down some of his equipment, he moved toward Operations with purposeful strides, Polly tagging along.
They were in time to be present when Base Commander Gennadius greeted the arriving crews.
The newly arrived military ships had brought with them another item of related news: yet another berserker attack upon a colony, the third in recent days. This time the target had been Malaspina, a planetoid of a sun that was relatively distant within the nebula. Malaspina was known for the foul "weather"—nebular turbulence and activity—that usually afflicted both its atmosphere and its surrounding space.
Before the returning fleet had fought its recent battle, its ships had picked up some peculiar radio messages from the direction of the colonized planetoid Malaspina, messages reporting the sighting of strange ships or objects in the nebula near Malaspina. Very shortly after picking up the radio transmissions, the fleet had been found by a robot courier from the attacked colony. The courier brought an urgent and now horribly familiar message: Colony under berserker attack.
Gennadius, as he listened to this story, appeared to be trying to remember something. "Malaspina. Wasn't there another report of some really peculiar nebular life forms around there just a standard month ago?"
Some of his aides standing nearby were able to confirm this.
"That's not all," said one of the exhausted ship captains who had just arrived. According to later messages received by the rescue fleet, some of the people at the third colony were reported to have behaved bizarrely during the attack.
"Hysteria," said someone on the base commander's staff.
"I suppose. Anyway, one of the radio messages we got said they were acting crazy—tearing off their clothes, singing. Running around wild, I guess. Those were about all the details we heard."
"You have recordings?"
"Of the action we just fought? They'll be along in a minute, Commander."
Others among the people at Base Four Twenty-five, who were now trying to evaluate events, at first attributed the reported bizarre behavior of the people at the colony, during the attack and immediately following it, to the effects of some virus.
The task force, responding with all possible speed to the courier-borne report of that attack, had arrived at the battered colony in time to save it from destruction.
The combat recordings were now being brought into the operations room. Polly retreated into the background, but no one cared if she and the other colonists present stayed to watch.
The light in the large room dimmed slightly, and a stage brightened. The ranking officer of the task force that had just arrived introduced the combat recordings, which told the story.
When the powerful Space Force battle group had appeared on the scene, the berserker raiding fleet had broken off its assault on Malaspina and retreated. The Space Force had arrived none too soon; the battle had been going badly for the human side until then. Three or possibly four berserkers had been engaged in this latest attack.
A staff officer swore. "Look at that; some kind of new shielding. Cuts off the defensive beams from the ground as if they were flashlights."
"That explains how they were able to overrun Liaoning and Shubra so fast and easy."
When the berserkers retreated from their attack on the Malaspina colony, the human task force had pursued and engaged them again after a chase of about an hour.
Again, disengagement by the enemy and pursuit by the Space Force. This time the human squadron had promptly run into a well-executed ambush. Loop back on your own trail within the nebula—if you could manage that—and ambushing a pursuer came within the realm of possibility. Shortly thereafter, having suffered a reverse and again lost contact with the enemy, the commander of the Space Force battle group turned back to protect Malaspina.
Gennadius nodded. "You say you'd already left a detachment there."
"That's right."
Gennadius now tried to decide where he could get ships to relieve the ones now on duty at Malaspina. The enemy was enjoying such success that he had to think of the defense of the base itself. "The best I can do is send some Home Guard ships to Malaspina—if I can come up with enough civilian volunteers." He switched the direction of his gaze. "Domingo?"
Domingo, who had been listening intently, ignored the question. He asked the returning officers: "Was Old Blue there, at Malaspina and afterward? There was a unit that looked like it in that recording, but I couldn't be sure."
Some of the men and women exchanged looks. "Oh yeah," said one. "No doubt about it."
"You didn't destroy it." It was more a statement than a question.
"No, We didn't."
Polly thought she saw her captain's shoulders slump slightly, as if with relief. Domingo said: "I'd like to see the rest of your gun-camera records as soon as possible."
Another look was exchanged among the haggard captains of the surviving task force: Who is this guy?
Gennadius seconded Domingo's question.
"Coming right up, sir."
Soon additional records had been brought in. These confirmed conclusively, and in stop-action detail, the presence of Leviathan in the action off Malaspina.
It was Polly's first good look at the thing called Old Blue—the fragmentary recording from Shubran ground defense hardly counted. Here there were views from several angles, in different wavelengths. Imaging techniques corrected for the exaggerated Doppler effect of high-speed combat. This was about as good a look at Leviathan as anyone had ever had and survived. Polly and the others watching with her now beheld a great, ancient, angular and damaged shape, with some blue coloring about it; she had heard that the color was thought to be the result of some emissions from some defective component of the drive or other peculiar system on board.
Polly watched. That is his special enemy, and therefore it is mine. If I can't turn him from his purpose, maybe I can help him to achieve it. Maybe then . . .
They were frightening pictures, but to her, Domingo's face as he studied them was more frightening still.
Gennadius, without taking his eye from the new recording as it played again, beckoned an aide over to him. Polly heard the base commander issuing orders to pass on word of what he saw as a disastrous battle to Eighth Space Force headquarters, at the Sector capital. A manned courier, recently arrived at Four Twenty-five, was about to head back to headquarters and could carry this bad news with it.
Gennadius was now asking the crew of the courier if there was much chance of his getting any reinforcement from Sector Headquarters in the near future.
"Wouldn't count on that, sir. There's berserker trouble in other districts, too, and Sector's chronically spread thin."
"Yes. Damn, damn. That's about what I thought; maybe even a little worse than I thought." Gennadius turned his gaze to the big display. "We're just going to have to mobilize all the colonies in the Milk as best we can."
"Yes, sir."
The commander addressed himself to another aide. "Next courier we send to Sector, I want to tell them I'm invoking martial law over the whole Milkpail district. Get that in print for me to sign."
Then his eyes swiveled to Domingo. "Niles, I want you to take your people, all of 'em that are ready to fight and all your ships, and stand by for Home Guard duty. Might be at Malaspina, might be somewhere else."
"I've told you where I stand on that, Gennadius. Captains who want to do that can. I have other plans for my own ship. And for as many of my crew as will come with me."
"Oh. And what plans are those?"
"I'm hunting for Leviathan."
The room was quiet enough for Polly to hear the sigh Gennadius let out. "With one ship. That doesn't make any sense. I've told you what I need done. If you won't do that, then just go home and stay there."
"Home. Oh yes, home. Where is that?"
"Go somewhere and stay out of my hair, then. Sorry, Domingo. But other people are hurting, too. And this time it is an order. I'm invoking martial law."
There was a long pause before Domingo spoke. His answer when it came was surprisingly meek. "All right, Gennadius. I'll be out of your way from now on."
Domingo summoned his crew to him with a look around the room, and they followed him when he went out quietly. When they were gathered around him in the corridor just outside operations, he announced quietly that he wanted to have a crew meeting in his ship immediately.
A minute or two later the six of them were gathered in the common room aboard the Pearl. The captain looked around the little group and told them he had allowed the Space Force people to think he was obeying their orders meekly, that he would go home and see what could be done to make Shubra livable and defendable again.
"But if any of you actually thought I was going to obey that order, forget it. This ship is going on with the hunt just as before."
Henric Poinsot had joined the others in their gathering outside operations, and he had accompanied them to the ship, saying he wanted to remove a few personal things that he had left aboard.
But Poinsot now came into the common room and asked the captain: "What about the other people from Shubra?"
"What about them?"
"I mean that we have about twenty of our fellow citizens still here at the base who'll want to know what the hell you're doing, Domingo. About Shubra, if nothing else. You're still officially the mayor."
"I'll nominate you to take a message to them. They can have my formal resignation, if they want it. If any of you get tired of gazing at the wreckage where you used to live, you can try to join me later. But I'm not waiting for you."
The captain spoke coldly and contemptuously. The people who knew Domingo best, better than Polly had yet had a chance to get to know him, were gazing at him strangely. If he was aware of it, he gave no sign.
Iskander Baza watched his captain narrowly and then exchanged looks with Polly. She wondered if the message was that he intended to be her ally or her rival.
Henric Poinsot said: "You're disregarding the commander's orders, then. I'm making no promises to keep any of this secret, Domingo."
"Tell who you like, and be damned to you. It'll save me the trouble of leaving a message somewhere else."
Poinsot looked around at them all, started to speak again, thought better of it and went out.
Domingo looked around at them all, too. "Anyone else? Now's the time."
"I'm hunting with you," Gujar Sidoruk said.
"Good. Polly?"
"I'll go," she said at once. It came to her as she said it that her chief fear at the moment was only of being separated from him. She was more afraid of that than of berserkers. When she tried to think of her children, all she could know of them at the moment was that they were far away and safe.
"Iskander—? I guess in your case I don't have to ask. Wilma, Simeon, what about you?"
The married couple spoke haltingly. Taking turns speaking, looking at each other between phrases, they said that they had lost heavily to the berserkers and wanted revenge. Polly got the impression that there was more to their decision than they were saying.
The Pearl was already gone when Poinsot told Gennadius of Domingo's decision. The base commander, his mind heavily engaged with other matters, only nodded and sighed. Knowing Domingo, he was not all that surprised.
All Gennadius said was, "Well. We've each done what we had to do, I guess."
Regretfully he removed the Sirian Pearl from his roster of Home Guard craft. He would have to remind himself to count it as lost from now on, and it was going to make his job just that much harder.