Brian Ball - Singularity Station

The station exuded screens, leaking power and easing between colossal forces. And it slid away, away and nearer the center.

Through eerie vortices, countering brute power with subtle field emissions, the station glided smoothly into the bizarre regions. Buchanan breathed a prayer of relief and gratitude to the engineers who had built the ship. They had been able only to guess at the grim fury of the Singularity’s inner depths, but they had planned and built well. No engine failed, no screen slipped.

The ship became calmer, its pace less subject to wild upheavals. Maran could concentrate on the operations screen, while Buchanan watched him.

There was no sign that he was afraid. If he trembled, it was not from fear, but awe at the incredible violence of the Singularity, and the miracle of the little ship’s survival. The maelstrom surged, and Maran’s face showed both awe and excitement. Buchanan stared now at the screen. He saw the strange black depths and felt his mind reeling.

“Look!” roared Maran, and Liz and Buchanan were held in a trance by the stark emptiness of the blackness at the center of the Singularity. They glimpsed it and shut their eyes.

“An entire new Universe!” Maran shouted.

But his two companions could not look. Reluctantly, Buchanan conceded Maran a measure of greatness. The bizarre architecture of the Singularity was a fit context for him. Maran was unquestionably awed by what he had seen, but he had lost none of his assurance. Massively excited, he radiated confidence and power.

“Al!” whispered Liz as Maran lowered his great head to the command console. “Al, why does he want to go to the Altair Star?”

Buchanan saw that Maran was indifferent to them. Eyes half closed, he was staring raptly at the screen.

“The ship’s almost intact,” he said. “If he could reach it, he could use the engines to power a life-raft.”

“But you can’t let him—Al, it’s like a mausoleum, you said! No one should disturb them!” Buchanan felt the sick excitement of his quest welling up inside him once more. Cursing his inconstancy, he whispered: “I don’t want to go, Liz—I don’t want Maran to have a chance of freedom! But I have to go!”

It seemed to take hours, but only minutes passed. Buchanan watched the seconds fly away and wondered if time were structured differently in the inner depths. Speculation was futile. No satisfactory theory had explained the unreal dimensions. Kochan’s words came back to him, and there was an uncanny stirring of the skin and short hairs behind his ears. He shuddered, as Liz had done, recalling the idea of the long undead. It was a betrayal of the natural order of things. And yet there was still the gripping compulsion to return to the Altair Star. It could not be denied. Whatever he might find, and however much he dreaded it, he had to go on now that he was so near. Even though Maran meant to use the ship!

Green-glowing serpentine coils gave way to infinite emptiness.

They were near the mystery now, very close to the strange stars, or the black hole, or the combination of unguessable events that formed the center of the enigma.

Buchanan saw the Altair Star as the eerie tunnel swam onto the big screen. A flickering glimpse, and then it was gone. Liz saw it.

“Al!” breathed Liz Deffant, cutting into his thoughts and bringing a rush of feelings that he could not concern himself with now.

“This is the place of wrecks?” asked Maran.

“This is the place.”

Scanners roamed as Maran manipulated the sensor-pads.

“Readings,” he demanded.

“No starquake emission,” reported the Grade One robot. “All three engines operating at satisfactory levels of efficiency. Screens engaged at nine-point-three-one-eight-two level.”

“Report the condition of the Altair Star.”

“Sir?”

“They don’t admit the scan,” said Buchanan.

“Report on the tunnel,” said Maran, ignoring Buchanan’s objection.

“The tunnel, sir?” asked the Grade One robot.

“They won’t admit the temporal discontinuity,” Buchanan said. “Nothing. No tunnel, no temporal discontinuity, so no ship.”

Maran wove a spell over the console. Robotic systems hesitated. Buchanan did not doubt Maran’s powers. As the big, white hands gentled the sensor-pads into compliance, the station edged nearer the glittering tunnel. The screens were filled with an astonishing glory. Then, Buchanan again glimpsed the emptiness that lay a whole Universe beyond the strange glittering tunnel. He saw a terrifying emptiness that sent his thoughts awry and brought a spangled, reeling and roaring confusion inside his mind. When it cleared, Maran was giving orders in his calm, insistent voice: “Scan.”

“Sir?” asked the robotic controller.

“For ships.”

“I have intermittent contact-potential with three Enforcement Service cruisers, sir.”

“Not those.”

“I have readings of the debris of a large transport, with implosion immediately preceding breakup.”

“The ES 110,” said Buchanan.

Maran held up a hand to indicate that he should be silent. Two flat carapaces regarded Buchanan with no menace at all. Yet they conveyed alert tension. He gritted his teeth in frustration. Patience, he tried to tell himself. All led to the Altair Star. Once he had determined the fate of the hundreds he had led to their doom, he could begin to plan, estimate, take decisions, find the single chink in Maran’s armor of self-confidence.

“Scan,” repeated Maran.

“Sir?” asked the robot.

“The temporal discontinuity observed by Commander Buchanan.”

“An interesting theory,” said the flat, metallic voice. “One that Mr. Kochan supports. It is, of course, impossible, sir.”

Maran did not hesitate: “Reduce screen levels.”

“Yes, sir.”

The station had an oddly defenseless feeling. Buchanan tensed again, aware of the gigantic forces that might boil up and leave the ship in submicroscopic, jangling fragments. But it held.

“Project a warp to the temporal discontinuity,” ordered Maran.

“To what, sir?”

“The discontinuity.”

Buchanan sensed the rebelliousness of the Grade One robot. If it would not accept Maran’s orders, they all faced Lientand’s ships.

“With what object, sir?” the machine at last asked.

“Investigating a theory.”

“Sir?”

Buchanan could almost hear the self-questioning of the robots.

Maran snapped: “Isn’t that the object of the Jansky Singularity Station?”

“The object of the station is observation and recording, sir,” the flat voice answered at once, quite certain now. “Those are the primary functions, sir.”

“Then observe the temporal discontinuity!”

“Which cannot exist, sir!”

Liz Deffant saw the big man’s utter concentration. His large, deep eyes were pinpoints as he stared at the pedestal which housed the Grade One robot.

“Observe the Quasi-discontinuity!”

“Sir?”

There was a long pause. Buchanan had seen the myriads of circuits, the endless tiny sheaves of memory-cells, which were the core of the ship’s computers. There was more factual knowledge in them than a man could store in a million lifetimes. And it was all ready for instant recall. There were generative systems which could produce strategies to cope with any eventuality the machines could understand. They had said they could not scan the impossible.

The discontinuity—the time-tunnel—was impossible.

Therefore, they reasoned, they could not cope with it. They could not admit its existence. And Maran was telling them to scan for a time-tunnel which might exist—a hypothetical discontinuity.