Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940)
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“And what’s more,” Curt declared, “I believe this Kenneth Lester, the missing archaeologist, ties into it somewhere. This Lester was highly certain, according to Quale, that he could find the secrets of the vanished race. Then he disappeared.”
Grag had listened with attention, trying to follow Curt’s explanation. Now the big robot asked a question.
“If the Space Emperor can make himself immaterial whenever he wants to, how can we catch him, master?”
“We can’t catch him if he’s immaterial, that’s the devil of it,” Captain Future told the robot. “Our only chance is to grab him while he’s in his normal state.”
He turned to the Brain.
“I want to investigate this Lucas Brewer first. As soon as Otho comes, we’ll go up to Jungletown and I’ll see what I can find out about that fat swindler. While we’re waiting for Otho,” he went on, “we can start study of this atavism victim I brought with me. It’s urgent that some cure for the blight be found as soon as possible, or this whole colony will be wiped out.”
Grag unfolded the metal table from the wall of the little compact laboratory that occupied the whole midship of the Comet. The robot laid the stricken, drugged man upon it.
Captain Future hung a curious lamp over the unconscious man. It was a long cylindrical glass tube that could project “tuned” X-rays which made either bone, blood or solid flesh tissue or nerve-tissue almost invisible, at will.
Curt set the rays to block out the whole skin, skull, and outer tissues of the victim’s head. Then he donned the fluoroscopic spectacles that were part of the equipment, and slipped similar spectacles over the eye-lenses of Simon Wright.
They could now look deep into the head of the victim as though he were semi-transparent.
“I believe,” Curt said tersely, “that this evolutionary blight is caused by a deep change in the ductless glands. We know that slight malfunctioning of the pituitary gland will produce acromegaly, in which the victim becomes brutish of body and mind. Suppose that the pituitary is really the secret control of physical evolution?”
“I understand,” said Simon, his lenses glittering. “You think that acromegaly, which has always been considered a mere disease, is really a case of mild atavism?”
CURT nodded his red head keenly.
“That’s it, Simon. And if a man found a way to paralyze the pituitary gland completely, then the resulting atavism would not be just mild but would become worse each day, the victim reverting farther each day to the brute!”
“Let’s look at the pituitary gland and see,” said Simon Wright.
Intently, they scrutinized the big gland that was attached to the base of the victim’s brain by a thin stalk.
“See the dark color of the gland!” Captain Future exclaimed. “That’s abnormal — the pituitary of this man has been subjected to some freezing or paralyzing radiation!”
He straightened his big figure, and there was a gleam in his gray eyes as he took off the fluoroscopic glasses.
“What we’ve got to do is to devise some way of starting the paralyzed pituitaries of the stricken man,” he said. “Do you think we could find a counter-radiation that would do it?”
“I doubt it, lad,” muttered Simon Wright. “It seems to me that our best chance would be to devise a chemical formula that could be injected directly into the victims’ bloodstream and which would reach their glands in that way.”
“Then we’ll try out different formulae on this victim —” Curt started to say. He suddenly stopped.
His keen ears had just caught the faint whir of the buzzer in his pocket-televisor. He snatched out the little instrument and touched the call-button to signal that he had heard.
“This is Otho speaking!” came a rapid whisper from it. “I am going with Jovians northward. The Space Emperor is to be —”
Suddenly the android’s whisper broke off. Curt waited, his tanned face a little alarmed in expression.
He dared not call the android back, without knowing what had happened. Minutes passed in silence. After a quarter-hour, Otho’s whisper came again, a little louder.
“One of these Jovians nearly caught me calling you, but I convinced him I was just talking to myself,” Otho chuckled.
“You crazy fool, be careful!” Captain Future spoke angrily into the instrument. “Do you want to get yourself killed? What the devil are you up to, anyway?”
“I’m going to stay with these Jovians until I find out where the Space Emperor is to appear before them,” Otho’s answer came back. “It’s to be tomorrow night, at some spot called the Place of the Dead, in the north jungles. As soon as I find out where the place is, I’ll come back and tell you.”
“We’ll have the Comet at Jungletown,” Curt told the android quickly through the instrument. “We’re going there now.”
“Give my regards to Grag and tell him that I am sorry he is sitting in the ship and doing nothing,” Otho’s voice teased, before he was silent.
Grag moved his metal head furiously.
“Is it my fault that I have been sitting here?” boomed the robot. “I wanted to go with you, and you took him instead!”
Curt gave the massive robot a powerful shove toward the control-room.
“Get in there and start the ship without more grumbling or I’ll disconnect your speech-apparatus!” he warned Grag. “We’re flying north to Jungletown, in a hurry.”
“What about our patient — do we take him too?” asked the robot.
Curt nodded.
“Simon can keep hunting for a cure and test his formulae on that poor fellow. I’ve got to attend to more urgent business.”
As Captain Future turned back to the Brain, his gray eyes had an expectant gleam.
“So the Space Emperor is to appear up in those northern jungles tomorrow night? And Lucas Brewer had to fly north tonight. The trail leads to Brewer, Simon!”
Chapter 10: Beneath Jovian Moons
JUNGLETOWN throbbed with roaring life tonight, under the two bright moons. Even the dreadful shadow of the horror that had stricken down hundreds, even the knowledge that the Jovian aborigine hordes were ominously restless could not slacken the gusty, lusty tempo of life in this wild new town.
This was a typical planetary boom town, such as sprang up wherever a great new strike was made, be it on desert Mars or mountainous Uranus or Arctic Pluto. To these boom towns thronged adventurous Earthmen from all over the System, prospectors and gamblers, merchants and criminals, engineers and drug-peddlers, dreamers and knaves and fools.
The great strike of uranium and radium northward had been responsible for the birth of Jungletown. It had grown with mushroom speed, till now it was a straggling mass of some thousands of metalloy houses, huddled together in the big clearing that had been blasted out of the mighty fern-jungles.
Captain Future peered keenly toward the town from where he stood with his comrades beside the Comet. They had landed the ship near the dark edge of the jungle, unobserved.
“The atavism cases haven’t slowed this place down much,”
Curt muttered as he stared.
“These boom towns aren’t afraid of man or God or devil!” rasped Simon Wright dourly. “Murder and robbery walk in them hand and hand. Remember the one on Neptune’s moon?”
“That town where those criminals laid the atomic trap for us?” said Curt. He chuckled softly. “I remember!”
“Hear that queer throbbing, master?” Grag boomed suddenly to Curt.
Captain Future and his companions stood with the solemn, murmurous black jungle towering at their backs. Out of it came heavy exhalations of rotting vegetation and the spicy scent of flowers.
The heavy tread of “stampers” was audible from its depths, and the rustle of a tree-octopus. Balloon-beasts floated overhead in the moonlight, the membranous gas-sac that held them aloft glimmering. And little sucker-flies hummed viciously around, while big death-moths fluttered in their strange dying flight that lasts for days.
Curt was listening tensely. Then he heard the sound the robot’s artificial hearing had detected. It was a dim, deep throbbing that came from the dark jungles northwest of the town, and that he felt rather than heard. It seemed to roll up from the ground on which they stood, in a steady, heavy rhythm.
“It’s Jovian ground-drums,” Simon Wright rasped.
Curt nodded tightly.
“There’s no doubt about it. They’re out there somewhere northwest of the town.”
Captain Future had heard the “ground-drums” before — unknown instruments by which Jovian aborigines caused a percussive vibration in the ground which could be heard for far.
“That means trouble, lad,” the Brain said harshly. “The Jovians ordinarily never do any ground-drumming where Earthmen can hear them.”
“I’m going into the town and hunt up Ezra Gurney, the Planet Police marshal here,” he told the Brain. “You can stay here and work on the atavism cure, Simon.”
“Yes, of course,” rasped the Brain.
“I go with you this time, master?” Grag asked anxiously.
“No, Grag, you’d attract too much attention in the town,” Captain Future told the big robot. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
Then Curt strode across the dark fields toward the town. The two moons looked down on his big figure, and the shaking glare of crimson in the sky tinged his keen face redly.
CURT entered the chief street of Jungletown, a narrow, un-paved one bordered on both sides by metalloy structures of hasty construction. Gambling places, drinking shops, lodging houses of ill appearance, all stood out under a blaze of uranite bulbs. Music blared from many places, and a babel of voices dazed the ears.
He shouldered through a motley, noisy crowd that jammed the street. Here were husky prospectors in stained zipper-suits, furtive, unshaven space-bums begging, cool-eyed interplanetary gamblers, gaunt engineers in high boots with flare-pistols at their belts, bronzed space-sailors up from Jovopolis for a carousal in the wildest new frontier-town in the System.
Curt noticed that only a few of the green Jovians were in the streets. The flipper-men made no remonstrance when drunken Earthmen cuffed them out of the way, but their silence was queerly ominous.
“Anybody want to buy a Saturnian ‘talker’?” a big space-sailor with an owl-like bird on his shoulder was shouting.
“Anybody want to buy a Saturnian ‘talker’?” the bird repeated, exactly mimicking its master’s voice.
“Biggest bar on Jupiter!” a telespeaker outside the roaring drinking place was calling. “Martian gold-wine, Mercurian dream-water — any drink from any planet!”
As Curt passed a big gambling-hall noisy with the click of “quantum wheels,” a hand grasped his hand. It was a thin-bodied, red-skinned native Martian, whose breath was strong with Jovian brandy as he appealed to Curt in his shrill, high voice.
“Help me out, Earthman!” he begged. “I’ve been stranded here a year and I’ve got to get back to Mars to my family.”
Curt chuckled.
“You’ve not been on Jupiter more than a month or your skin would have bleached out. You’ve no family for you belong to the Syrtis people of Mars, where the children are raised communally. But here’s something for a drink.”
The Martian, startled, took the coin and stumbled hastily away from the big redhead.
Then as Curt passed a tavern from which came wild, whirling music with the pulsing Venusian double-rhythm in it, he heard a sudden uproar break loose inside.
“Marshal or no marshal, you can’t tell Jon Daumer what to do!” roared an Earthman’s bellowing voice.
“I’m telling you, and I’m not telling you again,” answered a steely voice. “You and your friends get out of town and get out now.”
Captain Future recognized that hard second voice. He pushed quickly into the tavern.
It was a big, bright-lit metal hall, hazy with the acrid smoke of Venusian swamp-leaf tobacco. A mixed throng jammed the place. There were prospectors, gamblers and engineers, some of whom had been drinking at the long glassite bar, others of whom had been dancing with hard-faced, painted girls.
All eyes were now watching the tense drama taking place. A big, heavy-faced Earthman in white zipper-suit, with three other mean-eyed men behind him, confronted a grizzled, iron-haired man who wore the black uniform of the Planet Police and a marshal’s badge.
Ezra Gurney, the gray-haired marshal, was looking grimly at the quartet who faced him.
“I’m giving you and your three fellow-crooks just one hour to leave Jungletown, Daumer,” he warned.
Curt saw Daumer crimson with rage.
“You’ve not proved that we have broken any laws! the man bellowed at Gurney.
“I don’t need any more proof than what I’ve got,” said Ezra Gurney. “I know you four have been getting prospectors drunk and robbing them of their radium. You’re leaving!”
DAUMER’S face stiffened. He and his companions dropped their hands toward the hilts of their flare-guns.
“We’re not going, Gurney,” he said ominously.
Curt Newton stepped suddenly from behind Gurney. His tall, red-headed figure confronted Daumer and his companions.
“Take your hands off those guns and get out of town as Marshal Gurney says,” Curt ordered the four men coldly.
Daumer was first amazed at the stranger’s audacity. Then he uttered a guffaw of laughter that was echoed by the motley crowd.
“Listen to this Mr. Nobody that’s telling me what to do!” he exclaimed. The crowd roared in appreciative mirth.
“Captain Future!” cried Ezra Gurney suddenly as he glimpsed Curt’s face.
“Captain Future?” echoed Daumer blankly. His eyes dropped frozenly to the big ring on Curt’s finger.
“It’s him!” he whispered through stiff lips.
The laughter of the crowd was struck to silence as by a blow. In frozen, unbelieving stillness, they stared at Curt.
The greatest adventurer in the Solar System’s history, the mysterious, awesome figure whose legend dominated the nine worlds, stood in their midst. As they realized it, they could only stare rigidly at this big, red-haired, gray-eyed man whose name and fame had rung around the System.
“We’re — going, Captain Future,” Daumer said hoarsely, his brutal face pallid.
“See that you take the first ship off Jupiter,” Curt lashed, his bleak gray eyes boring into the faces of the four men.
Daumer and his companions were out of the place in a moment. Curt and Ezra Gurney followed them.
No man or woman in the crowded hall moved, as Captain Future and the grizzled marshal walked out to the street. But as they reached the noisy, thronged thoroughfare, they heard a great babel of excited voices from behind them blast forth in the tavern.
“Thanks for steppin’ in to help me out, Captain Future, but you spoiled a swell fight,” said Ezra Gurney testily.
Curt grinned.
“I see you’re as bloodthirsty as ever, Marshal. I thought maybe that fracas in the Swampmen’s Quarter on Venus two years ago would have quieted you down.”
Gurney looked at him with shrewd old eyes.
“What brings you to Jupiter is this atavism business, isn’t it?”
Curt nodded grimly.
“That’s it. What do you know about it, Ezra?”
“I know it s hell’s blackest masterpiece,” said Ezra Gurney somberly. “Captain Future, I’ve been out on the planetary frontiers for forty years. I’ve seen some evil things on the nine worlds in that time. But I never seen anything like this before.”
His weatherbeaten face tightened.
“This town is sitting on top of hell, and no on
e knows when it’ll bust loose. The atavism cases are increasing daily, and the Jovians are acting queer.”
“You called Quale tonight about the Jovian unrest increasing?” Curt said, and Ezra Gurney nodded emphatically.
“Yes, I told Quale the truth, that the Jovians are working up to something big. You can hear their ground-drums out in the jungle all the time now.”
They had turned off the crowded street into the small metalloy structure that housed Planet Police Headquarters.
“Ezra, what do you know about Lucas Brewer’s radium mine?” Captain Future asked.
Gurney looked at him keenly.
“There’s something queer about it. Brewer is able to get the Jovians to work for him as laborers, something nobody else can do. That gives him a big advantage, with labor as scarce as it is here. He’s getting rich producing radium, up there.”
“How does he explain the fact that the Jovians work for him and no one else?” Curt demanded.
“He says he treats ‘em right,” Gurney answered skeptically. “I know he pays ‘em a lot of trade-goods — shipments go up to his mine all the time. But the green critters won’t work for nobody else, no matter what pay is offered them.”
THE big red-haired man considered that, his tanned face thoughtful. He asked another question.
“Do you know anything about the disappearance of Kenneth Lester, a young planetary archaeologist, up here?”
“Not a thing,” Ezra confessed. “He went up into the jungles weeks ago. Then he flew back down here to send a letter off, and went back north. No more word ever came back from him and he’s never been found.”
“I’m going out and make a secret investigation of Lucas Brewers mine,” Captain Future declared, getting up. “Lend me a rocket-flier?”
Gurney’s face grew anxious.
“That’s a dangerous place to monkey around. Brewer’s got guards all around the mine. Says he’s afraid of radium-bandits.”
Curt grinned, and there was no trace of alarm in the big young adventurer’s cheerful face.
“I’ll take my chances, Ezra. What about that rocket-flier?”