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step up into the vehicle, which
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html was built high for good ground
clearance and off-
road use. A small engine compartment held a hydrogen lamp or fuel cell, to
drive the wheels in the free-zone stretches of road.
Harry was sitting back, trying to relax, letting
Bulaboldo drive. "The question I ask myself is, what do your mining claims
have to do with my getting my ship
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html back? It doesn't take a lot of heavy
thinking to get an answer, and the answer's getting clearer and clearer every
second. But I'd like to hear the official version anyway."
"Very perceptive of you, Harry. There is a connection to be discovered."
"So tell me."
"Easier to show than tell
and much easier to
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html show you if we're on the ground. All
will presently be revealed."
They were heading away from the center of town, through moderate traffic.
"What's that?" Harry's finger was pointing at a small, unlabeled indicator
light, near the center of the dashboard.
"Shows where we are, old friend. Comes on
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html only when the vehicle's not in a
breakdown zone, and therefore can be engine-driven. Otherwise one does not
know when one has crossed the invisible border, and one might keep pedaling on
and on, exhausting oneself unnecessarily."
Bulaboldo went on:
"Trouble is, there are many stretches of road in this region where the bloody
little light goes
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html on and off every fifty meters or so.
Not really worth the trouble to try to sit back and relax."
Harry wondered again, silently this time, why any Earth-descended humans
wanted to live on this enchanted world at all. But no, in his heart he
understood. The very oddities, the implicit dangers, the absolute cursedness
of the place, drew certain people like
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html powerful magnets.
Alan had heard
Bulaboldo's name when
Harry and Lily were talking in the square, and wasted no time in consulting a
city directory and finding his way to Bulaboldo's house. He had discarded his
Temple Malakó shirt and was plainly and cheaply clad when he arrived on the
doorstep
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html demanding to see his wife.
Lily, responding to a summons delivered to her room by one of the household
robots, met her husband in the doorway the robots had pointedly not invited
him inside. She saw that he had somehow come up with enough money to hire a
pedicab, though not a driver.
Alan was taut and
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html earnest. "Come take a ride with me,
Lil. We've got to talk things over."
Soon they were standing beside the pedicar, debating. Alan, trying to calm her
down, promised he would do all the pedaling. "Take it easy, Lil I was going to
send for you, once I got myself established on this world. By the way, this is
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a pretty posh place, where you're
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html staying."
"It's not mine, and it's not going to be. And if you're think-ing of asking
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