The Players of Null-A

X NULL-ABSTRACTS

For the sake of sanity, DATE: Do not say, 'Scientists believe. . . .' Say, 'Scientists believed in 1956 . . .' 'John Smith (1956) is an isolationist. . .' All things, including John Smith's political opinions, are subject to change and can therefore only be referred to in terms of the moment.

Slowly, Gosseyn let himself become aware again of his surroundings. He turned his head and glanced toward the dining room, where the servants had been so busy a short time before. They were not in sight. He could see the edge of the table, and all the dishes seemed to be on it, though no food was visible.

His gaze leaped to Leej, paused long enough for him to notice that she was climbing to her feet, and then flashed on to the door that led to the control room. From where he stood, the full length of the corridor and even a part of the dome window were visible, but there was no sign of Yanar.

The ship remained steady on its course.

Leej broke the silence between them. 'You've done it,' she whispered.

Gosseyn walked forward from the wall. He shook off her words, but he did not tell her that the Follower had just nullified whatever victory he had gained.

Leej came toward him now, her eyes glowing. 'Don't you realize,' she said, 'you've beaten the Follower?'

She touched his arm with a quick, tremulous caress of her fingers.

Gosseyn said, 'Come along.'

He headed toward the control room. When he entered, Yanar was bending expectantly over the magnetic radio receiver. For Gosseyn it was apparent at a glance what the man was doing—still waiting for instructions. Without a word he walked forward, reached past Yanar's shoulder and shut off the instrument.

The other started violently, then straightened, and turned with a sneer on his lips. Gosseyn said, 'Pack your bags if you have any. You're getting off at the first stop.'

The Predictor shrugged. Without a word he stalked from the room.

Gosseyn stared after him thoughtfully. The man's presence annoyed him. He was an irritation, a minor nuisance whose only importance in the galactic scheme of things was that he was a Predictor. That, in spite of his obstinate and petty character, made him interesting.

Unfortunately, he was but one man out of more than two million, neither typical nor atypical of his kind. It was possible to make certain cautious hypotheses about the Predictors from his observation of Yanar and Leej. But such conclusions must be subject to change without notice.

He dismissed Yanar from his mind, and turned to Leej. 'How long will it take us to get to Crest, where the warship is?'

The young woman walked over to a plate on the wall, which Gosseyn hadn't noticed before. She pressed a button. Instantly, a map sprang into sharp relief. It showed water and islands, and a tiny point of light.

She indicated the brightness. ‘That's us,' she said. She pointed at a land mass higher up. 'There's Crest.' Carefully, she counted finely ruled lines that crisscrossed the map.

'About three hours and twenty minutes,' she said. ‘Well have plenty of time to eat dinner.'

'Eat!' Gosseyn echoed. And then he smiled, and shook his head in a half apology to himself. He was tremendously hungry, but he had almost forgotten that such normal instincts existed.

It was going to be pleasant to relax.

Dinner.

Gosseyn watched as the young girl served him a cocktail glass that contained segments of what seemed to be fish. He waited alertly while Yanar was served by one of the older women, and then transposed the two glasses by similarization.

He tested his own cocktail. It was fish, sharply flavored. But, after the initial shock to his taste buds, delicious. He ate it all, then put down his fork, sat back and looked at Leej.

'What goes on in your mind when you foresee?'

The young woman was serious. 'It's automatic.'

'You mean, there's no pattern you follow?’

'Well '

'Do you pause? Do you think of an object? Do you have to see it?'

Leej smiled, and even Yanar seemed more relaxed, even slightly, if tolerantly, amused. The woman said, 'We just have it, that's all. It's not something that has to be thought about.'

So those were the kind of answers they gave themselves. They were different. They were special. Simple answers for simple people. Actually, the complication was of an unparalleled order. The Predictor processes occurred on a nonverbal level. The whole system of Null-A was an organized attempt to co-ordinate nonverbal realities with verbal projections. Even on Null-A Venus the gap between interpretation and event had never been more than partially bridged.

He waited while the empty glasses were removed, and they were each served a plate containing a brownish red meat, three vegetables and a thin sauce of greenish color. He exchanged his for Yanar's, tasted each of the vegetables in turn, and then cut off a piece of meat. Finally, he sat back.

Try to explain,' he said.

Leej closed her eyes. 'I've always thought of it as floating in the time stream. It's a spreading out. Memories are coming into my mind, but they aren't really memories. Very clear, very sharp. Visual pictures. What is it you want to know? Ask about something not connected with yourself. You blur everything.'

Gosseyn had laid down his fork. He would have liked a prediction about Venus, but that would require projection of his future. He said, ‘The girl who's serving me.'

'Vorn?' Leej shook her head and smiled at the girl, who was standing rigid and colorless. 'It's too hard on their nervous systems. I'll tell you her future privately later on, if you wish.' The girl sighed.

‘The galactic warship,' said Gosseyn, 'on Crest?'

'You must be connected with that because it's blurred.'

'Blurred now?' He was surprised. 'Before we actually get there?'

'Yes.' She shook her head. 'This is not answering your questions, is it?'

'Could we get through to another star system if somebody was going there?'

'It depends on the distance. There is a limitation.'

'How far?'

‘I don’t know. I haven’t had enough experience.’

‘Then how do you know about it?’

The galactic recruiting ship gives out bulletins.'

'Bulletins?'

She smiled. 'They're not depending entirely on the Follower's orders. They're trying to make it seem exciting.'

Gosseyn could imagine how that would work. The project was being made to sound fascinating for the benefit of minds that had many childlike qualities. And the publicists were smart enough to indicate that there were obstacles.

'These mental pictures,' he said. 'Can you follow the future-lines of some person you know who volunteered for warship service?

She sighed and shook her head. 'It's too far. The bulletin once mentioned about eighteen thousand light-years.'

Gosseyn remembered that Crang had indicated in his conversation with Patricia Hardie, or rather Reesha, sister of Enro, that the Distorter transport bases of galactic civilization could not be more than about a thousand light-years apart.

Theoretically, similarity transport was instantaneous, and theoretically spatial distance made no difference. In practice there seemed to be a margin of error. The instruments were not perfect. Twenty decimal similarity, the critical point where interaction occurred, was no total similarity.

Apparently, the Predictor gift was also imperfect, even when not impeded by the presence of Gilbert Gosseyn. Still, whatever the distance over which they could predict, it would be adequate for the purposes of a battle in space.

Gosseyn hesitated, then: 'About how many ships' movements could they take into account at the same time?’

Leej looked surprised. 'It really doesn't matter. All of them, of course, that had any connection with the event. It's very limited in that way,'

'Limited!' said Gosseyn.

He stood up, and without a word headed for the control room.

He had been undecided about the Predictors. Prepared to let the galactic ship go on recruiting them until he made up his mind just when he would try to seize it. Now, it seemed to him that might be a long way off. One man didn't capture a battleship without planning.

A preliminary move was necessary.

At the end of the living room, Gosseyn stopped and turned. 'Leej,' he called, 'I'll be needing you.'

She was already on her feet, and she joined him a minute later in the dome. 'That was a short dinner,' she said anxiously.

'We'll finish it later,' said Gosseyn. He was intent. 'Is there any band on this radio that can be used for sending a general message?'

'Why, yes. We have what we call an emergency band

that ' She stopped. 'It's used to co-ordinate our plans

when we are threatened.'

Gosseyn said, 'Set it.'

She gave him a startled look, but there must have been something in his expression that decided her to say no more. A moment later, Gosseyn was on the air. As before—-it was now quite automatic—he shifted the wire immediately before each sentence he spoke. He said in a ringing voice:

'Calling all Predictors! From this moment every Predictor who is discovered or captured aboard a warship of the Greatest Empire will be executed. Friends are advised to communicate this warning to people who are already aboard such ships.

'You may all judge the effectiveness of this threat by the fact that you did not foresee the call that I am now making. I repeat: Every Predictor found aboard an Enro warship will be executed. There are no exceptions.'

He returned to the dining room, finished his dinner, and then went back to the control room. From its vantage point two and a half hours later he saw the lights of a city in the distance. At Yanar's request, the ship was brought down at what Leej called a Predictor air station. As soon as they were up in the air again, Gosseyn set the accelerator to Full, and then slipped to the window, and looked down at the city below. So many people. He saw the lights entwined with innumerable curling fingers of water. In some cases the ocean twisted right through the center of the city.

As he watched, all the lights went out. Gosseyn stared, but there was blackness. Beside him Leej uttered an exclamation.

'I wonder why they did that'

Gosseyn could have answered the question, but he didn't. The Follower was taking no chances. He evidently had a theory about the nature of Gilbert Gosseyn's control over energy, and he intended to see that no energy was available.

Leej said, 'Where are we going now?'

When he told her, some of the color went out of her face. 'It's a warship,' she said. There are hundreds of soldiers aboard, and weapons that could kill you from many different directions at once.'

That was true enough. The danger of trying to use his special powers to seize a ship was that it would be virtually impossible to nullify or control many scores of hand weapons. It was under such circumstances that fatal accidents could occur all too easily.

But what had happened put a pressure on him to act more swiftly than he had planned. The reality was that he had already used his strongest weapons against the Follower. Therefore, the sooner he got away from Yalerta the better. Somewhere out in the galaxy there might be scientific understanding of what made the Follower invulnerable, and, actually, until be found a rational approach, he'd better stay away from the man.

Besides, the galactic warship was the only method he knew of to get off this isolated planet.

The greatest risks were in order.

In half an hour there was light ahead. At first, the galactic ship was little more than a bright blur in the midnight darkness, but presently, so brilliant were the lights around it, it was clearly visible. Gosseyn set Leej's airship into a wide orbit around the bigger ship, and studied the approaches through a magnetic powered telescope.

The stranger was about six hundred feet long. A small ship indeed by galactic standards. But then, it had only one purpose on Yalerta. Aboard was a Distorter transport instrument of the type that produced mechanical similarity. As an invention it had probably no equal in the history of science. With it, man could move across the vast distances of space as if there were no space. A Predictor on Yalerta need merely step into the Distorter aboard the warship, and he would be transported a hundred or a thousand light-years away almost instantly. The margin of error, as he had discovered with the organic distorter in his head, was as small as to be almost not noticeable.

The ship lay on a level plain. During the forty minutes that Gosseyn watched it, two skytrailers came out of the darkness. They came at different times, and floated down to a landing near a blaze point that must be an air lock. Gosseyn presumed that these were volunteers, and what interested him was that, on each occasion, the trailer departed before the volunteer was allowed aboard the galactic ship.

It was just such details that he had been waiting to find out.

They approached boldly. At five miles he was able to sense the energy aboard—and received his great disappointment. Electricity only, and in unimportant quantities. The drive pile had been damped.

Mentally, Gosseyn drew back from the venture. In his anxiety, he began to whistle under his breath. He was aware of Leej watching him.

'Why, you're nervous,' she said wonderingly.

Nervous, he thought grimly, uncertain, undecided. Very true. As things stood now, he could wait in the hope of improving his position with regard to the ship—or he could make an attempt to capture it immediately.

'This power of yours,' said Leej, 'the way you do things—— how does it work?'

She was wondering about that at last, was she? Gosseyn smiled, and shook his head.

'It's a little involved,' he said, 'and without wishing to be offensive, I think it's beyond your scientific training. It goes something like this: The extensional area we call space-time is probably an illusion of the senses. That is, any reality they have bears little relation to what you see, feel or touch. Just as you seem to be better orientated as a Predictor to the real space time continuum, with emphasis on the time element—that is, better orientated than the average individual—so I am better orientated, but in my case the emphasis seems to be on space.'

She seemed not to have heard. 'You're not actually all-powerful, are you? Just what are your limitations?'

'Do you mind,' said Gosseyn, 'if I tell you later? I've just made up my mind about something.'

A pale Leej guided the airship through the night, and grew paler as she listened to his instructions. 'I don't think you have any right,' she said shakily, 'to ask me to do such a thing.'

Gosseyn said, I'd like to ask you one question.'

'Yes?'

'When you were in the cell with Jurig, what would have happened if he had killed me? Would the Follower have rescued you?'

'No, I was merely a device to incite you to your greatest effort. If I failed—it was my failure, also.'

'Well?' said Gosseyn softly.

The woman was silent, her lips pursed. The neural flow from her had changed from an anxious unevenness to a tense but steady pattern. She looked up at last.

'All right,' she said, 'I'll do it.'

Gosseyn patted her arm in silent approval. He did not fully trust Leej. There was a possibility that this also was a trap. But the shadow thing had already discovered that imprisoning Gilbert Gosseyn was easier said than done.

Gosseyn's eyes narrowed with determination. He was a man who had to keep moving. He felt immensely confident of his ability to do so, as long as he did not become too cautious in the face of necessity.

His reverie broke, as the beam of a searchlight penetrated the dome. There was a click as the magnetic receiver went on, and a man's voice said, 'Please land in the lighted area a hundred yards from our entrance.'

Leej took the ship down without a word. When they had come to rest, the voice spoke again from the receiver. 'How many are coming?'

Gosseyn held up a finger to Leej, and motioned for her to answer. 'One,' she said.

'Sex?’

'Female.'

'Very well One female person will emerge from your ship and approach the admission office at the foot of the gangplank. The trailer will leave immediately and go to a distance of five miles. As soon as it has retreated the required distance, the volunteer will be allowed aboard our ship.'

So it was five miles that the trailers were supposed to go. It seemed to Gosseyn that the two volunteers he had observed earlier had been admitted before anything like that distance had been covered by the ships that had brought them.

It was the same way with Leej. Gosseyn, who had similarized himself to the rear control room, watched her pause at the small structure beside the lower end of the gangplank. After little more than a second she started up the gangplank.

He glanced at the speedometer. The trailer had gone one and one-eighth Yalertan miles.

It could mean one of two things. First, this was a trap, and he was being lured. Or second, the space veterans had become bored, and were no longer adhering to the rules.

Of course, it could be a combination. A trap by the Follower, of which the ship's crew knew nothing. Or perhaps they had even been warned, and didn't take the threat seriously.

One by one Gosseyn ticked off the possibilities in his mind, and each time came back to the same reality. It made no difference. He had to make the attempt.

As he watched, Leej disappeared through the lock. He waited patiently. He had set himself four minutes after she got inside. In a way it was a long time to leave her alone.

He waited, and he felt strangely without regrets. For a moment, when she had protested her inclusion, he had wondered if he was not pushing her too hard. That wonder was past. It had seemed to him then, and still did, that the ship's crew would have been warned against a man, not a woman. Therefore, hers must be the risk of making the initial entry.

If she got inside, then so would he. There were other methods, but that was the fastest. He had plans for Leej, but first of all she must acquire the feeling that her fate was bound up with his.

He glanced at the clock, and experienced a thrill. The four minutes were up.

He hesitated a moment longer, and then similarized himself to the open porthole beside the air lock. It was touch and go for a second as he clawed for a hold. And then his arm was straddling the metal seat of the porthole.

It had seemed like a good place to enter, and so he had photographed it through the telescope while the trailer was still on the ground. He drew himself into the tunnel-like porthole.