Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Then Captain Future and the big metal robot emerged from the Comet into pale sunlight and a thin, pungent atmosphere that rasped the lungs. Curt led the way toward the black craft on a run, the barren desert’s sterile surface reminding him strongly of the drab lifelessness of Mercury’s Hot Side.

  The black, torpedo-shaped space-cruiser lay a little on its side on the gray rock. There was no sound from inside it, indicating that the men within had been temporarily stunned by the crash. Curt and the robot reached the circular door.

  “You’ll have to open this door, Grag,” Captain Future said rapidly. “Use your drills.”

  “Yes, master,” boomed the big robot.

  Grag’s big metal fingers were removable. The robot rapidly unscrewed two of them and replaced them with small drills which he took from a kit of scalpels, chisels and similar tools carried in a little locker in his metal side.

  Then Grag touched a switch on his wrist. The two drills which had replaced two of his fingers whirled hummingly. He quickly used them to drill six holes in the edge of the ship’s door.

  Then he replaced the drills with his fingers, hooked six fingers inside the holes he had made. He braced his great metal body, then pulled with all his strength at the door.

  They could hear the men inside stirring as they recovered from the shock of crashing. But the colossal strength of the huge robot now ripped the door bodily off its heavy hinges. Instantly Captain Future leaped inside, the robot following.

  TWO men sprang fiercely to meet them. They were hardbitten, brutal-faced Earthmen, one with a bald head and pale eyes, the other a shock-haired giant. The bald one held a flare-pistol and fired swiftly at Captain Future.

  Curt swerved, with a fierce, low laugh, as the man pulled trigger. Before the bald one could fire again, Captain Future had leaped in and seized his gun-hand. They struggled tensely.

  In this moment of conflict, Curt’s mind reverted to his super-fast games with Otho on the moon, as a boy. How slow seemed this swearing man beside the blurring speed of the android!

  And how puny seemed the man’s strength compared to the giant power of the mighty robot against whom he had pitted himself in boyhood!

  The bald man suddenly went limp. Curt Newton, with his unerring knowledge of anatomy, had pressed and paralyzed a vital nerve center at the base of his skull.

  “That will hold you, my friend,” Captain Future exclaimed. He turned quickly. “You have the other one, Grag?”

  “Yes, master,” boomed the big robot calmly.

  Grag had grabbed the other Earthman in his huge metal arms before he could use his gun, and was holding him as helpless as a baby — Captain Future touched the same vital nerve-center of this man, and he too went limp and helpless.

  “Now,” Curt said grimly to the two, “you will tell me just who you are and why the Space Emperor sent you out here to ambush me.”

  “The Space Emperor? I never heard of him,” answered the bald-headed Earthman loudly. “I’m Jon Orris and this is my partner, Martin Skeel. We’re honest traders, going to Saturn.”

  “Traders, in a ship that looks to me like a stolen police-cruiser!” Curt Newton commented contemptuously. His gray eyes snapped. “Silence is better than such a clumsy lie.”

  “Try to make us talk then, Captain Future!” snarled Orris, defiant.

  “Shall I make them, master?” asked Grag eagerly, clenching his great metal fist ominously.

  “Not that way, Grag,” Curt said quickly. He stiffened. “Listen! I hear Otho coming.”

  He sprang to the open door of the ship. Out in the pale sunlight, Otho was running toward him. The rubbery android carried the handle of Simon Wright’s brain-case.

  “What’s wrong?” Curt demanded, sensing trouble.

  The Brain answered.

  “Crystals coming, lad. Look yonder.”

  Curt spun and peered westward, where the Brain’s eyes had turned. His lips tightened at what he saw.

  Over the brink of low rock hills there, a slender, shining mass was slowly flowing. It was like a brilliant cataract of diamonds, dazzling in the sun as it flowed slowly down the rock hill toward the two parked ships.

  Curt recognized that slowly approaching mass as one of the grotesque, dangerous life-forms that existed on Callisto. This strange, bizarre variety of life had developed in inorganic crystalline forms, as semi-intelligent, mutualistic crystal colonies. These crystal colonies had limited powers of movement, which enveloped and killed any luckless living thing unable to evade their slow approach.

  “The things can always sense any living creature who lands on their world,” Simon Wright was rasping. “They’ll reach us in a quarter hour.”

  Curt Newton’s gray eyes lit.

  “That gives me an idea! Grag, drag out our two prisoners.”

  The big robot obeyed. He emerged from the black ship in a moment, half-carrying the two paralyzed, helpless men.

  Curt pointed out the distant, approaching crystalline cataract to Orris and Skeel.

  “I guess you two know what those Callistan crystals do to anything they catch,” he said grimly. “If we take off and leave you here paralyzed as you are now, they’ll reach you in about fifteen minutes.”

  The two men paled with horror.

  “You wouldn’t do that, Captain Future!” gasped the bald-headed Orris wildly.

  “I would, unless you tell what you know of this horror that’s going on at Jupiter!” Curt snapped.

  HIS bluff worked. Sight of the crystals approaching had broken the nerve of the two as nothing else could.

  “I’ll tell you — but I don’t really know much!” Orris stammered. “The Space Emperor told us to steal a Planet Police cruiser. We were to wait here in ambush for you and blast you out of space. We had to do what he said.”

  “Why did you? Who is the Space Emperor?” Curt demanded, feeling a harp-string suspense as he awaited the answer.

  Orris shook his bald head shakily.

  “I don’t know who he is. Nobody knows who the Space Emperor is. I don’t even know if he’s human,” he added fearfully. “He’s always concealed in a big, queer black suit, and he speaks out of it in a voice that don’t sound human to me. He does things no human could do!

  “Skeel and I have criminal records,” he continued hastily. “We fled out here to Jupiter after we got into a murder scrape on Mars. Somehow the Space Emperor found out we were wanted by the Planet Police. He threatened to expose us to them unless we obeyed his orders. We had to do it! He’s forced other fugitive criminals like ourselves to do his bidding, by the same threat.”

  “How does he cause that reverse evolution in Earthmen?” Curt demanded.

  “I don’t know that. I’ve never seen him do it, if it’s he who does it,” Orris answered, dread in his pale eyes. “I do know that the Jovians worship the Space Emperor, and obey his every, order. He’s stirred them up to wild unrest to do his bidding.”

  “The Jovians worship the Space Emperor?” echoed Simon Wright’s metallic voice. “That is strange —”

  “There’s the devil of a lot about this story that’s strange!” Captain Future declared crisply. “If you’re lying —”

  “I’m not!” Orris declared fearfully, glancing nervously toward the approaching cataract of crystals.

  “Where were you to report to the Space Emperor when you’d succeeded in destroying me?” Captain Future demanded.

  “He was to meet us tonight in our cabin in Jovopolis,” Orris replied. “It’s beyond the Street of Space Sailors, at the edge of the city.”

  Skeel, the other man, interrupted.

  “Aren’t you going to let us go now?” he pleaded hoarsely. “Those crystals will be here in a few minutes!”

  Curt paid no attention to the approaching stream of dazzling crystals which had awakened panic in the two would-be murderers. A quick plan had been born in the red-haired adventurer’s mind.

  “Otho, I want you to make yourself up as a double of this man
Orris,” he told the synthetic man.

  “What is your plan, lad?” rasped Simon Wright keenly.

  NEWTON’S gray eyes snapped.

  “The Space Emperor will come to that cabin on the edge of Jovopolis tonight, to receive the report of these two men. Well, one of them is going to report with Captain Future as his prisoner — only it won’t be really Orris who reports, but Otho!”

  “I see!” muttered the Brain. “The Space Emperor will be thrown off guard by Otho’s disguise, and we may be able to capture him.”

  “Hurry, Otho!” Curt exclaimed. “Those crystals are getting close!”

  “I am hurrying, Chief,” the synthetic man replied.

  Otho was clawing in the square make-up pouch that hung at his belt beside his proton-pistol. He brought out a small lead flask with a sprayer attachment.

  From the flask, the android sprayed a colorless chemical oil onto his own face and head. Then he waited.

  In a moment a strange change came over Otho’s face. His rubbery, white synthetic flesh seemed to lose its elastic firmness and to soften like melting wax.

  Otho’s synthetic flesh was so constituted that an application of the chemical oil would soften it and make it as plastic as putty. It would harden again in a few minutes, but before it hardened it could be molded into any desired features.

  Now that his flesh was softened to plasticity, Otho himself began molding it. With firm, deft fingers the android pressed and touched the softened white flesh of his face. Modeling his features into different ones, as a sculptor might model a new clay mask from an old one!

  As he worked, Otho’s green eyes steadily watched the panicky, brutal face of the man Orris. And swiftly, Otho’s face became the face of — Orris, in every line and feature. The android, through long practice, could remake his face into an exact replica of any other face in a few minutes.

  A minute after he had finished, the flesh of his face began hardening again into elastic firmness.

  “Now for the make-up,” Otho muttered, clawing in his square pouch again.

  “Hurry!” urged Captain Future.

  With a tiny hypodermic, Otho injected a drop of fluid into each eye which changed their color from green to a pale hue. Thin stain from a tube changed his new face from dead-white to a space-tanned color. A little fringe of artificial brown hair around his new tanned, bald head completed the amazing disguise.

  Otho darted into the ship of Orris and Skeel. He returned in a moment clad in a zipper-suit of drab synthesilk like that worn by Orris. Then the android turned to Curt Newton.

  “Is it good enough?” he asked in a voice that was an uncanny replica of the voice of Orris.

  “It’s perfect!” Curt declared. Before him were two Orrises — indistinguishable from each other.

  “Good God, that creatures made himself into me!” gasped Orris horrifiedly.

  “Lad, it’s time we left,” rasped Simon Wright’s warning. “The crystals are coming too near.”

  Curt whirled. The cataract of brilliant crystals was now pouring steadily across the rocky plain toward them. The gleaming, faceted crystalline things advanced inexorably, motivated by an electric force in their strange inorganic bodies that gave them the power of attraction and repulsion to each other.

  With a clicking, murmuring, rustling sound, the brilliant flood moved at the rate of a few feet a moment, each separate gleaming crystal jerking a few inches forward by exerting repulsion upon those behind it. They were but a hundred feet away.

  “Grag, wreck the cyclotrons of this ship!” Captain Future ordered. “Then we’ll be off.”

  AS THE big robot sprang into the black craft to obey, Orris and Skeel voiced wild protest.

  “You’re not going to leave us here to be killed by those things!” they cried.

  Curt bent over the two helpless men and touched their nerve-centers, lifting the paralysis that held them. As they staggered up, Grag came out of the ship.

  “It is wrecked, master,” boomed the robot. “That ship will not fly in space again.”

  “You two men can run now, and you can easily keep away from the crystals here,” Curt told Orris and Skeel. “I’ll notify the Planet Police at Jovopolis and they’ll send a ship out to pick you up.”

  His eyes flamed.

  “If I did what I’d like to, I’d let the crystals have you! You’ve helped to spread a horror that’s blacker than murder!”

  The two criminals stared wildly at the clicking, advancing flood of crystals now only fifty feet away, and then broke into a crazy run in an opposite direction, stumbling frantically away across the drab gray desert.

  “Quick, to the Comet before those things cut us off!” Curt cried.

  Grag snatched up the handle of Simon Wright’s square brain-case. He and the disguised Otho and Captain Future ran hastily toward their ship.

  The clicking crystals were only yards from them as they passed the head of their cataract. Tumbling inside the Comet, Curt leaped to the control-room, and in a moment had the little teardrop ship zooming upward with a muffled roar of tubes.

  He looked back down and saw the baffled crystals flowing over the disabled black ship, smothering it until it seemed encrusted with blazing diamonds, searching its interior for any living thing. The two criminals who had fled were already far away across the rocky surface of Callisto, and would be safe until the Planet Police came for them.

  Captain Future had an eager gleam in his gray eyes as he steered upward.

  “Now for Jovopolis,” he said tautly, “and the Space Emperor!”

  Chapter 5: Power of the Space Emperor

  JUPITER, like all the other outer planets, had once been considered impossible as a habitation for Earthmen. Before interplanetary exploration actually began, it had been thought that the giant world would be too cold, its atmosphere too poisonous with methane and ammonia, its gravitation too great for human life.

  But the first Earthmen who visited Jupiter found that the great planet’s interior radioactive heat kept it at tropical warmth. The methane and ammonia, they discovered, existed only in the upper atmospheric layers. The lower layers were quite breathable. And the invention of the gravity equalizers had solved the problem of the powerful gravitation.

  Down through the darkness toward the night side of this great world, splitting the deep atmosphere with a shrill, knife-edged sound, plunged the Comet.

  Captain Future held the controls, with Grag and the disguised Otho and Simon Wright beside him. And the red-haired adventurer was tense with fierce hope as he peered downward.

  “Here we are,” Curt muttered finally, easing back a throttle. “We’re west of South Equatoria.”

  “Not far west, I think,” rasped Simon Wright, from the special pedestal upon which his brain-case rested.

  Beneath them lay a vast, heaving sea, bathed in silvery light by the three moons now in the sky. It was one of the thirty tremendous oceans of the monarch planet, and endless watery plain whose moonlit surface heaved in great billows toward the sky.

  Curt had leveled off, and now the Comet screamed eastward low above the tossing silver ocean. Under the brilliant rays of Ganymede and Europa and Io, the waste of waters stretched to the far horizons in magnificent splendor.

  Moon-bats, those weird Jovian birds that for some mysterious reason never fly except when the moons shine, were circling high above the waters. Their broad wings shone in the silver light with uncanny iridescence, due to some strange photochemical effect.

  Schools of flame-fish, small fish that glowed with light because of their habit of feeding on radioactive sea-salts, swam just under the surface. The triple head of hydra, a species of big sea-snake always found twined in curious partnerships of three, reared above the waves. Far northward a “stunner,” like an enormous flat white disc of flesh, shot up out of the moonlit sea and came down with a thunderous shock that would stun all fish immediately beneath and make them easy prey.

  The Comet drove on low above the sil
ver-lit ocean teeming with strange life. Under the three big, bright moons, the teardrop ship cleaved the atmosphere like a meteor, hurrying toward the perilous rendezvous with mystery that Curt Newton was determined to keep.

  “Lights ahead, master,” boomed Grag, the robot’s photoelectric eyes peered keenly.

  “Yes, it’s South Equatoria,” Curt said. “Those are the lights of Jovopolis.”

  Far ahead a low black coast rose from the moon-lit ocean. A little inland lay a big bunch of lights, dominated by the red-and-green lamps of the lofty spaceport tower.

  Beyond the city lights stretched the black obscurity of the big plantations and the deep jungles beyond. And in the horizon the sky was painted by a dazzling aurora of twitching, quivering red rays — the crimson glare flung up by the distant Fire Sea.

  “Only Saturn has more wonderful nights than this,” Curt said, feeling even in his tensity the weird beauty of it.

  “You’re not going to land openly in Jovopolis?” Simon Wright questioned Curt.

  Captain Future shook his red head at the question.

  “No, we’ll drop down secretly at the edge of the spaceport.”

  THE Comet glided with muffled rocket-tubes over the moonlit mud flats along the shore, against which the great lunar tide of the Jovian ocean was hurling itself in mighty combers. Silent as a shadow, the little teardrop ship approached the spaceport, avoiding the docks and sinking down at the unlighted edge of the field.

  Curt Newton cut the cyclotrons and stood up. He had already set his gravity equalizer, so that he did not feel the full power of the crushing Jovian gravitation.

  “Otho and I must hurry,” he said tensely. “We must be at Orris’ hut when the Space Emperor comes there.”

  “Can’t I come too, master?” asked big Grag.

  “You could never pass as a man,” jeered Otho. “One glimpse of your metal face would give us away.”