Alfred van Vogt - The World of Null-A

The second day passed without incident.

Morning of the third day. Gosseyn ate his breakfast hurriedly and headed for the videophone. He dialed “Long Distance” and waited, thinking how foolish he had been not to do it before. The thought ended as a robot eye took form on the video plate.

“What star are you calling?” the robot's voice asked matter of factly.

Gosseyn stared at it blankly and finally stammered, “I've changed my mind.” He hung up and sank back into his chair. He should have realized, he thought shakily, that the galactic base on Venus would have a private exchange, and that they would have direct communication with any planet anywhere. What star? For these people long distance meant long!

He studied the dial again and put his finger in the slot marked “Local.” Once more a robot eye looked at him.

Its voice answered his request unemotionally. “Sorry, I can put no outside calls through from that number except from Mr. Crang himself.”

Click!

Gosseyn climbed to his feet. The silence of the apartment flowed around him like a waveless sea. It was so quiet that his breathing was loud and he could hear the uneven beating of his heart. The voice of the robot operator again echoed in his brain. “What star?” And to think that he had wasted time. So much to do. The tunnel first.

He stood, a few minutes later, peering along the dim corridor that led into the depths of a tree that was an eighth of a mile thick and half a mile tall. It was very dark, but there was an atomic flashlight in the kitchen storeroom. Gosseyn secured the flash. He left the tunnel door open behind him. He began to walk along the low-roofed corridor into the interior of the tree.

There was a drabness about his surroundings that dulled thought. The tunnel became winding and tilted more sharply downward. The curving walls gleamed vaguely in the light of the flashlight. Twice, during the first ten minutes, the tunnel divided in two. During the next hour, seven tunnels joined the one he was in, and three times more the corridor split ahead of him. It could have been confusing, but Gosseyn sketched a map in his notebook, ticking off each side tunnel.

“I must,” he thought finally, “be walking several hundred feet below the ground, following the intertwining roots. I'm actually under the forest.”

He had not thought before of the extent of the roots supporting the mighty trees. But here in this continuous maze was evidence that the roots were at once large in size and pressing in, one upon the other, so tightly that it was impossible to decide from inside the tunnel where the connections were, where one root left off and another began. He examined the next side tunnel for markings. There was nothing visible. The wood, lemon-colored here in the nether roots, curved solidly up to a solid ceiling. Asfar as his fingers could reach, he fumbled over the metallically hard surface. And there were no switches, no hidden panels, no directions of any kind.

He was disturbed now. These tunnels apparently were endless. He'd need food if he was really going to investigate them, as he must. Too bad he had to retrace two hours of walking. But better two hours than five. The time to turn back was before he began to feel hungry or thirsty.

He reached Eldred Crang's apartment without incident. He made a pile of meat sandwiches and was sitting down to a lunch of eggs and bacon when the four men came in. They entered through three different doors. The first three men held guns, and they came in as if they had been catapulted by the same tight-wound spring. The fourth man was a wiry chap with hazel eyes. He had no gun and he entered in a more leisurely fashion. It was he who said, “All right, Gosseyn, put up your hands.”

Gosseyn, sitting rigidly at the table, head twisted up and around, presumed that Eldred Crang, galactic agent, Venusian detective, and secret supporter of null-A, had come home at last.

His first reaction was relief. Until responsible people with null-A training knew the danger that civilization faced, Gilbert Gosseyn must hold his life in trust. He tried to think of the coming of Crang as precipitating movement in that direction. He climbed to his feet, hands raised above his head, and watched the men curiously, trying to saturate his senses with the reality of their presence. He felt undecided as to how best he might tell them the story the Machine had urged upon him.

As he studied the men, one of them walked forward and broke open the package of sandwiches. They spilled out in a brown and white array, two falling on the floor with a vague sound, like pieces of dry dough. The man didn't speak immediately. But he smiled as he stared down at the sandwiches. He was a thickset, nicely groomed individual in his early thirties. He moved over to Gosseyn.

“Going to leave us, were you?”

His voice had a faint foreign tone to it. He smiled again. He hit Gosseyn stingingly across the face with the flat of his hand. He repeated in a dead-level tone, “Leaving, were you?”

He drew his hand back again. From Gosseyn's left, Crang said, “That's enough, Blayney.”

The man lowered his arm obediently. But his face worked, and his voice was blurred by emotion as he said, “Mr. Crang, suppose he'd gone? Suppose he hadn't rung up exchange? Who'd have thought of searching for him here? Why, if he had escaped, the big boss would have–”

“Silence!”

Blayney subsided sullenly. Gosseyn turned to the wiry-bodied leader.

“If I were you, Crang, I wouldn't trust Blayney after he gets to be forty.”

“Eh?” That was Blayney, an astounded look on his face. Crang's yellow eyes questioned Gosseyn.

“There are psychiatrical explanations for Blayney hitting me as he did,” Gosseyn explained. “His nervous system is beginning to react as strongly to things that might have happened as it would if they had actually occurred. It's a purely functional disorder, but its outward form is distressing to the individual. A gradual loss of courage. Sadistic outbursts to cover up the developing cowardice. By the time he's forty he'll be having nightmares about the damage he might have suffered in some of the danger spots he was in as a youth.” He shrugged. “Another case of a person lacking null-A integration.”

Blayney had gray eyes. They glared at Gosseyn, then twisted over to Crang. He said in a hushed voice, “May I hit him again, Mr. Crang?”

“No. What do you care what he thinks?”

Blayney looked dissatisfied, and Gosseyn said nothing more to aggravate the situation. It was time to tell his story.

Surprisingly, they listened intently. When Gosseyn had finished, Crang took a cigarette out of a case and lighted it. He caught Gosseyn's gaze on him, but he said nothing immediately. There was a slightly baffled expression on his face, and after a minute he was still puffing wordlessly at the cigarette. Gosseyn had time to study the man.

Eldred Crang was a lean man but not tall. There was a dark quality about his appearance that suggested Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin. He had possibly been born on a planet with a hotter sun than Sol. His manner was restless, and that, with his yellow-green eyes, gave a sort of fire to his personality.

So this was the man whom Patricia Hardie loved. Gosseyn wondered if he ought to feel any emotional dislike. He didn't. Instead, he found himself remembering what the roboplane had said, that Crang could not be expected to be helpful. The man was surrounded by gang adherents and by his own people. With Thorson in overall command, Crang would have to watch himself very carefully.

The man's silence ended abruptly. He laughed. “Just for a minute,” he said, “I had a mind to let you get away with that story. But the truth is we don't have to play games. We've decided to have a general conference about you with you present. We leave for Earth within the hour.”