Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

As he watched, the other lifted down one of the metal panels. Swiftly, he drew out the matrix in the slot, laid it on the floor, and came up immediately with a curved, glowing shape. Because of its shininess, it was so different from the other that a moment passed before Gosseyn recognized it. A Distorter matrix, not dead, but energized.

He stepped out of his hiding place, and walked toward the control board. He was about ten feet from it when the man must have heard him coming. He stiffened and then slowly turned.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘but I was sent up here to do some work on this ——— ’ He stopped the lie. Relief

flooded his face. He said, 'I thought you were one of the officers.'

He seemed about to turn back to the board when Gosseyn's expression must have warned him. Or perhaps he was taking no chances. His hand moved convulsively, and a blaster appeared in it.

Gosseyn similarized him thirty feet from the control board. He heard the hiss of the blaster, and then a cry of amazement, behind him. He turned swiftly, and saw that the other man was poised rigid in every muscle, facing away. In the man's tense hand he caught the glint of the blaster's stock. Swiftly, he photographed it, and as the other swung jerkily around, he similarized the weapon into his own hand. He was deliberate now.

He got the maniacal terror he wanted, but he got something more also. Snarling like an animal, the man made an attempt to reach the Distorter switches. Three times Gosseyn similarized him back to his starting point. The third time, abruptly, the other ceased his mad effort. He stopped. He snatched a knife from an inner pocket, and before Gosseyn could realize his intention, plunged the blade into his own left breast.

There were sounds of running footsteps. Captain Free, followed an instant later by Leej, came darting into the control room. 'What happened?' Captain Free asked breathlessly.

He stopped short, and he stood by wordlessly as the traitor grimaced at them, shuddered—and died.

The commander identified him as an assistant to the communications engineer. He verified that the matrix the fellow had put into the similarity slot was for the base four hundred light-years away.

There was time, then, for explanations. Gosseyn offered the main points of his rationalization that had led him to set his trap.

'If it was an agent of the Follower, then he must still be aboard. Why? Well, because no one was missing. How did I know that? You, Captain Free, kept in touch with the noncommissioned officers in charge of dormitories, and they would surely have reported it if a man were missing.

'So he was still aboard. And for a whole month he waited in the lower part of the ship, cut off from the control room. You can imagine the ferment he was in, for he surely hadn't planned on waiting so long before making his escape. Why would he have a way of escape? I think it'd be because a man would always include a way of escape when making his plans, and would only accept the idea of death if he felt himself trapped.

'With all those pressures working on him, he wasted no time getting upstairs when the doors opened.

'Of course, the new matrix would also have a wrecking circuit in it, which would operate the moment he used it to escape. But there's one little point about that which puzzles me. Captain Free tells me we'll have to stop at a base about eighteen thousand light-years from here, and pick up the matrixes that will take us to Venus at r36000 theta 272 Z1400, and when we get there, we're going to have to have our papers in order.

'My little point is this: How did a mechanic expect to turn up at base without release papers of some kind? Crew members of warships usually have to explain why they are not with their ships. You might say the Follower would protect him, but that isn't really logical. I don't think the Follower would care to have Enro know that he was responsible for cutting off Predictors from the fighting fleets for a whole month.’

He looked up. 'As soon as you've fixed up that circuit, Captain, come and see me. I'll be in my room.'

For the sake of sanity, learn to evaluate an event in terms of total response. Total response includes visceral and nervous changes, and emotional reaction, the thought about the event, the spoken statement, the action repressed, the action taken, et cetera.

As soon as he reached the bedroom, Gosseyn took off his shoes and lay down on top of the bed. He had been feeling the nausea coming on for more than an hour. The great effort of trapping the saboteur had been a strain almost too much for him to maintain.

He was anxious not to show weakness. And so it was pleasant to feel the strength flowing back into his body. After twenty minutes of lying with closed eyes, he stretched, yawned, and opened his eyes.

He sat up with a sigh. It was like a signal. Leej came in carrying another bowl of soup. The timing of it obviously indicated prevision. Gosseyn ate the soup thinking about that, and he was just finishing it when Captain Free came into the room.

'Well,' he said, 'we're all set. Give the signal and well start.'

Gosseyn glanced at Leej, but she shook her head. 'You can't expect anything from me,' she said. 'As far as I can see, there's nothing wrong, but I can't see as far as we're going.'

Captain Free said, 'We're lined up to go through the remainder of Decant Nine to the nearest marginal base in Decant Eight. There, of course, we have to stop.'

'Approach that base with a break,' Gosseyn said, 'and then we'll talk some more.'

Eighteen similarity jumps and slightly more than ten minutes later, according to the time that seemed to have passed, Captain Free came back into the cabin.

'We're six and three quarter light-years from the base,' he said. 'Not bad. That puts us within eleven thousand light-years of Venus.'

Gosseyn climbed off the bed and walked stiffly to the control room. He sank into the lounge in front of the transparent dome. The question in his mind was, should they flash straight into the base? Or should they make their approach overland? He glanced questioningly at Leej.

'Well?' he said.

The young woman walked over to the control board. She settled into the circular chair, turned, and said, 'We're going in.' She pulled the lever.

The next second they were inside the base.

There was dimness all around. As his eyes became accustomed to the lesser light, Gosseyn saw that the enormous metal cave was much larger than the base of the Greatest Empire on Venus.

Gosseyn turned his attention to Captain Free. The commander was giving instructions over the videophone. He came over to Gosseyn just as Leej also walked up. He said:

'An assistant of the port captain will come aboard in about half an hour Meanwhile I've given orders for the new equipment to be brought into the ship. They accept that as routine.'

Gosseyn nodded, but he was thoughtful as he studied the officer. He was not worried to any extent as to what Captain Free might be able to do against his interests. With Leej and himself coordinating to frustrate a threatening danger before it was scheduled to happen, risks from men and machines need scarcely be thought about.

Still, the man seemed to be co-operating not as a prisoner but as an open partner. He had no desire to call the other's attention to his neglect of duty as an officer of the military forces of the Greatest Empire, and yet, some understanding seemed essential.

He decided to be frank. After he had finished, he had to wait for nearly a minute. Finally, Captain Free said:

'Gosseyn, a man in your position, with your special power, can scarcely have any idea of what hundreds of thousands of officers in the Greatest Empire went through when Enro took over. It was very skillfully done, and if the others were like me, then they must have felt trapped.