Singularity Station

CHAPTER 1

Buchanan admitted to himself that he was worried, even though he was sure they’d give him the job. However much they wanted him to have the experimental Jansky Station, they were still a committee whose function it was to scrutinize every facet of his life, every last detail of his career and qualifications; it didn’t make for comfort to have such an inspection. The men and women facing him were well-disposed, even kindly. But they might just stand between him and the Jansky Singularity. And the ship he had lost.

He knew some of the members of the Board. Richtler, of course. And he’d heard of Kochan, shrewd and mysterious Kochan, who’d given up a seat on the Galactic Council to concentrate, so he said, on his personal interests. The others were average citizens, a wide spread of ages and appearances. Richtler and Kochan were the important ones; and Richtler was guiding the long interview with considerable skill to the conclusion he and Buchanan desired. Buchanan felt a muscle twitch over his left eyebrow as Richtler turned to him, with a half-smile on his face.

“You’ve given us a very clear picture of your early training, Mr. Buchanan. Apart from your successful completion of the Deep-space Program, you showed exceptional gifts in field theory…. Perhaps some of the other members of the Board would like to ask questions of a more general nature?” Buchanan felt his mouth go dry. “You’ll not object to some questions of a personal nature?” Richtler went on.

“No, sir.”

Richtler was not much older than he was—say in his mid-thirties. He too had once worked the uncertain dimensions between the spiraling arms of the Galaxy, though now he was the deskbound head of a big exploratory project out on the Rim. Richtler knew from personal experience, however, what the experimental station could mean, which was more than could be said for the rest of the archaically-titled Board for the Regulation of Space Hazards.

The Board had been set up at a time when everyday bits of junk like blown-up chemical and fission rockets littered Sol’s environs. Such shattered hardware, together with stray comets and the odd uncharted asteroid, constituted space hazards in the early days: now, the big ships were equipped with force-screens that could shunt whole planetary systems out of their paths if they had to. It was bizarre occurrences in the shifting fields of space-time like the Jansky Singularity that were the real hazards. Yet the Board’s resources were hopelessly inadequate to begin to survey the Singularity; they could do no more than mark it with robot beacons. Simply, there wasn’t the hard cash. Beginning as a semi-voluntary agency, the Board had never acquired the gritty ability to wrest proper finance from the Galactic Council, and it was only a combination of Richtler’s know-how and Kochan’s political skills that had at last managed to divert some of the central funds away from Exploration and Infragalactic Transport. Too many ships had been lost. Too many engulfed in the region of that unguessable enigma. When Kochan took an interest there was suddenly enough money to build a small, permanent station that could endure the terrible forces of the Singularity. A one-man artificial planet, Buchanan had to be the man. Some of the lay members of the Board asked the inane questions he expected. Did he not regret the days when the big ships were crewed by real field engineers and real deep-space commanders, like himself?

(He fended that one off easily.) Why had he refused another appointment with infragalactic? (That was easy too: he’d become a freelancer.) Well then, how had he adapted to free-lancing? (Well enough, until the Jansky Station project was rushed through.) What the Board’s members meant was how did the captain of a huge ship settle for working for wealthy private owners, for doing odd jobs for the big corporations, for hiring out to the junk-merchants who made a living from the wrecks of the past thousand years?

Buchanan explained that he’d found free-lancing interesting, but not fulfilling. They smiled in agreement There’d be plenty of fulfillment out at the Singularity.

Someone asked if it worried him that the station had no deep-space engines of its own. Buchanan smiled. He said he could rely on the Committee to send another tug to collect him when the job was done.

“Mr. Buchanan, have you given consideration to the dangers of the post you’re applying for?” asked a thin-faced middle-aged man in a high-pitched earnest voice.

Buchanan was amused; he thought of the man’s amazement should he learn what was behind his application.

Richtler frowned. “Mr. Buchanan knows what he has volunteered for, Mr. Chafe. I’m sure he has assessed the dangers better than any man living.”

It was a lapse of good manners. Chafe inspected the papers before him to cover his embarrassment.

“Ah, of course! Yes!”

Buchanan was not offended. He could not be hurt anymore. Not unless he hurt himself. He relaxed for a moment, and thus it was that Kochan’s question caught him off-balance.

“You’re a young and energetic man,” shrewd old Kochan said, walnut-patterned brown face unsmiling, clear black eyes piercingly bright, “and you are known to be considering matrimony—it’s no secret! Your application for the benefits of matrimonial status was filed six months ago. Naturally, since all information regarding candidates comes through to us, we must consider their emotional background.” Buchanan cursed silently. The comps didn’t forget. He had. It would have taken a few moments to cancel the request. “You’ll be on the station alone for an indeterminate period,” Kochan went on. “How will the future Mrs. Buchanan react to this?”

The big blue clock behind Kochan blurred as Buchanan felt the cold realization of aloneness. So far, he had been buoyed up by the excitement of the Jansky Station project. He had been away from Center for months, and it was only when he had returned—was it just five days ago!—that he had learned of the Board’s new venture. He had gone to see Richtler just as Richtler had been about to summon him. And there had been no time to suffer the chill of separation from Liz Deffant. Was it too late, even now, to get her back?

Perhaps she would still be around, waiting? No! She’d waited for three years while they built up the capital to charter the small scout vessel which would be their home as well as a source of income—she with her ecological training, himself as crew. There was plenty of free-lance work for skills such as hers, especially when they were allied to his experience. What a life it could have been!

It was over. Liz had blazed at him in a cold fury. By now she was probably on her way back to the remote world she’d told him about—remote, fairly sophisticated, and independent: people who didn’t take to too much direction from Center. They’d colonized the planet out in Messier 16 in two generations. And one of those sturdy colonizers would be only too incredulously unable to believe his luck as Liz Deffant returned. She’d made it clear enough that she was going back.

“That’s a point,” said Chafe, happy to be able to comment. “Mrs. Buchanan, now? How’s she going to take to being a station-widow?”

There was frank interest in the faces of the women members of the Board. They didn’t know much about field theory—Richtler apart—and they could only guess at the strains of life in the unstable wild regions about the edges of the Jansky Singularity, but they did know about the effects of prolonged separation.

“There won’t be a Mrs. Buchanan.”

Kochan’s gaze bored into Buchanan’s face.

“No marriage?”

“No, sir.”

There was an unspoken desire for additional information. The two younger women on the Board particularly found it difficult to restrain their questions; but they did. And, blessedly, the rest of the interview was more or less predictable after that surge of emotion. Much of the interest centered around the decision of a moderately wealthy ex-captain of an infragalactic vessel to give up life in the settled parts of the Galaxy for public service—dull, boring, plodding, ill-paid, even dangerous service—in the corridor of space-time that contained the unimaginably horrific maelstrom of the Jansky Singularity. Chafe’s ascetic features betrayed an anxiety to do his duty to the public purse: he wanted to be convinced, beyond doubt, that Buchanan was right for the appointment. Buchanan didn’t object to the questions. Kochan had sprung the only awkward question, and the moments of anxiety had passed.

No one wished to bring up the business of the ship.

Richtler had taken every opportunity of avoiding what might prove to be an embarrassing question. No blame attached to him. The ship was gone. His ship!

“You’ve been a great help, Mr. Buchanan,” Richtler complimented Buchanan.

“Mr. Chairman,” a sharp voice called out.

The members of the Board—and Buchanan—shifted their attention to a frail, elderly woman who so far had said nothing. Buchanan had been in the large, boardroom for an hour, and so far she had not impinged on his consciousness. If he had looked at her with attention, he would have assumed that she was one of those well-heeled elderly women for whom committees were a pleasing diversion from the social round; she had been part of the background, nothing else, so he had not noticed her. Now, he looked.

She looked like anybody’s indulgent, aged aunt, come to nod amiably as others made decisions for the public good. Buchanan saw the startling intelligence in her faded blue eyes. She was anything but a benevolent relative.

She was trouble.

“I have a question, Mr. Chairman, if Mr. Buchanan would bear with me.”

“Of course,” said Richtler.

“Certainly, ma’am,” Buchanan said warily.

She looked from one to another, self-contained, quite unselfconscious: Buchanan could feel the aura of confident authority about her.

“I’m not familiar with your sphere of operations, Mr. Buchanan,” she said briskly. “On the contrary, I’ve spent most of my working life on one planet, here at Center, with only rare excursions to the nearer settled constellations. I’m almost untraveled. Yet I believe I’m qualified to sit on this Board.”

“Mrs. Blankfort,” began Richtler.

“I’m a species of psychologist, Mr. Buchanan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” she said, silencing Richtler.

“The particular variety I belong to concerns itself with decision-making procedures.” Kochan neatly inserted a comment:

“Mrs. Blankfort is very eminent in her field, Buchanan. Very eminent.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kochan,” she said sharply, dismissing him. “I am retired now, of course, otherwise I shouldn’t be serving on this Board. It fills an old lady’s time, in part. Well, that’s enough about me, Mr. Buchanan. And now you do know, that is if you’re prepared to accept our Chairman and Mr. Kochan’s recommendations, that I am qualified to question you—”

“Naturally, ma’am.”

“Very well.” Kochan’s piercing gaze swept back to Buchanan’s craggy face, and Buchanan felt a sense of foreboding as Mrs. Blankfort considered her questions. Buchanan dismissed the subtle alarm that Kochan had induced: Kochan was one member of the Board, no more. But what did the old lady want?

Hadn’t the psychologists—the whole scalpel-minded crew of them!—had enough from him? Hadn’t there been the months of tests, analyses, reruns of the last moments of his former command?

“Mr. Buchanan,” he heard the sharp voice begin, “have you any thought of trying to find what happened to the Altair Star?”

Buchanan’s mind was a clamoring torment. The years fell away. He gripped hard onto the edges of the chair he had occupied so uncomfortably while pretending to be relaxed. He moved back three years and saw it all again. He could see once more the uncanny emptiness of the ship’s screens, the total absence of any fixed point of reference as the scanners tried to show him just how the Altair Star and its doomed passengers were being drawn into the fearful abyss within the Jansky Singularity. The terrible time was here again. He could not speak.

Then, like a moment of longed-for sanity in the middle of a nightmare, there came a memory of Liz Deffant. Liz, the first time he had seen her. He could fasten on that memory. He cleared his throat and began to answer: “So far as I am concerned—” He paused, looked about the faces of the members of the Board for the Regulation of Space Hazards, and knew that he had made a foolish and irrevocable decision. The awareness of being alone was a pit of despair inside his body. He could feel it, cold and gripping, like a monstrous crab in his intestines, cold and clawing.

He would never see her again.

Liz Deffant was still in a state of furious incomprehension. There had been anger. Of course anger! She was a forthright person who had no hang-up at all about expressing her views on anything that concerned her deeply. And Aloysius Buchanan had concerned her ever since, just over three years ago, she had stumbled out of the spaceport car, hair disheveled, reels of spindle-tape flying from her hands as her heel caught on the edge of a door; her by no means inconsiderable weight had taken the unprepared lean figure of Buchanan right in the midriff, bringing an explosive grunt of displeasure. She saw the too-bushy eyebrows, the angular strength of the face, a strength which continued through the muscular, bony frame, and then she was as embarrassed as sixteen—red-faced, stuttering an apology and wondering if the squeaky voice coming from her mouth could be hers. To her horror, she heard herself suggesting that they’d both feel better after a drink.

He had refused.

For a week she had combed the area for him—he was a deep-space man, she was sure of that—but he was not to be found. He knew her name—“Liz Deffant, that’s me” she’d told him, but there had been no offer of the intimacy of his name: just a disdainful look and nothing else. But had it been disdainful, she had argued. Could it be that the look was simply that of a man caught in the solar plexus by her hundred and thirty pounds? Or was it that he disliked forward women? Had it been that he was so badly winded that he couldn’t speak? (She learned later that he’d been shocked, but not in that way; he’d been dazed by the sheer panache of her introduction; he had been quite as lovingly shocked as she. Most lovingly belted in the midriff, most amazingly and deliciously slammed into silence. His refusal to accompany her had been a reflex action, like a hurt animal’s. He was still in a state of withdrawal from humankind, women included, women especially. And there were good, solid, ineluctable reasons.)

It took a week for her to identify him and learn that he was the captain of the Altair Star. Buchanan, captain and sole survivor of the big infragalactic ship lost in the worst accident for a half century. That was the man with whom she had fallen in love.

When she did finally track him down it had been hard work to get him to speak. She recalled his bitter smile with a shudder of pity. He was defeated and cold, slightly suspicious of her for looking up a man who had given up his career. He thought she was another journalist on the hunt for the final, definitive version of how Al Buchanan, superb navigator, fieldman extraordinary, had managed to save himself as six hundred and eighty-three men, women, and children had been clawed into the abyss. She had persuaded him that he had nothing to fear from her. Not immediately, of course. Weeks of small persistent attentions had helped him to forget the horrors that strode through his mind, Until the Board of Space Hazards commissioned the Jansky permanent outpost, Buchanan seemed to have regained his self-assurance. For three years they had worked hard to prepare a way of life that would enable them both to live happily.

Then the Jansky Station project.

Buchanan heard of the project a few days before the date they’d fixed for marriage. He wanted the job. More than her. Without any warning, he’d called at the research center where Liz was winding up her last assignment; and he’d told her, quite calmly, that he would be away indefinitely. He’d explained a little. Later, she learned more.

Regular soundings of the titanic waves of power blasting out from the Singularity: that was the object of the station. There had to be a crewman, for the robot ships they’d sent over the past century had vanished. All of them. They’d gone out on the station and lasted each for maybe a month, perhaps three months; and they had then slid down into the impossibly blank vortex.

They wanted a highly qualified field theorist who could apply his knowledge. And one who knew the space-lanes. It might be that he could survive where the robots were lost. And they had built a new kind of ship.

Liz saw that he meant to go, couldn’t be talked out of it. She’d seen the bitter resolution in his deep-set gray eyes.

Buchanan hadn’t got over the loss of the Altair Star.

He wasn’t a survivor at all.

“No!” Liz whispered again, as she had at first. “You can’t, Al!” But he had.

All the time he had been thinking of the journey through the eerie regions that made the vicinity of the Jansky Singularity such a danger for the unwary voyager who learned too late of the great pit’s existence. They’d give him the job.

Liz had rushed from her office to a robot-bug outside the complex of administration buildings. She kicked down hard at the controls, sending it high above the glistening towers, way out to the vast trenches where the shuttles were housed. There was sure to be a ship before long.

“Why?” she whispered, crushing down the surge of pity she felt for Buchanan and not succeeding. “It wasn’t your fault, Al!”

Kochan was very interested. His bland smile ineffectively camouflaged the excitement that made his eyes small beacons in the walnut-colored, whorled skin.

“Go on, Buchanan,” he said silkily. “As far as you’re concerned?” Buchanan’s hands shook slightly on the chair he held onto.

The Altair Star!

He said, without a noticeable tremor: “So far as I’m concerned, the affair of the Altair Star is closed.” Did they believe him?

It was unlikely that the old woman did, even though the others of the species she belonged to seemed to think that he had adjusted to that frightful trauma when the big, magnificent vessel had reeled off into emptiness. The Service psychologists said he was fine. They recommended that he ship out again soon. But he had resigned. And then met Liz.

“So your decision to give up the attractive Miss Deffant, to say nothing of a new career as a contract-surveyor, was arrived at purely on intellectual grounds?” Mrs. Blankfort asked. She was asking did he still worry about the ship.

He was about to answer that he never thought of the Altair Star nowadays, when he saw it wouldn’t do.

“Not entirely, ma’am.” He turned to Richtler. “There’s an element of risk in the job that appeals to me. I suppose the Jansky Singularity is in my bones now. Mr. Richtler will tell you that any fieldman would give his right arm to have an accurate chart of the regions around the Singularity, but none in his right mind would go near enough to make one.”

“So you’re saying that you’re not in your right mind, young man?” said Kochan, smiling.

“I don’t think that’s called for,” Richtler said, frowning. “Mr. Buchanan’s—” Buchanan interrupted.

“I lost a ship once, Mr. Kochan. I won’t imperil Board’s new station.” Lost, thought Buchanan.

The Altair Star wasn’t lost, not in the conventional way that meant a blowup or a mangling. The ship was in the terrible abyss somewhere.

He had seen her go.