Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) Read Online Free PDF Page A

like," Gerdek assured him. "It has been ages since he died, remember. All that we have are just dim traditions — his superhuman powers, his intrepidity, his wisdom. The flame-red hair is the only definite point."
    "And we could teach you everything you would need to know before you appeared to our people," Shiri added eagerly to Curt.
    Captain Future hesitated. The adventure that offered itself seemed a mad one. To enter a completely alien universe — to pass himself off as the revered, half-deified racial hero of a whole people!
    But a picture leaped into his mind. A somber mental vision of an unthinkably distant universe of dark, dead stars and frozen worlds; of a cold, unhuman menace that crept like a slow tide of horror toward the last, flickering stars and worlds that were the final refuge of a despairing human race.
    He turned and looked at the Brain and the other Futuremen.
    "I'm in favor of trying to help these people, even though this plan seems hopelessly risky," Curt stated. "But I can't take you into a venture like this against your judgment. Are you willing to go?"
    Otho's slant-green eyes glittered with excitement.
    "Go? Of course we go! Who'd miss a chance to visit a whole new universe? Why, it's the greatest opportunity for adventure we ever had!"
    Grag agreed, in his rumbling voice. The giant robot never cared where he went, as long as Captain Future was leading the way.
    The Brain spoke more deliberately.
    "You do not underestimate the riskiness of this proposal, lad. If those people discover that you're only an impostor impersonating their racial hero, they'll tear you to bits."
    Shiri looked troubled when that was translated.
    "It is true, they would do that. But it will not be discovered. It must not be discovered!”
    "Despite the risk," the Brain concluded, "I am in favor of trying it. In that distant, alien universe, opportunity for scientific research would be almost unlimited. And also, I want very much to investigate this puzzling fourth-dimensional beam-travel that Tiko Thrin has somehow devised."
    "I am afraid you will not learn much about that," Gerdek warned him. "The journey from our own universe to this one seemed little more than a mad confusion of indescribable sensations."
    Captain Future's gray eyes gleamed with that eager light that only great purpose and the lure of far cosmic frontiers could summon forth.
    "Good, it's settled! Gerdek, we'll come to your universe. I'll do my utmost to carry through this impersonation, if you think that's the only way in which we can succeed in helping your people. We'll bring our own ship, the Comet. We may need its resources before we're through."
    Otho objected, pointing to the barrel-shaped chamber of Tiko Thrin's matter-transmitter.
    "We can't get the Comet into that little chamber."
    "Which means that we'll have to build a much bigger matter-transmitter of the same design," Curt declared. "Gerdek and Shiri will have to build a similar receiver of large size, at their end. It will simply be a matter of duplicating in a larger scale the mechanism that Tiko Thrin has already taught them to construct."
    When the details of that were settled, the Tarast man and his sister prepared to return to their own universe. Gerdek wrung Curt's hand, and the platinum-tressed girl's violet eyes were wet and shining with emotion as she parted from Captain Future.
    "You have given us new hope," she told him through Tiko Thrin. "We shall be able to predict that soon Kaffr will return to his people and save them. They'll be afire with hope."
    "I only hope it won't end in tragic disappointment for them," Curt murmured uneasily. "I don't like impostors, even when they have as great a purpose as this one."
     
    GERDEK and Shiri entered the transparent chamber, and Tiko Thrin closed it upon them. The little Martian scientist sweated at the switchboard. A haze of shining force enwrapped the two Tarasts as power was turned on. When it was shut off and the haze faded, the two