Long, long ago, two alien races fought a war of extinction. All that is still left of either of them are the berserkers: huge, thinking, spacefaring, killer machines whose lone purpose is normally to damage all living factors. For the first time in all of their background, they have fulfilled a life type that has a chance of stopping them.

In the cold gets to of space, the berserkers seize a floating laboratory filled with human germ-plasm being stored for retrieval and growth in another colonization project. The ship contains millions of human being lives-but why are they not really destroying them? Will the human pursuers manage to find the lacking lab, beat the berserkers, and conserve the nascent lives?

This is a major Berserker novel-one of Saberhagen’s finest-with one hell of the surprise up its sleeve.