Photo courtesy of Don Solo on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep
By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 5
He had been through a lot even before his ship had fallen here, and sleep overtook him. Suddenly loud noises were waking him up.
He came full awake with a start of fear. The berserker was not helpless after all. Two of its man-sized machines were outside his glassy door, working on it. Karlsen reached automatically for his handgun. The little weapon was not going to do him much good, but he waited, holding it ready. There was nothing else to do.
Something was strange in the appearance of the deadly robots outside; they were silvered with a gleaming coating. It looked like frost except that it formed only on their forward surfaces and streamed away from them toward the rear in little fringes and tails, like an artist’s speed-lines made solid. The figures were solid enough. Their hammer-blows at his door… but wait. His fragile door was not being forced. The metal killers outside were tangled and slowed in the silvery webbing with which this mad rushing space had draped them. The stuff damped their laser beams, when they tried to burn their way in. It muffled the explosive they set off.
When they had tried everything they departed, pushing themselves from rock to rock back toward their metal mother, wearing their white flaming surfaces like hoods of defeat.
He yelled relieving insults after them. He thought of opening his door and firing his pistol after them. He wore a spacesuit, and if they could open the door of the berserker ship from inside he should be able to open this one. But he decided that it would be a waste of ammunition to even try.
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.
