“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?
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.
The robot moved away.
Rosario made himself think. He would have to seek out Maran. Down the grav-chute. Past the remains of Poole. But there wouldn’t be any, he thought wildly. Poole was now a part of the fabric of the ES 110. Dieter and Mack would be stored away. Then there was Tup. And the guard, Pete. And the girl. And the expellees. Rosario remembered sickly that they had been grotesquely summoned from their remote dreams to help realize Maran’s bizarre ambitions. Yes, Maran had gained control of the machines. Rosario blacked out.
As he lay, half supported by the console, the ES 110 machines decided that their function was to normalize conditions. Tiny maintenance units cared for their own. The spider-like machines picked up the glittering broken machine which had been knocked away by Maran. Bigger, lower-grade units replaced the smashed panels of the console on the bridge. And a silent corps of servitors began the macabre task of lifting the expellees from the ooze where they had died. The command system waited. Rosario again emerged from the darkness and sensed the watchfulness around him. The machines were waiting for instructions. Not from the commander of the Enforcement Service vesseclass="underline" from Maran. It had to be now, Rosario told himself. Whatever he had done, Maran was not yet totally the master of the ship. Perhaps he had succumbed to the shock of revivification. Rosario knew what Maran must do now: escape. The ship would leave a wake. Eventually, he must deviate from the huge looping course that would take the ship out to the Rim. When he turned the ES 110 off-course, robot satellites would register its passing. But Maran would have time.
Blood gushed from a wide, deep cut at the back of Rosario’s head. He felt as if the pain were attacking some other body. Woolly memories baffled him.
“Stand,” he said to himself. “Get down to the cell-deck.”
“Sir?” asked a passing servitor.
“Carry on,” ordered Rosario.
It considered and then moved away. Rosario sweated coldly. He could not ask the machines for help. Not with Maran’s insidious instructions subverting the memory-banks of the high-grade systems. I’ve got to stop Maran, he thought. He tottered toward the grav-chute. It glowed, promising a gentle descent. The way to the cell-deck was clear.
Rosario looked down at his hands. He was a trained close-combat fighter; not so good as Dieter and Mack, but competent. He almost grinned.
In his state, he might do damage to a frightened butterfly. He could hardly raise his right hand. His left had to hold his wrecked ribs together. He fought down the sick disgust that made him want to shout at his own incompetence. How many had died because he could not assert himself? Why had he not been able to find some counterargument that would divert the machines from their bizarre decisions?
He looked down at his right hand. It had come down to this. A crippled commander, perhaps the last living member of the ES 110’s complement: with one hand. After the utter sophistication of robotic control, a cripple with a head full of pain and one good hand.