by Brian N Ball
“Scores of them!” echoed the lieutenant. “It’s the expellees—maybe the crew!”
“The ship could be breaking up!” another voice called. Lientand rapped out orders. The three cruisers wheeled to claw in the scores of pods. It was a decision that had to be made instantly, for the cylinders were not designed for deep-space use. True, they had a certain capability of endurance, but a limited one. Rosario had been lucky.
“Maran’s abandoned the ship!” yelled a crewman jubilantly. “We’ll have him in a few minutes!” The field man forgot his unformed yet uneasy moment. He was elated, like the other crewmen; the hunt was over. Lientand was smiling. There would be no need for the frightful holocaust of the sungun. They all watched the bobbing, weaving kaleidoscopic patterns in the prison-ship’s wide, swirling wake. A successful action. The integrity of the Service had been preserved: never had they lost a ship. A particular delight was that the machines had failed: the robots had been unable to cope with the emergency.
“Sir!” yelled the field man, the first to realize that the ES 110 had slipped away like some incorporeal manifestation faced with the dawn. He pointed to the screen. Thin tendrils of broken space showed where the prison-ship had been.
And then the reports came in.
The ES 110 had jerked itself violently away from the space-time where the slowing cruisers and the oscillating survival-cylinders were making their rendezvous.
“I knew it made sense!” the field man yelled. “I didn’t think anyone would use it—look, sir!” he shouted, pointing to a growing blotch on the screen. “That’s where he was making for!” Lientand cursed silently. Maran had used the pods to conceal his latest maneuver. Maran had outwitted him. “Engage main drive!” he called. “Emergency!” Seconds later, he added: “Range on the ES 110
—main armament.”
The young lieutenant gasped: “Sungun, sir?”
“He used the expellees as cover to delay us,” said Lientand. “I should have guessed.”
“But where can he go, sir?”
The field man pointed to the screen. “The Jansky Singularity.” The normal bodily processes seemed to he utterly irrelevant to what he had witnessed. Nevertheless, Buchanan found himself to be ravenously hungry. He was tired, too, he realized. He had not slept at all since the first sighting of the Jansky Singularity by the long-range scanners, and not much for days before that. Living seemed to be telescoped. Everything focused on the search. Buchanan ate and wondered at his appetite. Was it that, by finding the Altair Star, by locating it, he was free of the tensions of the past three years? The thought disturbed him, for it led to other prospects. It led, for one thing, to thoughts of a time when he should have completed his mission. But that way led to despair. There was nothing for him now.
In a moment of clairvoyance, he understood that only a Liz Deffant could have brought him back into the range of normal human feeling. There would be no more of her kind. Not for Al Buchanan.
“Sleep,” he told the cone-shaped pedestal.
“Yes, sir.”
The bridge dimmed agreeably. A couch slid toward him, deeply foamed, utterly inviting.
“Six hours,” he said. Six hours of deep, conditioned sleep, and then the eerie tunnel. He could watt that long. When he woke, he would take the station down into the depths and search out his ship. Satisfied that he had almost come to the end of his quest, Buchanan settled to sleep. It was so nearly over. A bridge to that cocoon of forever…. It was possible. It had to be.
CHAPTER 13
Liz watched the operations screen as Maran indicated the ES 110’s course. Under his skilled direction, the scanners swam out through the uncertain dimensions, seeking their object. And they found it. Ripples of power surged in the blank regions. A network of bizarre serpentine coils spun across the cosmos. It all had a terrible familiarity. At the center of the whirling, coruscating mass was a sulking darkness.
“I have to lose the cruisers, you understand, Miss Deffant,” Maran said. “In order to do so, I am taking this vessel briefly near the outer reaches of the Singularity. Our warp-shift wake disintegrates once we get near. It’s a simple choice, you see, Miss Deffant. Maran on an obscure planet, or the culmination of a life’s work.”
Liz listened, a curious sense of relief drifting around her mind. She would be near Al. What a bitter coincidence of events, the take-over of the prison-ship and Al’s haunted mission! As the ES 110
shuddered under the strain of Maran’s reckless urgings, Al would be somewhere at the peripheries of the Singularity trying to solve his own obsessive riddle. They were all to rendezvous at the raging efflorescence of the Jansky Singularity.
“The cruisers have slowed to take on the expellees,” Maran said. “I used your idea, Miss Deffant.”
“It was Commander Rosario’s idea.”
“Nevertheless, you were the decisive factor. I needed a small delay. I had to distract the cruisers so that they would think I had abandoned the ship.”
“You think it’s going to survive in that?”
They both looked at the coiled and majestic phenomenon that dominated the cosmos with its raging might.
Maran was serious to the point of portentousness:
“Miss Deffant, Maran must be free! There are things that only Maran can do. Never before has such a mind been brought to bear on the ultimate mystery.” He put his hands to his large, gleaming skull. “Within this brain is a conjunction of powers and creative insight that is without parallel. Maran is the culmination of decades of research and dedicated experiment. And he is near—so near!—the realization of man’s supreme vision!”
It was lunatic. Egocentric, megalomaniac, self-obsessed boasting that was almost ludicrous. Yet the sweat-streaked, huge face, the dark brooding eyes with their strange beauty, the very posture of that big body, all of these things, and then the resonant voice to give them meaning: Liz could understand how he had gained his proud followers.
“Give up,” she said quietly. “Go to the Rim. Work there—plan but don’t experiment. Your work will be recognized.”
Maran spoke to her as if she were a child. “Maran on a bare rock, Miss Deffant, Maran? A stone hut and a musket? No, Miss Deffant. My unique genius needs the tools of this millennium.”
“You could begin.”
“Yes. Ten years, Miss Deffant. That’s how long it would take. Ten years to mine the ores, refine the metals, make the primitive tools, begin to build the technological capacity for the equipment I must have.” He looked at his big, white hands. “I am not a young man, Miss Deffant.”
“They won’t let you escape. They can’t.”
Maran sent scanners ranging far out into the uncertain dimensions. They brought back the cruisers’ feral shapes. One of the hunted, Liz could also share the feelings of the hunters. She saw the three cruisers hanging starkly in the boiling incandescence of interdimensional haze. They left a huge triple parabola across the cosmos as they tried to sniff out the trail of the ES 110.
“Message beamed from Commander Lientand, sir,” reported the Grade One robotic controller. It no longer attempted to offer advice to Maran. “Message warns of interdiction throughout the Quadrant. You are advised that this ship is now in an interdicted zone.”
Liz felt a chill passing through her body. She knew the jargon of the Enforcement Service sufficiently well to understand what Commander Lientand was telling Maran.
“I think it would be as well to listen to the commander,” said Maran. He gave orders. “It will be a close-run thing, Miss Deffant. Our warp-shift wake is breaking up, but they are closing.” He was worried, but his massive calmness had a reassuring effect on Liz. She realized helplessly that she was placing some kind of trust in this monstrous creature; his strangely haunting eyes had a warmth that did much to cancel out her fear of him. At the same time, she wanted him caught. Caught, not obliterated. Commander Lientand was brief and precise: “Maran, you can’t escape. I have a squadron of cruisers closing in. I have
placed an interdiction on the Quadrant. It is my duty to apprehend you, but if I can’t I am empowered to use my main armament to destroy the transport. I order you now to hold the ES 110
in a normal condition of Phase and beam your present coordinates. You will be safe. Your treatment will be in accordance with Galactic Council Penal Code Regulations. You have my personal guarantee that all will be done to insure your well-being. Reply at once.”
“He makes no mention of you,” said Maran thoughtfully.
“It doesn’t matter! Do as he says!”
“And you are not afraid for yourself,” Maran said approvingly.
“I am! But it’s over! The ship’s not built to stand this kind of strain! Give it up!” Low-grade systems complained bitterly. Maran swung the ship away on a new spiraling series of maneuvers, always toward the majestic menace of the Singularity. All over the great infragalactic ship, units were failing under the strain of the mad flight. Maran silenced the complaining machines, subordinating them, one by one, to his will. The fabric of the bridge shivered as it drifted near a small white star; Maran used its gusting radiation to sling the ES 110 even more wildly toward the rotating blotch that was the Singularity.
“No reply, sir,” reported the young lieutenant “Excuse me, Commander,” the medical officer said.
“There’s something you should know.”
Commander Lientand’s thoughts were on the man who had seized an Enforcement Service vessel—arrogant, of lightning decision, adroit, a man of infinite resource. To destroy that mind was a cruel waste. Lientand’s tired face remained grim.
“Well?”
“Rosario was conscious for a few moments, sir. He was asking about a girl.”
“Girl? I see. One of the female expellees.”
“No, sir. A passenger.”
“Passenger? On the ES 110?”
“A female ecologist, sir. With New Settlements. She would have clearance, especially if she had friends at Center. Rosario was insistent, sir. Very distressed when we couldn’t give him any assurances.”
“She wasn’t in a cylinder?”
“No, sir.” The medical officer went on: “I’m guessing at this, but I think she’s the one who gave him first aid. And then launched the two pods we picked up. Rosario in one, the other empty.”
“So she stayed behind.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lientand watched the growth of the Jansky Singularity on the vast blue-pulsing screen. “She stayed with Maran.”
“She is a Miss Elizabeth Deffant, single, sir. Rosario was rambling, but he remembered her name from the log.”
“Did he say why she remained?”
“No, sir.”
A girl, thought Lientand. It had not been easy to think of the holocaust swallowing up the ES 110 and its bizarre commander; but he could have done it and lived with his conscience afterward. Lientand could only speculate helplessly on the impulse that had made the unknown Bureau girl send Rosario away to safely while she watched the empty survival-cylinder leave without her. Perhaps she had been afraid at the last moment. Perhaps the thought of the colossal storms of hyperspace spuming the tiny pod about was too much for her. He shook his head. Another thought struck him, but he dismissed it. The New Settlements people were highly-motivated and resourceful people: could it be, however remote the possibility, that she had stayed to confront Maran?
Maran! thought Lientand savagely, Maran had not answered his orders, not so much as replied with a single word. Maran knew the value of his position. There was everything to be gained by keeping his pursuers in doubt: by blanking off all communication with the cruisers, he could keep them guessing as to his intentions. The girl’s presence was a bonus, a source of doubt and confusion.
“Sighting?” he asked.
“Nothing, sir,” said his field man. “There’s a lot of discontinuous action about the Singularity—we’ve lost his wake.”
“Can you trace him?”
“With three sets of scanners, almost certainly, sir. We can do an integrated plot—”
“Do it. Sungun ranged on first sighting,” he said to his young lieutenant. “Shoot on my order.”
“Sir! The girl—”
Lientand silenced the opposition. Bleakly he said: “I won’t take my ships into that.” He pointed to the raging fury of the Singularity. “And I won’t risk losing Maran.”
“But there is the girl, sir,” the medical officer insisted. Tight-lipped, he faced Lientand’s drawn face. “She saved Rosario.”
Lientand turned away. “She would forgive me.”
Buchanan had been asleep for more than five hours when the ES 110 registered its presence in the locality of the Jansky Singularity. There was a subdued metallic discussion and then, eventually, a decision. The couch began to heave gently. Impulses were directed through nerve-centers. Tiny alerts jangled, speaking of an emergency.
“Report,” said Buchanan, yawning in spite of the sharp tingling of nerve-ends. The deep uninterrupted sleep had restored him, but it still invested his tissues.
“This system has readings of approach of a Galactic Service vessel, sir. Designation: Enforcement Service vessel One-Hundred class.”
“A transport.”
“Yes, sir. On routine voyage to the Rim. Crew of six, accommodation for—”
“About a hundred expellees.”
“Modified for control-monitoring of not more than eighty expellees,” the robot corrected. Buchanan was not even mildly irritated. He remembered the earlier message. “Show.”
“Yes, sir.”
Scanners ranged and Buchanan saw the transport. Its warp-shift scattered wide showers of broken molecules.
“It’s the ES 110!”
“Yes, sir.”
Buchanan realized that the deep sleep had drugged his senses. He punched commands and allowed sensor-pads to slide into his palms. Information roared into his mind. He lost his sleepy, relaxed look. The craggy features became sharper, the eyes narrowed; his wiry body became taut with suppressed muscular energy.
“You let me sleep!” he exploded after a minute. “While Red Alerts go out from three cruisers—when there’s a hijacked prison-ship heading for us!”
“Your instructions, Commander, were that you be left to sleep. There are no standing orders overriding your instructions. This system did take it upon itself to awaken you when your sleep-requirement quotient was effectively satisfied.”
Buchanan snorted and then contained his useless anger. He scanned the bulky transport as it soared around the edges of a decaying white dwarf star. Its engines pushed space and clouds of interstellar dust aside. A blast of solar wind obscured its drive: on the screen, the wake showed as an uneven tidal wave.
“What in the name of God is it doing?” Buchanan expostulated. “Don’t they know what the Singularity can do? Beam direct—warn the ship!”
“Automatic signals have been beamed for the past nineteen minutes and eight seconds, sir. There has been no acknowledgment. Damage is reported by our scanners. The ES 110 is engaged in a series of dangerous maneuvers. It is approaching the critical area of the discontinuities zone. Power readings from the ES 110 indicate an insufficient level for survival should condition of starquake begin.”
“Put me on to its commander!”
“Yes, sir.”
Buchanan felt the rush of urgency as a message came strongly through his palms. A high-powered signal on the Enforcement Service Red Alert beamers was on its way. As Buchanan waited, a laconic system reported that the Singularity was again heaving its coils in a slow, massive pattern. Then the operations screen filled with an image of the cruiser squadron’s commander. Buchanan recognized the features of Commander Lientand. He waited for the message to come winging through the unreal dimensions. A vague but profound premonition began to trouble him; he had been alone with his haunted memories, and now the busy turbulent life of the Galaxy was seeking him out. His concern had been with the dead—with the ghosts who thron
ged his mind; and here was Lientand and an errant transport. Buchanan bit his lip. He wanted no part of the transport’s problems. Nor Lientand’s. Yet the ES 110 was even now blasting furiously toward the Singularity.
“Commander Buchanan,” said the laconic system. “Renewed activity suggestive of starquake—”
“Wait!”
Lientand was speaking, not entirely clearly, but clearly enough to be understood: “I am Commander Lientand. My ship is an Enforcement Service cruiser. I have under my command two more cruisers. My assignment is to capture the Enforcement Service transport ES 110. It is in the hands of the criminal Maran—”
“Maran!” Buchanan could not help calling. “Maran!” Lientand could not hear him, but he must have known the impression his words would create. “I repeat, the ES 110 is in the hands of the criminal Maran. We have located the ship and attempted to inhibit its drives, so far without success. Maran has taken the ES 110 into the vicinity of the Jansky Singularity, where his warp-shift wake may be concealed. It may be impossible for my cruisers to arrest the ship, in which case I shall destroy it. The Quadrant is now an interdicted zone. All ships receiving this message must leave the Quadrant immediately.”
Buchanan knew the reason for the ES 110’s apparently suicidal maneuvers. Maran would try anything to evade the pursuing Enforcement Service vessels. But why had he chosen now to make his escape bid?
“Have you established reciprocal contact with the ES 110?” he snapped to the Grade One robot.
“Not yet, sir.”
“Beam to the cruiser—message received and understood! Tell Commander Lientand Maran’s here. And tell him his ship’s damaged!”
“Of course, sir.”
He looked at the big screen as robotic systems simulated the transport’s wild course. Suddenly a gobbeting, snaking coil flooded the screen, engulfing the prison-ship.
“No!” whispered Buchanan.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” said the metallic voice sympathetically. “It was always a possibility, sir.” Maran had gambled with his life. This time, he had lost. Nothing could help the ES 110, Nevertheless, even a Maran deserved a warning. Buchanan thought of the other condemned men and women aboard the ship. And the crew.
