Brian Ball - Singularity Station

Buchanan knew the reason for the ES 110’s apparently suicidal maneuvers. Maran would try anything to evade the pursuing Enforcement Service vessels. But why had he chosen now to make his escape bid?

“Have you established reciprocal contact with the ES 110?” he snapped to the Grade One robot.

“Not yet, sir.”

“Beam to the cruiser—message received and understood! Tell Commander Lientand Maran’s here. And tell him his ship’s damaged!”

“Of course, sir.”

He looked at the big screen as robotic systems simulated the transport’s wild course. Suddenly a gobbeting, snaking coil flooded the screen, engulfing the prison-ship.

“No!” whispered Buchanan.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” said the metallic voice sympathetically. “It was always a possibility, sir.” Maran had gambled with his life. This time, he had lost. Nothing could help the ES 110, Nevertheless, even a Maran deserved a warning. Buchanan thought of the other condemned men and women aboard the ship. And the crew.

Abruptly he called: “Jansky Station to ES 110! This is Buchanan, Jansky Singularity Experimental Station—calling ES 110! Utmost danger exists—turn away at once—burn the drives out if you have to—but turn away from the Singularity! Starquake conditions exist—turn away now!”

The station’s powerful beamers began to reach out across the gulfs and through the serpentine coils of the Singularity. Surely Maran would try to save himself?

“ES 110 —I repeat, starquake conditions exist! If you turn away now and use maximum emergency power you may pull away—call the cruisers and ask for combined fields to help you!” Buchanan could not bring himself to address Maran directly. But there was the rest of the ES 110’s complement—perhaps the crew could reason with Maran. Maybe they could persuade him to try to save himself and the future of his stupendous, visionary schemes.

There was nothing he could do now but report to Lientand. Quietly he spoke into the beamer channel:

“This is Buchanan at the Jansky Singularity Station. I have Commander Lientand’s message. The ES 110

is approaching the rim of the Jansky Singularity. Violent starquake conditions exist. I am doubtful of the ability of the ES 110 to survive for many minutes. Maran does not respond to my warnings. It is my opinion that the ES 110 was taken to the Singularity deliberately. Have you any instructions for me?” Buchanan saw the transport clearly as it blasted across a glowing pit of incandescent radiation. There was a decayed air about it—bits of fittings trailed away; the drive jerked the ship about spasmodically; an unidentifiable section broke away from the stern and sank into the haze of the discontinuities. Another ship would join the silent, time-lost fleet.

The Jansky Singularity was claiming another ghost-ship.

The big battle-screen pulsed blue and then filled with the great efflorescence of the Singularity. Scanners darted about, leaving gossamer trails and bringing back only unidentifiable, almost unfathomable readings. Lientand thought of the New Settlements Bureau girl. He wondered what she must be going through now, as the ES 110 plunged into the Singularity’s fields.

“There!” yelled the field man suddenly.

On the screen, the ES 110 appeared. It hung like a broken moth against the frightful attraction of the raging depths. There could be no doubt about it. It was the ship. The superb scanners had been able to locate the ringing shards of its broken warp-shift, in spite of Maran’s maneuvers. Lientand tensed, face gray with grim pity. He would do it himself, his hand releasing the gobbeting fury that would tear across space with the force of a supernova and expunge the lives of the two human beings aboard the ES 110 .

“She’ll forgive me,” he whispered to himself.

The sensor-pad in his palm demanded assent. The deadly golden pellet waited to be ejected from the long snout of the cruiser. Warning sirens shrieked to the other cruisers: beware!

Lientand breathed in deeply, the order rising to his lips.

“Sir!” shouted the young lieutenant.

Lientand almost said the word, almost released the sunburst, almost wiped out the two lives. But he stopped.

“Well?” he grated, bile in his mouth.

“Beam from Buchanan, sir!”

“Buchanan?”

The strain of the terrible seconds had left a mark. Then Lientand remembered. Buchanan. A wreck—not many years ago. And, recently, something else—

“The Jansky Station, sir! The new crewed research beacon—Buchanan at the Singularity!”

“Yes.” He remembered it now. It had seemed a strange appointment to him. Buchanan had survived a ghastly wreck, and he had been appointed to this experimental ship. “Go on.”

“We got a repeat beam—from a robot beacon. There’s a lot of distortion from the ES 110, sir. It’s heading into the Singularity—and Buchanan says the Singularity’s brewing up for starquake!”

“He’d have hoped to lose us,” said Lientand slowly. “Now he’s lost. And the girl.” He pushed the sensor-pad away. “Keep ranging. Gunners at action stations.”

He watched but they did not see the doomed ship again. All aboard the cruiser could imagine the progress of the transport as it was swept nearer and nearer the rotating, blurred ragged hole where Buchanan’s tiny station hung.

“Buchanan asked for instructions, sir,” said the young lieutenant.

“I’ll talk to him,” said the tired man.

Buchanan saw that the ship was blind, almost helpless.

Its drive left a churning, twisting shape briefly among the tongues lapping out from the Singularity. Tendrils of power snaked out from the rotating coruscation and flung it about. Buchanan sensed as a physical thing the jerking, rushing movement of the ES 110. He remembered another ship that had left him reeling with vertigo as it danced and plunged in the grip of starquake until it was at the edge of the great maw of the Singularity.

Inevitably the ES 110 must join that strange fleet, that time-lost collection of silent ships. It would be a doubly bizarre end for the expellees in their coma-cells, for they would be embalmed in the cocoon of foreverness without ever waking to their danger.

Buchanan located the cruiser squadron. They held off, coasting well beyond the Singularity’s lapping tongues. They had chased the hijacked ship until it was forced against the swirling fields of the Singularity. Their task was over. Inside the transport, Maran and those that survived would realize it. Already they must know that it was too late to surrender. When Buchanan had called to Maran, there was only the remotest of possibilities of saving the ship. Only a freak combination of fields, such as that which had saved him three years before, would enable the prison-ship to loosen the grip of the serpentine coils. The ship’s failing engines would not provide shields for long against the strange vortices. It was a doomed, dying ship.

Buchanan watched its inelegant shape as the Singularity reached out. He could sense the tumult within the Singularity through the pads in his hands. Starquake was imminent, might even now be mangling space and time. The black hole would open, the ship would lurch through—

“Starquake confirmed, sir,” a robot voice informed him.

Buchanan spoke again to the cruiser commander: “I ask again, have you any instructions for me, Commander Lientand? I have your message regarding Maran and the ES 110. This is Buchanan at the Jansky Singularity Station. I have your message. I have just seen the ES 110 begin to enter the Singularity. Starquake condition is confirmed. The ES 110 is going, Commander. Starquake emissions have the ship. No ship can hold against these conditions. I repeat, have you any instructions for me?” Not that there’s anything I can do, thought Buchanan.