Alfred van Vogt - The World of Null-A

To hell with him!

On the afternoon of the experiment with the piece of wood, Gosseyn made a prolonged attempt to counteract the vibrator. Its intricacy startled him. It was a thing of many subtly different energies. Pulsations poured from it on a multitude of wave lengths. He succeeded in controlling it because it was a small machine, its various parts close together in space-time. The time difference between the innumerable functions was not a factor.

And that was why his control of it meant nothing so far as his escape was concerned. The time factor was important when, holding the vibrator, he tried simultaneously to memorize the structure of a section of the floor. He couldn't dominate both. That situation continued. He could control the vibrator or the floor, never the two of them together. The gang knew its Similarity science; that was finally clear.

On the nineteenth day he was given a metal rod with a concave cup made of electron steel, the metal used for atomic energy. Gingerly, Gosseyn reached with his mind for the small electric power source that had been brought into the room. The sparkling force coruscated in the energy cup and spat with a hazy violence against the floor, the wall, the transparent shield behind which the observers waited. Shuddering, Gosseyn broke the twenty-decimal similarity between the rod and the energy source. He surrendered the rod to a soldier who was sent out to take it from him. Not till then did Thorson come out. The big man was genial.

“Well, Mr. Gosseyn,” he said, almost respectfully, “we'd be foolish to give you any more training than that. It isn't that I don't trust you–” He laughed. “I don't. But I think you've got enough stuff to find our man.”

He broke off. “I'm having some extra clothing sent up to your apartment. Pack what you want, and be ready in an hour.”

Gosseyn nodded absently. A few moments later he watched the three guards ease the vibrator into the elevator, and then Prescott motioned him to enter. The men crowded in behind him. Prescott stepped to the controls, and Gosseyn, in a single, convulsive movement, grabbed him and smashed his head against the metal wall of the elevator. Even as he snatched at the blaster in the holster strapped to the man's hip, he let go of the body, reached for the nearest tube, and pressed it.

There was a blur of movement; that ended. By that time the blaster was glaring its white fire, and there were four dying men writhing on the floor.

The tremendous, desperate first act was a complete success.

Gosseyn tugged open the zippers and peeled off his suit. He suspected that electronic instruments were woven into its cloth, and there was at least one such device by which the wearer could be stunned by remote control. Stripped, he began to feel better, but it was not until he had hastily donned Prescott's suit and shoes that he considered himself ready for the next move.

He opened the elevator door and glanced along the unfamiliar corridor onto which it opened. He wondered briefly just where his chance pressure on the control tube had brought him. It didn't matter where he was, of course. This first stop had one purpose only-to get rid of the vibrator.

He shoved it unceremoniously out, and bundled the four bodies after it pitilessly. There was a door a score of feet along the hallway, but he had no time for exploration. This was one level that he must not come back to, for here the vibrator could nullify all his hopes; he just didn't have the time to examine it and shut off its interfering pulsations. Back in the elevator, he pressed a tube that took him to another unfamiliar corridor. Like the first one, it was empty. Gosseyn “memorized” the pattern of part of the floor near the elevator shafts and gave to its pattern the key number, one. At top speed he raced a hundred yards along the corridor, and paused when he came to a turn in the corridor. Just around the corner, he “memorized” a pattern of a small section of the floor, and gave it the key letter, A. Standing there, he thought, “One!”

Instantly he was back at the elevator shaft.

The sense of triumph that leaped through him was like nothing else he had ever experienced. He darted back into the elevator and pressed a third tube. The key words on that corridor were “2” and “B,” respectively. . . . As he stepped out of the elevator on the fourth corridor, a man was just coming out of the elevator in the next shaft. Remorselessly, Gosseyn opened up on him with his arsenal of weapons. He shoved the smoldering, twitching thing back into the elevator from which it had emerged a moment before.

That was the only incident of his swift progression. And yet, in spite of his speed, though he did not pause once to so much as glance inside a door, he estimated that half an hour had gone by when he finally reached the goal he had set himself: Nine pattern keys and as far as “I” in the alphabet of alternative patterns. And every electric socket on the way was “memorized” by a system of mathematical symbols.

He stepped back into the elevator and pressed the tube that took him to the corridor that led to Patricia's and his apartment. It too showed no sign that his break had yet been discovered. Gosseyn paused before the closed door, and made another brief survey of his situation. It was not absolutely perfect, but he had eighteen places to which he could retreat, and forty-one sources of energy on which his extra brain could draw. He saw that his hands were trembling the slightest bit, and he felt as if he had been perspiring. A natural tension, he decided. He was keyed up. In less than thirty minutes, he would be launched on the greatest military campaign ever attempted by one man, at least in his knowledge. In an hour he would be victorious or he would be dead forever.

His mental summation completed, he turned the knob and opened the door. Patricia Hardie leaped out of a chair and raced across the rug toward him. “For heavens sake,” she breathed, “where have you been?”

She broke off. “But never mind that. Eldred was here.”

There was nothing in her voice to indicate that she knew what had happened. Yet her words shocked Gosseyn. He had his first inkling of what she was going to say.

“Crang!” He spoke the name as if it were a bomb he was handling.

“He brought final instructions.”

“My God!” said Gosseyn.

He felt weak. He had waited and waited for some word. He had deliberately delayed until the last possible hour before he acted. And now this. The woman seemed unaware of his reaction.

“He said”–her voice sank to a whisper–“he said for you to pretend to be drawn to the Semantics building, and there co-operate with–with–” She swayed as if she were about to faint.

Gosseyn caught her, held her up. “Yes. Yes. With whom?”

“A bearded man!” It was a sigh. She straightened slowly, but she was trembling. “It's hard to imagine that Eldred has known about-him all this time.”

“But who is he?”

“Eldred didn't say.”

The anger that came to Gosseyn was all the more violent because what she was saying meant nothing after the irrevocable things he had done. But with all his strength and all his will he held that fury down. Patricia mustn't suspect yet what had happened, not until she had given him every bit of information that she had.

“What's the plan?” he said, and this time it was he who whispered.

“Death for Thorson.”

That was obvious. “Yes, yes?” Gosseyn urged.

“Then Eldred will have control of the army that Thorson brought with him. That's been the difficulty.” She spoke hurriedly. “Thorson commands a hundred million men in this sector of the galaxy. If those men can be gotten from Enro, it will take a year or more to organize another attack on Venus.”