Singularity Station

CHAPTER 8

As Buchanan felt the pull of the station’s drive, he had to hold down an urge to begin the descent into the maelstrom. He watched the operations screen. The station lay at the rim of the enigma. The three enormous engines surged to erect a force-screen against the insidious and ferocious energies of the strange gap in the cosmos. Buchanan’s hands relaxed. For the moment there was power to spare. But enough power? Enough to counter starquake?

It was in the sudden, irregular pulsing of vast gravitational and electromagnetic forces that the danger lay, however. At one moment the station would be riding easily along a simple dipole configuration; and then, in the next minute portion of time, a leaping gobbet of force would blur the simple lines and create an untenable, utterly incomprehensible vortex. And, somewhere within, was the emptiness of the pit. Deep, unguessably deep.

The ship’s scanners sensed the changes in the emissions from the core of the Singularity, but Buchanan sweated coldly each time until the engines responded. The screens held. Perhaps they would continue to hold. But for how long?

The realization came to him that what the station was experiencing was nothing compared to the rushing, monumental cataclysm of starquake.

It was a condition that trapped ships a billion miles from the epicenter of the cosmic storm. And if starquake could draw in powerful ships from such distances, then what forces raged within the Singularity itself? No wonder the robot satellites sent to record the seismic upheavals of the Singularity were lost!

What scanners and sensors could begin to measure the raging fury of the interior?

Buchanan began to glimpse the dilemma of the robots.

Nothing in the Galaxy was like the Singularity. He would proceed with caution.

“We stay at the rim for observation,” Buchanan said, awed by a fresh pulsation from the depths.

“That is our assignment,” agreed the robot.

Rosario opened his eyes and saw blood. In the bright-lit cheerful surroundings there was a particular horror in the sight of so much blood. Pain came in a dense flood. He closed his eyes, welcoming the darkness. Somewhere near him there was the soft, heavy movement of machinery. Rosario remembered. Maran.

He opened his eyes and knew it was his own blood that was congealing on the console. How badly was he hurt? There was a splintered mass of pain down his left side. Ribs gone. He breathed more deeply and the pain engulfed him once again. But he would not permit himself to lose consciousness. He coughed and the pain surrounded him with armies of dart-wielding enemies. He forced himself to think. He moved his head to see the bridge. An explosion, he remembered. A colossal blast. Before that, Poole with his staring, foolish face set in an unaccustomedly determined mask. It was the one truly determined act of his career. And then the molecular spin had taken him apart, grain by grain. Rosario shuddered. He would have to pass down the chute. Poor, sad-faced Poole’s ghost would linger in its force-waves. And then what? What could he do?

Rosario tried to call out. Dieter and Mack… had they reached the chute? A Grade Three robot passed before the field of Rosario’s vision. He saw that it carried a burden. There was a strong, big-chinned face. The body drooped, inert. Mack. Dead.

He forced himself to move away from the console, an inch. It was a desperate struggle. His slowly-growing rage helped keep him conscious. He saw the robot returning for the second smashed body. There was no sign of Poole.

There wouldn’t be.

Minutes passed, with Rosario hanging by a thread to his sanity. Agony grew in his side like a vast, barbed flower. A Grade Three robot stopped. Rosario felt the gentle touch of a tentacle. He held his breath. The robot inspected him, its carapace shimmering as its sensors absorbed information. Rosario stared back at it. Was Maran completely in charge of the ship? Had Maran ordered this grisly clearing-up? Or were the machines acting in accordance with their interpretation of standing orders? He waited.

The robot moved away.

Rosario made himself think. He would have to seek out Maran. Down the grav-chute. Past the remains of Poole. But there wouldn’t be any, he thought wildly. Poole was now a part of the fabric of the ES 110. Dieter and Mack would be stored away. Then there was Tup. And the guard, Pete. And the girl. And the expellees. Rosario remembered sickly that they had been grotesquely summoned from their remote dreams to help realize Maran’s bizarre ambitions. Yes, Maran had gained control of the machines. Rosario blacked out.

As he lay, half supported by the console, the ES 110 machines decided that their function was to normalize conditions. Tiny maintenance units cared for their own. The spider-like machines picked up the glittering broken machine which had been knocked away by Maran. Bigger, lower-grade units replaced the smashed panels of the console on the bridge. And a silent corps of servitors began the macabre task of lifting the expellees from the ooze where they had died. The command system waited. Rosario again emerged from the darkness and sensed the watchfulness around him. The machines were waiting for instructions. Not from the commander of the Enforcement Service vessel: from Maran. It had to be now, Rosario told himself. Whatever he had done, Maran was not yet totally the master of the ship. Perhaps he had succumbed to the shock of revivification. Rosario knew what Maran must do now: escape. The ship would leave a wake. Eventually, he must deviate from the huge looping course that would take the ship out to the Rim. When he turned the ES 110 off-course, robot satellites would register its passing. But Maran would have time.

Blood gushed from a wide, deep cut at the back of Rosario’s head. He felt as if the pain were attacking some other body. Woolly memories baffled him.

“Stand,” he said to himself. “Get down to the cell-deck.”

“Sir?” asked a passing servitor.

“Carry on,” ordered Rosario.

It considered and then moved away. Rosario sweated coldly. He could not ask the machines for help. Not with Maran’s insidious instructions subverting the memory-banks of the high-grade systems. I’ve got to stop Maran, he thought. He tottered toward the grav-chute. It glowed, promising a gentle descent. The way to the cell-deck was clear.

Rosario looked down at his hands. He was a trained close-combat fighter; not so good as Dieter and Mack, but competent. He almost grinned.

In his state, he might do damage to a frightened butterfly. He could hardly raise his right hand. His left had to hold his wrecked ribs together. He fought down the sick disgust that made him want to shout at his own incompetence. How many had died because he could not assert himself? Why had he not been able to find some counterargument that would divert the machines from their bizarre decisions?

He looked down at his right hand. It had come down to this. A crippled commander, perhaps the last living member of the ES 110’s complement: with one hand. After the utter sophistication of robotic control, a cripple with a head full of pain and one good hand.

The flowing fields of the chute had an insidious attraction. Perhaps even now Maran was coming to meet him.

“No,” said Rosario.

He stopped himself. “No,” he said, wrenching himself brutally away from the chute. “Not that way.” He braced himself and slowly retraced his steps. Dieter and Mack dead. Poor Poole dying foolishly. Tup—Pete—possibly the girl too.

Yet there could be no question of personal vengeance. Rosario recognized that he had been thinking at a primitive level of consciousness. Not as the commander of the ES 110. He had thought of Maran as enemy.

His training had reasserted itself at the last possible moment. It was neither his function nor his duty to attempt Maran’s capture.

A tiny flashing maintenance robot crabbed past him. He stared at the opening through which it had come. Somehow he would have to reach the lower levels. A slight disturbance of cold air helped concentrate his senses. He visualized the soaking narrow corridors, dark and chill, which were the arteries of the ES

110. Rosario groaned aloud. He was half tempted to make for the grav-chute and the direct confrontation with Maran. But he did not turn back.

Moments passed while he bound his left arm to his body to serve as a form of splint. The light webbing harness was difficult to manage, but at last he had it in place. There was no comment from any of the robots as he slid into the dark hatchway. They were still waiting for Maran to speak. Rosario wondered if he would live long enough to accomplish his mission. He groped forward. Then he began to slide past conduits, rungs, protruberances, dusty cables and the skittering intent little servo-robots about their blind tasks.

When the blast of the explosion sent a shock wave through the cell-deck, Liz Deffant was already in the lower hold. The noise came to her only faintly. Events had happened so fast, that she had had no time to absorb them. She looked about the bright, cavernous deck, with its rows of gleaming survival-pods, and all was so calm and silent and orderly that she could almost believe she had suffered a phantasmagorical experience. She closed her eyes for a moment.

It was all true. The nightmare was real. She shivered and called out.

It was Al Buchanan’s name she called.

She tried to order her thoughts. She saw again the two robots advancing on Maran. Almost, it had been over. They had advanced and then slowed to a puzzled creeping motion. Their tentacles were ready to pinion him, and yet they had halted. Maran’s terrible genius had stopped them. Maran had won, she told herself. But Rosario? Where was he? She had heard him trying to convince the machines that Maran was the danger. He had appealed to them. And all the time, she had been rigid with shock. Why could she not have moved—acted—thrown herself at Maran?

She breathed in shallowly. She was acutely conscious of small sounds that had not been noticeable before. Gentle soft noises. Remote systems pulsating. A distant, heavy jolt from the drive. Behind paneling, slithering, movements.

She experienced a moment of panic. She realized that she might be alone. If the ES 110’s crew had not yet sought her out, if Rosario had not yet come for her, then they were helpless. Perhaps, by now, they were dead. Then there had been the thin whipping sound as she left the grav-chute…. She was in a torment of indecision and frustration. She looked about the hold. Scores of cylinders flanked the cavern. At the far end a small console stood. In the recess behind it, she saw what looked like a space-lock.

She began to feel a bitter anger. Maran was a throwback to the days of the Mad Wars. He had shown no compunction in sacrificing the lives of the Security men nor the prisoners. Expellees his victims might be—people who had offended so vilely that they were intolerable—but they were human beings. Death should not some so horribly. They should not die so, poisoned in the ooze. With anger came determination.

What could she do? She was a resourceful woman, but she recognized that she was in a totally unfamiliar situation. Her framework of experience was narrow. She was an ecologist. She had never faced a real danger to her continued existence in her years with the Bureau. And now Maran threatened more than herself.

Maran was in control of a powerful Galactic Service vessel, with all its systems of decision-implementation. She was one person, helpless, unskilled in cybernetics. His sublimely creative mind, which had devised strategies for circumventing the elaborate safeguards of the ES 110, was a danger on a colossal scale.

The calm words of Rosario came back to her. A Red Alert. That had been the essential thing. Warn the Enforcement Service patrol-cruisers. Warn Center. Tell them Maran was loose. But how?

To allow Maran to continue unopposed was unthinkable. To return to the cell-deck was to invite the fate of Tup and the Security guard. What could she do? Soon, Maran must consolidate his hold on the ship. He would send out the robots to determine her whereabouts. There would be a little time, probably, before Maran regained his strength. On the cell-deck above, the robots were preoccupied. Until she saw her way clear, she must bide.

But what would that accomplish?

She looked at the nearest survival-pod. Memories straggled for expression. Her determination was growing to an angry resolve, one that could even face the inconceivable. She must halt Maran. Even if it meant returning to the green-lit hell above, she must go back.

She turned to the grav-chute. It gleamed invitingly. But her blood turned to ice and she could not move toward it. She despised herself with a cold fury.

A noise somewhere behind the tall, white cylinders brought her wheeling around. There was movement. Not the noise of servo-systems. Slow, dragging movement, irregular and bleakly menacing. Liz opened her mouth to scream. She could visualize Maran’s massive head, the straining eyes, the ooze-clotted heavy chest. The movement stopped. Whatever was behind the cylinders had sensed her presence.

She backed away.

Then she heard the harsh note of agony. She dared a look back.

She saw a hand, an arm. The rest of the man—it was a man—was concealed. A runnel of blood began to creep from below the cylinder. Liz was poised, either to run or to return. Pity won. She went back slowly. She saw Rosario’s head, with the long wound that was the source of the blood. In the side of the hold, a narrow panel gaped. There was no movement within it. Nor the least sign of movement from Rosario.

“Jack,” she whispered. “You came through that?” He had climbed down some kind of tunnel to reach the hold. She flinched as she turned his head gently. She looked at his body. One arm was bound loosely to his side. The other was stretched out in mute appeal. She had seen serious injuries before. This man needed immediate expert medical attention. Her first thought was that there would be a surgical unit aboard the ES 110. Rosario needed all the care he could get. He might be dying.

She listened for his breath.

There was little enough of it. Liz gulped down a rush of hope. Rosario had opened his eyes.

“I’ll get help—”

“No!” His voice was surprisingly strong. “Listen!”

Rosario’s head fell back, a dead weight. Even his iron will had its limits. Another change came over Liz Deffant. First there had been a helpless terror; and then a vague determination that Maran should not be allowed his triumph; now, determination had turned into a clear resolve. She could plan, actively plan. She had remembered something, something that had been swimming in the back of her mind since she had run blindly for the lower deck. But first, Jack Rosario.