Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

Firmly, he pressed the button. Metal stirred, thick slabs of it glided across the opening and clanked shut with a steely sound.

'Mind if I talk to my partner outside?' Oreldon asked.

Gosseyn had been wondering about the man outside. 'What do you want to say to him?' he asked.

'Oh, just that I've closed the door, and that he can relax for a while.'

'Naturally,' said Gosseyn, 'you will be careful how you word it.'

'Of course.'

Gosseyn checked the wiring, then waited while Oreldon switched on a wall phone. He recognized that the other was in a state of thalamic stimulation. Accordingly, he would be swept along by the intoxicating flood of his own humor until the shock of imminent disaster sobered him. That would be the moment to watch for.

Apparently, the doors were not always open, for the admission officer did not seem surprised that they were closed. 'You're sure, Orry,' he said, 'that you're not going off with that female who just came in?'

'Regretfully, no,' said Oreldon, and broke the connection. 'Can't have these conversations going on too long,' he said heartily to Gosseyn. 'People might get suspicious.'

They came to a stairway. Oreldon was about to start down it when Gosseyn restrained him. 'Where does this lead?' he asked.

'Why, down to the men's quarters.'

'And where's the control room?'

'Oh, you wouldn't want the control room. You have to climb for that. It's up front.'

Gosseyn said gravely that he was happy to hear that. 'And how many openings are there into the lower deck?' he asked.

'Four.'

'I hope,' said Gosseyn pleasantly, 'that you're telling me the truth. If I should discover that there are five, for instance, this blaster might go off suddenly.'

There's only four, I swear it,' said Oreldon. His voice was hoarse suddenly.

'You see,' said Gosseyn, 'I notice there's a heavy door that can slide over this stairway.'

'Wouldn't you say that was normal?' Oreldon was back in the groove again. 'After all, a spaceship has to be built so that whole sections can be sealed off in case of accident.'

'Let's slide it shut, shall we?' said Gosseyn.

'Huh!' His tone showed that he hadn't even thought of such a thing. His pasty face showed that this was the moment of shocked realization. His eyes rolled as he glared helplessly along the corridor. 'You don't think for one second,' he snarled, 'that you're going to get away with this.'

The door,' said Gosseyn in an inexorable tone.

The officer hesitated, his body rigid. Then slowly he walked to the wall. He opened a sliding panel, waited tensely until Gosseyn had checked the wiring and then jerked the lever. The door panels were only two inches thick. They closed with a faint thud.

'I sincerely hope,' said Gosseyn, 'that they are now locked, and that they can't be opened from beneath, because if I should discover differently I would always have time to fire this blaster at least once.'

They lock,' said Oreldon sullenly.

'Fine,' said Gosseyn. 'But now let's hurry. I'm eager to have those other stairways cut off also.'

Oreldon kept glancing anxiously along side corridors as they walked, but if he hoped that they would see a member of the crew, he was disappointed. There was silence except for the faint sound of their own movements. No one stirred.

'I think everyone must have gone to bed,' said Gosseyn.

The man did not respond. They completed the task of shutting off the lower floor before another word was spoken, then Gosseyn said, ‘That should leave twenty officers including you and your friend outside. Is that right?'

Oreldon.,, nodded, but he said nothing. His eyes looked glazed.

'And if I remember my ancient history of Earth correctly,' said Gosseyn, 'there used to be an old custom—-due to the intransigent character of some people—of confining officers to their quarters under certain circumstances. That always meant a system of outside locks. It would be interesting if Euro's warships also had problems, and solutions, like that.'

He had to take only one glance at his prisoner's face to realize that Enro's ships had.

Ten minutes after that, without a shot having been fired, he was in complete control of the galactic warship.

It had been too easy. That was the feeling that grew on Gosseyn as he peered into the deserted control room. Herding Oreldon ahead of him, and with Leej bringing up the rear, he entered the room. Critically, he looked around.

There was slackness here, not a single man on duty, except the two officers who looked after the Predictors.

Too easy. Considering the precautions that the Follower had already taken against him, it seemed unbelievable that the ship was his in reality.

And yet, it seemed to be.

Once more he gave his attention to the room. The instrument board curved massively beneath the transparent dome. It was divided into three sections: electric, Distorter and atomic. First, the electric.

He manipulated the switches that started an atomic powered dynamo somewhere in the depths of the ship. He felt better. As soon as he had memorized enough sockets, he would be in a position to release intolerable energy into each room and along every corridor. It was tremendously convincing. If this was a trap, then the crew members were not in on it.

But still he was dissatisfied, He studied the board. There were levers and dials on each section, the purposes of which he could only partially guess. He did not worry about the electric or the atomic; the latter could not be used within the confines of the ship, and the former he would shortly control without qualification.

That left the Distorter. Gosseyn frowned. There was no doubt of it. Here was the danger. Despite his possession of an organic Distorter in what he called his extra brain, his knowledge of the mechanical Distorter system of the galactic civilization was vague. In that vagueness his weakness must lie, and the trap, if there was a trap.

In his preoccupation, he had moved back from the board. He was standing there, teetering between several possibilities, when Leej said, 'We'll have to sleep.'

'Not while we're on Yalerta,' said Gosseyn.

His main plan was fairly clear. There was a margin of error between perfect similarity and the twenty decimal similarity of the mechanical Distorter. Measured by spatial distance, it came to about a thousand light-years every ten hours. But that also, Gosseyn had already surmised, was an illusion.

He explained to Leej: 'It's not really a question of speed. Relatively, one of the earliest and most encompassing of Null-A formulations, shows that factors of space and time cannot be considered separately. But I'm coming around to another variation of the same idea. Events occur at different moments, and separateness in space is merely part of the image that forms in our nervous systems when we try to interpret the time gap.'

He saw that once more he had left the woman far behind. He went on, half to himself: ‘It’s possible that two given events are so closely related that in fact they are not different events at all, no matter how far apart they seem to be, or how carefully defined. In terms of probability ——— ’

Gosseyn stood frowning over the problem, feeling himself on the edge of a much greater solution that that required by the immediate situation. Leej's voice distracted his attention.

'But what are you going to do?'

Gosseyn stepped once more to the board. 'Right now,' he said, 'we're taking off on normal drive.'

The control instruments were similar to those on the ships that plied the space between Earth and Venus. The first upward thrust tensed every plate. The movement grew continuous. In ten minutes they were clear of the atmosphere, and gathering speed. After twenty-five minutes more, they emerged from the umbral cone of the planet, and sunlight splashed brilliantly into the control room.