Photo courtesy of TopTechWriter.US on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep
By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 3
He got up from his chair and turned. A single step to the rear brought him to the curve of the glass. He looked out, following half a mile behind him, caught in the same string of space-debris, was the berserker-ship whose pursuit had drive him here. It was a machine fastened on one purpose — Karlesn’s death. Its scanners would be fixed on his bubble now and were probably able to see him moving. If it could get at him it would do so. The berseker-computers would was no time in awed contemplation of the scenery, that much was certain.
His bubbleboat was unarmed, but the berserker wasn’t. Why wasn’t it firing?
As if to answe his thought the flare of a beam-weapon struck out from the launch. But the beam looked odd and silvery, and its plowed only ten feet or so among exploding rocks and dust before fizzling away like a comic firework. It left added dust in a cloud that seemed to be thickening around the berserker. Probably the machine had kept on firing at him all along, but this weird space would not tolerate energy weapons. Missiles, then?
Yes, missiles. He watched the berserker launch one. The cylinder made one fiery dart in his directions, then disappeared. Where had it gone? fallen in toward the hypermass? At invisible speed, if so.
As soon as he spotted the first flare of another missile, Karlsen on a hunch turned his eyes quickly downward. He saw an instant spark and puff in the next lower line of force, a tooth knocked out of the buzzsaw. The puff where the missile had struck flew ahead at insane speed, passing out of Karlsen’s sight almost at once. His eyes were drawn after it, and he realized he had been watching the berserker-ship not with feat but with something like relief, as a distraction from facing…all this.
“Ah, God,” he said aloud, looking ahead. It was a prayer, not an oath. Far beyond the slow-churning infinite horizon, there were monstrous dragon-head clouds rearing up. Against the blackness of space their mother-of-pearl heads seemed to be formed by matter materializing out of nothingness to plunge toward the hypermass. Soon the dragons’ necks rose over the edge of the world, rainbow purls of matter, dripping and falling with unreal speed down in the hypermass. And then dragon-bodies, clouds throbbing with blue-white lightning above the red bowels of hell.
The vast ring, in which Karlsen’s thread of rocks was one component, raced like a circular saw blade toward the prominences. As they came flying over the horizon they rose up far beyond Karlsen’s level. They twisted and reared like mad horses. They must be bigger than planets, he thought, yes, bigger than a thousand Earths or Esteels. The whirling band he rode was going to be crushed between them — and then he saw that even as they passed they were still enormously distant from him on either side.
Still standing, Karlsen let his eyes close for a time. If men ever dared to pray, if they ever dared to even think of a Creator of the universe, it was only because their tiny minds had never been able to visualize a thousandth part…a millionth part…there were no words, no concepts, for sights like these.
And what of men who believed only in themselves, or in nothing? What might it do to them to look nakedly at such odds as these?
In this Sunday series of posts I will be “re-publishing” pulp science fiction short stories that have long since gone out of print. When possible I will seek out author’s and estates for permission.
