In this paper we establish a variantand generalized weak linkingtheorem, which contains more delicate result and insures the existence ofboundedPalais–Smale sequences of a strongly indefinite functional.The abstract result will be used to study thesemilinear Schrödinger equation $-\Deltau+V(x)u=K(x)|u|^{2^\ast-2}u+g(x, u),u\in W^{1,2}({\bf R}^N)$
, where N ≥ 4; V,K,g are periodicin xj for 1 ≤ j ≤ N and 0 is in a gap of the spectrumof -Δ + V; K>0. If $0<g(x, u)u\leq c|u|^{2^\ast}$
for anappropriate constant c, we show that this equation has anontrivial solution.