Singularity Station

CHAPTER 21

Lientand saw that the station had suffered. Unguessable forces had eaten at its fabric. Whole sections had been smashed clear away. No darting scanners roamed before it. It was a blind, crippled, failing nugget of technology that had just managed to stagger clear of the appalling chaos within the Singularity. Nevertheless, helpless as the station appeared, Lientand kept his cruisers’ main armament on it.

“Still no beamed transmissions, sir,” reported his lieutenant “The life-support systems are working, but there’s not much power.”

“Get him,” said Lientand.

He wondered if he should risk his crew. His humanity struggled against a growing conviction that Maran should be put down as one would a mad dog.

A launch set out, but before it covered the short distance to the station, a port opened in the scarred side. The launch followed.

“Take no chances,” ordered Lientand, when the raft was inboard. Seconds passed and then slowly a crack appeared in the bent and burned life-raft. A small port swung aside.

Restraint tentacles, hand-weapons, blast-screens: all were ready.

Then a crewman yelled incredulously: “It’s a woman!”

Lientand began to believe in miracles.

When he heard the uproar, Rosario crawled from his bed, to the accompaniment of robotic protest. He ignored it and dragged himself to the hold. All over the cruiser, men were roaring their delight. Buchanan helped Liz out. When he saw the way she looked at the lean, craggy-faced man, Rosario shrugged regretfully and listened.

“Where’s Maran?” asked Lientand,

Buchanan still looked dazed. “Maran chose to go into the Singularity.” Lientand knew shock when he saw it, but there had to be the few vital, immediate questions. Then, and for days later, Buchanan could only give an account of what he had seen—when trained interrogators began their subtle questioning to see what he knew of Maran’s motives, he could do nothing to help shed light on the inexplicable dynamics of the bizarre genius.

Maran; the time-locked tunnel; the black pit; the failure of the robots when the Altair Star was lost. Buchanan sensed a connection, but it was one that eluded him for many days. It was only when he was interviewed by Kochan that the moment of insight arrived. No one else was present to hear Buchanan’s appalling story. Kochan heard it all in silence, with hardly a change of expression on his wrinkled face. When Buchanan, finished, he said: “You are quite sure about her?”

“Yes.”

Kochan sighed. “I can live with it. Can you, Buchanan?”

“I think so.”

There would be the sadness, the regret, the memories, but the dread was gone. Liz Deffant would be there.

“There’ll be another station,” said Kochan. “Bigger. You’ll want it?”

“No.”

“I’m interested in the Quasi-warp. There’s a lot of work to be done at the Singularity.”

“Not by me,” said Buchanan. He thought of the impossible tunnel, the alien blackness. “I’m making a suggestion to the Council about it, sir.”

“Investigation?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“That we leave it alone.”

Kochan’s eyes did show emotion then. “Why?”

“I think we could become too interested in it. I also think it’s too much for us.”

“A mystery too deep for mere men?” He thinks my nerve has failed, thought Buchanan. Kochan was not sneering, but the tone was sardonic.

Buchanan tried to explain: “You remember what Mrs. Blankfort said?”

“What was that?”

“She told me not to hate the robots.”

“And?”

“I did. I loathed them for giving up the Altair Star.”

Kochan was hostile now. “What point are you trying to make?”

“In a way,” said Buchanan, aware of the hostility, “they were right.”

“Right to abandon all hope—right to take my grandchild!”

“I used to think as you do.”

“You’ve changed your mind. Why?”

“I believe the robots decided the Singularity was beyond our comprehension.”

“It is!”

“But ours, sir,” insisted Buchanan.

“Say what you mean.”

“The robots believe we can’t understand the Singularity—it’s beyond us—beyond us—not beyond them!”

As he said it, Buchanan had a sudden vision of Maran at the console of the big lifeboat, pitching the overpowered little vessel into the frightful alien pit: Maran with his machines! Maran, striving to penetrate some vast mystery by offering himself up to the creatures that had built the time-locked tunnel.

“Go on,” said Kochan.

Buchanan knew at last why the robots had surrendered his ship. Not because they believed the tunnel impossible. Maran had not told him the truth. The machines had wanted to keep the secret of the tunnel away from human beings.

“That’s all there is, sir,” he said helplessly. “I think the robots are right. They don’t believe the human race ready for the forces loose in the Singularity. That’s why they accepted the inevitability of the complete loss of ships that went near it. That’s why the robot satellites were lost so soon. The robots kept us from the Singularity through fear.”

“You came out. With the station.”

“It took a Maran.”

“Yes,” said Kochan, and Buchanan sensed in him something of Maran’s terrible simplicity. Kochan smiled. “You’ve done your part, Buchanan, You’ll find me grateful.” Buchanan realized that Kochan had found a new goal. He intended that the Singularity should give up its secrets.

He hated it with a pathological anger. He wanted revenge on the monstrosity that had destroyed his grandchild. By plundering its fantastic recesses, he would be gaining some recompense for her loss. Buchanan thought bleakly of the strange efflorescence that was the black hole. It was the ultimate danger. And Maran was in it. What would that bizarre genius work in the alien pit?

There was nothing he could do. Naturally he would point out the dangers. But men like Kochan inevitably would maneuver, scheme, fill others—like himself!—with a fiery passion to know, and then the window into that other Universe would be wrenched open by the might of the Quasi-warp.

“I’ve done my part,” Buchanan agreed. He had fought his one and only campaign.

“Miss Deffant is waiting,” said Kochan, not unkindly.

Buchanan knew that he had been dismissed. He thought with pleasure of the little survey-ship. While the Galaxy lasted, he and Liz would do the necessary, useful things like surveying barely-known star-systems and bending plant-forms to new uses.

He went, for he and Liz had waited long enough.

Let those who could make the mind-reeling decisions.

Let those who dared enter the Jansky Singularity.