With all the deathless courage of the Vorg hunters from whom they were descended, the Trigans threw themselves at the Tharvs. Trigan for ever! The Emperor defeated the Tharv General in hand-to-hand combat. Give the order to surrender—or prepare to meet your ancestors! Yes -I will do it! Fired by Trigo’s example, the Trigans hurled back the enemy on every frontier. Tharv sued for peace, and the peril was over. Long live the Emperor! And then—Trigo had a request to make of Peric. Now you will give me back my black box! There was a time when I thought that life would be meaningless without this device. But I have had to live without it for two days, and now the craving has lessened. There—I am free of its destructive influence!Then began the great work of rescuing others from the baleful spell of the black boxes. This Peric and his assistants did with hypnosis and other psychological techniques. You were a slave to your black box because it turned your secret longing into a sort of reality. Tell me, Brag, what is your secret longing? Many were the strange confessions that Peric heard. From Brag, for instance . . . I always had an ambition to be a great sculptor. Under the influence of the black box, I carved a mountain into a statue of Trigo! From Yarri Zemph . . . I have been a civil servant—a little grey man—all my life. But with the aid of the black box, I lived like a barbarian chieftain! From Keren . . . In my fantasy, I flew like a bird, all over Elekton. And from Roffa . . . I became—a god! It was a marvelous feeling. The Trigan Police found the headquarters of the criminal gang that had manufactured and sold for enormous prices thousands of the infernal little black boxes. Their method was fiendishly simple—the victim’s first introduction was to have this thing attached to his head by force! After that, he became its slave—and paid anything to keep it. As Trigo said . . . The Empire has, once more, triumphed over what seemed certain disaster. But it was a close thing!
This instalment was originally published in Look and Learn issue no. 549 on 22 July 1972.
