Null-A Three (13 page)

He sighed. And continued with his recapitulation: “I’m going to guess that the absence of your ship could be an advantage for the enemy.”

Silence. They walked several steps, and the end of the corridor was visibly only a a few hundred feet ahead now. Then: “It will probably take a while,” Breemeg said, “before anyone becomes aware that we have disappeared. So ours may not yet be a dangerous absence.”

“Your description of the enemy,” said Gosseyn, who had been considering what the other had said, “suggests that for the first time ever men have met a superior life form. By which I mean—”

He stopped, incredulous.

The floor was shaking.
Shaking!

It was a vibration that was visible. Literally, under him, the floor wobbled. And he saw that wobble run like a ripple that moved slantwise across the corridor. And, apparently, passed on to other parts of the ship. And was gone from where he was.

Just ahead, a ceiling bell clanged. And then a man’s strident voice said urgently: “All personnel to stations.

An enemy super-ship has just this minute entered our area of space—
”

Because of the intensity of tone, it took a moment to identify the voice as that of the Draydart Duart.

Inside his brain, he was aware of his Alter Ego mentally groaning at him: “Three,” that distant thought came, “I think you’ve done it. You thought of that other galaxy battle location; and I have an awful feeling something big happened—again.”

Gosseyn Three had no time for guilt. Because at that exact instant he felt an odd sensation in his head. It required several split instants for his second-in-line memory from Gosseyn Two and Gosseyn One, since he had no personally associated physical movements, to identify the feeling.

Then: . . . Good God! Something was trying to take control of his mind—

The twelve minutes of Leej’s prediction, must be up. That was only one of numerous fleeting impressions. Thought of Leej also brought instant memory of the Crangs, the Prescotts, Enro, and Strala . . . all of whom at this moment must be fighting efforts to control their minds.

So Gilbert Gosseyn Three had better get back there. Too bad because—that was another of the fleeting realizations . . . I should really be tracking down that boy—

A chill wind blew into Gosseyn’s face.

As far as the eye could see were snowy peaks. And, directly below the ridge on which they stood, was a swift flowing river with ice-encrusted shore lines.

He saw that the boy was gazing at the scene, eyes wide. A flush of color was creeping into the white cheeks. And it just could be the chill of that wind was reaching through all the madness and making itself felt on a new level of reality.

There was a long pause. Then: “Hey, this is really something, isn’t it?” The boyish voice had excitement in it.

Even as the words were spoken, the wind blew harder, icier. Gosseyn smiled grimly, and said, “Yes, it really is . . . something.”

His Imperial Majesty, Enin, seemed not to hear and not to feel. His voice went up several pitches of excitement: “Hey, what do you do in a place like this?”

It was not too difficult to believe that this boy had all his life been protected from extremes of weather. So Gosseyn’s feeling was that perhaps a little explanation was in order. Accordingly, he said, “Since, because of the battle that’s going on . . . back there—” He waved vaguely in the direction of the light-years-away Dzan ship—“we’ll be staying here for a little while, I should tell you that what you’re looking at is the winter season of this planet, and it’s a wilderness area. Not a sign of civilization is visible from here.”

“There’s something over there,” said the boy. He pointed, and added, “I’ve been here twenty minutes longer than you, and it was brighter then, and it looked like something when the sun was out.”

Gosseyn’s gaze followed the pointing finger, and saw that it was aimed in the direction that the river was flowing. The distance involved was more than a mile. There, at the point where the river and the valley turned leftward out of sight, was a dark area in the snow, seemingly at the very edge of the disappearing stream.

Was it the first building of a settlement that was located beyond the bend?

It would take a while to get there, and find out. But there was no question: if they remained here, that was the direction they would go.

Aloud, he said, “Let’s hope so. We have to find a place where we can be warm when night comes.” Undecided, he looked up at the cloud that hid the sun. And saw that it was part of a dark mass that would presently cover most of the sky. Too bad! It would have been interesting to see what kind of sun it was.

Already, the air seemed chillier than at the moment of his arrival. Time they were on their way.

As the two of them partly climbed down, and partly slid down the icy slope, Gosseyn Three conducted a silent debate with himself.

Presumably, where he—and the boy before him—had arrived, was a 20 decimal “photographed” area of Gosseyn One or Gosseyn Two; an exact location one of them had used for some purpose in the past.

The problem was that his own recollection of the travels of the earlier Gosseyns could not seem to recall a frozen mountain area. The joint memory he shared with the first two Gosseyns did not include a mental picture of a scene such as this, utilized for any reason.

It was merely a mystery, of course, and not a disaster. At any moment he could choose to use his extrabrain—and something would happen; exactly what was no longer predictable.

. . . After all, my intention was to return to the imperial apartment on the ship to help Strala and the visitors, who had been transmitted aboard by Gosseyn Two—

And, instead, he had had that final, fleeting thought about Enin; and, somehow, his defective extra-brain had worked out those intricate details, and had brought him to where the boy was on this frozen planet.

It could, of course, be earth itself. Still descending, still holding onto the boy’s hand, Gosseyn—with that thought—looked down and around, suddenly hopeful. He drew a deep, testing breath. The air, though chilly, felt exactly as his group memory remembered the air of earth. The snowy mountain peaks, the flowing stream, half-embedded in ice, were surely a variation of a thousand similar scenes in any of a hundred mountain areas on earth.

The feeling of hope stayed with him for at least another hundred yards of the descent. By then he was putting, first one hand and next the other, inside the upper portion of the loose-fitting garment that Voices One and Two had tucked him into.

There was still warm body underneath; and, by repeated contact, he was able to keep his hands, one at a time, in a reasonably warm state. But as more time went by, and still they were merely edging down that slope, there was no question in his mind: he was not dressed for this climate.

A few minutes later, it seemed as if the time for decisive action had come, as the boy suddenly whimpered, “I can’t—I can’t—it’s too cold. I’m freezing.”

They had come down to a wide ledge. There they stopped. And stood on the ice, slapping themselves in the manner of freezing individuals trying to force circulation back into their fingers and hands.

The view remained absolutely magnificent. Unfortunately, the fact that they could still see ice and snow in a thousand beautiful formations in the distances below and to either side, meant that they still had a long way to go. Gosseyn unhappily estimated that they were still four hundred yards above the river level.

Standing there, not quite sure what came next, he remembered—a Gosseyn Two involvement—when the group was preparing for the Big Journey, they had made three preliminary tests.

First, Leej predicted a location on earth; whereupon Gosseyn Two made his mental “photograph” of what his extra-brain “saw” at the particle level in the involved cells inside her head.

Two other tests, one to an unknown planet—the existence of which she predicted—and one to her home planet, Yalerta. And only when that preliminary had been evaluated as being satisfactory did Leej aim her prediction at a location in the other galaxy.

. . . This planet, where Enin and I landed so automatically, could be one of those preliminary test locations that no one ever actually went to—Was it earth? Was it Yalerta? Was it the unknown planet?

Obviously, it would not be possible to find out immediately. But if this was earth—What? There seemed to be several possibilities, all of them vague.

He kept stamping his feet, and rubbing his hands. And he was reluctantly realizing that, if the boy and he were this cold already, there was no chance that they could walk a whole mile to the dark area where the river made its turn. Even getting down to the shore of the river seemed as if it would be too much for their freezing bodies.

Yet he was feeling better about the mis-transmission that had brought him here. . . Have to learn to control that, of course; such accidents would need to be analyzed, and something positive done, but—The kid had been in this icy world at least twenty minutes longer than he had. And evidently two things had saved him until now. During all those first minutes the sun had been shining. Also, a young boy’s better circulation and overall warmer condition had had its good result.

Unfortunately, those special advantages had run out of time. And so—for both of them—the moment had come for one of those vague possibilities.

Gosseyn reached over, caught the boy’s cold, right hand, and squeezed it. Holding the hand firmly, and having gained the other’s attention, he said earnestly, “Listen, Enin, you and I have special abilities. And what might be the most advisable special thing for us to do right now is to find some way to trigger one of those electrical charges that you can do.”

Gloomily, the boy shook his head. “But it has to come from an energy source that already exists. A cloud with lightning in it, or a live wire somewhere.”

Gosseyn nodded. “That bunch of clouds up there—” he pointed with his thumb—“and this tree right here, set it on fire!”

The tree he pointed at was a twisted, twenty-foot-long, winter-denuded object. With its leafless, spread-out branches, it poked out of the side of the cliff just above the ledge, and seemed to hang there at a downward angle.

He waited while the boy looked at it; then glanced up at the cloud; and then: “Is there lightning in the winter?” Enin asked dubiously.

“Oh!” said Gosseyn.

It was a question which—he had to admit it—had never crossed his, or any Gosseyn’s mind. Ruefully, he realized that lightning on earth was connected with summer thunderstorms.

“I guess you’re right,” he agreed. But he was bracing himself with another possibility. He pointed with his free hand. “If that dark spot is actually a building, and it has electric wires in it, what could you do at this distance?”

Silently, the boy stared in the indicated direction. There was a pause; not long.

Abruptly a crackling sound, and the tree burst into flame!

Minutes later, they were still warming themselves as near the flames as they dared to go. The tree burned with a satisfying intensity; and even when it presently became a blackened ruin, it still gave off heat.

But getting warm ceased to be a principal preoccupation. Gosseyn grew aware that his companion was gazing off to one side, a troubled expression on his face. “Look!” the boy pointed, and added, “I was afraid that might happen.”

What Gosseyn saw, when his gaze followed the pointing finger, was a column of smoke a mile away, where the dark spot had, indeed, turned out to be a habitation.

“The electricity I brought over here,” said Enin, “set their place on fire when I forced it out of the wires.”

He seemed concerned; and it occurred to the man that the imperial child seemed to have acquired, or was automatically—now that he was away from his lifetime environment—showing moral qualities of a well-brought-up twelve-year-old who knew right from wrong.

As he had that thought, the boy spoke again: “So now if we go there, we may not find any place where we can stay.”

Gosseyn stared silently at the pall of black smoke that reared up into the sky, thinking ruefully: . . . Well, maybe not that moral, after all—Aloud, he said, “I hope no one was injured.”

The visible damage that was being done to the distant structure abruptly brought his mind back once more to the question: what planet was this? What kind of people were out there in that burning building? What level of technology?

. . . Obviously not possible to find out immediately.

Gosseyn had the conscious, dismissing thought. And saw that the boy had ducked under the smoldering tree and was restlessly walking along the ledge beyond it, peering over the edge as he did so.

Abruptly, Enin called, “I think we can get down better from here.” He pointed where the snowy slope seemed to be less steep.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Gosseyn called back.

First, his own, next purpose needed to be tested out.

Gingerly, he reached down, and took hold of the thickest of the blackened tree branches. Flinched. And let go again immediately. It was more than just warm.

It took a few minutes then. He threw snow on the sections he wanted to grab until they cooled; rather quickly, it turned out. As soon as he could comfortably take hold, he used his feet as a brace, and tore the entire branch loose from the tree.