Alfred Van Vogt: Null–A Three

He is captured by Eldred Crang, Venusian detective—and turned loose. After what Prescott overheard Kair discover about Gosseyn’s brain, they no longer fear him. Indeed, the gang realizes they are expected to kill Gosseyn. They refuse.

Free, Gosseyn doesn’t know what to do about himself. He goes to the Games Machine. And it tells him that Crang was right. He has served his purpose. He was used, first to startle the gang leaders, then to show them that their secret hiding place in Venus was known. It was all part of an immense political maneuvering, and it is up to him now to make way for Gosseyn Three, whose extra-brain is already trained.

The Machine also tells him that Venus has been invaded and all its cities captured, and that therefore he must waste no time in killing himself. Gosseyn refuses to do so, but later after boldly entering the palace, and sending the Distorter to the Games Machine, he realizes that he has no alternative.

He rents a room in a hotel, drugs himself with Coue hypnotic drug, sets a phonograph to repeating endlessly that he must kill himself; and he is lying there half-unconscious when he hears heavy gunfire. He drags himself out of bed, turns on the radio, and hears the Game Machine tell him not to kill himself because the body of Gosseyn Three has been accidentally destroyed, and so it’s up to him to escape and train his extra-brain.

Vaguely, Gosseyn hears the announcer say finally that the Game Machine has been destroyed. He returns to the bed, and slowly forgets what he has been told by the Machine. There is only the whining voice of the record repeating, “Kill yourself, kill yourself!—” This time he is rescued by Dan Lyttle, hotel clerk.

In the final third of “World”, Gosseyn’s “double” brain is trained, but he discovers it controls energy flows on a 20-decimal level of refinement, thus transcending the time-space phenomenon.

The violent conspirators are confronted in the Semantics Institute on Earth, and suffer the fate they deserve.

In the final chapter Gosseyn, still seeking clues to his own identity, finds himself looking down at a newly dead body, the face of which is a duplicate of his own. As his own mind probes the few, still living cells of the duplicate brain, vague clues come through. But he realizes that he has arrived too late.

He has won the battle; but he still does not know who he is…

The 1940s were easily the busiest years of my writing career; so, after it became apparent that “World” had made a big hit with most of the readers of Astounding Stories (about this time called Astounding Science Fiction), I wrote an even longer sequel: “The Players of Null-A.”

“Players” was published in the October, November, December, 1948, and January, 1949, issues of Astounding; and it also had summaries of the earlier installments, beginning in the November issue.

“The Players of Null-A” opens with the introduction of a sinister new character, a shadowy being, called The Follower; and presently a stranger history of human beings in our Milky Way galaxy emerges, and it tells how they (we) got here.

Two million years ago, in another galaxy far away, the human race there discovers that a vast, deadly cloud of gas is enveloping all its planets. Not everybody can escape, but tens of thousands of small spaceships are sent out, with potential survivors aboard each little craft in a state of suspended animation. After the million-plus year voyage, the little ships reach our Milky Way galaxy, and begin to land at random on habitable planets thousands of light-years apart.

Gilbert Gosseyn, a clone descendant of one of the survivors, has finally (in “The World of Null-A”) discovered clues to his origin, and his special abilities. Here on earth of 2560 A.D. he has received Null-A training, and is accordingly entitled to live on Null-A Venus. He is, at first, unaware that, as a result of his newly discovered self-knowledge, he has become the target of the machinations of The Follower, a shadow-like being, who comes to earth from a far-distant star system of the Greatest Empire—a vast interstellar civilization.

The Follower’s purpose is to prevent Gosseyn from leaving the solar system. Which means he wants to stop him, first of all, from going to Venus, where there is a hidden—hidden underground—interstellar space-time distorter system for transmitting huge spaceships across light-years of distance instantaneously. The principal reason for trying to delay Gosseyn is that, if he reached Venus in time, he might accompany the sister of Enro, head of the Greatest Empire; accompany her and her Null-A detective companion, Eldred Crang, to the Capital Planet of the Empire.

The delaying action is successfully achieved by The Follower’s human agent, Janasen. And, when Gosseyn later confronts Janasen, the latter produces an energized flat object, which has the appearance of being a glowing calling-card. When Gosseyn finally, deliberately, takes the card, he is instantaneously transported to a prison cell on the planet of the Predictors, a race of people who can predict the future. There, he meets, among others, a beautiful young woman, Leej, in whose presence—and with whose help—he has his first confrontation with The Followers.

Gosseyn has escaped from the prison cell by using his special abilities; and The Follower watched him escape with the intention of learning his methods.

As a result of this observation, the shadow being decides that Gosseyn is dangerous, and offers him a partnership arrangement—the purpose of which, apparently, is to take over the Greatest Empire from Enro and his sister, Reesha (on earth she used the name “Patricia”).

Gosseyn has the unhappy task of telling the schemer that Null-A people do not wish to conquer anyone except by reason. Whereupon, The Follower tries to destroy him. The resultant battle between the two tells us a great deal about the special abilities of both.

They seem to be equally matched; for both escape.

Gosseyn, with the help of Leej, thereupon makes it to the Capital Planet, where we discover that Reesha and Crang are trying to influence Enro toward peace; and

The Follower, who is revealed to be Enro’s chief advisor when in human form, is urging Enro to destroy Non-Aristotelian Venus.

Enro is alarmed by Gosseyn’s special abilities; and, after a confrontation, he lets The Follower influence him in the direction of destroying the solar system.

However, Gosseyn, with the help of Leej, Reesha and Crang, aided by the special Null-A defenses of Venus, defeats the vast fleets that are launched against Earth and Venus.

But Leej, and even villainous Enro—it turns out—are also descendants of the survivors of the distant galaxy; and their special abilities will be useful, as part of a team effort, that has the goal of returning to their galaxy of origin to find out what happened there.

“Players” ends with the destruction of The Follower.

And so, now that the reader has become aware of what went on in the previous “installments” (“The World of Null-A” and “The Players of Null-A”) the stage is set for “Null-A Three”.

Gilbert Gosseyn opened his eyes in pitch darkness.

… What, what, what—he thought. It was that quick. His instant feeling was that this was not where he should be.

During those swift moments there had, of course, been several awarenesses in him: He was lying on his back on something as comfortable as a bed. He was naked; but a very light cloth covered him. There were sensations all over his body, and his arms, and legs, as if at the point of each sensation, a suction device was attached there.

It was the over-all awareness of the numerous attachments that delayed the impulse to sit up. And so there was time for the Special Thought that only someone with his training could have: