CHAPTER 9
Buchanan felt the station sink down a shaft of strange energies. A skein of hypercubes shimmered dimly on the operations screen. Then they flared into blistering radiance.
“Report!” he ordered.
“Emissions from interior of Singularity increasing in strength,” said the robotic controller from its conical pedestal. “Associated discontinuities at edge of Singularity, Commander.” Buchanan snarled suddenly: “I can see that—explain them!”
“Not possible, Commander. The scanners cannot range on the inner core.”
“Then range on anything—anything that shows up!”
“Yes, Commander.”
Buchanan threw the sensor-pads away. They gave him information, but they did not accept his orders. But they would! When the station was affected by the Singularity’s weird powers, then the overrider would come into effect. The ship would be his!
He almost missed the sudden image.
“Ships!” Buchanan yelled. “There!”
At first he thought he had suffered an hallucination, for the ships—so many of them—seemed to wave and rock as if caught in subtle, shifting eddies. And such ships!
Tiny rocket-craft; here and there a minuscule scouting ship. One giant interstellar colonist ship from the first days of Galactic exploration.
And all of them caught in the writhing coils of the Singularity, all trapped, lost, held cold, dead, forgotten. The image of the big screen faded even as he spoke, but he had seen them. Yes! Maybe not the ship—the one he had come to seek, but certainly ships.
A whole Sargasso Sea of wrecks, held in tenuous force-bands, where they hung in a strange thermodynamic balance—hung by thin timeless tendrils within the eerie depths of the Singularity. Hung in shimmering white-gold tendrils.
Buchanan had seen a score of ships, some of modern design and some grotesquely ancient. Ships that might have trundled from a museum or a fairground.
“Try again!” Buchanan said. “The ships!”
“Ships, Commander?”
“I saw them! It was a steady-state! A gravitational and temporal steady-state! Run the sighting again.”
“Not possible, Commander. No sighting was recorded. Steady-state is not an acceptable theory!”
“Not recorded?”
“No, sir.” And Buchanan thought grimly of the absurdity of allowing the machines control of anything more complex than a domestic cleansing unit. “This system is not programmed to report and record impossible events!”
It was almost laughable. But life and death were not joking matters. “Impossible—” he said harshly. He stopped.
“Maintain regular scanning.”
It was absurd to quarrel with a machine.
Liz Deffant wondered how long they had. Rosario would need food, medical attention, rest.
“Jack! Jack!” she called. “The others—where are they?” She put her hand to his lips. She could feel hot dry breath. The solid beat of his heart gave her new strength. There was terrible damage to the rib cage, but he was a powerful man.
There was a fault sound from his lips. The eyes opened again. “Liz?” came the sighing sound. Rosario’s body trembled. Sweat glistened on his wide white face.
“You came down a maintenance shaft—why?” she asked. He struggled for breath against the anguish of his side. Panic claimed Liz Deffant She did not want to be alone again. “Jack—try!”
He responded. “…Center,” he got out, lips white. “Warn Center!”
“Yes, if I can! How? What can I do?”
She felt a wild urge to call to the machines for help.
It would take seconds for the servitors to carry Rosario to the surgical unit, minutes to begin the work of repairing the broken bones.
The words froze on her lips. Maran was the master of the machines. To invite their aid was to reveal their presence. But Rosario was dying.
He groaned aloud, eyes open without recognition. He retained enough of his senses to gasp his message, not nearly sufficient to detail instructions. She knew he did not know her, but he must have recognized that she was no enemy, for he said: “Tup?”
Liz wept bitter tears. “Dead!”
“Pete?”
“Yes!”
“But you—” he breathed, and there was recognition now in his eyes.
“I got away!”
“Warn Center,” Rosario said distinctly. “Poole tried—caught in the blast—” Raggedly he went on: “The others—Mack and Dieter—dead!” Blast? Liz thought, her mind reeling. Blast? She watched Rosario slide into a shallow unconscious state. There had been a thin, whipping sound as she emerged from the chute. Poole dead—caught in the blast? She almost shook Rosario. “All dead?”
Liz whimpered with remembered loss. So many grim details crowded her mind now that she could not think clearly. All her earlier resolve seemed to have slid away. It would be easy to close her eyes and sit beside Jack Rosario until the inquisitive robots sought her out. She sat against the hard metal of the nearest cylinder. It would be so easy to rest.
She remained quite still for ten minutes. Nothing at all happened. And then an almost inaudible voice:
“In the pods!” someone was whispering to her. She emerged from a waking dream of fatigue to hear the whisper from white lips. “Liz… hurry… Maran…”
“In the—?” But Rosario was silent. “In the pods, Jack? Jack!” She looked wildly. And remembered. Survival equipment. Tools—life-support systems—canned air—food—and a medical unit—a medical unit! Liz was confused for a moment. How long would it be before the robots searched the ship? How long before Maran realized that she had disappeared? Minutes? An hour? Certainly not long! The hunt would be on! “What shall I do, Jack?” She had wasted time while Rosario lay dying. She stood up and her mind cleared. The medical unit in the pod. She was no expert, but she had received a basic training in the treatment of injuries. And the medical units contained a guide to treatment. You fed in the observable symptoms and the unit directed your efforts. She opened the survival-pod.
The individual survival-pods contained life for Rosario. Resolution returned. She knew vaguely that delayed shock had kept her in a trance.
The pods were designed for maximum ease of use.
When the white surface slid away she saw the neat cartons of equipment, supplies, and systems. She reached and took a pack down.
“…pods…” Rosario was whispering.
“Yes!” Liz said, quickly stooping with the medical unit open. Rosario’s face was completely gray, with a faint blue tinge at the lips.
She took a knife and cut away his tunic.
Already angry red-blue marks scored his body. He watched, straining for breath. She took a syringe and pumped in the indicated pain-killing drugs. There was a lacy strap that snaked from a container to cling to the man’s shallow-breathing body.
“…listen…” Rosario was trying to say.
Liz held another syringe, the one that would bring peace.
“…don’t!” he said with an urgency transcending his torment. Liz looked at him questioningly.
“Closer,” he whispered.
Liz bent. Something in his tones compelled her to delay the beginning of oblivion.
“Liz—use the pod!” he was saying.
“I have! I’ll get—”
“No!” said Rosario, famt and with grim intensity.
“What?”
“Use… survival-pod… gives you a few hours…” He stopped, choking for breath. Rambling, thought Liz. Confused, hurt, rambling. She would have to hide him.
“Launch!” came Rosario’s voice, louder now. His eyes blazed with a passionate urgency. “Use the pod—manual control for launching!”