Brian Ball - Singularity Station

“Obey me!” called the ES 110’s commander. “This is Commander Rosario! All robotic systems should obey only identified Enforcement Service personnel! I repeat, obey only direct orders from Enforcement Service personnel!”

To Liz Deffant, still dazed by the shrieking uproar of the robots, it was plain that Rosario had failed. Maran had managed to obtain control of the cell-deck. And he had convinced the ship’s robotic controller that no emergency measures were needed.

“All Grade Three robots to report to the cell-deck,” Rosario ordered, with a note of desperation in his voice. “At once. Use all restraint procedures to hold Maran. Grade Two systems must not, repeat not, allow interference with activation systems. Maintain standing orders. Beam Red Alert to all Galactic Service vessels in range!”

Liz Deffant moved forward a step. It took all her courage, for the slitherings and shrieks from the coma-cells left her frozen with horror. She saw a gaunt head appear over the edge of a cell. Green-black eyes stared at her, pain dazzling them. She stumbled and a hand clawed feebly against hers.

“I have to warn,” a calm voice said above her, “that there has been irreparable damage to some human units. This emergency activation procedure is unprecedented!”

Limbs threshed, eyes glared, shrieks were cut off as mouths submerged.

Maran saw the girl moving blindly. She was helpless. His body settled on the command console. Grinding flashes of agony surged through his head. It was the moment of maximum danger, but he grimly kept to his task.

“…beam the message now! Now!” Rosario ordered.

The ES 110’s commander was desperate.

Maran heard the cold logic of the Grade One robot as it parroted the answers he had fed into its confused circuitry.

“This system has no procedures for passing to human control, sir. Kindly remain calm!”

“You’re in Maran’s hands—he’s confused you!”

Liz Deffant heard Rosario’s voice as if it were a million miles away.

Nothing would stop Maran, she knew. He was fighting for a monumental vision. Not Rosario. Not the unarmed crew. Certainly not the Grade One robot on which, ultimately, the thousands of systems in the ship depended It was under Maran’s spell. Liz heard its chilling answers.

“It is essential that expellees be revived,” it pondered. “This is an emergency—” Maran spoke above the metallic voices:

“This is an emergency where normal regard for expellees’ welfare must be temporarily suspended!” The machine repeated his order.

“Yes,” agreed Maran, pushing himself upright.

“This is an emergency not requiring intervention or assistance of Service vessels.” Maran encouraged the machine in its decision: “Correct.”

“Therefore no Red Alert call need be beamed.”

“Jack!” called Liz Deffant. “Jack, can’t you get him!” She could, at last, move. A head looked at her from the ooze. Somewhere a woman’s dying screams tore through the low cavern. Liz put her hands to her ears and ran blindly, anywhere to escape from the horrors of the cell-deck. Instinct drove Liz toward the far grav-chute. Maran was hardly conscious of her. He knew he was at the furthest limit of his physical resources. Above, alert men would be planning to contain him. The machines would soon realign their disrupted programs. Time. He needed time to recover.

Again he instructed the machines. Just before she descended the chute, Liz heard him distinctly.

“There is a possibility of danger for Service personnel on the cell-deck.”

“Therefore no Service personnel must be allowed to reach the cell-deck,” agreed the almost human voice of the Grade One robot.

“Seal it off,” Maran ordered.

“How could he get out?” Poole was saying as the machines decided the fate of the ES 110 and its strange cargo. “Jack—he couldn’t! We’d have known. It would have shown up—the monitors would have picked him up. He would have had to program four major systems, and even then the Grade One would have reported his revival! Jack, are you sure it is Maran? Couldn’t it be a malfunctioning of the Grade Twos?”

And still they ignored his frightened, reasonable optimism.

“Well?” asked Dieter.

“We’re on our own,” said Rosario. “No call for assistance went out. I don’t know what he’s planning—”

Poole was insistent. “You’re not listening to me, Jack! I’m the systems engineer! I know what can happen to machines once they start an aberrant pattern—it could all be some kind of interference from—”

Rosario spoke impatiently: “I haven’t the time to argue,” he said. “It’s Maran.” Poole was quiet.

“We’ll go down to the cell-deck,” said Mack. There was a hard edge in his tone. Dieter looked at his big hands.

“The two of you, then,” said Rosario. “I shouldn’t ask it.”

“He’ll be exhausted,” said Mack. “Sudden revivifying like that. I don’t care what kind of program he fed into the machines to get out. He’ll be as weak as a kitten.”

“He knows we have to try,” said Rosario. “Be careful. And watch out for the low-grades. They’ll be alert.”

They nodded and turned away. Rosario realized that the time for talk was over. The two Security men were well-trained. But Pete had not stopped Maran. Rosario almost called them back as they reached the grav-chute.

He saw the slight change in the shifting, hazy field that was the entrance to the chute. A robotic voice began to grate out a message. At the same time, Poole ran.

“It can’t be Maran!” Poole yelled. “I’ll go and put the—” Rosario added a useless warning. Dieter and Mack had half turned when Poole plunged into the spinning, black-spangled and closing field. There should have been fail-safes, Rosario thought dimly in his last seconds of consciousness. It had all worked for Maran.

Poole’s body vanished.

The explosion hurled the two Security guards across the bridge, where they settled slowly. Rosario was partly protected by the pedestal which housed the ship’s controller.

It began to report on the latest disaster evea as Rosario crashed against the console. It was the nearer of the two low-grade armored servitors that saved Maran. Black tentacles enveloped him and flung him behind a coma-cell. Its occupant was caught by the full force of the explosion.

“Cell-deck sealed off,” reported a distant, hollow metallic voice.

“Maintenance units ready to repair blast damage,” said another.

“Twelve human units are now defunct,” reported a third. “Should this system now discontinue revival procedures?”

The Grade One robot pondered the problem.

“Yes.”

There was a cessation of electronic noise. The ES 110 continued its voyage. The machines waited. Maran, head streaming with blood, twitched in an agonized delirium. After ten minutes, he groaned. The machines tensed.

Their god would speak.

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.