by Brian N Ball
“Beam picked up by Service vessel, sir,” the Grade One robot reported. “Instructions? Scanners report second survival-cylinder beam also reaching cruiser.”
“Second cylinder?” Maran said. In the moment of realization that the alert had been beamed, he had overlooked the report of a second launching.
The Grade Two system hastened to explain: “Second survival-cylinder also launched by female Deffant. But no Red Alert condition now exists,” it added defensively.
Maran remembered the shocked face of a young woman. The eyes glowed with intelligence, though, intelligence and resolution. “She was a crew-member?”
“Miss Deffant had crew status,” obliged the Grade One robot. “She had authority to launch the cylinders.”
“Miss Elizabeth Deffant is an employee of the New Settlements Bureau,” added a lower-grade system.
“So she got herself and Rosario away,” Maran said aloud. She was resourceful.
“No, sir.”
Maran checked as he was about to order a change of course. “Rosario is in one cylinder?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And in the other?”
“It was released empty, sir.”
“Where is she?”
The machines were silent. Maran ordered a search of the vessel. The orders were delegated to servitor-scanners. There was an atmosphere of quiet cooperation, complete subservience, and some apprehension in the ship. The robots sensed Maran’s dissatisfaction. Sight orifices explored the recesses of the ship. “Female Deffant is on the survival-deck,” a Grade Two system announced. “She gave authority for release of two cylinders. This is a direct contravention of Galactic Council—” Maran waited with an intense patience. Ideas thronged his busy mind. He thought of the vast, boiling wake left by the ES 110. He could visualize the gray-black snouts of the cruisers as they arrowed onto that flooding wake. Somewhere, two cylinders tumbled and eddied among the storms of hyperspace. Gradually, the ideas became coherent.
“Miss Deffant is leaving the survival-cylinder hold,” the Grade Two system announced. Maran waited. It was impossible—a lone woman?
“Female Deffant is on the cell-deck!”
The robot was incredulous.
CHAPTER 11
“The assignment is one of observation, not investigation, sir! I have to remind you—” Buchanan suffered the arguments for five minutes. It was right. The machine was programmed to remind him of his primary task. Then he grew tired of argument.
“Now.”
He was too tense to relax in the comfortable command-chair. Ratlike sensors writhed into his palms. And still the robotic controller pointed out that it was his task to report on the Jansky Singularity, not to enter it.
“I am assuming command,” he said. “No more questions, no more advice.”
“Sir—”
“The station is within the Singularity’s parameters.”
“This Grade One robot agrees,” it said reluctantly. “Therefore command decisions rest with the commander of the Jansky Singularity Station. And you, Commander Buchanan, are the commander of the Jansky Singularity Station.”
“In. Now.”
“Yes, sir. According to your instructions.”
It was the Altair Star engulfment all over again. Buchanan waited, filled with dread, fearing more than death. But huge engines surged to combat the grip of the Singularity’s fields. The station nicked inward, rolling into the rotating, glowing phenomenon. Shields sprang out to counteract grotesque forces. The station vanished into the Singularity.
Across the spiraling arms of the Galaxy, long gray cruisers turned and activated drives seldom used. They blasted through endless reaches of infragalactic space, across the starways of the dimensions and clear through to the gulfs where two survival-cylinders drifted in the wake of the ES 110. The commander of the nearest cruiser gave sharp, terse orders. The spaceways began to empty. Passenger liners wheeled away into safer regions; colossal cargo-ships ten miles long and crewed by servo-robots lumbered out of the cruisers’ field of fire; tiny yachts shot into contiguous quadrants yapping out irate questions. There were no answers.
Soon, the gray-black snout of the cruiser drifted near the slowly-tumbling cylinders. Force-fields sprang out and the enigmatic pods were drawn inboard, still flooding the beamer-channels with their siren-blasts: Red Alert! Red Alert! All Enforcement Service ships rebeam! Red Alert! The noise was cut off abruptly. Three cruisers could handle anything known in the Galaxy, possibly in the Universe. They were the striking force of the Service. Their armament was always in a state of readiness. Tensely the crew waited as armored robots filleted the survival-pods. They took no chances. Blast-walls protected them, radiation-suits encased them; and it was left to the servo-robots to recover the contents of the pods. But when they saw the badly-wounded man, immobile, drugged, half conscious but still struggling to frame his message, they raced to him.
He said one word, but that was enough. Loaded with partially-suppressed agony, he breathed:
“Maran!” And then he began his fight for life. The ship’s commander, a tall gray-haired man whose days in the Service were almost at an end, did not reveal his thoughts as he gazed at the leaden, shrunken face.
“He’ll make it,” offered the medical officer. The commander nodded. “If he says anything else, let me know.” A youngish lieutenant burst out: “Why wasn’t there anyone in the other pod—why two of them? How could Rosario have launched two pods?”
The commander was thinking of Maran. Maran loose: free to begin that frightful series of neural operations…. “We’ll know when we reach the ES 110,” he told the young officer. He crossed to the gray metal coldly-functional console. Robotic servo-mechanisms sensed his nearness and awaited his orders. The cruisers were the only ships programmed for complete and unquestioned control by human personnel. There were those in positions of power who questioned the wisdom of risking fallible human discretion, but the members of the Service had so far persuaded the Galactic Council that the robots could not cope with the situations in which they might find themselves. They had not the resources for the kind of decision that occasionally must be made.
The commander spoke to his field man: “Link with the squadron. Try a combined submolecular field. I want the ship intact.”
Liz Deffant’s hands were steady as she pieced together the surprisingly elaborate mechanism. Several screws had to be wound into place. There was a sighting apparatus— merely a notch, but it would be adequate. The weapon had a short range. About a hundred yards, Liz guessed. A small hammer held the flint. There were springs, ratchets, a flashpan. All had to be in alignment. The propulsive force was a black powder, a mixture of easily-available chemicals. Out at the Rim, the expellees would have no difficulty in locating sources for the primary materials. Before a year or so passed, they would be able to manufacture simple tools like this for themselves. Pour the grains of powder into the upturned barrel of the weapon, she read. She split the cartridge and made a wadding from the cartridge-paper.
Prime the weapon by placing a pinch of powder in the priming-pan. Liz wondered if her fingers were sweating too much. She wiped them free of moisture. A misfire could occur; she would have only one chance, for the process of preparing the weapon for firing had already taken over a minute. Tap the projectile into the barrel, using the ramrod. Take care not to distort the shape of the projectile.
The bullet rested on the wadding. All about her, Liz sensed the interest of robot eyes. She could have wept with fear. It was an absurd situation, ridiculous. A chance encounter with a friend of Al’s had led to this distillation of terror, to this gagging range of emotions which had previously been unknown territory. She was bitterly afraid. The determination that had kept her from leaving the ES 110 was almost entirely dissipated. She could not begin to understand why her fingers continued to prepare the barrel-loading, archaic musket, for there was no directing force behind the movement.
They were a part of a pattern
of events which had encompassed her. She felt as if she, too, were a part of the robotic equipment of the prison-ship, a preprogrammed and mindless complex of nerve and tissue that was a part of the spatial and temporal framework of events beginning with the sight of Tup’s dying face, and taking in the horrors of the past few hours. The situation had grown around her. She had grown into it. There was a terrible inevitability in it.
She took the heavy weapon, careful to close the priming-pan. Tears streamed down her face as she began to walk toward the wide grav-chute. It led to the clamorous horror of the cell-deck, to the puzzled low-grade servitors, to the tanks where the expellees writhed, and to the splayed, silent body of the naive crewman she had known as Tup. And, somehow, she could negotiate the silent, eerie green-lit deck. The robots had finished their work. Many tanks were empty. The dead crewmen were gone. She knew that unseen scanners reported her presence. Twice she saw groups of low-grade servitors, but they did not attempt to hinder her.
She had known at once that Maran would not be on the deck. She grasped the musket in almost nerveless fingers, feeling the smooth stock, the heavy barrel, the delicate priming mechanism. Icy sweat covered her face and hands. Maran would be on the bridge.
“Al, I wish we hadn’t parted like that,” she whispered. When she began the quick ascent to the bridge, she could recall every line of his face. She had stormed away from him filled with a bitter rage, and she could see now the poignant hurt in his eyes. The sense of loss was almost unbearable. After the green-lit half-light of the lower deck, the bridge was startlingly bright. Liz Deffant stepped out of the chute, narrowed her eyes against the flooding light, and sought out Maran. The musket almost slipped from her hand. Two things immediately impacted on her mind: two low-grade servitors were very close to her; and Maran stood squarely before her, outlined against the bulk of the robotic controller’s pedestal. He seemed to have been waiting like that for aeons. His great body was clad in black. There was a half-smile on his face, so that Liz had the feeling that he would come toward her almost indulgently. His eyes were nearly beautiful, she thought inconsequentially, more a woman’s eyes than a man’s. His eyebrows were perfectly curved above the heavy-lashed, wide-set eyes,
Liz raised the musket and, enwrapped in her strange trance, she had a prevision of a third eye opening redly above the pair that were regarding her. The projectile was heavy, round, metallic and in a tenth of a second it would smash through the large skull and Maran would be no threat to anyone. The trigger curved in a bow against her finger.
Maran made a small gesture with his large, white hands. Liz had the impression of ponderous movement. The sights of the weapon were exactly aligned on the center of Maran’s forehead. Maran said with massive calmness: “Miss Deffant, do you really know what—” The rest was lost.
She nicked the priming-pan open, noticed in a frozen moment of time that a few grains of powder had clung to her damp fingers, and then she pulled with increasing power on the trigger. The flint snapped down.
Fire blossomed, red and yellow. Smoke gushed from the priming-pan and the barrel, and Liz was hurled backward by the recoil. She did not know whether she was glad, relieved, horrified, amazed, or empty of emotion.
The smoke cleared.
Maran had not fallen.
The clear brown eyes were not glazing in death, as the young crewman’s had. And there was no third eye. Liz knew cold, clawing fear.
She stepped back half a pace, her shoulder raw and full of pain, and then she could not step back. A black tentacle carefully detached her hands from the metal of the musket. Maran came toward her, and Liz opened her mouth in pure, blind panic.
She could hear the echoes of her scream bounding back from the cheerful pastel-colored walls. When she moved, delicate tentacles restrained her. And Maran stopped.
The half-smile had gone. There was a look of sadness on his face, that of a large man who knows that, in spite of his harmless nature, the sheer physical bulk of his body inspired fear in others. Liz held onto her sanity, gagging down her bile. She realized that he was talking to her.
“Miss Deffant,” he was saying for the second or third time. “Miss Deffant—was it you who released the survival-cylinders? Miss Deffant?”
Liz repressed a shuddering sigh. He would want his revenge. The man was a merciless, obsessed psychopath. All human emotions had died within him; he lived only for some bizarre vision. And this was the man she thought could be right about the need for investigation into the nature of the only intelligent life in the Galaxy. She wondered if he would kill her now.
“Yes!” she spat at him. “I did it—and the whole Quadrant is repeating the Red Alert! Every Enforcement Service ship in the fleet will be after you!” She almost dared him to kill her, but she could not. There was too much animal fear in her. She could not challenge him so directly, not after what he had done so easily to the guard and the young crewman. She could only wait.
“It was the bravest thing I’ve ever known,” Maran said.
Liz shuddered, awaiting a blow, the condemnation to some vile form of death, instructions to the robots to dispose of her—for anything but this. What had Maran said? That her action was the bravest thing he had ever known? He was sincere.
There could be no doubt, for his face expressed only an admiring interest. The grim mask she had first seen glaring wildly about the green-lit hell of the cell-deck had changed into this benevolent visage. Maran was looking at her with the indulgent air of a schoolmaster glad that his pupil had absorbed her lesson well.
“I tried to kill you,” she heard herself whispering.
“Yes.”
“The cruisers will take you.” Liz felt again the uncanny sense of detachment from the situation. It was almost as if the words were spoken by another woman.
“Possibly,” Maran said.
“They will!” She could challenge him now.
“Quite possibly, Miss Deffant.” He was quite calm. Liz could begin to understand the power of the man. He was massively indifferent to her attempt on his life.
Shuddering afresh, she said: “I would have killed you.”
“You thought I was some kind of monster.”
He accepted it. Tears trickled down Liz’s face and she was bitterly ashamed of herself for them; for she knew that they came with the relief of knowing that she would not be killed. Maran would not harm her. The great white hooks of hands would not reach out….
“Sit down, Miss Deffant. You are almost exhausted. If you make no sudden move toward a possible weapon, the machines will ignore you.”
“They stopped me from—”
“I watched you come from the lower deck, Miss Deffant. I wondered if you would have the courage to carry through your plan.” The great brown eyes were full of warmth. “The servitors were programmed to disturb your aim only if it was accurate. It was.” He pointed to a white metallic scar above him. Liz could see the long line of the leaden projectile splashing the ceiling with its track. She sat down, aware of Maran, of the robots’ careful scrutiny, of her own shaking hands; and also of her own resignation. A voice that she knew as her own said: “Did you have to kill them?” Maran sighed. There was an indisputable sadness in his voice, a real regret in his face when he answered.
“When I was able to get out of the tank, I was still in a deep conditioning, Miss Deffant. You were right to be afraid when you first saw me. That was a monster, that creature who destroyed two lives—when threatened, it acted at the most primitive level in the most direct way.” His eyes were hypnotically attractive. Liz felt her anger dying away. “That creature is gone, Miss Deffant. You see before you only—Maran.”
And he was not looking at her, but through her. She sensed the evocative power of his name: repeating his own name had a talismatic effect. It reestablished him, gave assurance to his remote and majestic vision, substance to his belief in his rightness, in his destiny. Liz shivered. A pale reminder of her furious determination echoed in her mind: she had
known that Maran would have a plan to evade the cruisers. That was why she had assembled the archaic firearm from the survival-cylinder; even now Maran’s incredible mind would be building a strategy for survival. And there was nothing she could do, nothing at all.
And there it was, thought Buchanan. The electromagnetic conundrum, the gravitational enigma, the terrible Singularity, that contained the most bizarre architecture of any object in the Galaxy. Around the station, pulsing with incomprehensible powers, the core of the Singularity set in motion force-fields that were beyond measurement.
Buchanan held back a prayer as the three huge engines bit into the straining coils. They gripped the station. Buchanan could feel the very deck beneath him curving slightly in response to the gigantic flood of power from the three pods. The engines surged, bit, and the serpentine coils relaxed. The coils glistened. They backed away like scorched snakes.
The makers of the station had foreseen the uncanny power of the Singularity. The engines surged again. And they held the web of coiled forces emanating from the darkness at the center of the Singularity. The screen of the station projected red-banded submolecular fields, and Buchanan wiped the sweat from his face. He watched and lost himself in the marvel of the machines.
The Singularity was an imponderable, a freak. But human ingenuity had defeated the fantastic vortex. The small, squat, ugly vessel hung at the edge of Beyond. But it was not drawn into the gaping maw of the terrible Singularity. It survived.
It had survived, thought Buchanan, with a sudden accession of pride. The Jansky Singularity Station truly existed! Built with a single purpose in mind, it was a technological marvel. But a marvel of limited scope. Three colossal engines, each enough to power a vast infra-galactic ship. Stupendously overpowered, absurdly potent.
