“Yes!” she spat at him. “I did it—and the whole Quadrant is repeating the Red Alert! Every Enforcement Service ship in the fleet will be after you!” She almost dared him to kill her, but she could not. There was too much animal fear in her. She could not challenge him so directly, not after what he had done so easily to the guard and the young crewman. She could only wait.
“It was the bravest thing I’ve ever known,” Maran said.
Liz shuddered, awaiting a blow, the condemnation to some vile form of death, instructions to the robots to dispose of her—for anything but this. What had Maran said? That her action was the bravest thing he had ever known? He was sincere.
There could be no doubt, for his face expressed only an admiring interest. The grim mask she had first seen glaring wildly about the green-lit hell of the cell-deck had changed into this benevolent visage. Maran was looking at her with the indulgent air of a schoolmaster glad that his pupil had absorbed her lesson well.
“I tried to kill you,” she heard herself whispering.
“Yes.”
“The cruisers will take you.” Liz felt again the uncanny sense of detachment from the situation. It was almost as if the words were spoken by another woman.
“Possibly,” Maran said.
“They will!” She could challenge him now.
“Quite possibly, Miss Deffant.” He was quite calm. Liz could begin to understand the power of the man. He was massively indifferent to her attempt on his life.
Shuddering afresh, she said: “I would have killed you.”
“You thought I was some kind of monster.”
He accepted it. Tears trickled down Liz’s face and she was bitterly ashamed of herself for them; for she knew that they came with the relief of knowing that she would not be killed. Maran would not harm her. The great white hooks of hands would not reach out….
“Sit down, Miss Deffant. You are almost exhausted. If you make no sudden move toward a possible weapon, the machines will ignore you.”
“They stopped me from—”
“I watched you come from the lower deck, Miss Deffant. I wondered if you would have the courage to carry through your plan.” The great brown eyes were full of warmth. “The servitors were programmed to disturb your aim only if it was accurate. It was.” He pointed to a white metallic scar above him. Liz could see the long line of the leaden projectile splashing the ceiling with its track. She sat down, aware of Maran, of the robots’ careful scrutiny, of her own shaking hands; and also of her own resignation. A voice that she knew as her own said: “Did you have to kill them?” Maran sighed. There was an indisputable sadness in his voice, a real regret in his face when he answered.
“When I was able to get out of the tank, I was still in a deep conditioning, Miss Deffant. You were right to be afraid when you first saw me. That was a monster, that creature who destroyed two lives—when threatened, it acted at the most primitive level in the most direct way.” His eyes were hypnotically attractive. Liz felt her anger dying away. “That creature is gone, Miss Deffant. You see before you only—Maran.”
And he was not looking at her, but through her. She sensed the evocative power of his name: repeating his own name had a talismatic effect. It reestablished him, gave assurance to his remote and majestic vision, substance to his belief in his rightness, in his destiny. Liz shivered. A pale reminder of her furious determination echoed in her mind: she had known that Maran would have a plan to evade the cruisers. That was why she had assembled the archaic firearm from the survival-cylinder; even now Maran’s incredible mind would be building a strategy for survival. And there was nothing she could do, nothing at all.
And there it was, thought Buchanan. The electromagnetic conundrum, the gravitational enigma, the terrible Singularity, that contained the most bizarre architecture of any object in the Galaxy. Around the station, pulsing with incomprehensible powers, the core of the Singularity set in motion force-fields that were beyond measurement.
Buchanan held back a prayer as the three huge engines bit into the straining coils. They gripped the station. Buchanan could feel the very deck beneath him curving slightly in response to the gigantic flood of power from the three pods. The engines surged, bit, and the serpentine coils relaxed. The coils glistened. They backed away like scorched snakes.
The makers of the station had foreseen the uncanny power of the Singularity. The engines surged again. And they held the web of coiled forces emanating from the darkness at the center of the Singularity. The screen of the station projected red-banded submolecular fields, and Buchanan wiped the sweat from his face. He watched and lost himself in the marvel of the machines.
The Singularity was an imponderable, a freak. But human ingenuity had defeated the fantastic vortex. The small, squat, ugly vessel hung at the edge of Beyond. But it was not drawn into the gaping maw of the terrible Singularity. It survived.
It had survived, thought Buchanan, with a sudden accession of pride. The Jansky Singularity Station truly existed! Built with a single purpose in mind, it was a technological marvel. But a marvel of limited scope. Three colossal engines, each enough to power a vast infra-galactic ship. Stupendously overpowered, absurdly potent.
None of this power usable in warp-shift, all of it directed toward containment. To hold back the forces of black night. To keep the station swanning through the edges of the Singularity. And more, thought Buchanan. It had done more. Even within the Singularity, the station was safe. Its shields could divert the stupendous and bizarre vortices of the Singularity. They heaved, struck, and glissaded away. The station slid out of the serpent’s coils.
Buchanan experimented with the strange dimensions.
The station clawed into a furious maelstrom.
Buchanan’s senses reeled as the ship was flung about in the depths. He eased the ship into a calmer region. The robot controls in his palms translated his commands into action. Creaking with monstrous powers, the engines held a strange equilibrium in the weird hmer depths. Then Buchanan saw what he sought.
“Dear God!” he whispered as the maelstrom’s fantastic energies fell away and he saw into a corridor of unholy calm. “The ship!”
It was the strange graveyard of ships he had glimpsed before the descent into the Singularity. And there was his lost command!
He sweated as the screened image of the Altair Star was steady for long moments. The ruin held a lonely, frozen space among the other ships of long ago. The scanners ranged closer. He could see details. There were the marks of that ferocious wrecking when the bridge was ripped away. An engine hung clear of the ship, torn away as if by a kraken. But what of the silent crew and passengers? What of the silent company of the dead? Or the undead!
“Readings!” he snapped to the robotic controller. “How near—how soon!”
“Sir?”
“The Altair Star—there!”
“This automaton installation has records of the Altair Star lost three years ago. You want the details, Commander?”
It knew, of course, of his past. The machines had their own subtle ways of passing on information. The Grade One system that was now at his command knew quite well that he had once been the chief officer on the Altair Star.
“She’s there! You must have readings—I can see it on the screen! The scanners must have assessed the parameters! I’m sure it’s a steady-state!”
“No data, Commander,” the machine said.
Buchanan grew angry. The machines were ranged against him.