Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

His problem with regard to the Follower was not radically altered. Deadly and imminent danger remained but at least he could now get out into the open.

Warily, like a fighter parrying a dangerous opponent, Gosseyn watched the gorilla-like Jurig who was supposed to kill him.

'Leej,' he said, without looking at the Predictor woman, 'come over here behind me.'

She came without a word, her feet almost noiseless on the floor. He had a glimpse of her face as she slipped past him. Her cheeks were colorless, her eyes blurred, but she held her head high.

From the far side of what was now one room, Jurig snarled. 'That won't do you any good, hiding behind him.'

It was a purely thalamic threat, serving no useful purpose even to Jurig. But Gosseyn did not let it go by. He had been waiting for an opening. A man who could not make up his mind about a larger issue had to appear to concentrate on a smaller one. So long as he gave the impression of being concerned with Jurig, as if that were the danger, just so long would the Follower await events. He said in a steely voice:

'Jurig, I'm tired of that kind of talk. It's time you made up your mind whose side you're on. And I'm telling you right now that it had better be mine.'

The Yalertan, who had been bracing himself and edging toward, stopped. The muscles of his face worked spasmodically, quivering between doubt and rage. He glared at Gosseyn with the baffled eyes of a bully whose smaller opponent was not afraid.

'I'm going to smash your head against the cement,' he said from between clenched teeth. But he spoke the words as if he were testing their effect.

'Leej,' said Gosseyn.

'Yes?'

'Can you see what I'm going to do?'

'There's nothing. Nothing.'

It was Gosseyn's turn to be baffled. True, if she couldn't foresee his actions, then neither could the Follower. But he had hoped to obtain a vague picture which would help him make up his mind. What should he do when he got outside? Run? Or enter the Retreat and seek out the Follower?

His role in this affair was on a vaster level than that of either Jurig or Leej. Like the Follower, he was a major piece in the galactic game of chess. At least, he must consider himself one until events proved otherwise. It imposed restraints upon him. Escape alone would not solve his problems. He must also, if it could possibly be done, plant the seeds of future victory.

'Jurig,' he temporized aloud, 'you've got a big decision to make. It involves more courage than you've yet shown, but I'm sure you have it in you. From now on, regardless of consequences, you're against the Follower. I tell you, you have no choice. The next time we meet, if you're not working unconditionally against him, I shall kill you.'

Jurig stared at him uncertainly. It seemed hard for him to realize that a fellow prisoner was actually giving him an order. He laughed uneasily. And then the immensity of the insult must have penetrated. He became enormously angry, the anger of a man who feels himself outraged.

'I'll show you what choice I have!' he shouted.

His approach was swift but heavy. He held his arms out, obviously intending to hug and squeeze, and the surprise for him was when Gosseyn stepped right into the circle of those bear like limbs, and sent a powerful right to his jaw. The blow failed to land squarely but it stopped Jurig short. He grappled with Gosseyn with a sick look on his face. His expression grew sicker as he fought to gain a strangle hold on a man who, now that so telling a blow had been struck, was not only faster but stronger than himself.

The Yalertan yielded suddenly, like a door that has been smashed open, with a battering ram. Gosseyn felt it coming, and with a final burst of strength sent the other staggering back across the floor, routed, defeated in mind and body.

The shock would be lasting, and Gosseyn regretted it. But there was no doubt that it had been necessary. On such identifications, people like Jurig built their egos. All through his life, like the goats in the famous experiment, Jurig had butted his way to dominance. It was his way, not Gosseyn's, of expressing his superiority.

Consciously, he would resent the defeat, find a dozen excuses for himself. But on the unconscious level he would accept it. So far as Gilbert Gosseyn was concerned, his confidence in his physical prowess was gone. Only Null-A training would ever enable him to reorientate himself to the new situation, and that was not available.

Satisfied, Gosseyn similarized himself out onto the courtyard. Swiftly, then, the greater purpose of escape took full possession of his nervous system.

He was vaguely aware of people in the courtyard turning to look at him as he ran. He had a glimpse, in turning his head, of an enormous pile of buildings, spires and steeples, masses of stone and marble, colored glass windows. That picture of the Follower's Retreat remained in his mind even as he kept 'watch' on every energy source in the castle. He was ready to similarize himself back and forth to escape blasters and power-driven weapons. But there was no change in the flow from the dynamo or the atomic pile.

Automatically, he similarized Leej to the memorized area behind him, but he did not look to see if she was following him.

He reached the tall fence, and saw that the spears which looked formidable enough in themselves were encrusted with the same kind of needles as had been the grilles in the prison cell he'd just left. Nine feet of unscalable metal—but he could see between the spears.

It required the usual long—it seemed long—moment to memorize an area beyond the fence. Actually, it was not a memory. When he concentrated in a definite fashion on a spot, his extra brain automatically took a 'photograph' of the entire atomic structure of the matter involved to a depth of several molecules. The similarization process that could then follow resulted from the flow of nervous energy along channels in the extra brain—channels which had been created only after prolonged training. The activating cue would send a wash of that energy out, first along the nerves of his body, and then beyond his skin. For an instant then, every affected atom was forced into a blurred resemblance to the photographer pattern. When the approximation of similarity was made accurate to twenty decimal places, the two objects became contiguous, and the greater bridged the gap to the lesser as if there were no gap.

Gosseyn similarized himself through the fence and started to run toward the woods. As he ran he felt the presence of magnetic energy and saw a plane glide toward him over the trees. He kept on running, watching it from the corner of his eyes, striving to analyze its power source. It had no propeller, but there were long metal struts jutting down from its stubby wings. Similar type plates ran along its fuselage, and that gave him confirmation. Here was the source of the magnetic power.

Its weapons would be bullets or a magnetic beam blaster.

The machine had been off to one side. Now, its nose twisted toward him. Gosseyn similarized himself back to the fence.

A plume of colored fire puffed along the ground where he had been. The grass smoked. There were flashes of yellow flame from the brush, but that only mingled with the red-green-blue-orange of the blaster's own chromatic display.

As the plane hissed past him, Gosseyn took a photograph of its tail assembly. And once more, at top speed, he started to run toward the trees more than a hundred yards away.

He kept a watch on the plane, and saw it turn and dive down at him again. This time Gosseyn took no chances. He was a hundred feet from the fence, which was dangerously close. But he similarized the tail assembly of the plane to the memorized area beside the fence.

There was a crash that rocked the ground. The metallic shriek of the plane, its speed undiminished by the process of similarization, was ear splitting as it screeched along parallel to the fence, tearing the fence with fantastic ripping sounds. It came to a rest an eighth of a mile away, a tattered fragment.