Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

'You mean, we just sit out here in space?'

'Sleep,' she corrected. 'And stop worrying about those Venusians. Whoever attacks them will withdraw and look the situation over, as we did.'

He supposed she was right. The logic behind her remark was Aristotelian, and without evidence to support it. But her general argument was more plausible. Physical weariness. Slow reflexes. An imperative need to recuperate from the friction of battle.

The human element had entered the list of combatants.

'This blur,' he said finally, 'what's it about?'

'We wake up,' said Leej, 'and there it is.'

Gosseyn stared at her. 'No advance warning?'

'Not a word '

Gosseyn woke up in darkness, and thought, 'I've really got to investigate the phenomenon of my extra brain.' He felt immediately puzzled that he should have had such a thought during the sleep hour.

After all, his idea—a sound one—had been to leave the problem until he reached Venus.

There was a stirring in the next bed. Leej turned on the light. 'I have a sense of continuous blur,' she said. 'What's the matter?'

He felt the activity then, within himself. His extra brain working as it had when an automatic process was reacting to a cue. It was a sensation only, stronger than his awareness of the beating of his heart or the expansion and contraction of his lungs, but as steady. But this time there was no cue.

'When did the blur start?' he asked.

, 'Just now.' Her tone was serious. 'I told you there'd be one at this time, but I expected it to be the usual kind, a momentary block.'

Gosseyn nodded. He had decided to sleep up to the moment of the blur. And here it was. He lay back, closed his eyes, and deliberately relaxed the muscles of the blood vessels of his brain, a simple suggestive process. It seemed the most normal method of breaking the flow.

Presently, he began to feel helpless. How did a person stop the life of his heart or lungs—or the interneuronic flow that had suddenly and without warning started up in his extra brain?

He sat up and looked at Leej, and parted his lips to confess his failure. And then he saw a strange thing. He saw her appear to get up from her bed, and go to the door fully dressed. And then she was sitting at a table where Gilbert Gosseyn also sat, and Captain Free. Her face flickered. He saw her again, farther away this time. Her face was vaguer, her eyes wide and staring, and she was saying something he didn't catch.

With a start he was back in the bedroom, and Leej was still there, sitting on the edge of the bed gazing at him in amazement. 'What's the matter?' she said. 'It's continuing. The blur is continuous.'

Gosseyn climbed to his feet and began to dress. 'Don't ask me anything just now,' he said. 'I may be leaving the ship, but I'll be back.'

It took a moment, then, to bring back into his mind one of the areas he had 'memorized' on Venus two and a half months before.

He could feel the faint, pulsing flow from his extra brain. Deliberately, he relaxed as he had on the bed. He felt the change in the memory; it altered visibly. He was aware of his brain following the ever changing pattern. There were little jumps and gaps. But each time the photographic image in his mind would come clear and sharp, though changed.

He closed his eyes. It made no difference; the change continued. He knew that three weeks had passed, a month, then the full elapsed time since his departure from Venus. And still his memory of the area remained on a twenty decimal level.

He opened his eyes, shook himself with a shuddering muscular movement, and consciously forced himself to become aware again of his surroundings. ' It was easier the second time. And still easier the third time. At the eighth attempt the jumps and gaps were still there, but when he returned his attention to the bedroom, he realized that the uncontrolled phase of his discovery was over.

He no longer had the sensation of flow inside his extra brain.

Leej said, The blur has stopped!' She hesitated, then: 'But there's another one due almost immediately.'

Gosseyn nodded. 'I'm leaving now,' he said.

Without the slightest hesitation, he thought the old cue word for that memorized area.

Instantly, he was on Venus.

He found himself, as he had expected, behind the pillar he had used as a point of concealment on the day he arrived on Venus from Earth aboard the President Hardie.

Slowly, casually, he turned around to see if perhaps his arrival had been observed. There were two men in sight. One of them was walking slowly toward a partly visible exit. The other one looked directly at him.

Gosseyn walked toward him, and simultaneously the other man started forward, also. They met at a halfway mark, and the Venusian had a faint frown on his face.

'I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to remain here,' he said, 'until I can call a detective. I was watching the spot where you'—he hesitated—'materialized.'

Gosseyn said, 'I've often wondered what it would seem like to an observer.' He made no effort to conceal what had happened. 'Take me to your military experts at once.'

The man looked at him thoughtfully. 'You're a Null-A?'

'I'm a Null-A.'

'Gosseyn?'

'Gilbert Gosseyn.'

‘My name is Armstrong,’ said the man, and he held out his hand with a smile. ‘We’ve been wondering what had happened to you ——— ’ He broke off. 'But let's hurry.’

He did not head for the door, as Gosseyn had expected. Gosseyn slowed, and commented. Armstrong explained, 'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'but if you want fast contact you'd better come along. Does the word Distorter mean anything to you?'

It did indeed. 'Just a few as yet,' Armstrong amplified. 'We've been building vast numbers, but for other purposes.'

1 know,' said Gosseyn. The ship I was on ran into some of the result of your labors.'

Armstrong stopped as they came to the Distorter. His gaze was intent, and his face slowly whitened. 'You mean,' he said, that our defenses are no good?'

Gosseyn hesitated. 'I don't know yet for certain,' he said, 'but I'm afraid they're not.'

They went through the Distorter blackness in silence. When Armstrong opened the cage door, they were at the end of a corridor. They walked rapidly, Gosseyn slightly behind, to where several men were sitting at desks poring over piles

of documents. Gosseyn was not particularly surprised to discover that Armstrong was unacquainted with any of the men. Null-A Venusians were responsible individuals, and could go at will into factories where the most secret work was carried on.

Armstrong identified himself to the Venusian nearest the door, and then he introduced Gosseyn.

The man who had been sitting down stood up and held out his hand. 'Elliott is my name,' he said. He turned toward a nearby desk, and raised his voice. 'Hey, Don, call Dr. Kair. Gilbert Gosseyn is here.'

Gosseyn did not wait for Dr. Kair to arrive. What he had to say was too urgent for any delays. Swiftly he explained about the attack that Enro had ordered. That caused a sensation, but of a different kind than he expected.

Elliott said, 'So Crang succeeded. Good man.'

Gosseyn, on the point of continuing his account, stopped and stared at him. The light of understanding that broke over his mind then was dazzling for a moment. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that Crang went to Gorgzid for the purpose of

some how persuading Enro to launch an attack on Venus ——— ' He stopped, thinking of the still-born plot to assassinate

Enro. Explained now. It had never been intended to succeed.

His brief exhilaration faded. Soberly, he told the group of Venusians about the Predictors. He finished with the utmost earnestness:

I haven't actually tested my idea that Predictors can get through your cordons, but it seems logical to me that they can.'