Long, long ago, two alien races fought a war of extinction. All that is left of either of them are the berserkers: vast, thinking, spacefaring, killer machines whose sole purpose is to destroy all living things. For the first time in all of their history, they have met a life form that has a chance of stopping them. In the cold reaches of space, the berserkers seize a floating laboratory full of human germ-plasm being stored for retrieval and growth in a future colonization project. The ship contains millions of human lives—but why are they not destroying them? Will the human pursuers manage to find the missing lab, defeat the berserkers, and save the nascent lives?

This is a major Berserker novel—one of Saberhagen's finest—with one hell of a surprise up its sleeve.