I like Van Vogt's stuff as much as I like Heinlein or Azimov's. The settings he tackles are widely varied. This is part of what makes him so fun to read.
Within that variation his two common themes are that the antagonists are clever and that psychology is going to become a powerful science in the future and will guide both predicting and controlling people.
In this story when the aliens come to Earth they find a world where psychology has completely eliminated senseless human violence. These aliens are life force sucking vampire types who are on the run from the galactic community, and when they jump a couple of Earthlings walking down the street in a city these are the first criminal murders in decades!
There are some inconsistencies with this premise. For example, the bodies show up in a morgue where the protagonist sees them and finds out there's a problem afoot. Why is there still a morgue? The social structure -- the protagonist as an independent news reporter calling in scoops -- doesn't seem at all futuristic. It seems hard-boiled thirties pulp. In this aspect he hasn't explored ramifications.
It's a curious mix. Nice depiction of a detective-style fast thinker, but little thought to the social/technological ramifications of this being the future. Space ships land and take off quickly and simply; paper being handed around, not computer messages; people walk around corners and get lost in the city crowds, no ubiquitous monitoring. ...Well, it turns out there is ubiquitous monitoring, but you get to it by talking to a telephone operator.
The glamorous setting described as a restaurant room, where this mystery will deepen, is quite ostentatious. My first impression is absurbly so: This is a restaurant but what he describes is a hotel suite with a lot of "Hearst Castle" visit built in. Why both the ostentation and the misnomer? Why would this happen in the future?
...The secret door to the ship is reached by coming through this ultra-fancy restaurant salon. And this was set up by aliens within hours of their arrival in the solar system? That's a consistency stretch! And their informed pursuer is an attractive women masqurading as a college boy? Whew! Fully baked with lots of steaming garnish on top! I didn't remember this part. In retrospect, I guess this is to symbolize how advanced these evil aliens are: They can not only move with impunity among the human plebes, the humans remain unaware they have these aliens moving among them.
Pfft! Pure pulp fiction plot advancement silliness: A space ship somehow hides under a hyper-fancy restaurant in NYC, the beautiful mystery girl confronts the space vampires with only the ambitious newspaper reporter as a backup, and she doesn't explain to him what he's getting into. I had forgotten how silly this part was. More inconsistency in further thinking: She gives him a mysterious pistol-like object and tells him, "Use it like a gun." This is taking place in an era when the power of psychology has wiped out crime and violence, why should this reporter know how to use a gun?
I like, and remember liking, that for Van Vogt galactic means something big -- big and full of variety. For so many SF writers galactic means something mid-sized and universe means something big. And in story we have some overt species hierarchy -- species with different mental capabilities. It's not a common concept in SF, and even more rarely are humans the bottom of the heap. Van Vogt is handling both concepts well.
Given the alieness of the players (alien in the sense that they are not conventional to pulp fiction) this first confrontation scene was well handled. But one last inconsistency: These vampire aliens are having their first contact with humans, but they have instantly picked out a high-class place to hide and their dress and manner are high-class in the theatrical sense. How did they get attuned to human styles so quickly? Perhaps super high intelligence can explain it, but that's a big stretch. More so considering the story has already demonstrated that they have virtually no monitoring equipment of the sort we have in the 21st century. Ah well... it's pulp fiction.
Ugh! More silliness as the girl responds to his threat to publish. She uses powerful, tangible, subtle psychology to foil him. Nice concept, but this time reading it it comes across as silly. ...Well, it turns out not quite so silly. Humans of this time, as I mentioned earlier, have highly advanced psychological techniques. Leigh, the reporter, heads home so his psych machine can recover his memories. The manchine can't, but he's not the only one to find out. Merla, the female vampire alien, is there at his home reading the results. It's a nice demonstration of how easily these aliens move among people.
OK... he's doing better, at consistency as well as story telling. This door to the space ship can move from place to place on Earth, it's not fixed to the fancy restaurant. Yeah, he's doing a nice job of describing aliens who are far superior and choose to show this off in subtle ways.
Small inconsistency: These aliens have been on earth only a few hours, but Merla talks as if they have interviewed dozens of people, and through doing so have developed their good girl/bad guy technique as they are now using it. That makes them real fast studies, and it's not clear what they have gained by doing all that talking. But on the whole the interview scene in Leigh's bedroom is quite well handled.
Long space journeys nicely handled, and showing the superiority of the vampire space technology as they track Leigh. Inconsistent is that a lone wolf space trucker pilot would routinely carry a sidearm as he puttered around his ship -- he threatens Leigh with this. Also inconsistent is the lack of communication between the ship and the meteorite base -- the girl doesn't realize Leigh is on the ship until it arrives?
Leigh's running around in the Galactic Observer's meteor base as he tries to find a way to escape is the neatest and most memorable part of the story. I loved, and love, this part. This shows a lot of first class imagination as he mixes high tech with pulp investigating reporter.
Nice argument about the potency of intelligence. It's sad that talking about intelligence as a distinguisher between humans has become so culturally incorrect. Without that concept you can't have an interesting story such as this one.
Yes, this part is the highlight of the story, repeating the same scene but with different mental perspectives. Van Vogt handles this wonderfully.
Hypnotism as well as psychology gain great power in Van Vogt's world -- not too surprising in retrospect.
The description of Dreegh origin seems hokey and plot deviceish. It's too simple and too... sucked in unexpectedly by a star's gravity? It sure isn't consistent with the excellent way Van Vogt has been describing space travel up to this point! Ah well...
But I love the denouement. This galactic personality wants to be as dismissive of Leigh as it is the Dreegh, but harsh reality isn't quite so convienient. He has to do some more explaining and convincing. I like that.
Yup, all-in-all, still an outstanding story.