"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!"
Chapter 13: Phantom Prisoners
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.
He waited then, floating in the dim obscurity of the gloomy vault. But there came no telepathic answer.
"Shiri! Gerdek!" Again he uttered the telepathic cry. "Surely some of you c
an hear?"
There was no response. And Curt Newton's horror deepened as he realized that he was completely isolated even from those who had been disembodied like himself.
He could not "see" his fellow Unbodied ones, any more than they could perceive him. For all of them consisted now only of immaterial photons.
Neither could he contact the others telepathically. That, he knew, was because his tenuous new photon-body was unable to project a telepathic electric vibration of sufficient intensity to register upon another mind.
"This is worse than death!" Curt thought. "I'm like a bodiless ghost, that can dimly see but that can't be seen, and that can't speak to or be heard even by its fellow-ghosts."
Most dreadful of all to Captain Future, he would never now return to his own universe. He thought of the familiar Earth that he would never see again. He thought of Joan Randall, waiting for him —
"Simon! Otho!" he uttered in a fierce telepathic cry. "You've got to answer me!"
BUT still there was no answer. And that, to Curt Newton, was almost the last straw. He felt madness close to him. And he rallied against it with supreme determination.
"I won't give up!" he thought with wild passion. "Somehow, there must be a way out of this. If I could only find help —"
But could he even move? He was a photon-creature floating upon the magnetic currents of this planet. Would it be possible to breast those currents by a concentrated effort of his electric being?
Curt essayed the effort. He found that tho heightened pulsation of his mind's electric web did cause him to drift slowly in one direction.
He continued his experiments. It seemed that by concentrated thought, he could reverse the polarity of his photon-body and cause it to flow with or against the streaming magnetic currents on which he floated.
"If I can get out of here and find somebody —" he thought with a haggard gleam of hope.
He managed to drift toward the door of the shadowy vault. It was shut and locked from the outside. But Captain Future found himself drifting weirdly through the massive door.
That startled him, at first. Then he realized that his immaterial photon-being was naturally able to pass through solid matter. More than ever, it made him feel like a wandering ghost.
He drifted up through the stairways of the great Hall of Suns, seeking to reach the Council Hall. He made many movements in wrong directions, for control of this new method of locomotion was still very awkward and uncertain with him. But Curt was learning fast, now.
He reached the upper level of the Hall of Suns. His strange electric perception "saw" everything vaguely and unreally. Yet, when he entered the Council Hall, he could perceive that it was quite deserted.
"Then Vostol has already left on the mission to Thool!" he thought despairingly. "I may have been in this existence for hours."
Hopelessness was crushing even his indomitable resolution. He felt that awful shadow of madness creeping closer upon him.
Curt suddenly realized that a man had entered the Council. Hall. He had slipped in at a side door, in a peculiarly stealthy fashion, and was looking tensely around. With suddenly resurgent hope, Curt recognized him.
"Lacq!" he thought in a wild telepathic cry.
It was in fact the young Tarast, the descendant of Zuur whom they had brought back to Bebemos with them. Curt moved toward him.
"Lacq, listen!" he cried telepathically. "This is Kaffr speaking to you! I need your help!"
Lacq gave no sign whatever of having received the thought-cry, though Curt repeated it over and over again frantically.
Captain Future's sudden new hope swiftly died. He realized that his tenuous, immaterial photon-body could not project a telepath vibration strong enough for Lacq to hear.
Chapter 14: Into the Darkness
LACQ had been startled and dismayed when the Tarast soldiers had arrested Captain Future and his comrades as they entered Bebemos. He had stood stunned until Curt had whispered to him to leave them, and wait until they got in touch with him.
That order, Lacq had dazedly obeyed. He had slipped away from Curt's group and the soldiers had not stopped him, for he was not on their list. In worried wonder, Lacq had watched the prisoners marched away by the guards toward the Hall of Suns.
"They arrested Kaffr!" Lacq told himself incredulously. "They must have gone mad."
Lacq had not a doubt in his own mind that Curt was really Kaffr. The young Tarast had been utterly convinced, not only by the red-haired planeteer's appearance but also by his determination and resourcefulness.
As the Comet had returned to Bebemos, Lacq had been filled with wild hope for the future. Kaffr's intention of leading an expedition to Thool promised to achieve Lacq's cherished plan — discovery of his ancestor's secret and the vulnerability of the Cold Ones.
Lacq had cherished that plan for years. It was the one great goal of his life. For its success would not only mean the smashing of the Cold One menace. It would mean vindication of his ancestor Zuur, whose memory had been hated by his people for the terror he had unleashed.
Now all these wild new hopes had been suddenly imperiled by the arrest of Kaffr and his comrades. Lacq could not understand. He ventured a question of one of the Tarasts, who stood in troubled silence as the prisoners were marched away.
"Why do they arrest Kaffr?" Lacq asked bewilderedly. "Has the Council gone crazy, to do such a thing to our returned hero?"
The man he addressed answered troubledly.
"It is said that charges have been made that Kaffr is not really Kaffr — that he is an impostor."
"They must be mad indeed to listen to such charges!" Lacq said hotly. "Anyone can see that it is Kaffr!"
"That is my opinion too," said the man. He went on worriedly. "Kaffr's return gave us our first hope for years that we might defeat the Cold Ones. If they should prove now that it is not Kaffr at all, there would be universal despair."
That seemed to Lacq to be the attitude of all the troubled, tense crowds that filled the streets of Bebemos. All seemed to be praying desperately that the hope given them by the return of their great hero might not now be snatched away from them.
Lacq's uneasiness was great as he made his way through the throngs toward the Hall of Suns. And that uneasiness was not only for Kaffr, and for the fate of the expedition to Thool. It was for Shiri as well. Lacq had been strongly attracted by Gerdek's beautiful sister.
He waited with the tense crowds gathered outside the Hall of Suns. For a long time they stood there. Then a low murmur of voices went up as Vostol hurriedly emerged from the building.
"Vostol, has the Council made decision regarding Kaffr?" cried many eager voices.
"Igir will give you news — I cannot," Vostol answered, and hastened away before he could be questioned further.
Lacq was more uneasy than ever. He decided to follow Vostol. But he learned little by doing so.
For Vostol went directly to the spaceport outside the gate of Bebemos. There a star-cruiser had been made ready, and a silver circle had been painted boldly upon each of its sides. Vostol entered this ship and it sped rapidly out into space.
Puzzled and worried, Lacq returned to the Hall of Suns. Soon a cry rose from the crowd as the Council chairman, old Igir, emerged.
IGIR looked haggard as he spoke to the tense throng.
"The charges against Kaffr are still being considered, but no decision has yet been made," he told the people. "Return to your homes, and an announcement will be made to you later."
Unsatisfied and in uneasy silence the Tarast populace slowly dispersed from in front of the Hall of Suns. But Lacq remained.
"Something is very wrong," Lacq told himself with deep anxiety. "They've done something to Kaffr and his friends, but are afraid to announce it just yet to the people."
He continued to wait and watch. He saw the members of the Council of Suns leave the building. But Kaffr and his comrades did not come out. They were still in there somewhere, perhaps imprisoned.
<
br /> "I've got to find out what's happened!" Lacq decided finally. "If Kaffr needs help —"
He put his decision into instant execution. Without attempt at concealment he hurried up to the entrance of the mammoth building. Tarast soldiers brusquely barred his entrance. But Lacq's fertile mind had already fixed upon an expedient.
"I bring important dispatches from the world Raskol!” he snapped, mentioning another Tarast planet in the star-cluster. "For the Council secretary!"
His assurance of manner and assumed impatience impressed the guards and they stepped back.
"You'll find the secretary in his office."
Lacq breathed more easily as he made his way through the dusky corridors of the great structure. He was past the guards. But now a new difficulty arose. Where in this vast pile would he search for Kaffr?
He decided to investigate the Council Hall first Slipping into it by a side door he found the great amphitheater silent and deserted.
Lacq looked around, vainly seeking some trace of Kaffr's presence. Then his eye was caught by a small, square apparatus that rested upon a table on the great stage.
He approached and examined it wonderingly. Yes, he was right — it was a telep-transmitter such as were used by the Cold Ones for long-distance transmission of telepathic messages. Lacq was familiar with the instruments from his former association with the Cold Ones.
"But what's a telep-transmitter doing here?" he asked himself mystifiedly. "Did they capture this from the Cold Ones?"
He turned the instrument on, with a vague hope that he might catch something on it that would explain the mystery of its presence.
Next moment, Lacq received a staggering shock. From the shining knob of the telep-transmitter a frantic telepathic cry came to his mind.
"Lacq! This is Kaffr speaking to you!” vibrated that wild thought-message. "Can you hear me?"
"Kaffr?" cried Lacq aloud in his amazement. Then he repeated it as a thought directed into the instrument. "Kaffr, where are you?"
The answer added to his stupefaction.
Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) Page 10
