Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943)

by Edmond Hamilton

  They were all flung off their feet, onto the ground that rolled sickeningly under them with a dull, tremendous roar of diastrophism. The pile of metal struts collapsed with a clatter. Cries of terror arose.

  “Keep your heads!” Captain Future shouted. “It’s another quake.”

  “Look!” screamed Boraboll, pointing wildly to the east.

  The sky there was blazing with fire. Up from the distant volcanoes were shooting huge geysers of flaming lava that painted the heavens crimson.

  Vast clouds of steam and smoke and ashes whirled up to veil that titanic eruption. The air was thick with sulphurous fumes, and hot ashes rattled down upon them as the ground quivered ever more wildly beneath them.

  “The end of this world has come already!” hoarsely yelled a terror-stricken mutineer.

  THE darkness became Stygian as vast clouds of smoke from the erupting volcanoes filled the air. Winds were shrieking like fiends, and the sickening heave and fall of the solid ground beneath them continued.

  Choking and gasping as he breathed the superheated, sulphurous fumes, Curt Newton struggled to the side of Joan.

  “Lie down!” he yelled to her over the tumult. “This will soon pass.”

  Grag’s tremendous voice shouted through the infernal uproar. “Chief, the ship’s framework is going to break loose!”

  A new and appalling sound had entered the symphony of destruction. It was the heavy rumbling and thumping of a great mass rocking on the ground.

  The heavy metal framework of the Phoenix was rocking wildly in its rough cradle as the quakes continued. It threatened to roll free entirely, to roll down the knoll and crush out their camp and themselves.

  “Get away!” shrieked a scared mutineer. “She’ll come loose on us any minute!”

  “No!” blared Captain Future’s voice. “We’ve got to pin her down! Grag, get the sledges and some of the smaller beams for stakes! Otho, grab those sledge-cables and bring them!”

  Not even the terrifying nature of their situation could temper the instant loyalty and obedience of the Futuremen. They sprang to obey.

  And Curt found big Kim Ivan beside him as he ran to help Otho unfasten the tough, strong cables by which they had drawn the ore-sledges.

  “If she goes when we’re beside her, we’ll never see the Moon again!” gasped Otho as they ran toward the ship with the cables.

  Clang! Clang! Grag towered like an incredible metal giant in the storm, using the heaviest of the sledges to drive small, straight metal beams deep into the ground beside the Phoenix.

  The torpedo-shaped framework, upon which they had expended such tremendous toil and thought, was leaning toward them threateningly with each new heave of the quake. If it broke loose, it would smash itself and them, too.

  Curt and Otho fumbled furiously in the darkness to tie their cables to the stakes and then to the lower beams of the frame. Kim Ivan had found a sledge and was helping Grag drive more stakes, while George McClinton had groped his way to them to help.

  “Tighten those cables! Put two more on each side!” Curt shouted.

  The framework was securely lashed down to the stakes. Now the tremors seemed subsiding a little. But now the buffeting winds were rising to a gale of hurricane force.

  For two hours, they all lay flat upon the ground while the raging gale swept over them. By the end of that time, the quakes had ceased except for an occasional quiver. The disastrophic roar of shifting rock beneath had stopped, and the eruption of the volcanoes seemed lessening.

  DAWN came as the gale died down. The feeble, murky light disclosed a scene of destruction in their camp. The grimed, haggard castaways surveyed it in mute dismay.

  The framework of the Phoenix was undamaged, except for a bent beam which could soon be straightened. The huge barrel-like cacti still towered unharmed at the high central point of the clearing. But nearly everything else was wrecked. Most of the stockade was down, all the huts but one had collapsed, and their cyclotrons, tools and supplies were covered with debris.

  Captain Future discovered that none of them had been seriously injured, though there were many bruises and minor hurts.

  “By the Sun, I never thought I’d see another day,” declared Kim Ivan feelingly. “I sure thought the cursed planetoid was cracking up.”

  “This is a warning,” Curt told them urgently. “We can expect more and heavier cataclysms as Astarfall draws nearer the System. This unstable little world is starting to respond to the gravitational perturbations that in a couple of weeks will shatter it completely.”

  “Can we finish the Phoenix in time?” Joan asked breathlessly.

  “We’ve got to,” Curt said tightly. “And we’ve got to find the calcium which will enable us to operate it.”

  He detailed a small number of the men to clear up the battered camp. The rest he drove throughout the day with unremitting energy.

  Grag and George McClinton straightened the few bent beams of the ship-frame, by softening the metal with atomic welders and exerting pressure upon it with improvised jacks. Meanwhile, Captain Future and Otho supervised the ceaseless operation of the big smelters.

  They toiled all through that day casting the big beryllium alloy plates for the hull. The work parties of the mutineers brought constant new loads of ore upon their makeshift sledges. There was a quality of scared desperation in the way the convicts worked this day. They had been thoroughly impressed by the catastrophic outbreak of the night.

  The Brain, returning that evening from his ceaseless search for calcium, reported that the whole volcanic area was in violent activity.

  “New craters have broken out in the eastern section, and the Canyon of Chaos has partly collapsed on itself and is now a large lake of lava,” he stated.

  Curt nodded grimly. “The increasing shocks are allowing the radioactive hellfire at Astarfall’s core to gush to the surface. It’ll get rapidly worse. But what about the calcium?”

  “Curtis, I haven’t seen a sign of the element,” Simon Wright confessed. “It and certain related elements like potassium and scandium just do not seem to exist upon this world.”

  “If we can only find a few pounds of the stuff, it’ll be enough,” Captain Future sweated. “Even a pound or so would at least allow us to use the eyes long enough to take off.”

  That night Grag stood watch over the camp. But since the tireless robot could not alone keep watch over all the sleepers, young Rih Quili shared his guard.

  But the next morning Rih Quili himself was missing. It was tragically obvious that the Mercurian officer had fallen asleep and had been seized hypnotically by the Dwellers.

  Ezra Gurney raged. “I liked that boy a lot! If ever I find out who the cursed Dwellers are, I’ll — Cap’n Future, maybe them devilish tangle-trees are the Dwellers? Maybe they’re intelligent.”

  CURT shook his head haggardly. “No, they can’t be the Dwellers. I admit that plant-life on this world seems to have evolved further than on any planet I’ve ever visited. But the Cubics, who know more than we do, show no fear of tangle-trees. It is this region that they dread and refuse to approach.”

  The other castaways were less stricken by the new disappearance than Curt had expected. Their fear of the Dwellers was still great, but even greater now was their terror of the coming cataclysm.

  Through the next days, Captain Future drove the work around the clock. Their last two weeks were slipping rapidly away. And the ominously increasing volcanic activity and recurrent tremors showed that the final catastrophe was near.

  They welded the big plates onto the framework of the Phoenix, joining each plate to the next with the atomic welder to form an airtight joint. Presently, the inner hull of the torpedo-like ship was all on. But they still must build on the outer hull.

  Captain Future put that work into the hands of Grag and Otho, who trained the mutineers and divided them into gangs that worked in successive shifts. Curt himself, with McClinton and Kim Ivan, toiled to melt sand and minerals into glass
ite for the portholes and bridge-windows, to cast the inertron rocket-tubes, and to fashion tight tanks for water and oxygen.

  Kim Ivan, mopping sweat from his brow and staggering from sixteen hours of unresting labor, found one consolation.

  “The only good thing about it is that now we’re working day and night both, the cursed Dwellers have let us alone,” panted the Martian.

  Curt nodded exhaustedly. “Tomorrow we’ll install the cyclotrons in the ship, and fit the rocket-tubes.”

  “And then we’ll be able to leave this cursed planetoid!” exclaimed Moremos forcibly.

  “Not until we find calcium,” warned Captain Future.

  The venomous Venusian’s dark eyes narrowed. “What do you mean — till we find calcium? I’m no engineer, but I’ve rocketed enough to know that a ship’s cycs run on copper fuel, and we’ve plenty of copper. In this emergency, we can take off without that catalyst you talk about, surely.”

  “You’re a f-f-fool, Moremos,” said George McClinton emphatically. “Without the calcium catalyst, the released energy of c-copper would b-blow us sky-high.”

  Chapter 17: Disaster

  THAT night came a frightening series of sharp shocks, like tremendous gunnings underground. The Phoenix rocked in its cradle, and great jets of fire shot far into the heavens from the neighboring volcanoes filling them with brilliance.

  Joan Randall had incredible news for Curt when he awakened after that night of fear.

  “John Rollinger has recovered his sanity!” she exclaimed. “I think the shocks last night somehow did it. He’s asking for you.”

  Curt went with her to the physicist, who all these days had been confined a babbling madman in one of the huts. Rollinger’s spare face looked dazed but sane as he stared up at Curt.

  “Captain Future, they’ve told me what’s happened,” the physicist said hoarsely. “I can’t seem to remember anything. Yet I’m clear enough in my mind now.”

  “Take it easy, Rollinger,” Curt advised. “You’ve had a wonderful recovery, but you’ll relapse if you undergo any strain now. I’ll talk to you later.”

  At regular intervals throughout that day came the ominous thunder-gunnings from beneath ground. There was something terrifying about their regularity. Yet the volcanoes seemed unusually quiet, not even smoke rising from them.

  Thoroughly frightened by these new developments, the castaways worked furiously all through the day under Captain Future’s direction. They hauled the six massive cyclotrons into the Phoenix, and bolted them fast. The fuel-feed and power-lead pipes were installed, the heavy rocket-tubes were screwed into place, the hermetically tight space-door was hung.

  By sunset the men were dropping in their tracks. The periodic sharp shocks had completely ceased two hours before. A dead, heavy hush reigned, and the air seemed thick and oppressive. Curt Newton’s worn brown face was dripping with perspiration as he and McClinton and Otho staggered almost drunkenly out of the ship.

  “Now — the calcium,” Curt panted. “We’ve less than five days in which to find it, or perish.”

  McClinton’s face was hopeless. “The Brain has h-h-hunted all these weeks without finding a g-grain.”

  A wild yell interrupted them. It came from back inside the Phoenix, and was in Boraboll’s voice.

  “Rollinger is wrecking the ship!”

  Curt lunged back into the vessel. John Rollinger towered in its cyc-room, his face flaming as he battered with a heavy bar at the cycs.

  “Get him!” Curt yelled, plunging forward himself.

  The whirling bar sliced toward him in a blow meant to shatter his skull. He ducked under it and tackled Rollinger.

  The crazed scientist seemed to have the strength of ten men, and Curt’s weary muscles could not hold him. But Grag and the others were rushing forward. In a few moments, Rollinger was bound.

  Joan came running in to them, her face deathly white and a big bruise on her forehead.

  “It’s my fault!” she sobbed. “He seemed so sane all day, that finally I untied his bonds as he asked. Then he struck me down and ran toward the ship.”

  Rollinger was looking up at them with an expression of hatred and contempt upon his face. Then, abruptly, his face changed before their gaze.

  It distorted into what it had been before, the face of a madman. A stream of insane babblings fell from his lips.

  “They took my body!” whimpered the madman. “They guessed that you mean to escape from here —” He trailed off in unintelligible mouthing.

  “The Dwellers!” swore Otho. “They’ve always had a grip on Rollinger’s shattered mind. And because they don’t want their victims to leave here, they used him today to try to wreck the ship.”

  “Good God, what kind of creatures are they that can use such diabolical methods of attack?” cried Boraboll, shaking wildly.

  “Take Rollinger back to his hut,” Curt ordered. “He didn’t have time to do any real damage. Though, in a few minutes more —”

  The words were swept from his lips by a tremendous, booming sound that broke the heavy hush. The ship quivered suddenly in its cradle.

  A SHRILL yell from Ezra brought them tumbling out into the open. The ground was shuddering like a harp-string. The booming was increasing in volume and rapidity by the second.

  “The volcanoes are going to blow!” Curt shouted. “Everybody get —”

  For a second time he was interrupted. And this time the interruption was an explosive detonation of such titanic magnitude as to stun them.

  They glimpsed the crests of the distant volcanic range hurtling into the sky in great masses of rock and lava. The whole top of the range had blown off. Fiery lava raved up in spouting geysers, then was hidden by a tremendous wave of dark, smoky gases that puffed outward gigantically.

  “Into the ship!” Curt cried. “That burst of fumes will asphyxiate us all if it catches us!”

  They tumbled back into the ship, Grag dragging the raving Rollinger in with them. Otho slammed shut the heavy door.

  It was not a moment too soon. The wave of poisonous fumes rolled over the camp a minute later. Everything outside was blotted from sight by the swirling gases.

  Then the fumes began to thin. The Phoenix was still shuddering in its cradle. When the titanic burst of gases had been swept away, they staggered out of the vessel.

  They stood, appalled by what they saw. Innumerable colossal fountains of lava were pouring up from the shattered craters and chasms of the neighboring volcanic area. And already a ten-foot crest of the flaming molten rock was rolling toward the jungle and their camp.

  “That lava will wipe out everything here!” Moremos shouted. “Our only chance is to take off in the ship at once.”

  “No!” Captain Future cried. “I tell you, we can’t take off without calcium.”

  “I don’t believe you!” flamed the Venusian. “You’re only stalling so that you and your friends can slip away in the ship and leave the rest of us here.”

  “It’s better to risk starting without the calcium than to stay here and be killed by the lava!” howled Boraboll.

  “Listen to me!” Curt Newton’s voice rang out. “That lava may rollover the jungle but it won’t touch us yet, for our camp is built on this knoll. The lava may surround the knoll, but won’t be high enough to cover it. There’s still a chance to find the calcium. The Brain can still come and go even though the lava surrounds us. You’ve got to trust in me.”

  “I’m with you, Future,” said Kim Ivan promptly. “I think we’re sunk, but we gave you a promise and we’ll play it out to the end.”

  “Then get your men to work hauling everything up here to the highest part of the knoll!” Curt exclaimed. “Put the ores, tools, food supplies, everything up here between the ship and those cacti. Otho, you and Ezra come with me and we’ll see whether the lava can be deflected in any way.”

  Ezra Gurney and the android, as well as McClinton, raced beside Captain Future through the jungle toward the oncoming flamin
g tide.

  Curt’s eyes desperately studied the topography of the ground as they advanced. He was hoping that some freak of the surface might enable them to build a temporary dam or wall to shunt the lava away from the knoll.

  His hope died within him as they came closer to the advancing tide. The crimson-glowing wave was higher than a man, rolling forward with majestic slowness, hissing and crackling as it ate the jungle before it.

  “Holy sun-imps, nothing can deflect that!” cried Otho.

  CRASH! The hollow sound of the explosion came from the camp behind them. “That s-sounded like cycs exploding!” cried McClinton.

  Curt whirled. “Good God, if those fools —”

  He didn’t finish. He was already racing back toward the knoll. As he ran up its low slope, Kim Ivan and Joan and others came stumbling frantically to meet him.

  “The ship?” cried Captain Future. “Did Moremos —”

  “Yes, he did!” raged Kim Ivan. The big Martian was mad with wild anger. “When we others were hauling the stuff up out of danger, Moremos and Boraboll and a dozen other fools like them tried to take off in the Phoenix.”

  Curt and the others came into sight of the ship. An icy feeling of utter despair clutched at his heart as he saw.

  The cyclotrons had exploded when copper fuel was released into atomic power without the inhibitory calcium catalyst to control the violent energy. The explosion had rent a great hole in the stern of the ship.

  The battered bodies of Moremos and Boraboll and others who had been with them in the cyc-room had been blown out of the gaping hole in the hull. Other stunned mutineers were staggering dazedly beside it.

  Ezra Gurney’s voice was calm in despair. “So this is the end. Well, we made a good try, didn’t we?”

  Through murky veils of smoke and steam, the rising Sun looked down upon a world in dreadful travail. The whole surface of Astarfall was shuddering uneasily as the little planetoid felt the increasing gravitational grip of the planetary system toward which it was rushing. The volcanic area was now a hell’s-caldron of geysering lava, from which an angry red tide had crept out like an ominous blot over the jungle for miles.