by Brian N Ball
It was unlikely that the old woman did, even though the others of the species she belonged to seemed to think that he had adjusted to that frightful trauma when the big, magnificent vessel had reeled off into emptiness. The Service psychologists said he was fine. They recommended that he ship out again soon. But he had resigned. And then met Liz.
“So your decision to give up the attractive Miss Deffant, to say nothing of a new career as a contract-surveyor, was arrived at purely on intellectual grounds?” Mrs. Blankfort asked. She was asking did he still worry about the ship.
He was about to answer that he never thought of the Altair Star nowadays, when he saw it wouldn’t do.
“Not entirely, ma’am.” He turned to Richtler. “There’s an element of risk in the job that appeals to me. I suppose the Jansky Singularity is in my bones now. Mr. Richtler will tell you that any fieldman would give his right arm to have an accurate chart of the regions around the Singularity, but none in his right mind would go near enough to make one.”
“So you’re saying that you’re not in your right mind, young man?” said Kochan, smiling.
“I don’t think that’s called for,” Richtler said, frowning. “Mr. Buchanan’s—” Buchanan interrupted.
“I lost a ship once, Mr. Kochan. I won’t imperil Board’s new station.” Lost, thought Buchanan.
The Altair Star wasn’t lost, not in the conventional way that meant a blowup or a mangling. The ship was in the terrible abyss somewhere.
He had seen her go.
CHAPTER 2
“I’m afraid we’ve nothing for Messier 16 until the end of the month, Miss Deffant,” the bookings clerk said. He was almost human. Rolled-up sleeves, a worried expression, and a receding hairline; below the counter he’d be plugged into the big comps that ran Infragalactic.
“Damn!”
“Exactly, miss.”
Sympathy yet!
“Make the reservation for me.”
“Miss Elizabeth Deffant,” the clerk agreed. “With the New Settlements Bureau.” It wiped sweat from its pocked skin. “Certainly, miss.”
She turned away. It would mean staying at Center for another couple of weeks. How could she avoid all of their circle of friends and acquaintances? They’d all been in on the plans for the wedding — presents, lace, a cake, all the trimmings. The old style, full of sentiment. As she was. It would be too painful to hear their sympathy.
For some reason Liz turned back to look at the clerk. It was still watching her. She had a moment of insight then: it knew about Buchanan. Why shouldn’t it? All the machines were mutually compatible. The lowliest dirt-scavenger was a collector of information for the big comps far below the surface.
“So sorry we couldn’t ship you out right away!”
Why, Al? she screamed silently, furious at the sincere mechanical smile. Why couldn’t you leave it?
Buchanan kept his voice low and dispassionate. He knew that it would be difficult to talk himself out of the job he wanted with such desperation; but it could be done. If he showed himself unbalanced, if once he let slip the mask that hid his internal anguish and his iron determination to return to the shifting, subtle arena where his ship had been torn from him—if once he allowed the members of the Board to guess what he had in mind, then they would turn to one of the dozens of moderately-well qualified men and women who could do the job. He marshaled his thoughts. Go carefully! he told himself. He spoke for a while of his early days as a young fleldman. How all of his calling were trained to avoid hazards, to take any measures to avoid imperiling human life. He took them through his first Infragalactic appointments as commander. Buchanan saw that he had his audience now. A few more anecdotes—one or two descriptions of strange constellations—and then it was done. He would have the job. But Mrs. Blankfort returned to her question.
“Tell us about the Altair Star,” she suggested. “We have your views from the Board of Inquiry, naturally, but I for one would like to hear you state them before this meeting.” Buchanan nodded calmly. He knew her for the only impediment between himself and the station.
“Very well, ma’am. The Altair Star was one of the largest passenger vessels in regular service. She was powered by a type of engine that had been in infragalactic service for three decades. The fabric of the ship was in first-class condition; we had recently proven the power-units to nearly fifty percent more than the established safety reserves. I had captained the ship for two years, though I suppose ‘captained’ is hardly accurate.”
“Quite,” interjected Richtler.
“At about the time of my appointment to the Altair Star the ten-year experimental period of robotic control of all infragalactic flights was nearing completion. Soon afterward, the previous experimental procedures became standard. There was automatic control of all the ship’s systems.” Mrs. Blankfort was not finished. “You accepted the appointment knowing that there would be almost no possibility of using your skills, your training and expertise?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go on,” said Kochan. “As it comes, Buchanan.”
“We left Galactic Center on a regular scheduled passage serving the inner constellations,” began Buchanan. “There were between six and seven hundred passengers. We carried a crew of eight, apart, that is, from myself. Our course was predetermined, though the robot monitors continually made slight adjustments to take advantage of wave phenomena. I expected to complete the journey in seventeen days, from the information available on the state of subgalactic energy fields.” It was like the inquiry of three years ago. There was as much tension, in himself at least. A choking nausea filled him, though it was from a different cause. Then, it had been anger and pity; now, it was a tense excitement, mixed with hope. With an assured—if assumed—impassivity of features, he told how the flight had been smooth and comfortable; and of the looping course as they coasted along the inner arm of the spiraling Galaxy, taking every advantage of the pressures exerted by infragalactic force-fields. The robots were efficient, no doubt of it.
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 wis
h, 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.
“Liz!”
“I was just getting ready to leave, Tom.”
Tom Cappelli was one of the people she fervently wished to avoid. He was one of Buchanan’s oldest friends. And now he was here, a short, stocky balding man of fortyish who was as anxious to avoid embarrassing her as she was to feel grief again.
“So you’re thinking of going back to—” He paused. “Where again was it? Somewhere far out?”
“Messier 16.”
Tom knew the spaceways.
“Messier 16? Not till the thirtieth of the month. You pick it up a few light-years out of Center—”
“Yes. They told me at Bookings.”
“So what will you do with yourself for the next couple of weeks? Maggie and I are thinking of taking a few days out at—”
“No!” she said sharply. Maggie was Tom’s wife. Not Maggie! Not consolation for two weeks! “No thanks,” she said more calmly. “I’ll go for a short cruise. I’ve not seen half the sights here. Never had much time.”
Tom understood. “Call me if there’s anything.”
“I will,” she said, glad to be away.
He called her back when she had gone a few yards. “Liz!”
“I’d rather not—” she began.
“No, I’ve had another thought, Liz.”
She stopped, hugging the recorder and the tapes she had selected to remind her of her two expeditions for the Bureau; there was a picture, too, of the little survey-ship Al Buchanan had selected for them.
“What was it, Tom?”
“About Messier 16.”
“Yes?”
“You could leave in three days if you were prepared to pull a few strings and travel rough.” Liz felt a weight slide away from her. Three days! She could tolerate being on the same planet as Al Buchanan for three days, but after that she would be hanging around waiting for a sight of him, waiting for the moment when she would beg him to think again. “How?”
“There’s the ES 110.”
“The ES—”
Tom nodded.
“It isn’t a luxury cruise, but it’s quick. You’re still on Center leave, aren’t you?”
“Yes!”
“So you’re Galactic Center personnel. Liz, you’re entitled to travel on Center ships.”
“But the Enforcement Service!”
“So it’s a prison-ship! It’s goi
ng way, way out, to the Rim. They’ll drop you off at the Messier 16
constellation.”
Liz was silent for a while.
“You think they’ll let me go on it?”
Tom grinned. “Leave it to me. All right?”
“I think we’ve kept Buchanan waiting long enough, ladies and gentlemen,” Richtler said firmly.
“I still have reservations,” Mrs. Blankfort said. “But nothing I can put forward with any assurance.” There was a murmuring of polite deference from the other members of the Board.
“I’ve no wish to cut short a significant contribution,” Richtler told the frowning woman. “Mrs. Blankfort?” She shook her head. “He’s the man for the job. I don’t dispute it. I wondered simply whether he still hasn’t accepted the loss of the Altair Star.”
Kochan had listened to enough. “Shall we have Buchanan in now?”
“Mrs. Blankfort?” invited Richtler once again. She shook her head. “Have him in, please.” Richtler made the formal announcement: “Mr. Buchanan, you’ve convinced the Board of your suitability for the Jansky Station project. You’ll not be too surprised to hear that you were far and away the best candidate for the appointment. The Board has unanimously decided to offer you the post.”
“Thank you, sir,” Buchanan said, unsmiling in his grim relief.
“You accept, Mr. Buchanan?” Kochan asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Richtler offered his hand, a politician’s firm grip. Buchanan accepted the congratulations of the other members, achieving a half-smile to show that he appreciated their warmth. Inside, he could feel the sick excitement that always took him when he thought of the great well in space-time he had been hired to investigate. What lay at the core of the enigma that was called the Jansky Singularity?
Mrs. Blankfort offered a veined, tiny hand. He shook it gently. To his surprise, she said in a low voice that the others could not hear:
“Mr. Buchanan, you can’t hate a robot.”
He could find nothing to say in answer. Did she know after all? Or was it some psychologist’s trick, pretending to knowledge she only guessed at? He looked into her shrewd blue eyes and saw only a kind of contained pity. Then the others began to move away, taking her with them, and Buchanan was left alone.