“How’s that?”
“The station would have to enter the Singularity to get the necessary data, sir. And that isn’t your assignment.”
Buchanan bared his teeth in a humorless grin. The robot would soon be disillusioned as to the station’s mission.
“The two possibilities,” he said.
“Yes, sir. One is that there are slight distortions locally which would give a well-known effect—a slight disjunction of the time-scale between events inside and outside the Singularity with a difference measurable in microseconds. There are certain parallels in collapsing supernova readings.” Wrong, thought Buchanan. Nothing in the experience of man in his exploration of the Galaxy would be like the interior of the uncertain regions. Whatever forces boiled up during and after a supernova, they did not begin to match the weird qualities of the Singularity’s emissions. A difference of microseconds!
“The other?”
It was the theory he had projected once Kochan’s information began to flow. He had already formed a strong opinion, but he wanted the machines to confirm his interpretation. The fearful one. The interpretation which Kochan dreaded.
“A severe dislocation of temporal patterns.”
“How severe?”
“Time would stop.”
“Stop! Stop?”
Buchanan had not gone that far. Time bent. Time flowing sidereally. Time utterly out of joint. But time stopped?
The robot waited for a minute and went on: “A most extreme possibility, sir.”
“I hope so,” said Buchanan.
He thought of the Altair Star lapsing into the strange dimensions, falling away and into that gaping black maw… all those lives. Into what?
“And what of the effect on the Altair Star?” he demanded harshly. “On the humans aboard?” The robot showed him an image of force-bands held in a bizarre equilibrium. Time hung still.
“If the theory holds good, sir, then there would be a state of suspended animation.” Buchanan saw that this too was possible.
“But they died! They all died!”
“Clinical death is not easy to establish, sir,” the robot pointed out. “In humans the precedent is the cessation of all forms of electrical activity in the nervous system.”
“Well?”
“For all electrical activity to cease, there has to be an outlet for the energy, sir . It must be dissipated somehow.”
Buchanan had a vision of frozen, undead, undying men and women, of children poised for the final moment.
“They couldn’t live for three years!” snarled Buchanan, conscious of the pointlessness of his rage.
“There should be the condition known as ‘death,’” agreed the calm untroubled metallic voice.
“And there may not be!” grated Buchanan.
“Pushing the theory to a conclusion, sir, it may be said that the passengers and crew of the Altair Star might not have had enough time to die.”
Buchanan experienced a lurching sense of horror. The robot had given the inevitable confirmation. Had he sensed, in the haunted eyes of the fair-haired girl, that already she was aware of a shadowy kind of existence beyond time and death?
“It couldn’t be,” Buchanan said, believing that it could.
“We are talking only of theory, sir,” the robot voice said calmly into the aseptic, quietly-humming emptiness of the bridge.
And what a theory, thought Buchanan. More than ever, he was sure he had been right to seize the opportunity presented by the building of the Jansky Station. Right, too, to give up even a Liz Deffant.
“Only a theory,” he repeated. “I hope so.”
The unreasoning terror held Liz for minutes. During this time, she could neither think nor move. Etched on her mind was the sight of the young Enforcement Service crewman’s death. Tup. She did not know his full name. And now he was dead.
The general circumstances of the scene impinged on her mind, but not with any coherent force. She could see pain and bewilderment on Maran’s ooze-flecked face. Dimly she was aware that he was suffering. She could see that he was moving with slow, hesitant steps, about the area of the console. She knew too that he had seen her—and disregarded her. But the shock of Tup’s death prevented her from being able to analyze or react.
She could not even scream.
Tup had been laughing. He had approached the figure of the guard and surprised the expellee Maran. Maran had turned, reached….
Her eyes were fixed, staring. They were almost unfocused. She tried to scream. Nothing came. She recognized that Maran looked at her again.
In the two or three minutes of her total immobility, he halted the local command structure of the cell-deck. He subverted the robots. Liz could see, hear, watch with some kind of awareness, but she could do nothing. Maran ignored her.
“This system advises all human crew and Security guards to remain calm,” announced a metallic voice from the console. “Servitors will investigate emergency on cell-deck.” Maran heard and moved. There was an hierarchical structure of robotic control in the big ship. Systems controlled groups of lesser systems. At the moment, the Grade Two system which administered the cell-deck was dealing with a situation it recognized.
“Emergency on cell-deck!” reported another, more authoritative voice. It was almost human. “Emergency procedure five-eight-stroke-two will be carried out.”
“Agreed!” the cell-deck supervisor answered. “Low-grade servitors will apprehend released expellee forthwith. Malfunctioning of metabolic monitors will be investigated!” Deep within the vessel, tiny crablike maintenance machines began to skitter toward the dusty service passages.
In Maran’s slow-clearing mind there was an image of the robot’s instant response to the information that a prisoner had been freed. He looked at his big hands, briefly checked that the girl was still in shock, and acted.
Liz was aware, somewhere at the fringes of her mind, that heavy, armored servitors were moving. The deck below her feet quivered. Two robots slid past her. Restraint tentacles flowed smoothly from their squat bodies. Maran was a dark blur at the console. His hands began to weave over the controls of the cell-deck as the robots faced him.
“Do not move!” ordered a raw, cold voice. “You are subject to restraint order under Galactic Council Penal Code Regulations.”
“You are an expellee and must be returned to coma-cell,” added the second servitor. Liz Deffant slowly surfaced. It was over. Whatever calamitous accident had released Maran would be put right. The brief nightmare, the terror and the horror, were over. Liz could begin to feel a sense of relief. The robots must prevail against Maran. The guard had been taken unawares; Tup had died unknowing.
But the robots knew what they faced. The two low-grades moved like clever animals, one to each side of the console.
“Yes!” said Liz, a sharp satisfaction in her voice. “Get him!” Maran was punching commands. A tentacle cautiously flicked out. A bronchitic metal-lined voice called:
“Human interference with command console is not permitted unless authorized by Grade One system!
You are a human. You must move away. You are under restraint order!” The second machine added its warning: “Move away at once; otherwise restraint procedures will be used!”
Maran flinched—Liz could see the big body shake—at the touch of the hawser-like tentacle. He turned toward the dim-lit cell-deck, with its rows of silent, gently-bobbing men and women. Liz could not help a sensation of vengeful satisfaction. Two lives cut off in minutes—the guard and Tup.
Maran slammed a huge hand down on the bank of controls.
The eerie cell-deck became a place of ghastly, convulsed terrifying confusion. A scream of protest came from a dozen robotic throats. The flood of metallic howls, each one stepped up in volume to make itself heard above the others, blasted at Liz. Pain rocked her. She put her hands to her ears, the first move she had made since she saw Tup die. She was deafened by the uproar of the robots.