“I am beginning to fear,” said Simon, “that there is no accessible calcium on Astarfall.”
Curt bit his lip. “We’ve got our makeshift cyc almost finished. But we can’t use copper fuel in it until we have a little calcium.”
Copper was the fuel most ordinarily used in cyclotrons. That metal released more atomic energy when disintegrated than did any other ordinary substance. It released so much energy, indeed, that it would blow any cyclotron apart unless its disintegration was slowed down by calcium.
“We c-c-could use iron for fuel, instead of c-c-copper,” McClinton suggested. “It won’t p-produce half as much power as c-copper would, but it c-could be used w-without the c-calcium catalyst.”
“It’s what we’ll have to do, to get going,” Captain Future agreed. “But we still must have calcium! Only copper will release enough energy to power a space-ship! Unless we get a little calcium, any ship we build will never take off.”
He put McClinton to work upon casting the inertron valves and fittings. The lanky engineer labored diligently, stopping only to munch a few of his dried prunes now and then.
“They g-g-give me energy,” he defended when Joan chaffed him about his addiction. “P-people don’t realize the value of p-prunes.”
“What’ll you do when they’re all gone?” Joan laughed. “Your case is almost empty.”
He looked dismal. “I know. That’s why I’m w-working so hard to g-get the ship started. To get back to c-civilization and p-prunes.”
Captain Future himself was engaged upon the harder job of building the electric firing-mechanism for their cyclotron.
A cyclotron is operated by disintegrating powdered metal fuel atoms into their constituent electrons. This exploding cloud of free electrons was in reality what people called atomic energy.
ONCE the disintegration process was started, It was self-continuing as long as the injector fed powdered fuel. But to start it, it was necessary to have a trigger-apparatus consisting of an electrostatic generator that would release a bolt violent enough to start the disintegration within a small trigger-tube attached to the main power-chamber.
“How the devil do we build an electrostatic generator when we don’t even have a foot of wire?” Otho demanded.
“We make the wire first,” Curt retorted.
“This thing gets more complicated the further we go with it,” groaned the android.
But he fell to with Grag and Curt in the tremendously difficult task of drawing out the necessary wire from their supply of smelted copper.
Joan’s deft fingers wove fine fiber threads from certain plants into the necessary insulation for the wire. Curt wound the complex coils, upon wooden frames. Gradually the electrostatic generator took shape.
The inertron trigger-tube was fitted into one of the small openings of their cyclotron, with its electrodes in place inside it and with heavy copper cables running from it to the generator itself.
The generator contained the condensers for storing the charge, the transformer coils, and the copper spheres, belts and brushes of an electrostatic machine which was to be turned by a geared crank.
“We’re about r-r-ready,” said McClinton hopefully, at last. “I p-p-put the refined iron powder into the f-f-fuel-hopper.”
Everyone of the castaways was gathered that morning to witness the test of the vital cyclotron upon which all of them had labored in some way or other. An atmosphere of tension held them.
Grag had already for some time been turning the crank of the electrostatic generator, building up the charge in its condensers. Lacking instruments, Curt had to calculate mentally the amount of charge available.
“It should be enough to fire the trigger-tube,” he said tautly. “Shove in the injector, George.”
The prune-chewing engineer eagerly obeyed, pushing down the knob atop the massive little cyclotron, injecting a charge of powdered iron into it.
Captain Future instantly closed the heavy switch that broke the copper cable connecting the generator to the cyc. The stored electric charge flashed into the trigger-tube of the cyclotron.
There was a sharp detonation as the terrific electric bolt started the bit of fuel in the trigger-tube disintegrating. Almost instantly, it was followed by a bursting, vibrating roar as the process of atomic disintegration spread to the main charge of powdered iron in the power-chamber.
Curt depressed the valve-lever atop the power take-off. From that take-off tube, a jet of pale white fire lanced out. It was a sword of atomic energy that cut deep into the side of the knoll behind the cyclotron.
“She works!” yelled Otho, his face aflame with excitement.
“By space, you’ve done it!” bellowed Kim Ivan. “We’ve got atomic power now!”
Weary as he was, Curt Newton felt a thrill of inextinguishable pride in what they had done. In two short weeks, they had retraced the whole history of human invention from fire to atomic power.
They had started from nothing, as the first primitive savages of Earth had done. The only difference was that they had had the knowledge slowly gathered by hundreds of generations, and had been able to apply it.
“N-n-now do we start laying the f-frame of the ship?” McClinton asked eagerly, but Captain Future shook his head.
“Not yet. We’ve got to build more cyclotrons first. We’ll need them for the immense labor of actual construction. Then when we’ve built the ship, our cyclotrons can be installed in it as its propulsion machinery.”
CURT drove the work relentlessly on in the next days, spending every possible minute on the construction of more cyclotrons. Progress was much faster now, for they could use the cyc they had already built to power an atomic smelter that reduced the time of operations greatly.
But on that first night after completing the original cyclotron, two more men had mysteriously disappeared! Old Tuhlus Thuun and one of McClinton’s engineers vanished as inexplicably as though they had been swallowed by thin air. And the stockade wall had been guarded all night!
Next night, another mutineer vanished. Few slept on the following nights, so great was the alarm and fear. Nothing happened those nights. Than the vanishings started again.
Panic halted the operations of the mutineers. Their terror was so great that they refused longer to assist the Futuremen’s labors.
“There’s no use of working to build a ship!” cried Boraboll when Curt tried to get them to resume work. “Long before we get a ship built, the Dwellers will have murdered all of us!”
Curt felt baffled desperation. He had depended on the mutineers to mine the great amount of metal-ores necessary for construction. Their panicky stoppage of work imperiled all his hopes of building a ship in time to escape from this doomed world.
“We demand that the cursed Dwellers be found and destroyed before we’ll go on working!” shouted one of the rebels.
“We can’t stop work now to search for the Dwellers,” Captain Future pleaded desperately. “We’re behind schedule as it is. In a little more than four weeks, Astarfall is going to be destroyed.”
Kim Ivan added his authority to Curt Newton’s plea. “Don’t be idiots!” the big Martian stormed his followers. “The Dwellers may get some of us, but unless we build a ship in till we’re all finished.”
Moremos nodded agreement. The Venusian murderer had to have seen the force of arguments. Its logic was undeniable.
“You know I have no love for Future, but he’s right in this,” snapped Moremos. “We still haven’t the faintest clue as to what or where the Dwellers are. We might spend weeks hunting for them without success.”
But the superstitious terror of most of the mutineers was not to be allayed by cold reason. The nearer danger loomed bigger to them.
“We’re not going to work in those diggings all day and then be afraid to sleep at night, lest we vanish, too!” Boraboll squeaked.
Curt Newton felt a sense of frustration. He could understand the terror of these men. But their panicky strike was the
last straw.
Unexpectedly, the Brain came to his help. Simon Wright glided to his side and spoke coolly.
“Tell them to quit acting like scared children — that I now have at least a clue to the Dwellers,” said the Brain. “I’ve managed partially to decipher that inscribed tablet from the Canyon of Chaos.”
“Simon, then you’ve found out something about the mystery of this place?” demanded Curt.
“Yes, lad,” answered the Brain. “I have at least begun to solve the riddle of this planetoid’s strange history.”
Chapter 13: Tragedy of the Void
FUTURE was more than a little excited by this information.
“Does that inscription identify the Dwellers?” he asked quickly.
“No,” admitted Simon Wright. “But it does give a possible clue to them, if we could decipher all the writing. You see, the inscription was the Antarian language, as we surmised. But none of us have more than sketchy acquaintance with that tongue from our brief experience with it. And this writing seems to be in a quite ancient form of it. Many terms I could not translate.”
“What became of the men who left that tablet?” asked Joan wonderingly.
“I’m coming to that,” said the Brain. “It appears that this little world we call Astarfall has a strange and terrible history. But I shall read you my partial translation itself.”
Everyone listened with deep interest as the Brain’s chill, metallic voice recited his translation of the old tablet.
“We men of Antares colonized this small world many generations ago. This world was then the moon of a planet in the system of **** near our own star. It possessed mineral resources, and to exploit those resources a band of our people settled here and established mines. Each **** came ships from Antares which brought us supplies and took away the ores we had mined.
“But then came unforeseen catastrophe. A dark star was approaching the system **** of which this moon was a member. The passing dark star came so close that its huge gravitational pull dragged this moon from its orbit and flung it off into space. The moon left that system and drifted steadily out into the vast interstellar void.
“Our colonists had but a few ships of their own. These could contain only a small number of people. So only that small number were able to escape the torn-away moon. There was no escape for the others, for by the time ships could have been assembled and come from Antares, this drifting world was too far out in the trackless void.
“So some thousands of Antarian colonists were marooned upon this moon as it traveled steadily out into the face of the deep. They knew that they were cut off forever from their parent system, but they did not despair of life. For the radioactive core of the moon **** sufficient heat to maintain life upon it even in the sunless depths of the outer void.
“Farther and farther into the vast abyss traveled the drifting moon, on into the remote **** a sector of the galaxy which no ship had ever traversed. The older generation of colonists passed away and a new generation was born who had never known anything but this little world. It seemed that generation would follow generation without change, and that some day the drifting moon would reach the distant star-system of *** and perhaps attach itself to a planet there.
“But out in the face of the deep a terrible thing began to happen. The drifting moon had entered a region of terrific cosmic radiation. It was an area of space in which cosmic radiation swept in a concentrated current, due to **** and other obscure factors of space-warp. The result was that all life upon this little world was drenched by constant penetrating radiation which soon caused a subtle and fearful change.
“Evolution began to speed up terrifically upon our drifting world. The unprecedented radiation produced **** and other changes in the genes of every living species, which caused a tremendous flowering of new mutations. Each species of animal and plant life on the world began a rapid new evolution. And our human species, too, began to evolve.
“We humans became less and less human! New mutations rising among us, such as **** radically altered the nature of our species. By now it seems evident that we **** destined to evolve hideously onward into species entirely unhuman.
“But all the other forms of life on this world have also been evolving at terrific speed. Plant life here has developed weird new carnivorous forms of trees and shrubs, animal life has evolved into equally uncanny and alien forms, and one species of **** has evolved into such great intelligence and mental power that it has been able to menace us by means of hypnotic mental attack.
“We found a way to protect ourselves from that dreadful hypnotic attack of the **** We still cling to life, by means of that protection. But our world is still traversing the region **** cosmic radiation, and evolution still continues to alter our human species with nightmare speed. We fear that by the time this world has finally drifted out of the region of **** radiation and the burst of evolution stops, we shall have been conquered by our evermore powerful enemies, and shall have disappeared forever. And so we leave this table as record of our fate should ever men of Antares manage to reach this world.”
THEY were all silent for a little when the Brain finished reading his translation of the tablet. All were gripped by an overpowering sense of the cosmic tragedy that was the history of this little world.
An inhabited moon, torn away from its native system and drifting fatally out into the vast night of the interstellar void, never to return! They seemed with their own eyes to look back and see that Antarian, a man whom hideous evolutionary changes had perhaps already made inhuman, writing upon the lead tablet his tragic record of the awful fate of his people.
Captain Future broke the silence. “So that is the reason for the unprecedentedly weird animal and plant life of this planetoid! Out there in the abyss, it passed through a region of radiation that caused nightmare evolutionary change in every species.”
“What do you suppose became of the people who had been human?” Joan whispered.
“They must have perished entirely,” said the Brain. “No doubt despite their attempts to protect themselves, they finally succumbed to the hypnotic attacks of the new species, whom we call the Dwellers.”
Otho voiced an urgent question. “That’s what I’m most interested in, the Dwellers. Doesn’t the inscription, tell just what they are?”
“Yes, if we knew that, we could hunt the devils out and destroy them,” put in Kim Ivan.
“The inscription does not help us much there,” denied the Brain. “It names the species who evolved into the Dwellers. But their scientific name for that and other species is meaningless to us. There’s no way I can translate their scientific terms or proper names.”
“Try it anyway, Simon,” urged Curt Newton. “Our safety depends on it. Until we have some idea what and where the Dwellers are, we’re helpless to do anything against them.”
Ezra Gurney made an emphatic assertion. “That inscription just proves what I said before — that the Dwellers are none other than the Cubics. It’s clear as daylight. One o’ the animal species here evolved into them little cubic monsters, whose group-minds are strong enough to carry out those telepathic attacks.”
“I still can’t believe that the Cubics are the Dwellers,” Curt demurred. “They just don’t appear to be of high enough intelligence. But if Simon can translate the gaps in the inscription, it will give us a clear clue to the Dwellers. Then we can act.”
“I will try, but I am not too optimistic of success,” rasped the Brain. “I know almost nothing of the scientific terminology of the Antarian language.”
“What are we going to do in th’ meantime?” demanded Boraboll.
Captain Future reassured him. “We’ll fix up an alarm-signal around the whole stockade. Then if the Dwellers get a mental grip on any of us and try to draw us out, there’ll be an alarm that will rouse the others.”
That promise placated the uneasy castaways a little. Curt Newton worked hastily to arrange the alarm, grudging the time spent upon it.
He devised a strong cord of vegetable fibers, which was so looped around the inside of the stockade that anyone touching it would sound a clamorous copper gong to which the cord was attached.
“That will keep anyone from being drawn out over the wall,” he pointed out. “And the gate is guarded at night. Now, back to work!”
ALL that day, Captain Future kept the others so busy that they had no time to think of the Dwellers. They finished their battery of six cyclotrons, and started the rigging of several atomic smelters.
The smelters were big inertron crucibles into which large amounts of ore could be shoveled. A stream of atomic energy brought through inertron pipes to each smelter would burn out the mineral impurities and permit the molten refined metal which remained to be suitably alloyed and run off into casting-molds.
“Twenty-two days — we’re behind schedule,” sweated Curt Newton that evening. “We should be casting beams and plates by now. We’ve got to speed up somehow.”
Weary as the mutineers were that night from their toil in the ore-diggings, few of them slept. Their fear of the Dwellers was too great. They sat in close groups around the fire, listening nervously for the alarm that would signify that the mysterious enemy had hypnotically seized one of them and was drawing him out of the camp.
But the alarm did not come. And morning found none of them missing. It reassured the men a little, though some contended that the Dwellers had not struck simply because they had been wakeful. The hypnotic attacks had always been made upon sleeping men.
The atomic smelters were finished this day. During his work upon the smelters, Captain Future had detailed McClinton and Grag to a special job. This was the construction of several very small cyclotrons which could be used to power such portable tools as atomic welders. They would be necessary for the fabrication of the ship.
Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) Page 11