“You know when.”
“Of course, of course, Miss Deffant,” the robot said defensively. “No problem there. There’s a disclaimer I have to ask you to read and sign.”
“All right.”
“Here, miss.”
She took the slip of paper. It was brief. While taking all usual precautions the Enforcement Service absolved itself from responsibility for the safety and well-being of personnel not of the Service taking advantage of transport facilities. Liz signed. “When?” she asked.
“When does the shuttle connecting with the ES 110 leave?” the robot said.
“Yes.”
“In forty hours, three minutes, twelve seconds, Miss Deffant.” Struck by a sudden thought, Liz turned.
“The ship—will it be carrying expellees?”
The robot smiled blandly.
“I’m afraid that’s confidential information, Miss Deffant. You should inquire at the Central Enforcement Office.”
It was a passing notion only. So what if there were prisoners aboard the ES 110?
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Confirm the booking.” Liz thought of filling the remaining forty hours. There were friends, of course. Two days away from Center had brought her a resigned calmness; she could face them now, especially someone like Tom Cappelli. Back at her room she hesitated, wondering whether to call if only to say good-bye. But that would lead to questions of how she felt, what she was planning, then she’d have to ask in return if Tom had seen anything of Al.
And inevitably there would be tears and the urge to run to hurl herself at him and beg him not to go to trouble long-dead ghosts!
She shivered, gave instructions to the sleep-regulator and immersed herself in the blankness of hypno-sleep. When she woke she instructed the domestic automatons to allow no one near. Buchanan introduced himself to the team of engineers checking out the scores of systems packed into the ungainly bulk of the station. He saw they already knew of him.
They explained how the station would operate: he already knew about the tug. The station wasn’t built for infragalactic flight.
They showed him the three big engines which would hold the station in position.
“It’s a new approach,” Buchanan said admiringly. “The engines used almostly entirely for projecting screens. For resisting pressure rather than moving forward.”
“The walnut and the snake,” agreed a tired man. “Grease the walnut and you can’t be hurt.”
“If you stay in the walnut,” Buchanan said, his eyes not on the ship but on the sinking sun.
“Stay in it?”
Buchanan gave some sort of answer.
When the engineers said they had worked long enough for one day, Buchanan decided to stay on. There was little point in returning to an empty room. The quarters aboard the ship were comfortable enough. He spent half the night familiarizing himself with the manuals. It was easy enough work, but sheer fatigue drove him to bed in the early hours. Sleep was hard won, and when it came there was the usual sensation of falling—falling as if he were once more a part of that last macabre sequence of events when the bridge below him began to slide away from the wreck of the Altair Star. He tried to wake himself, but the vertiginous terror was on him, encompassing his soul.
There would be no peace for him, he thought grimly, when he awoke: no cessation of the torment that ripped him, not until he went into the terrible vortex of the Singularity and found the ship. And perhaps not then!
Kochan came out to see the station the next day. At the time Buchanan was familiarizing himself with the ship’s big simulator-screen. He had set up a program which gave an approximation of the conditions he would encounter at the rim of the Singularity. Engrossed in the complex math of the program he did not hear Kochan come up behind him.
“Does it trouble you, Mr. Buchanan?” he asked. Buchanan’s eyes were fixed on the pulsing blue screen where two bandings of magnetic fields wove into one another in a serpentine configuration. Most of his attention was on the projected fields, but he could hear Kochan. He registered the fact of his presence, wondered at it, dismissed his own question since Kochan had every right to inspect the ship his Committee had commissioned. Kochan was top brass. The busy engineers carrying out last-minute checks on the colossal engines that would hold the ship at the edge of the unreal dimensions would have passed Kochan on without question.
“Does what trouble me, sir?” Buchanan asked. He watched closely as the jagged cylindrical lines representing the ship’s energy screens began to force a way into the writhing coils of the Singularity’s fields.
“Your assignment.” Kochan looked too.
“The ship’s as safe as it can be made, sir,” Buchanan said. “I know it relies on a robot tug for the deep-space journey to get it to the Singularity, but once it’s there, I’ve no doubts about its capacities.” He kept his voice low and confident. No excitement, no betrayal of his sick tension. He wanted Kochan to think of him as a sincere, dependable employee; one who would serve the Committee’s purposes with as much caution and dedication, and as much mechanical efficiency, as the robots. “See.” He pointed to the snakelike coils which showed green and black against the pale blue of the screen.
“That’s how we read the configurations at the edge of the Singularity. Whatever’s building these fields adds up to this kind of reading—we don’t know exactly how they’re caused but the ship’s been given enough force-shields to cope with the most intense readings recorded.” He grinned to show that he was confident. “I’ll be like a snake trying to crush a greased walnut.” Kochan said nothing, so Buchanan went on: “Look at the cylindrical lines—the serrated red lines.”
“Like teeth,” said Kochan. His wrinkled brown face was impassive. They were like teeth. Red teeth biting into the serpent coils.
“It’s just the comps’ way of showing the relative strengths of our screens as against the energy fields radiating from the Singularity. A better way of expressing it would be to say they’re like oil around the station.”
Kochan smiled bleakly. “I didn’t come to ask about the ship, Mr. Buchanan.” Buchanan sensed the man’s own inner tensions. Behind the black eyes he could see a turmoil of spirit that matched his own. Buchanan’s wiry muscles bunched under the drab overalls; was Kochan, even now, a threat to his self-imposed tortured quest?
“No, Mr. Buchanan,” Kochan went on. “I know something of the formation of the Singularity. I know the ship can exist at its rim indefinitely, whatever happened to the satellites. I don’t think you’ll lose the ship, even though the core of the Singularity has the most bizarre architecture of any object in the Galaxy.” A metallic voice asked Buchanan if he wanted the approximation to continue. He waved a hand and it was silent. Buchanan waited.
“I talked to Mrs. Blankfort,” said Kochan abruptly.
“And?” Buchanan said, throat dry.
“I share her views.”
Buchanan held down the expostulations, the denials that sprang to his lips. He was prepared to lie with a steady determination.
Nothing would stand in his way, not now.