Knock Twice Scrapbook

Photo courtesy of solomonrothman on Flickr.

The Face of the Deep
By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.

part 7

He sat in his chair, holding his drawn gun and waiting, having no more to say. HE knew that the berserker-ship would have had boats aboard and that it could build its killing machines into rough likenesses of men. These were almost good enough to fool him.

The figures outside produced a slate of their own from somewhere.

WE TOOK BERS. FROM BEHIND. ALL OK & SAFE. COME OUT.

He looked back. THe cloud of dust raised by the berserker’s own useless weapons had settled around it, hiding it and all the force-line behind it from Karlsen’s view. Oh, if only he could believe that these were men…

They gestured energetically and lettered some more.

SHIP WAITING BACK THERE BEHIND DUST. SHE’S TOO BIG TO HOLD THIS LEVEL LONG.

And again:

KARLSEN, COME WITH US!!! THIS IS OUR ONLY CHANCE!

He didn’t dare read any more of their messages for fear he would believe the,. rush out into their metal arms and be torn apart. He closed his eyes and prayed.

After a long time he opened his eyes again. His visitors and their boat were gone.

Not long afterward — as time seemed to him — there were flashes of light from inside the dust clud surrounding the berserker. A fight to which someone had brought weapons that would work in this space? Or another attempt to trick him? He would see.

He was watching alertly as another recue boat, much like the first, inched its way out of the dust cloud towared him. It drew alongside and stopped. Two more spacesuited figures got out and began to wear silver drapery.

This time he had his sign ready.

LOOK AROUND AT THE SCENERY FOR A WHILE.

As if to humor him, they began to look around him. Maybe they thought him mad, but he was sane. After about a minute they still hadn’t turned back to him — one’s face looked up and out at the unbelievable stars, while the other slowly swiveled his neck, watching a dragon’s head go by. Gradually their bodies became congealed in awe and terror, clinging to his class wall.

After taking half a minute more to check his own helm and suit, Karlsen opened his door.

“Welcome, men,” he said, over his helmet radio. He had to help one of them aboard the rescue boat. But they made it.

END

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.

Photo courtesy of divyanshs on Flickr.

The Face of the Deep
By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.

part 6

Some deep part of his mind had concluded that it was better for him, in his present situation, not to think about Time. He saw no reason to argue with this decision, and so he soon lost rack of hours and days — weeks?

He exercised and shaved, he ate and drank and eliminated. The boat’s recycling system worked very well. He happened to have aboard a device that would let him freeze himself into suspended animation — but no thanks, at least not yet. The possibility of rescue was in his thoughts, mixing hope and his fears of Time.

He knew that on the day he fell down here there was no ship built capable of coming after him and pulling him out. But ships were always being improved. Suppose he could hang on here for a few weeks, or months, while a few years passed outside. He knew he was important to many important people, and that an attempt to save him would be made if it looked at all possible.

From being awed, almost paralyzed by his surroundings, he passed through a stage of exaltation and then quickly reached — boredom. The mind had its own business and turned itself away from all these eternal blazing miracles. He slept a good deal.

In a dream he saw himself standing alone in space. He viewed himself at the distance where the human figure dwindles almost to a speck in the gaze of the unaided human eye. With an almost invisible arm, himself-in-the-distance waved good-by and then went walking away, headed out toward the white stars. The striding leg movements were at first barely perceptible and then became nothing at all as the figured dwindled, losing existence against the face of the deed…

With a yell he woke up. A space boat had nudged against his crystal hull and was now bobbing a few feet away. It was a solid metal ovoid, of a model he recognized, and the numbers and letters on its hull were familiar to him.

He had made it. He had hung on. The ordeal was over.

The little hatch of the rescue boat opened, and two suited figures emerged, one after the other from its sheltered interior. At once these figures became silver-blurred as the berserker’s machines had been, but these men’s features were visible through their faceplates, their eyes looking straight at Karlsen. They smiled in steady encouragement, never taking their eyes from his.

Not for an instant.

They rapped on his door and kept smiling while he put on his spacesuit. But he made no move to let them in; instead he drew his gun.

They frowned. Inside their helmets their mouths formed words: Open up! He flipped on his radio, but if they wre sending , nothing was coming through in this space. They kept on gazing steadily at him.

Wait, he signaled with an upraised hand. He got a slate and stylus from his chair and wrote them a message.

LOOK AROUND AT THE SCENERY FOR A WHILE.

He was sane, but maybe they though him mad. As if to humor him, they began to look around them. A new set of dragon’s-head prominences were rising ahead, beyond the stormy horizon at the rim of the world. The frowning men looked ahead of them at dragons, around them at buzzsaw rainbow whirls of stone; they looked down into the sullen depths of the inferno, they looked up at the stars’ poisonous blue-white spears sliding visibly over  the void.

Then both of them, still frowning uncomprehendingly, looked right back at Karlsen.

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.

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.

Photo courtesy of  cobalt123 on Flickr.

The Face of the Deep
By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.

part 4

Karlsen opened his eyes. In his belief a single human was more important to the Creator than any sun of whatever size. He made himself watch the scenery. He determined to master this almost superstitious awe.

But he had to brace himself again when he noticed for the first time how the stars were behaving. They were all blue-white needles , the wave-fronts of their light jammed together in a stampede over the cliff of gravity. And his speed was such that he saw some stars moving slightly in parallax shifts. He could have depth perception in light-years, if his mind could stretch that far.

He stepped back to his chair, sat down and fastened himself in. He wanted to dig himself a tunnel, down into the very core of a huge planet, where he could hide… but what were even the biggest planets? Poor lost specks, hardly bigger than thin bubble.

Here he faced to ordinary spaceman’s view of infinity. Here there was a terrible perspective, starting with rocks just outside the glass and drawing the mind on and out, rock by rock and line by line, step by inescapable step, on and on on —

All right. At least this was something to fight against, and fighting something was better than sitting here and rotting. To begin with, a little routine. He drank some water, which tasted very good, and made himself eat a bit of food. He was going to be around for a while yet.

Now for the little job of getting used to the scenery without going mad. He faced in the firection of his bubble’s flight.

Half a dozen meters ahead of him the first large rock, massive as the bodies of a dozen men, hung steadily in the orbit-line of force. With his mind he weighed this rock and measured it and then moved on to the next notable chunk, a pebble’s throw further. The rocks were each smaller than his bubble, and he could follow the string of them on and on, until it was swallowed in the converging patter of forfcelines that at last bent around the hypermass, defininf the full terror of distance.

His mind hanging by its fingertips swayed out along the intervals of grandeur… like a baby monkey blinking in jungle sunlight, he thought. Like an infant clumber who had been terrified by the size of trees and vines, who now saw them for the first time as a network of roats that could be mastered.

Noe he dared to let his eyes grab hard at that buzzsaw rim of the next inner circle of hiurtling rocks, to let his mind ride it out and away. Now he dared to watch the stars shifting with his movement, to see the depth perception of a plant.

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.