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get them started ferrying people over here."
Sandy Kensing was slowly coming up out of deep SA sleep. It was different from
the arousal from ordinary sleep, vaguely like recovering from a long
illness-only faster-and vaguely like being drugged. Over the last four or five
subjective years of Kensing's life the sensation had come to be
familiar to him, and he recognized it at once.
The gossamer threads of some glorious dream had just begun to weave
themselves together, as part of the sensation of being drugged, when
they were brutally torn apart. The dream had had to do with Annie and him. In
it they were, for once, both out of the deep freeze at the same time, and
Dirac was going to let them go, somehow send them home&
But already the dream was gone. Kensing was on the biostation, where
he had been for too many years, for what seemed like eternity. Where
he was always going to be.
Still on the biostation, in his usual SA unit. And a big man,
graying, powerfully built, was bending over Kensing's coffin.
"Time to get up, kid," he urged in his rasping voice.
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"What?" Kensing still lay there in his glassy box, half dazed.
"Give me a few minutes."
"No. Wake up now." The big man was relentless. "You're the
defense-systems expert, and I want to talk to you before I go
waking the boss. He's very touchy about being got up. But we've got
information that someone's moving around on the yacht."
The temporary disorientation attendant upon revival from SA
sleep was passing quickly. Sandy Kensing was sitting up in his glassy
coffin, remembering.
"How many years this time?" he demanded of Dirac's bodyguard, Brabant.
At the moment, with mind and eyes a little foggy still, asking was still
easier than looking at the indicators for himself.
The graying man didn't look any older than Kensing remembered him. But
Brabant himself had doubtless spent most of the interval asleep. He answered:
"How many years have you been out? Shade under five. Not very long."
Kensing nodded. That would make the total length of this damned
voyage-if this ordeal could be called a voyage-still only a little over three
centuries. He himself had not spent more than four or five years out of
those three centuries awake and active, metabolizing and aging. But
subjectively he thought that he could feel every second of them, and more.
"What's up?" His coffin lid had now retracted itself all the way, and Sandy
Kensing moved his legs and started to get up. "I want a shower."
"Shower later." Brabant moved back a couple of steps to give him room. "Right
now I need a consultation. Someone's visiting the yacht. Someone, or
something."
Naked, Kensing climbed out of his coffin, reaching to accept the clothing
offered by an attendant service robot. Automatically his eyes sought the other
medirobots nearby, in which several of his shipmates lay temporarily
entombed. Not Dirac, of course.
The Premier, damn him, took his rest imperiously apart.
In that one, there, lay Annie. The readouts on that unit all looked
normal-and that was as close as he was going to be
allowed to get to Annie now.
On the way to the flight deck, where they would board a shuttle for
the short trip to the yacht, Kensing asked: "Who's on the yacht?"
Brabant looked at him morosely. "That's what we're going to find out. If
anyone's really there. Nick got me up, with some half-assed story
about intruders, and the first thing I did was come to get you. I'm
having a little trouble communicating with
Nick."
"Oh?"
"He's probably over there on the yacht now. But I want to see for myself
what's going on, and I want you to back me up."
Meanwhile, Commodore Prinsep was temporarily abandoning the yacht's control
room, shifting his efforts to other areas of the ship. He was determined
to wake up its drive and weapons systems, if at all possible.
It would be a hideous disappointment after discovering this ship,
seemingly miraculously intact, to be denied its use as a means of
escape.
As for the yacht's weapons, the indications were that firepower still
remained; but Prinsep was not about to risk arousing the berserker
with a live test.
Superintendent Gazin of the Humanity Office had slipped without protest
into the role of ordinary spaceman, at least for the time being. He and the
two active survivors of Prinsep's crew, Lieutenant Tongres and Ensign
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Dinant were taking turns watching the berserker, making as sure as
possible that the enigmatic mass at the head of the small procession
was still completely quiet.
Seen from this close-berserker and yacht were less than a kilometer
apart-that mass was big enough to stop a Solarian's
thought processes altogether, if he allowed himself to think of it as a
berserker. Its hull, rugose with damage, bulged out on all sides
past the considerable bulk of the captive bioresearch station.
The lifeboat carrying the badly wounded people from the
Symmetry had now docked successfully with the yacht, and
Prinsep led his troops in their effort to stretcher the five worst cases
in through airlock and corridors and lodge them in the yacht's five
medirobots. He was pleased to find that Havot had the quintet of devices all
checked out, warmed up, and ready.
Havot acknowledged the commodore's commendation with a dreamy smile.
"What next, sir?"
"Next, you and I go to check out the research station. Dinant, you and the
superintendent hang around here and keep an eye on our people. Tongres, go to
the control room and take a look at the drive on this bird. Possibly I missed
something."
No one questioned the implicit decision to abandon the flagship. The
risks of returning to that vessel were steadily mounting, as the
Symmetry telemetered indications that a killing explosion threatened at any
moment.
Despite their growing weariness, Havot and the commodore soon
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