Brian Ball - Singularity Station

“Buchanan, Jansky Station,” he called again. “The ES 110’s going.” Impelled by a macabre curiosity, he moved the station closer and closer to the doomed transport. The little station edged among increasingly powerful surgings as the effects of starquake split the dimensions. And then Buchanan saw the twisting ship clearly.

Inside it, was Maran fighting for his life? Was he trying some desperate expedient in a vain effort to hold back the blackness at the Singularity’s core?

He could not succeed. The drive was visibly failing. Buchanan watched its jagged, fading wake. Often the ship was totally obscured by the boiling waves of the Singularity’s emissions. What remained of power in the ES 110 was a weak, splintered thrust. Nothing could save Maran. There was no chance that the robotic systems could hurl a part of the ship clear of the Singularity, for the engines were dying. The little station slid nearer, a greased nut in the bizarre serpentine coils. Buchanan saw the details of the prison-ship’s last plummeting flight. Great chunks of the ship fell away. A complete engine pod burst into a nuclear holocaust, to be instantly extinguished by the weird emissions from the black hole. Snuffed out, the engine’s debris at once drifted into the core.

Buchanan was fascinated and horrified by the big infragalactic ship’s end. It was so like the last careering plunge of the Altair Star. Again, an overwhelming freak of nature was gobbling a minuscule and frail victim. Struggle as it might, the ship could do nothing.

By the time the cruiser commander acknowledged Buchanan’s reports, the ES 110 was a wreck. The Singularity’s roaring fields almost wiped out the powerfully-beamed message, but enough of it came through. Buchanan listened as he saw the prison-ship begin to fall apart.

“…Buchanan at… cruiser…. Your message received…. agreed, Buchanan, there can be no hope…. My field man’s readings… starquake emissions….” Lientand’s voice crackled. And there was a long break, so that Buchanan’s attention was diverted to the screen. But Lientand’s voice, as well as his image, came through clearly for the latter part of his message, the part that burned into Buchanan’s mind like white fire: “Especially regret the loss of the courageous woman passenger. She enabled Commander Rosario to escape just before Maran released the surviving expellees. If you can do anything to get a message to her, please do so, Buchanan. Tell her Commander Rosario is safe. And the rest of the expellees were picked up unharmed. It’s largely through her efforts that Maran was traced. I know there is nothing any of us can do to help her, but let her know at least that we are all in her debt. My instructions, Buchanan, are that you should tell Elizabeth Deffant that—” It was all Buchanan heard, for though Lientand’s voice went on the words would not register. Buchanan saw the gray face, the long jaw, the lean upright body. The beam came from a cruiser hovering beyond the Singularity’s peripheries, and it showed the commander’s image: his face, with the lips moving and words coming out slowly, a face gray with fatigue and with lines of age etched deeper by mental torment. The man was suffering, Buchanan recognized. And he was ordering him, Buchanan, to get a message to—

“…Deffant?” he whispered. “You said ‘Elizabeth Deffant’?” The shape of the commander vanished as the processes that made up the seismic monstrosity of starquake struck out and splayed the dimensions adrift. Buchanan was unable to respond.

“He said—” and moments passed as Buchanan, slit-eyed, jaws clenched, his thin face white, repeated the commander’s message. “He said—aboard the ES 110— Liz.” Thoughts spun wildly about his tormented mind. Liz? Liz Deffant on the prison-ship? Why!

It was inconceivable. Enforcement Service ships didn’t carry passengers. Their function was to take expellees to newfound star-systems, Liz had been on her way to her home planet, to Messier 16, not to the Rim of the Galaxy! Buchanan sweated coldly as seconds passed. Futile questions rang around his mind. Worse answers followed. And he would not admit that he had heard Lientand’s words.

“No,” said Buchanan.

It had been an effect of starquake distortion. That, and his own guilt feelings. He had imagined Lientand’s message. He had invented the commander’s mention of an Elizabeth Deffant because his loneliness had worked on his mind to such an extent that he had needed to hear someone mention her.

“Ravings—hallucinations,” Buchanan decided. Lientand hadn’t said anything about a woman passenger who saved commanders. Especially Lientand hadn’t said a word about a Liz Deffant who was nowhere near the Singularity—who was making for her home planet in a fit of righteous indignation at being cast off like an old shoe! Buchanan blinked. Wrong.

“He said ‘Elizabeth Deffant.’” And Buchanan reached for the writhing sensor-pads. “He did,” he repeated slowly. He called for information with a deadly calm. “Data on ES 110!” he ordered. “Possibility of a woman passenger named Elizabeth Deffant, employee of New Settlements Bureau, shipping out to Messier 16, being aboard ES 110. Soonest.”

The Grade One robot was efficient The answer came within a second: “This ship’s systems have no data on a woman named Deffant, but it’s a distinct possibility that Commander Lientand is right. As a Galactic Service employee, she would be entitled to travel on all Service ships with vacant accommodation. Regulations allow for it, sir, but not many take advantage of the facility. It’s unusual, sir, not unheard of.”

“She was going to Messier 16!”

“All the more likely, then, sir,” the machine pointed out, helpfully smashing down Buchanan’s hopes. “The ES 110 was scheduled to pass near enough for the regular shuttle to intercept, sir.” It paused. “I have a full recording of Commander Lientand’s message, sir.”

“I expect you have.”

“I thought you were denying the validity of the commander’s message, sir. It’s quite clear. A Miss Deffant is aboard the ES 110.”

Not Liz! And, with a silent plea, Buchanan accepted it. Liz Deffant was drifting away, silently spinning into the eerie depths of the Jansky Singularity. He groaned aloud. It was too macabre a coincidence, too sick a triumph of a vengeful fate. The inconceivable was happening as he watched. Liz was joining the ghost-fleet.

Maran fought the ship even as it died.

He worked in a determined frenzy, shearing off defunct systems, abandoning an engine that threatened to rip the vessel apart, calling on remote and rarely-used emergency circuits to add their power to the weak thrust of decaying engines. It could never be enough, Liz knew. The Singularity had them. The ship was wrenched about in short, bone-shaking surges. The fabric of the ES 110 was buckling. Writhing tendrils of alien energies threaded through submicroscopic orifices.

The Singularity was claiming the ship. And the ES 110 could do nothing. High-grade systems had ceased to clamor for relief. Liz found it especially frightening that no more warnings came from the robots. They recognized the impossibility of their task.

Liz cried out in true fear as a shock wave hit the ship.

Maran’s huge face streamed with sweat. He too was afraid, but for him the physical fear of personal extinction was nothing; Liz sensed his obsessive agony. He was terrified that he would never complete his ten-million year search for the moment of transition of beast to man, never range the inner depths and bring out, dripping, the gem of information that was buried somewhere beneath the overlay of a half-million lifetimes.