Alfred Van Vogt - Null–A Three

He was thinking: this time it was not the earlier spinning feeling but—

He wondered vaguely:… Tugging—to where?—

On a planet of a sun in the Milky Way, a man named Neggen stood gazing down at a machine—a small, cigarshaped spaceship.

The spacecraft was below him in a natural hollow that was half garden and half smooth marble. It was a man-smoothed marble and a man-made garden, which provided a decorative setting for the little machine.

The man was thinking with a dark regret: “All these years, these millenia, that ship has been down there—and we didn’t realize what it was.”

And now, a message had come from a Gilbert Gosseyn on far Earth. It was a message authorized by the Galactic League, stating that many such craft would probably be findable, at least one each on tens of thousands of planets. The message had described exactly what he was looking at.

The accompanying photograph showed the interior of the ship, with its four containers. Two of these were large enough to hold, each, one male adult human. The other two were slightly smaller, and each was designed to hold a woman.

The details had been described in Gosseyn’s message, which concluded: “Advise at once if such a vessel has ever been found on your planet, and where it is now!”

So he had sent the information requested… and now here was the man himself, who had himself been shown in an accompanying photograph; except that now he was walking up the marble steps toward Neggen.

… What bothered Gosseyn Three a minute or so later, as he stood beside Neggen and gazed at the photographs, was a feeling of overwhelm. And even instant that now went by he had the strong conviction: he should have some purpose of his own.

But what?

Naturally, there was always an obvious goal in even situation: stay alive! However, that really led nowhere in terms of the specific situation he was in.

What bothered him most was the precision of awareness the Troogs were displaying. Somehow, they had become aware of how mankind had originally, perhaps as long ago as a million years, come from that other galaxy.

And they had used League authorization and his name in their attempt to locate one of these four-passenger spaceships. And, when a reply came, they had immediately had available a twenty-decimal method of their own to transport Gilbert Gosseyn Three to a location where neither he nor any other Gosseyn had ever been. Transport him at twenty-decimal speed from a restaurant near the Institute of General Semantics on Earth.

And the fact that he had arrived fully dressed indicated that they had taken note of what he had done with business man Gorrold’s jacket with a precision that did not simply derive from Gosseyn’s own mind. Because he himself had not yet taken his extra-brain photographs of this new suit of clothes.

When he had come up to the level of the man in the Roman toga-like garment, who stood at the top of the

steps, Gosseyn had had the thought: “Maybe just noticing how skilful they are is the only purpose I need right now.”

All the details might tell him something eventually.

Neggen said—in English: “What do you hope to gain from discovering such machines as this?”

As he heard the familiar language, Gosseyn was aware of a tiny purpose forming inside him. For later. Incredibly—again—these Troog must now know how they had learned English, because here they had utilized a method of transmitting it to someone else.

All by itself, during a later confrontation, that would enable him to Find out how 178,000 Dzan had automatically spoken English, the language of the sleeping Gosseyn body in the space capsule they had found in space… after the Dzan and their ship were mysteriously transported at twenty-decimal speed from their own galaxy a million light-years away.

… Should I leave? Should I return and pick up Erin?

And head for the Dzan battleship, and to whatever protection it could give?

“—What do you think, Alter?…”

It was a spontaneous question, with no advance thought about it; simply, acceptance that perhaps he should have some advice. What startled him, then, was that there was no reply; and, worse, no sensation of that other Gosseyn mind… out there.

It was not clear why the Troogs were taking the trouble to keep the two Gosseyns mentally disconnected in this situation. If it was another attempt to demonstrate their capability, that had already been established earlier; though—the thought came—not for such a long time.

His rapid speculation was interrupted. Footsteps. He turned, with Neggen. And saw that a woman, also dressed in a toga-like outfit, was approaching from a long, squat building visible through heavy brush in that direction. In terms of earth age she seemed about forty, which was also the age appearance of the man.

The woman stopped about ten feet away on the slightly higher level of steps at that point, and said something like:

“… N’ya dru hara tai, Neggen?” Her voice sounded troubled, and had a question in it.

The man’s voice widened. “Good God!” he said. “Rubri, what kind of gibberish is that?”

The shock waves of the interchange had also reverberated through Gosseyn. It required several moments to come to terms with his instant feeling of being somehow responsible for what had been done to these people. Addressing Neggen, he asked, “Your wife?”

The man nodded, but his face still had a critical look on it. “What’s the matter with her?”

Gosseyn was recovering from his own dismay. He pointed at the photographs and the accompanying message. “Let’s take her to your computer,” he said. “If it could accept a message from me before—uh—I learned your language, then it can translate for your wife. In fact,” he added hastily, all these interstellar computer-communicators automatically translate about hundred thousand languages—I’m told.”

“B-but—but—”

“It’s a long story,” said Gosseyn, “and right now I don’t know how it will be rectified. But, quick! Before anything further happens.”

The urgency in his voice came from a sudden feeling inside him—the tugging sensation was back.

He was conscious of a vague thought of his own: somehow the Troogs had brought him here so that they could have a look at one of the small craft that had in the long, long ago brought two men and two women from their galaxy to this one.

In that long ago hundreds of thousands of these tiny spaceships had crossed the colossal distances of intergalactic space. And evidently they had wanted to see one—

… Into one of the smallnesses of the universe, into a restaurant, turned out to be the next place to which he was transmitted.

But it was actually not until he came cautiously out from the small anteroom, in which he had arrived, that Gosseyn saw that he was, in fact, in a rather fancy earth-type restaurant.

As his gaze, in a manner of speaking, absorbed the elegantly dressed maître-de, what diverted him was… he was remembering that he had taken Enin and Dan Lyttle to a restaurant. What could be the purpose of the Troogs in duplicating such a situation?

The memory remained a small distraction in him during the next minute, as the maître-de came forward, and said in English, “This way, Mr. Gosseyn. They’re waiting for you.”

“This way” led to the door one of those small private dining rooms. And it was not until he started across the threshold that he saw the approximately dozen people—first glance impression—who were inside, already seated around a long table.

In that group, in that dimly lighted room, a head of red hair caught his eye; and so the first individual Gosseyn recognized was—shock!—Enro the Red, king of the planet Gorgzid and conqueror of the colossal empire that Gorgzid controlled. President Blayney sat beside Enro, and so he was second to be identified. Swiftly, after that, the faces, figuratively, leaped out at him: the Prescotts, Eldred and Patricia Crang, Leej, Breemeg, the Draydart—in uniform—and three more men who, since they faced away from him—Gosseyn took a little longer to identify. They were the three scientists, whom he had identified as Voices One, Two, and Three. They were the ones who had originally brought him out of the capsule.