Singularity Station

by Brian N Ball

  There would be not even one survivor.

  Without hope, Buchanan would not give up.

  “Maran! Put the woman Deffant in a life-raft!” he yelled into the blankness before him. “Yourself too—I swear I’ll try to save you! The robots say it can’t be done, but maybe I can get some kind of field rigged up—try, Maran! Get a life-raft made. For you—and the woman!” The fatigue showed in Maran’s face. His eyes were opaque, their hypnotic beauty dimmed. Through the sound of metal shrieking, force-screens Jangling appallingly, and distant systems advising that they were defunct, Liz could hear his grated orders. He would not surrender to the inevitable. The man was invested with a rage to survive, and Liz was freshly amazed at the supremacy of his vision. He played the machines as if they were delicate music, and while they gradually lapsed into quiescence he soothed them, wringing each last note of power as they died. When she recalled how she had tried to shoot him with the ponderous, archaic weapon, Liz could have wept. She felt no more bitter anger at Maran. It was a betrayal of her regard for the young man she had known for such a short time; it was a betrayal, too, of all her instincts and training; yet she could not hate Maran, either for what he had done so horribly to his deluded followers, or for the murder of the Enforcement Service personnel. There was a pitiable quality in his desperation. And she pitied him.

  Al Buchanan’s voice seemed part of the nightmare at first.

  “… I swear I’ll try to save you! The robots say it cant be done, but maybe I can get some kind of field rigged up —Try, Maran!” His voice rang through the black-flooding bridge. “Get a life-raft made. For you—and the woman!”

  Liz realized that she had not thought of the station as a means of help. So bewildered had she been that she had thought of Al as nearby but not within possible reach. And this was his voice calling with a contained desperation to Maran! And to a woman.

  Did he know she was on the ship?

  “I repeat—get the woman Deffant and yourself into a life-raft!” Liz cried out in pain, relief, abandoned joy, frustrated happiness.

  Maran reacted instantly. “Reciprocal contact! Get me this Buchanan!” Failing systems hoarsely assured him that they would try. He wove his big white hands over the console and armored servitors appeared. Suddenly the bridge was alive with movement, where before it had seemed a dying organism.

  “Miss Deffant! This station—you know it?”

  Liz tried to refuse the information. Al was trying to reach her, but Maran was a deadly threat to the hundreds who might be involved in his next series of grotesque experiments, to thousands who might follow them. But she could not. She had reached the end of her ability to resist the urge to live. Al was the voice of promised life. She could not deny the promise. And she could not speak. Intently, Maran said to her: “I thought I should never say this to another person, Miss Deffant, but I must do so. Do not think I talk to you in this way because I am afraid to die—I am not. I am talking to you as an equal—and for the first time to any man or woman!—because I care that you understand. I do care that you have the facts. That you are able to judge for yourself why I have to survive now—that I have to reach this man Buchanan who means something to you. I must have your confidence and his help, and this is why. Listen.”

  And, strangely in the midst of preparations, clamorings, fee noises of the disintegrating ship and the robots’ exchanges, Liz listened with the deepest attention.

  “I know,” said Maran, “that there are farsighted and dedicated men and women in positions of authority who would help me. They know the value of my work and they know that I am the only man who can do it They know Maran is unique. They admit that there should be agencies of change in the Galaxy if man is to venture beyond it. Before he can go farther out to the ends of the Universe, he must first learn to explore himself. Miss Deffant, the key to all knowledge is in here!” Maran rested his hands on his sweating head. He had the look of a visionary priest who is ready to make a prophecy.

  “There are also the inhibitors who cannot yet see that what we have done in this Galaxy is only a beginning. They cannot yet see that the Galaxy is only the microcosm. And it is these malignant creatures—the men of no vision —who have decreed that Maran must live like an ape on a rock! They would send this brain, this mind, this soul, to the Rim of the Galaxy in company with a cargo of poor lost psychopaths, and condemn it to extinction.” He paused, and Liz could feel with him the sense of time passing, of visions swimming into the void unrealized, the waste, the venomous opposition of the small-minded, the soaring fantasy of his mind. “In the long-term, it is the great, creative minds that win, Miss Deffant. Always, there is more vitality in creation than in the negation of the human spirit. But in the short-term, it is the inhibitors who win. They have the authority to suppress the individual genius of a particular man. They can delay the passage of the human spirit for a measurable time—for a life-span, perhaps more. And, certainly, they can deny a Maran. They can send Maran to a bleak planet where the predators and the harsh climate make bare existence a heavy and unending battle. But Maran would begin now, Miss Deffant! Maran would change the whole direction of the human race! Maran knows where the search begins to unleash the infinitely gigantic genius of the human race! Maran can unlock the deepest wells of the human spirit!” And once more Liz Deffant saw the uncanny effects on Maran of the repetition of his name. Maran. The word boomed out in his rolling bass voice with the effect of a drumbeat. When he spoke of himself, his eyes lost their cloudiness. They shone clear, like beacons. His face lost its flat planes and swelled like a great orb. His body cowered in the gloom of the shredding vessel, and among the robots which were his acolytes, he looked like a deity. “Maran can show you as well, Miss Deffant, that the power of the human spirit can surmount even the boundaries of time!”

  She did not know what he meant, and cared less. He no longer frightened her. His presence inspired her with a feeling of religious awe, and she believed that he was what he said, a man of a unique mold, one who could wrench the veils from the ultimate mysteries and discover the secret of man’s enigmatic rise from the beast.

  “The station, Miss Deffant?”

  “It’s a new, experimental device,” she answered. “Crewed by one man. Designed for observation of the Singularity. It has the capability to withstand all recorded emissions. It can operate at will within the peripheries of the Singularity, or so its engineers claim.”

  “Buchanan?”

  “My fiancée. My former fiancée.”

  Maran nodded, ponderous head bending in sympathy. “He has a regard for you.”

  “I believe so.”

  “And you for him?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It might, Miss Deffant.”

  “Yes.”

  “A strange meeting.”

  Liz felt hollow. Too many emotions had raged within her. She needed rest. Deep oblivion. She had seen two men whose every thought had centered on a single, obsessive vision. First Buchanan, now Maran. They had bled her of energy. She was as passive as the dead leaves she and Buchanan had once kicked away as they ran through an autumn wood when the sun flickered through branches full of yellow and gold.

  “Miss Deffant, I have the feeling that we were preordained to meet. You and I. Buchanan and yourself. Buchanan and I. I shall try to make the meeting possible.”

  He redoubled his efforts at the console. All about the ship, failing robots answered his summons. Low-grade servitors finished the task of building a make-shift raft. Higher-grade systems shored up failing screens with the remnants of their power-sources. The entire vessel willingly gave up its last resource to insure that the god of the machines received his due. And, at last, there was reciprocal contact with the Jansky Singularity Station.

  Liz heard a flat metallic voice announce the presence of the station and the man she had loved: “Jansky Singularity Station closing. Two scanners have visual contact.”

  “Near,” said Maran.

&nbs
p; “Engines operating at four percent efficiency. No reserve. Estimated drive capability at minimum levels, seven minutes at this utilization rate.”

  “Seven minutes,” said Maran. “I hope your Buchanan is a man of resource.” Liz realized that she was too tired, too shocked, too used, to answer. She had no response to offer, none at all.

  “This ship is in an immeasurable gravitational and electromagnetic conjunction of forces,” said the robotic controller. “Increasing in complexity and magnitude. Source is the Jansky Singularity.”

  “This system can maintain a vocal contact with Commander Buchanan at the Jansky experimental station,” announced another robot system.

  Liz tensed.

  “Let me speak to him,” said Maran.

  And Buchanan’s craggy features began to filter through the appalling vortices. Liz Deffant saw the man who had gone to search out the ghosts of the Altair Star.

  CHAPTER 15

  Buchanan followed the twisting course of the ES 110 as the coils of starquake held it. The Singularity’s motions were those of a rapacious predator; it would not give up its prey now. The ES 110 was to be ingested.

  “Commander Buchanan, I have direct contact with an officer called Maran, but I should warn you, sir, that my colleague aboard the ES 110 has information that this officer is also an expellee. In addition—”

  “Direct—get me Maran!”

  And Buchanan glimpsed the shadowy outline of a broad, heavy-featured face with straining eyes, a familiar face: Maran. But Buchanan was peering around the shadowy image of the man; he tried to make out the figures that moved like ponderous wraiths behind him. Machines! No sign of the slim shape of the woman who had almost exorcised the demons that rode his spirit. Where was Liz?

  Maran was speaking. Across the broken dimensions, the words came haltingly: “… life-raft with all possible power-units … any way of using your screens …” And though much was lost, Buchanan knew that Maran was appealing for assistance. “… a woman passenger named Elizabeth Deffant, Buchanan!” Buchanan heard, almost clearly. What was Maran saying?

  That Liz was safe? Or that she had already succumbed to the smashing fury of starquake?

  For Buchanan there was an eternity of agonized waiting as the station’s scanners lost contact with the decaying prison-ship. Momentarily, the robots picked it up again. End over end the great infragalactic ship tumbled, strewing wreckage in a shower of nameless fragments. And then the sensor-pads informed Buchanan that he could again speak to Maran.

  “The Singularity’s throwing out starquake. Maran, I’ll try to get near. Get into the life-raft and lay the bridge open—keep to the ship as long as it has some power! If you and the woman get into the raft, I’ll try to lock it into my screens. I say again, hold to the ship for as long as you can! It will give the life-raft some protection! And get the woman into the life-raft! Use deep-space armor—all you can carry!”

  The three huge engines of the station screamed as the massive drive built to a crescendo. Incomprehensible energies sprang outward as starquake raged. The cruisers ran from the menace of the serpentine coils, seeking calmer dimensions. Buchanan called again to the lost ship, but there was no answer. Liz! he called silently.

  “Maran, Maran!” he called. “No contact! Get the woman Deffant into a life-raft!”

  “Beam from the ES 110,” cut in the calm voice of the Grade One robot. “Commander, the expellee who seems also to be an Enforcement Service officer has impressed my colleague aboard the ES 110 with the urgency of the situation. He has a proposal which, I am bound to say—”

  “Direct!” snarled Buchanan. “Direct to Maran!” So Maran was devising some scheme for his own self-preservation. Buchanan was past caring how much a danger the escaped man might be: he had one overwhelming concern. Against the safety of Liz Deffant, nothing mattered, nothing had ever mattered, not the futile quest for the Altair Star, not all those lost passengers and crew; and certainly not the grotesque personality of a Maran!

  The broad, sweating face swam into view. A pulsing of sensor-pads told Buchanan that Maran could see him, in turn. Warnings irradiated his nerve-endings; Maran was trying to cut into the command-systems of the station.

  “… the only way,” Maran was saying to him. “I know from your high-grade systems that your ship is under your control. It gives me a chance, Buchanan,” he said urgently. “This vessel has power for only a few minutes! Give me direct access to your ship’s memory-banks—allow me to take over its decision-making procedures! I could do it myself, given time, but there is no time! I have Miss Deffant’s welfare to consider, Buchanan! I know it’s important to you—do as I say, Buchanan, and I might…” And again, to leave Buchanan writhing with agonized impatience, the coils of the Singularity blotted out all beamer channels.

  “Liz!” he yelled, knowing she could not hear. But she was safe— safe! he thought wildly, safe if Maran’s word could be trusted, safe for a few minutes, and then the lunging descent into nothingness!

  Maran knew the connection between Liz and himself—she must have told him; And Maran would know that he would try any course of action, no matter how dangerous or traitorous, so long as there was the faintest of hopes that she could be pulled back from the black center of the Singularity and its promise of eternal silence, unending night.

  The machines were uneasy. The Grade One robot voiced their doubts: “I view these proceedings and proposals with alarm,” it began. “My colleague aboard the ES 110 suggests that the criminal Enforcement officer Maran be given free access to the readings so far accumulated at the Singularity. More, it suggests that Maran is a suitable person to control other functions of this ship now delegated to yourself, sir!” Buchanan collected his scattered thoughts. His craggy face was aflame with rage as he yelled at the pedestal which housed the robot: “No comments, no suggestions, no interference! Never!” Even as he yelled, he realized how he had come to treat the machines as somehow personalized.

  “… sir,” the machine responded, in its flat metallic voice.

  “Agreed,” Buchanan said across the gulfs that separated him from the ES 110. “Anything, Maran.” He knew he was conniving at the release of a man condemned by the Galactic Council as the greatest threat to mankind since the madness of the early Confederation days. If Maran could reach the station, he could hold it for a year.

  But what was the alternative?

  Refuse to help him, and Liz Deffant would join the eerie unlife of the time-lost tunnel. She would be beyond recall. Maran might do more and worse damage than he had done already; but if Maran the cyberneticist believed that he could work some kind of miracle among the robots’ resources, then it must be so. There was no time for dispute.

  Buchanan relinquished the sensor-pads as the first authoritative, insidious commands seeped into the station. Soothing, elegant instructions had the sensors-pads writhing in expectant ecstasy. Buchanan looked down at the console and knew that he was giving up all he had lived by during his years of Galactic Service, as well as his quest for the Altair Star. And nothing mattered, none of it. The robotic controller raised no more objections. It became Maran’s slave as soon as it picked up his wheedling, harsh, irresistible commands. Buchanan monitored the sequences with a growing wonder. Maran called on the powerful, sophisticated memory-banks to give every last detail of the observed data associated with the Singularity. He demanded—and received— readings of which Buchanan knew nothing. The robots recognized the touch of the master-cyberneticist as Maran’s personality infected the controlling devices of the station.

  Maran heard the machines offhandedly mention the theories which they had decided were impossible, and his response was instantaneous.

  “Steady-state?” he demanded.

  “It’s only a theory,” Buchanan was driven to interrupt “I think there might be—”

  “Report on screen strengths necessary to stabilize the station in steady-state conditions,” Maran rapped.

  “Such hypotheses
are interesting as speculations,” the Grade One robot told Maran pedantically.

  “However, they must be regarded only as probably unlikely interpretations of conflicting data. In the absence of systematic recordings—”

  Maran cut in abruptly: “Devise a warp capable of containing such a steady-state!” Buchanan tensed. The two ships were close now, the sickening descent temporarily arrested as a flurry of vortices blustered against one another and created a pocket of relative calm. The unlikely elements were giving the ES 110 a breathing-space. And Maran was using it to try to convince the robots that they should attempt the impossible.

  He was trying to save the ES 110 as, three years before, Buchanan had tried to save the Altair Star. The difference was that Maran was using his unique abilities to change the direction of the machines’

  conclusions.

  Buchanan had attempted to wreck the robots; Maran made them his puppets. Buchanan watched as the prison-ship lost a great chunk of its lower decks. Fragments of equipment, stores, engines, and unidentifiable debris hung in the grip of the Singularity’s fields.

  “This system is not designed to measure the impossible, nor to create a technology capable of withstanding the impossible,” the machine answered primly.

  Buchanan watched the last struggles of the ES 110. Surely it was lost now? He followed the flow of information that was streaming across the impassable gap between the two ships. Maran checked and rechecked the data. Especially he wanted the few available readings which the machines would admit to concerning the eerie tunnel where the ghost-fleet hung in the eddying fields of white-gold translucence.

  “This system suggests that Commander Maran regard himself as defunct,” the Grade One system announced. “Estimated power-reserves of the ES 110 now give three minutes’ duration capability.”

  “Warp,” Maran said, more to himself than to the machines.

  “Impossible, sir,” the robot answered.

  Buchanan thought sickly of Liz Deffant, who would be waiting to hear the cold information that would tell her of the failure of the ES 110’s last power-reserves. And yet he could not accept that she would be lost. Not while Maran fought the chilling logic of the robots.