Alfred Van Vogt - Null–A Three

“I gather that such a battle was in progress when your ship suddenly found itself in this area of space.”

“True,” was the reply.

Momentarily, Gosseyn tried to picture that battle scene in the remote universe nearly a million light years from the Milky Way galaxy. Human beings there fighting as men had been fighting here since the beginning of recorded history.

He shook his head, sadly. The General Semantics notion that one human being is not the same as any other—Gilbert Gosseyn is not Breemeg, is not Eldred Crang, is not Prescott, is not Enro—while it had a limited truth in terms of individual identity and appearance, did not seem to encompass the character of the race as a whole.

He sighed. And continued with his recapitulation: “I’m going to guess that the absence of your ship could be an advantage for the enemy.”

Silence. They walked several steps, and the end of the corridor was visibly only a a few hundred feet ahead now. Then: “It will probably take a while,” Breemeg said, “before anyone becomes aware that we have disappeared. So ours may not yet be a dangerous absence.”

“Your description of the enemy,” said Gosseyn, who had been considering what the other had said, “suggests that for the first time ever men have met a superior life form. By which I mean—”

He stopped, incredulous.

The floor was shaking. Shaking!

It was a vibration that was visible. Literally, under him, the floor wobbled. And he saw that wobble run like a ripple that moved slantwise across the corridor. And, apparently, passed on to other parts of the ship. And was gone from where he was.

Just ahead, a ceiling bell clanged. And then a man’s strident voice said urgently: “All personnel to stations.

An enemy super-ship has just this minute entered our area of space—”

Because of the intensity of tone, it took a moment to identify the voice as that of the Draydart Duart.

Inside his brain, he was aware of his Alter Ego mentally groaning at him: “Three,” that distant thought came, “I think you’ve done it. You thought of that other galaxy battle location; and I have an awful feeling something big happened—again.”

Gosseyn Three had no time for guilt. Because at that exact instant he felt an odd sensation in his head. It required several split instants for his second-in-line memory from Gosseyn Two and Gosseyn One, since he had no personally associated physical movements, to identify the feeling.

Then:… Good God! Something was trying to take control of his mind—

The twelve minutes of Leej’s prediction, must be up. That was only one of numerous fleeting impressions. Thought of Leej also brought instant memory of the Crangs, the Prescotts, Enro, and Strala… all of whom at this moment must be fighting efforts to control their minds.

So Gilbert Gosseyn Three had better get back there. Too bad because—that was another of the fleeting realizations… I should really be tracking down that boy—

A chill wind blew into Gosseyn’s face.

As far as the eye could see were snowy peaks. And, directly below the ridge on which they stood, was a swift flowing river with ice-encrusted shore lines.

He saw that the boy was gazing at the scene, eyes wide. A flush of color was creeping into the white cheeks. And it just could be the chill of that wind was reaching through all the madness and making itself felt on a new level of reality.

There was a long pause. Then: “Hey, this is really something, isn’t it?” The boyish voice had excitement in it.

Even as the words were spoken, the wind blew harder, icier. Gosseyn smiled grimly, and said, “Yes, it really is… something.”

His Imperial Majesty, Enin, seemed not to hear and not to feel. His voice went up several pitches of excitement: “Hey, what do you do in a place like this?”

It was not too difficult to believe that this boy had all his life been protected from extremes of weather. So Gosseyn’s feeling was that perhaps a little explanation was in order. Accordingly, he said, “Since, because of the battle that’s going on… back there—” He waved vaguely in the direction of the light-years-away Dzan ship—“we’ll be staying here for a little while, I should tell you that what you’re looking at is the winter season of this planet, and it’s a wilderness area. Not a sign of civilization is visible from here.”

“There’s something over there,” said the boy. He pointed, and added, “I’ve been here twenty minutes longer than you, and it was brighter then, and it looked like something when the sun was out.”

Gosseyn’s gaze followed the pointing finger, and saw that it was aimed in the direction that the river was flowing. The distance involved was more than a mile. There, at the point where the river and the valley turned leftward out of sight, was a dark area in the snow, seemingly at the very edge of the disappearing stream.

Was it the first building of a settlement that was located beyond the bend?

It would take a while to get there, and find out. But there was no question: if they remained here, that was the direction they would go.

Aloud, he said, “Let’s hope so. We have to find a place where we can be warm when night comes.” Undecided, he looked up at the cloud that hid the sun. And saw that it was part of a dark mass that would presently cover most of the sky. Too bad! It would have been interesting to see what kind of sun it was.

Already, the air seemed chillier than at the moment of his arrival. Time they were on their way.

As the two of them partly climbed down, and partly slid down the icy slope, Gosseyn Three conducted a silent debate with himself.

Presumably, where he—and the boy before him—had arrived, was a 20 decimal “photographed” area of Gosseyn One or Gosseyn Two; an exact location one of them had used for some purpose in the past.

The problem was that his own recollection of the travels of the earlier Gosseyns could not seem to recall a frozen mountain area. The joint memory he shared with the first two Gosseyns did not include a mental picture of a scene such as this, utilized for any reason.

It was merely a mystery, of course, and not a disaster. At any moment he could choose to use his extrabrain—and something would happen; exactly what was no longer predictable.

… After all, my intention was to return to the imperial apartment on the ship to help Strala and the visitors, who had been transmitted aboard by Gosseyn Two—

And, instead, he had had that final, fleeting thought about Enin; and, somehow, his defective extra-brain had worked out those intricate details, and had brought him to where the boy was on this frozen planet.

It could, of course, be earth itself. Still descending, still holding onto the boy’s hand, Gosseyn—with that thought—looked down and around, suddenly hopeful. He drew a deep, testing breath. The air, though chilly, felt exactly as his group memory remembered the air of earth. The snowy mountain peaks, the flowing stream, half-embedded in ice, were surely a variation of a thousand similar scenes in any of a hundred mountain areas on earth.

The feeling of hope stayed with him for at least another hundred yards of the descent. By then he was putting, first one hand and next the other, inside the upper portion of the loose-fitting garment that Voices One and Two had tucked him into.

There was still warm body underneath; and, by repeated contact, he was able to keep his hands, one at a time, in a reasonably warm state. But as more time went by, and still they were merely edging down that slope, there was no question in his mind: he was not dressed for this climate.

A few minutes later, it seemed as if the time for decisive action had come, as the boy suddenly whimpered, “I can’t—I can’t—it’s too cold. I’m freezing.”