A. E. Van Vogt - The World of Null-A

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The World of Null-A

By A.E.Van Vogt

Scanned by BW-SciFi

Scan Date: July, 5th, 2002

To John W. Campbell, Jr.

Published by arrangement with the author's agent

to reproduce this book or portions thereof in

any form whatsoever. For information address

SBN 425-02558-6

BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS are published by

Berkley Publishing Corporation

200 Madison Avenue

New York, N.Y. 10016

BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS ® TM 757,375

Printed in the United States of America

Berkley Medallion Edition, MARCH, 1974

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Reader, in your hands you hold one of the most con-troversial-and successful-novels in the whole

of science fiction literature.

In these introductory remarks, I am going to tell about some of the successes and I shall also

detail what the prin-cipal critics said about The World of Null-A. Let me hasten to say that what

you shall read is no acrimonious defense. In fact, I have decided to take the criticisms seriously,

and I have accordingly revised this first Berkley edition and have provided the explanations which

for so long I believed to be unnecessary.

Before I tell you of the attacks, I propose swiftly to set down a few of The World of Null-A's

successes:

It was the first hard-cover science fiction novel pub-lished by a major publisher after World War II

(Simon and Schuster, 1948).

It won the Manuscripters Club award.

It was listed by the New York area library association among the hundred best novels of 1948.

Jacques Sadoul, in France, editor of Editions OPTA, has stated that World of Null-A, when first

published, all by itself created the French science fiction market. The first edition sold over 25,000

copies. He has stated that I am still-in 1969-the most popular writer in France in terms of copies

sold.

Its publication stimulated interest in General Semantics. Students flocked to the Institute of

General Semantics, Lakewood, Connecticut, to study under Count Alfred Korzybski-who allowed

himself to be photographed reading The World of Null-A. Today, General Semantics, then a

faltering science, is taught in hundreds of universi-ties.

World has been translated into nine languages.

With that out of the way, we come to the attacks. As you'll see, they're more fun, make authors

madder, and get readers stirred up.

Here is what Sam Moskowitz, in his brief biography of the author, said in his book, Seekers of

Tomorrow, about what was wrong with World of Null-A: ". . . Bewildered Gilbert Gosseyn, mutant

with a double mind, doesn't know who he is and spends the entire novel trying to find out." The

novel was originally printed as a serial in As-tounding Science Fiction, and after the final

installment was published (Mr. Moskowitz continues), "Letters of plaintive puzzlement began to

pour in. Readers didn't un-derstand what the story was all about. Campbell [the editor advised

them to wait a few days; it took that long, he suggested, for the implications to sink in. The days

turned into months, but clarification never came-"

You'll admit that's a tough set of sentences to follow. Plain, blunt-spoken Sam Moskowitz, whose

knowledge of science fiction history and whose collection of science fic-tion probably is topped

only by that of Forrest Ackerman (in the whole universe) ... is nevertheless in error. The number of

readers who wrote "plaintive" letters to the editor can be numbered on the fingers of one and a

half hands.

However, Moskowitz might argue that it isn't the quan-tity of complainers, but the quality. And

there he has a point.

Shortly after The World of Null-A was serialized in 1945, a sci-fi fan, hitherto unknown to me,

wrote in a science fiction fan magazine a long and powerful article at-tacking the novel and my

work in general up to that time. The article concluded, as I recall it (from memory only) with the

sentence: "Van Vogt is actually a pygmy writer working with a giant typewriter."

The imagery throughout this article, meaningless though that particular line is (if you'll think about

it), in-duced me to include in my answering article in a subse-quent issue of the same fan

magazine-which article is lost to posterity-the remark that I foresaw a brilliant writing career for the

young man who had written so poetical an attack.

That young writer eventually developed into the science fictional genius, Damon Knight,

who-among his many accomplishments-a few years ago organized the Science Fiction Writers

of America, which (though it seems im-possible) is still a viable organization.

Of Knight's attack so long ago, Galaxy Magazine critic Algis Budrys wrote in his December, 1967,

book review column: "In this edition [of critical essays] you will find among other goodies from the

earlier version, the famous destruction of A. E. van Vogt that made Damon's reputa-tion."

What other criticisms of The World of Null-A are there? None. It's a fact. Singlehandedly, Knight

took on this novel and my work at age 23-1/2, and, as Algis Bu-drys puts it, brought about my

"destruction."

So what's the problem? Why am I now revising World? Am I doing all this for one critic?

Yep.

But why?-you ask.

Well, on this planet you have to recognize where the power is.

Knight has it?

Knight has it

In a deeper sense, of course, I'm making this defense of the book, and revising it, because

General Semantics is a worthwhile subject, with meaningful implications, not only in 2560 A.D.

where my story takes place, but here and now.

General Semantics, as defined by the late Count Alfred Korzybski in his famous book, Science

and Sanity, is an over-word for non-Aristotelian and non-Newtonian systems. Don't let that

mouthful of words stop you. Non-Aristotelian means not according to the thought solidified by

Aristotle's followers for nearly 2,000 years. Non-Newtonian refers to our essentially Einsteinian

universe, as accepted by today's science. Non-Aristotelian breaks down to Non-A, and then

Null-A.

Thus, the titles World of-and Players of-Null-A.

General Semantics has to do with the Meaning of Meaning. In this sense, it transcends and

encompasses the new science of Linguistics. The essential idea of General

Semantics is that meaning can only be comprehended when one has made allowances for the

nervous and per-ception system-that of a human being-through which it is filtered.

Because of the limitations of his nervous system, Man can only see part of truth, never the whole

of it. In describing the limitation, Korzybski coined the term "lad-der of abstraction." Abstraction, as

he used it, did not have a lofty or symbolical thought connotation. It meant, "to abstract from", that

is, to take from something a part of the whole. His assumption: in observing a process of nature,

one can only abstract-i.e. perceive-a portion of it.

Now, if I were a writer who merely presented another man's ideas, then I doubt if I'd have had

problems with my readers. I think I presented the facts of General Semantics so well, and so

skilfully, in World of Null-A and its sequel that the readers thought that that was all I should be

doing. But the truth is that I, the author, saw a deeper paradox.

Ever since Einstein's theory of relativity, we have had the concept of the observer who-it was

stated-must be taken into account. Whenever I discussed this with people, I observed they were

not capable of appreciating the height of that concept. They seemed to think of the ob-server as,

essentially, an algebraic unit. Who he was didn't matter.

In such sciences as chemistry and physics, so precise were the methods that, apparently, it did

not matter who the observer was. Japanese, Germans, Russians, Cath-olics, Protestants,

Hindus, and Englishmen all arrived at the same impeccable conclusions, apparently bypassing

their personal, racial, and religious prejudices. However, everyone I talked to was aware that, as

soon as members of these various nationalities or religious groups wrote history-ah, now, we had

a different story (and of course a different history) from each individual.

When I say above that "apparently" it didn't matter in the physical sciences, or the "exact

sciences" as they are so often called, the truth is that it does matter there also. Every individual

scientist is limited in his ability to abstract data from Nature by the brainwashing he has received

from his parents and in school. As the General Semanticist would say, each scientific researcher

"trails his history" into every research project. Thus, a physicist with less educational or personal

rigidity can solve a prob-lem that was beyond the ability (to abstract) of another physicist.

In short, the observer always is, and always has to be a "me "... a specific person.

Accordingly, as World of Null-A opens, my hero-Gil-bert Gosseyn-becomes aware that he is not

who he thinks. He has a belief about himself that is false.

Now, consider-analogically, this is true of all of us. Only, we are so far gone into falseness, so

acceptant of our limited role, that we never question it at all.

... To continue with the story of World: Not knowing who he is, nevertheless, my protagonist

gradually becomes familiar with his "identity." Which essentially means that he abstracts

significance from the events that occur and gives them power over him. Presently he begins to

feel that the part of his identity that he has abstracted is the whole.

This is demonstrated in the second novel, The Players of Null-A. In this sequel story, Gilbert

Gosseyn rejects all attempts at being someone else. Since he is not con-sciously abstracting in

this area (of identity), he remains a pawn. For a person who is rigidly bound by identifica-tions with

what might be called the noise of the universe, the world is rich and colorful, not he. His identity

seems to be something because it is recording this enormous number of impacts from the

environment.

The sum total of Gosseyn's abstractions from the en-vironment-this includes his proprioceptive

perceptions of his own body-constitutes his memory.

Thus, I presented the thought in these stories that memory equals identity.

But I didn't say it. I dramatized it.

For example: a third of the way through World, Gos-seyn is violently killed. But there he is again at

the begin-ning of the next chapter, apparently the same person but in another body. Because he

has the previous body's memories, he accepts that he is the same identity.

An inverted example: At the end of Players, the main antagonist, who believes in a specific

religion, kills his god. It is too deadly a reality for him to confront; so he has to forget it. But to

forget something so all-embracing, he must forget everything he ever knew. He forgets who he is.

In short, no-memory equates with no-self.

When you read World and Players, you'll see how con-sistently this idea is adhered to and-now

that it has been called to your attention-how precise is the development.

I cannot at the moment recall a novel written prior to World of Null-A that had a deeper meaning

than that which showed on the surface. Science fiction often seems so complicated all by itself

when written straightforwardly without innuendoes or subtle implications on more than one level,

that it seems downright cruel of a writer to add an extra dimension that is hidden. A recent

example of such a two-level science fiction novel is the first of that genre written by the British

existentialist philosopher, Col-in Wilson, titled The Mind Parasites. The protagonist of Parasites

was one of the New Men-an existentialist, in short.

In World, we have the Null-A (non-Aristotelian) man, who thinks gradational scale, not black and

white -without, however, becoming a rebel or a cynic, or a con-spirator, in any current meaning of

the term. A little bit of this in the Communist hierarchies, Asia and Africa in general, and our own

Wall Street and Deep South, and in other either-or thinking areas . . . and we'd soon have a more

progressive planet.

Science fiction writers have recently been greatly con-cerned with characterization in science

fiction. A few writers in the field have even managed to convey that their science fiction has this

priceless quality.

To set the record straight as to where I stand in this controversy-in the Null-A stories I

characterize identity itself.

Of greater significance than any squabble between a writer and his critics . . . General Semantics

continues to have a meaningful message for the world today.

Did you read in the newspapers at the time about S.I. Hayakawa's handling of" the San Francisco

State College riots of 1968-69? They were among the first, and the most serious-out of control

and dangerous. The president of the college resigned. Hayakawa was appointed interim

president. What did he do? Well, Professor Hayakawa is today's Mr. Null-A himself, the elected

head of the In-ternational Society for General Semantics. He moved into that riot with the sure

awareness that in such situations communication is the key. But you must communicate in

relation to the rules that the other side is operating by.

The honest demands of the people with genuine grievances were instantly over-met on the basis

of better-thought. But the conspirators don't even know today what hit them and why they lost their

forward impetus.

Such also happens in the fable of Gilbert GoSANE in The World of Null-A.

A. E. VAN VOGT

Common sense, do what it will, cannot avoid being sur-prised occasionally. The object of

science is to spare it this emotion and create mental habits which shall be in such close

accord with the habits of the world as to secure that nothing shall be unexpected. B. R.

The occupants of each floor of the hotel must as usual during the games form their own

protective groups. . . ."

Gosseyn stared somberly out of the curving corner win-dow of his hotel room. From its

thirty-story vantage point, he could see the city of the Machine spread out below him. The day was

bright and clear, and the span of his vi-sion was tremendous. To his left, he could see a

blue-black river sparkling with the waves whipped up by the late-afternoon breeze. To the north,

the low mountains stood out sharply against the high backdrop of the blue sky.

That was the visible periphery. Within the confines of the mountains and the river, the buildings

that he could see crowded along the broad streets. Mostly, they were homes with bright roofs that

glinted among palms and semitropical trees. But here and there were other hotels, and more tall

buildings not identifiable at first glance.

The Machine itself stood on the leveled crest of a mountain.

It was a scintillating, silvery shaft rearing up into the sky nearly five miles away. Its gardens, and

the presiden-tail mansion near by, were partially concealed behind trees. But Gosseyn felt no

interest in the setting. The Ma-chine itself overshadowed every other object in his field of vision.

The sight of it was immensely bracing. In spite of him-self, in spite of his dark mood, Gosseyn

experienced a sense of wonder. Here he was, at long last, to participate in the games of the

Machine-the games which meant wealth and position for those who were partially suc-cessful,

and the trip to Venus for the special group that won top honors.

For years he had wanted to come, but it had taken her death to make it possible. Everything,

Gosseyn thought bleakly, had its price. In all his dreams of this day, he had never suspected that

she would not be there beside him, competing herself for the great prizes. In those days, when

they had planned and studied together, it was power and position that had shaped their hopes.

Going to Venus neither Patricia nor he had been able to imagine, nor had they considered it. Now,

for him alone, the power and wealth meant nothing. It was the remoteness, the un-thinkableness,

the mystery of Venus, with its promise of forgetfulness, that attracted. He felt himself aloof from

the materialism of Earth. In a completely unreligious sense, he longed for spiritual surcease.

A knock on the door ended the thought. He opened it and looked at the boy who stood there. The

boy said, "I've been sent, sir, to tell you that all the rest of the guests on this floor are in the sitting

room."

Gosseyn felt blank. "So what?" he asked.

"They're discussing the protection of the people on this floor, sir, during the games."

"Oh!" said Gosseyn.

He was shocked that he had forgotten. The earlier an-nouncement coming over the hotel

communicators about such protection had intrigued him. But it had been hard to believe that the

world's greatest city would be entirely without police or court protection during the period of the

games. In outlying cities, in all other towns, villages, and communities, the continuity of law went

on. Here, in the city of the Machine, for a month there would be no law except the negative

defensive law of the groups.

"They asked me to tell you," the boy said, "that those who don't come are not protected in any way

during the period of the games."

"I'll be right there," smiled Gosseyn. "Tell them I'm a newcomer and forgot. And thank you."

He handed the boy a quarter and waved him off. He closed the door, fastened the three plasto

windows, and put a tracer on his videophone. Then, carefully locking the door behind him, he went

out along the hall.

As he entered the sitting room, he noticed a man from his own town, a store proprietor named

Nordegg, standing near the door. Gosseyn nodded and smiled a greeting. The man glanced at

him curiously, but did not return either the smile or the nod. Briefly, that seemed odd. The

unu-sualness of it faded from Gosseyn's mind as he saw that others of the large group present

were looking at him.

Bright, friendly eyes, curious, friendly faces with just a hint of calculation in them-that was the

impression Gos-seyn had. He suppressed a smile. Everybody was sizing up everybody else,

striving to determine what chance his neighbors had of winning in the games. He saw that an old

man at a desk beside the door was beckoning to him. Gos-seyn walked over. The man said, "I've

got to have your name and such for our book here."

"Gosseyn," said Gosseyn. "Gilbert Gosseyn, Cress Village, Florida, age thirty-four, height six feet

one inch, weight one hundred eighty-five, no special distinguishing marks."

The old man smiled up at him, his eyes twinkling. "That's what you think," he said. "If your mind

matches your appearance, you'll go far in the games." He finished, "I notice you didn't say you

were married."

Gosseyn hesitated, thinking of a dead woman. "No," he said finally, quietly, "not married."

"Well, you're a smart-looking man. May the games prove you worthy of Venus, Mr. Gosseyn."

"Thanks," said Gosseyn.

As he turned to walk away, Nordegg, the other man from Cress Village, brushed past him and

bent over the ledger on the desk. When Gosseyn looked back a minute later, Nordegg was talking

with animation to the old man, who seemed to be protesting. Gosseyn watched them, puz-zled,

then forgot them as a small, jolly-looking man walked to an open space in the crowded room and

held up his hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I would say that we should now begin our discussions.

Everybody in-terested in group protection has had ample time to come here. And therefore, as

soon as the challenging period is over, I will move that the doors be locked and we start.

"For the benefit," he went on, "of those new to the games who do not know what I mean by

challenging period, I will explain the procedure. As you know, everybody here present will be

required to repeat into the lie detector the information he or she gave to the doorkeeper. But

before we begin with that, if you have any doubts about the legitimacy of anybody's presence,

please state them now. You have the right to challenge anybody present. Please voice any

suspicions you have, even though you possess no specific evidence. Remember, however, that

the group meets every week and that challenges can be made at each meeting. But now, any

challenges?"

"Yes," said a voice behind Gosseyn. "I challenge the presence here of a man calling himself

Gilbert Gosseyn."

"Eh?" said Gosseyn. He whirled and stared in-credulously at Nordegg.

The man looked at him steadily, then his gaze went out to the faces beyond Gosseyn. He said,

"When Gosseyn first came in, he nodded to me as if he knew me, and so I went over to the book

to find out his name, thinking it might recall him to me. To my amazement I heard him give his

address as Cress Village, Florida, which is where I come from. Cress Village, ladies and

gentlemen, is a rather famous little place, but it has a population of only three hundred. I own one

of the three stores, and I know everybody, absolutely everybody, in the village and in the

surrounding countryside. There is no person residing in or near Cress Village by the name of

Gilbert Gosseyn."

For Gosseyn, the first tremendous shock had come and gone while Nordegg was still speaking.

The after-feeling that came was that he was being made ridiculous in some obscure way. The

larger accusation seemed otherwise quite meaningless.

He said, "This all seems very silly, Mr. Nordegg." He paused. "That is your name, is it not?"

"That's right," Nordegg nodded, "though I'm wonder-ing how you found it out."

"Your store in Cress Village," Gosseyn persisted, "stands at the end of a row of nine houses,

where four roads come together."

"There is no doubt," said Nordegg, "that you have been through Cress Village, either personally or

by means of a photograph."

The man's smugness irritated Gosseyn. He fought his anger as he said, "About a mile westward

from your store is a rather curiously shaped house."

" 'House,' he calls it!" said Nordegg. "The world-famous Florida home of the Hardie family."

"Hardie," said Gosseyn, "was the maiden name of my late wife. She died about a month ago.

Patricia Hardie. Does that strike any chord in your memory?"

He saw that Nordegg was grinning gleefully at the in-tent faces surrounding them.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, you can judge for your-selves. He says that Patricia Hardie was his

wife. That's a marriage I think we would all have heard about if it had ever taken place. And as for

her being the late Patricia Hardie, or Patricia Gosseyn, well"-he smiled-"all I can say is, I saw her

yesterday morning, and she was very, very much alive, and looking extremely proud and beautiful

on her favorite horse, a white Arabian."

It wasn't ridiculous any more. None of this fitted. Patri-cia didn't own a horse, white or colored.

They had been poor, working their small fruit farm in the daytime, study-ing at night. Nor was

Cress Village world-famous as the country home of the Hardies. The Hardies were nobodies.

Who the devil were they supposed to be?

The question flashed by. With a simple clarity he saw the means that would end the deadlock.

"I can only suggest," he said, "that the lie detector will readily verify my statement."

But the he detector said, "No, you are not Gilbert Gos-seyn, nor have you ever been a resident of

Cress Village. You are-" It stopped. The dozens of tiny electronic tubes in it flickered uncertainly.

"Yes, yes," urged the pudgy man. "Who is he?"

There was a long pause, then: "No knowledge about that is available in his mind," said the

detector. "There is an aura of unique strength about him. But he himself seems to be unaware of

his true identity. Under the cir-cumstances, no identification is possible."

"And under the circumstances," said the pudgy man with finality, "I can only suggest an early visit

to a psychiatrist, Mr. Gosseyn. Certainly you cannot remain here."

A minute later, Gosseyn was out in the corridor. A thought, a purpose, lay on his brain like a cake

of ice. He reached his room and put through a call on the video-phone. It took two minutes to

make the connection with Cress Village. A strange woman's face came onto the plate. It was a

rather severe face, but distinctive and young.

"I'm Miss Treechers, Miss Patricia Hardie's Florida secretary. What is it you wish to speak to Miss

Hardie about?"

For a moment the existence of such a person as Miss Treechers was staggering. Then: "It's

private," said Gos-seyn, recovering. "And it's important that I speak to her personally. Please

connect me at once."

He must have sounded or looked or acted authoritative. The young woman said hesitantly, "I'm

not supposed to do this, but you can reach Miss Hardie at the palace of the Machine."

Gosseyn said explosively, "She's here, in the great city!"

He was not aware of hanging up. But suddenly the woman's face was gone. The video was dark.

He was alone with his realization: Patricia was alive!

He had known, of course. His brain, educated in ac-cepting things as they were, had already

adjusted to the fact that a lie detector didn't lie. Sitting there, he felt strangely satiated with

information. He had no impulse to call the palace, to talk to her, to see her. Tomorrow, of course,

he would have to go there, but that seemed far away in space-time. He grew aware that someone

was knocking loudly at his door. He opened it to four men, the foremost of whom, a tall young

man, said, "I'm the assis-tant manager. Sorry, but you'll have to leave. We'll check your baggage

downstairs. During the policeless month, we can take no chances with suspicious individuals."

It took about twenty minutes for Gosseyn to be ejected from the hotel. Night was falling as he

walked slowly along the almost deserted street.

The gifted . . . Aristotle . . . affected perhaps the largest number of people ever influenced by a

single man . . . . Our tragedies began when the "intensional" biologist Aristotle took the lead

over the "extensional" mathematical philosopher Plato, and formulated all the primitive

identifications, subject-predictivism .. . into an imposing system, which for more than two

thousand years we were not allowed to revise under penalty of persecution. . . . Because of

this, his name has been used for the two-valued doctrines of Aristotelianism, and, conversely,

the many-valued realities of modern science are given the name non-Aristotelianism. . . . A.K.

It was too early for grave danger. The night, though already arrived, was but beginning. The

prowlers and the gangs, the murderers and the thieves, who would soon emerge into the open,

were still waiting for the deeper darkness. Gosseyn came to a sign that flashed on and off,

repeating tantalizingly:

ROOMS FOR THE UNPROTECTED

$20 a night

Gosseyn hesitated. He couldn't afford that price for the full thirty days of the games, but it might do

for a few nights. Reluctantly, he rejected the possibility. There were ugly stories connected with

such places. He preferred to risk the night in the open.

He walked on. As the planetary darkness deepened, more and more lights flashed on in their

automatic fashion. The city of the Machine glowed and sparkled. For miles and miles along one

street he crossed, he could see two lines of street lamps like shining sentinels striding in

geometric progression toward a distant blaze point of illusory meeting. It was all suddenly

depressing.

He was apparently suffering from semi-amnesia, and he must try to comprehend that in the

largest sense of mean-ing. Only thus would he be able to free himself from the emotional effects

of his condition. Gosseyn attempted to visualize the freeing as an event in the null-A

interpreta-tion. The event that was himself, as he was, his body and mind as a whole, amnesia

and all, as of this moment on this day and in this city.

Behind that conscious integration were thousands of hours of personal training. Behind the

training was the non-Aristotelian technique of automatic extensional think-ing, the unique

development of the twentieth century which, after four hundred years, had become the dynamic

philosophy of the human race. "The map is not the ter-ritory. . . . The word is not the thing itself. . .

." The belief that he had been married did not make it fact. The hallucinations which his

unconscious mind had inflicted on his nervous system had to be counteracted.

As always, it worked. Like water draining from an overturned basin, the doubts and fears spilled

out of him. The weight of false grief, false because it had so obviously been imposed on his mind

for someone else's purpose, lifted. He was free.

He started forward again. As he walked, his gaze darted from side to side, seeking to penetrate

the shadows of doorways. Street corners he approached alertly, his hand on his gun. In spite of

his caution, he did not see the girl who came racing from a side street until an instant before she

bumped into him with a violence that unbalanced them both.

The swiftness of the happening did not prevent pre-cautions. With his left arm, Gosseyn snatched

at the young woman. He caught her body just below the shoul-ders, imprisoning both of her arms

in a viselike grip. With his right hand, he drew his gun. All in an instant. There followed a longer

moment while he fought to recover from the imbalance her speed and weight had imposed on

them both. He succeeded. He straightened. He half carried, half dragged her into the shadowed

archway of a door. As he reached its shelter, the girl began to wriggle and to moan softly.

Gosseyn brought his gun hand up and put it, gun and all, over her mouth.

"Sh-sh!" he whispered. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She ceased wriggling. She stopped her whimpering. He allowed her to free her mouth. She said

breathlessly, "They were right behind me. Two men. They must have seen you and run off."

Gosseyn considered that. Like all the happenings in spacetime, this one was packed with unseen

and unseeable factors. A young woman, different from all the other young women in the universe,

had come running in terror from a side street. Her terror was either real or it was assumed.

Gosseyn's mind skipped the harmless possibility and fastened upon the probability that her

appearance was a trick. He pictured a small group waiting around the cor-ner, anxious to share in

the spoils of a policeless city, yet not willing to take the risk of a direct assault. He felt cold-ly,

unsympathetically suspicious. Because if she was harm-less, what was she doing out alone on

such a night? He muttered the question savagely.

"I'm unprotected," came the husky answer. "I lost my job last week because I wouldn't go out with

the boss. And I had no savings. My landlady put me out this morn-ing when I couldn't pay my

rent."

Gosseyn said nothing. Her explanation was so feeble that he couldn't have spoken without effort.

After a mo-ment, he wasn't so sure. His own story wouldn't sound any too plausible if he should

ever make the mistake of putting it into words. Before committing himself to the possibility that

she was telling the truth, he tried one ques-tion. "There's absolutely no place you can go?"

"None," she said. And that was that. She was his charge for the duration of the games. He led her

unresist-ing out onto the sidewalk, and, carefully avoiding the cor-ner, into the road.

"We'll walk on the center white line," he said. "That way we can watch the corners better."

The road had its own dangers, but he decided not to mention them.

"Now, look," Gosseyn went on earnestly, "don't be afraid of me. I'm in a mess, too, but I'm honest.

So far as

I am concerned, we're in the same predicament, and our only purpose right now is to find a place

where we can spend the night."

She made a sound. To Gosseyn it seemed like a muffled laugh, but when he whirled on her, her

face was averted from the nearest street light and he couldn't be sure. She turned a moment later

to face him, and he had his first real look at her. She was young, with thin but heavily tanned

cheeks. Her eyes were dark pools, her lips parted. She wore makeup, but it wasn't a good job and

added nothing to her beauty. She didn't look as if she had laughed at anything or anybody for a

long time. Gosseyn's suspicion faded. But he was aware that he was back where he had started,

protector of a girl whose individuality had not yet shown itself in any tangible form.

The vacant lot, when they came opposite it, made Gos-seyn pause thoughtfully. It was dark, and

there was brush scattered over it. It was an ideal hiding place for marauders of the night. But,

looked at from another angle, it was also a possible shelter for an honest man and his pro-tegee,

provided they could approach it without being seen. He noticed after a brief survey that there was

a back alley leading to the rear of the vacant lot, and a space between two stores through which

they could get to the alley.

It took ten minutes to locate a satisfactory patch of grass under a low, spreading shrub.

"We'll sleep here," Gosseyn whispered.

She sank down. And it was the wordlessness of her ac-quiescence that brought the sudden

realization that she had come with him too easily. He lay thoughtful, eyes nar-rowed, pondering

the possible dangers.

There was no moon, and the darkness under the overhanging bush was intense. After a while, a

long while, Gosseyn could see the shadowlike figure of her in a splash of dim light reflections from

a distant street lamp. She was more than five feet from him, and all those first minutes that he

watched her she didn't move perceptibly. Studying the shadow shape of her, Gosseyn grew

increasingly con-scious of the unknown factor she represented. She was at least as unknown as

he himself. His speculation ended as the young woman said softly, "My name is Teresa Clark.

What's yours?"

What indeed? Gosseyn wondered. Before he could speak, the girl added, "Are you here for the

games?"

"That's right," said Gosseyn.

He hesitated. It was he who ought to be asking the questions.

"And you?" he said. "Are you here for the games, too?"

It took a moment to realize that he had propounded a leading question. Her answer was

bitter-voiced. "Don't be funny. I don't even know what null-A stands for."

Gosseyn was silent. There was a humility here that em-barrassed him. The girl's personality was

suddenly clearer: a twisted ego that would shortly reveal a complete satisfaction with itself. A car

raced past on the near-by street, ending the need for comment. It was followed rapidly by four

more. The night was briefly alive with the thrum of tires on pavement. The sound faded. But vague

echoes remained, distant throbbing noises which must have been there all the time but which

now that his atten-tion had been aroused became apparent.

The young woman's voice intruded; she had a nice voice, though there was a plaintive note of

self-pity in it that was not pleasant. "What is all this games stuff, anyway? In a way, it's easy

enough to see what happens to winners who stay on Earth. They get all the juicy jobs; they

become judges, governors, and such. But what about the thousands who every year win the right

to go to Venus? What do they do when they get there?"

Gosseyn was noncommittal. "Personally," he said, "I think I'll be satisfied with the presidency."

The girl laughed. "You'll have to go some," she said, "to beat the Hardie gang."

Gosseyn sat up. "To beat whom?" he asked.

"Why, Michael Hardie, president of Earth."

Slowly, Gosseyn sank back to the ground. So that was what Nordegg and the others at the hotel

had meant. His story must have sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. President Hardie, Patricia

Hardie, a palatial summer home at Cress Village-and every bit of information in his brain about

that absolutely untrue.

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TheWorldofNull-AByA.E.VanVogtScannedbyBW-SciFiScanDate:July,5th,2002ToJohnW.Campbell,Jr.Copyright1945,1948,©1970,byA.E.VanVogtAllrightsreservedPublishedbyarrangementwiththeauthor'sagentAllrightsreservedwhichincludestherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyformwhatsoever.Forinformationaddress...

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