Maran heard the machines offhandedly mention the theories which they had decided were impossible, and his response was instantaneous.
“Steady-state?” he demanded.
“It’s only a theory,” Buchanan was driven to interrupt “I think there might be—”
“Report on screen strengths necessary to stabilize the station in steady-state conditions,” Maran rapped.
“Such hypotheses are interesting as speculations,” the Grade One robot told Maran pedantically.
“However, they must be regarded only as probably unlikely interpretations of conflicting data. In the absence of systematic recordings—”
Maran cut in abruptly: “Devise a warp capable of containing such a steady-state!” Buchanan tensed. The two ships were close now, the sickening descent temporarily arrested as a flurry of vortices blustered against one another and created a pocket of relative calm. The unlikely elements were giving the ES 110 a breathing-space. And Maran was using it to try to convince the robots that they should attempt the impossible.
He was trying to save the ES 110 as, three years before, Buchanan had tried to save the Altair Star. The difference was that Maran was using his unique abilities to change the direction of the machines’
conclusions.
Buchanan had attempted to wreck the robots; Maran made them his puppets. Buchanan watched as the prison-ship lost a great chunk of its lower decks. Fragments of equipment, stores, engines, and unidentifiable debris hung in the grip of the Singularity’s fields.
“This system is not designed to measure the impossible, nor to create a technology capable of withstanding the impossible,” the machine answered primly.
Buchanan watched the last struggles of the ES 110. Surely it was lost now? He followed the flow of information that was streaming across the impassable gap between the two ships. Maran checked and rechecked the data. Especially he wanted the few available readings which the machines would admit to concerning the eerie tunnel where the ghost-fleet hung in the eddying fields of white-gold translucence.
“This system suggests that Commander Maran regard himself as defunct,” the Grade One system announced. “Estimated power-reserves of the ES 110 now give three minutes’ duration capability.”
“Warp,” Maran said, more to himself than to the machines.
“Impossible, sir,” the robot answered.
Buchanan thought sickly of Liz Deffant, who would be waiting to hear the cold information that would tell her of the failure of the ES 110’s last power-reserves. And yet he could not accept that she would be lost. Not while Maran fought the chilling logic of the robots.
Buchanan saw the man’s face. Straining every nerve, he was concentrating his strange powers on the machines’ decision-making centers.
“The ES 110 must be regarded as a total loss,” the robot told Buchanan. “Shall I repeat and beam to the cruisers?”
Wearily, Buchanan assented.
The somber message began to seep through the Singularity’s weird fields, but even as it went, Maran’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints and, like a clarion-call, his voice rang around the bridge of the station:
“This is Commander Maran! Your orders are to build a Quasi-warp capable of withstanding the discontinuous zones!”
Buchanan clutched at the straw. Quasi-warp!
“Repeat, please, Commander Maran,” said the flat metallic voice of the Grade One robot.
“Build a Quasi-warp!”
“Elucidate, please, Commander.”
Buchanan was ahead of the machines. The machines had said that they could not warp aside the chaotic, billowing fields of the Singularity. It was impossible. Inconceivable.
So Maran had ordered an approximation of a warp.
A Quasi-warp. One that might be possible.
It was a form of words. Don’t try to make the impossible, Maran was ordering. Build on the data from the interior of the Singularity and make an approximation of that!
Maran’s steadying, insidious, soothing, irresistible arguments followed, and, within seconds, the station jangled into hectic movement. Scanners ranged into the pit Comps boiled with data. Engines began to flex for the first impulses; makeshift force-fields edged out into the strange void; a whole new dimensional framework began to invest the ship.
Then, like a sword-thrust, a great band of white-gold translucence cut through the boiling fields of the Singularity. It sliced aside the threatening serpentine coils and bathed the dying prison-ship in a sheath of strange radiance.
A scanner showed Buchanan the whole scene.
From the squat station an eerie, tauntingly beautiful tunnel had been pushed out toward the wreck of the ES 110. Around the three engines of the station hung a flowering, rippling surge of black light. Immense floods of power held the white-gold tunnel in place.
“He’s done it,” Buchanan whispered, between relief and incredulity. Then: “Liz!” A freak of beaming showed her slim figure. Maran, directing a herd of low-grade servitors, hid her at first He moved aside as the robots brought a small life-raft to the last part of the ship to resist the unreal dimensions. And then Buchanan saw Liz.
An impassive low-grade robot was hurrying her into deep-space armor. Buchanan yelled to her, but she did not see him. She looked dazed, altogether helpless.
Anger began then. Buchanan’s craggy face was set in a cold mask. Mostly, the anger was directed at himself. Had he been harder—had he put the safety of his fellowmen first, he would not have allowed Maran to take control of his command.
A man of sterner spirit would have sacrified even a Liz Deffant.
Maran was loose.
Then Buchanan saw what a trap the station was.
Maran might be loose. He was not free.
“Commander Lientand to all cruisers,” the Enforcement Service commander was saying. “I have a message from the Jansky Singularity Station to say that the ES 110 is a total loss. Buchanan reports that there is a remote possibility of survivors. He’s standing by.”
As the ES 110’s screens imploded, Lientand completed his orders to the cruiser squadron:
“I repeat, keep to allotted patrol stations. All cruisers to carry out necessary steps with regard to the expellee Maran.”
CHAPTER 16
“Commander Maran,” said the Grade One robot from the Jansky Station, “my high-grade colleague aboard the ES 110 is ready to assist in the completion of Quasi-warp. Kindly stand by for removal of sections of the bridge.”
Liz Deffant almost giggled at the punctilious observation of niceties among machines which were disobeying their primary conditioning. She tried to operate the controls of the deep-space armor. It added an element of lunatic comedy when she began to float on a small force-screen toward the blank screen.
“Miss Deffant, please,” said Maran, gigantic in the armored suit. “Into the raft, Miss Deffant.” A low-grade casually hooked her toward the small port as a gang of servitors ripped away the sides of the ship. Liz gasped with sudden pain as a blinding white-gold translucence flooded the wreckage. It was crazily beautiful, a zany dance of white and gold particles against sinking chains of hypercubes.
“Quasi-warp,” she said, half stunned.
Maran lumbered into the confined space of the raft, his movements energetic in spite of the weight of the armored suit. Liz glimpsed a tentacle flashing across the wrecked bridge to close the port of the makeshift raft. It was the last she saw of the ES 110, for the eerie flow of white-gold particles enveloped the entire ship. The strange translucence seeped into the raft too, finding invisible gaps—irradiating the cramped interior with its uncanny presence.