Singularity Station

by Brian N Ball

CHAPTER 7

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the robotic controller of the station. “Commander Buchanan.” Buchanan held his breath. He had seen it. The great leprous blotch made by the uncanny wave emissions from the vast rotating core of the Singularity was now forming into the patterns he had observed three years before.

  “A direct sighting, Commander,” the robot insisted. “The Singularity.” The profound gap in the cosmos waiting for the unwary. He watched for almost an hour. At last, the ship trembled.

  “Commander Buchanan, the tug has released the station. We are now beginning independent flight.”

  “Yes.”

  Buchanan watched the tug begin its endless voyage; another drifting hulk that would finish in the interior of some remote star. Then he stared again at the Singularity.

  The station would soon be his.

  Inside the shocked, pain-filled head of Maran, ideas flared and were instantaneously put into action. He was aware that he was working at a low level of efficiency. The drugs that had revived his body, and the electrical discharges that had smashed through his nervous system, had blotted out whole areas of memory and intellect. Maran knew he was using the dying remnants of his powers instinctively. The first blinding shock of returning consciousness had nearly killed him. There had been nothing he could do to prepare for it. No barrier could save him from it. The robots would have known if he had kept back the least shred of consciousness. Automatons they might be, but they were superbly designed. Not until the Enforcement Service ship was way out from Center could the delay-circuit be activated. And when it began its work, when low-grade systems whispered to more sophisticated circuitry, the result was inevitable. Pain, terrible pain. Confusion. Mind-blinding agonies. Perhaps the total dislocation of his faculties. At best, a limited hold on perhaps a quarter of the intellect that had so nearly solved the ultimate mystery. Instinct would have to serve.

  It did.

  Maran’s actions would one day be analyzed in wonder by relays of cyberneticists. There would be fierce controversy over precisely what he accomplished during the first few minutes. Symposia would annually dissect what was known of his subversion of the machines; how remote and unimportant systems were crossed with vital cycles so that the higher control robots would withhold decisions. Maran himself could not have explained.

  Dazed, senses screaming in torment, he had emerged from the gray ooze, just as he had foreseen and planned, and moved toward the control console. A memory came back to Maran as he caught sight of the woman. He looked down at his huge hands and felt again the corded sinew of the Security guard’s throat. For a moment, he reeled. There should have been no attendants. No guards. His information was that the Enforcement Service ships were entirely automaton-controlled. The guard had not seen him, not even turned… .

  Maran pushed the memory back into the confusion of his agonized thoughts. The robots must be kept from their appointed tasks—kept in a state of indecision, kept unbalanced. … It had been so easy at first. The low-grade servitors advancing, tentacles ready to hold him. And the woman—what was she doing on the cell-deck?—stiff with shock! No threat. An alert face, but quite rigid with fear.

  The servitors had told him how to handle the situation. “You are subject to restraint order under Galactic Council Penal Code Regulations!” one had said. “You are an expellee and must be returned to coma-cell,” another had directed.

  Maran’s hands had swept over the controls even as other robotic systems reported his actions. No, he had assured the low-grade robots, he was not an expellee. All expellees were in the coma-cells. Expellees could not escape from the cells. It was impossible. So no expellee had escaped. Therefore he was not an expellee.

  A query from a Grade Two system which was responsible for monitoring the life-support apparatus of the tanks was answered at once. Maran assured it that all coma-cells were full. There was a prisoner in each of the tanks. Therefore no prisoner had escaped.

  Doubly reassured, the low-grade servitors allowed black tentacles to retract. The girl was recovering, Maran saw. He flinched at the touch of a tentacle. The girl was saying something. She was afraid, but there was the beginning of outraged determination in her eyes. Like all the others, she thought him a monster. Another who could never understand the supreme importance of his destiny. Maran could see the resolve building up in her mind. Others would know that he was loose. They would react more quickly. Crewmen— perhaps more Security guards—certainly a programmed automatic reaction. Then there would be the appeals for assistance, and the big Enforcement Service cruisers would wheel around and follow the wake of the ES 110. Maran’s wildly straining eyes took in the rows of gently-bobbing expellees. Their minds were weaker than his. They had frail bodies, some of them. Old men would not stand up to the shocks of sudden revivification. Yet the robots must be halted!

  His hands swept down in a dazzling arc. Sensors leaped into his palms. Maran left the high-grade systems bewildered. Bawling metallic voices filled the green-lit cell-deck with a huge uproar. In the midst of it, Maran ordered the release of all the prisoners.

  On the deck above, Rosario began to understand the extent of Maran’s audacious and brilliant plan. As he struggled to assert some form of control over the machines, Maran poured a steady stream of orders into the Grade Two circuit which controlled the cell-deck. A part of Maran’s mind functioned clearly. He could hear Rosario, the commander of the ship. Unlike the robots, Rosario had not panicked. All his energies were going into the one vital response: beaming a Red Alert.

  Maran sweated coldly. Black shock waves made him reel. His limbs shuddered. Bunches of nerve-endings throbbed and jerked. He looked up from the console and saw that the girl was almost recovered from the blast of robotic noise. Above, the iron-nerved commander of the ship was talking calmly to the machines:

  “This is a full-scale emergency,” he was saying. “Emergency systems must at once beam a request for help. Beam the request for help now. A Red Alert condition exists.” Maran waited for the reply to the one message which must not be sent. He heard the Grade One robot’s refusal.

  The calm voice of the commander did not falter. Maran heard Rosario tell the machine that it was receiving false information: that he had escaped; that he was a danger warranting a Red Alert.

  “Check the identity of all expellees,” ordered Rosario. “I repeat, check the identity of all expellees held in coma-cells.”

  The Grade One robot hesitated. Maran acted. Sensor-pads relayed his orders. At the heart of the massive complex of electronic machinery, there was a huge roar of protest. Men and women in the coma-cells twitched, leaped, screamed, thrashed frenetically, slipped back, and died.

  “Identity check not possible at this stage,” admitted the robotic voice from its pedestal. Rosario began to realize that he had failed.

  “Maran’s feeding you false information!” he roared, as the machine whined softly and soothingly. “He’s loose— he’s confusing you—get him!”

  “Try the low-grades,” said Dieter. “Appeal to the servitors. They might respond.” Rosario tried. Below, Maran watched as the armored robots listened to the voice of the ES 110‘s commander. Tentacles flicked out cautiously, then drew back.

  “There does appear to be a serious malfunctioning of systems on cell-deck,” the robotic controller admitted to Rosario. “One human unit is defunct. I have confused reports and conflicting data.” Maran knew this was the moment of maximum danger.

  “Obey me!” called the ES 110’s commander. “This is Commander Rosario! All robotic systems should obey only identified Enforcement Service personnel! I repeat, obey only direct orders from Enforcement Service personnel!”

  To Liz Deffant, still dazed by the shrieking uproar of the robots, it was plain that Rosario had failed. Maran had managed to obtain control of the cell-deck. And he had convinced the ship’s robotic controller that no emergency measures were needed.

  “All Grade Three robots to report to the cell-deck,” Rosari
o ordered, with a note of desperation in his voice. “At once. Use all restraint procedures to hold Maran. Grade Two systems must not, repeat not, allow interference with activation systems. Maintain standing orders. Beam Red Alert to all Galactic Service vessels in range!”

  Liz Deffant moved forward a step. It took all her courage, for the slitherings and shrieks from the coma-cells left her frozen with horror. She saw a gaunt head appear over the edge of a cell. Green-black eyes stared at her, pain dazzling them. She stumbled and a hand clawed feebly against hers.

  “I have to warn,” a calm voice said above her, “that there has been irreparable damage to some human units. This emergency activation procedure is unprecedented!”

  Limbs threshed, eyes glared, shrieks were cut off as mouths submerged.

  Maran saw the girl moving blindly. She was helpless. His body settled on the command console. Grinding flashes of agony surged through his head. It was the moment of maximum danger, but he grimly kept to his task.

  “… beam the message now! Now!” Rosario ordered.

  The ES 110’s commander was desperate.

  Maran heard the cold logic of the Grade One robot as it parroted the answers he had fed into its confused circuitry.

  “This system has no procedures for passing to human control, sir. Kindly remain calm!”

  “You’re in Maran’s hands—he’s confused you!”

  Liz Deffant heard Rosario’s voice as if it were a million miles away.

  Nothing would stop Maran, she knew. He was fighting for a monumental vision. Not Rosario. Not the unarmed crew. Certainly not the Grade One robot on which, ultimately, the thousands of systems in the ship depended It was under Maran’s spell. Liz heard its chilling answers.

  “It is essential that expellees be revived,” it pondered. “This is an emergency—” Maran spoke above the metallic voices:

  “This is an emergency where normal regard for expellees’ welfare must be temporarily suspended!” The machine repeated his order.

  “Yes,” agreed Maran, pushing himself upright.

  “This is an emergency not requiring intervention or assistance of Service vessels.” Maran encouraged the machine in its decision: “Correct.”

  “Therefore no Red Alert call need be beamed.”

  “Jack!” called Liz Deffant. “Jack, can’t you get him!” She could, at last, move. A head looked at her from the ooze. Somewhere a woman’s dying screams tore through the low cavern. Liz put her hands to her ears and ran blindly, anywhere to escape from the horrors of the cell-deck. Instinct drove Liz toward the far grav-chute. Maran was hardly conscious of her. He knew he was at the furthest limit of his physical resources. Above, alert men would be planning to contain him. The machines would soon realign their disrupted programs. Time. He needed time to recover.

  Again he instructed the machines. Just before she descended the chute, Liz heard him distinctly.

  “There is a possibility of danger for Service personnel on the cell-deck.”

  “Therefore no Service personnel must be allowed to reach the cell-deck,” agreed the almost human voice of the Grade One robot.

  “Seal it off,” Maran ordered.

  “How could he get out?” Poole was saying as the machines decided the fate of the ES 110 and its strange cargo. “Jack—he couldn’t! We’d have known. It would have shown up—the monitors would have picked him up. He would have had to program four major systems, and even then the Grade One would have reported his revival! Jack, are you sure it is Maran? Couldn’t it be a malfunctioning of the Grade Twos?”

  And still they ignored his frightened, reasonable optimism.

  “Well?” asked Dieter.

  “We’re on our own,” said Rosario. “No call for assistance went out. I don’t know what he’s planning—”

  Poole was insistent. “You’re not listening to me, Jack! I’m the systems engineer! I know what can happen to machines once they start an aberrant pattern—it could all be some kind of interference from—”

  Rosario spoke impatiently: “I haven’t the time to argue,” he said. “It’s Maran.” Poole was quiet.

  “We’ll go down to the cell-deck,” said Mack. There was a hard edge in his tone. Dieter looked at his big hands.

  “The two of you, then,” said Rosario. “I shouldn’t ask it.”

  “He’ll be exhausted,” said Mack. “Sudden revivifying like that. I don’t care what kind of program he fed into the machines to get out. He’ll be as weak as a kitten.”

  “He knows we have to try,” said Rosario. “Be careful. And watch out for the low-grades. They’ll be alert.”

  They nodded and turned away. Rosario realized that the time for talk was over. The two Security men were well-trained. But Pete had not stopped Maran. Rosario almost called them back as they reached the grav-chute.

  He saw the slight change in the shifting, hazy field that was the entrance to the chute. A robotic voice began to grate out a message. At the same time, Poole ran.

  “It can’t be Maran!” Poole yelled. “I’ll go and put the—” Rosario added a useless warning. Dieter and Mack had half turned when Poole plunged into the spinning, black-spangled and closing field. There should have been fail-safes, Rosario thought dimly in his last seconds of consciousness. It had all worked for Maran.

  Poole’s body vanished.

  The explosion hurled the two Security guards across the bridge, where they settled slowly. Rosario was partly protected by the pedestal which housed the ship’s controller.

  It began to report on the latest disaster evea as Rosario crashed against the console. It was the nearer of the two low-grade armored servitors that saved Maran. Black tentacles enveloped him and flung him behind a coma-cell. Its occupant was caught by the full force of the explosion.

  “Cell-deck sealed off,” reported a distant, hollow metallic voice.

  “Maintenance units ready to repair blast damage,” said another.

  “Twelve human units are now defunct,” reported a third. “Should this system now discontinue revival procedures?”

  The Grade One robot pondered the problem.

  “Yes.”

  There was a cessation of electronic noise. The ES 110 continued its voyage. The machines waited. Maran, head streaming with blood, twitched in an agonized delirium. After ten minutes, he groaned. The machines tensed.

  Their god would speak.

  CHAPTER 8

  As Buchanan felt the pull of the station’s drive, he had to hold down an urge to begin the descent into the maelstrom. He watched the operations screen. The station lay at the rim of the enigma. The three enormous engines surged to erect a force-screen against the insidious and ferocious energies of the strange gap in the cosmos. Buchanan’s hands relaxed. For the moment there was power to spare. But enough power? Enough to counter starquake?

  It was in the sudden, irregular pulsing of vast gravitational and electromagnetic forces that the danger lay, however. At one moment the station would be riding easily along a simple dipole configuration; and then, in the next minute portion of time, a leaping gobbet of force would blur the simple lines and create an untenable, utterly incomprehensible vortex. And, somewhere within, was the emptiness of the pit. Deep, unguessably deep.

  The ship’s scanners sensed the changes in the emissions from the core of the Singularity, but Buchanan sweated coldly each time until the engines responded. The screens held. Perhaps they would continue to hold. But for how long?

  The realization came to him that what the station was experiencing was nothing compared to the rushing, monumental cataclysm of starquake.

  It was a condition that trapped ships a billion miles from the epicenter of the cosmic storm. And if starquake could draw in powerful ships from such distances, then what forces raged within the Singularity itself? No wonder the robot satellites sent to record the seismic upheavals of the Singularity were lost!

  What scanners and sensors could begin to measure the raging fury of the interior?
r />   Buchanan began to glimpse the dilemma of the robots.

  Nothing in the Galaxy was like the Singularity. He would proceed with caution.

  “We stay at the rim for observation,” Buchanan said, awed by a fresh pulsation from the depths.

  “That is our assignment,” agreed the robot.

  Rosario opened his eyes and saw blood. In the bright-lit cheerful surroundings there was a particular horror in the sight of so much blood. Pain came in a dense flood. He closed his eyes, welcoming the darkness. Somewhere near him there was the soft, heavy movement of machinery. Rosario remembered. Maran.

  He opened his eyes and knew it was his own blood that was congealing on the console. How badly was he hurt? There was a splintered mass of pain down his left side. Ribs gone. He breathed more deeply and the pain engulfed him once again. But he would not permit himself to lose consciousness. He coughed and the pain surrounded him with armies of dart-wielding enemies. He forced himself to think. He moved his head to see the bridge. An explosion, he remembered. A colossal blast. Before that, Poole with his staring, foolish face set in an unaccustomedly determined mask. It was the one truly determined act of his career. And then the molecular spin had taken him apart, grain by grain. Rosario shuddered. He would have to pass down the chute. Poor, sad-faced Poole’s ghost would linger in its force-waves. And then what? What could he do?

  Rosario tried to call out. Dieter and Mack … had they reached the chute? A Grade Three robot passed before the field of Rosario’s vision. He saw that it carried a burden. There was a strong, big-chinned face. The body drooped, inert. Mack. Dead.

  He forced himself to move away from the console, an inch. It was a desperate struggle. His slowly-growing rage helped keep him conscious. He saw the robot returning for the second smashed body. There was no sign of Poole.

  There wouldn’t be.

  Minutes passed, with Rosario hanging by a thread to his sanity. Agony grew in his side like a vast, barbed flower. A Grade Three robot stopped. Rosario felt the gentle touch of a tentacle. He held his breath. The robot inspected him, its carapace shimmering as its sensors absorbed information. Rosario stared back at it. Was Maran completely in charge of the ship? Had Maran ordered this grisly clearing-up? Or were the machines acting in accordance with their interpretation of standing orders? He waited.