Down the hall toward the throne-dais at its farther end strode the eight star-rovers. Upon one side of Captain Future marched Otho, insolently staring around the crowd. On his other side stalked the mighty metal form of Grag. Close behind them came the swaggering star captains — hulking Hol Jor and his Antarian companion, fat, waddling Taunus Tar, tight-faced, brown Ki Illok, and old Ber Del, the blue Vegan. Curt Newton halted before the throne-dais and looked up calmly at the man and woman who sat in silver chairs facing him.
“The star-strangers from outside the cloud, highness!” Uzhur was announcing. “Strangers, King Larstan and Queen Liane!”
Curt felt a shock of amazement as he looked at the king. He had expected some aggressive, bullying, half-barbarian ruler. But Larstan was a handsome young man, his dark hair brushed sleekly back from his high forehead. His pale green face wore an almost sleepy expression, his lids drooping over dark eyes that studied Curt Newton and his comrades with apparent disinterest.
“Intelligent — too intelligent,” Captain Future thought sharply. “It won’t be easy to fool this man!”
He bowed politely to Larstan and his queen. The woman was hardly more than a girl, her perfect, pale-green face extraordinarily beautiful in its frame of dark hair, her haughty eyes showing a flicker of interest as they rested on Curt Newton’s tall form and tanned face. Larstan’s handsome face was smooth and impassive as he considered Curt’s group. His voice was velvety.
“Uzhur says that you have come here in search of secrets of the universe, strangers. Just what secret is it that you seek”
“He thinks we’re hunting the Birthplace!” Curt thought quickly. “But he can’t be sure —”
Aloud, Captain Future spoke blandly. “We had heard vague rumors of marvelous things here inside the cloud and wished to see if they were true. So we came, from different outside stars, into this place.”
“Was one of the tales you heard a tale of the Birthplace of Matter?” Larstan suddenly asked him.
“Yes, that was one of the tales. Can you tell me, is there any truth to it?”
Larstan laughed softly. “I like you, stranger — you are not stupid. Yes, the Birthplace of Matter exists here within the cloud.”
“Have you Korians been able to learn the secret of matter-creation from it?” Captain Future asked. He hung tensely upon the answer.
Before Larstan could answer, Ber Del, the old Vegan, made a fatal interruption. He whispered loudly to Curt.
“Ask about the Watchers.”
Larstan and Uzhur and all the other nearby Korians heard. And the effect upon them of the old Vegan’s words was astounding. They were stricken into a dead silence, an unnatural hush falling on the hall. Then Larstan jumped to his feet, his dark eyes blazing in tigerish suspicion at Curt. “What do you know about the Watchers?”
Chapter 9: In the Palace Dungeons
THE BRAIN waited for some time after Captain Future and the others had left, before moving from the table on which he rested. Then he rose smoothly into the air.
“Now to see if there’s a way out of this trap we’re in,” Simon muttered to himself.
The Brain detested action. His icy mentality, almost completely divorced from ordinary emotions by his lack of a human body, took its chief delight in scientific speculation and experiment. He would often remain motionless, brooding for hours on end, wrapped in some intricate problem.
But one emotion still beat strongly in the mind of Simon Wright. That was his utter devotion to Captain Future. Since the long-dead day upon the Moon when he and Grag and Otho had undertaken the guardianship of the helpless infant who then was Curtis Newton, the devotion of the Brain to his brilliant pupil had never wavered. It was anxiety for Curt’s safety that now spurred Simon into action. He glided softly across the room, moving with a smooth effortlessness upon his traction beams. Those magnetic beams, which Simon could jet from apertures in his square case in any direction, not only gave him great powers of free movement, but could also be used as arms and hands. He made a weird sight as he softly approached the door, opened it by means of one of his beams and peered down the corridor outside with his lens-like eyes.
“As I expected,” he murmured to himself, closing the door. “These Korians are taking no chances.”
A dozen Korian guards were still on duty in the corridor outside. Exit by that way was impossible. So Simon turned toward the windows.
He examined the latticework of silvery metal outside the windows. Its interstices were much too small to permit him to pass through. Investigation showed him that the metal bars of the lattices were extremely heavy, composed of an unknown alloy of great hardness and strength which would resist almost any force.
“This suite,” the Brain decided, “is a disguised prison, as we thought. But there still remain the ventilation tubes.”
He directed his effortless movement toward the square opening high in the copper wall of this corner chamber. Hovering outside it, he peered and listened intently for a few minutes. The aperture was obviously the mouth of a ventilating tube. A constant current of cool, fragrant air poured out of it. The aperture was not barred, for it was too small for a man to enter. But the Brain could enter it! He found by cautious test that his square case would pass through the opening into the squared tube behind it, with a few inches of room to spare.
“There must be a network of such tubes inside the walls of this palace,” he thought. “And if I can find a way outside —”
Without hesitation, he glided into the darkness of the tube. It dropped vertically, inside the wall. The Brain sank cautiously down its shaft upon his traction beams, hearing the rush of air pumped upward all around him. The tube joined a larger, horizontal duct. Simon entered this, proceeding in a westerly direction somewhere within a wall that he estimated was on the ground floor of the great palace. Then he heard an ever louder whistle of air, and detected a pumping sound from ahead.
“Just what I was afraid of,” he thought annoyedly. “Perhaps I can get past, though.”
He had come to two of the power-driven fans which pumped the air upward through the ducts. The whirring fans completely blocked the tube, being set side by side in the large duct.
SIMON cautiously glided along the duct until he was a few feet from the left fan. He peered toward it. The darkness was absolute, yet the Brain could see a little even in utter darkness, for his lens-eyes embodied an ingenious infra-red sensitivity. The whirring fan was powered by a small atomic motor sunk in the side of the duct. Simon used two of his tractor beams to take the cover off this motor. A turn of a screw was sufficient to close the injector valve of its tiny cyclotron unit. The motor gradually died and the left fan stopped its whirling.
The Brain approached and began to disassemble the left fan from its mounting. He made a strange picture, hovering in the dark duct within the palace wall, working deftly with his tractor beams. He finally got the whole left fan and housing out, leaving one half of the big duct open.
“Better leave the right fan working,” he muttered to himself as he glided forward in the duct. “They’d soon notice if the pumping of air through these tubes stopped completely.”
Twenty feet farther along the duct, the Brain emerged suddenly into the open night. At once, he darted back into the concealment of the duct.
From that point, he studied his situation. The mouth of this duct was in the northern facade of the palace, near ground level. The tube was designed to suck in fresh air at this point, by the help of the fans. Before the Brain lay the obscurity of the palace gardens. Tall, graceful trees and beautiful flowering shrubs were silhouetted against the hazy, glowing sky.
From, the palace above him came a distant sound of laughter, song, clinking glasses.
“It’s a way out, but only for me,” Simon thought. “I don’t see how this is going to help much.”
He decided to retrace his way to their chambers and report his findings to the others when they returned. The tubes along which he ret
urned were now less noisy, due to his stopping of the fan. As he glided over the mouth of one of the branch tubes leading downward, the Brain heard an unexpected sound, A low sobbing came from one of the downward tubes, so faint as to be almost inaudible even to his keen microphone-ears. The Brain, intrigued, decided to investigate.
He dropped softly down that particular tube, found that this ventilation duct opened into the ceiling of a small, windowless cell deep in the underground levels of the palace. Faint light came from a door loophole. He could dimly make out the interior of the cell. In one corner, a slim girl lay sobbing. But some consciousness of watching eyes made her suddenly spring to her feet and look around. She instantly glimpsed the square case of the Brain, floating above her.
“Make no sound,” warned Simon quickly in a rasping whisper.
He had divined at once, from the fact that this was a dungeon, that the girl was a prisoner. She stood now, looking up at him, wide eyes peering incredulously.
“What — who — are you?” she whispered, awed by the unhuman appearance of the floating Brain, whose lens-eyes were fixed on her.
Simon Wright was thinking swiftly as he took in her appearance. This girl was white, not green-skinned like the natives of Kor.
HER bright yellow hair, cut short at her shoulders, glimmered through the semi-darkness. He could hardly more than glimpse her pale, strained face and dilated eyes. Her garment was a knee-length white kirtle and tunic that left her legs and arms and shoulders bare.
“You’re some new device of Larstan’s to torture me,” she said bitterly after a moment, in the language of Kor.
“You are Larstan’s prisoner?” the Brain asked her.
She paid him no attention. “So the Korians try now to torment me with speaking machines,” she said. “Do they think such a childish device will shatter my resistance?”
“Listen to me, girl,” rasped the Brain. “I am no machine. My human brain lives and speaks to you from within this case. Nor am I a friend or tool of the king of Kor. I and my comrades are ourselves detained by the Korians, upon whose world we landed for the first time today.”
The girl seemed unconvinced. “If you are strangers to Kor, where did you come from?” she demanded unbelievingly. “I know that you are not from Thruun.”
“We never heard of either Kor or Thruun before today,” Simon assured her, “We come from outside the great cloud, from far across the universe.”
Wonder struggled with doubt in the girl’s tone when she finally spoke.
“It cannot be! No ship could win through the awful currents of the cloud! Yet it is true that no being like yourself has ever been known here.”
“It is true, girl.” The Brain’s chill, emotionless voice carried conviction. “We landed upon this world to repair our ship. The Korians surprised us, led by a noble named Uzhur,”
“That plotting old fox!” the girl spat at the name.
“We accompanied them to this city, Kor,” the Brain continued, “but doubt their intentions. I was seeking a way out of the palace, through the ventilation ducts, when I heard your sobbing.”
There was a long silence. Then the girl spoke abruptly, “I believe you, stranger. No such living Brain as yourself has ever been heard of inside the cloud, so you must be telling the truth.
“I am Thyria, princess of Thruun — I’ve been Larstan’s prisoner here.”
“Thruun?” repeated the Brain sharply. “That is the world of the red sun we glimpsed far within the central haze, is it not?”
Thyria nodded her yellow head quickly. “That is my world. We of Thruun are deadly enemies of Larstan and his Korian nobles.”
“How did they come to capture you?” Simon asked.
“A party of us Thruunians came to this world of Kor in a secret expedition to get copper. We need it badly, for only copper will proof a spaceship against the electron-barrage of the haze. That’s why the Korians use copper outer walls on their spaceships. But we of Thruun have little copper, and our need for it is great now that we are building more ships. Each ship must be copper-coated.
“So I led an expedition to this world to get copper from the metal mountains of Kor. But Korian scouts saw us, and before we could escape they captured us. They killed the others, but kept me to torture from me all that they could learn of the secrets of Thruun.”
Thyria’s quivering voice became urgent. “You too are in dreadful danger. The fact that you strangers came from outside the clouds puts you in the shadow of doom while you’re in Kor.
Chapter 10: Feast in Kor
CAPTAIN FUTURE was momentarily taken aback by the profound effect upon Larstan and the other Korians of old Ber Del’s question about the Watchers. All the assumed boredom and languidness left the handsome Korian king. His smooth face was a mask of suspicion as his dark eyes blazed down at Curt Newton’s group. “What do you know about the?Watchers?” he repeated in a voice that was almost a hiss.
Curt saw that the whole court was hanging in tense silence upon the answer. Uzhur’s eyes had narrowed, and the old noble had made a surreptitious signal to the Korian guards around the throne.
Curt answered bluntly. “We know nothing at ail about the Watchers, except the name.”
“Where did you learn that name, then?” Larstan asked suspiciously.
Captain Future shrugged. “As I told you, there were vague rumors in the outside universe of marvelous things inside the cloud. One rumor was the tale of the Birthplace of Matter. Another vague legend was of mysterious beings called the Watchers. That is all we know,”
For a long minute, Larstan’s eyes bored into Curt’s face. Captain Future faced that fiery gaze unflinchingly. Gradually, Larstan’s handsome green features smoothed into their accustomed lines. He relaxed, laughed softly.
“It seems that I have startled you, strangers. But you need not be afraid.”
“We’re not in the least afraid,” Captain Future retorted coolly, “but we are interested. Who or what are these Watchers?”
Larstan waved his hand carelessly. “It is only an old legend or tradition without basis. I would not bore you with such a fantastic and foolish tale.”
The tense silence of the nobles, ladies and soldiers of the court relaxed also. There was a low buzz of whispering voices across the great hall. It seemed to Captain Future that that brief interval of tension had had in it a queer, shadowy element of fear.
Otho had detected it also. “Looks like the way to get unpopular quick here is to talk about the Watchers,” he muttered under his breath. “For space’s sake, ask no more questions, Ber Del.”
The old Vegan star-captain nodded nervously. “I did not think. Next time I will keep silent.”
The verbal fencing between Captain Future and Larstan was going on. The Korian king leaned forward toward the red-haired Planeteer.
“Uzhur tells me that your spaceship is of very greatly different design than our own,” he said. “Indeed, it must be of far greater power and speed than ours, to be able to penetrate the cloud.”
Curt Newton sensed a hidden meaning behind the question. Something in Larstan’s bearing disturbed him. Nevertheless, he could see no point in trying to deny the obvious.
“Our ship uses a different method of propulsion than yours,” he conceded. “Even so, it was only by good luck that we were able to get through the currents of the cloud.”
In Larstan’s eyes appeared a momentary gleam of triumph. It was gone in a moment, but it increased Curt’s uneasiness. What was Larstan driving at with this talk about the Comet? Captain Future returned to the attack.
“You said that the Birthplace of Matter does exist here within the cloud. What is it like?”
HE ASKED the question as though only in curiosity, but he waited tensely for Larstan’s answer. “I cannot tell you much about the Birthplace, strangers,” said Larstan slowly. “For we Korians have never been able to reach it. We have always been prevented by certain — obstacles.”
“Then you don�
�t know the secret of matter-creation?” Curt pressed politely.
“No, we do not have that secret — yet!” answered the Korian king, his voice rising sharply on the last word. He brooded, chin in hand, his eyes fixed on Captain Future’s face. When he spoke, his voice was soft and deliberate. “Strangers, I think you have not been entirely frank with me. I think that you fought your way through the cloud to this place, not from idle curiosity about the unknown, but for the purpose of finding the Birthplace of Matter and possessing its secret of creation.”
“He’s got our number,” murmured Grag uneasily. “Stand by for trouble.”
Curt Newton made as though to answer, but Larstan went quickly on before he could speak.
“You need not deny it, stranger!” the Korian ruler told Curt. “I do not blame you men of the outside universe for seeking to attain such a colossal secret. I, too, have wanted that secret for long. With it, I could do great things!” Larstan leaned forward almost eagerly. “We both want the same thing — you strangers from outside stars, and we Korians. We both seek to attain the Birthplace of Matter. The obstacles to that attainment are great and might well baffle either of us. But together we could win the secret of creation from it!”
Captain Future had guessed what was coming. Yet he was none the less surprised by the proposal. “You’re suggesting that we become partners in an attempt to reach the Birthplace?” he said slowly.
“I do suggest it,” Larstan declared promptly. “We could help each other very greatly. For we of Kor know much about the perils surrounding the Birthplace which you cannot know.”
“I concede that,” Curt said keenly. “But in what way would we be able to help you? You have hundreds of ships, plenty of men and resources. Why should you need us?”
“I do not really need you,” Larstan replied a trifle haughtily. “But I admire the bold spirit that has brought you on this odyssey into the unknown. And also, your alien Science might complement our own in many ways for this venture.”
Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) Page 8