He cried chokingly to Captain Future, who barely caught the words.
“Can’t — hold on —”
The archaeologist’s grip upon the vine was slipping, weak as he was from his long, drugged captivity.
Curt grabbed him just in time with his left arm, hanging onto the vine with his right. The weight put a terrific strain on the red-headed adventurer’s muscles. No man less perfect physically could have withstood that strain.
Grag was hauling them up rapidly now. The tremendous strength of the robot was standing him in good stead. Upward, they rose, revolving slowly at the end of the vine rope, Lester now an unconscious burden inside Curt’s arm.
Curt was nearly overcome by the fumes of the falling lava. Wild air-currents from below screamed and howled around him.
Then he glimpsed the mouth of the shaft above.
At the north side of the opening, the lava sea poured in. At the south edge, upon the rock brink, stood Grag’s great metal figure.
In a few moments, Curt stood with the robot upon the rock. It was still night, and they stood beneath the combined light of three moons and the red glare of the Fire Sea.
“Good work, Grag!” Captain Future exclaimed, as he lowered the unconscious archaeologist to the rock.
Grag was pleased.
“It took me a long time to get far enough away from the Fire Sea to find vines growing, or I would not have taken so long,” he explained.
Curt snatched out his pocket-televisor once more. Again he pressed the call-button.
“Ought to be able to get Otho and Simon now that we’re out of the cavern,” he muttered.
Presently came the faintest of answering signals from Otho.
“Come in the Comet and get us!” Captain Future ordered. “I’ll leave the call-signal of the televisor on as a beam to guide you here.”
HE COULD just hear the faint, distance-dimmed reply from Otho.
“Coming!”
While they waited, Curt hastily examined Lester. The young archaeologist was still unconscious.
“He’s in bad shape, but he’ll pull through with rest and treatment,” Curt declared.
“Master, the Comet comes!” Grag called a little later.
Out of the south like a shooting star drove the little teardrop ship. It dived toward them with a scream of splitting air, and came jarringly to rest on the rock ledge.
Curt shouldered inside, and Grag followed with the senseless archaeologist.
“I’ve got the immaterializer, Simon!” Curt cried eagerly to the Brain. “Now I can hunt down the Space Emperor and meet him on even terms.”
“Too late for that, lad!” rasped Simon Wright. “The Jovians are already on their way to attack Jungletown. They’re swarming toward the town from all their villages — thousands of them. By this time, they must be there!”
Captain Future felt the full shock of the Brain’s tidings, his big figure stiffening. And Otho was shouting.
“The atavism cases in the Jungletown hospital have broken loose, too!” the android hissed. “We believe they were purposely released by the Space Emperor, to add to the panic.”
“Head back toward the town at full speed,” Curt’s voice flared. “There may still be time.”
The Comet jerked upward, and screamed low above the moonlit jungles toward the south.
The night was wild. The silver radiance of Callisto, Europa and Ganymede was paled by the stupendous red glow of the Fire Sea behind them.
Like a meteor, the teardrop ship knifed the air of Jupiter. Curt watched with superhuman tenseness for the lights of Jungletown. If the Space Emperor’s hordes of duped Jovians had already reached it —
Far ahead on the rim of the moonlit jungle appeared the clustered lights of the town. They seemed to leap toward Curt, as Otho recklessly swooped to a landing in one of the blazing-lit streets.
“The Jovians aren’t here yet!” Captain Future cried as he tore the door of the ship open. “There’s still time —”
Then a moment later his face froze in incredulous horror, and he uttered a sharp cry.
“This place has become, a hell!”
Jungletown, under the light of the three great moons and the shaking, flaring fire-glow northward, had indeed become an inferno.
Men and monsters were battling in its streets. Monsters — that had once been men!
Hairy ape-brutes, four-footed feral creatures, scaled reptiles that fought and tore.
Captain Future’s pistol leaped out and his proton-beam shot to stun a roaring ape-creature that was rushing toward them.
“Come on — we’ve got to find Gurney!” he exclaimed.
The big adventurer’s red head towered above the wild turmoil as he pushed forward through the streets, Grag and Otho close at his side, the android carrying Simon Wright.
The place was a nightmare of terror.
With chaos of panic reigning and monstrous beasts roaming its streets, Jungletown seemed a city of men reeling back toward the brute.
Boom! Boom! Ground-drums out in the jungles were thundering unceasingly now, in a crescendo of fierce excitement.
“The Jovians must be near here!” Curt exclaimed. Then he yelled, “Gurney! Ezra Gurney!”
The marshal was forcing down the street, leading a little group of people who fought off the prowling monsters with their flare-guns.
“CAPTAIN FUTURE, this looks like the end of us!” cried Gurney, his eyes wild in the moonlight. “I can’t organize any defense, and the Jovians are near now.”
“I’m going out to the Jovians now,” Curt exclaimed. “The Space Emperor is out there, and destroying him is the only thing that can stop them now.”
Joan Randall, her face deathly white in the moonlight, sprang from behind the marshal to grasp Curt’s arm.
“Don’t go!” she pleaded. “Eldred Kells went out to try and talk the Jovians into peace, and he didn’t come back. And Governor Quale went after him, and he didn’t come back either!”
“We caught Lucas Brewer,” Gurney told Captain Future hoarsely. “Found him hiding here in town. Not that it makes much difference now, I guess.”
“I’m going,” Curt told them. “Otho, you and Grag and Simon stay here. This is —”
“Look!” yelled Otho, pointing a finger, his eyes suddenly blazing. “Here they come now!”
A deep roar of thousands of fierce bass voices rent the air at that instant.
Out of the jungle into the clearing around Jungletown, a solid mass of Jovians, on foot and mounted on lopers, was pouring.
Flare-guns gleamed in their mass, ominously.
And at the head of them moved a dark, gliding figure — the Space Emperor.
Chapter 21: The Unmasking
FOR a moment the little group around Captain Future seemed frozen by sight of that fierce, advancing horde.
“It’s all up!” Ezra Gurney cried. “There’s thousands of those critters.”
“I can still stop those Jovians,” Curt Newton flashed. “Wait here — all of you!”
“Nothin’ can stop them now!” Ezra Gurney exclaimed hoarsely.
But Captain Future’s big form was already running out through the moonlight toward the oncoming horde.
The Jovian masses were still pouring solidly out of the jungle. Whipped to fanatic madness by the Space Emperor’s playing on their superstitions, convinced that they must destroy the Earthmen, they rolled forward in a solid wave after the dark, gliding figure of their leader.
Captain Future came into full view of the oncoming hordes, his tall figure looming in the moonlight, as he faced the Space Emperor and his followers.
The Space Emperor stopped, in sheer amazement it seemed. And the Jovians behind him stopped also. For a full moment, the horde and its mysterious leader faced Captain Future.
Then Curt Newton cried out in a loud voice to the Jovian masses, in their own language.
“Why do you come here to attack the Earthmen?” he shouted. “They have nev
er harmed you. You have allowed this Earthman to lead you into a great crime.”
“He is no Earthman!” cried scores of fierce Jovian voices. “He is the Living Ancient, the last of the great Ancients who has commanded us to sweep away you Earthmen.”
“I’ll show you,” Curt cried, and leaped in a flying spring toward the startled black figure.
As Curt sprang through the air, his hands were on the switches of his gravitation equalizer and of the hemispherical mechanism at his belt.
The equalizer he snapped to zero. And as his other hand snicked the switch of the immaterializer, he felt a sickening shock of violent force through every fiber.
There was no other sensation. But he knew that he was immaterial as the Space Emperor now. And then he struck the Space Emperor — solidly.
Both Curt and the dark plotter being now immaterial as regarded ordinary matter, they were on a basis of equality. Because their bodies had both received the same atomic vibration step-up, they were real and solid to each other.
But Curt had no air to breathe such as the Space Emperor had inside his suit. He felt a gasping shock of agony in his lungs as he seized the super-criminal.
He and the Space Emperor struggled wildly. And as they struggled, drifting floatingly, they were both floating through the Jovians who had crowded wildly forward. The green natives recoiled in horror.
Curt knew he could last but seconds, without air to breathe. Already his head was roaring. He was trying to reach the switch of the Space Emperor’s immaterializer. The other was trying, desperately, to prevent him.
Consciousness seemed draining out of Curt’s brain. He vaguely glimpsed Grag and Otho wildly trying to help him, but unable to grasp either himself or his antagonist.
CURT made a savage last effort, putting into it the last of his fading strength. His hand struggled to the switch of the other’s mechanism. He snapped it open —
And the Space Emperor became like a phantom in his arms, unreal and tenuous. The dark criminal had been made normal again — and Curt was still in the other, shadowy state.
He glimpsed Grag’s great metal fist strike at the Space Emperor. His lungs were on fire, the world dark about him, as he sought to snap open the switch of his own immaterializer. It finally snicked under his fingers — again the sickening shock —
Captain Future found himself staggering on the ground — the solid ground — as he reset his equalizer also.
“The Space Emperor!” he choked. “Did he get away?”
“No, master!” boomed Grag.
Curt stared. The robot’s mighty fist had crushed the whole top of the Space Emperor’s helmet.
All this swift struggle had taken but seconds. The Jovian horde had watched, frozen with astonishment. Now, with a wild yell of rage, they surged forward.
“Wait!” yelled Captain Future with all his strength. “See!”
And with frantic fingers, he tore the black, flexible suit off the prone figure of the plotter.
An Earthman’s body was revealed in the bright moonlight! It was the body of a tall man whose blond head had been crushed in by Grag’s awful blow. And his face was the face of —
“Eldred Kells!” yelled Gurney wildly.
It was Kells’ dead face that lay there in the moonlight. Kells — the Space Emperor!
Curt Newton faced the Jovians. They had again frozen. In their mien was an incredulous horror.
“You see!” Captain Future shouted to them. “The Living Ancient was a deceiver who duped you. He was not one of the great Ancients, but merely an Earthman like myself.”
“It is true,” said a Jovian to the stunned horde. “We have been deceived.”
“Return then to your villages and forget this mad folly of war against Earthmen,” Curt said clearly. “There is room on this great planet for both Earthman and Jovian to live in peace, is there not?”
There was a little, tense silence before the big Jovian who seemed the spokesman answered.
“It is the truth — there is room for both our races,” the Jovian answered slowly. “We only prepared to war upon you because we thought the spirits of the Ancients wished it.”
Slowly, in a dead silence, the Jovians turned and started to shuffle back into the jungle.
No word was spoken by them. Curt Newton looked after them, pity on his taut face. He knew what a tremendous shock to them had been the discovery that they had been deceived.
Otho and Grag were at his side, and Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall and the others were running forward.
Gurney looked down at the dead face of Eldred Kells as though unable yet to believe his eyes.
“It can’t be true!” the marshal muttered.
Joan Randall cried out suddenly.
“Here’s Governor Quale!” she announced.
QUALE was stumbling out of the jungle. He came toward them, his face pallid.
“The Jovians captured me when I went out to look for Kells,” he said hoarsely. “They released me just now, and I gathered they’d given up the attack —”
His voice trailed off as he saw the dead body of the vice-governor, in its dark suit. He looked up with a wild question in his eyes.
“Yes,” Captain Future said heavily, “Kells was the Space Emperor. I’ve guessed it for some time.”
“How could you know?” Quale cried incredulously.
“I knew the Space Emperor was one of four men who could have trapped Joan and me in that Jovopolis hospital,” Curt replied. “The four were you, Kells, Brewer and Cannig.”
“You were eliminated, Governor Quale, because you were talking to Marshal Gurney on the televisor when I was trapped. You see, I confirmed the fact from Gurney that you had actually talked to him at that time.
“Brewer,” Curt added, “seemed the most logical suspect then. He was giving the Jovians guns, as I discovered. But when I found that he was doing it only to get them to dig his radium, I felt he could not be the Space Emperor. He would not stir up a planetary rebellion, when his desire was to get rich from his mine! He’d have everything to lose.
“Cannig,” Captain Future concluded, “had been seen with the Space Emperor, by Joan, and so he could not be the plotter. That only left Eldred Kells of the four original suspects.”
“I still can’t believe it of Kells!” Quale cried. “He was so capable and efficient and ambitious —”
“He was too ambitious; that was the trouble,” Captain Future said somberly. “He was chafing here as a mere vice-governor, and when he read the report of this wonderful discovery which Kenneth Lester sent to your office, Kells saw his opportunity to bid for planetary power.
“He saw himself as lord of Jupiter — even as the emperor of other worlds — using the great powers and weapons of the Ancients. He might have done it, too, had he been luckier!”
“Aye,” rasped Simon Wright, his glittering lens-eyes staring at the dead man. “That is the curse of you humans — lust for power. It has brought a many of you to their deaths, and it will bring many more.”
Chapter 22: The Way of Captain Future
CAPTAIN FUTURE stood in the pale sunlight beside the open door of the Comet, with Grag and Otho and Simon Wright. The little ship rested on the ground at the edge of the wilderness outside Jungletown.
The big, red-headed adventurer faced three people — Joan Randall and Sylvanus Quale and Ezra Gurney.
“Must you leave Jupiter now?” Quale was asking earnestly.
Curt grinned.
“It’s got too tame around here, now that all the excitement is over.”
A brief Jovian week had passed. That week had seen the complete restoration of order in the demoralized colony.
The atavism cases were slowly returning to normal, being treated with the formula Simon Wright had devised. The Jovians were again on friendly terms with the Earthmen, and there seemed no doubt that they would remain so.
A scientific commission was on its way from Earth to consult Kenneth Lester and investigate t
he secrets of the Ancients stored in that cavern by the Fire Sea. Meanwhile, the place was guarded.
“Everything here’s washed up now,” Curt was saying. “I called President Carthew today and reported so, though of course this whole affair won’t be made public.”
Joan Randall spoke impulsively to the big redhead. “Then the people of the System will never know what you’ve done for them?”
Curt laughed.
“Why should they know? I’ve no desire to be a hero.”
“You are a hero, to every man and woman in the nine worlds,” Joan said steadily.
There was a throbbing emotion in the girl’s soft face as she looked into the big young adventurer’s gray eyes.
“And now you’re going back to that lonely home of yours on Earth’s moon, to live without another human being near?”
“I’m going back to my home, and my comrades will be with me,” Curt defended.
“Captain Future, are you always going to lead this hard, dangerous life?” the girl cried appealingly.
Curt’s face grew somber. His voice was low-pitched, his eyes looking far away, as he answered.
“Long ago, I dedicated my life to a task,” he said. “Until that task is finished, I must remain — Captain Future.”
He held out his hand, and the cheerful smile came back once more into his gray eyes.
“Good-by, Joan,” he said. “We’ll meet again, somewhere.”
He grinned at Gurney. “And I’m sure to meet you in that part of the System where trouble is the thickest.”
There was a glimmer of tears in the girl’s dark eyes as she watched Curt enter his little ship.
The cyclotrons droned, and the Comet shot upward into the pale sunlight. Up from Jupiter it roared, out through the dense atmosphere until the mighty planet was a vast white globe behind them, and black, starred space stretched ahead.
Toward the bright gray speck that was Earth, and the smaller white speck that was its moon, the little ship flew.
Curt Newton’s eyes were queerly abstracted as he sat at the throttles. He spoke to the Brain, slowly.
Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) Page 15