by Brian N Ball
“A fruitless conversation,” sighed Maran. “I had hoped for better things.” Buchanan felt choked by his conflicting emotions. There was a need for violent action very near the surface of his mind; yet the robots hovered close, ready to react with instant speed. Patience, he warned himself. Maran had not yet spoken of what he intended to do. The station had a considerable capacity for life-support, but that capacity had to be divided by three now that Maran and Liz were aboard. Maran could do simple equations too.
Liz asked the question that dominated Buchanan’s thoughts: “Well, what do you intend to do, Maran?
Al’s right—the cruisers can’t let you escape. Commander Lientand can sit outside the Singularity until you’re ready to give up. There’s no way out.”
“I think Buchanan knows,” said Maran.
Buchanan said nothing, did not, allow a movement of his face to betray his thoughts.
“Al?” asked Liz.
“I checked the reports, Buchanan,” said Maran. “All the readings.”
“I expected that,” agreed Buchanan.
Yet what could Maran do, even if he persuaded the machines that what was clearly impossible might be reached?
“Al?” asked Liz again.
“Buchanan feels it his duty not to discuss the object of his search,” said Maran.
“You said you wouldn’t—”
“Don’t!” Buchanan said harshly.
“Buchanan, I know!” Maran said decisively. “Yes, Miss Deffant. I told you I felt a sense of predestination about your involvement with my escape from the ES 110. Our paths coincide.”
“The ship?” she said, trembling.
“Yes, Miss Deffant. I shall invite Commander Buchanan to return with me to his former command. I have instructed the machines to take us to the Altair Star.”
Liz gasped. Buchanan’s fist clenched around the stem of the glass. The slender stem snapped in his hand, and brandy made a spreading stain. A servitor had the cloth cleared and the brandy mopped away within seconds.
“When?” asked Buchanan.
“Why, when you have finished your drink,” said Maran, as the robot placed another glass before Buchanan.
Liz Deffant saw the massive, serpentine coils enveloping the station and gripped Buchanan’s arm until the nails bit into the flesh; an unreasoning panic blotted out all other thoughts. Buchanan swayed too, knowing that no matter how many times he ventured within the deeper reaches of the bizarre space-time enigma he could never become accustomed to the appalling blank otherness at the center. He saw that Maran was stunned by the violence of the descent into the Singularity.
And there was nothing he could do, for the slender tentacles of the couch held him firm. The station shuddered, engines howling, as the drive built force-screens to ease the station through a vicious conjunction of energies. The big screen showed the coils giving way to a whirling blackness shot through with emerald whorls. From the black pit, reinforcing bands of power emerged to investigate the nugget of human technology which had invaded the Singularity.
The station exuded screens, leaking power and easing between colossal forces. And it slid away, away and nearer the center.
Through eerie vortices, countering brute power with subtle field emissions, the station glided smoothly into the bizarre regions. Buchanan breathed a prayer of relief and gratitude to the engineers who had built the ship. They had been able only to guess at the grim fury of the Singularity’s inner depths, but they had planned and built well. No engine failed, no screen slipped.
The ship became calmer, its pace less subject to wild upheavals. Maran could concentrate on the operations screen, while Buchanan watched him.
There was no sign that he was afraid. If he trembled, it was not from fear, but awe at the incredible violence of the Singularity, and the miracle of the little ship’s survival. The maelstrom surged, and Maran’s face showed both awe and excitement. Buchanan stared now at the screen. He saw the strange black depths and felt his mind reeling.
“Look!” roared Maran, and Liz and Buchanan were held in a trance by the stark emptiness of the blackness at the center of the Singularity. They glimpsed it and shut their eyes.
“An entire new Universe!” Maran shouted.
But his two companions could not look. Reluctantly, Buchanan conceded Maran a measure of greatness. The bizarre architecture of the Singularity was a fit context for him. Maran was unquestionably awed by what he had seen, but he had lost none of his assurance. Massively excited, he radiated confidence and power.
“Al!” whispered Liz as Maran lowered his great head to the command console. “Al, why does he want to go to the Altair Star?”
Buchanan saw that Maran was indifferent to them. Eyes half closed, he was staring raptly at the screen.
“The ship’s almost intact,” he said. “If he could reach it, he could use the engines to power a life-raft.”
“But you can’t let him—Al, it’s like a mausoleum, you said! No one should disturb them!” Buchanan felt the sick excitement of his quest welling up inside him once more. Cursing his inconstancy, he whispered: “I don’t want to go, Liz—I don’t want Maran to have a chance of freedom! But I have to go!”
It seemed to take hours, but only minutes passed. Buchanan watched the seconds fly away and wondered if time were structured differently in the inner depths. Speculation was futile. No satisfactory theory had explained the unreal dimensions. Kochan’s words came back to him, and there was an uncanny stirring of the skin and short hairs behind his ears. He shuddered, as Liz had done, recalling the idea of the long undead. It was a betrayal of the natural order of things. And yet there was still the gripping compulsion to return to the Altair Star. It could not be denied. Whatever he might find, and however much he dreaded it, he had to go on now that he was so near. Even though Maran meant to use the ship!
Green-glowing serpentine coils gave way to infinite emptiness.
They were near the mystery now, very close to the strange stars, or the black hole, or the combination of unguessable events that formed the center of the enigma.
Buchanan saw the Altair Star as the eerie tunnel swam onto the big screen. A flickering glimpse, and then it was gone. Liz saw it.
“Al!” breathed Liz Deffant, cutting into his thoughts and bringing a rush of feelings that he could not concern himself with now.
“This is the place of wrecks?” asked Maran.
“This is the place.”
Scanners roamed as Maran manipulated the sensor-pads.
“Readings,” he demanded.
“No starquake emission,” reported the Grade One robot. “All three engines operating at satisfactory levels of efficiency. Screens engaged at nine-point-three-one-eight-two level.”
“Report the condition of the Altair Star.”
“Sir?”
“They don’t admit the scan,” said Buchanan.
“Report on the tunnel,” said Maran, ignoring Buchanan’s objection.
“The tunnel, sir?” asked the Grade One robot.
“They won’t admit the temporal discontinuity,” Buchanan said. “Nothing. No tunnel, no temporal discontinuity, so no ship.”
Maran wove a spell over the console. Robotic systems hesitated. Buchanan did not doubt Maran’s powers. As the big, white hands gentled the sensor-pads into compliance, the station edged nearer the glittering tunnel. The screens were filled with an astonishing glory. Then, Buchanan again glimpsed the emptiness that lay a whole Universe beyond the strange glittering tunnel. He saw a terrifying emptiness that sent his thoughts awry and brought a spangled, reeling and roaring confusion inside his mind. When it cleared, Maran was giving orders in his calm, insistent voice: “Scan.”
“Sir?” asked the robotic controller.
“For ships.”
“I have intermittent contact-potential with three Enforcement Service cruisers, sir.”
“Not those.”
“I have readings of the debris of a large transport, wi
th implosion immediately preceding breakup.”
“The ES 110,” said Buchanan.
Maran held up a hand to indicate that he should be silent. Two flat carapaces regarded Buchanan with no menace at all. Yet they conveyed alert tension. He gritted his teeth in frustration. Patience, he tried to tell himself. All led to the Altair Star. Once he had determined the fate of the hundreds he had led to their doom, he could begin to plan, estimate, take decisions, find the single chink in Maran’s armor of self-confidence.
“Scan,” repeated Maran.
“Sir?” asked the robot.
“The temporal discontinuity observed by Commander Buchanan.”
“An interesting theory,” said the flat, metallic voice. “One that Mr. Kochan supports. It is, of course, impossible, sir.”
Maran did not hesitate: “Reduce screen levels.”
“Yes, sir.”
The station had an oddly defenseless feeling. Buchanan tensed again, aware of the gigantic forces that might boil up and leave the ship in submicroscopic, jangling fragments. But it held.
“Project a warp to the temporal discontinuity,” ordered Maran.
“To what, sir?”
“The discontinuity.”
Buchanan sensed the rebelliousness of the Grade One robot. If it would not accept Maran’s orders, they all faced Lientand’s ships.
“With what object, sir?” the machine at last asked.
“Investigating a theory.”
“Sir?”
Buchanan could almost hear the self-questioning of the robots.
Maran snapped: “Isn’t that the object of the Jansky Singularity Station?”
“The object of the station is observation and recording, sir,” the flat voice answered at once, quite certain now. “Those are the primary functions, sir.”
“Then observe the temporal discontinuity!”
“Which cannot exist, sir!”
Liz Deffant saw the big man’s utter concentration. His large, deep eyes were pinpoints as he stared at the pedestal which housed the Grade One robot.
“Observe the Quasi-discontinuity!”
“Sir?”
There was a long pause. Buchanan had seen the myriads of circuits, the endless tiny sheaves of memory-cells, which were the core of the ship’s computers. There was more factual knowledge in them than a man could store in a million lifetimes. And it was all ready for instant recall. There were generative systems which could produce strategies to cope with any eventuality the machines could understand. They had said they could not scan the impossible.
The discontinuity—the time-tunnel—was impossible.
Therefore, they reasoned, they could not cope with it. They could not admit its existence. And Maran was telling them to scan for a time-tunnel which might exist—a hypothetical discontinuity.
Buchanan knew he would return to the Altair Star in that moment. It was a confirmation of Maran’s prescience. Maran had ordered the impossible. And the machines accepted the order.
“Very good, sir,” came the metal-edged voice.
They watched as the marvelous, haunting time-tunnel began to take shape. Bathed in a coruscating white-gold sea of strange, eddying forces, the ships appeared on the screen. Liz Deffant sighed. She forgot the burly figure at the console. All the experiences of the bitter hours drifted from her memory. She saw what Al Buchanan had seen, and she entered into his knowledge, shared his wonder and grief, understood his compulsive obsession as never before. The eerie resting-place of so many ships was dreamily peaceful, utterly beyond anything she had thought to see. Al was right. It was alien but beckoning, terrifying but compelling. The mystery lay before her in its bizarre majesty. A freak scanning showed the whole length of the Altair Star. Washed by ripples of white-gold translucence, it gleamed like some magnificent, somber tomb.
“We shouldn’t disturb it,” breathed Liz. “No, Al!”
“Please, Liz,” said Buchanan.
Maran brought the scanners close to the ship. He knew ships. “The bridge has gone. But that doesn’t mean she’s a wreck.”
“It was blasted clear. Against my orders.”
“Yes,” said Maran. “It was under robotic direction?”
“Infragalactic policy. I tried to take over.”
Buchanan thought of the frenzied, despairing, harsh orders, the gouging shocks as his engineers ripped out decision-making systems.
“And?”
“I took too long to make the decision to take over.”
Maran frowned. “Power potential when you blasted clear?”
“About eight percent.”
“Low.”
“The robots let the screens down.”
“Yes,” said Maran.
“Leave the ship alone, Al! Please!” Liz said, turning to Maran.
“I’m sorry, Miss Deffant,” Maran said.
Buchanan waited, bile in his mouth. The years of searing anguish, interrupted by Liz Deffant’s tenderness, had led to this moment.
“Well?” he asked.
“We go, Buchanan.”
“All of us?”
“Not Miss Deffant.”
“Stay here,” said Buchanan to Liz.
“We both have our reasons for going,” Maran said to her. “Buchanan’s you know. You may or may not have guessed mine. But you know this, Miss Deffant,” and his great eyes were luminously intent. “You know that Maran must not fail!”
Liz shrank back, afraid for Al Buchanan, convulsively afraid that Maran might work some shocking legerdemain aboard the ghost-ship.
“Project a Quasi-warp,” ordered Maran.
The robotic controller still hedged. “Where to, sir?”
“To the Altair Star!”
“We’ll take deep-space armor,” Buchanan added.
“Why?” asked Maran.
“Life-support. Aboard the Altair Star. Its systems should have run out.” He said in a low voice: “I hope they have.”
“I must state, for the purposes of record that the station commander is grossly exceeding the instructions of the Board,” the Grade One robot announced.
Buchanan followed Maran to the hold.
Liz Deffant watched the ghostly fleet, picking out here a bulbous ion-fission hulk that had not roared across the dimensions for half a millennium; there an elegant scout that had drifted into the tunnel not more than sixty or seventy years before. She could hardly bare to look at the huge, infragalactic liner that had been Al Buchanan’s command.
CHAPTER 19
The eerie journey brought a proximity desired by neither man, yet each derived a measure of comfort from the knowledge that another human being was in the cramped cabin. Pinpoints of white-gold iridescence spangled the interior. Its tiny engines groaned as shields were forced inward by the blossoming Quasi-warp. Coiling shards of black light began to build up as the glittering tunnel formed around the raft. The Singularity’s fields jerked and pushed, and the raft spun crazily as it left the station. Buchanan gave no thought to Maran. Half-forgotten scenes tumbled with appalling clarity through his mind: a child’s toy; the stunned face of a dignified old man; Preston’s refusal to believe that the machines would condemn them, his shout of protest…. The last moments of the Altair Star haunted him afresh. He could see the lost faces, the dawning horror, the slow realization that the final moment had come.
“Proceed,” ordered Maran.
The Quasi-warp, created by the station’s puking engines, reached out to the misty edges of the strange graveyard of ships.
Buchanan saw Maran’s big-boned, overfleshed face through the visor. There was a grotesque magnificence in his bulk. His eyes burned with a deep, profound, and tormented vision. Buchanan knew that he should be considering his own future actions: he should be working on some way of thwarting Maran’s escape plans. But he could not. Liz was safe. Whatever happened to Maran and himself aboard the Altair Star—and he was more sure than ever that he would reach the ship—she would be cared for.
T
he robots would safeguard her person. If he and Maran failed to return, they would decide that the station and its records should be preserved; and Liz with it. Perhaps Maran knew that only if Liz’s safety was assured would he willingly accompany him to the riven, time-lost ship. Buchanan firmly put down any speculation about what Maran wanted him for; it was enough that he was returning to his command. He would find the answer to the question that had tortured him for so many years, that had sustained him through the long interview with the Board, that had kept him intent and purposeful during the descents into the depths of the Singularity. Time enough to wonder about Maran when he had put to rest the ghosts of the Altair Star.
“Maran,” he said urgently. “I want to be the first to step into my ship.” He was pleading, but he did not care. “It was my command.”
“Agreed,” said Maran.
The Quasi-warp built into a thrusting, glowing spear that sliced through the unguessable forces. It merged with the strange architecture of the Singularity and allowed the life-raft to pass into the deeper regions. A small screen pulsed irregularly. Buchanan’s mind spun as the screen picked out the fantastic time-locked graveyard.
“There!” he called.
They had reached the impossible temporal discontinuity. And the images of the ancient ships filled the screen —blurred, almost unrecognizable as the deep-space vessels to the untrained eye, but immediately identifiable to Buchanan. And Maran, it seemed.
“I see, Buchanan.”
Maran fed in commands. The raft hung, shot through with the white-gold, stunning radiance and the eerie black light. Every cell in Buchanan’s body seemed invested with the Singularity’s weird effects. Yet he saw the ship.
“The Altair Star!”
The impossible warp drilled through and into the time-tunnel. Coruscating, whirling forces eddied around the raft as it glided along its sheath of translucence toward the Altair Star. Buchanan clung to the obsessive fixation that had worried and ripped at his mind for so long: why had the robots allowed so many to sink away into the glittering tunnel?
Then even that thought was gone as a sudden eddy of grotesque forces beat the Quasi-warp. Maran struggled to hold the raft, but the Singularity’s weird forces would not be denied. The little craft was hurled about with a blind, brutal frenzy of strange powers. And the two men pitched about the tiny cabin helplessly.
