qualifications. When I was a child, I shared his resentment. I refused to have anything to do with null-A. But he went too far for me. When I began to realize that behind his wonderful personality—and you must admit he had it —was a man who felt careless of the consequences of his acts, I secretly rebelled. When Eldred came on the scene a year and a half ago, after a meteoric rise in the diplomatic service of the Greatest Empire, I had my first contact with the Galactic League.”
“He’s a galactic agent?”
“No.” There was pride in her voice. “Eldred Crang is Eldred Crang, unique individual. He put me in touch with the League.”
“And you became a League agent?”
“In my own way.”
There was a tone to her voice that made Gosseyn say quickly, “What do you mean by that?”
“The League,” said Patricia, “suffers from many shortcomings. It’s only as determined as its member nations. It’s so easy, so awfully easy, to sacrifice one star system for the good of the whole. I always kept that in mind, and so worked
Gosseyn nodded, remembering what Thorson had told him. He ceased wondering why Enro had chosen an obscure planetary system in which to provoke his war. An attack on the only unarmed planet in the galaxy would be the most brazen method of flouting the League treaties.
“It was Eldred,” said Patricia, “who discovered that the injuries suffered by old Lavoisseur in the explosion at the Semantics Institute a few years ago had turned that great scientist into the bloodthirsty maniac whom you knew as ‘X.’ He thought the man would recover, and so become useful, but that didn’t happen.”
Back to Eldred. Gosseyn sighed.
The silence between them lengthened. With each passing minute, Gosseyn grew more determined, grimmer. He had no illusions. This was the calm before the storm. A rapacious Thorson had been drawn from the purpose for which he had come to the solar system. So the world of null-A had a chance to arm itself, and the League had a few additional weeks to realize that Enro meant war. Thorson would play his private game as long as he dared, but if he ever felt himself threatened, he would carry on with the war of extermination.
Gosseyn could see his hopes narrowing down to one lone being working, with the help of a few uncomprehending assistants like himself, against the colossal might of a violently unsane, all-embracing galactic civilization.
“It’s not enough,” he thought with sudden insight. “I’m counting too much on somebody else to perform the final miracle.”
In that moment, with that realization, the first germ of desperate action was born.
XXXII
Two days after that, he bent two light beams together in the dark room without the aid of the Distorter. He felt the action. Felt it as a sensation like—he tried to describe it afterward to the others—like “the first time you get a floating arm in hypnosis.” Distinct, unmistakable attunement. It was a new awareness of—and addition to— his nervous system.
As the days passed, the tingles in his body grew more insistent, sharper, and more controllable. He felt energies, movements, things, and reached the point where he could identify them instantly. The presence of the other men was a warm fire along his nerves. He responded to the most delicate impulses, and by the sixth day he could distinguish Dr. Kair from the others by a “friendliness” that effused from the man. There was an overtone of anxiety in the psychologist’s feeling, but that only accentuated the friendliness.
Gosseyn was interested in distinguishing between the emotions felt about him by Crang, Prescott, and Thorson. It was Prescott who disliked him violently. “He’s never forgotten,” Gosseyn thought, “the scare I gave him, and the way I fooled him again when I went to the palace to get the Distorter.” Thorson was a Machiavellian; he neither liked nor disliked his prisoner. He was both cautious and resolute. Crang was neutral. It was a curious emotion to receive from the man. Neutral, intent, preoccupied, playing a game so intricate that no dear-cut reaction would come through.
But it was Patricia who provided the startling state. Nothing. Again and again, when he reached the point where he could identify the individual emotions of the men, Gosseyn strained to make contact with Patricia’s nervous system. In the end he had to conclude that a man could not tune in on a woman.
During those days his plan grew sharper in his mind. He saw with a developing comprehension that the picture of this situation had come to him through Aristotelian minds—almost literally. Even Crang, he mustn’t forget, was only a fine example of how man could organize himself without having had knowledge of the null-A system since childhood. He was a null-A convert, and not a null-A proper.
There were gaps in that reasoning, but it brought the scene down to the level of a human nervous system. The mysterious player, seen in that light, no longer seemed so important. He was a concept of Thorson’s Aristotelian mind. The reality would probably turn out to be some one who had discovered a method of immortality, and who was attempting without adequate resources to oppose the plans of an irresistible military power. He had already proved that he cared little about what happened to any one body of Gilbert Gosseyn, and it seemed clear that if Gosseyn II was killed, then the player would accept the defeat of that phase of his plans and turn to other prospects of the situation.
To hell with him!
On the afternoon of the experiment with the piece of wood, Gosseyn made a prolonged attempt to counteract the vibrator. Its intricacy startled him. It was a thing of many subtly different energies. Pulsations poured from it on a multitude of wave lengths. He succeeded in controlling it because it was a small machine, its various parts close together in space-time. The time difference between the innumerable functions was not a factor.
And that was why his control of it meant nothing so far as his escape was concerned. The time factor
On the nineteenth day he was given a metal rod with a concave cup made of electron steel, the metal used for atomic energy. Gingerly, Gosseyn reached with his mind for the small electric power source that had been brought into the room. The sparkling force coruscated in the energy cup and spat with a hazy violence against the floor, the wall, the transparent shield behind which the observers waited. Shuddering, Gosseyn broke the twenty- decimal similarity between the rod and the energy source. He surrendered the rod to a soldier who was sent out to take it from him. Not till then did Thorson come out. The big man was genial.
“Well, Mr. Gosseyn,” he said, almost respectfully, “we’d be foolish to give you any more training than that. It isn’t that I don’t trust you—” He laughed. “I don’t. But I think you’ve got enough stuff to find our man.”
He broke off. “I’m having some extra clothing sent up to your apartment. Pack what you want, and be ready in an hour.”
Gosseyn nodded absently. A few moments later he watched the three guards ease the vibrator into the elevator, and then Prescott motioned him to enter. The men crowded in behind him. Prescott stepped to the controls, and Gosseyn, in a single, convulsive movement, grabbed him and smashed his head against the metal wall of the elevator. Even as he snatched at the blaster in the holster strapped to the man’s hip, he let go of the body, reached for the nearest tube, and pressed it.
There was a blur of movement; that ended. By that time the blaster was glaring its white fire, and there were four dying men writhing on the floor.
The tremendous, desperate first act was a complete success.
