Berserker

IN THE TEMPLE OF MARS

Something was driving waves of confusion through his mind, so that he knew not who he was, or where. How long ago what was happening had started or what had gone before it he could not guess. Nor could he resist what was happening, or even decide if he wanted to resist.

A chant beat on his ears, growled out by barbaric voices:

On the wall there was painted a forest

In which there lived neither man nor beast

With knotty, gnarled, barren trees, old . . .

And he could see the forest around him. Whether the trees and the chanting voices were real or not was a question he could not even formulate, with the confusion patterns racking his mind.

Through broken branches hideous to behold

There ran a cold and sighing wind

As if a storm would break down every bough

And downward, at the bottom of a hill

Stood the temple of Mars who is mighty in arms . . .

And he saw the temple. It was of steel, curved in the dread shape of a berserker’s hull, and half-sunken in dark earth. At the entrance, gates of steel sang and shuddered in the cold wind rushing out of the temple, rushing out endlessly to rage through the shattered forest. The whole scene was gray, and lighted from above by an auroral flickering.

The northern lights shone in at the doors

For there was no window on the walls

Through which men might any light discern . . .

He seemed to pass, with a conqueror’s strides, between the clawlike gates, toward the temple door.

The door was of eternal adamant

Bound lengthways and sideways with tough iron

And to make the temple stronger, every pillar

Was thick as a barrel, of iron bright and shiny.

The inside of the temple was a kaleidoscope of violence, a frantic abattoir. Hordes of phantasmal men were mowed down in scenes of war, women were slaughtered by machines, children crushed and devoured by animals. He, the conqueror, accepted it all, exulted in it all, even as he became aware that his mind, under some outer compulsion, was building it all from the words of the chant.

He could not tell how long it lasted. The end came abruptly—the pressure on his mind was eased, and the chanting stopped. The relief was such that he fell sprawling, his eyes closed, a soft surface beneath him. Except for his own breathing, all was quiet.

A gentle thud made him open his eyes. A short metal sword had been dropped or tossed from somewhere to land near him. He was in a round, softly lighted, familiar room. The circular wall was covered by a continuous mural, depicting a thousand variations on the theme of bloody violence. At one side of the room, behind a low altar, toward the statue of an armed man gripping chariot reins and battleax, a man who was larger than life and more than a man, his bronze face a mask of insensate rage.

All this he had seen before. He gave it little thought except for the sword. He was drawn to the sword like a steel particle to a magnet, for the power of his recent vision was still fresh and irresistible, and it was the power of destruction. He crawled to the sword, noticing dimly that he was dressed like the statue of the god, in a coat of mail. When he had the sword in his hand the power of it drew him to his feet. He looked round expectantly.

A section of the continuous mural-wall opened into a door, and a figure entered the temple. It was dressed in a neat, plain uniform, and its face was lean and severe. It looked like a man, but it was not a man, for no blood gushed out when the sword hewed in.

Joyfully, thoughtlessly, he hacked the plastic-bodied figure into a dozen pieces. Then he stood swaying over it, drained and weary. The metal pommel of the sword grew suddenly hot in his hand, so that he had to drop it. All this had happened before, again and again.

This painted door opened once more. This time it was a real man who entered, a man dressed in black, who had hypnotic eyes under bushy brows.

“Tell me your name,” the black-uniform ordered. His voice compelled.

“My name is Jor.”

“And mine?”

“You are Katsulos,” said Jor dully, “the Esteeler secret police.”

“Yes. And where are we?”

“In space, aboard the Nirvana II. We are taking the High Lord Nogara’s new space-going castle out to him, out to the rim of the galaxy. And when he comes aboard, I am supposed to entertain him by killing someone with a sword. Or another gladiator will entertain him by killing me.”

“Normal bitterness,” remarked one of Katsulos’ men, appearing in the doorway behind him.

“Yes, this one always snaps right back,” Katsulos said. “But a good subject. See the brain rhythms?” He showed the other a torn-off piece of chart from some recording device.

They stood there discussing Jor like a specimen, while he waited and listened. They had taught Jor to behave. They thought they had taught him permanently—but one of these days he was going to show them. Before it was too late. He shivered in his mail coat.

“Take him back to his cell,” Katsulos ordered at last. “I’ll be along in a moment.”

Jor looked about him confusedly as he was led out of the temple and down some stairs. His recollection of the treatment he had just undergone was already becoming uncertain; and what he did remember was so unpleasant that he made no effort to recall more. But his sullen determination to strike back stayed with him, stronger than ever. He had to strike back, somehow, and soon.

Left alone in the temple, Katsulos kicked the pieces of the plastic dummy into a pile, to be ready for careful salvage. He trod heavily on the malleable face, making it unrecognizable, just in case someone beside his own men should happen to see it.

Then he stood for a moment looking up into the maniacal bronze face of Mars. And Katsulos’ eyes, that were cold weapons when he turned them on other men, were now alive.

A communicator sounded, in what was to be the High Lord Nogara’s cabin when he took delivery of Nirvana II. Admiral Hemphill, alone in the cabin, needed a moment to find the proper switch on the huge, unfamiliar desk. “What is it?”

“Sir, our rendezvous with the Solarian courier is completed; we’re ready to drive again, unless you have any last-minute messages to transmit?”

“Negative. Our new passenger came aboard?”

“Yes, sir. A Solarian, named Mitchell Spain, as we were advised.”

“I know the man, Captain. Will you ask him to come to this cabin as soon as possible? I’d like to talk to him at once.”

“Yes sir.”

“Are those police still snooping around the bridge?”

“Not at the moment, Admiral.”

Hemphill shut off the communicator and leaned back in the thronelike chair from which Felipe Nogara would soon survey his Esteeler empire; but soon the habitually severe expression of Hemphill’s lean face deepened and he stood up. The luxury of this cabin did not please him.

On the blouse of Hemphill’s neat, plain uniform were seven ribbons of scarlet and black, each representing a battle in which one or more berserker machines had been destroyed. He wore no other decorations except his insignia of rank, granted him by the United Planets, the anti-berserker league, of which all worlds were at least nominal members.

Within a minute the cabin door opened. The man who entered, dressed in civilian clothes, was short and muscular and rather ugly. He smiled at once, and came toward Hemphill, saying: “So it’s High Admiral Hemphill now. Congratulations. It’s a long time since we’ve met.”

“Thank you. Yes, not since the Stone Place.” Hemphill’s mouth bent upward slightly at the corners, and he moved around the desk to shake hands. “You were a captain of marines, then, as I recall.”

As they gripped hands, both men thought back to that day of victory. Neither of them could smile at it now, for the war was going badly again.

“Yes, that’s nine years ago,” said Mitchell Spain. “Now—I’m a foreign correspondent for Solar News Service. They’re sending me out to interview Nogara.”

“I’ve heard that you’ve made a reputation as a writer.” Hemphill motioned Mitch to a chair. “I’m afraid I have no time myself for literature or other nonessentials.”

Mitch sat down, and dug out his pipe. He knew Hemphill well enough to be sure that no slur was intended by the reference to literature. To Hemphill, everything was nonessential except the destruction of berserker machines; and today such a viewpoint was doubtless a good one for a High Admiral.

Mitch got the impression that Hemphill had serious business to talk about, but was uncertain of how to broach the subject. To fill the hesitant silence, Mitch remarked: “I wonder if the High Lord Nogara will be pleased with his new ship.” He gestured around the cabin with the stem of his pipe.

Everything was as quiet and steady as if rooted on the surface of a planet. There was nothing to suggest that even now the most powerful engines ever built by Earth-descended man were hurling this ship out toward the rim of the galaxy at many times the speed of light.

Hemphill took the remark as a cue. Leaning slightly forward in his uncomfortable-looking seat, he said: “I’m not concerned about his liking it. What concerns me is how it’s going to be used.”

Since the Stone Place, Mitch’s left hand was mostly scar tissue and prosthetics. He used one plastic finger now to tamp down the glowing coal of his pipe. “You mean Nogara’s idea of shipboard fun? I caught a glimpse just now of the gladiatorial arena. I’ve never met him, but they say he’s gone bad, really bad, since Karlsen’s death.”

“I wasn’t talking about Nogara’s so-called amusements. What I’m really getting at is this: Johann Karlsen may be still alive.”

Hemphill’s calm, fantastic statement hung in the quiet cabin air. For a moment Mitch thought that he could sense the motion of the C-plus ship as it traversed spaces no man understood, spaces where it seemed time could mean nothing and the dead of all the ages might still be walking.

Mitch shook his head. “Are we talking about the same Johann Karlsen?”

“Of course.”

“Two years ago he went down into a hypermassive sun, with a berserker-controlled ship on his tail. Unless that story is not true?”

“It’s perfectly true, except we think now that his launch went into orbit around the hypermass instead of falling into it. Have you seen the girl who’s aboard?”

“I passed a girl, outside your cabin here. I thought . . . ”

“No, I have no time for that. Her name is Lucinda, single names are the custom on her planet. She’s an eyewitness of Karlsen’s vanishing.”

“Oh. Yes, I remember the story. But what’s this about his being in orbit?”

Hemphill stood up and seemed to become more comfortable, as another man would be sitting down. “Ordinarily, the hypermass and everything near it is invisible, due to the extreme red shift caused by its gravity. But during the last year some scientists have done their best to study it. Their ship didn’t compare to this one”—Hemphill turned his head for a moment, as if he could hear the mighty engines—“but they went as close as they dared, carrying some new instruments, long-wave telescopes. The star itself was still invisible, but they brought back these.”

Hemphill stood behind him. “That’s what space looks like near the hypermass. Remember, it has about a billion times the mass of Sol, packed into roughly the same volume. Gravity like that does things we don’t yet understand.”

“Interesting. What forms these dark lines?”

“Falling dust that’s become trapped in lines of gravitic force, like the lines round a magnet. Or so I’m told.”

“And where’s Karlsen supposed to be?”

Hemphill’s finger descended on a photo, pointing out a spot of crystalline roundness, tiny as a raindrop within a magnified line of dust. “We think this is his launch. Its orbiting about a hundred million miles from the center of the hypermass. And the berserker-controlled ship that was chasing him is here, following him in the same dust-line. Now they’re both stuck. No ordinary engines can drive a ship down there.”

Mitch stared at the photos, looking past them into old memories that came flooding back. “And you think he’s alive.”

“He had equipment that would let him freeze himself into suspended animation. Also, time may be running quite slowly for him. He’s in a three-hour orbit.”

“A three-hour orbit, at a hundred million miles . . . wait a minute.”

Hemphill almost smiled. “I told you, things we don’t understand yet.”

“All right.” Mitch nodded slowly. “So you think there’s a chance? He’s not a man to give up. He’d fight as long as he could, and then invent a way to fight some more.”

“Yes, I think there is a chance.” Hemphill’s face had become iron again. “You saw what efforts the berserkers made to kill him. They feared him, in their iron guts, as they feared no one else. Though I never quite understood why . . . So, if we can save him, we must do so without delay. Do you agree?”

“Certainly, but how?”

“With this ship. It has the strongest engines ever built—trust Nogara to have seen to that, with his own safety in mind.”

Mitch whistled softly. “Strong enough to match orbits with Karlsen and pull him out of there?”

“Yes, mathematically. Supposedly.”

“And you mean to make the attempt before this ship is delivered to Nogara.”

“Afterwards may be too late; you know he wanted Karlsen out of the way. With these police aboard I’ve been keeping my rescue plan a secret.”

Mitch nodded. He felt a rising excitement. “Nogara may rage if we save Karlsen, but there’ll be nothing he can do. How about the crew, are they willing?”

“I’ve already sounded out the captain; he’s with me. And since I hold my admiral’s rank from the United Planets I can issue legal orders on any ship, if I say I’m acting against berserkers.” Hemphill began to pace. “The only thing that worries me is this detachment of Nogara’s police we have aboard; they’re certain to oppose the rescue.”

“How many of them are there?”

“A couple of dozen. I don’t know why there are so many, but they outnumber the rest of us two to one. Not counting their prisoners, who of course are helpless.”

“Prisoners?”

“About forty young men, I understand. Sword fodder for the arena.”

Lucinda spent a good deal of her time wandering, restless and alone, through the corridors of the great ship. Today she happened to be in a passage not far from the central bridge and flag quarters when a door opened close ahead of her and three men came into view. The two who wore black uniforms held a single prisoner, clad in a shirt of chain mail, between them.

When she saw the black uniforms, Lucinda’s chin lifted. She waited, standing in their path.

“Go round me, vultures,” she said in an icy voice when they came up to her. She did not look at the prisoner; bitter experience had taught her that showing sympathy for Nogara’s victims could bring added suffering upon them.

The black uniforms halted in front of her. “I am Katsulos,” said the bushy-browed one. “Who are you?”

“Once my planet was Flamland,” she said, and from the corner of her eye she saw the prisoner’s face turn up. “One day it will be my home again, when it is freed of Nogara’s vultures.”

The second black uniform opened his mouth to reply, but never got out a word, for just then the prisoner’s elbow came smashing back into his belly. Then the prisoner, who till now had stood meek as a lamb, shoved Katsulos off his feet and was out of sight around a bend of corridor before either policeman could recover.

Katsulos bounced quickly to his feet. His gun drawn, he pushed past Lucinda to the bend of the corridor. Then she saw his shoulders slump.

Her delighted laughter did not seem to sting Katsulos in the least.

“There’s nowhere he can go,” he said. The look in his eyes choked off her laughter in her throat.

Katsulos posted police guards on the bridge and in the engine room, and secured all lifeboats. “The man Jor is desperate and dangerous,” he explained to Hemphill and to Mitchell Spain. “Half of my men are searching for him continuously, but you know how big this ship is. I ask you to stay close to your quarters until he’s caught.”

A day passed, and Jor was not caught. Mitch took advantage of the police dispersal to investigae the arena—Solar News would be much interested.

He climbed a short stair and emerged squinting in imitation sunlight, under a high-domed ceiling as blue as Earth’s sky. He found himself behind the upper row of the approximately two hundred seats that encircled the arena behind a sloping crystalline wall. At the bottom of the glassy bowl, the oval-shaped fighting area was about thirty yards long. It was floored by a substance that looked like sand but was doubtless something more cohesive, that would not fly up in a cloud if the artificial gravity chanced to fail.

In this facility as slickly modern as a death-ray the worst vices of ancient Rome could be most efficiently enjoyed. Every spectator would be able to see every drop of blood. There was only one awkward-looking feature: set at equal intervals around the upper rim of the arena, behind the seats, were three buildings, each as large as a small house. Their architecture seemed to Mitch to belong somewhere on Ancient Earth, not here; their purpose was not immediately apparent.

Mitch took out his pocket camera and made a few photographs from where he stood. Then he walked behind the rows of seats to the nearest of the buildings. A door stood open, and he went in.

At first he thought he had discovered an entrance to Nogara’s private harem; but after a moment he saw that the people in the paintings covering the walls were not all, or even most of them, engaged in sexual embraces. There were men and women and godlike beings, posed in a variety of relationships, in the costumes of Ancient Earth when they wore any costumes at all. As Mitch snapped a few more photos he gradually realized that each painted scene was meant to depict some aspect of human love. It was puzzling. He had not expected to find love here, or in any part of Felipe Nogara’s chosen environment.

As he left the temple through another door, he passed a smiling statue, evidently the resident goddess. She was bronze, and the upper part of her beautiful body emerged nude from glittering sea-green waves. He photographed her and moved on.

The second building’s interior paintings showed scenes of hunting and of women in childbirth. The goddess of this temple was clothed modestly in bright green, and armed with a bow and quiver. Bronze hounds waited at her feet, eager for the chase.

As he moved on to the last temple, Mitch found his steps quickening slightly. He had the feeling that something was drawing him on.

Whatever attraction might have existed was annihilated in revulsion as soon as he stepped into the place. If the first building was a temple raised to love, surely this one honored hate.

On the painted wall opposite the entrance, a sowlike beast thrust its ugly head into a cradle, devouring the screaming child. Beside it, men in togas, faces glowing with hate, stabbed one of their number to death. All around the walls men and women and children suffered pointlessly and died horribly, without hope. The spirit of destruction was almost palpable within this room. It was like a berserker’s—

Mitch took a step back and closed his eyes, bracing his arms against the sides of the entrance. Yes, he could feel it. Something more than painting and lighting had been set to work here, to honor Hate. Something physical, that Mitch found not entirely unfamiliar.

Years ago, during a space battle, he had experienced the attack of a berserker’s mind beam. Men had learned how to shield their ships from mind beams—did they now bring the enemy’s weapons inside deliberately?

Mitch opened his eyes. The radiation he felt now was very weak, but it carried something worse than mere confusion.

He stepped back and forth through the entrance. Outside the thick walls of the temple, thicker than those of the other buildings, the effect practically disappeared. Inside, it was definitely perceptible, an energy that pricked at the rage centers of the brain. Slowly, slowly, it seemed to be fading, like a residual charge from a machine that had been turned off. If he could feel it now, what must this temple be like when the projector was on?

More importantly, why was such a thing here at all? Only to goad a few gladiators on to livelier deaths? Possibly. Mitch glanced at this temple’s towering bronze god, riding his chariot over the world, and shivered. He suspected something worse than the simple brutality of Roman games.

He took a few more pictures, and then remembered seeing an intercom station near the first temple he had entered. He walked back there, and punched out the number of Ship’s Records on the intercom keys.

When the automated voice answered, he ordered: “I want some information about the design of this arena, particularly the three structures spaced around the upper rim.”

The voice asked if he wanted diagrams.

“No. At least not yet. Just tell me what you can about the designer’s basic plan.”

There was a delay of several seconds. Then the voice said: “The basic designer was a man named Oliver Mical, since deceased. In his design programming, frequent reference is made to descriptive passages within a literary work by one Geoffrey Chaucer of Ancient Earth. The quote fantastic unquote work is titled The Knight’s Tale.”

The name of Chaucer rang only the faintest of bells for Mitch. But he remembered that Oliver Mical had been one of Nogara’s brainwashing experts, and also a classical scholar.

“What kind of psycho-electronic devices are built into these three structures?”

“There is no record aboard of any such installation.”

Mitch was sure about the hate-projector. It might have been built in secretly; it probably had been, if his worst suspicions were true.

He ordered: ”Read me some of the relevant passages of this literary work.”

“The three temples are those of Mars, Diana, and Venus,” said the intercom.”A passage relevant to the temple of Mars follows, in original language:

“First on the wal was peynted a forest

In which there dwelleth neither man ne beast

With knotty, knarry, barreyn trees olde

Of stubbes sharp and hidous to biholde.”

Mitch knew just enough of ancient languages to catch a word here and there, but he was not really listening now. His mind had stopped on that phrase “temple of Mars.” He had heard it before, recently, applied to a newly risen secret cult of berserker-worshippers .

“And downward from a hill, under a bente

Ther stood the temple of Mars armipotente

Wrought all of burned steel, of which the entree

Was long and streit, and gastly for to see.”

There was a soft sound behind Mitch, and he turned quickly. Katsulos stood there. He was smiling, but his eyes reminded Mitch of Mars’ statue.

“Do you understand the ancient language, Spain? No? Then I shall translate.” He took up the verse in a chanting voice:

“Then saw I first the dark imagining

Of felony, and all its compassing

The cruel ire, red as any fire

The pickpurse, and also the pale dread

The smiler with the knife under his cloak

The stable burning with the black smoke

The treason of the murdering in the bed

The open war, with all the wounds that bled . . . ”

“Who are you, really?” Mitch demanded. He wanted it out in the open. And he wanted to gain time, for Katsulos wore a pistol at his belt. “What is this to you? Some kind of religion?”

“Not some religion!” Katsulos shook his head, while his eyes glowed steadily at Mitch. “Not a mythology of distant gods, not a system of pale ethics for dusty philosophers. No!” He took a step closer. “Spain, there is no time now for me to proselytize with craft and subtlety. I say only this—the temple of Mars stands open to you. The new god of all creation will accept your sacrifice and your love.”

“You pray to that bronze statue?” Mitch shifted his weight slightly, getting ready.

“No!” The fanatic’s words poured out faster and louder. “The figure with helmet and sword is our symbol and no more. Our god is new, and real, and worthy. He wields deathbeam and missile, and his glory is as the nova sun. He is the descendant of Life, and feeds on Life as is his right. And we who give ourselves to any of his units become immortal in him, though our flesh perish at his touch!”

“I’ve heard there were men who prayed to berserkers,” said Mitch. “Somehow I never expected to meet one.” Faintly in the distance he heard a man shouting, and feet pounding down a corridor. Suddenly he wondered if he, or Katsulos, was more likely to receive reinforcement.

“Soon we will be everywhere,” said Katsulos loudly. ”We are here now, and we are seizing this ship. We will use it to save the unit of our god orbiting the hypermass. And we will give the badlife Karlsen to Mars, and we will give ourselves. And through Mars we will live forever!”

He looked into Mitch’s face and started to draw his gun, just as Mitch hurled himself forward.

Katsulos tried to spin away, Mitch failed to get a solid grip on him, and both men fell sprawling. Mitch saw the gun muzzle swing round on him, and dived desperately for shelter behind a row of seats. Splinters flew around him as the gun blasted. In an instant he was moving again, in a crouching run that carried him into the temple of Venus by one door and out by another. Before Katsulos could sight at him for another shot, Mitch had leaped down an exit stairway, out of the arena.

As he emerged into a corridor, he heard gunfire from the direction of the crew’s quarters. He went the other way, heading for Hemphill’s cabin. At a turn in the passage a black uniform stepped out to bar his way, aiming a pistol. Mitch charged without hesitation, taking the policeman by surprise. The gun fired as Mitch knocked it aside, and then his rush bowled the black-uniform over. Mitch sat on the man and clobbered him with fists and elbows until he was quiet.

Then, captured gun in hand, Mitch hurried on to Hemphill’s door. It slid open before he could pound on it, and closed again as soon as he had jumped inside.

A dead black-uniform sat leaning against the wall, unseeing eyes aimed at Mitch, bullet-holes patterned across his chest.

“Welcome,” said Hemphill drily. He stood with his left hand on an elaborate control console that had been raised from a place of concealment inside the huge desk. In his right hand a machine pistol hung casually. “It seems we face greater difficulties than we expected.”

Lucinda sat in the darkened cabin that was Jor’s hiding place, watching him eat. Immediately after his escape she had started roaming the ship’s passages, looking for him, whispering his name, until at last he had answered her. Since then she had been smuggling him food and drink.

He was older than she had thought at first glance; a man of about her own age, with tiny lines at the corners of his suspicious eyes. Paradoxically, the more she helped him, the more suspicious his eyes became.

Now he paused in his eating to ask: “What do you plan to do when we reach Nogara, and a hundred men come aboard to search for me? They’ll soon find me, then.”

She wanted to tell Jor about Hemphill’s plan for rescuing Karlsen. Once Johann Karlsen was aboard, no one on this ship would have to fear Nogara, or so she felt. But just because Jor still seemed suspicious of her, she hesitated to trust him with a secret.

“You knew you’d be caught eventually,” she countered. “So why did you run away?”

“You don’t know what it’s like, being their prisoner.”

“I do know.”

He ignored her contradiction. “They trained me to fight in the arena with the others. And then they singled me out, and began to train me for something even worse. Now they flick a switch somewhere, and I start to kill, like a berserker.”

“What do you mean?”

He closed his eyes, his food forgotten. “I think there’s a man they want me to assassinate. Every day or so they put me in the temple of Mars and drive me mad, and then the image of this man is always sent to me. Always it’s the same face and uniform. And I must destroy the image, with a sword or a gun or with my hands. I have no choice when they flip that switch, no control over myself. They’ve hollowed me out and filled me up with their own madness. They’re madmen. I think they go into the temple themselves, and turn the foul madness on, and wallow in it, before their idol.”

He had never said so much to her in one speech before. She was not sure how much of it was true, but she felt he believed it all. She reached for his hand.

“Jor, I do know something about them. That’s why I’ve helped you. And I’ve seen other men who were really brainwashed. They haven’t really destroyed you, you’ll be all right again someday.”

“They want me to look normal.” He opened his eyes, which were still suspicious. ”Why are you on this ship, anyway?”

“Because.” She looked into the past. “Two years ago I met a man called Johann Karlsen. Yes, the one everyone knows of. I spent about ten minutes with him . . . if he’s still alive, he’s certainly forgotten me, but I fell in love with him.”

“In love!” Jor snorted, and began to pick his teeth.

Or I thought I fell in love, she said to herself. Watching Jor now, understanding and forgiving his sullen mistrust, she realized she was no longer able to visualize Karlsen’s face clearly.

Something triggered Jor’s taut nerves, and he jumped up to peek out of the cabin into the passage. “What’s that noise? Hear? It sounds like fighting.”

“So.” Hemphill’s voice was grimmer than usual. “The surviving crewmen are barricaded in their quarters, surrounded and under attack. The damned berserker-lovers hold the bridge, and the engine room. In fact they hold the ship, except for this.” He patted the console that he had raised from concealment inside Nogara’s innocent-looking desk. “I know Felipe Nogara, and I thought he’d have a master control in his cabin, and when I saw all the police I thought I might possibly need it. That’s why I quartered myself in here.”

“What all does it control?” Mitch asked, wiping his hands. He had just dragged the dead man into a closet. Katsulos should have known better than to send only one against the High Admiral.

“I believe it will override any control on the bridge or in the engine room. With it I can open or close most of the doors and hatches on the ship. And there seem to be scanners hidden in a hundred places, connected to this little viewscreen. The berserker-lovers aren’t going anywhere with this ship until they’ve done a lot of rewiring or gotten us out of this cabin.”

“I don’t suppose we’re going anywhere either,” said Mitch. “Have you any idea what’s happened to Lucy?”

“No. She and that man Jor may be free, and they may do us some good, but we can’t count on it. Spain, look here.” Hemphill pointed to the little screen. ”This is a view inside the guardroom and prison, under the arena’s seats. If all those individual cells are occupied, there must be about forty men in there.”

“That’s an idea. They may be trained fighters, and they’ll certainly have no love for the black uniforms.”

“I could talk to them from here,” Hemphill mused. “But how can we free them and arm them? I can’t control their individual cell doors, though I can keep the enemy locked out of that area, at least for a while. Tell me, how did the fighting start? What set it off?”

Mitch told Hemphill what he knew. “It’s almost funny. The cultists have the same idea you have, of taking this ship out to the hypermass and going after Karlsen. Only of course they want to give him to the berserkers.” He shook his head. “I suppose Katsulos hand-picked cultists from among the police for this mission. There must be more of them around than any of us thought.”

Hemphill only shrugged. Maybe he understood fairly well those fanatics out there whose polarity happened to be opposite from his own.

Lucinda would not leave Jor now, nor let him leave her. Like hunted animals they made their way through the corridors, which she knew well from her days of restless walking. She guided him around the sounds of fighting to where he wanted to go.

He peered around the last corner, and brought his head back to whisper: “There’s no one at the guardroom door.”

“But how will you get in? And some of the vultures may be inside, and you’re not armed.”

He laughed soundlessly. “What have I to lose? My life?” He moved on around the corner.

Mitch’s fingers suddenly dug into Hemphill’s arm. “Look! Jor’s there, with the same idea you had. Open the door for him, quick!”

Most of the painted panels had been removed from the interior walls of the temple of Mars. Two black-uniformed men were at work upon the mechanism thus revealed, while Katsulos sat at the altar, watching Jor’s progress through his own secret scanners. When he saw Jor and Lucinda being let into the guardroom, Katsulos pounced.

“Quick, turn on the beam and focus on him. Boil his brain with it! He’ll kill everyone in there, and then we can take our time with the others.”

Katsulos’ two assistants hurried to obey, arranging cables and a directional antenna. One asked: “He’s the one you were training to assassinate Hemphill?”

“Yes. His brain rhythms are on the chart. Focus on him quickly!”

“Set them free and arm them!” Hemphill’s image shouted, from a guardroom viewscreen. “You men there! Fight with us and I promise to take you to freedom when the ship is ours; and I promise we’ll take Johann Karlsen with us, if he’s alive.”

There was a roar from the cells at the offer of freedom, and another roar at Karlsen’s name. “With him, we’d go on to Esteel itself!” one prisoner shouted.

When the beam from the temple of Mars struck downward, it went unfelt by everyone but Jor. The others in the guardroom had not been conditioned by repeated treatments, and the heat of their emotions was already high.

Just as Jor picked up the keys that would open the cells, the beam hit him. He knew what was happening, but there was nothing he could do about it. In a paroxysm of rage he dropped the keys, and grabbed an automatic weapon from the arms rack. He fired at once, shattering Hemphill’s image from the viewscreen.

With the fragment of his mind that was still his own, Jor felt despair like that of a drowning man. He knew he was not going to be able to resist what was coming next.

When Jor fired at the viewscreen, Lucinda understood what was being done to him.

“Jor, no!” She fell to her knees before him. The face of Mars looked down at her, frightening beyond anything she had ever seen. But she cried out to Mars: “Jor, stop! I love you!”

Mars laughed at her love, or tried to laugh. But Mars could not quite manage to point the weapon at her. Jor was trying to come back into his own face again, now coming back halfway, struggling terribly.

“And you love me, Jor. I know. Even if they force you to kill me, remember I know that.”

Jor, clinging to his fragment of sanity, felt a healing power come to him, setting itself against the power of Mars. In his mind danced the pictures he had once glimpsed inside the temple of Venus. Of course! There must be a countering projector built in there, and someone had managed to turn it on.

He made the finest effort he could imagine. And then, with Lucinda before him, he made a finer effort still.

He came above his red rage like a swimmer surfacing, lungs bursting, from a drowning sea. He looked down at his hands, at the gun they held. He forced his fingers to begin opening. Mars still shouted at him, louder and louder, but Venus’ power grew stronger still. His hands opened and the weapon fell.

Once the gladiators had been freed and armed the fight was soon over, though not one of the cultists even tried to surrender. Katsulos and the two with him fought to the last from inside the temple of Mars, with the hate projector at maximum power, and the recorded chanting voices roaring out their song. Perhaps Katsulos still hoped to drive his enemies to acts of self-destructive rage, or perhaps he had the projector on as an act of worship.

Whatever his reasons, the three inside the temple absorbed the full effect themselves. Mitch had seen bad things before, but when he at last broke open the temple door, he had to turn away for a moment.

Hemphill showed only satisfaction at seeing how the worship of Mars had culminated aboard Nirvana II. “Let’s see to the bridge and the engine room first. Then we can get this mess cleaned up and be on our way.”

Mitch was glad to follow, but he was detained for a moment by Jor.

“Was it you who managed to turn on the counter-projector? If it was, I owe you much more than my life.”

Mitch looked at him blankly. “Counter-projector? What’re you talking about?”

“But there must have been . . . ”

When the others had hurried away, Jor remained in the arena, looking in awe at the thin walls of the temple of Venus, where no projector could be hidden. Then a girl’s voice called, and Jor too hurried out.

There was a half minute of silence in the arena.

“Emergency condition concluded,” said the voice of the intercom station, to the rows of empty seats. “Ship’s records returning to normal operation. Last question asked concerned basis of temple designs. Chaucer’s verse relevant to temple of Venus follows, in original language:

“I recche nat if it may bettre be

To have victorie of them, or they of me

So that I have myne lady in myne armes.

For though so be that Mars is god of Armes,

Your vertu is so great in hevene above

That, if yow list, I shall wel have my love . . . ”

Venus smiled, half-risen from her glittering waves.