Brian Ball: Singularity Station

Kochan’s gaze dropped. The black eyes lost their hardness.

“The station is the only civilian ship which can be taken over by a human commander,” said Kochan.

“Getting the Committee to accept an overrider was difficult. Getting you as its commander was more of a problem. You’d not have got the assignment if I hadn’t suppressed some reports,” he said. Buchanan gaped. Kochan could not be lying. He had an aura of complete sincerity, overwhelming certitude. But a member of the Committee deliberately falsifying information by suppressing reports!

“Mrs. Blankfort—” Buchanan began.

Kochan nodded.

“She guessed, but I prevailed on her. I think she understood my motives.” Buchanan’s mind ranged frantically over what little he knew of Kochan’s vast enterpreneurial activities. The man had exploited whole stellar colonies. His personal wealth was immense. He could have headed the Galactic Council. Was there some source of personal power in the Singularity? A mystery that he could turn to advantage? Some inconceivable way of using the energies of that bizarre space-time event?

Kochan produced a wallet. “Look,” he said, raw iron defeat on his face. Buchanan saw the picture of a young woman in the first flush of adult beauty. Blonde hair cascaded to her shoulders. There was a confident smile, wide blue eyes, a slim neck and a firm bosom: she was intelligent, courageous, beautiful. Life lay before her and she wanted its fullness. He grabbed the wallet and stared.

“My only grandchild,” said Kochan.

Buchanan understood, or half understood.

“She was—” He had seen her before.

“Yes.”

Those wide blue eyes had looked out at him in slow-dawning comprehension; an infinite sadness had begun to swim into their depths. Buchanan knew her well, too well. It was the girl who had flirted with young Preston.

Buchanan wiped cold sweat from his forehead.

“If there had been anything I could have done,” he said helplessly. “Anything!” Kochan’s black eyes were impassive again. He put the wallet away.

“I know, Buchanan.”

Both men were lost for long seconds in despairing memories. Buchanan recovered first.

“I have to tell you, sir,” he said, sick at heart. “There can be no chance—none! Not in a starquake like that!”

“I know she can’t be brought back to life,” said Kochan in his iron tones. “I know and accept it!”

“And you still want me to go to the Altair Star!”

There was no need for deception now.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Kochan’s face was pinched, wizened, gnarled. Buchanan knew that worse monsters trod through his brain than those that afflicted his own tormented dreams.

“You simulated the interior of the Singularity just then,” he grated. “But it’s only a simulation—a projection! We don’t know really what goes on at the middle of the accursed Singularity!”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t you see, Buchanan, that what terrifies me is not that my granddaughter is dead—” Buchanan knew he was poised on the edge of a frightful knowledge.

“Sir?” he said, anxious for Kochan to continue, desperately afraid of the answer.

“I’ve checked on every known theory—all the variations of every conceivable hypothesis, every interpretation of all known readings! My God, Buchanan, I’ve devoted three years and enough wealth on research to build a fleet of Altair Star s! And no one can prove that my granddaughter is at rest!”

“But life can’t continue without life-support systems, Mr. Kochan! The ship was half-wrecked! There wouldn’t be air—energy—heat to sustain life for three years! Accept it,” said Buchanan, afraid now. “She must be dead!”

Kochan fixed him with his black stonelike eyes.

“Buchanan, I was behind the building of the Singularity Station. I gave up all thoughts of personal ambition so that I could control the policies of the Committee. Only the Committee has the power to promote investigations of the Jansky Singularity, you see.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man’s grim dedication and resolve matched his own. But what impelled him?

Buchanan heard, almost unbelieving, as Kochan went on:

“At the center of the Singularity is a core. And that core has properties that are not understood. Buchanan, believe me when I say this, that I have the best available evidence. There is a possibility that within the Singularity there is a kind of life that we cannot yet understand!”

“Life?”

“Human life—or inhuman life!”

“You think the people aboard the ship may be alive?”

“I want to know about my granddaughter!” Kochan was pleading with him. The old man went on: “All the theories I’ve been able to gather have been fed into the comps in your ship. When the time comes, listen to them. And then do what you have to do.”

“You believe she may not be— dead?” Buchanan did not want to ask his next question. It trespassed on an old man’s innermost and most deeply-felt emotions. But he had to ask. “You want me to find out?”

“Buchanan, there may be more than one way of dying. Make sure she is at rest!” Stunned, Buchanan watched Kochan leave. He stood for several minutes staring at a blank, blue-pulsing screen without realizing it. He was brought back to a realization of the present by the slight oscillation of the ship as more of its systems were given their final tests.

There was much to think about.

But, meanwhile, there was work to do.

The small shuttle lifted off between the great infragalactic ship’s robot tugs, a minnow among salmon. The whine of engines thrusting out through the thin rain and then higher, past fifty-mile-high noctilucent clouds, came to Liz Deffant as an echo of her own silent howl of pain and loss. Within minutes, the shuttle would slide into the maw of the Enforcement Service vessel, and she would be cut off forever from the bitter, haunted man she wanted—needed!—and had lost to the ghosts of the past.

“Scan for the new Jansky Singularity Station,” she ordered, surprising herself.

“Yes, Miss Deffant,” an unseen automaton answered.

Before her a screen pulsed into life and the docking area swam into view. She reached forward and allowed a pair of clinging sensor-pads to latch onto the palms of her hand; their touch was unpleasant. Closer, she ordered, manipulating the pads with easy skill.

She saw figures moving about the black bulk of the ungainly vessel. A group of engineers were busy at one massive engine-pad.

Where was Al?

She saw a stooping, thin figure emerge tiredly. An old man. Who was he? She scanned closer still and saw a face she knew from many newscasts. Kochan. What was he doing there?

And still no sign of Al.

She almost ordered the scanners to cease probing, but she told herself she was entitled to one last look at Buchanan.

For over ten minutes she kept the scanners hunting for a sight of the lean, hard man she loved. And all the time she could feel the interest of the automatons which controlled the shuttle and obeyed her orders; already they would be reporting her interest in the almost-completed station. One more piece of information for the endless banks of comps far below the surface.

“Al!” she whispered as at last she saw the familiar honed features, the long sinewy frame, the bitter mouth which had begun to be able to ease into a smile.

There was a new expression on his face.

Before, he had looked tired, despairing, a man who thought of himself as a failure. Now, he seemed completely lost. Cold, alone, lost.

She watched until the image shivered and began to fill with shadows. The great engines of the ES 110 impinged on the little shuttle’s own force-bands.