Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) (20 page)

IN a few moments, the robot had completely freed Captain Future and Otho and the three Tarasts. At that moment they all became conscious of a vibration from the floor. It was from a sharp knocking outside the door.

"The Cold One guards out there!" hissed Otho. "That shell going off must have made a tremor that they caught. They're alarmed now."

"They can't get in very easily with those bolts holding the door," Curt declared. "We have a little time, at least."

Vostol, who had remained in stupefied silence during all this tense action, was now staring at Curt Newton with a wild expression.

"I almost believe that you
are
Kaffir, to have accomplished all this!” he said hoarsely.

But Lacq, the moment he was freed, had sprung excitedly toward the cabinets and apparatus at the other end of the room.

"The notebooks of Zuur!" he exclaimed, panting. "Mwwr said they were in this treasure chamber. If only he wasn't lying —"

Terrific tension held Captain Future and all the others as they searched through the cabinets. They hardly heeded the fact that the alarmed Cold Ones outside the door had now begun to batter heavily on it. They had reached the crisis of their desperate plan.

It was Lacq himself who cried out with crazy exultation as he feverishly drew three small bound books from one of the cabinets.

"The three missing notebooks!" he choked. "They're here! And in them, the secret of the Cold Ones' vulnerability that my ancestor wrote down —"

Lacq was possessed by such emotion that his shaking hands could not open, the notebooks. Curt could not read the Tarast writing. It was Gerdek who took the books and tautly ran through their pages.

"The secret
is
here!" he cried in a moment. "Listen to this! It's perhaps the last entry that Zuur ever made."

He read the ancient writing.

I have decided to destroy the colony of osseous mutant-humans whose development cost me so many years of labor. My hopes have ended in tragic failure. This osseous race which I evolved can never continue man's civilization into the future, as I dreamed.

They can withstand the cold and airlessness of our dying universe, it is true. My manipulation of the genes evolved a race capable of that, as I hoped. But their psychology is alien to that of ordinary humanity, and they are so coldly cruel and ruthless that I cannot entrust to
them
the future of civilization.

Even if I did so, they would in the future be all destroyed by the vulnerability to inherit them. It is a fatal defect which I entirely overlooked when I planned their evolution. It is a defect which does not harm them in the least, under the present conditions of our dying universe. But it would become lethal to all of them when our universe is reborn, as it will in some future time.

This fatal defect of the Cold Ones is their susceptibility to ultra-violet vibrations. Ultra-violet rays have a terrific damaging effect upon any living tissues not properly conditioned. Human beings, who evolved long ago when our universe was young and its suns poured forth much ultra-violet radiation, naturally developed protection against that radiation in the form of pigmented skin. This makes humans able to withstand a high degree of ultra-violet without harm.

But the Cold Ones have not developed protection against such radiation, for they have been evolved in our present dying universe, in which there is almost no such thing. Dying suns like ours emit hardly any ultra-violet rays. So it is natural that the Cold Ones have no protection against such rays, for they do not need such protection now.

But when our universe is reborn, as it some day will be, then hot young suns will be pouring out floods of the ultra-violet rays. The Cold Ones would have no protection against those fierce rays. The radiation would almost instantly slay them all, shattering their cartilage-brains and riddling their osseous bodies. They would perish.

So the future of civilization cannot be entrusted to them. And as I have written, their malign and alien natures make that impossible, in any case. Therefore I have decided to destroy them before they try to turn on me and kill me. I shall use ultra-violet rays to exterminate them quickly.

Gerdek looked up from the ancient notebook.

"That's the last entry," he said hoarsely. "It seems that the Cold Ones killed Zuur before he could carry out his plan of extermination."

Captain Future was stunned.

"That's the hidden vulnerability of the Cold Ones, then? Ultra-violet radiation!"

CURT'S eyes blazed with excitement.

"Why in the world didn't I think of that? I should have realized that the Cold Ones, having been evolved in this dying universe, would have no inherited resistance to a type of radiation such as hardly exists here now. We humans have developed that resistance, but they lack it utterly."

"Then we can use ultra-violet radiation to smash the Cold Ones forever?" Lacq cried eagerly.

But Otho's thoughts were elsewhere.

"Come back to reality!" he exclaimed. "Feel that pounding on the door? The devils out there will be breaking in, in a few minutes!"

"That's right," muttered Grag. "We've got the secret, but how in the world are we going to get out of here with it?"

Curt Newton was feverishly examining the dusty scientific apparatus that lay upon the tables. It, like the notebooks, seemed to have been brought originally from Zuur's laboratory.

"If we had an ultra-violet generator, we could cut our way out of Thool with it," Curt was saying tautly. "There's a chance —"

Otho interrupted pessimistically.

"Sure, we could do just that little thing —
if
we could build a generator. All we need
is
a lot of assorted materials, and a good workshop, and several hours of time. Instead of which, we've got about two minutes before those devils break in!”

"You don't understand, Otho. There ought to be an ultra-violet generator somewhere here," Curt flashed.

"Who would leave it here — Santa Claus?" Otho countered.

"Mwwr would have one here, if my calculation is right," Captain Future retorted. "Mwwr, like the Cold One rulers before him, kept the secret so that he could use it to quell any possible rebellion against his regime.

"Suppose a rebellion did suddenly break out. Just knowing that ultra-violet was fatal to his people wouldn't do Mwwr any good in an emergency. He'd have to have an ultra-violet generator ready for action."

"Say, maybe there's something in that," Otho admitted. He joined them in a hasty search of the cabinets. In a moment he uttered a cry. "Hey, Chief, look at this!"

"This" was a heavy instrument whose chief feature was a broad quartz lens, mounted on the face of a square lead box around which was a hemispherical lead reflector.

"You've found it!" Curt said eagerly. He examined the instrument. "It has a chemical battery that seems okay. This was designed to throw ultra-violet radiation in a broad beam forward, so that the operator of the thing wouldn't absorb any of it."

He pointed it across the room and depressed its switch. A fan of purple light sprang from the lens.

"Okay, open the door to those guards, Otho," he ordered.

Otho hesitated.

"You
sure
that'll work, Chief? We've got only Zuur's word on it. Maybe the old guy was wrong."

"I'll stake my scientific reputation that the ultra-violet from this generator will shatter the brain structure of any living creature who has no natural protection against it," Curt assured him. "Go ahead!"

Otho went to the door, which was vibrating wildly from the battering outside. The android suddenly released the massive bolts.

The door swung sharply open. The horde of Cold One guards outside seemed petrified for a moment by its opening. They stood, their hideous skull-faces peering in as they raised their atom-guns.

Captain Future loosed the purple beam. The ultra-violet radiation and its accompanying light bathed the skeletal figures in the doorway in a weird glow.

And the Cold Ones in that doorway died! It was quicker than the telling. They fell as though struck by lightning, as that fierce radiation cleaved into their unprotected brains.

"Jumping space-imps, it works! And
how
it works!” Otho exulted.

LACQ'S eyes were shining wildly.

"My ancestor's secret — it will save the Tarast race. People will revere Zuur's name now, instead of cursing it."

"They will if we can get back to Bebemos in time," Curt rapped. "Remember, Mwwr ordered an attack on the city in full force. We've got to get out of here and back to the
Comet."

They emerged into the corridor. Two Cold One officers were hastening along it. The violet beam dropped them in bony heaps.

"Quick! We must find a way into the wall. Then we can escape from the city under the snow in the same way we came!" Curt urged.

It was Grag who found the passage into the wall: one of the doors designed to give entrance into it in case repairs were necessary. The adventurers crowded hastily inside and made their way to the hole they had cut through the outer wall. In a few moments they were emerging from this, beneath the snow of the ancient river bed.

Keeping beneath the concealing snow as before, Captain Future and his comrades pressed back northward along the river bed. The going was easier now, for they followed the tunnel in the snow they had made in coming.

Curt raised his head above the snow to look back, when they had almost reached the mountains. The distant city of Thool now looked like an aroused hornet's nest. Space-sleds were swarming wildly over it, and lights were moving. Captain Future and his friends pressed on up the gorge.

When they stumbled exhaustedly into the
Comet,
Shiri came running toward them with exaltation on her face.

"You got the secret!" she cried. "I
know
you did — for you wouldn't have come back without it."

"We got it, but perhaps too late to avert a catastrophe to your capital," Curt Newton said, panting. "The Cold Ones may already be concentrating their forces for a full attack on Bebemos. We've got to get there quickly!”

The
Comet
rose a few moments later from the snowy gorge. It climbed rapidly through the somber darkness of frozen Thool, and arrowed out into space.

Captain Future built the velocity of the little ship to its utmost limits as they flew out through the graveyard of dead suns. Far across the universe lay the Tarast worlds, which might already be fighting an invasion.

The Futuremen were racing against time. The dragging hours of their homeward flight were an agony of torment to all of them. As they flashed through the gloom of the dying universe, they were not challenged by Cold One patrols. But that added to their anxiety rather than allayed it.

"It means that all their patrol forces have been gathered to take part in the attack on Bebemos." said Gerdek fearfully.

Curt nodded without answering. He and Otho and the Brain, while Grag piloted, were busy upon a tense labor. They were building a powerful ultra-violet generator, which would operate from the ship's power supply and give off a powerful radiation in all directions.

The hours seemed endless, as the
Comet
dashed like a thunderbolt across the waning universe. To the anguished Tarasts, even their incredible present speed seemed slow. The Futuremen labored on at their task. They did not finish the big new ultra-violet generator until the dying star cluster of the Tarasts loomed large across the sky ahead.

Captain Future took the controls as they rushed into the cluster toward the capital planet of the Tarasts. He decelerated expertly.

"Not a Cold One ship in sight," he muttered. "That doesn't look hopeful."

Again he cut speed, and again. Now at last they were sweeping down toward the central red sun and the capital world.

"Look!" yelled Gerdek in agony. "They're breaking into Bebemos!”

Down there upon the planet, the hothouse city seemed to be in its death throes. An armada of hundreds of enemy space-sleds was hovering vulturously over the capital, wrecking section after section of the great dome with atom-shells.

THE turret guns of the Tarasts were making valiant reply. But many turrets had already been smashed, and others had been overwhelmed by parties of Cold Ones who had landed on the dome.

"What are you stopping for?" cried Lacq wildly to Curt. The
Comet
had slowed down, high above the battle. "We must strike, Kaffr!”

Curt ignored the frantic Tarast's cry.

"Get into those ray-proofed space-suits, all of you," he ordered crisply.

He and the Futuremen had prepared garments scientifically proofed against even the most powerful radiation. They hastily donned them now.

"Now the generator, Otho," Curt directed.

The big ultra-violet generator began to hum as the power of the ship's cyclotrons was largely channelled into it. The radiating sphere of metal mounted on the generator blazed with blinding purple light.

From the
Comet
there pulsed outward a spherical nimbus of pale violet radiance. It swelled bigger and bigger until it formed a half-mile halo of powerful ultra-violet radiation completely enclosing the ship.

Those in the
Comet
felt nothing, in their ray-proofed garments. Without that protection, even they could not have withstood the damaging effect of that terrific ultra-violet barrage.

"Now," said Captain Future grimly, "we are going down."

Gently as though in peaceful summer skies, the
Comet
glided down toward that desperate battle that raged over Bebemos.

Captain Future's comrades were sighted. Space-sleds came rushing savagely up toward them, with enemy crews leveling their atom-guns. Those space-sleds of osseous attackers entered the gigantic violet nimbus around the
Comet
—

"Gods!" whispered Vostol shakenly, a moment later.