The Players of Null-A

XI NULL-ABSTRACTS

For the sake of sanity, INDEX: Do not say, 'Two little girls . , .' unless you mean, 'Mary and Jane, two little girls, different from each other, and from all the other people in the world ...'

From where he lay straddling the porthole, Gosseyn could hear the murmur of conversation. It was subdued, so that no word came through. But the talking was between a woman and a man.

Cautiously, Gosseyn peered around the inner rim of the porthole. He looked down into a broad corridor. About thirty feet to his left was the open air lock through which Leej had come. To his right he could see Leej herself standing in a doorway and beyond her, with only his shoulder and arm visible, was a man in the uniform of an officer of the Greatest Empire.

Except for the three of them, the corridor was deserted.

Gosseyn lowered himself to the floor, and keeping to the far wall, approached the couple.

As Gosseyn came up, Leej was saying: '. . . I think I'm entitled to the details. What arrangements have been made for women?'

Her tone was calm, with just the right note of demand in it. The officer's voice, when he answered, held a resigned patience.

‘Madam, I assure you, a six-room apartment, servants, every convenience, and authority second only to that of the captain and his first officer. You are ——— ’

He stopped, as Gosseyn stepped into the doorway beside Leej. His surprise lasted only a few seconds.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you come aboard.

The admission officer outside must have forgotten to- '

He stopped again. He seemed to realize the improbability of the admission officer having forgotten anything of the kind. His eyes widened. His jaw sagged slightly. His plump hand moved perkily toward the blaster at his side.

Gosseyn hit him once on the jaw. And caught him as he fell.

He carried the unconscious body to a couch. He searched the man quickly, but found only the blaster in the holster. He straightened, and looked around. He had already noticed that in addition to the ordinary furnishings, the room contained a number of Distorter type elevators. Now, he counted them. One dozen, and not elevators, really. He'd called them that ever since he had mistaken them for elevators when he was in Enro's secret Venusian base.

One dozen. The sight of them in a row against the wall farthest from the door clarified his mental picture. This was the room from which Yalerta's Predictors were sent to their assigned posts. The process was even simpler than he had thought. There seemed to be no preliminaries. The admission officer allowed a volunteer into the gangplank. And then this plump man led them into this room, and shipped them to their destination.

The rest of the ship was apparently unaffected. The officers and men lived their routine existence, apart from the purposes for which their ship had come to Yalerta. And since it was after midnight, they might possibly be asleep.

Gosseyn felt stimulated at the mere idea.

He stepped back to the door. As before, the corridor was deserted.

Behind him, Leej said, 'He's awakening.'

Gosseyn returned to the couch, and stood waiting.

The man stirred, and sat up, nursing his jaw. He glanced swiftly from Leej to Gosseyn and back again. Finally, he said in a querulous tone, 'Are you two crazy?'

Gosseyn said: 'How many men are there aboard this ship?'

The other stared at him, then he started to laugh. 'Why you fool,' he said. For a moment he seemed to be overcome with renewed amusement. 'How many men,' he mimicked. His voice rose. There are five hundred. Just think that over, and get out of this ship as fast as you can.'

The crew complement was about what Gosseyn had expected. Spaceships were never crowded in the same fashion as ground vehicles. It was a matter of air and food supply. Still, five hundred men.

'Do the men live in dormitories?' he asked. . There are eight dormitories,' replied the officer. 'Sixty men in each one.' He rubbed his hands together. 'Sixty,' he repeated, and his voice relished the figure. 'Would you like me to take you down and introduce you?'

Gosseyn allowed the humor to pass him by. 'Yes,' he said, 'yes, I would.'

Leej's fingers plucked at his arm nervously. 'There's a continuous blur,' she said.

Gosseyn nodded. 'I've got to do it,' he said. 'Otherwise he would know what I'm doing.'

She nodded doubtfully. 'So many men. Doesn't that make it complicated?'

Her words were like a spur to the officer. He climbed to his feet. 'Let's go,' he said jovially.

Gosseyn said, 'What's your name?'

'Oreldon.'

Silently, Gosseyn motioned him toward the .corridor. When they came to the open outer lock,. Gosseyn stopped.

'Can you close these doors?' he asked.

The man's plumpish face glowed with conscious good humor. 'You're right,' he said. 'We wouldn't want any visitors while I was off duty.' He stepped briskly forward, and he was about to press the button when Gosseyn stopped him.

'A moment, please,' he said. I'd like to check those connections. Wouldn't want you setting off an alarm, you know.'

He unfastened the plate and swung it open. By count, there were four wires too many. 'Where do they go?' he asked Oreldon.

To the control room. Two for opening, two for shutting.'

Gosseyn nodded, and closed the panel. It was a chance he had to take. There would always be a connection with the control board.

Firmly, he pressed the button. Metal stirred, thick slabs of it glided across the opening and clanked shut with a steely sound.

'Mind if I talk to my partner outside?' Oreldon asked.

Gosseyn had been wondering about the man outside. 'What do you want to say to him?' he asked.

'Oh, just that I've closed the door, and that he can relax for a while.'

'Naturally,' said Gosseyn, 'you will be careful how you word it.'

'Of course.'

Gosseyn checked the wiring, then waited while Oreldon switched on a wall phone. He recognized that the other was in a state of thalamic stimulation. Accordingly, he would be swept along by the intoxicating flood of his own humor until the shock of imminent disaster sobered him. That would be the moment to watch for.

Apparently, the doors were not always open, for the admission officer did not seem surprised that they were closed. 'You're sure, Orry,' he said, 'that you're not going off with that female who just came in?'

'Regretfully, no,' said Oreldon, and broke the connection. 'Can't have these conversations going on too long,' he said heartily to Gosseyn. 'People might get suspicious.'

They came to a stairway. Oreldon was about to start down it when Gosseyn restrained him. 'Where does this lead?' he asked.

'Why, down to the men's quarters.'

'And where's the control room?'

'Oh, you wouldn't want the control room. You have to climb for that. It's up front.'

Gosseyn said gravely that he was happy to hear that. 'And how many openings are there into the lower deck?' he asked.

'Four.'

'I hope,' said Gosseyn pleasantly, 'that you're telling me the truth. If I should discover that there are five, for instance, this blaster might go off suddenly.'

There's only four, I swear it,' said Oreldon. His voice was hoarse suddenly.

'You see,' said Gosseyn, 'I notice there's a heavy door that can slide over this stairway.'

'Wouldn't you say that was normal?' Oreldon was back in the groove again. 'After all, a spaceship has to be built so that whole sections can be sealed off in case of accident.'

'Let's slide it shut, shall we?' said Gosseyn.

'Huh!' His tone showed that he hadn't even thought of such a thing. His pasty face showed that this was the moment of shocked realization. His eyes rolled as he glared helplessly along the corridor. 'You don't think for one second,' he snarled, 'that you're going to get away with this.'

The door,' said Gosseyn in an inexorable tone.

The officer hesitated, his body rigid. Then slowly he walked to the wall. He opened a sliding panel, waited tensely until Gosseyn had checked the wiring and then jerked the lever. The door panels were only two inches thick. They closed with a faint thud.

'I sincerely hope,' said Gosseyn, 'that they are now locked, and that they can't be opened from beneath, because if I should discover differently I would always have time to fire this blaster at least once.'

They lock,' said Oreldon sullenly.

'Fine,' said Gosseyn. 'But now let's hurry. I'm eager to have those other stairways cut off also.'

Oreldon kept glancing anxiously along side corridors as they walked, but if he hoped that they would see a member of the crew, he was disappointed. There was silence except for the faint sound of their own movements. No one stirred.

'I think everyone must have gone to bed,' said Gosseyn.

The man did not respond. They completed the task of shutting off the lower floor before another word was spoken, then Gosseyn said, ‘That should leave twenty officers including you and your friend outside. Is that right?'

Oreldon.,, nodded, but he said nothing. His eyes looked glazed.

'And if I remember my ancient history of Earth correctly,' said Gosseyn, 'there used to be an old custom—-due to the intransigent character of some people—of confining officers to their quarters under certain circumstances. That always meant a system of outside locks. It would be interesting if Euro's warships also had problems, and solutions, like that.'

He had to take only one glance at his prisoner's face to realize that Enro's ships had.

Ten minutes after that, without a shot having been fired, he was in complete control of the galactic warship.

It had been too easy. That was the feeling that grew on Gosseyn as he peered into the deserted control room. Herding Oreldon ahead of him, and with Leej bringing up the rear, he entered the room. Critically, he looked around.

There was slackness here, not a single man on duty, except the two officers who looked after the Predictors.

Too easy. Considering the precautions that the Follower had already taken against him, it seemed unbelievable that the ship was his in reality.

And yet, it seemed to be.

Once more he gave his attention to the room. The instrument board curved massively beneath the transparent dome. It was divided into three sections: electric, Distorter and atomic. First, the electric.

He manipulated the switches that started an atomic powered dynamo somewhere in the depths of the ship. He felt better. As soon as he had memorized enough sockets, he would be in a position to release intolerable energy into each room and along every corridor. It was tremendously convincing. If this was a trap, then the crew members were not in on it.

But still he was dissatisfied, He studied the board. There were levers and dials on each section, the purposes of which he could only partially guess. He did not worry about the electric or the atomic; the latter could not be used within the confines of the ship, and the former he would shortly control without qualification.

That left the Distorter. Gosseyn frowned. There was no doubt of it. Here was the danger. Despite his possession of an organic Distorter in what he called his extra brain, his knowledge of the mechanical Distorter system of the galactic civilization was vague. In that vagueness his weakness must lie, and the trap, if there was a trap.

In his preoccupation, he had moved back from the board. He was standing there, teetering between several possibilities, when Leej said, 'We'll have to sleep.'

'Not while we're on Yalerta,' said Gosseyn.

His main plan was fairly clear. There was a margin of error between perfect similarity and the twenty decimal similarity of the mechanical Distorter. Measured by spatial distance, it came to about a thousand light-years every ten hours. But that also, Gosseyn had already surmised, was an illusion.

He explained to Leej: 'It's not really a question of speed. Relatively, one of the earliest and most encompassing of Null-A formulations, shows that factors of space and time cannot be considered separately. But I'm coming around to another variation of the same idea. Events occur at different moments, and separateness in space is merely part of the image that forms in our nervous systems when we try to interpret the time gap.'

He saw that once more he had left the woman far behind. He went on, half to himself: ‘It’s possible that two given events are so closely related that in fact they are not different events at all, no matter how far apart they seem to be, or how carefully defined. In terms of probability ——— ’

Gosseyn stood frowning over the problem, feeling himself on the edge of a much greater solution that that required by the immediate situation. Leej's voice distracted his attention.

'But what are you going to do?'

Gosseyn stepped once more to the board. 'Right now,' he said, 'we're taking off on normal drive.'

The control instruments were similar to those on the ships that plied the space between Earth and Venus. The first upward thrust tensed every plate. The movement grew continuous. In ten minutes they were clear of the atmosphere, and gathering speed. After twenty-five minutes more, they emerged from the umbral cone of the planet, and sunlight splashed brilliantly into the control room.

In the rearview plate, the image of the spinning world of Yalerta showed as a saucer of light holding a vast, dark, misty ball. Gosseyn turned abruptly from the scene, and faced Oreldon. The officer turned pale when Gosseyn told him his plan.

'Don't let him guess I'm responsible,' he begged.

Gosseyn promised without hesitation. But it seemed to him that if a military board of the Greatest Empire should ever investigate the seizure of the Y-381907 the truth would be quickly discovered.

It was Oreldon who knocked on the captain's door, and presently emerged accompanied by a stocky, angry man. Gosseyn cut his violent language short.

'Captain Free, if it should ever be discovered that this ship was captured without the firing of a shot, you will probably pay with your life. You'd better listen to me.'

He explained that he wanted the use of the ship temporarily only, and Captain Free calmed enough to start discussing details. It appeared that Gosseyn's picture of how interstellar ships could operate was correct. Ships were set to go to a distant point, but the pattern could be broken before they got there.

'It's the only way we can stop at planets like Yalerta,' the captain explained. 'We similarize to a base more than a thousand light-years farther on, then make the break.'

Gosseyn nodded. 'I want to go to Gorgzid, and I want the pattern to break about a day's normal flight away.'

He was not surprised that the destination startled the other. 'Gorgzid!' the captain exclaimed. His eyes narrowed, and then he smiled grimly. They should be able to take care of you,' he said. 'Well, do you want to go now? It will take seven jumps.'

Gosseyn did not answer immediately. He was intent on the neural flow from the man. It was not quite normal, which actually was natural enough. There were uneven spurts, indicating emotional disturbances, but there was no purposeful pattern. It was convincing. The captain had no plans, no private schemes, no treachery in mind.

Once more he considered his position. He was attuned to the electric dynamo, and the atomic pile of the ship. He was in a position to kill every man aboard in a flash. His position was virtually impregnable.

His hesitation ended. Gosseyn drew a deep breath, and then:

'Now!' he said.