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distraction from facing... all this.
"Ah, God," he said aloud, looking ahead. It was a prayer, not an oath. Far
beyond the slow-churning infinite horizon, monstrous dragon-head clouds were
rearing up. Against the blackness of space their mother-of-pearl heads seemed
to be formed by matter materializing out of nothingness to plunge toward the
hypermass. Soon the dragons' necks rose over the edge of the world, wattled
with rainbow purls of matter that dripped and fell with unreal-looking speed.
And then appeared the dragon-bodies, clouds throbbing with blue-white
lightning, suspended above the red bowels of hell.
The vast ring, in which Karlsen's thread of rocks was one component, raced
like a circular sawblade toward the prominence. As they rushed in from the
horizon they rose up far beyond Karlsen's level. They twisted and reared like
mad horses. They must be bigger than planets, he thought, yes, bigger than a
thousand Earths or Esteels. The whirling band he rode was going to be crushed
between them-and then he saw that even as they passed they were still
enormously distant from him on either side.
Karlsen let his eyes close. If men ever dared to pray, if they ever dared even
to think of a Creator of the universe, it was only because their tiny minds
had never been able to visualize a thousandth part... a millionth part...
there were no words, no analogues for the mind to use in grasping such a
scene.
And, he thought, what of men who believe only in themselves, or in nothing?
What must it do to them to look nakedly at such odds as these?
Karlsen opened his eyes. In his belief a single human being was of more
importance 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 wavefronts of their
light jammed together in a stampede over this 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
retreat within himself. 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 this bubble.
Here, he faced no ordinary spaceman's view of infinity. Here there was a
terrible perspective, starting with rocks an arm's length outside the glass
and drawing the mind on and out, rock by rock and line by line, step by
inescapable step, on and on and on...
All right. At least this was something to fight against, and fighting
something was better than sitting here rotting. To begin with, a little
routine. He drank some water, which tasted very good, and made himself eat a
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bite of food. He was going to be around for a while yet.
Now, for the little job of getting used to the scenery. He faced in the
direction 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 his thought 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 pattern of forcelines
that at last bent around the hypermass, defining 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 climber who had been terrified by the size of trees and vines, who
now saw them for the first time as a network of roads that could be mastered.
Now he dared to let his eyes grab hard at that buzzsaw rim of the next inner
circle of hurtling rocks, to let his mind ride it out and away. Now he dared
to watch the stars shifting with his movement, to see with the depth
perception of a planet.
He had been through a lot even before falling here, and sleep overtook him.
The next thing he knew 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 substantial 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 shame in their 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 it would be a waste of ammunition.
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 track of hours and days-weeks?
He exercised and shaved, he ate and drank and eliminated. The boat's recycling
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