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a foothold on the station. But
Nick observed that the victory gave every indication of turning out to be
Pyrrhic. Only these two craft had survived this sharp clash.
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Nick was presently able to reestablish radio contact with Dirac.
One of the Premier's first questions was "Where's the scoutship? How
did Marcus come out?"
"He went down somewhere, it looked like, on the far side of the big
berserker. I wouldn't count on him, sir, for any more help."
"Damn it. Any more bandits in sight?"
"Negative, sir. They went out of my sight along with the colonel."
"All right. Stand by, Nick. We're docked here now, and we're going in."
"The best of luck, sir." And at that moment, Nick was sure he meant it.
Frank Marcus was down, but not yet dead.
On finding his scoutship surrounded and harassed by a number of the foe, he
had continued to fight aggressively. Triumphantly he had radioed word back-a
signal that never got through-that he thought he had succeeded in breaking the
back of the opposition by small machines. The number actively engaged against
him had diminished to almost nothing. He had won for his shipmates the chance
to land on the station virtually unopposed.
But now the scout with Frank inside was down, smashed down by grapples of
overwhelming force upon the enemy's black, scarred hull. Still, Frank was
not dead. The colonel came out of his wrecked ship fighting, having
survived where no being entirely of flesh could have done so, his
mobile boxes making him almost as agile and armored as a berserker.
It was time, and past time, for a retreat. But there was no way to retreat,
and just staying where he was, until the berserker got around to looking for
him, was pointless. He doubted very much that anyone was coming to his rescue.
That left him with the option of going forward. At least he wasn't
finished fighting yet.
He hadn't gone far before he saw the chance, the possibility, of being able
to do some more damage before the finish came.
Ahead of him, as he clawed his way forward across the berserker's
outer hull with his eight metallic limbs, Marcus now perceived a weakness, a
place where his huge opponent's outer armor had been blown or ripped away in
some fight thousands of
years in the past.
It was just moments later, when he was in the act of actually entering the
berserker, pushing ahead with his own boarding operation, that Frank
suddenly understood, was perfectly convinced, that time and luck had run
out at last. This was one daring effort that he was not going to survive. The
realization did not interfere with his smooth flow of effort; if he had
tried he couldn't have thought of any better way to die.
Naturally he had not come out of his little ship unarmed. Once inside the
great berserker, near anything it thought important, he could still distract
the enemy, make it pay a price. Show it that wiping out life from the universe
was never going to be an easy job. Force the damned thing to divert
part of its computing capacity and its material resources to finish him
off. And maybe in the process he could give his fellow Solarians a chance to
rob it of its prize, the bioresearch station it so badly wanted.
Maybe
Dirac and the rest would even be able to finish it off altogether.
Marcus indeed managed to get inside the hull. Then he had not far to go, in
his one-man lunge for some outlying flange of the enemy's vitals, before he
encountered heavy opposition.
Only Hawksmoor, alertly guarding his post aboard the
Eidolon
, received any of the last radio message Colonel Marcus sent. Only part of the
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message came through, and that in somewhat garbled form. And the last words
that Nicholas, listening closely on the yacht, was able to hear from Frank
were "Oh my God. Oh. My.
God."
The two surviving small Solarian vessels had by now attached themselves to
modest beachheads on the large hull of the biostation-itself small by
comparison with the looming bulk of the berserker only a few hundred meters
beyond it.
Dirac and those who were still alive and functioning with him-Kensing
among them-were preparing, under the umbrella of
Nick's potential firepower, to enter simultaneously two of the
station's airlocks.
The boarders had to confront the possibility that the hatches might be
booby-trapped or barricaded. Actually the station's outer skin appeared
scorched or dented here and there, as if by near-miss explosions. But as
far as could be ascertained from outside, the airlocks were intact.
All indications were that the mating outer doors had functioned perfectly.
Now the Premier and his companions, wearing armor and carrying the
best shoulder weapons available, climbed out of their acceleration couches and
made their way one at a time through the small airlocks of their own craft and
into the station's larger chambers, where there was room for several to
stand together.
Kensing moved among them, as eager and terrified as the rest-but his yearning
to find Annie quenched his terror.
On entering the station's lock, they immediately discovered that the
artificial gravity was still functioning at the normal level.
Indications were that the internal atmosphere was normal also.
But no one moved to open his or her helmet.
"Go ahead. We're going in."
Someone standing beside Kensing worked the manual controls set into a
bulkhead. And now the station's inner door was cycling.
Kensing waited, weapon leveled, mind almost blank, his will holding
the alphatrigger trembling on the edge of fire.
EIGHT
The planetoid Imatra was ringed by the orbits of a score of
artificial satellites, and several of these metal moons bristled with
sophisticated astronomical equipment. Similar devices were revolving
close to the larger members of the local planetary system. Now all of
these instruments in orbit, as well as many on the ground, had been
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