And the minutes were ticking by toward the fateful moment when Vulcan would blast out of its age-old orbit, with all the appalling consequences to the life of the Solar System that would bring!
Chapter 20: Dark Battle
VAINLY struggling Captain Future shook to the apocalyptic vision of the dread disaster that rushed through his mind. Soon those colossal cyclotrons would start throbbing, and the energies they derived from radium fuel would rush through the underground power pipes to the rocket-tubes in the pits.
The awful blast would tear Vulcan out of its orbit — and this little world would become an Outlaw World in direst truth. A pirate planetoid, speeding out through the System to loot the civilized planets. Behind it, Mercury would be dislodged and spiral slowly into the Sun to cause the explosion that would wipe out half the System.
“I can’t let it happen!” Curt Newton thought wildly. “There must be some way to stop it!”
He made more desperate efforts to wrench free of his chains, but with no result except to further bruise his already bleeding wrists.
As though to mock his despair, Ru Ghur was at the tall switchboard inspecting chronometers, gauges and switches. Joan had gone to the Uranian’s side and was watching in a lackadaisical way.
“It will soon be time to start the big cycs,” Ru Ghur was saving. “They must be running full capacity when we fire the first blast.”
Suddenly all the krypton lights in the citadel went out. They were plunged into smothering darkness.
“The Randall girl tore out the wires of the light circuit!” Ru Ghur’s yell pierced the dark. “Grab her!”
There was a whirling confusion in the darkness — running feet, shouting raiders, wailing Vulcanian slaves.
Captain Future was thunderstruck. Had Joan’s ray-drugged mind already been brought back to normal by Simon out there in the Comet? No, that was impossible. She had not been away long enough for that.
Curt felt a hand suddenly jam an atom-pistol into his belt.
“Lean forward in your chains, all three of you!” a familiar voice whispered in his ear. “I’ll blast you free with my gun.”
“Otho!” Curt whispered back, but had no time to question the android’s mystifying reappearance. Here was the desperate chance for which he had hoped.
He leaned forward to the limit of the chains. A gun’s atom-blast crashed and he felt the chains part. As he tore them from his wrists, the atom-gun crashed twice again.
“Future and the others are breaking loose!” shrilled RuGhur. “Block the doorway! And find that girl and kill her!”
Captain Future faced a terrible choice there. His every instinct cried for him to find Joan and assure her safety. But if he did, and missed the chance to wreck Ru Ghur’s titanic and terrible scheme, he would be betraying his duty to the System. In a torturing breath that seemed an eternity, he made his choice.
“Otho! Grag! Bork! Make for the door! We’re crashing out!”
He heard Grag’s metal feet and the lithe stride of the android as they blundered through the dark doorway. They crashed into raiders swarming to block the door.
Grag’s mighty arms whirled and the vaguely glimpsed enemies went down like tenpins. Curt, Grag, and Otho burst out into the night.
Curt was wild with fear for Joan, whom he was leaving in deadly peril in that dark room. But he did not waver in his desperate resolution.
“The gun platform on the central dome!” he cried hoarsely. “If we can let the Vulcanian warriors in we’ve got a chance!”
The court was almost as dark as the room they had quitted. But, searchlights suddenly sliced white beams through the obscurity. The searchlights were on the raider cruisers, which had been about to take off on the search for the Comet.
“Get those lights!” yelled Captain Future.
He plunged across the court shooting at the ships. The streaks of blasting force from his atom-pistol smashed out two of the searchlights. He heard Otho’s gun crash, and the other two lights went out.
Raiders streamed out of the ships, running toward them, their guns blazing.
The fiery blasts crisscrossed in front of Curt as he reached the stair that led to the gun platform.
He went up the stair shooting, for he had glimpsed the two raiders now on guard there swinging around the heavy atom-guns. These two dropped lifeless beneath their weapons.
“Don’t use those heavy guns on the citadel!” Curt yelled to Crag and Otho. “Give the signal to Kah!”
The heavy atom-guns would bring the citadel crashing down on all within it. It was not only of Joan’s safety that he was thinking, but also of Bork King, and the pitiful Vulcanian slaves.
CURT was fumbling with the base of the big Lethe-ray projector. He counted on it being on a different circuit than the krypton lights, and he was right. For when his fingers closed the switch, he heard the generator of the deadly ray begin its deep hum.
Otho’s pistol crashed five times into the air. And that signal was answered by a roar of hundreds of fierce voices out in the dark forests.
“They’re coming up the stair!” yelled Grag.
Other searchlights had come on from the raider ships, their white beams lighting up the courtyard. Curt Newton glimpsed the mass of raiders pressing up the stair toward him.
Deafening blasts of atomic fire streaked past his head as the raiders turned loose their guns. But instantly Curt swung the Lethe-ray projector to point straight down at them. The invisible beam stopped them in their tracks. They staggered and collapsed, lying sprawled in heaps. The Lethe-ray, suddenly dazing them with drugging dreams, had knocked them out of the battle.
Captain Future heard a new voice yell out in the dark.
“Strike down the evil ones! Kill them all!”
Kah and his Vulcanian warriors were coming over the wall! Savage tribesmen, spears raised, were finally getting a chance to avenge themselves on Ru Ghur’s brutal band.
Raiders, seeing that horde breaking in, turned to fire at these savage attackers. Others inside the citadel were lunging out to join the fighting.
Captain Future swung the invisible, super-powered Lethe-ray upon them. As its potent beam leaped from one to another, the raiders sagged dazedly.
Kah and Vulcanians rushed forward to kill them.
“Kah, don’t kill them — just disarm them!” Curt Newton shouted down. “They’re harmless now!”
For a moment it looked as though Kah would not be able to restrain his warriors from wreaking a bloody vengeance. Then slowly they obeyed, disarming the stunned men.
“We’ve smashed them!” Grag bellowed joyfully.
“Ru Ghur’s still in the citadel and Joan is too!” Curt cried hoarsely, plunging toward the stair.
“Joan is safe, Chief!” called Otho. “Look!”
Curt swung around. His jaw dropped in amazement. By the beams of the searchlights, he saw that behind him were Grag and Joan, and no one else.
“Joan, how did you get here?” he cried. “Where’s Otho?”
Joan performed a startling action then. “She” raised a hand to wipe make-up from her face, snatched away false dark hair. The hairless white head and pale face of Otho confronted them. He grinned at their amazement.
“I was the Joan who came back to the citadel,” he said. “During the fight in the dark, you couldn’t see me.”
Curt was stunned. “You always were a master of disguise,” he muttered, “but this one fooled me completely. But where is Joan?”
“In the Comet,” Otho answered. “By now, Simon will have made her mind clear again. She was so drugged she struggled all the way, and set off the alarms. But once I got her to the ship I disguised myself and came back to the citadel. Ru Ghur allowed her freedom because she was so helpless. That would give me a chance, in her guise, to help you.”
“You did more than just help, Otho,” Curt said feelingly. “All the credit for preventing disaster belongs to you.” Then he suddenly remembered. “But Ru Ghur’s stil
l down in the citadel!”
“What if the defeated Uranian should fire the great rocket-tubes in a final gesture of hate!”
They forced their way through the crowded courtyard, where Kah’s warriors were joyfully greeting the Vulcanian slaves. They burst into the citadel. The vast room of cyclotrons was still dark and silent. Otho groped at the switchboard until he restored the light circuit he had torn away. The kryptons came on, lighting the room with blue brilliance.
“Gods of space!” exclaimed Grag. “Bork King —”
The giant Martian was on his knees, a bloody, terrible figure, his side and shoulder blasted by new wounds, but his massive red face still flamed, with the light of vengeance.
“I stayed here to find Ru Ghur,” he muttered thickly. “I found him.”
The Uranian lay upon the floor. His neck had been broken by Bork King’s great hands. He was dying. His fading eyes looked up at them dully, and his lips moved.
“You’ve won, Future,” he whispered. “I always wished you were on my side.”
The whisper dribbled into nothingness. The brilliant intellect that had almost wrecked the Solar System had gone into darkness...
TWO days later, the Comet lay in the citadel courtyard ready for departure from Vulcan. The Futuremen had destroyed the great rocket-tubes, power pipes and cyclotrons upon which Ru Ghur’s Vulcanian slaves had labored for so many months. Now those slaves had been restored to their people. And Kah and all the Vulcanian were here to see the departure of the Futuremen.
“We will be back soon, with other ships,” Curt Newton assured them, “For we must restore the stolen radium to its owners. And when the System Government learns that this inhabited world exists inside Vulcan, and that ships can find copper here to refuel, many more will come.
“We shall keep the evil ones prisoned until you return,” Kah told him.
That evil, thoroughly cowed band, would face the courts of the System Government.
Bork King, slowly recovering from his wounds, was remaining in Vulcan.
“I’ll keep watch over that radium till you come for it,” he offered. “I’m a Guardian of Mars, and part of that radium means life for my planet.” He had squared his big shoulders as he added, “When the radium is safely back in the pump station of my world, I’ll be ready to face my trial for piracy.”
“Bork,” Curt Newton had told him, “after the System hears my story, any court that didn’t acquit you and your men would be mobbed!”
The big Martian had grinned. “You made a pretty good pirate yourself.”
He and the Vulcanian waved farewell as the Comet rose toward the brilliant splendor of the Beam. The fuel bunkers were bulging with copper now, and the anti-heaters hummed as they entered the scorching glare of solar radiance.
Curt swung the little ship Earthward as soon as they emerged above Vulcan’s molten surface.
From the cabin came loud voices raised in argument. Ezra Gurney had slyly provoked Grag and Otho into the perpetual dispute over the merits of their respective pets.
“And furthermore,” Otho was shouting, “I warn you that I refuse to go anywhere again if you take that cowardly moon pup with you.”
“Fine!” bellowed Grag’s angry voice. “We’d all rather have Eek along than a cocky rubberoid imitation of a man and his miserable mascot!”
Curt Newton, for the first time in many days, had a laugh on his lips as he drew Joan closer to his side.
“At last I’m getting back to normal peace and quiet!” he said.
THE END
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Captain Future 19 - Outlaw World (Winter 1946) Page 14