Brian Ball - Singularity Station

He saw her eyes fill with alarm and remembered that Maran was on his ship. He turned, fast.

“What are your instructions?” asked the robotic controller. “Sir, have you any instructions regarding ES 110 personnel?”

Buchanan was himself again, alert and decisive. “I resume full command of the station,” he snapped. “Full restraint procedures—seize the criminal expellee Maran and take him for medical attention. He is not to be permitted to speak—do not allow him to communicate with any automatic system!”

“Al, he controls—” Liz yelled, as Buchanan took a step toward the burly figure.

“What are your instructions, Commander?” the metallic flat voice interrupted, as Liz was shouting. Buchanan opened his mouth to roar at the stupidity of the machines when he saw that the blank faces of the two low-grade servitors were not turned to him. In that moment, he knew what Liz was trying to say.

“Relinquish all decision-making procedures!” he called abruptly. “I am commander of this ship—accept no orders but mine!”

It was too late.

“Commander?” asked the robotic controller.

Both low-grades faced Maran. They were awaiting his orders. Like dogs, they knew their master. Buchanan tried to reach Maran. His hands were wedge-shaped, the hard edges downward, the muscles in his shoulders and arms ready to power the blows that would crush Maran while he was still dazed from the mind-reeling passage of the tunnel. It was always too late. “Restrain,” said Maran hoarsely. Tentacles snaked to encompass Buchanan’s limbs. He stared at him as two metallic carapaces regarded him indifferently. Buchanan felt anger surge within him once more, and again the anger was directed at himself. He had acted with such stupidity that it was hardly believable. Maran had issued commands before leaving the ES 110. Of course he had! But he had been vulnerable for a few seconds when the life-raft lay like a stranded monster in the hold of the station; the man had been half crazed by the shock of the strange phenomenon of Quasi-warp. That should have been his chance, Buchanan thought savagely. He had lost it.

A sense of unreality gripped him. Here he was, in his own command, a prisoner of his own servitors. Facing him was the bulk of Maran, one of the most dangerous men ever to be sent to the Rim. By a freak of chance, Liz Deffant was here too—she had been brought across the spiraling arms of the Galaxy to this encounter, having played some part in the desperate events leading to Maran’s presence. Shocked, enraged, bewildered, he shouted to the robots: “I am Buchanan, commander of the station!

Release me! I resume full control of all systems throughout the station! Maran is not to be allowed access to any system—secure him now!”

The tentacles did not relax. Buchanan’s rage seeped away.

Both he and Liz were waiting for Maran to shake the sense-blinding effects of the Quasi-warp from his massive head. Haggard, patient, utterly fatigued, he at last looked directly at Buchanan. The sense of unreality would not leave Buchanan.

“Buchanan,” Maran said, his strange deep eyes assessing the bound man before him. There was no hint of triumph. Buchanan could begin to appreciate the power of the man; another, in his place, would have shown pride, perhaps boasted of his mastery of the machines. Maran accepted the situation and his dominance of it; it was his right. About him, there was an aura of grandeur that was only partly to be explained by his size. He was uninterested in fighting Buchanan. He would not accept him as an opponent, in spite of the defiance in Buchanan’s face. Any kind of confrontation was ruled out by his monumental patience.

Buchanan clung to his one advantage. “You can’t get away,” he said. “This station has no deep-space Phase capability. And Commander Lientand’s squadron is waiting.”

Maran was unperturbed. Like Liz, he was swaying. He was almost on the point of collapse. “Attend to Miss Deffant,” he said. “You’ll do that?”

“What?”

Liz Deffant heard. She was too tired to begin to explain.

“Yes,” said Maran. “A remarkable woman.” He gestured to the servitors, and the tentacles flowed away into invisible orifices. “The machines will hold you if you attempt to harm me,” he said. “Be a realist, Buchanan. I must have rest—Miss Deffant will tell you about their trials aboard the prison-ship. When I have recovered, your machines will tell me about your command. In the meanwhile, do nothing rash.”

Buchanan tensed, and an almost undetectable robotic quivering told him that the contraction of muscle been noted. Maran was massively unimpressed.

“The robots will watch, Buchanan,” he said. His eyes were wells of tiredness. “You were appointed to this station, presumably, Buchanan, because you have an expert knowledge of these tools.” He indicated the low-grade servitors. “Respect them!”

“He’s right,” said Liz slowly. “He’s always right.” Buchanan could not resist saying: “You won’t get away, Maran.” Childish as it was, the threat did something to restore his confidence.

“Very possibly,” agreed Maran. “To the bridge,” he ordered a servitor. It aided his halting progress to fhe small grav-chute. Buchanan was sure he was asleep before the chute took him to the bridge of the Jansky Station.

When he was gone, Buchanan looked down at his bony hands. He felt the crab of helplessness stirring in his body, gripping, clawing at him. Despair and doom echoed through his skull.

“Al?” whispered Liz, and he saw that she was exhausted.

Confused and bitter as he was, he responded to the appeal. Liz’s eyes held no condemnation, only an urgent need. She lifted her arms and he bent to hold her. Minutes passed. Only the slow whine of remote systems could be heard. The ship might have held no more than the two of them. Buchanan felt a suffusion of delight such as he had never, not in the best days of their relationship, believed possible. It was a bursting of happiness that drowned the crablike clawings deep in his body. Liz gently pushed Buchanan away. They had both drawn strength from the tenderness of reconciliation.

“I was a fool,” whispered Buchanan, still amazed at the freak of coincidence that had kept her from joining the long-dead in the time-lost tunnel. “Why did I leave you?”

“You had to! I know how it was, Al!” Buchanan saw that she had changed. There was a new edge of resolution about Liz Deffant. He remembered the cruiser commander’s message.

“Maran?” he said. “He held you hostage?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“When I think of him—”

“Don’t—not now!”

“We have to!”

“There’s been too much, Al! Too much for anyone to take!”

He held her, lightly this time. But even during this second long embrace, Maran’s brooding presence made itself felt. A robotic voice said peremptorily: “Routine report, Commander Buchanan!”

“Well?”

He hardly had time to ask himself if the machines had revertedly to his authority before it demolished the unborn hope.

“Commander Maran wishes you to listen to all routine reports, sir. The latest on core emission is that condition starquake is now in abeyance. There are simple dipole configurations and data corresponding with previous readings. No aberrant energy fields. That is all, sir.” Buchanan heard, filled with a sharp self-disgust. Maran had instructed the machines to keep him informed. He was, possibly, useful to the cyberneticist who had so easily taken his ship from him. Maran slept, confident of the robots’ loyalty.

He heard a racking sob and saw that Liz Deffant was at the end of her powers of endurance. Cursing himself for his selfishness, he led her to the grav-chute. A tentacle restrained him gently.