And so once more you allowed among yourselves the luxury of dangerous conflict, carrying the threat of suicidal violence. Imagined threats had receded behind horizons of silence and vastness. The alien immensity surrounding you appeared to be not hostile after all.

To your settlers and frontiersmen the galaxy began to seem a friendly place, rich in worlds hanging ripe for your peaceful occupation. In large colonies and small you scattered yourselves across one segment of one arm of our slow-turning galaxy. Alas, for the day unthinkable that was to come, the day when we wished ourselves warlike! You of Earth found uninhabited planets, where you could thrive in the warmth of suns much like your own. We saw to it that Earthmen were not crowded by our presence physically and mentally they had to stretch to touch us. We live in different environments and think mainly in different directions. We Carmpan and our older friends are more passive than you. Your race and mine studied each other with eager science and with great caution and courtesy. And when the men of old Earth began to travel faster than light, they followed our voices to seek us out. They studied our alien voices whenever they could hear us. In the same century the men of old Earth took their first steps into space. Like island savages just become aware of the great powers existing on and beyond their ocean, your nations began- sullenly, mistrustfully, almost against their will-to put aside their quarrels with one another. They became aware of the real world surrounding them-a universe strange and immense beyond thought, possibly hostile, surrounding and shrinking all Earthmen alike. On the day when whispers in our alien voices were first detected, straying in across the enormous intervals, the universe of stars became real to all Earth’s nations and all her tribes. Looking into the past I have seen how in the twentieth century of your Christian calendar your forefathers on Earth first built radio detectors capable of sounding the deeps of interstellar space. And so I have truly set down the acts and words of Earth-descended men great and small and ordinary, the words and even the secret thoughts of your heroes and your traitors. In these minds alien to me I often perceive what I cannot understand, yet what I see is true. The vision has been formed piece by piece through my contacts in past and present time with the minds of men and of machines. INTRODUCTION I, THIRD HISTORIAN OF THE CARMPAN RACE, IN GRATITUDE to the Earth-descended race for their defense of my world, set down here for them my fragmentary vision of these battles from their great war against our common enemy. Reprinted by arrangement with Tor Books Printed in the United States of AmericaĬONTENTS BERSERKER ATTACK Copyright 1987 by Fred Saberhagen INTRODUCTION MASQUE OF THE RED SHIFT IN THE TEMPLE OF MARS BROTHER BERSERKER “I-“SMASHER SMASHER copyright © 1978 by Mercury Press Inc. BROTHER BERSERKER copyright © 1969 by Fred Saberhagen. MASQUE OF THE RED SHIFT and IN THE TEMPLE OF MARS copyright © 1965, 1966 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. BERSERKER ATTACK Copyright © 1987 by Fred Saberhagen All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. Men and women who poured time and wealth and genius into costumes and music and smiling masks, seeking escape from the terror of the world. I have touched minds that worked hard at revelry. A jester by his efforts may give laughter to others, but by no labor can he seize it for himself.

Pillars of eternity portraits berserker