Read Online Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) by Edmond Hamilton - Free Book Online

sleepers were exclaiming in mad joy, “The Thousand have succeeded! Our sun has been rekindled, and our world has awakened to new life!”
    Suddenly, as their first frantic joy quieted a little, the awakened sleepers became aware of the presence of Curt and Hol Jor and the Brain, watching them from the foot of the spiral stair. The rejoicing multitude recoiled a little, in surprise and alarm. Though a handsome, graceful race, these gray-skinned folk appeared of no great courage by the way they shrank back. From their midst finally stepped the young man who wore the coronet of authority on his dark hair. Doubtfully, he approached Curt.
    “You are not of our people,” he said wonderingly to Captain Future. “Whence do you come?”
    “From another star,” Curt answered quietly. “We found the door down into your cavern here only a few minutes ago.”
    “You found the door?” echoed the young ruler of the sleepers. His eyes flashed with joy. “Then it is certain that the ice is gone from above, and that our sun has been rekindled by the Thousand.”
    “We do not understand your reference,” Curt told him. “Why have you slept here, and how? And who are the Thousand?”
    The young ruler of the gray sleepers explained.
    “We are an ancient race, native to this world. We were so civilized that we had no more need of scientific progress, but could live a life of aesthetic ease and pleasure, happily pursuing the arts and served in all our needs by the machines our scientists had created. Only a thousand scientists were required to be trained each generation to keep our mechanical system in good operation.
    “But after ages of this happy life, death faced us. Our sun had long been dying, and it cooled so rapidly that this whole world became frozen.
    The sun became a mere giant cinder, and only by dire means did we manage to keep alive.
    “Then our thousand scientists said to us, ‘Means must be found of rekindling the sun. It is possible that we can do that in time by long experiment with atomic explosions. We shall go to the dead sun and set up laboratories there and begin the attempt. But it may take many generations, and long before then you would all be dead. So you must all sleep while we carry out the attempt to renew the sun.’
    “So our thousand scientists,” continued the young ruler, “prepared for us this place beneath the crust of our planet. They installed in it an apparatus which could cast us into a perpetual hypnotic trance through auditory stimulation of bells. They told us that a similar apparatus would automatically awake us from the hypnotic trance, when our sun was rekindled.
    “Melting of the ice on our world overhead would automatically start that awakening apparatus. For the thousand scientists themselves, if they succeeded in rekindling the sun, would surely perish in the very moment they succeeded, and so would not be able to return to awake us.”
    The young ruler concluded eagerly.
    “They must finally have succeeded in rekindling our dead star by atomic explosion, as they hoped! So when the new warmth of our sun melted all the ice over this place, the apparatus of bells automatically awoke us.”
     
    CURT NEWTON felt his heart wrung by the unutterable pathos which lay hidden in the young ruler’s eager words — pathos of a thousand men and women who long ago had gone to their dead sun to try to awaken it to life, and who had known that they themselves would perish if they succeeded. The pathos of these frantically rejoicing people who thought that the attempt had succeeded — was almost as tragic.
    “They don’t guess the truth!” whispered Hol Jor pityingly. “It was our proton-rays that melted the ice over this place and started the apparatus that woke them up — but they think their sun has been revived to new life.”
    The young leader of the gray sleepers faced Curt anxiously.
    “It is true that our sun is rekindled, that we can go back up to take up life again on the