The World of Null-A

XXXIII

Gosseyn tugged open the zippers and peeled off his suit. He suspected that electronic instruments were woven into its cloth, and there was at least one such device by which the wearer could be stunned by remote control. Stripped, he began to feel better, but it was not until he had hastily donned Prescott's suit and shoes that he considered himself ready for the next move.

He opened the elevator door and glanced along the unfamiliar corridor onto which it opened. He wondered briefly just where his chance pressure on the control tube had brought him. It didn't matter where he was, of course. This first stop had one purpose only-to get rid of the vibrator.

He shoved it unceremoniously out, and bundled the four bodies after it pitilessly. There was a door a score of feet along the hallway, but he had no time for exploration. This was one level that he must not come back to, for here the vibrator could nullify all his hopes; he just didn't have the time to examine it and shut off its interfering pulsations. Back in the elevator, he pressed a tube that took him to another unfamiliar corridor. Like the first one, it was empty. Gosseyn “memorized” the pattern of part of the floor near the elevator shafts and gave to its pattern the key number, one. At top speed he raced a hundred yards along the corridor, and paused when he came to a turn in the corridor. Just around the corner, he “memorized” a pattern of a small section of the floor, and gave it the key letter, A. Standing there, he thought, “One!”

Instantly he was back at the elevator shaft.

The sense of triumph that leaped through him was like nothing else he had ever experienced. He darted back into the elevator and pressed a third tube. The key words on that corridor were “2” and “B,” respectively. . . . As he stepped out of the elevator on the fourth corridor, a man was just coming out of the elevator in the next shaft. Remorselessly, Gosseyn opened up on him with his arsenal of weapons. He shoved the smoldering, twitching thing back into the elevator from which it had emerged a moment before.

That was the only incident of his swift progression. And yet, in spite of his speed, though he did not pause once to so much as glance inside a door, he estimated that half an hour had gone by when he finally reached the goal he had set himself: Nine pattern keys and as far as “I” in the alphabet of alternative patterns. And every electric socket on the way was “memorized” by a system of mathematical symbols.

He stepped back into the elevator and pressed the tube that took him to the corridor that led to Patricia's and his apartment. It too showed no sign that his break had yet been discovered. Gosseyn paused before the closed door, and made another brief survey of his situation. It was not absolutely perfect, but he had eighteen places to which he could retreat, and forty-one sources of energy on which his extra brain could draw. He saw that his hands were trembling the slightest bit, and he felt as if he had been perspiring. A natural tension, he decided. He was keyed up. In less than thirty minutes, he would be launched on the greatest military campaign ever attempted by one man, at least in his knowledge. In an hour he would be victorious or he would be dead forever.

His mental summation completed, he turned the knob and opened the door. Patricia Hardie leaped out of a chair and raced across the rug toward him. “For heavens sake,” she breathed, “where have you been?”

She broke off. “But never mind that. Eldred was here.”

There was nothing in her voice to indicate that she knew what had happened. Yet her words shocked Gosseyn. He had his first inkling of what she was going to say.

“Crang!” He spoke the name as if it were a bomb he was handling.

“He brought final instructions.”

“My God!” said Gosseyn.

He felt weak. He had waited and waited for some word. He had deliberately delayed until the last possible hour before he acted. And now this. The woman seemed unaware of his reaction.

“He said”–her voice sank to a whisper–“he said for you to pretend to be drawn to the Semantics building, and there co-operate with–with–” She swayed as if she were about to faint.

Gosseyn caught her, held her up. “Yes. Yes. With whom?”

“A bearded man!” It was a sigh. She straightened slowly, but she was trembling. “It's hard to imagine that Eldred has known about-him all this time.”

“But who is he?”

“Eldred didn't say.”

The anger that came to Gosseyn was all the more violent because what she was saying meant nothing after the irrevocable things he had done. But with all his strength and all his will he held that fury down. Patricia mustn't suspect yet what had happened, not until she had given him every bit of information that she had.

“What's the plan?” he said, and this time it was he who whispered.

“Death for Thorson.”

That was obvious. “Yes, yes?” Gosseyn urged.

“Then Eldred will have control of the army that Thorson brought with him. That's been the difficulty.” She spoke hurriedly. “Thorson commands a hundred million men in this sector of the galaxy. If those men can be gotten from Enro, it will take a year or more to organize another attack on Venus.”

Gosseyn let go of the girl and sagged into a near-by chair. The logic was dazzling. His own plan had been simply to try to kill Thorson, but failing that-and he expected to fail-he intended trying to destroy the base. It was a good stopgap scheme, but it was a tiny hope compared to the vaster scheme of Crang. No wonder the man had compromised with murder if this was the ending he had in mind. Patricia was speaking again.

“Eldred says Thorson cannot be killed here in the base. There are too many protective devices. He's got to be led out where he is not so well protected.”

Gosseyn nodded warily. In its own way it sounded as dangerous as what he had done. And as vague. He was to co-operate with a bearded man. He looked up.

“Is that all Crang said-co-operation?”

“That's all.”

They expected a great deal, Gosseyn thought bitterly. Once more he was supposed to follow blindly the ideas of another person. If he surrendered now, or pretended to be captured-he could see how he might do that with a certain cunning-it would mean giving up every gain, submitting to even closer supervision, and accepting the hope that some unknown plan of the bearded man would work. If only he knew the identity of even one of the people whose instructions he was following. The thought gave him pause.

“Patricia, who is Crang?”

She looked at him. “Don't you know? Haven't you guessed?”

“Twice,” Gosseyn said, “a suspicion has jumped into my mind, but I couldn't see how he would have worked it. It seems fairly clear that if the galactic civilization can produce a man like that, then we'd better give up null-A and adopt their educational system.”

“It's really very simple,” the woman said quietly. “Five years ago, in the course of his practice on Venus, he grew suspicious of the null-A pretensions of a man who worked on a case with him. The man, as you might guess, was an agent of Prescott. That was his first inkling of the galactic plot. Even at that time, a warning would only have forced Enro to make a quick decision, and of course Eldred had no idea just what was being planned. He took it for granted others would discover what he had learned, and so he merely tried to cover his own trail. He spent the next few years out in space working his way up in the service of the Greatest Empire. Naturally, he adjusted to every necessity of the situation. He told me he had to kill a hundred and thirty-seven men to get to the top. He regards what he is doing as in the normal line of duty, and quite average–”

“Average!” Gosseyn exploded. And then he subsided. He had his answer. Eldred Crang, an average Venusian null-A detective, had suggested a course of action. His method was not necessarily the best one, but it was undoubtedly based on more information than was possessed by Gilbert Gosseyn. Part of its purpose-to bring the mysterious player out into the open-would compensate to some extent for the sorry ending of what he had started with such boldness.

He'd pretend to fight, but would permit a quick capture. There'd probably be some bad moments, particularly if they questioned him with a lie detector. But that was a chance he had to take. Fortunately, lie detectors never volunteered information. Still, if the wrong question were asked, then Crang might have to act fast.

During the battle that followed, Gosseyn retreated in turn to the nine numbered patterns, leaving the lettered ones as a reserve in case the wrong questions were asked. There was just enough confusion involved-a numbered and a lettered pattern on each floor-to justify the hope that he could keep his secrets. He ended up on the corridor of pattern “7.” There, pretending he had come to the end of his resources, he burned out a wall by short-circuiting the electricity, and then let himself be captured.

He had to tense every muscle in his body to restrain his relief when he saw that the questioner before whom he was taken was Eldred Crang. The interview that followed seemed thorough. But so carefully were the questions worded that not once did the lie detector give away any vital fact. When it was finally over, Crang turned to a wall receiver and said, “I think, Mr. Thorson, you can safely take him to Earth. Everything here will be taken care of.”

Gosseyn had been wondering where Thorson was. It was clear that the man was taking no unnecessary chances-and yet Thorson had to go to Earth personally. That was the beauty of all this. The search for the secret of immortality could not be delegated to subordinates whose life-hunger might cause them, also, to forget their duty.

The big man was standing beside a row of elevators when Gosseyn was brought up. His manner was condescending.

“It's as I thought,” he said. “This extra brain of yours has its limitations. After all, if it was able to oppose a major invasion by itself, then the third Gosseyn would have been brought out without preliminaries. The truth is, one man is always vulnerable. Even with a limited immortality, and a few bodies to play around with, he can do very little more than any bold man. His enemies need merely suspect his whereabouts and an atomic bomb could wipe out everything in that vicinity before he could so much as think.”

He waved his hand. “We'll forget about Prescott. Fact is, I'm rather pleased that this happened. It puts things in their proper perspective. The fact that you tried it, though, shows that you've thoroughly misunderstood my motives.” He shrugged. “We're not going to kill this player, Gosseyn. We merely want to participate in what he's got.”

Gosseyn said nothing, but he knew better. It was the nature of Aristotelian man that he did not share willingly. All through history the struggle for power, murder of rivals, and exploitation of the defenseless had been the reality of unintegrated man's nature. Julius Caesar and Pompey refusing to share the Reman Empire, Napoleon, first an honest defender of his country then a restless conqueror-such men were the spiritual forebears of Enro, who would not share the galaxy. Even now, as Thorson sat here denying ambition, his brain must be roiling with schemes and visions of colossal destiny. Gosseyn was glad when the giant said, “And now let's go. We've wasted enough time.”

It was something to be up and going toward the crisis.