Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

'Where to?'

'Over the mountain,' said Gosseyn, 'I'll tell you where to go from there.'

They took off swiftly over the city. To the impatient Gosseyn, it seemed as if the spread of lights below would never end. Finally, however, the blackness began, and soon it was

general except for vagrant spots of light that dotted the horizon.

Once more the roboplane spoke. 'We're over the mountains. Where to?'

Gosseyn looked down. He could see nothing. The sky was cloud-filled, the night like pitch.

'I want you to land on a little road about half a mile this side of the Temple of the Sleeping God,' he ordered.

He described it in detail, estimating the distance of various clumps of trees, and picturing the curving of the road on the basis of Ashargin's sharp memory of the scene.

The flight continued in silence. They came down in darkness, and bumped to a stop.

Gosseyn's parting admonition was: 'Come back every hour.'

He stepped down onto the road, walked a few feet, and stopped. He waited then for the plane to make its almost silent take off—a rush of air and a slight hiss of power— and then he started off along the road.

The night was hot and still. He met no one, but that was expected. This was a road that Ashargin knew of old. A thousand and more nights like this he had tramped from the potato fields back to Ms cot in one of the work huts.

He reached the even deeper shadows of the temple itself and paused again. For a long minute he listened for sounds that would indicate activity.

There was no sound.

Boldly, yet with care, he pushed open the metal door, and started down the same metal stairway which had been his route during the Parade of the Beholding.

He reached the door of the inner chamber without incident, and to his surprise it was unlocked. The surprise lasted only a few moments. He had brought along an instrument for picking locks, but it was just as well not to have to make Ashargin's poorly coordinated fingers cope with it.

He slipped inside, and closed the door softly behind him. The now familiar scene of the crypt spread before him. Swiftly, he walked to the small corridor that led to the private office of the Lord Guardian.

At that door he paused again and listened. Silence. Safely inside, he headed for the storeroom door. He held his breath as he peered into the dim interior, and sighed with relief as he saw the body lying on the floor.

He was in time. But the problem now was to get the unconscious body to safety.

First, he hid the matrix under a metal box on an upper shelf. Then, quickly, he knelt beside the still form, and listened for life in it. He heard the heartbeat, and felt the pulse, and felt the warmth of the slow, measured breathing of the unconscious Gosseyn. And it was one of the strangest experiences of his existence to be there watching over his own body.

He climbed to his feet, bent down, and slipped his hands under the armpits. He drew a deep breath, and jerked. The limp body moved about three inches.

He had expected difficulty in moving the body, but not that much. It seemed to him that if he could get it started that would be the important thing. He tried again, and this time he kept going. But his muscles began to ache as he crossed the little den, and he took his first rest at the door.

His second rest, somewhat longer, came at the end of the short corridor. When he reached the middle of the chamber of the crypt nearly twenty minutes later, he was so worn out that he felt dizzy.

He had already decided on the only possible place in the temple where he could hide the heavy body. Now, he began to wonder if he would have the strength to put it there.

He climbed the steps to the top of the crypt. From that vantage point, he studied the mechanism of the covering; not the transparent plates near the head of the sleeper, but the translucent sections farther along the twenty-foot length of the coffin.

They slid back. It was as simple as that. They slid back, and revealed straps and tubes and holding devices for three more bodies. Two of them were on a slightly smaller scale than the other. At the sight, understanding dawned on Gosseyn. The smaller ones were for women.

This spaceship was designed to take two women and two men across the miles of interstellar space and the years of time between star systems that had not had similarity travel established between them.

He wasted no time pondering the implications, but bent his muscles to the enormous task of dragging the Gosseyn body up the steps and into the crypt.

How long it required he had no idea. Again and again he rested. A dozen times it seemed to him that Ashargin was being driven beyond all the resources of his thin physique. But at last he had the body tied in place. Tied because there must be a mechanism for disposing of dead bodies. Parts of this machine were so faulty that they probably had no operating function that would tell them when a body was alive. That might explain why the women and one of the men had not been replaced.

It was as well to take precautions.

He slid the panel back in place, moved the steps back into position, and he was standing on top of them making sure that there was no sign that they had been tampered with, when he heard a sound from the direction of the storeroom. He turned, tense.

Eldred Crang came in.

The Null-A detective stopped short, and put one finger to his lips in a warning fashion. He came forward swiftly, pushed the other stairway toward the rear of the crypt, and climbed up it.

With a gesture he slid back the panels where Gosseyn-Ashargin had put the Gosseyn body. For several seconds he gazed down at the body, and then he pulled the panels shut, climbed to the floor, and pulled the stairway back where it had been.

Ashargin meanwhile had returned to the floor also, Crang took his arm.

'Sorry,' he said in a low voice, 'that I didn't get a chance to help you cart it up there. But I wasn't in my apartment when the machine first sent a warning to me. I came as soon as I could make sure'—he smiled—'that you hid it where it ought to go.'

'But now, quick, come along.'

Gosseyn followed him without a word. There was not a Null-A aboard the Venus who had questioned Crang's motives, and he was not going to start now. His mind bubbled with questions, but he was prepared to accept the implications of Crang's words that there was need for haste.

Through the little office and into the storeroom they hurried. Crang stepped aside when they came to the Distorter. 'You first,' he said.

They emerged in Crang's library. Crang started forward as urgently as ever, and then, halfway across the floor, he paused and turned. He indicated the Distorter through which Gosseyn had originally come from Yalerta.

'Where does that lead?' he asked.

When Gosseyn told him, he nodded. 'I thought it was something like that. But I could never be sure. Going through from here depends upon the operation of remote controls, which I've never been able to locate.'

Crang asking a question about something he didn't know was a new experience for Gosseyn. Before Gosseyn could ask any questions of his own, Crang said:

'Enro has been away for eight days, but he's due back any minute. That's according to word we received shortly after dinner. So go to your room as fast as you can'—he hesitated, evidently considering his next words—'and sleep,' he finished finally. 'But quick now.'

In the drawing room, Patricia said, 'Good night!' quietly.

At the outer door Crang said earnestly, 'Have a good night's rest. And I mean sleep!'

Gosseyn headed sedately along the corridor. He felt strangely blank, and he had a feeling that too many things had happened too swiftly. Why had Crang assured himself that the Gosseyn body was in the right place, after having first been warned by a machine? What machine? There was only one that had any relevancy, so far as Gosseyn could make out. And that was the damaged electronic brain under the crypt.