Even in those first few seconds of alarm and scrambling desperation aboard the Pearl, it was already obvious that none of the blasting, melting, disintegrating weapons usually employed in space combat were at all effective against these mysterious encroaching shapes.
Domingo had been in his combat chair at the start of the crisis and was still there. Even with all his instrumentation before him, his first indication of trouble was the alarm on the intercom, the voices of his crew announcing the presence of an intruder on the ship. Such was the subtlety of the invader and of its fellows just outside the hull.
Whatever the things were out there, they were very difficult to see, hard to detect on any of the instruments that the captain presently had in use.
A gabble of speech grew steadily on the intercom.
"They're not ships, I tell you—"
"I can see that. They're not berserkers, either."
"Not any kind of berserker I ever heard about."
"Not like any . . . not like any thing I've ever seen."
Before they could push each other completely into panic, Domingo roared for silence, then made specific demands on specific people for readings, reports, information. In moments the incipient panic had subsided. The coordinated use of instruments even began to bring in some useful data.
Within a matter of seconds after the first alarm, using a helpful observation or two passed along by other crew members, Domingo had managed to adjust his instruments so as to be able to get a better look at the things, whatever they were, that had his ship surrounded. What he beheld were bizarre entities of varying and almost indeterminate size and shape. There were dozens of them swarming, flitting by his ship at ranges varying from only a few meters out to several score kilometers and at speeds that ought to mean ship or machine and not any kind of self-propelled life form. But somehow, as he studied them, the impression that these were life forms gradually dominated. Seemingly they were able to avoid the centers of the blasts from the Pearl's armament while passing unharmed through the outer regions of the explosions, even through zones where steel would have been vaporized. The forms, whatever they were, appeared to be altering themselves from moment to moment, changing their very structure somehow, so beam weapons that would have chewed up a berserker's shields passed through them harmlessly.
It was almost, the captain thought, as if these things surrounding him and his ship could at will become no more than illusions.
The time elapsed since Branwen and Simeon had sounded the first alarm was still less than a full minute.
Domingo shouted to his crew: "Cease fire. We're not doing any good. Cease firing!"
The barrage of pulsing beams and flying projectiles ceased, almost instantly. Inside the ship the difference to the ears was minimal, but the alteration in the inward energies of space briefly left an empty feeling in the bones.
The fusillade had achieved nothing but a waste of energy—which would be easy enough to replace—and of certain types of missiles, which would not. The things outside, whatever they were, did not seem to have been injured in the slightest by being shot at, and certainly they had not been driven away. On the bright side, the six humans in their ship were also unharmed. That in itself was enough to convince Domingo that the entities outside the ship were not berserkers and probably were not enemies at all. If the swarming of the wraithlike things around the ship had been meant as an attack, it had to be considered a failure, though at least one of the things had penetrated the hull itself.
But still, a moment after the captain had called a ceasefire, he came near countermanding the order.
His crew were already shouting new alarms at him; unnecessarily, for he could see for himself what was happening now that the Pearl's guns had quieted. The view outside the ship was changing, becoming vaguely obscured in strips and patches. It was as if translucent nets were being spread around the Pearl.
"I think they're trying to tie us up, Chief," Iskander drawled.
To Domingo, the entities outside—units, creatures, beings, whatever they were—appeared to be trying to grapple the Pearl with forcefield weapons. So far, very little power was evident in these weapons, which as far as the captain could tell were indistinguishable from extensions of the creatures' own bodies; but they appeared to be able, as before, to penetrate the ship's defensive shields.
Fourth Adventurer's voice came suddenly on intercom. The tones of weariness and illness had vanished from it, but the words were unsteady with unprecedented excitement: "It is not an attempt to tie you up. It is a probing for information. Act, Captain, act. Respond, lest you be taken for something inanimate."
Act? And do what? Suppressing a sharp retort, Domingo instead answered his own question for himself.
On Domingo's orders, crisply and precisely issued, the Pearl put out her own forcefield weapons in several strengths and varieties, trying to disengage the grip of the enemy's fields. His crew was trained in the tactics of grappling and ramming with such devices.
Clipping out more orders, Domingo assigned each member of his crew a different section of his ship's hull to defend. They all went to work in intense silence, manipulating the Pearl's defensive fields, trying to find a way of repelling the intrusion. Now and then a few terse words were exchanged; for the most part the intercom was silent.
The shadowy tools of the outsiders were now opposed by a variety of fields generated from the Pearl. The result after the first moments of struggle was a tangled snarl that still held the human ship delicately enmeshed. Domingo was confident that even an easy application of his ship's drive would break the Pearl free; but for the time being he withheld that stroke. He was coming more and more to the opinion that his crew and the outsiders were not so much locked together in a struggle as engaged in a mutual groping for information.
Confused grappling ensued and was protracted over a period of several minutes. Domingo, reading his ship's instruments from his own station and sifting the fragmentary reports from his crew as best he could, decided there was now at least a strong possibility that the aliens—it was now definite in his own mind that living things opposed him—were also trying to withdraw from the tangle of interlocking forces but found themselves unable to do so, either. Perhaps they too had forces in reserve.
The next report from Fourth Adventurer confirmed definitely that what surrounded the ship were indeed living minds and bodies. "I now have established mental contact with them. It is difficult. Only intermittent communication has been achieved as yet, but it may be the minimum we need."
"They're living, then."
"Indeed they are."
"They must be aggregations, swarms, almost like the ones we sometimes harvest. But—"
"Yes, Captain. They are in many ways like those other nebular life forms, and related to them through evolution. But these around our ship are more than that. Much more." Fourth Adventurer said that much and fell silent.
"Can we communicate with them? On an intelligent level, I mean?"
"I shall try now, and report again."
The Pearl, and the entities around her with which she struggled, were not only bound together but isolated, lost, in swirling nebula. There was still no sign of the Space Force fleet.
"There's not as many of them around us as there were," Branwen reported, almost calmly. Some of the mysterious aliens had evidently departed—or dissipated—or died. She thought that their numbers around the Pearl had been greater at the start of the confrontation than they were now, though Domingo thought it was still hard to guess whether there were now twenty of them or a hundred.
Whether the entities might simultaneously be conducting a similar struggle with the Space Force somewhere in the nebula nearby was more than anyone on board the Pearl was able to determine.
Anyone, at least, but Fourth Adventurer. In response to a question from Domingo, the Carmpan now announced that he thought that any such confrontation between the entities and the Space Force was unlikely; his own presence on the Pearl was tending to draw the nebular things here.
"Your presence? Why?"
"They sense my mind, as I sense theirs."
Benkovic's voice, sounding shaken, came over the intercom: "What are they, then? What are they? These things aren't berserkers!"
Domingo spoke almost soothingly. "All right, we already know that much. They seem about as far from being berserkers as they can get. Fourth Adventurer says he's sure they're alive, and I have to agree. But what level of intelligence are they, and what do they want?"
The Carmpan at last was able to announce some success in trying to determine that. He was, he said, still managing to maintain a limited telepathic contact with the aliens. "They are of human intelligence. And at the moment the main thing they want is to know what we are; or more precisely, to understand our ship. They sense the continual close presence of my mind and wish to know why it is so bound in heavy matter."
There was a pause. "You're saying they're—a human theme?"
"Indeed, yes. My hope in joining your crew was to welcome a new theme to the brotherhood of the Taj."
There was silence momentarily on intercom, people looking at one another's imaged faces. The brotherhood of the what? Simeon wondered silently.
When no one else said anything, Fourth Adventurer resumed: "I am also endeavoring to explain to them your natures, as the controllers of this ship, but it is difficult. Ships in general are a great mystery to them, as are berserker machines. As, indeed, is telepathy. They communicate among themselves on a purely physical level, as do you and I."
"A new human theme." It was a hushed whisper in Branwen Galway's voice. Others were murmuring, too. Such a discovery had happened perhaps half a dozen times in the whole previous history of Earth-descended exploration.
"Indeed," Fourth Adventurer repeated patiently, "a theme of humanity whose existence has heretofore been completely unknown to humans of your theme, and only guessed at by my fellow Carmpan and myself. The reason is that only very recently have the people of this new theme become a thinking species. They are the reason for my presence here, for my application to become a member of this crew. Another ship might have brought me to them, but only your ship, Captain, was ready and equipped at the right time and place to have a chance of giving them the help they need. More than words and good wishes will be required to clear their pathway to the Taj."
Someone asked: "To the what?"
But the captain, impatient, interrupted before the question could be answered.
Domingo said: "Great, great. Meanwhile we seem to have a problem. Two problems, at least."
"You refer to our physical entanglement with the life forms around us, and to our social relations with them. I believe both problems can be solved."
"Can you tell them that we wish them well? That we are alive, as much as they are, that . . . you know what we want to tell them."
"I believe I do, Captain. On that general level. Allow me a few more moments of silence."
Silence fell on intercom again. Simeon, watching his instruments, observed that the entanglement of forcefields persisted; it seemed almost to have taken on a life of its own by now.
The Carmpan was back on intercom presently. "War is almost an alien concept to them."
"Then, damn it, tell them we're not looking for a fight, either. Not with them."
"They say they thought our ship was an odd type of dead-metal killer."
"If that means what I think it means . . ."
"I am sure that it does."
At least neither side was trying to escalate the struggle. In fact it now seemed that the encounter had been turned away from being a fight at all, though what it had become was still uncertain. The contending fields of force still rested tautly against one another, maintaining a quivering, fluctuating balance, the fields generated within the ship more powerful, those from outside more penetrating and elusive.
The Pearl drifted, enfolded in enigmas, her crew waiting intently at their stations.
Benkovic came on a private intercom channel to voice his own suspicion to Domingo.
"Captain? A private word?"
"Go ahead."
"I don't know if we ought to buy any of this, Captain. Except that these things can still come aboard our ship when they feel like it. Looks like we can be sure of that much."
"What're you telling me, Spence? That our Carmpan's lying to me?"
"Nossir, I don't know that. Maybe he wouldn't lie, but he could be wrong. Getting fooled somehow."
"Well. Anything else?"
"Maybe so. Maybe one thing more. I told you I saw something strange in the nebula near Shubra the day Leviathan was there. Other people have seen strange things out in the gas near other colonies, the colonies that have been hit. It could have been the same characters we've got flitting around us now. They could be goodlife, acting as berserker scouts of some kind. I don't know what to tell you to do, except—watch out."
"I assure you, I am watching."
Immediately after Benkovic switched off the intercom, the Carmpan came on another channel with another report.
"My sense of the situation, Captain Domingo, is that some of the nebular creatures are still suspicious of us. This heavy, metallic ship in some ways strongly resembles a berserker machine; and that resemblance suggests to the people we have just encountered that we are really allies of the berserkers."
It was almost, the captain thought, as if Fourth Adventurer had been aware of Benkovic's warning to Domingo, despite the closed intercom channel.
The Carmpan was speaking again. "They are unhappy that this ship is making an effort to trap them with fields, as the dead-metal killers sometimes do."
"Trap them? Only after we got the impression that they were making an effort against us—as you know."
"I have already conveyed that thought, Captain."
"What do you think, Adventurer? Can they be trusted? To a reasonable extent, I mean?"
"It is my belief that they are speaking the truth to me. That I am wrong is very unlikely, though not impossible."
"All right. That's all I can expect. Good. Next question is, can we reach some arrangement with them so we can all get our fields untangled? Tell them we'll pull our horns in if they will."
"I will try to talk with them again, and emphasize that that is our wish."
The ship drifted. Minutes passed.
Then Fourth Adventurer was back, reporting. Communication with the beings outside the ship proceeded slowly, but it seemed now that at least something was being accomplished.
Domingo asked his translator: "What do they call themselves?"
"It is . . . there are no useful words. Refer to them by what name you like, and I will try to manage a translation." Fourth Adventurer paused, then added: "They wish to find out what you know about berserkers."
"We'll be glad to exchange information on that subject. Very glad. Be sure you tell them that."
Iskander now came on intercom to add his caution to Benkovic's. Baza too still halfway suspected the aliens of being either goodlife or some creation of the berserkers. He recalled all the biological experimentation by the enemy that they had discovered.
Domingo listened, admitting the possibility but unconvinced. The captain knew intellectually that goodlife existed, perhaps in every theme of humanity. But he had never encountered it, and it would be hard for him to believe that any living thing in front of him had really chosen an existence as the berserkers' servant.
Iskander Baza had a question for Fourth Adventurer: "You say their species just—came into existence recently? How recent is recent?"
"For all I can tell, as short a period as one of your own lifetimes. It is hard to say."
"No offense, Adventurer, but that sounds incredible. I mean, how can you think if your brain is the equivalent of a hard vacuum? In that short time they've developed a—a language? How long are their individual lives?"
"You would not find it so incredible if your own knowledge of the Galaxy was greater."
"Huh." Even Iskander seemed unable to come up with a clever response to that.
"But I admit my estimate of their evolutionary speed may not be accurate. What I can see of their time frame is only their own perception of it. As it exists in their minds. I find it hard to translate from that to your frames of time, or to mine. I guess, and estimate."
Simeon was thinking that the aliens were certainly weird by Earth-descended standards. He supposed that it worked both ways. To us the aliens were mirror-image, photographic-negative, transparent, nebulous beings. To them, thought Simeon, we are—what? Voices from a hurtling lump of metal, very doubtfully alive at all?
It was a weird picture, the ship with himself and the others in it, seen from outside that way. He wondered if some of it at least was spillover from the laboring Carmpan mind nearby.
Now that the situation appeared to have quieted down, at least temporarily, Simeon would have liked to duck back to his berth and finish dressing. But there would be no getting away from battle stations just now.
There was another brief flurry of alarm. One or more of the nebular beings had come aboard ship again, uninvited. Domingo saw one of the things directly this time, a gray transparent presence moving between him and the instruments a meter from his face. A moderate heat wave in the air would have been substantial by comparison. But the creature was gone again before he could do more than start to react.
The crew continued to experiment with their field generators. Certain fields slowed or deflected the movements of the aliens, while others appeared to cause them discomfort. And yet other types of field created a barrier that the beings could penetrate only with the greatest difficulty if at all. To enclose the whole ship in that kind of barrier, though, might be beyond the capabilities of the present equipment.
Meanwhile the creatures, basically undeterred, continued to investigate the ship.
"Adventurer, tell them to stop coming aboard. It causes problems for us."
"I will ask them. I suggest that it is not advisable to order them to stop."
"That's fine, if they're amenable to being asked. If not, I'll have to find some way to make it a statement instead of a request."
Whatever method Fourth Adventurer used appeared to be effective. The visitors departed shortly.
The ED component of the Pearl's crew began to speculate on what it might mean that these creatures—Nebulons was a name for them that seemed to spring up out of nowhere—were in fact a much younger race than the human race of Earth, had much more recently undergone the step of speciation that brought them into intelligence.
Domingo had only a limited interest in the subject. He did not forget that, despite Fourth Adventurer's opinion, there was no certain evidence that the suspicions of Iskander and Spence were wrong; these Nebulons might, for all anyone on board the Pearl could tell, be creations of the berserkers, intended somehow to spell doom for ED humanity.
Others were aware of the possibility, too. "How could berserkers create a life form so complex? We can't do that, and we're supposed to know more biology than the damned machines do."
Through the Carmpan, some of the aliens once more put forward their own suspicions that it was the solid, incredibly massive ED people who were allied with the berserkers; in their view, they said, the two types of entity had so much in common, it was hard to believe anything else. But yet the two forms, berserker and human ship, could be distinguished from each other—ED vessels almost always contained life, the dead-metal killers very rarely so.
Another distinguishing factor was the fact that the human ships did not always and routinely kill as they passed through the shoals and drifts of nebular life; some of the aliens took that as evidence that these objects were not necessarily allied with their enemies. Sometimes the ships killed, harvesting or sampling. But the intelligent nebular-theme humans also killed, ingesting concentrations of energy, patterns, complexity from the lower forms, often the same types that the ships and colonies also harvested.
By now the minutes since the first encounter with the aliens had lengthened into an hour. It felt to Simeon like the longest hour he had ever lived through, except perhaps the hour of the fight in which Wilma had been killed.
By now it had become plain, through steady observation of the aliens, that these nebular-theme humans possessed a faster means of travel through the nebula than either ED humans or berserker machines had ever been able to attain.
Fourth Adventurer, on this point, offered the observation that the nebular-theme creatures were able to detect the thin-vacuum or hard-vacuum interstices in nebular turbulence. The obvious point was commented on: the same ability, or some variation of it, allowed them to get into a spaceship's hull without opening a hatch or making a noticeable hole.
Through the Carmpan, the creatures acknowledged that they could use this ability to get at berserkers, too, if the berserkers could be taken unawares and were moving slowly. But the enemy was aware of the Nebulons' existence now, and such attacks were no longer a practical possibility.
"Cap, if they can knock out a berserker somehow, they can knock out this ship."
Domingo remained calm. "I see that, Ike. Go on, Fourth Adventurer."
The dead-metal killers, after losing a unit or two and coming close to losing others, had not only developed effective repelling countermeasures and barrier fields but killing fields as well. But those worked only at short ranges, and the berserkers still had trouble hunting and killing the nebular people.
"They admit to us that a killing field exists. Seems a little naive."
Benkovic snorted. "Maybe it's meant to seem that way."
The discovery of another intelligent species, another theme of Galactic humanity; it had to be one of the rarest events in history. Everyone aboard the ship was shaken by it, even in the midst of other problems. Almost everyone. Domingo had taken it in stride. He did not even appear to find it particularly interesting, except as it might affect his chances of hunting down Leviathan. Not until now had Simeon fully appreciated the intensity of the captain's monomania.
The captain demanded to know more from the nebular creatures, all that any of them knew about berserkers. And he was even more interested in the apparent fact that these people might be able to help him find Leviathan.
"Ask them if they know one of the dead-metal killers in particular. Ask them if they know Old Blue."
The Fourth Adventurer somehow determined that they did.
They had a special name for Old Blue too, which Fourth Adventurer translated as best he could into the language he shared with the ED humans: Dead-Metal-That-Bears-The-Radiance-Of-Death.