Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Curt brought the Comet to a landing on one of the desolate plains. He exhaled a long breath as he turned off the rockets. It was the first landing they had made since leaving the Moon in their own System, far across the universe.

  “The air is breathable,” reported the Brain, from his check of the atmosphere tester, “but has a high percentage of inert gases.”

  They emerged from the ship and tramped cindery ashes underfoot as they moved aft to view the damage.

  As Captain Future had guessed, the terbium drive-ring had been snapped when the hull was warped by impact of currents. Half of the ring was now missing.

  “We can soon repair the drive ring,” he declared, eyeing the damage, “if we find terbium on this dark star. But terbium is an unlikely element on a dead sun like this —”

  He had turned to wave across the starlit, deathly plain as he spoke, but suddenly stiffened, his voice dying away. Unbelievingly, Curt stared. From Otho came a gasp.

  “Gods of space, what are they?”

  Across the dim, ashen plain, a group of incredible figures advanced toward them.

  Chapter 5: Castaways of the Stars

  THE grotesque creatures approaching them bore a dim resemblance to humanity. In the starlit distance, they looked like stooping, shambling men with stocky bodies and preternaturally long arms. Then Captain Future’s keen eyes apprehended their full strangeness.

  These were not men. Their bodies, even the hairless heads, were of gray, mineraline substance resembling asbestos. Their arms each ended, not in a fingered hand, but in a great curved claw like that of a pick. And their faces were flat and unhuman, with huge-pupiled shining eyes and wide mouths equipped with enormous grinding-fangs.

  “I can’t be seeing these things for I haven’t been drinking!” gasped Otho. “Last time I saw anything like these was when I had too many radium highballs that night on Uranus.”

  “They look as though they may have been human once,” Curt muttered. “But look at that one!”

  He was calling attention to the peculiar action of one of the mineral-men. The group of creatures was steadily approaching the Comet, their blank, shining eyes fixed upon the Futuremen. But one of the gray mineral-men had stopped and with a quick motion, had used his claw-like “hand” to dig out a chunk of gleaming ore from the cindery plain. The creature thrust it into his mouth, ground it between his massive teeth, swallowed the pulverized rock and came on with the others.

  “Good Lord, they eat rock, just like Eek!” yelped Otho. “Let me out of here! I don’t crave to tangle with guys who chew up a nice piece of iron ore for breakfast.”

  The Brain’s rasping voice came, coolly interested.

  “Obviously, these creatures can ingest their food-elements in the rawest forms. They’re an extreme instance of adaptation to an unusual habitat.”

  “They’re a lot of nightmares!” Grag declared. “I don’t like the way they’re coming on.”

  The mineral-men were now advancing in a rapid, shuffling trot, low humming cries came from their throats, and that the Comet and the Futuremen were the object of their advance could not be doubted.

  “Stand by for trouble!” Curt said tersely. “I think they’re after some of the chemical elements, either in our ship or ourselves.”

  He raised his proton-pistol in a warning gesture. But the shining-eyed caricatures of humanity appeared not to comprehend the menace of the weapon. They only quickened their advance. Curt sensed the weird-ness of the scene — these gray humanoid horrors shuffling toward them across the starlit, ashen plain of the dead sun. But it was time to act. He drew aim on the foremost of the mineral-men and triggered swiftly. The thin blue beam of the proton-pistol lanced through the shoulder of the creature like a bolt of lightning. But the thing did not even flinch. It came on with the others, its two claw-like hands raised toward the Futuremen. Curt shot again, this time into the breast of the mineral-man. The creature did not stop or fall.

  “Holy sun-imps!” yelped Otho as he too shot without effect. “Their bodies are so different, they don’t even feel our beams!”

  “Back to the ship!” yelled Captain Future, now thoroughly alarmed. “We’d better get out of here.”

  IT WAS too late. With a final rush, the mineral-men reached them. Two of the gray horrors seized big Grag and endeavored to tear his metal body apart with their huge claws.

  Grag, bellowing furiously, balled his mighty fists and hammered his attackers with blows that would have felled a Jovian elephant. The creatures were knocked away, but they and others leaped back on the robot, bore him to the ground.

  “Pull them off Grag!” Curt yelled to Otho, springing forward.

  With indomitable courage, Captain Future seized the rough, mineraline body of one of the attackers and sought to tear him loose.

  The creature appeared not even to feel his efforts. And a moment later, great claws seized Curt from behind, and he was torn away by another of the creatures. With a yell of warning to Otho, Captain Future twisted skillfully free before those grotesque claws could rip him to shreds. But Otho was hard put to keep himself from being torn apart. The mass of the creatures still piled upon Grag, clawing at the metal body of the angry robot. At this desperate juncture, a loud cry in a human voice smote Curt Newton’s ears. He glanced in the direction from which it came, and saw two men running toward the battle over the starlit plain.

  They were men such as he had never seen before — men with brilliant crimson skins, stiff black hair and garments of black leather secured by red belts. The foremost of the pair was a giant in size, and both he and his companion brandished light metal spears tipped with a sticky, shining substance. The mineral-men uttered humming cries of alarm at sight of the two newcomers. The gray monsters hastily halted their attack on the Futuremen and started a rapid retreat.

  “Who are they?” blurted Otho bewilderedly, staring at the advancing crimson men.

  “The mineral-men seem to know and fear them,” Captain Future rejoined. “Look at that!”

  One of the gray mineral-men, more daring than his companions, turned to attack the crimson-skinned newcomers instead of fleeing. The red giant met the attacking monster with a roar of rage. The crimson man evaded the clutching claws by a quick movement and stabbed at the gray creature with his seemingly puny little spear. The point of the spear hardly more than touched the mineral-man’s breast. But that was enough. The sticky, shining substance smeared on the point of the spear acted like an inconceivably rapid poison. A spreading, shining stain crept quickly across the breast of the monster. It hummed in mingled pain and rage, tore at, its breast and then fell prone. By this time, the other mineral-men had disappeared.

  “Demons of Pluto!” swore Otho, gaping. “These crimson lads know how to deal with those gray fiends.”

  “Those monsters were trying to tear my body apart and eat it!” roared Grag furiously as he got to his feet.

  “A nice lunch you’d have made for them,” flipped Otho. “That old iron carcass of yours would have given them indigestion they’d never forget.”

  Curt Newton paid no attention to them. His whole interest was focused on the two crimson-skinned men who were now approaching them. The hulking giant of the two stopped a few feet from Curt. He was a bristling-haired, massive-faced individual, with bleak, tawny-yellow eyes and the look of a veteran adventurer. His comrade, obviously of the same race, was slighter and younger-looking.

  “They’re obviously of a human race, but one from some other star than our own Sun System,” rasped the Brain, studying them.

  THE crimson giant and his comrade gaped in astonishment at hearing the voice emanate from the floating case of the Brain. They stared at Simon Wright and then at Grag and Otho, in open wonder. Captain Future spoke clearly, holding out his hand in sign of friendship.

  “We thank you for your aid. Can you understand me?”

  The crimson giant shook his head puzzledly. He spoke to Curt, but it was in a language Captain Future had
never heard.

  “Might have known our languages would be completely different,” Curt muttered disappointedly. “I suppose there’s nothing for it but to pick up their speech, if we can,”

  The crimson giant seemed to understand when Curt made signals of inquiry to him. He pointed to his own breast and said loudly, “Hol Jor.”

  Curt having responded, naming himself. Hol Jor repeated the name, “Captain Future,” several times, then grinned in understanding. Then he pointed to his companion and said, “Skur Kal.”

  Then Hol Jor, the crimson-skinned giant, pointed to himself and his companion and then up into the western heavens. His finger stabbed in the direction of the distant red star Antares.

  “Holy sun-imps, he means they’re from Antares!” ejaculated Otho. “It isn’t so far from here as interstellar distances are measured, but how did they get here? And why did they come?”

  Curt already had a suspicion of the answer to the latter question. But he concentrated now upon learning Hol Jor’s language.

  Captain Future was an expert with strange languages. Through long experience on strange worlds, he had perfected a method of learning an alien tongue in the shortest possible time. He now put it into effect. Squatting down with the two Antarians, Curt began a rapid process of vocabulary building. He pointed to objects and Hol Jor gave the Antarian names for them. He performed actions in mimicry, and thus rapidly acquired a stock of verbs. Curt’s phenomenal memory retained each word. By the time they had spent a few hours at this, Captain Future and the Futuremen had acquired a working knowledge of the Antarian tongue.

  Haltingly, Curt asked Hol Jor the question that was uppermost in his mind.

  “What are you two Antarians doing on this dead sun?”

  “We were wrecked and cast away here,” was Hol Jor’s emphatic rejoinder, accompanied by something that sounded like an oath. “Twenty-eight quals ago we drifted onto this accursed dark star.”

  “We are amazed to learn that there is a human race on Antares and that they possess star-ships,” Curt asserted.

  “There are human civilizations on the planets of many stars in this part of the galaxy,” Hol Jor assured him. “It is our tradition that long ago the worlds of many stars were colonized by a parent human stock that had its origin on the planets of yonder star.”

  Hol Jor pointed toward a faint yellow star low on the horizon, which the Futuremen recognized instantly.

  “Deneb!” exclaimed Otho, excitedly. “Chief, remember what we learned on the lost world of Katain — that the original human stock of our System came from Deneb!”

  “Aye,” rasped the Brain. “It is clear that the Denebians of long ago spread the human seed far and wide through the galaxy. What a race of adventurers they must have been!”

  CURT NEWTON felt a new glow of excitement at the thought that there were on the worlds of perhaps countless stars, human races who, in many cases, might have reached an advanced stage of civilization and scientific progress. Hol Jor was asking a question. “From what star do you come?”

  Curt pointed to the tiny spark of his own Sun, barely visible in the low eastern sky.

  “From that star. We call it Sol.”

  Hol Jor’s jaw sagged in astonishment. “You came from there? But that sun as far away across the galaxy. Why, none of us castaways came from so remote a system.”

  Curt seized on his reference.

  “You mean that there are other castaways here beside you two Antarians?”

  “Three others — survivors of different wrecks who managed to reach this cursed sphere,” Hol Jor affirmed. “One is a Vegan, one is from Fomalhaut, and another is a native of one of the stars here in Sagittarius.”

  Hol Jor gave his own names to the stars, but by pointing them out or describing them, made it possible for Curt to identify them.

  “We two Antarians have been castaway here the shortest time,” he continued. “We are the sole survivors of an expedition of ten. We managed to drift to this dark star in space-suits, but the rest of our crew perished when our ship was wrecked trying to enter that cursed cloud.

  He pointed, as he spoke, toward the vast black blot of the cosmic cloud that covered the bigger part of the firmament above — the cloud from which the Futuremen had just escaped perilously.

  Curt stiffened.

  “Why were you trying to enter the cloud?” he asked keenly.

  “To find the Birthplace of Matter, of course,” Hol Jor replied. “Isn’t that why you came to this part of the galaxy?”

  “It is,” Curt admitted. “But we did not dream that men of other stars might be on the same quest.”

  Skur Kal, the younger Antarian, spoke to Captain Future.

  “We desired to find the Birthplace and learn how to make matter from radiation, so that we could revive our dying worlds. Antares is a fading, aging sun. Life is hard on our worlds, and the secret of matter-mastery would make it easy once more.”

  “We are after the same secret for the same reason,” Curt Newton admitted.

  “Of course,” commented Hol Jor unsurprisedly. “The other castaways here were on expeditions with the same purpose. The secret of the hidden Birthplace is a lure that has brought star-explorers here from distant suns for ages, or so old Ber Del says.”

  The big Antarian rose to his feet.

  “Speaking of Ber Del, he and our other friends will be wondering where we are. Let’s go back to our camp, and you can talk to the others yourselves.”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE at once accepted the invitation. He led the way into the Comet. The two Antarians looked around the crowded ship in amazement, and Hol Jor uttered a whistle as he surveyed the great generators of the vibration drive.

  “It looks like terrific motive power you’ve got here, even though I can’t fathom its design,” he declared. “Our own ship used a form of electron jets for propulsion, but we could never have got up to speeds capable of coming as far as you have.”

  “Our drive ring is broken and will have to be repaired — that’s why we landed here,” Curt explained. “But we can travel on rocket drive to your camp.”

  When the Comet rose into the dusky sky, Hol Jor tersely explained the direction of the camp. Grag, at the controls, drove the ship low across the cindery plain.

  In the eternal twilight, the surface of the dark star lay infinitely desolate and deathly. As they scudded above the rolling plains and hills of dun-colored slag and cinders, they sighted a small group of gray mineral-men digging in the ground.

  “What are those creatures, anyway?” Otho demanded of the Antarians. “They look like men, but curse me if I ever saw men who could eat raw rock.”

  “Ber Del, my old Vegan friend here, has a theory about them,” Hol Jor replied. “He thinks that long ago they were ordinary humans who peopled the two planets of this sun. Then when the sun died, and the planets became sheathed in eternal ice, the humans must have moved to this dead star itself, given it a thin artificial atmosphere and used chemical conversion to make food from the rock elements.

  “It’s Ber Del’s idea,” he went on, “that during the course of ages those people gradually evolved the power to ingest the raw rock elements directly into their bodies, and developed claws and teeth capable of digging and grinding the richer rock. Of course, their intelligence would degenerate — they’re little more than brutes, now.”

  “What’s on those spears of yours that kills them so quickly?” Curt asked.

  Skur Kal, the younger Antarian, answered.

  “We castaways discovered that a certain radioactive substance here was poisonous in an extreme degree to the mineral-men. So we made spears tipped with the radioactive poison, to repel them when they attacked us.”

  Hol Jor interrupted, pointing ahead.

  “There’s our camp. Won’t the others be surprised?”

  The camp of the interstellar castaways was in a hollow in the rock plain. The hollow had been gouged by the crash of a large, cylindrical shaped vessel that had be
en shattered into a total wreck.

  “That’s the ship of Ber Del — the other Vegans in his expedition were all killed in the crash,” Hol Jor explained. “Later, when we others drifted here from Wrecks, we found Ber Del living here and joined forces with him. We’ve lived ever since, using the rations in the wreck and utilizing a chemical conversion unit to make water from the rock-elements.”

  The Comet landed nearby, and the Antarians led the Futuremen into the camp. From the shattered wreck, three men came wonderingly forward to meet them. Hol Jor hailed them.

  “A ship at last, mates! Maybe it means we can finally get off this cursed globe!”

  He named the three men, one by one. Ber Del, the old Vegan, was a small, withered, blue-skinned man, completely hairless, with a bulging intellectual-looking skull, and colorless, faded eyes. Taunus Tar, the man from Fomalhaut’s worlds, was a pink-skinned plump, genial looking man of middle age whose small black eyes peered at them incredulously from between crinkling rolls of fat. Ki lllok, the castaway whose home was one of the suns of this Sagittarius region, was a brown man. The Sagittarian was compact, stocky, clipped of speech, brusque of manner. All three star rovers seemed astounded when Hol Jor told them how far across the galaxy the Futuremen had come.

  “These friends all understand my language — we’ve learned each other’s tongue, in the time we’ve been here,” he explained to Curt.

  “You came that far across the universe?” Ki lllok, the brown Sagittarian, repeated unbelievingly to Captain Future. “It’s hard to believe. Yet your companions certainly look alien.”

  “They came looking for the Birthplace of Matter as we did,” shrugged big Hol Jor. “Only they were luckier than we, and didn’t get completely wrecked when they tried to enter the cloud.”

  Ber Del, the withered old Vegan, shook his head. “Many men from different stars have met their deaths in this part of space, drawn by the lure of the Birthplace and the power its secret would give. And who knows — maybe all in vain. Maybe even if we could penetrate the cloud, we wouldn’t be able to reach the Birthplace against the will of the Watchers.”