"Yeah. Yeah!" It was a cry of joy.

Harry, at the controls of the Witch's compact single lifeboat, had just ejected from his ship, and could already see plain confirmation that the smaller shape was going to make a great deal of difference. In less than a minute he had got notably nearer to the berserker, even though the lifeboat's little engine was no powerhouse. Yes, he was gaining ground - more accurately, cutting through distorted space, where the orbits of objects round a star came to resemble those of electrons round an atomic nucleus.

Very soon he would have moved a whole orbital ring inward, approximately halving the distance to his target. Things were going very well. Except that some of the local distortion seemed to have invaded the small boat's tiny cabin.

Space distortion hell, no, this was something worse. He mouthed murderous profanity.

Lily's voice, anxious, said: "What is it, Harry?"

"More of Bulaboldo's shit! He or his people got into this boat somehow!"

It was plain what had happened. When the smugglers had boarded the ship in Harry's absence, they had used the lifeboat as a hiding place for more bags of the cargo Harry had refused to carry. Some of the damned stuff had spilled, and some got on Harry's suit. Again he had an impression of small, hard particles, wrapped up in flowing goo.

As long as he was in his suit, he could breathe in safety, the drug wasn't going to be an immediate problem. In another minute he had worked his way close enough to the berserker vehicle, reducing the range to only about ten kilometers, to see it clearly with only modest optical help.

He had gained on his enemy by one full ring, in this crazy system of quantified orbits. But there was still one more ring to go, he thought. Suddenly there came an extra flash of light from up ahead, and Harry had the impression that the berserker craft was firing some kind of weapon at him. He couldn't be sure, with all the natural flaring and fireworks that grew up in this strange space like weeds. But probably the flashing was more distant; it came again, followed swiftly by effects sounding like nearby missile detonations, hammering wavefronts of radiation against his little hull. Anyway, Dr. Kochi had said the enemy mounted no weapons. And even if it did, berserker gunnery shouldn't have any better success here than the kind where human thought waves pulled the trigger.

Only one more orbital notch to descend, one kilometer of effective distance to be gained; but his gauges were no longer showing any progress. In frustration Harry pounded an armored fist on the controls of the lifeboat's feeble drive. That didn't help.

The lifeboat had taken him as far and as fast as it could, and now he would have to find another way. Somehow, he felt no surprise, but only a sense of the inevitable.

For this outing Harry had of course chosen to wear his heavy armor, with a miniature fusion lamp in its backpack to give him power, and small jets for maneuvering in space. The suit was also equipped with a compact system for recycling air. This would not be the first time he had relied on it to keep him alive in space.

It only made sense to keep his fellow human beings informed, as best he could, of what was going on.

"Lily, I'm leaving the boat here, going out in my suit. That's the only card I've got left to play."

"I read you." Lily's voice showed a quaver, but obviously she'd been expecting to hear something of the kind. "I'll pass on your message when I can."

A minute later, Harry had left the boat. Carbine clamped on his suit's right shoulder, he went headfirst out the little hatchway half expecting to be swept away, caught up in the great wind from that crazy poem, the blast that blew the stars around like sparks from a smithy, which he kept visualizing as some kind of primitive communal fire.

But there was no great wind, not yet, only the insane displays that might not drive him crazy as long as he stuck to business and refused to look at them. He was flying alone in the maelstrom, and he wanted very much, even more than when he had been in the control room, to close his eyes. But the job he had to do would not allow that.

Quickly he discovered he could indeed make headway with his suit's little maneuvering jets. Power did not count for much in this environment, but smallness evidently did. He was swiftly sinking to the next lowest orbital ring - how many there might be altogether he could not guess - catching up with the murderous machine. Harry could see the berserker much more clearly now, a long, thin cylinder that was mostly open framework. If it was of a size to snugly fit that tunnel in the cave, then he must have closed to within about a hundred meters of it.

Minute by minute, that distance shrank.

He was certain, somehow, that the enemy must be able to see him coming, though he had no evidence that the launch vehicle, built under strange conditions to do one simple and straightforward job, was equipped with sensors that could pick up a sneaking human. But there was the communal machine that Dr. Kochi had described, which had sounded like a kind of combination guard and maintenance robot. A thing like that would certainly be equipped with senses, with powerful limbs and small but nasty grippers, maybe with other devices that could serve as weapons. It would see him coming, and then it would do its best to shoot him, or melt him down, to crush him to a pulp, armor and all, or shred him into little fragments, like the tidal grip of Ixpuztec.

Now Harry was so close to the berserker, he estimated only about ten meters, that the last trivial veil of distortion seemed to have fallen away, and he could see it clearly. Hope leaped up again. He reminded himself that this was a stripped-down, specialized model, constructed out of kit parts, by crazed goodlife in a cave. The prisoner might have been wrong about the robot riding with it. So it might well have no way of dealing with such an audacious invasion.

One ominous aspect coming into clear view was a huge grip-per device, mounted forward. That was something Dr. Kochi had somehow neglected to mention. Probably it was what the thing had used to drag itself through the tunnel.

And there at the rear, where it had been vaguely visible from a distance, was the solid box that must enclose the magnetic wrapping, which in turn was required to sheath the antimatter from all contact with the normal world.

Letting his gaze slide forward along the framework, Harry knew a sudden chilling, an inner emptiness. Emily Kochi had been right after all. Halfway along the big berserker's length, motionless as a crouching spider but plain to see - there was really no place for it to hide - was the extra machine that she had warned him of. It looked to be about the size of a man, but of a very different shape, with limbs enough to wrestle an octopus on equal terms.

Harry had no doubt at all that it saw him coming and was standing by to repel boarders.

Fiddling with his suit's little maneuvering jets, Harry slightly altered course, heading first toward the enemy's prow. When the small machine scrambled quickly to intercept him there, he waited until it was almost at the prow, then sent his suited body as quickly as possible back toward the stern.

Moving with unnerving speed, the metal spider reversed its progress, too, clambering swiftly back along the framework to anticipate his landing.

Hoping at least to avoid running right into it, Harry tried another swerve at the last moment, a dodge that brought him in contact with the framework of heavy metal about amidships, with the spider still far aft. Setting the carbine in alphatrigger mode, just as he had during the duel before the cave, Harry fired blast after blast against the payload box, with no visible effect. Meanwhile the spider, evidently lacking any projectile weapons of its own, had moved to the far side of the long framework, where it came scuttling toward him.

Quickly Harry switched his aim, letting go another small barrage. Inevitably, most of his force packets spent themselves, in vain, against the heavy framework of the long machine. But one passed through the interstices between girders and deprived the spider monster of a leg. Another tore off a chunk of its midsection. Still moving with deadly speed, the thing came leaping at Harry from one side, and grabbed his carbine by the stubby muzzle. The weapon was still clamped to his helmet, and momentarily he had the feeling that his helmet was going to be wrenched off, with his head inside. Instinctively he grabbed with both hands for the berserker's arm. The servo power of his suit allowed him to almost match its strength, and after a timeless moment of straining struggle, he was able to slide away.

Clinging to a framework girder with one hand, he felt with the other for his carbine. The weapon was a ruin now, the barrel sharply bent. Harry released the clamp and shoved the useless junk out of his way.

Where had the wounded spider gone? He quickly decided that about the only place it could be hiding was aft, behind the heavily armored box. Doubtless it had retreated there, because defending that would be its top priority. It must be lurking, watching, saving itself to leap at him at the last moment, if he should come up with some new weapon.

The spider evidently didn't realize that it had totally stripped him of his armament, deprived him of his last hope of getting at the antimatter. And Harry knew that one more bout of wrestling with the spider would be likely to finish him off.

But the enemy was not so confident, and it needed to take no more chances. The spider didn't have to kill him, to win the game. All it had to do was keep him motionless as the final minutes and seconds ticked down toward the end.

He couldn't reach the antimatter. But there might be one more chance.

Turning around, Harry clambered forward, making sure he had a tight grip with every move. Any little twitch of the launch vehicle would probably shake him loose, treat him to a slow death in a long orbit, even if something went wrong with its main plan and he survived the coming blast. The berserker vehicle could have rid itself of him by that means at any time since his arrival. But, short of absolute compulsion, it wasn't going to twitch. Because it was now tracking through the last minutes, maybe the last seconds, of the run to the precisely calculated point where it would drop its bomb.

Feeling nakedly disarmed, and knowing full well that the spider might, after all, be creeping up behind him, Harry kept moving forward along the framework of girders. Somewhere up here must be the drive, and also the guidance mechanism. Conceivably there was a weak point where he could get at one or the other.

Two-thirds of the way toward the nose of the machine, he came to a flat surface, dark even in the glare of Avalon, Built into the surface was a large niche, and inside the niche seemed a very likely place to search. He would be looking for some kind of structure, housing a vital part. Maybe he could even find something recognizable as an access panel.

Harry's groping arm and peering eyes found nothing of the kind. There was only a strangely familiar rounded shape that made the saboteur recoil momentarily. Then he saw that it was a spacesuit, wedged and strapped into the recess.

Harry hung there for a few seconds, celestial glories blurring overhead and underfoot, before he understood just what he had discovered. He was looking at the dead body of some ultrafanatical goodlife, one who wore a spacesuit of an older model, much inferior to Harry's. Strapped on outside the suit was a crude belt pouch. A lightweight pistol, as useless to Harry in his present situation as it had been to the goodlife, was bolstered at the figure's side.

Somehow he (or she - though the glare of Avalon shone in through the faceplate during one segment of the vehicle's slow axial rotation, it was no longer possible to tell) had defied the metal master in the cave and contrived to come along, seeking death in this way as a special honor, disregarding such niceties as life-support systems and artificial gravity. The inevitable result had been that tidal forces or acceleration had already crushed the organs and broken the bones of the living body inside the suit. Undoubtedly the berserker would like to do the same to Harry. But just completing the bombing run would efficiently take care of him, and maybe a billion others.

Harry hesitated, his thoughts racing. Did the spider even sense that this corpse was here? Probably it knew, and was simply ignoring the object's presence, knowing that the pistol at its belt was too feeble a weapon to do a berserker damage.

The belt pouch. What else would a fanatic goodlife be likely to be carrying on his or her last sortie against the universe?

Thrusting an armored hand into the old-style ammo pouch, Harry found two solid, fist-sized lumps. A couple of grenades - old-style drillbombs, obsolescent and crude by the latest ordnance standards, but still effective. In the hands of a goodlife such weapons would be contraband; berserkers never wanted to trust their helpers with anything that could be turned against the machines themselves. But these were special circumstances; and this particular helper would not have dreamed of any such rebellion.

Unconsciously shifting to a private mode of speech, and cutting off his radio, Harry put his helmet close to the other one, and whispered to the shapeless mass inside: "Thanks, pal. I'll never let anyone tell me that fanatics do no good."

Then he drew a deep breath and moved.

Backing out of the recess, Harry turned and headed aft again. When he had scrambled a few meters, and judged his distance, he hurled one drillbomb ahead of him, with all the strength and velocity that a skilled user could get from a servo arm. He aimed straight for the middle of the flat surface of the armored antimatter box. The missile was only a fraction of a second from impact, when the crippled berserker spider jumped out of concealment to get its own body in front of it. A moment later, grenade and spider had vanished together in a spray of metal fragments.

One grenade was left, one chance, and Harry wasn't going to gamble with it against the fortified box that the packets from his carbine hadn't even scratched. Working his way forward, the single remaining drillbomb in hand, Harry twice had to dodge the huge gripper that the berserker launch device wielded. It looked immensely powerful, but, fortunately, it was just a little slow.

A moment later, moving forward again along the girdered skeleton, pushing recklessly in among machinery that would probably be trying to electrocute him, or administer a lethal dose of radiation, Harry located a bulging, shielded unit centered in the cage of framework. To Harry his discovery looked more like a housing for the guidance mechanism than for the drive, but he would settle for either one. It was protected with a tough cover, yes, but he could gamble that this one would not be tough enough.

With a brief and confused thought of saying goodbye to everything, he slapped the drillbomb home.

The fury of the controlled explosion, focused into a molten, armor-piercing jet, was channeled in the direction of the slapping impact, away from Harry's impelling, suited hand.

But he felt the result right through the soles of his armored boots, braced as they were against a beam. In the next moment the whole berserker vehicle lurched violently, twisting itself out of its planned orbit. It went shooting upward, away from Avalon, and in moments it had lost an entire orbital lap, fallen hopelessly off course in its pursuit of the exactly proper launching position. Now the berserker would need more time to regain the exact position that it wanted.

If it had any chance of doing that at all.

The lurching acceleration did not exactly take Harry unawares, but there was nothing he could do about it. The sudden change of direction exerted only a few gravities of force, but those were easily enough to whiplash him away from the convulsing metal.

The large berserker was seriously disoriented, but not dead. Even as Harry's body flew free, the swinging gripper struck at him. It was not quite fast enough to clamp him in its jaws as he flew by. His suited body continued hurtling through space at a fantastic orbital speed, while at the same time drifting slowly outward, upward, away from blazing Avalon, on a rising curve that would soon carry him back and through the level where he had left the lifeboat.

The whole launch vehicle, dislodged from its inner orbit, was rising, as was Harry, like a giant cork in water, gaining speed. He'd hit it hard and hurt it seriously, in its guidance system or its memory. But whether the machine was still following a plan, or only homing on a target of opportunity, it was coming after the one human being it had in sight. And it was starting to catch up.

Deprived of a billion lives or more, a berserker will methodically and unemotionally accept the next best opportunity, and take whatever number it can get. In this case, one.

Harry's lifeboat must have been somehow tracking him, too, keeping itself as near to him as possible, and now it came hurtling toward him, falling like some damned demon from the upper reaches of this impossible space. The boat flashed near him and away again at bullet-speed, as Harry shot helplessly past, climbing slightly out of the grip of Avalon, rising toward the next higher orbital ring, the one in which the Witch herself still traveled.

Looking round, he discovered to his horror that the launch vehicle was still with him, bearing down on him at tens of meters per second, giant gripper poised to grab and crunch him at its leisure.

The neutron star had suddenly lurched away, with the speed of a stage illusion. Some trick, Harry supposed, of that crazy Pauli exclusion business, sharply altering his orbit, and the berserker's, too. In place of Avalon here came Ixpuztec, speeding toward their common perihelion, the point where the two extravagantly massive bodies passed closest to each other.

And in the same moment, Lily's radio voice came through: Harry, I'm coming. Goodbye Harry.

Under what might have been a thousand gravities of acceleration, the Witch, with Lily still at the controls, was only a streak. But the crash of Harry's ship into his pursuing enemy was spectacular, destruction dancing in pure silence in the depths of space.

Harry got one clear look at the magnetic package of antimatter, still unruptured, flying free from its broken box. A moment later it had melded into the rest of the debris, forming one bright streak. A streak that moved as fast as the darting curve of some graphics line drawn on a holostage, headed, not for the pulsar, but in the direction of the swiftly approaching black hole.

Tons of antimatter, and many tons of normal matter in the Witch... the joining of matter and antimatter must have produced a mindbending explosion. But that sprang into life only at a safe distance, far enough down the gravitational well that its results were all drawn into the maelstrom.

The ship was gone, her voice still there, faintly echoing, ringing in the void: Goodbye, Harry.

Avalon rolled on, its surface untouched, as serene as that of a hungry pulsar could ever be.

Much nearer, berserker and ship had utterly evaporated, blurred into one bright smear. The detonation of a bomb that might have killed a billion humans, but in fact took with it only one berserker and one ship. Harry's Witch, along with every living thing aboard, humans and bacteria all melded together in the bright streak of the blast. Matter and antimatter squeezed into one bundle, never mind if they should be compelled to explode. The blur would be moving at the speed of light when it went through the black hole's event horizon. Once caught in the full grip of Ixpuztec, even the unadulterated fury of an antimatter explosion was crushed and quenched, frozen like a bug in amber, embedded in the soon-to-be-infinite distortion of spacetime that went swirling away, perpetually vanishing into the guts of the ultimate abyss.

Goodbye, Harry . Only a technical echoing, but it sounded as if Lily could still be saying it again, even out of the pure hell of the great blast, as she went down. No human being in the history of the Galaxy had ever gone down farther, faster, than she was falling now.

Her last cry, as she neared the event horizon, would never stop sounding - in the perception of an outside observer, time down there on the rind of Ixpuztec appeared to die entirely. But each iteration of the signal would be fainter, and of longer wavelength. In only a minute or two of Harry's time the frequency would have dropped out of his radio's range, and the volume diminished to the point where no instrument would ever be able to pick it up.

But Harry Silver knew that he would never cease to hear that sound.

Goodbye, Harry.