Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

There was one other thing he had to do, and he did it the moment he was down in the Retreat again. He similarized Yanar to his one memorized area on the island of Crest.

That humane duty performed, he joined the group investigating the Follower's private Distorter system. Already the results were interesting.

'That is the most advanced setup we've seen to date,' one of the Null-As told him. 'More intricate. Some of the printed circuits inside that paneling will take time to trace.'

They had already decided to work on the assumption that the Follower's Distorters operated on a better than twenty decimal similarity basis.

'So we're going to remain on Yalerta for a while, and give you a chance to come back. Besides, we have to wait for that battleship of Enro's which you mentioned. It's due any day now.'

Gosseyn agreed that the final purpose at least was important. It was vital that no more Predictors be sent to Enro's fleet.

He was not so sure about waiting for his return. The action he was about to take could become involved, and might require a prolonged effort. Still, if the Distorter Was really fast, only the journey through it would take time. He could now be sure of similarizing himself back to the ship with minimum time error, and then back again to wherever he had been.

It was the opinion of all that there was no time to waste, and that a thorough investigation of the instruments would take quite a while.

Once again Gosseyn agreed. His own examination had shown him that the paneling was divided into two sections. In one division were three Distorters, the controls of which could be adjusted to any patterns.

The second division had in it only one instrument. It had as its control a single protruding tube, which could be pulled or pushed by a tiny lever. In the past he had discovered that such single control Distorters were similarizable to any one destination to which they had a permanent matrix. He hoped that this one was tuned to the Follower's real headquarters in the galaxy.

He pulled the lever without hesitation.

Gosseyn did not move immediately after the blackness ended. He was in a large, book-lined room. Through a half open door he could see the edge of a bed.

He let his extra brain become aware of the life in the building. There was a great deal, but it seemed on a quiet and peaceful level. As far as he was able to make out, there was no one in the adjoining room.

His gaze was moving around swiftly now. He saw that the Distorter to which he had been similarized was one of two set at right angles to each other in a corner.

That seemed to complete the general picture.

He memorized a floor area at his feet, then walked over and picked one of the books out of the bookcase. It was printed in the Gorgzid language.

That gave him a moment of exhilaration, but as he was turning to the flyleaf he thought: It doesn't necessarily mean I'm on Gorgzid. Many people in the Greatest Empire will have books printed in the language of the capital planet.

At that instant his thought poised. He stared down at the name in the flyleaf, shook his head, and put the book back on the shelf.

But five other volumes he selected at random had the 'same name in them.

It was the name of Eldred Crang.

Gosseyn walked slowly to the bedroom door. He was puzzled, but not very worried. As he moved across the bedroom, he sensed the presence of people in the room beyond. Cautiously, he opened the door a crack. A corridor. He opened the door wider, slipped through and closed it behind him.

If necessary, he could make a retreat at the speed of similarity. But he wasn't sure yet whether he was going to retreat.

He reached the end of the corridor and stopped. From where he stood he could just see the back of somebody who looked like Patricia Hardie. She spoke then, and the identification was complete.

Her words had no importance, nor had the answer Crang gave her. What mattered about them was that here they were, and in the library adjoining their bedroom was a Distorter that connected with the Follower's Retreat on Yalerta.

It was a bewildering discovery, and Gosseyn decided against confronting the couple until he had discussed the matter with Elliott and the others.

But he was not yet ready to leave Gorgzid. He returned to the library, and stood contemplating the second Distorter. Like the one which he had already used in the Retreat, it was a single control affair.

It seemed logical to find out where it would take him. He pressed the lever.

He emerged in what seemed to be a small storeroom. There were piles of metal cases in one corner, and several shelves. A single, closed door seemed the only normal entrance.

There was no Distorter except the one through which he had come.

Swiftly, Gosseyn memorized a floor area, and then tried the door. It opened out upon a rather bare office. A desk, two chairs and a rug completed the picture.

Beyond the desk was another door.

Gosseyn paused on his way across the room and tried the drawers of the desk. They were locked with key locks, and could not be opened by an extra brain without the use of power.

The office door opened onto a corridor about ten feet long, at the end of which was another door. Gosseyn pushed it wide without hesitation, stepped through, and stopped.

The large chamber that spread before him hummed with faint undercurrents of sound. A narrow buttress extended twenty feet from one wall. It was so skillfully integrated that it seemed to be a projection of the wall itself, a prolonged curving out instead of the flat surface which the wall normally should have been.

The nearer curve of the jutting wall was translucent, and glowed with an all-pervading light. Tiny stairways led from the floor to the top of the crypt of the Sleeping God of Gorgzid.

The effect of it upon him was different than when he had seen it through the eyes of Ashargin. Now, with his extra brain, he sensed the pulsing currents of energy that operated the invisible machines. Now, there came a faint sense of life force, a human neural flow, slight, steady, and with scarcely any variation in intensity.

Gosseyn climbed the steps without benefit of the Ceremony of the Beholding, and looked down at the Sleeping God of Gorgzid. His examination of the face and of the crypt was different from that of Ashargin, sharper, more alert. He saw things to which the duller senses of the prince had been blind.

The 'coffin' was a structure of many sections. The body was held by a series of tiny, viselike arms and hands. He recognized their purpose. They were designed to exercise the muscles. If the Sleeping God ever wakened from his long sleep, he would not find himself stiff and weak, as Gilbert Grosseyn had after a month of being unconscious on the destroyer Y-381907.

The sleeper's skin was healthy. His body looked firm and strong. Whoever had planned his diet had had more equipment than had been available to Leej on the destroyer.

Gosseyn came down the steps, and examined the base of the coffin. As he had expected, the stairs were movable, and the base panels could slide back.

He slid them out of the way, and stood looking down at a machine.

Almost immediately he realized that he had come to the end of a trail. On all his journeyings, on the mightiest ships of the Greatest Empire, he had never seen a machine quite like this one.

After he had gazed at it a while, he shook his head in wonder. The circuits were printed in intricate designs, but he was able to identify more than a dozen purposes.

He recognized a Distorter circuit, a lie detector, a robot relay, and other more simple devices. But that electronic brain had no less than one hundred and forty-seven main circuits, each one of which was a unit in depth, the surface and interior of which was interlaid with many thousands of smaller circuits.