Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) (13 page)

"Therefore, the Tarast race can endure but a few more generations, in any case. Why should we inflict the misery of a terrible existence on those last few generations, people who will gradually freeze and die until the last wretched survivors are killed by the Cold Ones? Why not make this present generation the last, and with it bring the life of our race to a peaceful, happy conclusion?

"We can do that," Vostol continued earnestly. "We need only agree to the treaty proposed by the Cold Ones, and promise that this will be our last generation and that we will have no more children. If we do that, the Cold Ones will stop attacking us and we last Tarasts will have peace."

Old Igir spoke in a slow, heavy voice.

"You are right, Vostol. There seems nothing else to do now that Kaffr, our last hope, has proved a fraud." The chairman addressed the silent Council. "Do you assent to make a treaty with the Cold Ones?"

In a dead silence fraught with the tension of a fateful decision, the Council members reluctantly raised their hands in affirmative vote.

"Don't do it!" begged Gerdek, agonized. "You're committing race suicide when you agree to make this treaty!"

They ignored his appeal. Reaction from the shattering of their faith in Kaffr had compelled their surrender to Vostol's plan.

OLD IGIR was addressing Vostol. "The Council has decided. Are you ready to negotiate the treaty with the Cold Ones?"

Vostol nodded.

"When the Cold One envoys first proposed the treaty, they gave me one of their telep-transmitters with which I could call them if we decided on acceptance. I have it here now."

He brought out the square apparatus that was used by the enemy race for long-distance transmission of telepathic messages. Vostol touched the switches of the compact instrument, and then seemed to stare in concentrated silence at the shining knob upon its face.

Several minutes passed silently, while the Council and the prisoners tensely watched. Then Vostol turned off the telep-transmitter and straightened.

"I established telepathic contact with the Cold Ones' capital at distant Thool," he reported. "Their ruler, Mwwr, spoke to me. When I told him we had decided to accept their proposal, he requested me to come to Thool to negotiate the treaty."

"Mwwr promised me safe-conduct to Thool," Vostol added. "I am to go in a star-cruiser marked with a silver circle, and all patrols of the Cold Ones throughout the universe will be instructed to let that cruiser pass."

Igir nodded haggardly.

"A star-cruiser will be made ready for you at once. But what shall we do now with the false Kaffr and these other convicted conspirators?"

Vostol and all the members of the Council looked at Curt Newton and his fellow-prisoners. There was a momentary silence.

Then Vostol spoke heavily.

"We have no choice," he said. "They are too dangerous to be allowed freedom, and they have merited our heaviest punishment They must be imprisoned with the Unbodied."

"Oh,
no!"
exclaimed Shiri, with a little cry of horror. The same horror was reflected from the face of her brother.

Captain Future wondered puzzledly again what there was about this mysterious punishment of the Tarasts which so terrified people. As he wondered he was raising his voice in final desperate warning.

"You are sentencing your race to death needlessly when you reject my leadership!" Curt cried. "I tell you, you must not make that treaty!"

Igir, ignoring him, was speaking troubledly to Vostol.

"Many of the people still will believe that this man is really Kaffr. There may be riot and dissension if we announce that we've condemned him to the Unbodied."

"Then do not announce it yet," advised Vostol. "Announce merely that the charges against Kaffr are still being considered and that judgment has been deferred until later. Then, after I have returned from Thool with the treaty we can explain all to the people."

"We will do that, then," Igir decided.

With pity in his eyes, the old chairman faced the soldiers.

"Take the prisoners down to the vault of the Unbodied," he directed.

Captain Future and his friends were conducted out of the great hall and down winding stairs that dropped, level after level, into subterranean chambers beneath the Hall of Suns. The stairs were hewn from solid rock, and there was no light except for a few glowing bulbs.

"Don't give up hope, Gerdek," Curt muttered to the crushed Tarast beside him. "Things aren't finished yet. Even if Vostol concludes the treaty at Thool, there'll still be time in which to fight against it"

"No, there will be no time then," Gerdek replied hopelessly. "For if the treaty is signed, then at once the whole Tarast race will be required to submit to self-sterilization which will forever destroy the power of my people to have children. That will mark the end of our race."

CURT NEWTON frowned at this information.

"That shortens down the time-limit, all right. It means we'll have to escape imprisonment before Vostol actually reaches Thool and signs the treaty."

"Escape?" echoed Gerdek incredulously. "You don't know what you're talking about. There
is
no escape from the Unbodied!”

"Don't you believe it," Captain Future retorted confidently. "I've been in lots of queer prisons in my time, and I escaped them all."

"But they're not going to put us into any prison!” Gerdek exclaimed. "You don't understand. The Unbodied are men and women whose minds are dissociated from their bodies."

Curt started.

"What in the world are you trying to tell me?" he demanded.

"Chief, it doesn't sound so good to me," Otho hissed uneasily.

"It's the truth," Shiri affirmed tragically. "Long ago in the great age of Tarast science, a machine was invented which could dissociate the mind from the physical body. The body then lies like dead, while the mind wanders as a bodiless phantom entity. We do not now understand completely the principle of the ancient machine, but we still can operate it."

"And it is used for the punishment of criminals," Gerdek added hoarsely. "Imprisonment would be impractical, in our crowded cities. So condemned criminals are sent into the Unbodied for definite terms, their minds expelled from their bodies to wander like homeless ghosts."

Captain Future felt an icy shock of dismay at this horrifying information. It seemed incredible, yet it was scientifically possible —

"So
that's
why all you Tarasts fear the very mention of the Unbodied!" Otho was saying, appalled. "And that's what they're going to do to us!"

THEY had now reached the lowest subterranean level. The guards, watchfully covering the bound prisoners with their weapons, halted them in front of a massive metal door with a complicated combination lock. "The vault of the Unbodied!" whispered Shiri, her great violet eyes wide with shrinking horror.

Curt's mind was in a turmoil. He had to think of something, and think fast. He couldn't let them put him into a horrible state like that.

The old chairman, Igir, had followed them down the stairs and was now touching the studs of the massive lock. The door clicked open. Captain Future and his fellow prisoners were thrust sternly through.

They found themselves in a dimly lighted space of forbidding aspect. It was a big, vaulted rock chamber whose chill was freezing. Most of its interior was occupied by tiers of transparent coffins, in which lay men and women whose faces were stony and unmoving.

"They are not dead — they are only frozen bodies whose minds have been wrenched out of them," Gerdek murmured hoarsely. "We'll soon be like them."

"Not much
I
will!” bellowed Grag. "Nobody's going to file
me
away like that!”

And the big robot made convulsive efforts to break his metal wrist-cuffs. Curt Newton and Otho were making equally fierce efforts.

It was in vain. The stout metal cuffs held even Grag. And the Tarast soldiers rushed in and seized them, holding them helpless.

"No use," Curt told the Futuremen. "It's my fault for getting you into this."

Igir was giving orders to the Tarast guards.

"Put the helmet of the machine on the girl. She goes first"

The Tarast soldiers dragged Shiri toward a large, squat machine in the center of the vault. Complexities of electrical coils and tubes were covered by a round copper platform. From the high back of the machine bulged a big copper bulb, mounted on insulated standards.

Shiri struggled wildly as she was forced onto the platform. Her black robe was torn away, her slim young body unclad except for the white shorts and halter she had worn beneath. While the soldiers held her, a curious hemispherical glass helmet was forced down upon her head.

Gerdek was shouting in hoarse rage, and Curt Newton was struggling furiously to go to the girl's help. But before they could accomplish anything, old Igir closed the switches and turned a rheostat.

"Gods of Space!” choked Otho, appalled by what followed.

A blaze of green force gushed from the copper bulb and struck the glass helmet that enclosed Shin's head. She reeled from the impact.

The mysterious energies striking her helmeted head flowed down through her body to the copper platform on which she stood. They bathed her in such fierce light that her skeletal structure was half revealed. The green rays gave an uncanny green tint to the Tarast guards around her.

Then Shin's body went limp and lifeless. Igir gave an order, and the girl's body was placed in a coffin. Captain Future was now dragged to the machine. And he felt a freezing horror as he vainly struggled.

He had divined the nature of this instrument of ancient Tarast science. The human mind was really a web of electric force imposed upon the neurons of the living brain. This machine wrenched that tenuous electric web from the brain and embodied it in a pattern of immaterial photons!

Grag was raging madly.

"If you do that to the Chief, I'll kill every man on your Council!"

Igir's aged face was pale.

"I hate to do this to you all, even though your deception merits it," he told Curt. "But I must."

The glass helmet had been forced upon Curt's head. The green blaze of force struck Captain Future's helmeted head squarely as Igir turned on the mechanism.

Curt felt as though that stunning force was streaming through his skull, tearing with cruel fingers at his brain. His mind was a dazed whirl of roaring force. He had lost consciousness of his own body...

GRADUALLY he recovered semiconsciousness to realize that the agonizing force had stopped. He seemed to be floating in silent, dim obscurity.

"It didn't work!" he thought with wild hope. "I'm still conscious —"

Then Curt began to realize that he possessed a changed perception of his surroundings. He could not really see, now. His mind received illusory sensations of things about him, by some other sense than sight.

He perceived vaguely that he was floating in mid-air in the gloomy vault of the Unbodied. Igir and the Tarast soldiers were taking a limp body off the machine. It was Curt's own body!

"God, it's happened!" Captain Future thought, appalled. "I'm just a mind — a disembodied mind living only in a pattern of photons!”

His body — his own body — was being put in one of the glass coffins. Yet he, the mind of that body, the real Curt Newton, floated here!

"But how is it that I can
perceive
anything if I'm just a pattern of photons?" he wondered wildly. "I have no eyes or ears now."

Curt soon guessed at an explanation of that mystery. He was now an immaterial electric entity, and as such was sensitive to all electrical vibrations. It was by the reflection of electric waves that he vaguely "saw" the outlines of things, just as a ship's crew can "see" through dense fog by invisible infra-red vibrations.

The strange perception of his disembodied mind was not really like clear sight. He perceived only the dim outlines of solid masses, yet it was enough for recognition of his surroundings.

"What am I going to do?" he asked himself, dazed by horror. "What
can
I do, as a bodiless, photon-pattern mind?”

Curt's attention was drawn to the fact that the Futuremen and Gerdek, one by one, had by now suffered the same fate as himself. Their lifeless bodies were being placed in the glass storage coffins. Igir and the Tarast soldiers were leaving the vault.

"All of us — disembodied minds!" Curt thought tragically. "The others must be floating as phantom minds like myself, right here."

He could not "see" his comrades by his strange sense of electric vision. But he knew that all of them must be near him, transformed into ghostly photon-entities like himself.

Captain Future had an idea. Even if he couldn't
"see"
the rest, perhaps he could speak with them telepathically. Then at least the phantom prisoners would be able to discuss their situation.

"Grag! Simon! All of you — can you hear me?" he thought with great concentration.