Singularity Station

CHAPTER 16

“Commander Maran,” said the Grade One robot from the Jansky Station, “my high-grade colleague aboard the ES 110 is ready to assist in the completion of Quasi-warp. Kindly stand by for removal of sections of the bridge.”

Liz Deffant almost giggled at the punctilious observation of niceties among machines which were disobeying their primary conditioning. She tried to operate the controls of the deep-space armor. It added an element of lunatic comedy when she began to float on a small force-screen toward the blank screen.

“Miss Deffant, please,” said Maran, gigantic in the armored suit. “Into the raft, Miss Deffant.” A low-grade casually hooked her toward the small port as a gang of servitors ripped away the sides of the ship. Liz gasped with sudden pain as a blinding white-gold translucence flooded the wreckage. It was crazily beautiful, a zany dance of white and gold particles against sinking chains of hypercubes.

“Quasi-warp,” she said, half stunned.

Maran lumbered into the confined space of the raft, his movements energetic in spite of the weight of the armored suit. Liz glimpsed a tentacle flashing across the wrecked bridge to close the port of the makeshift raft. It was the last she saw of the ES 110, for the eerie flow of white-gold particles enveloped the entire ship. The strange translucence seeped into the raft too, finding invisible gaps—irradiating the cramped interior with its uncanny presence.

“This vessel is now defunct,” said the robotic controller of the ES 110. It was the only epitaph the prison-ship received.

Liz was flung hard against the side of the tiny craft as it lurched into the broken dimensions with a mind-reeling plunge. The raft spun wildly for a few seconds, and then it was grinding down the Quasi-warp tunnel away from the wreck of the ES 110. Liz looked at Maran and saw that his armored suit was crawling with the glittering, eerie radiance. He had the look of a monstrous god riding a chariot of suns.

Buchanan felt the absence of the station’s protective screens with a deep-space voyager’s instinctive alarm. The station quaked in the maelstrom. Engines howled with the effort of projecting the warp which could not exist. And which had been manufactured.

Scanners showed the breakup of the ES 110.

A fresh flurry of starquake grabbed the prison-ship and drew what was left of its shattered hulk inward. Buchanan caught the last unconcerned message from its robotic controller. There was a faint blast as the ES 110 imploded.

Buchanan shivered. Any shipwreck was a desolating thing. There would be only broken fragments of this vessel to sink into the time-lost graveyard where the Altair Star lay. And then, through the showering debris and the fury of starquake, Buchanan glimpsed the hauntingly beautiful tunnel. It grew like some living thing in the broken dimensions, a tube of white-gold translucence that seemed too fragile to endure against the devastating onrush of serpentine coils billowing from the depths of the Singularity. It held, and the engines of the station kept the wildness of starquake back. And the life-raft slowly crept toward the station. It lurched forward at first, but then its progress was slow, as if it fought painfully against an alien element; Buchanan breathed in shallow gulps as he thought of Liz Deffant encased in the frail pellet of a ship that was being reborn through the coruscating tube. He was in the station’s small hold when the raft nudged into the lock. A strange delirium of hope gripped him. When the battered raft creaked to a rest and the white-gold translucence died away, he could not contain himself.

“Liz! Liz!”

The two low-grade servitors that were the entire complement of the station went about their work efficiently. They assisted the two dazed figures from the raft and began to remove the massive space armor. Buchanan was taut with almost unendurable emotion. He heard the robotic controller of the station announce:

“Commander, starquake emissions dying down. Quasi-warp fields have been withdrawn. All three engines have resumed normal functions. There has been a slight failure of some elements of Number Two Engine, but maintenance systems have repairs in hand. Full efficiency will be obtained in all systems in one hour. What are your instructions?”

Buchanan was beside her as the helmet came free. Her long hair flowed around a pale face. She blinked and stared at him. A tension that had built up during the hours of the ES 110’s lunging voyage into the Singularity now burst, and Buchanan reached out a big, wide hand to touch her face. He felt tears.

“Al—” whispered the girl, and he felt his senses battered. The touch of her soft skin was the revival of all he had ever hoped for. The Altair Star was only a distant, thin ghost, one that could stay in its shadowy nonlife. This was real, this tactile impression of her tears.

He saw her eyes fill with alarm and remembered that Maran was on his ship. He turned, fast.

“What are your instructions?” asked the robotic controller. “Sir, have you any instructions regarding ES 110 personnel?”

Buchanan was himself again, alert and decisive. “I resume full command of the station,” he snapped. “Full restraint procedures—seize the criminal expellee Maran and take him for medical attention. He is not to be permitted to speak—do not allow him to communicate with any automatic system!”

“Al, he controls—” Liz yelled, as Buchanan took a step toward the burly figure.

“What are your instructions, Commander?” the metallic flat voice interrupted, as Liz was shouting. Buchanan opened his mouth to roar at the stupidity of the machines when he saw that the blank faces of the two low-grade servitors were not turned to him. In that moment, he knew what Liz was trying to say.

“Relinquish all decision-making procedures!” he called abruptly. “I am commander of this ship—accept no orders but mine!”

It was too late.

“Commander?” asked the robotic controller.

Both low-grades faced Maran. They were awaiting his orders. Like dogs, they knew their master. Buchanan tried to reach Maran. His hands were wedge-shaped, the hard edges downward, the muscles in his shoulders and arms ready to power the blows that would crush Maran while he was still dazed from the mind-reeling passage of the tunnel. It was always too late. “Restrain,” said Maran hoarsely. Tentacles snaked to encompass Buchanan’s limbs. He stared at him as two metallic carapaces regarded him indifferently. Buchanan felt anger surge within him once more, and again the anger was directed at himself. He had acted with such stupidity that it was hardly believable. Maran had issued commands before leaving the ES 110. Of course he had! But he had been vulnerable for a few seconds when the life-raft lay like a stranded monster in the hold of the station; the man had been half crazed by the shock of the strange phenomenon of Quasi-warp. That should have been his chance, Buchanan thought savagely. He had lost it.

A sense of unreality gripped him. Here he was, in his own command, a prisoner of his own servitors. Facing him was the bulk of Maran, one of the most dangerous men ever to be sent to the Rim. By a freak of chance, Liz Deffant was here too—she had been brought across the spiraling arms of the Galaxy to this encounter, having played some part in the desperate events leading to Maran’s presence. Shocked, enraged, bewildered, he shouted to the robots: “I am Buchanan, commander of the station!

Release me! I resume full control of all systems throughout the station! Maran is not to be allowed access to any system—secure him now!”

The tentacles did not relax. Buchanan’s rage seeped away.

Both he and Liz were waiting for Maran to shake the sense-blinding effects of the Quasi-warp from his massive head. Haggard, patient, utterly fatigued, he at last looked directly at Buchanan. The sense of unreality would not leave Buchanan.

“Buchanan,” Maran said, his strange deep eyes assessing the bound man before him. There was no hint of triumph. Buchanan could begin to appreciate the power of the man; another, in his place, would have shown pride, perhaps boasted of his mastery of the machines. Maran accepted the situation and his dominance of it; it was his right. About him, there was an aura of grandeur that was only partly to be explained by his size. He was uninterested in fighting Buchanan. He would not accept him as an opponent, in spite of the defiance in Buchanan’s face. Any kind of confrontation was ruled out by his monumental patience.

Buchanan clung to his one advantage. “You can’t get away,” he said. “This station has no deep-space Phase capability. And Commander Lientand’s squadron is waiting.”

Maran was unperturbed. Like Liz, he was swaying. He was almost on the point of collapse. “Attend to Miss Deffant,” he said. “You’ll do that?”

“What?”

Liz Deffant heard. She was too tired to begin to explain.

“Yes,” said Maran. “A remarkable woman.” He gestured to the servitors, and the tentacles flowed away into invisible orifices. “The machines will hold you if you attempt to harm me,” he said. “Be a realist, Buchanan. I must have rest—Miss Deffant will tell you about their trials aboard the prison-ship. When I have recovered, your machines will tell me about your command. In the meanwhile, do nothing rash.”

Buchanan tensed, and an almost undetectable robotic quivering told him that the contraction of muscle been noted. Maran was massively unimpressed.

“The robots will watch, Buchanan,” he said. His eyes were wells of tiredness. “You were appointed to this station, presumably, Buchanan, because you have an expert knowledge of these tools.” He indicated the low-grade servitors. “Respect them!”

“He’s right,” said Liz slowly. “He’s always right.” Buchanan could not resist saying: “You won’t get away, Maran.” Childish as it was, the threat did something to restore his confidence.

“Very possibly,” agreed Maran. “To the bridge,” he ordered a servitor. It aided his halting progress to fhe small grav-chute. Buchanan was sure he was asleep before the chute took him to the bridge of the Jansky Station.

When he was gone, Buchanan looked down at his bony hands. He felt the crab of helplessness stirring in his body, gripping, clawing at him. Despair and doom echoed through his skull.

“Al?” whispered Liz, and he saw that she was exhausted.

Confused and bitter as he was, he responded to the appeal. Liz’s eyes held no condemnation, only an urgent need. She lifted her arms and he bent to hold her. Minutes passed. Only the slow whine of remote systems could be heard. The ship might have held no more than the two of them. Buchanan felt a suffusion of delight such as he had never, not in the best days of their relationship, believed possible. It was a bursting of happiness that drowned the crablike clawings deep in his body. Liz gently pushed Buchanan away. They had both drawn strength from the tenderness of reconciliation.

“I was a fool,” whispered Buchanan, still amazed at the freak of coincidence that had kept her from joining the long-dead in the time-lost tunnel. “Why did I leave you?”

“You had to! I know how it was, Al!” Buchanan saw that she had changed. There was a new edge of resolution about Liz Deffant. He remembered the cruiser commander’s message.

“Maran?” he said. “He held you hostage?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“When I think of him—”

“Don’t—not now!”

“We have to!”

“There’s been too much, Al! Too much for anyone to take!”

He held her, lightly this time. But even during this second long embrace, Maran’s brooding presence made itself felt. A robotic voice said peremptorily: “Routine report, Commander Buchanan!”

“Well?”

He hardly had time to ask himself if the machines had revertedly to his authority before it demolished the unborn hope.

“Commander Maran wishes you to listen to all routine reports, sir. The latest on core emission is that condition starquake is now in abeyance. There are simple dipole configurations and data corresponding with previous readings. No aberrant energy fields. That is all, sir.” Buchanan heard, filled with a sharp self-disgust. Maran had instructed the machines to keep him informed. He was, possibly, useful to the cyberneticist who had so easily taken his ship from him. Maran slept, confident of the robots’ loyalty.

He heard a racking sob and saw that Liz Deffant was at the end of her powers of endurance. Cursing himself for his selfishness, he led her to the grav-chute. A tentacle restrained him gently.

“Let me pass,” he ordered.

“Commander Buchanan will remain in the hold until summoned by Commander Maran,” it informed him. Buchanan shrugged. “Get a couch for Miss Deffant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Liz was talking now. Some of the story came out, garbled and incoherent: “…he was so young! And those hands… but he had to do it! It was the animal that took over…. Al, he wasn’t responsible—but the eyes! The eyes in the cell-deck—all staring! It was green, Al—they were thrashing about and dying! But he had to do it that way! It’s the small-minded bigots who had him sent out! If he’s given a chance, he can change the nature of our minds! And poor Tup’s neck—it broke, broke!”

Al stopped the flow of words as her voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He could only guess at the horrors of the doomed ship’s last hours. Murder. The successive shocks of the cruisers’ combined fields. The escape of the wounded prison-ship commander. She should not go through the trauma of telling it, not yet.

He soothed her, comforting her by his physical presence.

“Rosario?” she asked abruptly.

“He was picked up. I had a message from the commander of the cruiser. He’s safe and well.” And then she was back in the nightmare. “I tried, Al—I found a gun—a musket, and I’ve never killed anything in my life—but I tried to kill him!”

“All right! Now rest! Tell me later!”

“But I tried to kill him!” She was trying to make him understand with an agony of desperation.

“Liz, I would have done the same!”

“But him!”

And Buchanan knew she was in a frenzied torment.

“Forget him! Rest now—sleep!”

“The musket fired—he knew!”

Buchanan began to worry. This was more than fatigue—more than understandable nervous reaction to even mayhem. Liz was in a state of acute anxiety over Maran.

“Not now, Liz,” he said. “Leave it!”

“I tried—to—kill—Maran.”

Buchanan thought of what he knew of Maran. A powerful and hypnotic personality, a man with a unique charisma, a man who could exert such a power over the minds of men and women that they volunteered willingly for the brutal surgery his machines inflicted on the deepest centers of the cortex. They died believing they were Maran’s disciples.

Liz?

She was staring at him with a shocked despair.

She had tried to kill Maran. And, because of that attempt, she was suffering from an unholy feeling of guilt that would not give her the slightest remission.

Buchanan sensed the right thing to say. Hating himself, but able to say the words to the woman he loved, he whispered: “He forgave you. Liz, Maran forgave you.”

Liz’s anguish diminished. Gradually the panic left her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered back. “He did.” She slept.

Buchanan kicked out savagely at the watchful servitor. Even as his legs braced to take the impact of its metallic bulk, a tentacle swept out to hold him. Another prevented him from falling. He sat down to watch Liz sleep. He had found her again, only to lose her to the mesmeric genius who had taken his ship.

The three of them were trapped, he and Liz doubly trapped. And where was the way out for any of them?