Vogt On Cowardice

"If I were you, Crang, I wouldn't trust Blayney after he gets to be forty."

"Eh?" That was Blayney, an astounded look on his face. Crang's yellow eyes questioned Gosseyn.

"There are psychiatrical explanations for Blayney hitting me as he did," Gosseyn explained. "His nervous system is beginning to react as strongly to things that might have happened as it would if they had actually occurred. It's a purely functional disorder, but its outward form is distressing to the individual. A gradual loss of courage. Sadistic outbursts to cover up the developing cowardice. By the time he's forty he'll be having nightmares about the damage he might have suffered in some of the danger spots he was in as a youth." He shrugged. "Another case of a person lacking null-A integration."

Blayney had gray eyes. They glard at Gosseyn, then twisted over to Crang. He said in a hushed voice, "May I hit him again, Mr. Crang?"

- A.E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A