Brian Ball: Singularity Station

But why hadn’t they noticed the frightful, billowing emissions of power that flared up from the Singularity? Why had the robots failed?

“So all went well until you were two days out from Center?” prompted Kochan as Buchanan’s flat voice faded in the large, old-fashioned room.

“We were passing the Singularity,” Buchanan said. “We had to.”

“Agreed,” said Richtler. He explained to the lay members of the Board that in order to pass from one quadrant of the spiraling Galaxy to another a ship couldn’t avoid nearing the unfathomable depths of the deadly kink that had been called after the first radio-astronomer, Jansky. “Naturally, the course would be such as not to endanger any ship. And there are regulations which aim to prevent the kind of terrible disaster that occurred in the case of Mr. Buchanan’s former ship. Should there be any risk, ships are programmed to turn back.”

“I would have turned back,” Buchanan went on. “Had I been in direct control of the vessel, I should have taken any action to avoid nearing the Singularity.” There was a coldness in the room now. The men and women of the Board could feel Buchanan’s emotion, though his craggy face was composed and his low voice was controlled.

Richtler answered the unspoken question: “It was policy, and still is, to withhold final decisions from the human crew,” he said, eyes averted.

“I tried,” said Buchanan. “When the robots allowed me to see what was happening out there, I tried.” The terrible moments were back. He, bored, answering passengers’ questions over an evening meal, watching a fair-haired girl trying to make time with young Preston, fending off a request to attend a party, smiling as a child peeped with huge eyes at the braid on his shoulders that meant nothing now that the machines had taken over; and then the message which Mallet brought, white-faced, trembling, hopeless.

“There was nothing you could do,” said Kochan. “We all know that.” And yet his eyes were questioning!

Question if you wish, thought Buchanan. I could do nothing. God knows, I tried! But, between the moment when the cold analysis from the robotic navigators had been put into his hand, and the silent long farewell to the ship and its unbelieving, doomed passengers and crew, there had been a grim inevitability about events. The message was in the code of his trade. A pattern of force-fields, a sketch of figures incomprehensible to anyone but a fieldman, and an appraisal of the circumstances that was plain enough for a child to understand. Conclusion: the Altair Star must be considered a total loss.

“So the Jansky Singularity engulfed the vessel,” said Richtler, more to the Board than to Buchanan.

“Whatever decisions Mr. Buchanan may or may not have made if he had been able to assume control of the ship’s systems cannot concern us. We all know that his conduct was in the highest traditions of the service of which he was a member. It is no reflection either on his integrity or his abilities that he could not, in the nature of things, do anything to prevent the total loss of his ship. Neither does it reflect on him that he was, by a singular stroke of fortune, the sole survivor of that unhappy event. We are fortunate, extremely fortunate, to have him as a volunteer for the program that has been decided upon by this Board. I can think of no better appointee than Mr. Buchanan.”

“I agree,” said the old woman. But, like Kochan, her eyes were questioning still.

“I think, perhaps, that we have all heard enough for our purposes,” said Richtler. The others accepted his decision. “You wouldn’t mind waiting outside for a few minutes, would you, Mr. Buchanan?” He found himself shaking when he was finally alone in the painted corridor. There were pictures on the walls, old-fashioned pictures commissioned in the days when the Board was unashamedly proud of its work. A rescue here, there an ordeal survived gallantly: tiny vessels that had somehow survived the blowing-up of chemical and fission power-units. It was all long past, this kind of human gallantry. The machines were the masters of the space-ways now.

Buchanan knew the machines had been mistaken. The Court of Inquiry had disagreed with him. It was, their report suggested, in no way a condemnation of robotic control, this loss. The sudden eruption at the Jansky Singularity had been totally unforeseeable: no computer ever devised could have forecast that surging leap of clawing power that had encompassed the Altair Star. There was no question of fault, no hint of blame. And Buchanan had been helpless! He had gone to what had once been the bridge that was not a bridge anymore. True, it looked as a bridge might look. There were controls, screens, even the writhing rat-like limp suckers that reached out to embed tendrils into the soft parts of the palm so that they could slide information about the ship’s progress straight into a human nervous system. A captain such as Buchanan could listen. And that was all. Only the machines could act. So he had ordered the members of his crew to try to smash the central control system in a mad, wild effort to circumvent the decision of the computer-robots that had decided the Altair Star was a write-off.

It was impossible to escape the Jansky Singularity, they had informed him. The maelstrom had the great infragalactic vessel in its grip.

Buchanan had tried, tried until the robots had decided that the last available moment had arrived. Then they had blasted the bridge clear of the ship and allowed him, Buchanan, to escape. The whole of the bridge’s superstructure became a life raft.

Waiting to be told that he would soon return to the scene of that awful tragedy, Buchanan relived the ghastly last minutes of the Altair Star.

The shock of the explosion had stunned him for a few seconds. He could see the screens all about him dissolving into a kaleidoscope of garish colors; then they had cleared and brought, with admirable clarity, the Altair Star before him.

In the big screen immediately before him he had seen into the dining room where a frantic mass of humanity was yelling in appalled horror. Now, years after the tragedy, he mouthed silently the same protest torn from him when he saw the struggling crowd:

“Get me back! Get me back!”

He closed his eyes.

The Board might have guessed.

He had to have the Jansky Station!

Often he had awakened, sweating, in the night to see again the appalling sights of the last minutes of the Altair Star. He had ordered the robots to take him back, so that he could share in its end; at least he might have made a show of trying to turn the great vessel away from the pit that was swallowing it. Given a few more minutes, perhaps he would have come up with some way of warping the Vessel out toward the rim of the Singularity—there must have been some way of saving her!

How could someone like Liz understand what it felt like to see nearly seven hundred fellow human beings going down shrieking into the night? How could Liz, Richtler, Mrs. Blankfort, Kochan— anyone!

—know the pure distilled horror of that last glimpse of the faces turned to him in stony accusation?

He had watched the end of the Altair Star.

And, by some obscene decision of the robots who controlled the ship, the passengers and crew had been able to watch his escape.

How could he hope that Liz would understand that he had to get the Jansky Station?

So he hadn’t tried to explain. He had presented his application, knowing that he might well be selected. He had simply told her that the wedding was off. Indefinitely.

Liz Deffant walked through the cool, pleasant corridors of the Bureau with the few personal possessions she had selected. Officially, she was still an employee, though now on severance leave. She had been careful to choose her time: there would be few people about. She rounded a corner and saw Tom Cappelli.