Vostol frantically denied this, but the enemy monarch had turned his attention toward Captain Future.
"I was able to intercept your utterances from inside the wall by telepathic concentration," Mwwr informed him. "You spoke of a secret you were seeking. What secret are you looking for here?"
Curt Newton coolly returned the ruler's unwinking glare.
"That's something you'll never know," he retorted with a clear thought.
"I feel sure that I already know," Mwwr returned ominously. "But I intend to find out how you learned of the existence of that secret. You are going to tell me everything you have learned."
His glaring gaze swung back to Vostol.
"And you, false ambassador, will pay the penalty for your lies at the same time."
Cold One guards sprang forth. They seized and bound Vostol like the other captives, as he protested his innocence.
Mwwr rose to his feet. Red rage colored the telepathic declaration that he addressed to the throng of Cold One officials and soldiers.
"My people, the Tarasts have been trying to trick us! They have sought to take advantage of the truce which we offered them. When I proposed that we would cease attacking their worlds if they would agree to racial sterilization, I believed they would be glad to accept.
"I thought such a compromise would save us the great losses we would suffer in a final attack upon them, and that within a generation we would inherit their worlds anyway.
"But their attempt to trick us will now bring our vengeance on their heads, no matter what our losses! I order an assault in force upon these last Tarast worlds! Call up every available space-sled and dispatch it to the Tarast cluster to take part in the attack. The attack is to continue until Bebemos and their other cities are utterly destroyed!"
IN OBEDIENCE to this furious order, officials and captains of the osseous throng sped from the hall.
Mwwr turned his attention now to the captives.
"As for these prisoners, take them down to my treasure chamber," he ordered an officer.
"But we cannot take them into the treasure chamber," the guard officer reminded him telepathically. "You alone possess the key to it, Highness."
"I am coming with you," Mwwr declared. "I intend to find out just how much these men know of my secrets and how they gained the information."
Captain Future and his comrades, and the unlucky Vostol, were hauled out of the great room and down a corridor and stair to the level immediately beneath. Bound tightly, they could offer no resistance.
Curt's thoughts were a chaos of tragic realizations. All chance of ever finding Zuur's ancient secret seemed lost now. And worse, their attempt had precipitated an all-out enemy attack upon the Tarast worlds.
Vostol's bitter voice came to deepen Curt's dark depression.
"I hope you are satisfied now, you who call yourself Kaffr. You've brought final destruction on the people you professed to be helping."
Chapter 18: Escape
THE captives were halted in front of a door that was a single huge slab of synthetic stone. It had no knob or keyhole, but a dull jewel was mounted near its edge.
Mwwr approached and extended his hand toward the gem. Upon his fleshless finger was a ring set with an exactly similar jewel. As the two gems touched, both glowed with fierce red brilliance. A resonance of some kind had been set up which actuated the door lock. For massive metal bolts slid back and the great door swung open.
The treasure chamber into which Curt and his comrades were pushed was a long, windowless stone room lit by white bulbs. It contained nothing that looked like treasure. The only contents were some metal cabinets and several tables upon which sat dusty, queer-looking pieces of scientific apparatus and receptacles full of assorted chemicals.
"Secure the prisoners to those rings in the far wall," Mwwr's harsh thought directed the guards.
In the farther wall of the chamber were heavy metal rings embedded in the synthestone, for support of some hanging cabinets. The cabinets were removed and Curt and his comrades secured.
They were, Captain Future realized, completely helpless. Even Crag's furious strength could make no impression on the chains which bound their upper bodies to the embedded rings.
Mwwr was now giving telepathic instructions.
"Withdraw and await orders outside the door. But leave me an atom-pistol."
"But Highness," the guard officer objected, "we cannot leave you alone with these enemies."
"Do as I say," Mwwr ordered angrily. "They are safely tied up. And I do not wish you or anyone else to hear the secret things about which I am going to question them."
"Oh-oh!” muttered the irrepressible Otho. "So we're going to talk secrets? I don't much like this little tea party."
The guards had withdrawn, closing the door after them. Its massive inner bolts were shot home by Mwwr. Then he turned to the captives. His glaring gaze ran over them — the mighty figure of Grag and the five space-suited men, Curt, Otho, Gerdek, Lacq and Vostol.
Mwwr appeared to recognize Captain Future as the leader, for he addressed Curt telepathically. The whole exchange that followed was purely telepathic, for the Cold One ruler was able to project his thoughts at will and also seemed perfectly able to receive his prisoners' answering replies.
"You and the metal man do not look like Tarasts, but undoubtedly you're working with them," Mwwr's harsh thought came to Curt. "You came to Thool in search of the secret of Zuur, did you not?"
"If you're so sure of it, why ask me?" Curt Newton thought back coolly.
"I am sure of it, stranger," Mwwr replied grimly. "You told Vostol you were seeking a secret here. The only secret that could make you dare such perils is the one here in this chamber."
Captain Future stiffened at that information. And the effect of the telepathic statement upon Lacq was galvanic.
"Did you hear, Kaffr?" cried Lacq, in overpowering excitement. "The lost notebooks of Zuur are in this very room!"
Instantly came Mwwr's triumphant thought.
"Ah! So it is Zuur's notebooks for which you are searching!"
The Cold One ruler was no fool, Curt began to realize. He had neatly trapped them into admitting their purpose.
"The question that interests me," Mwwr continued incisively, "is how you came to learn of the existence of this secret. Nobody else, not even among my own people, dreams that we Cold Ones possess a dangerous hidden vulnerability. We rulers have guarded that secret in each generation, ever since the first ruler of our race took it from the dead Zuur who originally created us.
"We have preserved it to use only in case our own people should revolt against our rule.
"But now you strangers appear here, knowing all about its existence!" Mwwr went on with mounting rage. "How could you possibly learn that it exists? Who else knows about it?"
CAPTAIN FUTURE had been thinking with the superhuman clarity and rapidity that characterized his mind in moments of supreme stress. He had assessed the Futuremen's predicament in desperate search of a way out.
There seemed none. The six of them were all quite helpless, their upper bodies chained each to a solidly embedded ring. It was impossible to get their hands free. Yet a shadowy plan began to form in Curt's mind.
He answered the vengeful monarch's telepathic question.
"No one else knows that there is such a secret," said Captain Future.
"Then how did you learn of its existence?" demanded Mwwr.
It was the question for which Captain Future had been waiting. His reply was in line with the tenuous scheme he had formed.
"Lacq, one of my Tarast comrades here, is a remote descendant of Zuur," Curt declared. "He had some of his ancestor's papers, which he showed me. In one of those papers, Zuur had hinted at the secret."
"Where is that paper now?" Mwwr asked instantly.
"I don't have it!” Curt answered hastily. "I destroyed it after I had read it."
He purposely made his denial too hasty and emphatic. As he had
hoped, Mwwr immediately disbelieved the too-vehement denial.
"You are trying to deceive me!" charged the enemy king. "You undoubtedly have the paper in your possession. It must be destroyed at once, for not even my own officers may see it."
Gripping his atom-pistol in one bony hand, Mwwr advanced toward Captain Future. Had the Cold One king been able to read the hidden plan in Curt's mind, he would nastily have recoiled.
But he could not read Curt's hidden thoughts. The telepathic faculty of the Cold Ones was only an ability to project concentrated thought-messages or to detect such concentrated mental messages when projected by others.
Mwwr came close to Captain Future and reached toward the helmet of his space-suit.
"I shall have to remove your helmet and thus end your life, before I can search you. But you would never leave this chamber alive anyway —"
Mwwr never finished that coldly cruel thought. The opportunity for which Curt had desperately played had arrived.
Curt's upper body was tightly bound to the wall. But his legs were free. And he lashed out with them now in a carefully calculated kick at Mwwr's bony shanks.
The Cold One's osseous limbs were kicked from beneath him. He fell, just as Curt had planned he should fall, directly in front of Grag.
"Grag, kill him!" yelled Curt at the same moment.
Grag acted. The mighty robot's upper body was bound, like the rest of them. But his huge metal legs were free also.
He instantly raised one of his massive metal feet, brought it down with all his force upon the head of the sprawling Mwwr. There was a crunching sound. Mwwr's osseous body lay suddenly unmoving.
Grag raised his foot to disclose that the hideous skull-like head had been shattered, laying bare the pulped cartilage-brain.
"Chief, that devil's dead!" cried Otho exultantly. "What an ideal And I thought we were done for!"
Curt Newton felt shaky from reaction.
"The credit is Grag's," he declared. "He acted in the one instant that action was possible. I hadn't dared warn him what was coming, lest Mwwr should pick up my projected thought."
"But what good does it do us?" Gerdek asked hoarsely. "We're still tied up here. We can't get away."
"And Zuur's secret is somewhere right in this room!" raved Lacq.
"Take it easy, now," Curt commanded. "One thing at a time. Grag, can you reach that atom-pistol with your foot?"
The atom-pistol Mwwr had held was still in the Cold One's hand. Grag extended his foot and pulled the bony corpse closer; then with his toe tugged the weapon out of the dead, fleshless hand.
"Good!" Curt approved. "Now kick the pistol over to Otho."
GRAG carefully kicked the weapon and Otho adroitly caught it with his foot, as it slid along the floor. He drew it in with his toe.
"What's the idea, Chief?" the android asked Curt anxiously.
"The idea," Captain Future said, "is to use the atom-pistol to get one of us free. You'll have to do it with your feet, Otho. I chose you because you're the deftest of us all at such tricks. I want you to try to blow out the wall ring-bolt holding Grag."
"Hey, wait a minute!" Grag protested. "No crazy android is going to let fly with an atom-gun at me, aiming with his feet!”
"Otho will be careful, Grag," reassured Curt. "The shells in these small pistols make a flare of force only a foot across. The flare may scorch your back when it burns out the bolt in the wall, but it won't do you much real damage."
"Why not let somebody else get his back scorched?" Grag cried.
"Because if the space-suit of any of us is burned through, we'd die at once in this airless world," Curt explained.
Grag reluctantly acquiesced. He strained forward as far as he could, as Otho tensely maneuvered the pistol between his two feet.
Otho was unhumanly clever at such tricks of manipulation. But the heavy space-suit that covered his feet hampered him. At last he got the pistol between his toes. Gripping it there, he carefully turned it until it pointed up at the wall behind Grag's back.
Now Grag called a last caution.
"If you don't care anything about my life, Otho, just remember that if you miss the wall you'll probably hit the Chief!"
"Be quiet," growled Otho. "You're distracting me."
The android seemed for an endless time to change the aim of the pistol imperceptibly.
"Here goes!" he muttered finally.
He squeezed hard on the pistol gripped between his feet, thus squeezing the firing button on the hilt. From the pistol flew a tiny atom-shell that struck the ring in the wall to which Grag was bound.
The tiny shell exploded in a little flare of dazzling force. Grag plunged face-forward onto the floor. The ring-bolt to which he had been tied had been blasted from the wall by the flare of force.
"Are you all right, Grag?" Captain Future asked sharply.
Grag's metal back was scorched and partly fused in places, but the robot was getting to his feet.
"I guess I'm not much hurt, though it'll take a lot of work to put some new plates in my back," he grumbled. He added more brightly, "Say, I think that flare fused through my chains too."
He expanded his mighty arms. The half-melted chains around him parted beneath the strain. Grag stood free.
Chapter 19: Deadly Secret
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."
Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) Page 14