Brian Ball - Singularity Station

Then the Jansky Station project.

Buchanan heard of the project a few days before the date they’d fixed for marriage. He wanted the job. More than her. Without any warning, he’d called at the research center where Liz was winding up her last assignment; and he’d told her, quite calmly, that he would be away indefinitely. He’d explained a little. Later, she learned more.

Regular soundings of the titanic waves of power blasting out from the Singularity: that was the object of the station. There had to be a crewman, for the robot ships they’d sent over the past century had vanished. All of them. They’d gone out on the station and lasted each for maybe a month, perhaps three months; and they had then slid down into the impossibly blank vortex.

They wanted a highly qualified field theorist who could apply his knowledge. And one who knew the space-lanes. It might be that he could survive where the robots were lost. And they had built a new kind of ship.

Liz saw that he meant to go, couldn’t be talked out of it. She’d seen the bitter resolution in his deep-set gray eyes.

Buchanan hadn’t got over the loss of the Altair Star.

He wasn’t a survivor at all.

“No!” Liz whispered again, as she had at first. “You can’t, Al!” But he had.

All the time he had been thinking of the journey through the eerie regions that made the vicinity of the Jansky Singularity such a danger for the unwary voyager who learned too late of the great pit’s existence. They’d give him the job.

Liz had rushed from her office to a robot-bug outside the complex of administration buildings. She kicked down hard at the controls, sending it high above the glistening towers, way out to the vast trenches where the shuttles were housed. There was sure to be a ship before long.

“Why?” she whispered, crushing down the surge of pity she felt for Buchanan and not succeeding. “It wasn’t your fault, Al!”

Kochan was very interested. His bland smile ineffectively camouflaged the excitement that made his eyes small beacons in the walnut-colored, whorled skin.

“Go on, Buchanan,” he said silkily. “As far as you’re concerned?” Buchanan’s hands shook slightly on the chair he held onto.

The Altair Star!

He said, without a noticeable tremor: “So far as I’m concerned, the affair of the Altair Star is closed.” Did they believe him?

It was unlikely that the old woman did, even though the others of the species she belonged to seemed to think that he had adjusted to that frightful trauma when the big, magnificent vessel had reeled off into emptiness. The Service psychologists said he was fine. They recommended that he ship out again soon. But he had resigned. And then met Liz.

“So your decision to give up the attractive Miss Deffant, to say nothing of a new career as a contract-surveyor, was arrived at purely on intellectual grounds?” Mrs. Blankfort asked. She was asking did he still worry about the ship.

He was about to answer that he never thought of the Altair Star nowadays, when he saw it wouldn’t do.

“Not entirely, ma’am.” He turned to Richtler. “There’s an element of risk in the job that appeals to me. I suppose the Jansky Singularity is in my bones now. Mr. Richtler will tell you that any fieldman would give his right arm to have an accurate chart of the regions around the Singularity, but none in his right mind would go near enough to make one.”

“So you’re saying that you’re not in your right mind, young man?” said Kochan, smiling.

“I don’t think that’s called for,” Richtler said, frowning. “Mr. Buchanan’s—” Buchanan interrupted.

“I lost a ship once, Mr. Kochan. I won’t imperil Board’s new station.” Lost, thought Buchanan.

The Altair Star wasn’t lost, not in the conventional way that meant a blowup or a mangling. The ship was in the terrible abyss somewhere.

He had seen her go.

“I’m afraid we’ve nothing for Messier 16 until the end of the month, Miss Deffant,” the bookings clerk said. He was almost human. Rolled-up sleeves, a worried expression, and a receding hairline; below the counter he’d be plugged into the big comps that ran Infragalactic.

“Damn!”

“Exactly, miss.”

Sympathy yet!

“Make the reservation for me.”

“Miss Elizabeth Deffant,” the clerk agreed. “With the New Settlements Bureau.” It wiped sweat from its pocked skin. “Certainly, miss.”

She turned away. It would mean staying at Center for another couple of weeks. How could she avoid all of their circle of friends and acquaintances? They’d all been in on the plans for the wedding—presents, lace, a cake, all the trimmings. The old style, full of sentiment. As she was. It would be too painful to hear their sympathy.

For some reason Liz turned back to look at the clerk. It was still watching her. She had a moment of insight then: it knew about Buchanan. Why shouldn’t it? All the machines were mutually compatible. The lowliest dirt-scavenger was a collector of information for the big comps far below the surface.

“So sorry we couldnt ship you out right away!”

Why, Al? she screamed silently, furious at the sincere mechanical smile. Why couldn’t you leave it?

Buchanan kept his voice low and dispassionate. He knew that it would be difficult to talk himself out of the job he wanted with such desperation; but it could be done. If he showed himself unbalanced, if once he let slip the mask that hid his internal anguish and his iron determination to return to the shifting, subtle arena where his ship had been torn from him—if once he allowed the members of the Board to guess what he had in mind, then they would turn to one of the dozens of moderately-well qualified men and women who could do the job. He marshaled his thoughts. Go carefully! he told himself. He spoke for a while of his early days as a young fleldman. How all of his calling were trained to avoid hazards, to take any measures to avoid imperiling human life. He took them through his first Infragalactic appointments as commander. Buchanan saw that he had his audience now. A few more anecdotes—one or two descriptions of strange constellations—and then it was done. He would have the job. But Mrs. Blankfort returned to her question.

“Tell us about the Altair Star,” she suggested. “We have your views from the Board of Inquiry, naturally, but I for one would like to hear you state them before this meeting.” Buchanan nodded calmly. He knew her for the only impediment between himself and the station.

“Very well, ma’am. The Altair Star was one of the largest passenger vessels in regular service. She was powered by a type of engine that had been in infragalactic service for three decades. The fabric of the ship was in first-class condition; we had recently proven the power-units to nearly fifty percent more than the established safety reserves. I had captained the ship for two years, though I suppose ‘captained’ is hardly accurate.”

“Quite,” interjected Richtler.

“At about the time of my appointment to the Altair Star the ten-year experimental period of robotic control of all infragalactic flights was nearing completion. Soon afterward, the previous experimental procedures became standard. There was automatic control of all the ship’s systems.” Mrs. Blankfort was not finished. “You accepted the appointment knowing that there would be almost no possibility of using your skills, your training and expertise?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Go on,” said Kochan. “As it comes, Buchanan.”

“We left Galactic Center on a regular scheduled passage serving the inner constellations,” began Buchanan. “There were between six and seven hundred passengers. We carried a crew of eight, apart, that is, from myself. Our course was predetermined, though the robot monitors continually made slight adjustments to take advantage of wave phenomena. I expected to complete the journey in seventeen days, from the information available on the state of subgalactic energy fields.” It was like the inquiry of three years ago. There was as much tension, in himself at least. A choking nausea filled him, though it was from a different cause. Then, it had been anger and pity; now, it was a tense excitement, mixed with hope. With an assured—if assumed—impassivity of features, he told how the flight had been smooth and comfortable; and of the looping course as they coasted along the inner arm of the spiraling Galaxy, taking every advantage of the pressures exerted by infragalactic force-fields. The robots were efficient, no doubt of it.