Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

Thirty-six thousand, four hundred light-years from the galactic axis, at an angle of 272° from the standard line —which was based on some remote galaxy—and eighteen hundred light-years on the minus side of the galactic plane. And his very first task must be to get to Decant Eight.

As he pulled the lever in the cage, Gosseyn felt the change. Felt himself return to his own body—free of Ashargin.

He wakened in the swift fashion of the change, sat up abruptly, and then lay back with a groan as every stiff muscle in his body shrieked in protest against the sharp movement.

There was a feminine exclamation from near the bed, Leej came into the line of vision of his smarting eyes.

'You're awake,' she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. 'I thought something was going to happen, but I couldn't be sure.'

Tears came into her eyes. 'I've got to tell you,' she said. 'We're cut off. Something has happened to the Distorter system. The ship is marooned. Captain Free says it will take us five hundred years to get to the nearest base.'

The mystery of the lost destroyer, Y-381907, was explained.

A few of the operational principles of general semantics are as follows: (1) Human nervous systems are structurally similar one to the other, but are never exactly the same. (2) Any human nervous system is affected by events —verbal or nonverbal. (3) An event—that is a happening— affects the body-and-mind as a whole.

Gosseyn did not try to move again immediately. His eyes were watering from the sudden flood of light, but his vision was better. His body ached. Every joint and muscle seemed to be protesting the one attempt he had made to sit up. He recognized what had happened. Allowing for the passage of time during the Distorter transport, he had been away from the destroyer for about a month. During the whole time his body had been lying unconscious.

Compared to the attention the Gosseyn bodies must receive from their automatic 'incubators,' the care he had been given during the month just past, however well meaning, had probably been on a level only slightly higher than primitive.

He grew aware again of Leej. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him with eyes that glowed emotionally. But she said nothing, and so, favoring his stiff muscles, he looked around the room.

It was a rather nicely furnished bedroom with twin beds. The other bed had been slept in, and he surmised that it had been occupied by Leej. He passed instantly on to the thought that they were probably imprisoned together.

That was an assumption that he intended to check on as soon as possible.

His gaze came back to her, and this time she spoke. 'How are you feeling? The pictures I have are not clear on that point.'

He managed a reassuring smile for her. He was just beginning to realize what a disastrous month it must have been for a woman of her position. In spite of what the Follower had tried to do to her, she was not really accustomed to danger or reverses.

'I think I'm all right,' he said slowly. And his jaw ached from the effort of speaking.

Her delicate face showed concern. 'Just a moment,' she said. 'I'll get some ointment.'

She disappeared into the bathroom, and emerged almost immediately with a small plastic tube. Before he could realize her intention, she drew the bedclothes from him. For the first time he realized that he was completely undressed. She squeezed a fine slick of oil onto her palm, and began to rub it vigorously into his skin.

'I've been doing this all month,' she smiled. 'Just imagine.'

Oddly enough, he knew what she meant. Imagine Leej, a free Predictor, who had servants for every purpose, actually performing such menial labor herself. Her amazement at herself made the intimacy of the act subtly right and normal. He was no Enro, requiring the soft feel of women's hands to make him happy, but he settled back and waited while she rubbed the ache out of his legs, arms and back. She stepped away finally and watched his hesitant attempts to sit up.

To Gosseyn, his helplessness was a startling condition. Not really unexpected, but a reality which somehow he would have to take into account in the future. While he experimented with exercising his muscles, Leej brought his clothes out of a drawer.

'I had everything cleaned,' she said, 'in the ship's cleaning plant, and I bathed you about two hours ago, so you just have to get dressed.'

The fact that she had managed to secure the services of the laundry department interested Gosseyn, but he did not comment on that mundane level. 'You knew I was going to wake up?'

'Naturally.'

She must have seen the questioning expression of his face, for she said quickly:

'Don't worry, the blurs start soon enough, now that you're awake.'

'When?' He was tense at the thought of action.

'In about fifteen minutes.'

Gosseyn began to dress more swiftly.

He spent five of the fifteen minutes slowly walking around the room. Then he rested for a minute, and for two minutes walked faster, swinging his arms with a free rhythm. He paused finally and looked down at Leej where she had sat down in a chair.

'What's all this about being lost in space?' he asked.

The eagerness went out of her eyes. 'We're cut off,' she said somberly. 'Somebody set up a relay that destroyed the Distorter Matrix for the nearest base. That happened at the moment when you became unconscious, after the matrix had been used once.'

The technical words sounded strange coming from her lips, but presently only the meaning remained. In that first moment after his awakening, when his alertness had been subnormal, he had only partially grasped the implications of what she had said. It wasn't that he hadn't understood. He had. But his mind had leaped to the related but comparatively unimportant idea that this explained why the destroyer had for so long failed to answer videophone calls.

Now, he felt a chill.

Cut off, Leej had said. Cut off four hundred light-years from the nearest base. If the ship's Distorter transport system had really been put out of commission, then they would be dependent on atomic drive with all the speed limitations of ordinary space-time travel.

He parted his lips to speak. Leej knew virtually nothing of science. The words she used must have been picked up during the past month, and they probably meant very little to her.

He had better find out as quickly as possible from more authoritative quarters the full extent of the catastrophe.

He turned and looked at the door, annoyed at the idea of being imprisoned. These people couldn't possibly suspect what he could do with this extra brain. And, therefore, locked doors were childish barriers, irritating when there were so many things to do. He turned to question Leej.

She said quickly, 'It's not locked. We're not prisoners.'

Her words anticipated his question. It made him feel good to be back again where such things were possible. He walked to the door; it opened effortlessly. He hesitated, and then stepped across the threshold and out into the corridor. It was silent and deserted.

He took a photograph of the floor just outside the door, and because he was intent, a second passed before he realized that he must have used his extra brain automatically at just about the time predicted by Leej.

He returned into the room, and stood looking at her. 'Was that it?' he said. 'Was that the moment?'

She had climbed to her feet to watch him. Now, with a sigh, she sank back into her chair. 'What did you do?'

Gosseyn had no objection to telling her—except for one thing. 'If ever you should be captured,' he explained, 'a lie detector might obtain information from you that would be dangerous for us all.'