Before he had taken a dozen more strides, what sounded like a real firefight burst out not far ahead, gunblasts blurring briefly into a continuous roar.

Harry ran faster, the power in the suit's legs giving him gazelle-like speed. He kept reminding himself that he should be in no immediate danger of running into a breakdown zone, not just here. Because the Templars had made it this far, and a little farther on, Private Zhong's tin man was walking.

Crouching, Harry rounded a corner of sharply angled Maracandan rock and came in sight of the cave entrance Bulaboldo had mentioned, a dark, broad hole. Harry was just in time for the end of the fight the two Templars had been making, though he couldn't see it clearly. The echoing racket of heavy shoulder weapons had died away, the dust of the latest chain of explosions still hung in the mild air, over the sides of a couple of steep, almost pillarlike Maracandan hills, just forcibly remodeled.

Another burst of gunfire rang, and suddenly Harry's helmet radio was squawking, with a desperate call for help. He couldn't tell whether the voice was Teagarden's or Zhong's.

Harry kept his answer short, in the tone of a cautious reprimand: "My orders are to remain on the ship." Maybe the damned thing would hear that, maybe it would even believe it.

The Templar's words broke off in screams, and the screams trailed off, then came back, at lower volume... only to fade again.

Harry eased his way along until he could see the entire cave mouth, a roughly triangular opening quite big enough to drive a freight hauler into. Not that there were any vehicles in sight at the moment.

He still had not seen a berserker, but abruptly enemy fire was being directed at him, and he jumped for better shelter. The outer layer of weird Maracandan designer rocks on the steep hillside above Harry's head dissolved in a roaring rain of chunks and powder, head-sized lumps cascading down on his heavy armor. The slide of debris would have pulped an unprotected man, but only nudged his suited body slightly off balance as he moved.

Peering round another rocky edge, Harry caught got one quick glimpse of a moving object fifty meters or so away, the leg and foot of a berserker, definitely of anthropomorphic shape, darting across a gap between large rocks, just outside the cave. Very fast, as always when they wanted to move fast. Still, he thought there had been something jerky in this one's movements, a hint of awkwardness. Just one glimpse and it was gone, behind a rock. The sight sent a brief electric jolt down Harry's spine. It was the same feeling he had had out on the edge of the Thisworld system, when the little red dot came on the holostage.

Adjusting his position carefully, a step at a time, exercising patience, Harry eased up to another corner, and presently was able to get a somewhat better look at his opponent. He saw the two-legged shiny body with bulging shoulder turrets above its arms appear momentarily at about the same range as before, then quickly vanish again between two small hills.

This time Harry was sure there had been something a little odd, a little off balance, about the way it moved. The thing looked a trifle awkward - for a berserker. So, one of the Templars must have hit it, Harry thought. Hit it once, at least. If it hadn't been damaged already, it might still be too fast for Harry to even get a look at it.

There was no longer any radio signal from the Templars at all. Not even noise. Harry was afraid to discover just what had happened to his two allies and all their top-notch equipment. But it was essential that he know.

Slowly and cautiously Harry continued to advance. Soon he could see the exposed area where one of the Templars, Teagarden he thought, was lying, his armored suit all crumpled in a little heap. It took Harry a little longer to make out what was left of Zhong. The private was clearly dead, sprawled amid a messy rearrangement of his own internal organs, with fragments of his equipment scattered around him, in the middle of the flat open space immediately before the entrance to the cave. Obviously whatever version of Space Force gear these lads had been issued had not been heavy enough. Not at close range and against the real enemy.

Corporal Teagarden was suddenly back on radio, sounding as if he must be on his last gasp. He reported that the berserker machine was definitely damaged.

Harry muttered something back, while his eyes kept probing for the enemy.

"Silver, is that you? Silver, I hit it once." The poor wretch sounded proud.

"Great. You can relax, corporal. Take it easy now, you've put in a good day's work." Harry thought that was probably halfway true, and he was trying to be nice. Damn it, why couldn't he say anything that sounded right?

"Zhong? Where's Zhong?" The corporal's voice seemed to be failing steadily.

"Private Zhong's discharge came through. He's cleared the base already."

Teagarden still had something else he wanted talk about, between gurgles, but Harry didn't suppose that hearing it would do him any good. He had to consider the geometry of the situation. Harry himself and the two Templars were all within thirty or forty meters of each other, with their single opponent a slightly greater distance away, closer to the entrance to the cave.

Scattered around among the little geometric hills there were a lot of geometric rocks, many of them big enough for man or machine to hide behind, which made the tactical problem interesting. Harry, edging his way slowly round the side of a sheltering rock, got the muzzle of the carbine up in place and then took his time looking things over.

Neither Templars nor berserker were going anywhere in the immediate future. Not unless the berserker, which could still move faster than a man, even a man in armor, decided to retreat back into the cave. But retreating did not appear to be what it was programmed for.

Teagarden was back on radio, doing what he could to pass on information. The dying Templar was insisting that he and his comrade had seen only one berserker here.

"There's only one of them, Silver. Only one."

"Yes, that's good, corporal. Over and out."

"Be careful, Silver. Be careful. Oh God."

"Yeah, I will be. Thanks."

There was no way of knowing how many machines the two novices might have missed. As far as Harry could tell from his own observation, there was still only one guarding the cave mouth, and it didn't appear to have any weapons heavier than Harry's. So far it was winning against the human competition, but that could be put down to speed and skill.

Harry confirmed this when he caught another glimpse of the berserker, as it darted into what it must have computed as a better position. It might strongly suspect that there was now only one human opposing it, but it couldn't know that for sure. That thought gave Harry the beginnings of an idea.

In the course of its last movement, Harry had got his best look at the thing yet. He could see that the left side of its torso had been blasted open, right where the lower ribs would have been on a human. The metal leg on that side appeared to be dragging slightly.

He slammed the carbine's stock against the automatic clamp on the right shoulder of his suit. What he needed now was reliable speed, not firing-range safety. He switched to alphatriggering mode and clipped the sighting mechanism on the side of his helmet. From that position the gunsight would track a reflection of Harry's pupils and aim faithfully along his line of vision, ninety-nine times out of a hundred hitting the exact spot of anything that he was looking at. Now he would be able to aim and fire almost instantaneously while keeping both hands free.

A sudden movement between rocks, and the alphatriggered carbine stuttered and flared, spitting armor-piercing packets of force. But the thing must have seen Harry at practically the same time, for it was elsewhere when his fire arrived, safe by a handful of milliseconds. And shooting back. One blasting roar after another. More shattered rock, more fragments flying at bullet speeds. Some of the gravel was taking long seconds to fall back to the ground, making a prolonged pattering.

Behind the spot where the berserker had been standing yawned the broad, dark entrance to the goodlife cave. What in all the hells had the machines and their playmates been doing in there? Why was it guarded now? But questions would have to wait.

When the dust from the latest barrage had settled, Harry could see that the cave entrance was marginally wider than it had been a few seconds ago. The inside was still a great void of darkness, except now he could see that the darkness was spotted in the middle distance by some kind of electric lights. The sight reminded him that he didn't want to be still engaged in this fight when whatever strange powers ruled on Maracanda decided it was time for darkness to fall again.

His thought kept coming back to the question of what could possibly be inside the cave. There had to be something that the enemy thought it necessary to guard. The whole berserker presence on Maracanda was obviously quite limited. Yet one very capable fighting machine, instead of being sent out ravening to slaughter whatever life it could find, had been kept here solely to defend this spot. Evidently the guardian of the cave had not even located Bulaboldo's hideout nearby, and that could only be because it had not gone looking. It must be constrained to remain right here, on sentry duty, just on the chance that some intruder might come by.

So the enemy must have a lot invested, in one way or another, in whatever the sentry had been detailed to guard.

Harry murmured a curse at the unpleasant way the universe in general kept turning out to be organized. The curse was followed immediately by a muttered blessing on the two Templar idiots, one of whom still breathed and groaned. If Teagarden and Zhong hadn't insisted on launching their all-out attack before Harry came to help, he would now be facing an undamaged fighting machine with lots of charge left in its power pack. He would also be enjoying the benefit of two live and energetic idiots as allies, certain to be shouting orders at him and getting in his way. They might very easily have got him killed along with themselves.

But never mind what might have been. Concentrate on the job at hand.

Peering slowly round an edge of rock, wishing he could somehow have equipped his suit with a little periscope to use at times like this, Harry studied the situation.

At unpredictable, irregular intervals the berserker would dart from one rocky place of shelter to another, methodically maneuvering to find the best position from which to kill him. It was armed with a carbine-type weapon, not much different from Harry's, except the machine's would be built right into it, in the form of a small turret on each shoulder. There were two arms and hands, all of an anthropomorphic model, to facilitate the operation of human-made tools and ships and weapons, if and when the thing got a chance to do that.

Experience also made Harry wonder if the berserker could be keeping something in reserve, maybe some kind of a grenade to launch with one of its almost human-looking arms.

Of course it could.

Harry fired again at the silver shape as it went flashing between rocks, and had no better success than before.

What was it going to do?

If it ran out of ammo, of charge-power for its weapon, it might play dead and try to draw him near. It wasn't going to come charging out of the cave even if it calculated it could kill him that way.

Without putting itself in Harry's view, the berserker fired several rounds close to the Templar who still breathed, but missed the killing shot deliberately. Harry thought, What was the point of that? All he could imagine was that the machine was probably trying to bring its human opponent running out of cover in response to the renewed screams of the dying man.

Yeah, that was the kind of altruistic thing that humans might sometimes do. But Harry wasn't having any.

Looking at the other mangled Templar body, the dead man in the open space, Harry caught himself listening for the buzz of flies. But there were no insects on Maracanda - he wondered if there were even any germs. Berserkers might find a lot to love about Maracanda. There wasn't going to be a germ left in the whole Galaxy if the machines had their way.

Harry thought he would rather have germs get him than the damned machines.

The berserker had gone silent and immobile for almost a full minute. He thought he knew just where it was, but he could be wrong. They could be as patient as rocks, once they computed that was the best tactic to employ.

Harry knew his enemy's sight and hearing were at least as keen as his own when he was using all the help his suit could give him. And the berserker's reflexes were faster.

Gunfighting a berserker, one that knew at least approximately where you were trying to stay hidden, was not the surest way to make a long-term contribution. Harry thought that maybe the smart thing for him to do would be to get back to his ship, if he could manage to traverse that path without getting killed, and try to find some new way to help the cause. But he wasn't going to do that - the reason seemed to have something to do with Zhong and Teagarden.

All right, then, he was going to fight it out here, one of him against one of it. About all Harry really had going for him was the big hole in the machine's side. The hole was as wide as the span of a man's hand, but he thought probably not very deep. Most of what had been torn and blasted away was armor. But that wound wasn't going to kill it, not unless he could put another packet right in there.

Still silence, immobility. Had it decided to play dead and try to fake him into approaching it?

Harry had to assume that by now the enemy was doing its best to try to listen to his radio. Of course, if it came to a duel of optelectronic communications, the Witch ought to be able to prevail over one machine of only this berserker's size.

Unless her master told her otherwise.

Casually Harry got on the communicator. "Lily. Got a message for the ship." After her terse acknowledgment, Harry spoke three words in a different language, and a moment later the Witch confirmed that the coded signal had been received. The idea was to allow the enemy to listen in on Harry's next communication.

After letting a few seconds pass, Harry called again, and when Lily answered, told her where to direct the reinforcements when they came. There was a clever woman for you. She caught on quickly and didn't ask just who he thought he might be expecting.

Now it was Harry's turn to begin to play the silent, waiting game. He was going to see if he could do it better than a machine. If the berserker had really heard him that last time. If it would allow itself to be convinced that human help was probably on the way. If it should compute its best chance of defending the cave lay in emerging from its shelter to try to kill its current opponent before he was reinforced.

Once more the enemy shuttled between rocks, too fast for Harry to react.

Then it made another dash, doubtless trying to provoke him into moving also. His eyes picked out the dark wound disfiguring the darting target's flank. Harry willed destruction. His carbine's gunsight read the pinpoint target of his gaze, the weapon aimed itself, the almost weightless packets streamed out of the muzzle faster than bullets.

Fractionally slowed down as it was, the berserker could not dodge this time. Impacts pounded home, the first blast on metal, tearing armor, staggering the enemy, the second freezing it momentarily in place. Then a third, deep into the old wound. The flare of a secondary explosion splashed light across the jagged landscape. The metal body, torn nearly in half, was flung away from the cave entrance, tumbling in the open, somewhere between the two men it had killed.

Harry stepped out into the clear before the flying shape came down. Standing where he had a clear line of fire, he pumped packet after packet singly into the lifeless metal, one impact hurling the maimed puppet back into the air, another smashing it against the broken geometry of the cliffside. A third and a fourth tore it to pieces before it could fall back to Maracandan soil.

There was little left of the berserker machine but tumbling fragments, sparks dying in the dusty atmosphere. Nothing anywhere but burning wreckage, no piece bigger than a human hand or foot.

"Harry?" Lily's voice came from the ship. "Harry?" At last she sounded like she might be cracking with the strain.

"I'm all right. Just shut up a minute."

He had heard something else, something that made him stand and listen. Turning up his airmikes' sensitivity, he waited for his own breathing to quiet, and listened very carefully.

Cautiously he moved to a new position, still keeping a barricade of rock between himself and the cave entrance. There might, after all, be one more bandit somewhere in there. Then, with his carbine ready, he moved closer to the cave's mouth.

His airmikes told him there were faint sounds coming from inside, faint sounds as of another pair of human lungs.