Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) Read Online Free
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
intently. Gerdek appeared to be excitedly proposing something connected with Captain Future.
Tiko Thrin looked perplexed.
"I don't understand this," he told Curt. "The man keeps harping on your red hair. He's telling his sister that because you're red-haired, you might be able to save his doomed people."
"Say, this is goofy!" Otho exclaimed. "How the devil is the Chief’s red hair going to save anybody from doom?"
"Aw, these people must be still space-happy from their trip," growled Grag.
"We’re getting nowhere," Captain Future said decisively. "Tiko, ask the man to tell us slowly what his universe is like and why his people are doomed. You translate for the rest of us as he goes along."
Gerdek nodded quickly when the little Martian made the request. He began to speak in low, eager tones, looking with a strangely hopeful expression at Curt. The girl Shiri searched Curt's face with her great, dark violet eyes as her brother talked. Tiko Thrin translated.
"Our universe is much different from this one of yours," Gerdek declared. "Like yours, it is a great bubble of three-dimensional curved space floating in the extra-dimensional abyss. But our universe is apparently much larger than yours in diameter. And ours is a dying universe, almost a dead one.
"Long, long ago our universe was much like yours. It contained hosts of hot, bright suns whose outpouring radiation supported life on myriads of planets. That was when we Tarasts rose to civilization and glory. The scientific powers of our race so expanded that we were able to spread out and colonize the worlds of hundreds of stars.
"The great hero of that long-past period of expansion was a scientist and leader named Kaffr, whose memory has been revered ever since by my race.
"But that was all ages ago. As time passed, millennium after millennium, millions after millions of years, the decline of our universe set in. Its suns could not pour out radiation forever. Each star, as the carbon-nitrogen cycle consumed its free hydrogen, waned and cooled. The inexorable laws of entropy were taking effect. The older suns of our universe ran down through the spectrum to dull red, and then were dark, cold cinders.
"The lights of our universe were going out, one by one! We could not halt that stupendous natural process — nothing could. Our far-flung race had sadly to abandon the frozen worlds of the burned-out suns, and migrate to other stars. So began the first somber retreat of the Tarast civilization from the borders of our cosmic empire."
GERDEK paused for emphasis.
"That retreat has been going on, ever since. For the last four million years, my people have abandoned one frozen stellar system after another. It has been a slow withdrawal, you see. A universe does not die in a day.
"Each generation during those four million years saw little retrogression during its lifetime — only the occasional abandonment of some star's worlds. It has been slow — but it has been very sure.
"In more recent ages, the cosmic retreat of our empire has been accelerated by two factors. One is the decay of our scientific powers, an intellectual degeneration that inevitably resulted from the psychological effects of our hopeless retreat. Very many techniques and knowledges were lost or forgotten as world after world was abandoned.
"We still retain and operate many mechanical devices, but the spirit of scientific experimentation is almost dead. We Tarasts are now, it is obvious to me, inferior to you people of this universe in science.
"The other factor that deepens the hopelessness for us is a more tangible and terrifying one. It is the threat of the Cold Ones. That is the name we give to a new and hostile race of intelligent creatures that has appeared in our dying universe.
"The Cold Ones are unhuman in many respects. They are the product of a disastrous chain of biological events that took place on the frozen planet of a dead star. They have advanced as we retreated, conquering world
Tiko Thrin looked perplexed.
"I don't understand this," he told Curt. "The man keeps harping on your red hair. He's telling his sister that because you're red-haired, you might be able to save his doomed people."
"Say, this is goofy!" Otho exclaimed. "How the devil is the Chief’s red hair going to save anybody from doom?"
"Aw, these people must be still space-happy from their trip," growled Grag.
"We’re getting nowhere," Captain Future said decisively. "Tiko, ask the man to tell us slowly what his universe is like and why his people are doomed. You translate for the rest of us as he goes along."
Gerdek nodded quickly when the little Martian made the request. He began to speak in low, eager tones, looking with a strangely hopeful expression at Curt. The girl Shiri searched Curt's face with her great, dark violet eyes as her brother talked. Tiko Thrin translated.
"Our universe is much different from this one of yours," Gerdek declared. "Like yours, it is a great bubble of three-dimensional curved space floating in the extra-dimensional abyss. But our universe is apparently much larger than yours in diameter. And ours is a dying universe, almost a dead one.
"Long, long ago our universe was much like yours. It contained hosts of hot, bright suns whose outpouring radiation supported life on myriads of planets. That was when we Tarasts rose to civilization and glory. The scientific powers of our race so expanded that we were able to spread out and colonize the worlds of hundreds of stars.
"The great hero of that long-past period of expansion was a scientist and leader named Kaffr, whose memory has been revered ever since by my race.
"But that was all ages ago. As time passed, millennium after millennium, millions after millions of years, the decline of our universe set in. Its suns could not pour out radiation forever. Each star, as the carbon-nitrogen cycle consumed its free hydrogen, waned and cooled. The inexorable laws of entropy were taking effect. The older suns of our universe ran down through the spectrum to dull red, and then were dark, cold cinders.
"The lights of our universe were going out, one by one! We could not halt that stupendous natural process — nothing could. Our far-flung race had sadly to abandon the frozen worlds of the burned-out suns, and migrate to other stars. So began the first somber retreat of the Tarast civilization from the borders of our cosmic empire."
GERDEK paused for emphasis.
"That retreat has been going on, ever since. For the last four million years, my people have abandoned one frozen stellar system after another. It has been a slow withdrawal, you see. A universe does not die in a day.
"Each generation during those four million years saw little retrogression during its lifetime — only the occasional abandonment of some star's worlds. It has been slow — but it has been very sure.
"In more recent ages, the cosmic retreat of our empire has been accelerated by two factors. One is the decay of our scientific powers, an intellectual degeneration that inevitably resulted from the psychological effects of our hopeless retreat. Very many techniques and knowledges were lost or forgotten as world after world was abandoned.
"We still retain and operate many mechanical devices, but the spirit of scientific experimentation is almost dead. We Tarasts are now, it is obvious to me, inferior to you people of this universe in science.
"The other factor that deepens the hopelessness for us is a more tangible and terrifying one. It is the threat of the Cold Ones. That is the name we give to a new and hostile race of intelligent creatures that has appeared in our dying universe.
"The Cold Ones are unhuman in many respects. They are the product of a disastrous chain of biological events that took place on the frozen planet of a dead star. They have advanced as we retreated, conquering world
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