As they flew eastward over the moonlit ferns again, Curt’s mind was worked up to a fever pitch of excitement. He felt that at last there was a chance of getting to grips with the sinister criminal who had thus far slipped through his hands like a shadow.
The little teardrop ship landed in the mine-clearing within minutes. The prisoners and Ezra Gurney were gone. Evidently, a police flier had already taken them back to Jungletown.
“Be careful up there, lad,” begged Simon Wright as they parted. “You know that it’s death to meddle with that hellish ocean.”
“I will take care of master,” Grag announced, joyful with pride at being chosen to accompany Captain Future.
The Comet shot away, hurtling southward toward Jungle-town. Curt and the robot hastened toward the rocket-flier he had left inside the jungle.
In a few moments the little torpedo-like craft rose sharply out of the jungle, and headed northward at its highest possible speed.
Ahead of them the whole night sky was a vivid glare of scarlet, a shaking splendor of wild red rays. Black against the glare stood out the dark, jagged hills that rimmed the southern shore of the Fire Sea.
As they neared the hills, the glare became so intense that their eyes could hardly look into it. Grag turned a little uneasily from the controls toward Captain Future.
“Shall I keep straight on over the hills and above the Fire Sea, master?” he asked.
“Keep on over the hills — we’re going to reconnoiter the coast of the sea,” Curt told him. He added with a quick grin, “You’re not afraid of a little molten lava, Grag?”
“I would not be afraid of a little,” Grag answered seriously, “but there is a great deal of it in that ocean, master.”
Curt chuckled. “A great deal is right. But it won’t hurt us — I hope!”
The flier was now pitching and tossing slightly despite its powerful drive, as it encountered great winds and blasts of superheated air rushing up from the vast, flaming ocean that lay ahead. The whole sky was an unthinkable flare of scarlet from the molten sea.
Curt felt his muscles tightening. They were, he knew, rushing toward one of the most stupendous and perilous natural wonders in the Solar System — one that had claimed the lives of almost all the Earthmen who had ever dared attempt the exploration of its shores.
Whirling blasts of smoke and fumes engulfed the speeding flier, as it raced on over the rocky hills toward the dreaded ocean of fire. Would they be able to survive the fiery sea’s perils? Captain Future wondered.
Chapter 18: The Sleeper in the Cavern
FIRE SEA OF JUPITER! Most dangerous and stupendous feature of the mightiest planet, which was spoken of with awe by men from Mercury to Pluto!
It stretched before them now, a vast ocean of crimson, molten lava that extended to the dim horizons and beyond for eight thousand unthinkable miles, and that extended east and west for three times that distance. A flaming sea that was constantly kept liquid by the interior radioactive heat.
The surface of that evilly glowing red-hot ocean was rippled by little, heavy waves and boiling maelstroms. Upon it like genii danced lurid flames, and whirls of sulfurous smoke. Its radiated heat was overpowering, even through the filter-windows of the rocket-flier.
Captain Future felt awe as he looked, not for the first time, on this incredibly fiery gulf into which all Earth could have been plunged.
“Don’t go out over it, Grag,” he told the robot. “The air-currents above it would capsize the flier. Follow along the shore-line.”
“Yes, master,” boomed the robot, turning the ship to move eastward. He added naively, “I do not like this place.”
“I prefer even the ice-fields of Pluto to this myself,” Curt admitted ruefully.
“I see nothing along the shore, master,” Grag said.
“Neither do I,” Curt admitted. “But there must be something here.”
Below them lay the southern shore of the Fire Sea. The flaming ocean’s molten waves lapped directly against the great range of black rock hills which acted as a dike to dam them back.
The rock slopes of the hills were heavily encrusted with solidified lava, that showed the tide-marks to which the molten flood reached. But there was nothing else to be seen upon that incredible shore, and indeed, it seemed impossible that ever any living beings could have set foot there.
Captain Future watched with close attention as the flier throbbed eastward along the shore-line. He believed that there must be some ruin or other vestige that would mark the spot which had once been frequented by the ancients.
Doubt grew in Curl’s mind, as the miles unreeled beneath without yielding any sign. After all, he told himself, he had only the evidence of that ancient world-globe in the Place of the Dead to guide him.
An hour passed, in which they had flown steadily east along the flaming coast. Curt made a sudden decision.
“Turn back and fly westward down the coast, Grag,” he ordered. “It may be in that direction.”
The robot obeyed, and the flier raced back at top speed over the ground they had covered, then moved on westward along the shore.
Again they watched with closest attention. Yet still there was nothing to see but the lava-crusted rock slopes, and the evilly glowing red ocean of molten lava that stretched away on their right.
Blasts of sulfurous air, and howling currents of superheated gases shrieked like fiends around them. The small rocket-flier pitched uneasily, yet Grag held it steadily above the fiery coast.
“Slow down!” Captain Future cried suddenly to the robot, his big figure tensing.
He had glimpsed something ahead — a queer opening in the rock shore at the edge of the lava sea.
THEY glided closer, hovered above the spot. From Curt Newton came an exclamation.
“This may be the place we’re looking for, Grag!” he declared.
“But I see nothing, master — nothing but a big round hole in the shore, into which the lava is pouring,” boomed the robot puzzledly.
Below them, there was a large, jagged circular opening in the rock slope of the hills, just where the fire ocean lapped against it.
As a result, a stream of the molten lava was pouring ceaselessly down over the lip of that opening, with a dull, reverberating thunder.
“There’s a big cavernous space of some kind down there in the rock,” Captain Future declared. “And that round opening leading down into it is too round to be natural. It looks as though it had been artificially enlarged at some time in the past.”
“Do you think then that the place of the Ancients we are hunting is down in that hole?” Grag asked incredulously, “It’s a chance,” Curt said. “We’ve seen no place else that could be what we’re looking for. We’ll investigate this.”
“But how do we get down in there?” Grag boomed puzzledly. “There does not seem to be any opening except this one through which the lava falls, master.”
Curt grinned at the big robot.
“When there’s only one door to go through, you can’t take the wrong one, Grag. That’s our way in.”
Grag stared.
“Down through that opening alongside the falling lava? There is barely enough room for the flier to make it without being caught in the fire-fall.”
“Enough room is as good as a light-year,” Curt shrugged. “Take her on down, Grag.”
Curt gave the order coolly, yet he knew the perilous nature of the descent they were about to attempt.
He would have taken the controls himself, but knew that the robot would take that as a lack of confidence on his part. And he had perfect faith in Grag’s abilities.
Grag moved the controls slightly, the robot’s photoelectric eyes peering downward. The little rocket-flier sank gently toward the dark, jagged opening through which the fire-fall plunged into unguessable depths.
Down sank the little craft, on an even keel, supported by its keel-tubes. The cataract of falling lava was only a yard away on their one side, and its thu
nder was deafening.
Wild air-currents screaming upward shook the flier as it sank lower. Its stern rasped ominously against the rock side of the opening, threatening to send the ship lurching into the falling lava.
But Grag steadied the craft, kept it sinking directly downward. In a moment they had descended through the opening into a vast, dim subterranean space weirdly illuminated by the red glow of the falling lava.
“Run into the cavern a little and then land, Grag,” Captain Future ordered excitedly.
They were hovering near the northern end of the enormous underground space. It extended shadowly southward, a cavern a thousand feet wide and of unguessable length.
The molten red lava of the fire-fall thundered down into a flaming pool, and then ran down the center of the cavern in a sunken channel or canal, a flaming, sluggish river.
Grag landed the flier on the rock floor of the dim cavern, near that fiery river. In a moment, Curt and his companion were emerging.
“This place is incredible,” declared Curt, raising his voice above the deafening thunder of the cataract.
“Even the caverns of Uranus are not as uncanny as this!” Grag agreed, staring in awe.
Captain Future felt a throb of leaping excitement that kindled higher each moment.
“It’s the place of the Ancients we were hunting!” he cried. “See!”
A little farther along the cavern from them, upon either side of the flaming lava river, rose two strange statues of silvery metal.
They represented creatures almost exactly like the Jovians, erect bipeds with round heads, unhuman but strangely noble features, and limbs that ended in flipperlike hands and feet.
The metal figures stood, each with a slender arm upraised, as though to warn Captain Future and the robot back. And upon the pedestal of each statue was a lengthy inscription in queer, wedge-shaped characters.
“The Ancients?” Grag said wonderingly as they paused beneath one of the statues. “But they look just like the Jovians.”
“Yes,” Captain Future nodded, his gray eyes gleaming. “I believe that the great Ancients were nothing but Jovians such as inhabit this world today.”
The big robot stared at Curt, his simple mind trying to comprehend the statement.
“But the Jovians today do not build great cities and statues and machines,” — Grag objected. “They cannot do the things the Ancients are supposed to have done.”
“I know,” Curt said thoughtfully, more to himself than to the robot. “Yet, I’ve felt all along that the Jovians are simply the descendants of the mysterious Ancients of whom they tell legends — that the great race of the Ancients had its civilization swept away by some catastrophe.
“If I’m right,” Curt added, “the present Jovians have not even a suspicion that the Ancients they revere were their own forefathers. All they have are vague legends, distorted by ages.”
“They look as though they were warning us to stay out of here,” said Grag, peering up at the solemn statues.
“We’re going on,” Captain Future said, striding forward, his big figure animated by driving determination.
They passed the silvery figures, and moved on along the edge of the fiery lava river whose dancing flames eerily illuminated the cavern.
Sulfurous smoke from the lava drifted about them, and the heat from it was fierce on their faces. From behind them came the perpetual booming thunder of the awful fire-cataract.
“See, master!” called Grag, pointing ahead with his metal arm. “Machines!”
Vague, towering metal shapes loomed up out of the dim shadows ahead. They were big mechanisms of so alien and unfamiliar a design that their purpose was unfathomable.
ONE was a complexity of cogged wheels of silver metal, geared to a,sliding arm whose end suggested the muzzle of a gun. Another was a huge upright metal bulb that suggested a cyclotron in appearance.
Upon the base of each machine was a lengthy inscription in the queer, wedge-shaped characters of the Ancients.
“If I could only read those!” Captain Future exclaimed tensely. “Here, for some mysterious reason, were gathered all the powers and weapons of that perished race. And I can’t translate the key to this riddle, discover those powers!”
“Maybe you can decipher those characters in time, master,” Grag suggested.
“Time? There is no time, now!” Curt exclaimed. “Unless we find in here the powers we need to crush the Space Emperor, and return to do that at once, the Jovians will have trampled Jungletown and the other Earthmen towns out of existence!”
Curt was feeling the strain of agonizing apprehension. The knowledge that somewhere southward the Black One was spurring the Jovian hordes on to the attack was like a prodding goad in his mind.
“But we can’t decipher these inscriptions at once. Nobody could,” he muttered hopelessly.
“I hear someone in here,” Grag suddenly said uneasily. “Someone living!”
“Be quiet and listen,” Captain Future commanded. “Your ears are keener than mine, Grag.”
Curt’s hand had dropped to the hilt of his proton-pistol. Standing motionless, listening intently, he cast his glance quickly around.
He could see nothing but the mysterious, silent mechanisms towering about him in the red-lit shadows, the dim spaces of the cavern stretching southward. And he could hear nothing but the thunderous reverberation of the fire-fall.
“I hear it again,” Grag asserted in a moment. “Someone moving —”
“I hear too, now!” Curt exclaimed, his keen ears catching the slight, shuffling sound above the thunderous roar. “It’s from farther along the cavern.”
He drew his pistol swiftly, and Grag imitated him.
“Come on,” Curt muttered. “There’s someone else in here. If it’s the Space Emperor —”
His pulses leaped at the thought, even though he knew that his next encounter with the mysterious plotter might be his last.
They crept forward, big Grag moving soundlessly on his padded feet. They moved around towering, dusty machines, on along the flaming river, deeper into the great cavern.
“There — an Earthman!” Grag boomed, pointing his metal arm.
Curt had seen the man at the same moment. He was not a hundred yards ahead.
A slight-looking figure in a worn brown zipper-suit, the man lay sprawled on his face on the rock floor of the cavern. Near him stood a table which bore an extinguished argon-lamp, and many papers covered with wedge-shaped characters.
“He’s either unconscious or sleeping, master,” said the robot.
Captain Future saw that the man’s limbs were moving restlessly, as though in sleep. It was the sound Grag had heard.
Curt bent over the man, and as he did so he smelled an acrid, unforgettable odor.
“This man’s been drugged,” he declared. “He’s been given a shot of somnal, the Mercurian sleep-drug.”
He turned the man over on his back. The face of the drugged sleeper was exposed to the red glow of the fire-river.
It was a serious, spectacled, haggard young face that Curt had never been before. The red-haired adventurer stared down at the man, utterly perplexed.
Then he noticed a monogram on the sleeper’s synthesilk jacket. The letters were “K.L.”
“Kenneth Lester!” Curt cried. “That’s who this is — the missing archaeologist!”
Chapter 19: The Epic of Ages
CAPTAIN FUTURE’S pulses throbbed with excitement as he raised the drugged man to a sitting position.
He had felt all along that Kenneth Lester was somehow the key to this whole great’ planetary plot. And now at last he had found the young archaeologist.
“He’s been drugged more than once,” boomed the robot. “See the needle-scars on his wrist.”
“I can bring him around, I think,” Curt muttered.
He fished in his belt for his medicine-kit. It was hardly larger than his finger, but inside it were minute vials of the most powerful drugs kno
wn in the Solar System.
Captain Future dipped a sterile needle into one of those vials, and then pressed its wet point into Kenneth Lester’s veins.
As the tiny drop of super-powerful anti-narcotic raced through the young archaeologist’s bloodstream, he began to stir. In a moment he opened dazed, dark eyes. He looked haggard, worn.
“Why don’t you kill me, and get it over with?” he asked hoarsely, looking up unseeingly. “This horrible existence —”
Then as Lester’s vision cleared and he saw Captain Future and the towering metal robot bending over him, he uttered a startled cry.
“Who — what —”
“I’m Captain Future,” Curt told him rapidly. “You may have heard of me.”
“Captain Future?” Lester cried incredulously.
The young archaeologist knew that name, as did everyone in the Solar System. As it sank into his fogged mind, a wild relief showed on his haggard face.
“Thank God you’re here!” he sobbed. “It’s been a hellish death-in-life for me here, these last weeks. The Space Emperor —”
“Who is the Space Emperor?” Curt asked swiftly, hanging on the answer.
But again he was doomed to disappointment.
“I don’t know!” cried young Lester. Then he raged feebly, “Whoever he is, he’s a fiend from hell! He’s kept me here, for how many weeks I can’t guess — forcing me to decipher these ancient Jovian inscriptions for him, and leaving me drugged whenever he went away.”
“You were the one who found this place originally, weren’t you?” Curt asked.
He had been sure of that, from the Gist. And he found now that his reasoning had been correct.
“Yes,” nodded Lester weakly. “I found it, and I thought I had made the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of the Solar System.”
He was sitting up, now, talking with feverish rapidity as he looked up into Captain Future’s tanned, set face.
“I came to Jupiter because I had heard of Jovian legends that spoke of a great, ancient race who had once inhabited this planet. I believed that there must be some basis to those legends, and resolved to track it down.
Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) Page 13