Captain Future 19 - Outlaw World (Winter 1946)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “Simon, we’ve got to reach that wreck!” Joan Randall said quickly. “Curt may be on it, hurt!”

  “We may be able to catch it before the currents sweep it into the Sargasso,” muttered the Brain. He asked for data of the drifting wreck’s course, and calculated swiftly. “There’s a chance we can head it off, if we hurry!”

  He gave Otho the new bearings. The android instantly jammed the cyc pedal to the floor and twisted the space-stick. The Comet darted away like a flash.

  “You chaps stay here and keep huntin’ the raiders!” Ezra called to the Patrol cruisers. “Your ships couldn’t buck the currents.”

  “I only hope the Comet doesn’t have to buck that inner maelstrom.” muttered Otho. “The two times we went into the Sargasso before, we had the Chief’s knowledge of the currents to get us out, and then we barely made it.”

  The Comet was shuddering violently as it tore through the powerful ether currents. It required all Otho’s superlative skill to keep the racing ship on its course.

  ETHER currents, the name given by spacemen to the complex cosmic phenomenon more accurately known as space warps, were always feared by interplanetary navigators. Most dreaded of all were the powerful currents which had received the name of the Sargasso Sea of Space. Few ships sucked into that area ever returned.

  The Futuremen had enough past experience with the ghostly place to make them dread being drawn into it. And even if they managed to escape it, it would mean a grave delay.

  “No sign of the Orion yet,” reported Grag from the lookout lens.

  “Faster, Otho!” ordered the Brain. “Use all the power we have.”

  “Hold your hats, then,” Otho warned grimly, as his foot pressed the cyc pedal deeper. “We’re hitting the big currents now.”

  The Comet leaped forward with a roar. Giant hands seemed to be batting it this way and that as they entered the stronger currents.

  Joan Randall watched tensely with Simon through the windows. So old a comrade was he that she had no thought of the strange contrast of her own slim figure with the boxlike Brain.

  The stout metal frame of the Comet creaked and protested. The rockets roared in staccato thunder. Eek fled to the shelter of Grag’s shoulder, cowering there terrified.

  “There’s the wreck ahead!” Grag boomed suddenly.

  In a moment they all sighted the wrecked freighter which the mighty currents were bearing at high speed toward the graveyard of space. They rapidly began to overhaul it. Then they saw the name clear on its bows, and that the whole lower deck had been ripped out by an explosion.

  “Stand by to cast our grapples, Grag!” shouted Otho. “We’ll search the wreck.”

  He drove the Comet abreast of the wrecked freighter. Grag yanked a lever that released machinery which hurled magnetic grapples and cables toward the wreck. The grapples fastened to the wreck, and winches automatically brought the ship of the Futuremen right beside the Orion.

  “I’ll try to hold back against the currents as much as possible while you search the wreck!” cried Otho. “But make it fast! We’re being sucked deeper into the Sargasso by thousands of miles a minute!”

  Joan and Ezra already had on their space-suits. Grag and Simon needed no suits, for they were not oxygen-breathers. The four hastily opened the space-door and clambered through the torn side of the Orion.

  The wreck was threatening to collapse altogether beneath rushing ether currents. Their time was limited.

  Dead bodies lay everywhere. Officers and crew had been ruthlessly gunned down by the radium raiders. Joan ran wildly up to the telaudio room. But there were no bodies in it.

  They began a hasty inspection of the slain. When it was completed, they looked at each other with mingled perplexity and relief.

  “Curt isn’t here!” Joan cried. “Then he’s not dead, at any rate!”

  The Brain spoke sharply. “Then Ru Ghur penetrated his disguise and discovered he was Captain Future. Everyone else aboard the Orion was killed, which means that Ru Ghur, recognizing Captain Future, took him with him as a prisoner.”

  “Seems to me that fat Uranian devil would kill Cap’n Future soon as he spotted him, he hates you Futuremen so much!” exclaimed Ezra Gurney.

  “Simon’s right,” boomed Grag. “Ru Ghur’s got some devil’s scheme in mind that led him to take the Chief prisoner.”

  Otho’s voice broke in upon them, through the short-range telaudio by which they communicated when in space-suits.

  “Don’t wait there to talk now! Get back to the Comet. We’ve got to get out of here now, if ever.”

  The wreck and the ship of the Futuremen, bound together, were rushing through space at frightful speed despite all Otho’s efforts. Stumbling and staggering they clambered back into their own ship.

  “Release the grapples, Grag!” cried Otho.

  The robot obeyed and the Comet swung clear of the wreck.

  “Out of here at full speed!” ordered the Brain. “We’re dangerously near the Sargasso!”

  The cyclotrons roared a titan song of power as the Comet plumed a brilliant tail of atomic flame, all its stern rockets blazing as it fought to breast the raging currents. But they were standing still, making no progress. The currents would not let go so easily.

  BUT with frequent short blasts of the lateral tubes, Otho was edging the Comet out of the most powerful part of the current. Then they began to fight slowly outward. Soon they were plunging through the lesser currents at high speed.

  “This is better,” Joan said. “I thought we’d never get free.”

  The Comet was functioning smoothly now, the raging currents left far behind its tail flame.

  Otho handled the controls with skill and dexterity. But he was plainly still filled with apprehension concerning the difficult problem that confronted them.

  His concern showed in the way he lost no time in posing his question once the Comet was out of danger.

  He raised his voice.

  “Now how are we going to find the Chief?” Otho demanded anxiously.

  “He is a prisoner of Ru Ghur’s raiders,” pointed out the Brain: “That means that we’ll have to find them.”

  “Them devils are millions of miles away by now,” Ezra Gurney said rather discouragedly.

  “And we don’t even know that Outlaw World is inside the System!” exclaimed Joan, appalled.

  They all felt a little overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. The Planet Patrol, with its hundreds of cruisers, had been unable to catch Ru Ghur or locate his mysterious base. There was every indication that Outlaw World could not be in the Solar System. And if it were in some alien dimension or star system, a search was hopeless. The vastness of the cosmos would mock their attempts.

  “What are we going to do?” burst out Grag. “We can’t search the whole universe for Ru Ghur!”

  “I still believe that Outlaw World is somewhere between Vulcan an’ Pluto,” muttered Ezra stubbornly.

  “It can’t be, Ezra!” expostulated Otho. “The Planet Patrol has searched every world and moon in the System for months without finding it.”

  “I don’t think we can find Ru Ghur’s mysterious base, in time to save Curtis,” the Brain said thoughtfully. “But Ru Ghur could find us.”

  “What in thunder do you mean, Simon?” demanded Grag.

  Simon Wright briefly explained a daring plan he had in mind.

  “It’ll be dangerous, but it might work!” Ezra exclaimed.

  “It’s worth any risk if it gives us a lead to Curt!” Joan cried.

  Otho glanced around inquiringly. The Brain gestured with his beams toward the broad window beyond which lay a black abyss in which the asteroid zone and Jupiter and Mars stood out clearly.

  “That way, Otho. I’ll give you the exact course as soon as I compute it. And hurry!”

  Chapter 6: In the Moon Forest

  MENACINGLY crouched in the door of the raider cruiser on nighted Leda, Captain Future shot swiftly and accurately at the raide
rs who were running forward in answer to Ru Ghur’s order.

  The crackling bolts of atomic energy dropped two of them and the rest fell back for a moment. Curt swung around with the idea of trying to start the cycs and take the Falcon off into space. But Bork King, the big Martian outlaw leader who still stood in the corridor with his hands bound, shouted a warning.

  “More are coming from the cyc room! They’ve got us between them!”

  Ru Ghur had, with his usual caution, left the cyclotron crews in the ship, ready to start up the craft at any urgent necessity. Hearing the shooting, those cyc men of the raider ship were pouring up along the corridor.

  Captain Future shot a thundering blast down the corridor that drove them back. But he knew it would not be for long. They knew they would rapidly find weapons and come plunging back.

  He swung on Bork King.

  “You’re with me against Ru Ghur’s raiders?” he demanded, and at the big Martian’s nod. “Then come on we’ve got to get out of here!”

  In an instant he had torn loose the Martian’s wrist bonds. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, Curt Newton and the towering Martian darted out of the ship into the planet-lit glade of giant flowers.

  It was their only possible chance of escape, Curt knew. To linger a moment longer would be to he hopelessly surrounded by the raiders.

  “They’re breaking for the forest!” Ru Ghur’s voice yelled. “Get them!”

  Captain Future flung an atom-blast in that direction from his pistol, in the fierce hope of hitting the Uranian, but knew that he had not.

  Gun blasts were crisscrossing the silver-lit glade, reverberating crashingly. Bork King had snatched up the weapon of one of the fallen raiders as they had run past, and the big Martian was triggering with a speed almost matching Captain Future’s as they flung themselves toward the shelter of the forest.

  Raiders tumbled and died there amid the giant flowers. Fierce voices yelled with rage or shrieked in agony. But the next moment Curt Newton and the big Martian were in the shadowy shelter of the thickets.

  “Come on!” cried Curt. “They’ll be after us!”

  Roars of rage had broken from scores of throats as the raiders had seen their prisoners escape. The next instant, a ragged volley of atom-blasts tore through the thicket behind them. They heard Ru Ghur’s whining yell as the Uranian led his men in pursuit.

  Bork King turned fiercely. “I’m not going to run and let that fat toad take my radium,” he snarled.

  “Don’t be a fool!” cried Curt Newton. “We’ve no chance against that mob! You won’t get your radium back by getting killed!”

  That somewhat tempered the rage of the Martian outlaw and he lunged forward with the young Earthman through the dense underbrush.

  As they ran beneath the towering tree-flowers, more atom-blasts crackled perilously close through the thickets around them. And they heard Ru Ghur’s raging voice still calling to his men.

  Beneath the towering giant flowers, the jungle of trailing lianas and vines and shrubs was almost impassable to the two men. Curt’s heart hammered his ribs from exertion.

  He and Bork King burst into a glade of giant lilies, whose trunk-like stalks rose far above their heads to support enormous white flowers that nodded in the silvery planet glow. This glade was criss-crossed by innumerable thick, transparent cables.

  “Back!” cried Bork King warningly as he saw the network of glistening cables. “That’s a moon spider’s web!”

  As he uttered the warning, Curt Newton saw a black, monstrous shape rising from a cavity in the ground which was the focus of the huge web.

  His hair bristled at sight of the creature. It was a spider whose hairy, bulbous body was of cart horse size, and whose great limbs ran like catlike swiftness over the cables of its web as it charged in their direction.

  “Don’t shoot — it can’t come off its web!” Bork King told Curt as the young Earthman flung up his atom-pistol. “Listen!”

  The Martian had turned his gaze away from the monstrous moon spider, which had reached the end of its web and was crouched, glaring at them with evilly opalescent red eyes.

  TO THEIR ears came the crash of a large group of men through the brush, and the calling of brutal voices. Their pursuers were close behind them.

  “Devils of Deimos, we’re cornered!” raged the big Martian outlaw. “We can’t get across this glade, and before we can get around it through the brush, they’ll hear us and will be on us!”

  To Curt Newton’s mind came a sudden possibility. Instantly, he whipped off his jacket. He lightly scratched his arm with a sharp projection of his atom-pistol, and let it bleed on the jacket. Then he fired his gun into the air.

  “Now scream!” he whispered urgently to Bork King. “As though you were being tortured to death!”

  Uncomprehending, the Martian nevertheless obeyed. His and Curt’s voices rose in shrieks of raw, quivering agony.

  Yells of triumph came from the pursuers, as Ru Ghur’s men heard the atom-blast and screams, and started beating toward them.

  Captain Future flung his bloodied jacket toward the moon spider. The hairy monster pounced on it as it hit the web, and began to tear at it.

  “What the devil —” gasped Bork King, still uncomprehending.

  “Up this tree flower, quick!” cried Curt Newton in a low voice, dragging the Martian toward one of the giant lilies. “We can hide up there.”

  They scrambled up the thick trunk until they gained a high crotch from which heavy branches forked out to support the huge flowers. Each of these giant flowers was a thick, tough cup ten feet in diameter. Captain Future clambered into one of the lily cups and his companion followed his example just as Ru Ghur and his men poured into the glade below. They could look right down upon the raiders.

  “Look out — there’s a moon spider!” yelled the Uranian as he caught sight of the hairy monster in the web. “Kill the beast!”

  His own gun flashed a streak of fire. But the huge spider, moving with incredible swiftness as the gun blasted, streaked back along its shining web and disappeared into its pit before the rest could fire.

  “Here’s the jacket of one of them!” exclaimed Kra Kol, the Saturnian. Moving forward cautiously, he picked up the torn, bloody garment. “The moon spider must have got them when they blundered into its web.”

  “So that’s why they shot and screamed.” Ru Ghur nodded. “The beast devoured them before they had a chance to escape.”

  Captain Future, peering down from the big lily cup high above, saw the fat Uranian looking musingly at the ripped jacket.

  “Well,” he heard Ru Ghur murmur, “this is a strange end for a long and brilliant career.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” muttered Kra Kol. “I don’t like these cursed flower jungles.”

  Ru Ghur shrugged, and led the way back in the direction from which they had come. In a few moments Curt and Bork King slid down to the ground.

  “That was close, and it was cursed clever of you,” said Bork King to Curt. “What’s your name, Earthman?”

  Captain Future knew better than to let his real identity be known now. Bork King was an outlaw, one of the Companions of Space. And all that pirate brotherhood hated Captain Future as their bitterest enemy.

  Nor could he count on the Martian’s gratitude for having helped him escape from Ru Ghur. Hastily, he dissembled.

  “I’m Jan Dark,” he said. “I was one of Zarastra’s crew.”

  Zarastra had been a famous space pirate captain who had had been trapped and destroyed with most of his force by the Planet Patrol only a few weeks before.

  “When the Patrol caught Zarastra’s ships off Titan, I escaped the wreckage in a space-suit,” Curt went on. “That devil Ru Ghur picked me up and was holding me prisoner. He thought Zarastra had buried radium treasure and was going to make me tell about it.”

  Bork King extended a big hand. “You sure saved my neck, Jan Dark. And I’m not the man to forget a debt.”


  “You don’t owe me anything,” Curt denied. “All I want is to get my hands on that Uranian devil for what he did to me.”

  Even as he spoke there came suddenly to their ears the distant sound of an explosion.

  “What the devil?” exclaimed Bork King, his craggy face stiffening. “That came from the camp!”

  ALMOST instantly, the explosion was followed by a distant roar of rocket-tubes. And they glimpsed four cruisers rising above the flower forest and darting up into the night sky.

  “There go Ru Ghur and his raiders, curse him!” cried the Martian. “If they’ve taken my radium I’ll get them!”

  He plunged back toward the camp. Captain Future followed him closely.

  “Fiends of Mars!” swore Bork King as they burst into the planet-lit clearing of the flame rose glade. “Look at what they’ve done!”

  The cruisers of the radium raiders were gone, Bork King’s men still lay unconscious around the ground beneath the giant flowers, as before. But an explosion had blown out the whole stern of the Martians’ cruiser, the Red Hope.

  “Ru Ghur exploded your ship’s cycs so you and your men couldn’t get away!” Captain Future said quickly.

  The big Martian was already hastening into the battered ship. He ran to the cabin in which his looted radium had been stored. It was gone.

  Bork King’s broad shoulders seemed to sag, and a look of tragedy came upon his massive face. His eyes were dull with misery.

  “Gone — every gram of it!” he muttered. “And we went through months of hardship and danger to gather that radium together.”

  “It could have been worse,” Curt pointed out. “You might have lost your lives, as well as your loot.”

  “That radium wasn’t mere loot!” snapped Bork King. “It’s true that we took it by force from its original owners, but it wasn’t because of greed.”

  Captain Future looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t understand. I thought you were pirates, like myself.”

  “We’re outlaws, not pirates,” retorted the Martian. “Oh, legally we’re guilty of piracy. But we had to have radium, and had to use force to get it, since for months Ru Ghur’s raiders have swept up the whole supply.”