THEY nerved themselves for the risky attempt. Both Curt and Gerdek held their weapons in readiness for instant action. Grag picked up Eek with one hand and balled his other into a fist, as they started cautiously back out into the corridor.
Things suddenly happened with explosive swiftness. As they entered the dim corridor, they came almost face to face with three Cold Ones and a space-suited man coming along the passage.
"That's Lacq!" yelled Grag, plunging forward. "Take care of those devils and I'll get him!"
The bony Cold Ones drew their atom-shell guns with phenomenal speed. But they could not match the superhuman swiftness with which Captain Future shot.
Three bursts of blazing force streaked from his proton pistol faster than the eye could follow. The three unhuman creatures tumbled forward, their skull-like heads shattered before they could fire.
Grag had seized Lacq's throat and was squeezing grimly through the traitor's space-suit. The man went limp and unconscious.
"Don't kill him, you idiot!” Curt cried to the robot. "Out of here, quick!”
They ran down the corridor toward the rear of the building. But the fight had not gone unnoticed. Two Cold Ones appeared at the front end of the passage.
Captain Future turned and shot with the quickness of a wolf’s snap. He and Gerdek and Grag, the latter carrying the unconscious Lacq like a child, burst out of the building and started through the dead, snow-wrapped city in a run.
Curt glanced back. Space-sleds were rising into the dark sky above the square, like hornets suddenly aroused.
"Hurry!" he yelled. "The alarm's out and all the Cold Ones there will be out looking for us."
They had reached the edge of the city, were floundering out through the great drifts of snow in the direction of the Comet. Up across the stars of the brooding sky came the searching space-sleds.
Grag led the way, his mighty form crashing a path through the high snow despite the unconscious burden he carried. But they were less than a third of the way to the Comet, when one of the space-sleds furiously quartering across the heavens came diving toward them.
"They've spotted us! Duck into the snow before they blast us!" Captain Future cried.
"They're not going to blast anybody!" Grag exclaimed. "Look at that!"
From ahead, a shining metal thunderbolt whizzed above them to attack the swooping space-sled. It was the Comet, and its heavy proton guns were belching deadly beams that smashed at the enemy craft.
The space-sled was ripped from stem to stern by those deadly rays. It fell, a whirling mass of wreckage and bony white bodies. Other enemy craft came rushing across the sky immediately. But the Comet was already swooping down toward the three fugitives in the snow.
"In with you!" Curt yelled as the open door of the hovering ship yawned beside them.
They tumbled into the air-lock and Future slammed shut the outer door.
"Okay, Otho!" he cried.
Whizz — roar! The Comet stood on its tail as Otho flung it out of the path of the onrushing space-sleds.
Captain Future and his two companions were flung against the wall as they scrambled with their senseless captive toward the control room.
"Take the guns, Chief!" Otho cried from the space-stick. "Simon's been using them, but he's a little slow for this party."
Otho's slant-green eyes were blazing with excitement as he flung the Comet all over the sky to outmaneuver the attacking space-sleds.
"Quit playing around and haul tail out of here before those devils gang up on us!” Curt ordered him. "There's too many —"
HE WAS interrupted by the raging swoop of two enemy craft, that came in from the quarter with their guns spitting atom-shells.
Otho avoided the shells by a twist of the space-stick, and Captain Future let go with two bursts of the port proton gun. The beams caught one space-sled squarely, grazed the other closely.
Then the Comet zoomed skyward before the Cold Ones could attack again. Otho corkscrewed the ship's flight until the space-sleds seeking to pursue were thrown off by the ship's superior speed. By that time, they were far out in space from the frozen world.
"We've left them for good," Curt said, panting. He removed his helmet and mopped his brow. "Lay your course back to Tarasia, full speed."
Otho was looking around at Grag.
"I see you hauled that big cast-iron idiot out of his jam, Chief," he commented sourly.
"No thanks to you, you misbegotten son of a test-tube," retorted Grag. "It was Eek who led the Chief right to me. Yes, sir! Eek's brilliant intelligence located me, just as he found the Chief for us that time on the comet-world. What would we do without him?"
"Oh, devils of space, now he's going to start bragging about that miserable moon-pup again!” exclaimed Otho in exasperation.
"What did Oog ever do to brag about?" demanded Grag. "That thick-headed little pet of yours can't do anything except sleep and eat."
Captain Future ignored the argument as he stared keenly back into space. They had definitely shaken off the pursuit of the Cold Ones. The space-sleds could not match the Comet's high-speed drive.
As the ship continued to throb faster than light through the great cluster of dead and dying suns, on its return trip to Tarasia, Curt went back into the cabin with the Brain. Back there, Gerdek had stripped off Lacq's space-suit. The young traitor was regaining consciousness.
"What happened?" gasped Lacq, his pale young face dazed as he looked bewilderedly around.
"You've been captured and you're being taken back to Bebemos to meet the fate you deserve, traitor!" Gerdek burst out. "The Council of Suns will sentence you to the Unbodied indefinitely for your treachery."
"You mean that this man was working with the Cold Ones?" Shiri said incredulously. "Oh, no, that's impossible."
Lacq seemed crushed by despair.
"You've ruined everything by taking me prisoner!" he cried. "You've wrecked all my plans."
"We've ruined your plans to help the Cold Ones," spat Gerdek. "Even being condemned to the Unbodied is too good a fate for you!"
"What is all this about the Unbodied?" the Brain asked puzzledly.
Before Gerdek could answer, Curt Newton intervened. His eyes and voice were hard as he spoke to the abashed young prisoner.
"Lacq, I don't know what this punishment is that Gerdek refers to, but I gather it's unpleasant," Curt said. "Your only chance to avoid it is to cooperate with us. You must know a lot about the Cold Ones, and we want to hear everything you know."
Lacq looked up at Curt Newton for the first time. His eyes dilated in amazement as he stared at the red-haired planeteer and then at the unhuman, hovering shape of the Brain.
"Who — who are you?" he mumbled to Curt. "You're no Tarast —"
"He is Kaffr!" Gerdek said forcefully. "Kaffr himself, come back from the dead with his comrades. Ah, that unnerves you, traitor!"
Lacq had started violently as he heard the name of the Tarasts' ancient legendary hero. He peered frozenly at Curt's face.
"It's true — you do look like Kaffr," he murmured in awe. A wild joy appeared in his eyes. "Kaffr, come back to help our people!"
"The Tarasts are no longer your people, traitor!” said Gerdek.
"But they are!" Lacq declared earnestly. "I am no traitor, really. I pretended to be one, yes. I joined the Cold Ones and offered to help them, but only because I had a plan to aid my own people."
"Lies!" said Gerdek contemptuously. "The fellow is trying to squirm out of his treachery. Didn't he betray Grag to the Cold Ones?”
"I didn't know the metal man was a Tarast ally," Lacq protested. "And I was desperate to gain the Cold Ones' confidence, to aid my plan. That is the truth!" Lacq went on. "My plan was to find the hidden secret of the Cold Ones, the secret vulnerability which would enable us to conquer them if we only knew it. It is the one thing in this universe of which they are afraid."
Chapter 10: Disaster
CAPTAIN FUTURE was instantly alert.
Lacq's head bobbed excitedly.
"Yes, Kaffr. It is so."
"Do not believe him," Gerdek advised Curt heatedly. "No Tarast has ever heard about any such secret weakness of the Cold Ones. How would he know anything about it?"
"I know," Lacq replied simply, "because I am a descendant of the man who first created the Cold Ones. Zuur, the scientist, was my remote ancestor."
Captain Future felt dawning excitement.
"Zuur, the man who produced the Cold Ones by artificial evolution on the world Thool? You are descended from him?"
"That cannot be so," Gerdek declared. "For Zuur's family perished as he did when the Cold Ones he had created slew him."
Lacq shook his head.
"No, Zuur's family did not perish, though everyone thought they did. They had left Thool before the fatal experiments began. After the tragedy, they changed their family name.
"They did so," he added with a trace of bitterness, "because all the Tarast race blamed Zuur for creating the Cold Ones. They knew this universal resentment and hatred would extend to the dead scientist's family."
Shiri looked excitedly at Curt Newton.
"It sounds like the truth to me, Kaffr!”
Curt reserved judgment.
"Let's hear your story," he told Lacq.
Lacq spoke with earnest eagerness.
"I will tell you, Kaffr. Perhaps my plan is not yet lost, now that you have returned."
He talked rapidly.
"We of my family have always kept secret the fact that we are descended from Zuur, of such unhappy memory. But some of the papers and notes of our unfortunate ancestor, we have always preserved. Recently, I examined those papers for the first time.
"I found little in them worthy of note. There were records of experiments, but these I could not understand; for you know how much our scientific knowledge has decayed. But I did find among the papers a last letter which Zuur had written to his wife from the laboratory on frozen Thool.
"Zuur wrote:
" 'My latest attempt to create a new mutant race of humans, to fit the changed conditions of our universe, has been a failure. These new mutants can endure cold and airlessness, as I had hoped. Their osseous bodies require only simple mineral elements for sustenance. They are highly intelligent, too, though their intelligence is of a coldly malignant type. This leads me to think my process changed the human mind or soul, as well as the body.
" 'But despite their intelligence and capabilities, they are a failure. For though they can endure the most extreme conditions of cold and hardship, they have one hidden weakness in their makeup that would render them vulnerable to extermination by anyone who knew it.
" 'So I am going to destroy them and try again, in order to develop a different mutant of less malignant type who will not possess this dangerous and vulnerable weakness.' "
Lacq paused a moment, and then went on earnestly.
"That is what my ancestor Zuur wrote in his last letter. It was the Cold Ones he was writing about, and whom he meant to destroy. He never did so, however. The Cold Ones must have guessed their creator's intention — for they killed him first. Then they spread out from Thool, increasing in numbers and invading all the universe."
Captain Future felt a growing excitement.
"This vulnerable weakness or the Cold Ones to which Zuur referred — was there no hint of its nature?"
Lacq shook his head.
"No, there was not. I searched through all the surviving papers of Zuur which my family possessed, but without success."
"Lad, if we could learn that secret, vulnerable point, we could destroy the Cold Ones!" exclaimed the Brain.
LACQ'S head bobbed.
"That was my plan! I reasoned that the secret might exist in records made by Zuur in his laboratory at Thool. If I could find and search Zuur's records there, I would hold power to eliminate forever the menace of the Cold Ones.
"But how was I to get to Thool to make such — a search? It seemed impossible, for distant Thool is now the capital of the Cold Ones' power. On that forbidding, icy world far across the universe lies the central city from which their king reigns. How could I reach and search that world?
"I decided that my only chance lay in subterfuge. I would become an ally of the Cold Ones, a supposed traitor to my own race. In that way, I might be able to reach guarded Thool.
"But though they accepted me as an ally because of false information I gave them, the Cold Ones would not permit me to go to Thool. Then you came and captured me, Kaffr."
Curt Newton asked a keen question.
"Even if you had got to Thool, how could you have much hope of finding the secret of the Cold Ones' vulnerability? Wouldn't Zuur's laboratory and records be gone, after all this time?"
"No, the laboratory of my ancestor Zuur still exists on Thool," Lacq asserted. "I learned from the Cold Ones whom I 'joined' that the laboratory is still there. I gathered that the creatures shun that place of their creation. They say the place is haunted by terrible danger."
Curt Newton's gray eyes gleamed.
"Lacq, I believe your story. And I think it gives us the chance I've been looking for. The chance to devise a weapon with which the Tarasts can hurl back the Cold Ones for good!"
Gerdek looked doubtful.
"You think the Cold Ones really have such a vulnerable weakness? But what could it be?"
"I haven't an idea," Curt admitted. "But Zuur knew what it was. He created the Cold Ones; he knew more about them than anyone else. If we could go to Thool and search his records —"
"Go to Thool?" Gerdek repeated. "You talk as if it were easy! Do you think you can just speed to Thool in this ship without trouble?"
"I suppose it wouldn't be easy," Captain Future conceded. "But we've got into some tightly guarded places before this."
"You don't know of what you speak," Gerdek said emphatically. "You would not have one chance in a million of reaching Thool. That icy world lies far across our universe, countless leagues away.
"All those vast spaces and their dead suns and worlds are patrolled and inhabited by the Cold Ones. Their ships are everywhere. You'd never get through."
Shiri nodded troubledly.
"And even if you did by some miracle win through the Cold One patrols, you'd find Thool so guarded that you would be discovered and seized almost at once," she warned.
"I am afraid they are right," Lacq said discouragedly to Curt. "No Tarast ship for centuries has succeeded in even getting near Thool. It would take every star-cruiser we have to smash a way through to it."
Captain Future's eyes flashed.
"Then we'll gather every Tarast star-cruiser for just such an attempt! We'll assemble a force and make a swift surprise raid across the universe to Thool. Once we overcome its defenses, we can find Zuur's ancient laboratory and search his records."
The three Tarasts seemed dumfounded by the suggestion.
"But my people never have dreamed of carrying the attack to our outnumbering enemies!" gasped Gerdek.
"That's the very reason why the Cold Ones won't be expecting a savage assault on their capital," Curt retorted.
LACQ'S face lit up.
"Kaffr, only you would have thought of such a daring plan! And it could succeed! Before the Cold Ones could rally their far-flung forces to the point of counter-attack, we would have had a chance to find my ancestor's secret. With it, we could repel all their hordes."
"But will the Tarasts agree to make such an attack?" Curt Newton asked anxiously.
"They'll follow Kaffr anywhere!" Shiri told him eagerly.
"Good!" Curt exclaimed. "Well soon be back in Bebemos. I'll propose the plan to the Council of Suns at once."
Taut impatience possessed Curt Newton as the Comet flashed through the cluster of dying suns, toward the heart of the shrunken Tarast empire. Curt felt the thrill of the offensive h
e had planned, the audacious, desperate foray that he would lead across this waning universe to the guarded citadel of the Cold Ones' power.
The risks would be great, he knew. But they were worth taking, when there was chance of finding the ancient secret that would give them power to destroy the treacherous enemy. For that would mean that the Tarast race could live in safety, until the future day when their universe was reborn and their cosmic empire once more expanded.
The Comet swept down through red sunlight toward the vast, gleaming dome of Bebemos that lay like a shining bubble on the snow. Day had come again to the Tarast capital, during the adventurers' absence.
"Land on the spaceport outside the city gate," Gerdek directed Otho. "There, where you see the star-cruisers parked."
There were a dozen of the Tarast star-cruisers, ancient-looking ships battered by much use. They were of the same general design as the Comet but were somewhat larger.
"We can assemble a force of about forty star-cruisers from all our worlds," Gerdek told Captain Future. "It is all we have left."
Curt nodded thoughtfully.
"It won't be a very strong force, but it should be enough for the surprise raid on Thool.”
They left their ship at the space-port and hastened through the bitterly cold air to the gate of Bebemos. The warmth of the hothouse city was exceedingly welcome.
"Now to the Council to tell our plan!" Curt said eagerly.
A party of Tarast soldiers approached them. Their officer's pale face was masklike as he spoke to Curt Newton.
"Stranger, you and your comrades, and Gerdek and Shiri also, are commanded to appear before the Council of Suns," he said. "My men will conduct you there."
"You can't mean that you're arresting Kaffr!" cried Gerdek.
The officer's voice was stern.
"Vostol claims that he can prove absolutely that this stranger is not Kaffr. The Council will judge!"
Chapter 11: Checkmate
CURT felt a shock of dismay at this dire information. He had assumed that his impersonation of the ancient hero would not now meet serious challenge. When he had left Bebemos, the wild cheers of the Tarast people for Kaffr had still been ringing in his ears.
Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) Page 8