Al Buchanan’s voice seemed part of the nightmare at first.
“…I swear I’ll try to save you! The robots say it cant be done, but maybe I can get some kind of field rigged up—Try, Maran!” His voice rang through the black-flooding bridge. “Get a life-raft made. For you—and the woman!”
Liz realized that she had not thought of the station as a means of help. So bewildered had she been that she had thought of Al as nearby but not within possible reach. And this was his voice calling with a contained desperation to Maran! And to a woman.
Did he know she was on the ship?
“I repeat—get the woman Deffant and yourself into a life-raft!” Liz cried out in pain, relief, abandoned joy, frustrated happiness.
Maran reacted instantly. “Reciprocal contact! Get me this Buchanan!” Failing systems hoarsely assured him that they would try. He wove his big white hands over the console and armored servitors appeared. Suddenly the bridge was alive with movement, where before it had seemed a dying organism.
“Miss Deffant! This station—you know it?”
Liz tried to refuse the information. Al was trying to reach her, but Maran was a deadly threat to the hundreds who might be involved in his next series of grotesque experiments, to thousands who might follow them. But she could not. She had reached the end of her ability to resist the urge to live. Al was the voice of promised life. She could not deny the promise. And she could not speak. Intently, Maran said to her: “I thought I should never say this to another person, Miss Deffant, but I must do so. Do not think I talk to you in this way because I am afraid to die—I am not. I am talking to you as an equal—and for the first time to any man or woman!—because I care that you understand. I do care that you have the facts. That you are able to judge for yourself why I have to survive now—that I have to reach this man Buchanan who means something to you. I must have your confidence and his help, and this is why. Listen.”
And, strangely in the midst of preparations, clamorings, fee noises of the disintegrating ship and the robots’ exchanges, Liz listened with the deepest attention.
“I know,” said Maran, “that there are farsighted and dedicated men and women in positions of authority who would help me. They know the value of my work and they know that I am the only man who can do it They know Maran is unique. They admit that there should be agencies of change in the Galaxy if man is to venture beyond it. Before he can go farther out to the ends of the Universe, he must first learn to explore himself. Miss Deffant, the key to all knowledge is in here!” Maran rested his hands on his sweating head. He had the look of a visionary priest who is ready to make a prophecy.
“There are also the inhibitors who cannot yet see that what we have done in this Galaxy is only a beginning. They cannot yet see that the Galaxy is only the microcosm. And it is these malignant creatures—the men of no vision—who have decreed that Maran must live like an ape on a rock! They would send this brain, this mind, this soul, to the Rim of the Galaxy in company with a cargo of poor lost psychopaths, and condemn it to extinction.” He paused, and Liz could feel with him the sense of time passing, of visions swimming into the void unrealized, the waste, the venomous opposition of the small-minded, the soaring fantasy of his mind. “In the long-term, it is the great, creative minds that win, Miss Deffant. Always, there is more vitality in creation than in the negation of the human spirit. But in the short-term, it is the inhibitors who win. They have the authority to suppress the individual genius of a particular man. They can delay the passage of the human spirit for a measurable time—for a life-span, perhaps more. And, certainly, they can deny a Maran. They can send Maran to a bleak planet where the predators and the harsh climate make bare existence a heavy and unending battle. But Maran would begin now, Miss Deffant! Maran would change the whole direction of the human race! Maran knows where the search begins to unleash the infinitely gigantic genius of the human race! Maran can unlock the deepest wells of the human spirit!” And once more Liz Deffant saw the uncanny effects on Maran of the repetition of his name. Maran. The word boomed out in his rolling bass voice with the effect of a drumbeat. When he spoke of himself, his eyes lost their cloudiness. They shone clear, like beacons. His face lost its flat planes and swelled like a great orb. His body cowered in the gloom of the shredding vessel, and among the robots which were his acolytes, he looked like a deity. “Maran can show you as well, Miss Deffant, that the power of the human spirit can surmount even the boundaries of time!”
She did not know what he meant, and cared less. He no longer frightened her. His presence inspired her with a feeling of religious awe, and she believed that he was what he said, a man of a unique mold, one who could wrench the veils from the ultimate mysteries and discover the secret of man’s enigmatic rise from the beast.
“The station, Miss Deffant?”
“It’s a new, experimental device,” she answered. “Crewed by one man. Designed for observation of the Singularity. It has the capability to withstand all recorded emissions. It can operate at will within the peripheries of the Singularity, or so its engineers claim.”
“Buchanan?”
“My fiancée. My former fiancée.”
Maran nodded, ponderous head bending in sympathy. “He has a regard for you.”
“I believe so.”
“And you for him?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might, Miss Deffant.”
“Yes.”
“A strange meeting.”
Liz felt hollow. Too many emotions had raged within her. She needed rest. Deep oblivion. She had seen two men whose every thought had centered on a single, obsessive vision. First Buchanan, now Maran. They had bled her of energy. She was as passive as the dead leaves she and Buchanan had once kicked away as they ran through an autumn wood when the sun flickered through branches full of yellow and gold.
“Miss Deffant, I have the feeling that we were preordained to meet. You and I. Buchanan and yourself. Buchanan and I. I shall try to make the meeting possible.”
He redoubled his efforts at the console. All about the ship, failing robots answered his summons. Low-grade servitors finished the task of building a make-shift raft. Higher-grade systems shored up failing screens with the remnants of their power-sources. The entire vessel willingly gave up its last resource to insure that the god of the machines received his due. And, at last, there was reciprocal contact with the Jansky Singularity Station.
Liz heard a flat metallic voice announce the presence of the station and the man she had loved: “Jansky Singularity Station closing. Two scanners have visual contact.”
“Near,” said Maran.
“Engines operating at four percent efficiency. No reserve. Estimated drive capability at minimum levels, seven minutes at this utilization rate.”