Brian Ball - Singularity Station

“Elucidate, please, Commander.”

Buchanan was ahead of the machines. The machines had said that they could not warp aside the chaotic, billowing fields of the Singularity. It was impossible. Inconceivable.

So Maran had ordered an approximation of a warp.

A Quasi-warp. One that might be possible.

It was a form of words. Don’t try to make the impossible, Maran was ordering. Build on the data from the interior of the Singularity and make an approximation of that!

Maran’s steadying, insidious, soothing, irresistible arguments followed, and, within seconds, the station jangled into hectic movement. Scanners ranged into the pit Comps boiled with data. Engines began to flex for the first impulses; makeshift force-fields edged out into the strange void; a whole new dimensional framework began to invest the ship.

Then, like a sword-thrust, a great band of white-gold translucence cut through the boiling fields of the Singularity. It sliced aside the threatening serpentine coils and bathed the dying prison-ship in a sheath of strange radiance.

A scanner showed Buchanan the whole scene.

From the squat station an eerie, tauntingly beautiful tunnel had been pushed out toward the wreck of the ES 110. Around the three engines of the station hung a flowering, rippling surge of black light. Immense floods of power held the white-gold tunnel in place.

“He’s done it,” Buchanan whispered, between relief and incredulity. Then: “Liz!” A freak of beaming showed her slim figure. Maran, directing a herd of low-grade servitors, hid her at first He moved aside as the robots brought a small life-raft to the last part of the ship to resist the unreal dimensions. And then Buchanan saw Liz.

An impassive low-grade robot was hurrying her into deep-space armor. Buchanan yelled to her, but she did not see him. She looked dazed, altogether helpless.

Anger began then. Buchanan’s craggy face was set in a cold mask. Mostly, the anger was directed at himself. Had he been harder—had he put the safety of his fellowmen first, he would not have allowed Maran to take control of his command.

A man of sterner spirit would have sacrified even a Liz Deffant.

Maran was loose.

Then Buchanan saw what a trap the station was.

Maran might be loose. He was not free.

“Commander Lientand to all cruisers,” the Enforcement Service commander was saying. “I have a message from the Jansky Singularity Station to say that the ES 110 is a total loss. Buchanan reports that there is a remote possibility of survivors. He’s standing by.”

As the ES 110’s screens imploded, Lientand completed his orders to the cruiser squadron:

“I repeat, keep to allotted patrol stations. All cruisers to carry out necessary steps with regard to the expellee Maran.”

“Commander Maran,” said the Grade One robot from the Jansky Station, “my high-grade colleague aboard the ES 110 is ready to assist in the completion of Quasi-warp. Kindly stand by for removal of sections of the bridge.”

Liz Deffant almost giggled at the punctilious observation of niceties among machines which were disobeying their primary conditioning. She tried to operate the controls of the deep-space armor. It added an element of lunatic comedy when she began to float on a small force-screen toward the blank screen.

“Miss Deffant, please,” said Maran, gigantic in the armored suit. “Into the raft, Miss Deffant.” A low-grade casually hooked her toward the small port as a gang of servitors ripped away the sides of the ship. Liz gasped with sudden pain as a blinding white-gold translucence flooded the wreckage. It was crazily beautiful, a zany dance of white and gold particles against sinking chains of hypercubes.

“Quasi-warp,” she said, half stunned.

Maran lumbered into the confined space of the raft, his movements energetic in spite of the weight of the armored suit. Liz glimpsed a tentacle flashing across the wrecked bridge to close the port of the makeshift raft. It was the last she saw of the ES 110, for the eerie flow of white-gold particles enveloped the entire ship. The strange translucence seeped into the raft too, finding invisible gaps—irradiating the cramped interior with its uncanny presence.

“This vessel is now defunct,” said the robotic controller of the ES 110. It was the only epitaph the prison-ship received.

Liz was flung hard against the side of the tiny craft as it lurched into the broken dimensions with a mind-reeling plunge. The raft spun wildly for a few seconds, and then it was grinding down the Quasi-warp tunnel away from the wreck of the ES 110 . Liz looked at Maran and saw that his armored suit was crawling with the glittering, eerie radiance. He had the look of a monstrous god riding a chariot of suns.

Buchanan felt the absence of the station’s protective screens with a deep-space voyager’s instinctive alarm. The station quaked in the maelstrom. Engines howled with the effort of projecting the warp which could not exist. And which had been manufactured.

Scanners showed the breakup of the ES 110.

A fresh flurry of starquake grabbed the prison-ship and drew what was left of its shattered hulk inward. Buchanan caught the last unconcerned message from its robotic controller. There was a faint blast as the ES 110 imploded.

Buchanan shivered. Any shipwreck was a desolating thing. There would be only broken fragments of this vessel to sink into the time-lost graveyard where the Altair Star lay. And then, through the showering debris and the fury of starquake, Buchanan glimpsed the hauntingly beautiful tunnel. It grew like some living thing in the broken dimensions, a tube of white-gold translucence that seemed too fragile to endure against the devastating onrush of serpentine coils billowing from the depths of the Singularity. It held, and the engines of the station kept the wildness of starquake back. And the life-raft slowly crept toward the station. It lurched forward at first, but then its progress was slow, as if it fought painfully against an alien element; Buchanan breathed in shallow gulps as he thought of Liz Deffant encased in the frail pellet of a ship that was being reborn through the coruscating tube. He was in the station’s small hold when the raft nudged into the lock. A strange delirium of hope gripped him. When the battered raft creaked to a rest and the white-gold translucence died away, he could not contain himself.

“Liz! Liz!”

The two low-grade servitors that were the entire complement of the station went about their work efficiently. They assisted the two dazed figures from the raft and began to remove the massive space armor. Buchanan was taut with almost unendurable emotion. He heard the robotic controller of the station announce:

“Commander, starquake emissions dying down. Quasi-warp fields have been withdrawn. All three engines have resumed normal functions. There has been a slight failure of some elements of Number Two Engine, but maintenance systems have repairs in hand. Full efficiency will be obtained in all systems in one hour. What are your instructions?”

Buchanan was beside her as the helmet came free. Her long hair flowed around a pale face. She blinked and stared at him. A tension that had built up during the hours of the ES 110’s lunging voyage into the Singularity now burst, and Buchanan reached out a big, wide hand to touch her face. He felt tears.

“Al—” whispered the girl, and he felt his senses battered. The touch of her soft skin was the revival of all he had ever hoped for. The Altair Star was only a distant, thin ghost, one that could stay in its shadowy nonlife. This was real, this tactile impression of her tears.