“I don’t know,” muttered old Tuhlus Thuun.
JOHN ROLLINGER interrupted. The crazed scientist, still lying bound under Grag’s guard nearby, was sobbing hysterically.
“We must leave this world!” he screamed. “Unless we leave, the Dwellers will kill us all!”
“What’s he talking about — the Dwellers?” Kim Ivan asked puzzledly.
“The hidden ones — the mighty lords — they watch us now and they wait!” raved Rollinger.
Grabo, the Jovian, stirred uneasily, his dark face nervous in expression. “I don’t like this place. It’s as spooky as the Place of the Dead, on Jupiter.”
“Do you s’pose there could be critters of some kind on this planetoid cunning enough to steal into the camp and carry away them two men?” asked Ezra Gurney.
Surely we’d have seen any creatures as intelligent as that,” objected Joan, eyes bright with concentration.
“I don’t know,” Curt muttered. “Everything about this planetoid is alien, different from the life of our own System. It comes from remote regions of the galaxy, and during its ages of isolation, its evolution has taken different paths.”
There was an uneasy silence. The night suddenly seemed pregnant with mysterious menace. The low calls of small animals and the squeak of birds from the dark surrounding jungle fell upon tensely listening ears.
Had some formidable beast of prey actually entered the camp and slain the Neptunian and Mercurian, it would not have have been so terrifying as this baffling disappearance of the two men. It was the unearthly mystery of it that chilled them. Their minds conjured pictures of malign and alien creatures lurking out there in the dark, watching and waiting.
“The most intelligent-lookin’ creatures we’ve seen on this planetoid are the Cubics,” drawled Ezra. “Do you s’pose they’re the Dwellers?”
“They didn’t look of high intelligence,” Curt said doubtfully. “Besides, how could they enter the camp and make off silently with two men?”
“Luuq and the Mercurian must have went sleepwalking into the jungle and got grabbed by some beast,” Kim Ivan growled.
“Just the same, I propose we post our own guards at night to prevent any more ‘sleepwalking’,” said Moremos, glancing toward Curt Newton.
For the remaining few hours of that night they sat around the fire, talking in low voices. All realized more completely than ever before the alien nature of this wandering worldlet from outer space. What dark riddle was it hiding?
The coming of day was a relief to strained nerves. Almost cheerfully, they breakfasted on fruit and berries. Then Captain Future got to his feet and incisively addressed them.
“We’ve got to organize our operations, if we’re to get anywhere with the task ahead of us,” he declared.
He was a confidence-inspiring figure as he stood, his tall, rangy figure and red head silhouetted against the pale sunrise, his keen gray eyes sweeping their faces. But he was not nearly so confident as he looked. He was a little overwhelmed by the audacity of what they were about to attempt.
“First, we’ve got to complete the stockade around this knoll and build some huts,” he stated. “Others of us have to form regular foraging parties to supply fruit, roots, and small meat-animals if possible.”
KIM IVAN spoke up. “I’ll superintend the building of the stockade and huts. And Grabo can take care of the food-supply. He says he knows how to set traps for the animals whose traces we saw in the jungle.”
Curt nodded. “I’ll leave all that to you, then,” he told Kim Ivan. “The Futuremen and I will begin an exploratory survey for the metallic ores and other materials we’ll require. That’s our first step toward a ship.”
The big clear knoll soon was buzzing with activity. Kim Ivan’s stentorian voice bellowed orders, supervising a large party of the mutineers in hauling fern-poles from the jungle and setting them up in a stockade and in framework for huts.
Grabo had chosen a dozen of the men and had gone into the fern-forest to set the animal-snares he had improvised from strips of clothing. Other of the men were already bringing in fruits and roots.
Curt asked Ezra Gurney, “Will you stay here and keep an eye on Moremos? I don’t think he’ll try to make any real trouble until we have built a ship. But I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I understand,” nodded the veteran marshal. “I’ll watch that varmint.”
Captain Future and Grag and Otho and the Brain set forth eastward upon their quest for ores, accompanied by George McClinton and Joan. The girl had insisted upon going.
Curt headed toward the nearby region of volcanic activity. All around that region were chasms and crevasses that had been split by the recent seismic disturbances.
“Our best chance of finding surface deposits of iron, beryllium and the other ores we need, is in those chasms,” he pointed out. “We have to find the stuff in easily worked surface deposits at first, for as yet we have no tools for mining.”
“When I think of all the work ahead of us, I wish I was back home on the Moon,” Otho said gloomily.
They approached the black fields of solidified lava. Beyond that crusted expanse lay the smoking valleys through which came the sluggish red rivers of molten rock that flowed down from the towering volcanoes. The sulphurous fumes half-veiled the forbidding vista.
Curt Newton turned to the Brain. “Simon, will you reconnoiter as many of the chasms and gorges as you can? See what deposits of ores you can spot. We’ll be working northward, from here.”
The Brain glided off upon his mission, looking like a glittering flying cube as he shot away through the pale sunlight upon his traction-beams. He was quickly out of sight.
George McClinton, to whom Simon was not as familiar as to the others, looked after the Brain with marveling wonder.
“If the Brain can f-f-fly like that so easily, w-w-why couldn’t he f-f-fly back to the System for help?” he asked.
Curt shook his head. “Simon derives the power for his beams from a tiny atomic generator inside his case. It holds a charge of fuel sufficient for many hours’ activity, but not enough for a long flight in space.”
“That reminds me,” Grag said dismayedly, “I’ll be needing copper and other elements for fuel for my own generators pretty soon. Otherwise, my power will run down.”
Otho told the robot, “That’s all right — when your power runs out, we can make some swell tools out of you. Yes, sir, you’re going to come in mighty handy, Grag.”
“Chief, will you make Otho quit threatening me!” demanded Grag angrily. “He’s getting on my nerves by his talk of using me for metal.”
“He can use up some of his wind climbing down into this crevice and prospecting for iron,” Captain Future said acidly as they started forward.
They had been moving northward and had come to a deep crevasse driven in the rock of the planetoid by quakes. It was quite narrow and its jagged walls were almost vertical.
OTHO’S rubbery figure went down the walls as though he were a fly. Presently his voice echoed hollowly up to them.
“Yes, there’s nickel-iron down here. Looks like the core of Astarfall.”
“That’s what I was hoping for,” Curt declared. “I figured from its mass that Astarfall would have a nickel-iron core like most planetoids and planets, and that its rock crust could not be a thick one.”
They went back to the jungle and secured a quantity of tough vines from which they fashioned a strong, flexible ladder. Curt and Grag went down this into the gloomy depths of the crevasse.
Glittering outcrops of nickel-iron ores were plentiful in the bottom of the chasm. But digging out the ore without tools was another matter. Here Grag’s great strength came into play. With a few chunks of hard rock for hammers, the big robot loosened small masses of ore.
Joan and McClinton had woven wicker baskets which they let down by a vine rope. Thus the masses of ore were hauled to the surface. It was slow, toilsome work. The day was waning when they finally
had enough of the ore for Captain Future’s immediate purposes.
The Brain had returned and made his report. “I investigated a good many of the chasms. And I found indications of copper, manganese, chromium and several other of the ores we need.”
He listed them all, and Curt Newton listened intently. He asked then, “What about the beryllium, calcium and lead? They’re vital.”
“I’ve not found any of them yet,” admitted the Brain. “There are signs of possible beryllium: and lead deposits in that huge gorge between the double range of volcanoes. But I didn’t risk going far down into it, for, that abyss is highly dangerous. The terrific air-currents, heat and fumes from the lava at its bottom make it a veritable canyon of chaos.”
“The Canyon of Chaos sounds like a good name for that place, at that,” remarked Otho.
“It’s hardly worth while naming places on a world that’s going to blow up two months from now,” grumbled Grag.
The Sun was sinking when they returned to the camp. The transformation there proved that Kim Ivan and his men had been at work.
The stockade around the knoll was roughly complete. A spring had been dug. The framework of a dozen huts was up, and several had already been thatched with flat fronds. The huge, barrel-shaped cacti in the clearing had been left untouched, since to attempt to cut down those giant growths would have entailed immense labor for no particular reason.
“Not bad,” Kim Ivan admitted when Curt complimented him on the day’s work. “It won’t take us long to finish up the huts now.”
GRABO and his trappers soon returned from the jungle. “We eat tonight, and not just fruit,” proclaimed the Jovian complacently.
They had snared four plump, rodent-like animals as big as small pigs. And they had brought several new varieties of edible fruits.
“But that jungle is a devilish place.” swore the Jovian. “Beside those cursed tangle-trees, there’s smaller plants that eat insects and birds in the same way. I never saw such evil plant-life as this world has.”
Nevertheless, the animals made a palatable sort of stew. Although he didn’t eat, the Brain passed upon the flesh as being harmless and containing nutriment. He waved his eye-stalks questioningly when Captain Future thoughtfully fished a couple of bones out of the stew and offered them for his inspection.
“What is it, lad?” he asked.
“Note the glazed appearance of these bones,” said Curt. “Just an interesting side problem, but do you make the same thing I do of the skeletal structure of mammals here?”
“Siliciferous compounds!” ex-claimed the Brain at once. “The bony structure of creatures on Astarfall are built up from silicon. Altogether different from Earthly specimens. It’s unmistakable.”
“Exactly,” said Captain Future, nodding. He turned to speak to one of the cooks.
“Save the skins of those animals for me,” he requested. “I’ll need them tomorrow.
“To build the space ship?” sneered Moremos, who had returned with the Jovian.
“Yes, to build the ship,” Curt nodded, with a calm smile.
He and Grabo scraped and cleaned the hides that night, and he used strong fiber threads and a thorn needle to sew two of them together into a rude but effective bellows. This he mounted in a rough wooden frame.
It was late when he finished this work by the firelight. Joan had retired to the smallest hut, which had been assigned for her use. Most of the mutineers and others were also already asleep.
Grag had taken up his tireless and sleepless watch. And old Tuhlus Thuun and Boraboll were remaining awake and watchful tonight, too.
“I’m going to turn in,” Curt yawned, straightening. “How’s Rollinger?”
“Muttering a little, but not as noisy as he was last night,” Grag replied. “I think he’s quieting down.”
The crazed scientist was now confined in one of the other small huts. He had been subdued and silent all during the day.
Chapter 10: Dread Warning
CURT slept heavily. When he awakened and went out into the sunrise, he found Kim Ivan swearing.
“There is something cursed spooky about this place,” declared the big Martian. “I had queer dreams all night — as though somebody was talking inside my mind.”
Boraboll spoke nervously. “Nothing happened all night. And nothing came near the camp that we could see or hear.”
That day, while most of the mutineers resumed the work of building the huts and replenishing the food-supply, Captain Future and his party began the next step of their task.
“We’ve got iron ore, and now we’ve got to smelt it out for steel,” Curt stated. “Since we don’t have any atomic smelter, we’ll have to go back to ancient ways.”
He supervised the bringing of massive stones, and the building of them into a small furnace. They had no coal with which to fire this, but the Brain had located a deposit of combustible peat in one of the swampy sections of the jungle.
Curt Newton attached his rude bellows to the stone furnace. He used its draft to fan the peat fire he kindled inside. Then he arranged a mass of the nickel-iron ore inside the furnace. When the ore became molten, he forced air through it by hard pumping on the bellows.
“This arrangement goes back to primitive times,” he commented. “It’s crude, but we’ll have to use crude ways until we have some tools.”
When the forced air had reduced the ore to a mass of molten iron, Captain Future added a small quantity of carbon.
“Hey, that isn’t the way you make steelite,” objected Otho.
“We can’t make a modern steelite alloy without beryllium and other elements which we haven’t got yet,” Curt retorted. “We’ll have to be satisfied at first with this old-fashioned steel.”
The product of his labors for the day were two chunks of solid steel. One, which was much larger than the other, was roughly shaped to serve as an anvil. The other Curt attached to a limber wooden handle, converting it into a crude but heavy forging-hammer.
Joan looked a little disappointedly at these two unlovely products of their day’s toil.
“It’s wonderful that you’ve been able to make them, but they seem a long way off from a big, complex space ship,” she murmured.
“They’re the seeds of a space ship,” Curt old her. “You have to crawl before you can walk. Remember that we’re starting here completely empty-handed. That means that we’re forced to retrace a lot of the steps by which thousands of generations of men ascended from the discovery of fire to the building of space ships.”
All during the next two days, he kept their improvised furnace and forge at work. McClinton was his chief helper, while Otho untiringly pumped the bellows and Grag utilized his huge strength in bringing fresh masses of ore from the surface working they had discovered.
Kim Ivan had detailed a party of the mutineers to dig that ore and help transport it to the camp. The Brain was away from dawn till dark each day, searching the face of Astarfall for the other needed elements. He had already managed to locate deposits of several of them.
The first thing which Captain Future beat out upon their forge was the steel framework for a larger and more efficient smelter. When that was going, a larger amount of better quality steel began to result.
“We’re still only in the first stages of tooling up,” Curt declared. “We can’t really make any start on ship-building until we have atomic power and an atomic smelter for turning out high-grade light alloys.”
“Why don’t you start on that right away, then?” Joan wanted to know.
“Be reasonable, woman,” pleaded Captain Future. “An atomic power set-up requires certain chemicals which we can’t dig out until we have strong steel tools for mining.”
THEY were concentrating now upon making tough steel picks, bars and other tools for mining operations. Each tool had to be beaten into shape upon their forge. The camp rang with the clangorous hammering.
By now, the huts had been completed and a routine system of gatheri
ng and preparing food set up. These last few nights had brought no recurrence of the mysterious disappearances, although several others beside Kim Ivan had complained of uncannily oppressive dreams. The stockade gate was guarded each night by a couple of the mutineers.
“Now,” said Captain Future on the fourth morning, “we can start mining copper and the other elements we need for the next step.”
“I told you of the copper-ore deposit I found,” said the Brain. “But I’ve still not located any calcium, beryllium or lead.”
“Let me scout for those and the other elements we still lack,” begged Otho. “I can maybe find them where Simon would miss them.”
“All right, you can prospect the chasms northwest of the volcanic area,” Curt acceded. “The rest of us will start copper-mining today.”
Otho departed upon his prospecting mission. Captain Future, Grag, McClinton and Rih Quili gathered their new tools and started out for preliminary work upon the copper deposit the Brain had located. Joan was ready to accompany them, but Curt firmly overruled her this time, leaving her standing rebelliously outside the stockade. But before they had gone far through the jungle, he stopped.
“I thought I heard Joan calling,” he said. “Listen!”
They heard Joan’s voice raised sharply again, in an exclamation that had more of anger than fear in it.
Instantly Curt plunged back through the jungle the way they had come. When he came into sight of the stockade, a sudden tide of red fury pulsed through his brain.
Joan was struggling angrily in the arms of Moremos. The green-skinned Venusian was laughing as he drew her toward him.
“You are a little wildcat,” he chuckled.
In all the years, Captain Future had killed more than one man. But always he had slain as the personification of stern, icy justice. He had almost never before felt the hot, raging desire to slay that now flung him forward.
Moremos thrust the girl away and recoiled startledly. Next moment Curt had him by the throat. The Venusian fought furiously, a savage hate flaming in his eyes as he sought a deadly swamp-man’s grip.
Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) Page 8