“That new wave o’ lava will cover the knoll!” yelled Ezra Gurney.
One of the mutineers clutched wildly at Captain Future’s arm. “You promised that if everything else failed, you had a way to at least get the ship off this world!”
Curt Newton’s haggard face set, his lips tightening. The dreadful last expedient that he had kept in mind all these terrible days now stared him full in the face.
He met it unflinchingly. He knew what he had to do — and there was small time left in which to do it.
His voice rang like a trumpet through the din. “Into the Phoenix, everybody. We’re going to take off.”
“But, Chief!” expostulated Otho wildly. “You know that as soon as we start the cycs without the calcium catalyst, they’ll blow again.”
“I have enough calcium to act as catalyst for one cyclotron,” Curt answered swiftly. “I didn’t tell any of you, because I was hoping to get more. But one cyc will be enough to get the ship off Astarfall.”
“It’s raining fire!” screeched one of the mutineers in terror.
A fiery sleet was indeed falling upon them from the smoke-darkened heavens as the burning ashes of the latest continuing eruptions descended.
THEY fought their way toward the ship. Curt steadied Joan’s staggering steps, and yelled for Grag to bring the shrieking Rollinger.
Inside the Phoenix, he slammed shut the door to keep out the wave of scorching, superheated air that was rolling up from the lava which now was advancing to wash over the knoll.
“Up to the bridge-deck, all of you!” he shouted. “There’ll be less danger there if anything happens to the cycs.”
They slipped and tripped, for now the Phoenix was rocking wildly in its cradle. Curt thrust Otho into the pilot-chair, in front of which were the space-stick, throttles and few simple instruments they had devised.
“Otho, I want you to pilot the takeoff,” Captain Future ordered. “Now listen closely. I’ve only enough calcium catalyst for one cyclotron. I’ll put it in the Number One cyc. You must only use that one cyc to power the take-off. And you must not let it run for more than a minute, for by the end of that time the catalyst will be used up.
“In that minute,” he told the android tensely, “you must get the ship off and start it in the direction of the System. Then cut the cyc at once. But do not start to take off, until ten minutes after I have gone down to the cyc-room to put in the catalyst.”
Otho nodded his head understandingly. “I get it, Chief. Ten minutes after you go down, I cut in the Number One cyc, use its full power for one minute to get the ship off, and then cut it off again.”
Curt Newton paused. His gray eyes had a queer brilliance in them as he met the gaze of his three old comrades.
“Simon — Grag — Otho — just in case anything should go wrong, I want to say that no man ever had finer pals. I’m thinking of the old days on the Moon, of all we four went through together.”
It was a moment of tense emotion, and that emotion gripped Joan Randal as she clung to Captain Future.
“Curt, do you think we’re not going to make it? Is that why you’re saying goodbye?”
“We’ll make it — I’m sure we will,” he told her earnestly. His eyes searched her face with strange wistfulness. He held her fiercely close, kissed her, then turned abruptly away. “Remember, Otho — in ten minutes!”
Curt’s heart was bursting with overpowering emotion as he flung himself down the companionway and back to the cyc-room.
George McClinton was there. McClinton had just unscrewed the heavy inertron top of the massive Number One cyclotron. He clambered hastily down off the towering cylinder as Curt burst in.
“McClinton, get up with the others!” Curt cried. “We’re going to start, and I want everybody else up there out of harm’s way.”
The lanky engineer showed no sign of obeying. He came toward Curt, a strange smile on his homely, spectacled face.
“No, Captain Future.” It was odd that in this moment of superhuman strain his stammer finally left him. “I know what you’re planning to do. I guessed it when you made that promise to the others. And I’m not going to let you do it.”
His voice was deep as he told Curt, “You mean too much to the System’s future, to do this. And you mean too much to her.”
There was a faraway tenderness that transfigured the engineer’s homely face, as he spoke of Joan.
“But I don’t mean much to the System or anyone,” George McClinton continued. “That’s why I’m doing — this!”
The engineer’s right hand flashed out as he spoke. He had a heavy wrench in that hand, and he aimed the unexpected blow at Curt Newton’s head.
Curt had no chance to dodge, so utterly unforeseen was the attack. His skull rang, and he sank unconscious.
Chapter 19: The Call
CAPTAIN FUTURE struggled back to consciousness a few minutes later to hear a bursting roar and feel a violent shock. He was pressed against the floor by brief, terrific acceleration.
The sensation passed swiftly. His head began to clear and he was able to stagger to his feet. He looked dazedly around.
The Phoenix was out in space. Its cyclotron had operated for the brief, prearranged moment, and the short blast of power from its rocket-tubes had flung it out in the take-off. It was rushing now toward the gleaming flecks of the Solar System. Astarfall was a smoky, fire-shot ball receding rapidly astern. Curt looked wildly around the cyc-room. “McClinton!”
There was no answer. The lanky chief engineer was gone. And Curt knew where he had gone.
The Number One cyclotron was still hot from that moment of operation that had enabled them to take off. Curt Newton bowed his head against the side of the cyc, his face working.
The others found him thus when they came down into the cyc-room. Their voices were ringing with excitement and hope, but they were startled into silence when Curt raised his head.
Few men had ever seen tears in Captain Future’s eyes. But they saw them now.
“Chief, what is it?” Grag cried anxiously. “What’s wrong?”
Joan was looking puzzledly around. “Where’s George McClinton? I thought he was down here.”
Curt pointed back toward space. His voice was choked. “McClinton is back there.”
They read tragedy in his face. “Curt, what do you mean?”
“I mean that McClinton gave up his life to allow us to escape from Astarfall,” Captain Future husked. “He supplied calcium to the Number One cyc from the only possible source, the calcium of his own body’s skeleton.
“He knew the only possible source of calcium, since there was none on Astarfall, was in our own bodies. The average human body contains more than a pound of calcium. Enough to act as catalyst in a cyclotron for at least a minute! McClinton knew that, and gave himself so that we could escape!”
“My God!” cried Ezra Gurney. “Do you mean that he —”
Curt Newton nodded heavily. “Yes. McClinton got inside Number One cyc. When it was turned on, the blast of atomic energy reduced his body to ashes. But in those ashes was enough calcium-catalyst to control the flow of energy and keep it from wrecking the cyc during that minute.”
He added, “He knew I’d have stopped him. He knocked me out when I came down into the cyc-room.”
Curt did not tell them, would never tell them, that he himself had made desperate decision to sacrifice his own life in the same way rather than that they should all perish. But they all understood that now. And every surviving outlaw was humbled.
“When you said good-by to us up in the bridge-room —” Joan began. Then, as her stricken eyes traveled from the silent cyclotron back to the vault of space behind the stern window, she began to sob wildly.
“Oh, Curt, that shy, stammering boy we all teased!”
He held her, soothing her. He heard the calm voice of the Brain.
“It was a fine thing McClinton did. It is too bad that his sacrifice was probably all for nothing.”
“What do you mean?” cried Kim Ivan. “We’re clear of Astarfall.”
“Yes, and we are rushing toward the System,” answered the Brain. “But we still have no calcium. We can’t operate the cyclotrons again. That means we can’t change course to land on any planet. Unless we somehow get help, we’ll fall helplessly through the System toward the Sun.”
THEY looked at each other, stunned. In all their minds, the same terrible fact had become obvious. If they were to operate the cyclotrons again, another of them must die!
Ezra Gurney yelled suddenly. “Look back there at Astarfall! She’s goin’!”
They crowded to the windows. Awe that made them forget their own deadly peril fell upon them at the spectacle of cosmic catastrophe they beheld.
The little planetoid had entered its final convulsions. The veils of smoke and steam were momentarily torn from its surface, and they looked upon its appalling surface.
Great rifts were opening in the crust of the worldlet, radiating outward like spreading cracks. Up from these rifts boiled the infernal core of the planetoid. Whole sections of the surface sank beneath this bursting lava like ice-floes submerging beneath the sea.
Wild streams of fire and steam shot for hundreds of miles out from the surface. For several minutes, the geography of the flaming sphere was fluid and formless. Blue lightning wreathed the dying world.
Astarfall exploded! As the cloven crust let the hydrosphere into its interior fiery core, the resulting blast of expanding steam tore the crumbling planetoid into fragments that hurtled out in every direction.
“She’s gone!” cried Ezra hoarsely. “That was the end of her!”
They heard the Brain’s brooding voice. “The end of the pitiful history of the Cubics, and the strange dreams of the Dwellers.”
“Some of those fragments are coming after us!” Kim Ivan exclaimed. “And we can’t dodge ‘em!”
“We’ll have to take our chance,” Captain Future said tensely.
The fragments of the exploded planetoid were rushing after them with a speed that would soon overtake the Phoenix. They waited tautly.
They soon glimpsed jagged masses of rock whirling past nearby. Smaller debris struck against the Phoenix’ sides and stern with a rattling clatter that shook the ship in every beam. Then it was soon over.
“The inner hull wasn’t holed by any of that debris,” Grag soon reported.
“Then that danger is past,” said the Brain. “But we’ll soon be rushing into the System. Our speed will accelerate by the hour as we fall toward the Sun. What are we going to do?”
Again their terrible dilemma faced them. Without calcium, they could not operate the cycs to reach any planet. And they had but one source of the element, and that was their own bodies.
Kim Ivan spoke up. “Captain Future, I’ve been thinking. It was your work and McClinton’s sacrifice that saved me and my boys from that world’s end. We owe you something for that. I propose that we boys draw lots among ourselves.”
“Agreed!” roared the voices of all the mutineers in chorus.
“Oh, no!” Joan sobbed. “No more of us must die in that terrible way! Please, Curt!”
“We’ll find another way,” Captain Future promised. “We’ve got to — now.”
He went up with them to the bridge-room. The Phoenix was rushing silently on. The Line, the edge of the System, was not so far ahead. For the planetoid had been steadily approaching it during all these past weeks.
The bright little disc of Pluto gleamed, ahead of them and far to the left. Beyond lay the shining specks of the inner planets and the brilliant, small sphere of the Sun.
“If we could only call for help to the Patrol somehow,” Curt muttered. “A cruiser could easily contact us before we fell in through the whole System to death.”
Ezra shrugged hopelessly. “We ain’t got no way to call — no audiophone.”
IT HAD been impossible, of course, for them to undertake the construction of a complex audiophone transmitter when they had built the ship. They had barely completed the ship itself in time. But now their lack of a transmitter seemed to spell their doom.
“Could we build a small transmitter?” Joan asked hopefully.
Curt shook his head. “By the time we got it finished, we’d be crashing in through the inner planets to the Sun. And even then, if we had a transmitter, we’d have no power to operate it. We still couldn’t use the cyclotrons.”
The Brain, hovering beside them, spoke thoughtfully. “There is a possible solution. You know that my serum-case embodies a small atomic motor which furnishes power to the generator of my traction-beams and the pumps which repurify the serum. You could take out that motor and generator from my ‘body’ and soon convert them into a small improvised audiophone transmitter.”
Captain Future protested. “No, Simon! You would die when the pumps and purifiers stopped working and your vital serum became toxic!”
“I would not die at once,” the Brain said coolly. “I would live for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, though I would lapse into unconsciousness during that time as my serum became toxic. In that time, you might be able to receive help in answer to your call. You could then revive me.”
“But if help didn’t come soon enough, it would be too late ever to revive you!” Curt exclaimed. “The power of your motor would be exhausted.”
The Brain’s metallic voice was annoyed. “You are being illogical, Curtis. It is certainly preferable that I should take that risk than that we should all perish. Remember what you had intended doing.”
The logic was unassailable, yet Captain Future still hesitated. His haggard face was deeply moved as he looked into the lens-like eyes of his old companion.
“Simon, if this should cost your life —”
“Come, come, you know how I abhor sentimentality,” interrupted the Brain annoyedly. Yet his metallic voice seemed oddly softer as he added, “Get on with it and stop wasting time.”
The Brain glided to the shelf-like table beside the instrument panel — the navigation-desk. His transparent cube rested there, waiting.
Sweat stood out on Curt Newton’s brow as he and Otho got their meager supply of tools and began work. Deftly, quickly, they unbolted the bottom section of the Brain’s strange body which contained its motive mechanisms.
They removed it, disconnecting and clamping the tiny pipes and cables which connected with the serum-case proper. Now the Brain was merely an isolated living brain in a transparent box of serum. His powers of speech, hearing, movement, had been stripped from him.
Captain Future worked with utmost speed now. Every minute counted, for the Brain’s hours of life were now numbered. Rapidly, he and Otho and Grag took apart the mechanisms that had enabled Simon to live.
The small, powerful atomic motor, with its own compact charge of calcium catalyzed fuel, they set aside. They dissembled the motors from the serum-pumps and hooked them to the generators that had produced the Brain’s magnetic traction-beams. They thus set up a complete new circuit which would emit electro-magnetic waves in the frequency-range of audiophone usage. The little atomic motor was connected to furnish the power.
Curt Newton connected this little improvised transmitter to the makeshift antenna-sphere which Grag had prepared and attached outside the space-door.
He used the microphonic “ears” of the Brain for microphones.
“It’s finished,” Curt announced finally. “Turn it on, Otho.”
The atomic motor throbbed with power. The generators began to hum, casting their roughly-tuned wave out into space.
Curt spoke into the microphones. “Ship Phoenix, Captain Future commanding, calling all Patrol vessels or other ships! We need help in the form of calcium supplies! We are approaching the Line from outer space, in the following approximate position.”
He gave the figures of their position as they had calculated it. Then he again repeated the call.
For the next few hours, Curt repeated the m
essage at regular intervals. The last time, the little atomic motor went dead on the last words.
“She’s played out!” Otho reported. “Fuel’s clear gone. No wonder, when we’ve been running it full load all this time.”
“Do you suppose our message was heard?” Joan asked Curt tensely.
“There’s no way of telling,” he muttered. “We’ve no receiver. All we can do is wait.”
The Phoenix rushed silently on and on toward the Line. In torturing suspense, Captain Future peered haggardly out into the star-flecked void.
The superhuman strain under which he had been laboring for many days took its toll. He slept, his head against the window.
It was many hours later that he was awakened by Otho shaking his shoulder.
“Chief, come look at Simon!” begged the android fearfully.
Curt rubbed red-rimmed eyes dazedly. That his exhausted slumber had been long, he knew from a glance at the planets far ahead. They were brighter, nearer.
Joan and the others were sleeping druggedly. Curt hastened with Otho to the shelf on which rested the now lifeless cubical case of the Brain.
He looked into the transparent cube. Its colorless serum had now assumed a dark tinge.
“What’s happening, Chief?” Grag asked anxiously.
Curt’s answer was a dry whisper. “The serum, no longer repurified, is becoming toxic. Simon is dying.”
“But Simon can’t die!” burst out the great robot. “Why, we’ve been together, he and Otho and I, all my life! Even before you were born!”
Curt Newton felt an icy, utter despair. He looked at them numbly. And then came a hoarse cry from Ezra Gurney, watching at the window.
“Cap’n Future, I saw a rocket-flash in space ahead of us!”
Curt and the others feverishly plunged to the window, and scanned the vault. But there was nothing save the cold, mocking eyes of the stars.
“I — I guess I’m gettin’ delirious,” faltered Ezra.
Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) Page 16