Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More (March 1951) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online

stories of their lives and anecdotes plucked from their careers. Follow this department closely, for it contains many interesting and fascinating facts to supplement those you read in our featured novels.
     

 
    The Metamorphosis of Simon Wright
    From the Winter 1944 issue of Captain Future
     
    Roger Newton Preserves Simon Wright’s Mind from Oblivion and, as The Brain, the Doughty Old Scientist Begins the Task of Turning Curt Newton into a Wonder-Being, Captain Future!
     
    SIMON Wright was dying, and he knew it. He lay in his cot in the monastic little bedroom adjoining his beloved laboratory, and calmly estimated how many hours of life remained to him.
    His silvery head was raised upon the pillow, and his austere, wrinkled face was unperturbed as he looked down at his thin, angular body and wasted hands. Yet the approach of death did not find the old scientist wholly without regret.
    “If I’d only been able to live long enough to help Roger finish our experiments,” he thought. “It’s a pity that a man spends a lifetime learning how to do his work, and then has to die before he can use his knowledge.”
    The door opened, and a stalwart, red-haired young man whose spectacled face was pale and worried came into the little room.
    “How are you now, Simon?” asked Roger Newton anxiously. “That last stimulant I gave you —”
    “Wore off in an hour,” Simon Wright answered calmly. “It’s no use, Roger. You can’t patch up a machine that’s worn out with use. And that’s what my body is — a worn-out machine.”
    He shrugged weakly and continued. “There’s no reason to feel badly about it. I’ve had a long and fairly useful life. Now my time has come.”
    “But it’s such a waste of genius for you to die when your knowledge could benefit humanity so much,” burst out Roger Newton.
    “Nature is wasteful,” murmured the old scientist. “It’s her way.”
     
    ROGER NEWTON HAS AN INSPIRATION
    Newton was silent for a few minutes. A queer emotion seemed to possess him. His spectacled face had a breathless look on it when he finally spoke.
    “Simon, maybe your mind could continue to live after your body dies.”
    He rushed on. “Remember all the advances we’ve made in tissue-culture recently? Isolated living hearts and other organs have been kept alive indefinitely in serum-cases. Even brains have been kept alive so.”
    Startled understanding showed in Simon Wright’s old eyes.
    “You’re proposing to remove my brain into a serum-case and keep it alive there?” he said after a pause. “But what good would that do? I wouldn’t be able to hear or see or do anything else but think.”
    “No, listen,” continued the younger scientist earnestly. “I’ve always believed that it should be possible to connect artificial organs of speech, hearing and sight to an isolated human brain living in serum. I tried it with a rabbit’s brain and was successful. And though the human brain is much more complex, I still believe it could be done.”
    Simon Wright brooded in silence upon the astounding proposal. Despite his deep wish to continue his researches, he felt a revulsion from the prospect that had been proposed to him.
    He was a normal man. But he would not be one any longer, if he underwent this change. He would be something more, or less, than a man.
     
    WRIGHT’S DUTY TO SCIENCE
    “Think, Simon, of the work you could do, the years of research ahead of you,” urged Roger Newton. “It’s your duty to humanity to keep your vast scientific skill and knowledge alive.”
    “I wouldn’t be able to do anything myself,” muttered the old man, voicing the doubt that was deepest in his mind. “I’d have no hands, no body.”
    “I’d be your hands,” Newton declared eagerly. “Together we could go on with our work, instead of leaving it half-finished as it must remain if you die.”
    That argument persuaded Simon Wright. He had long ago outlived most human emotions, but the flame of