Captain Future 18 - Red Sun of Danger (Spring 1945)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Newton saw the shock in the faces of the decent immigrants.

  “Any rat who would try to murder Captain Future deserves to be lynched!” exclaimed Gordon wrathfully.

  Chapter 5: World of Arkar

  HOURLY Captain Future had expected the news of the “shooting” to catch up to him. Starships these days, even though traveling faster than light, maintained instantaneous communication by the undimensional wave that carried telaudio signals in a short-cut across dimensions.

  But Curt Newton hadn’t expected such fierce indignation toward Rab Cain. It took him aback, momentarily. Nevertheless, he had to brazen out his part.

  “I shot Captain Future in self-defense!” he sneered. “He drew his atom-gun on me — and I protected myself.”

  “If Captain Future drew a weapon on you, he undoubtedly had good reason,” said the ship captain in a blistering tone.

  A chorus of agreement came from most of the crowd around them. Newton bared snarling teeth.

  “Did the Planet Patrol say they wanted me?” he demanded.

  “N-no!” admitted Captain Kasro reluctantly.

  “You see?” said Newton in triumph. “They didn’t put any charge against me because they knew it was self-defense. So you’ve got no right to bully me.”

  The captain bit his lip. “Technically, you’re correct. Just the same, Cain, I warn you that we’re watching you. The first disorder you cause on this ship, you go into the brig.” He turned on his heel and left the crowd. Curt Newton looked around the black faces of the emigrants, swaggering defiantly.

  “Nobody can bluff Rab Cain,” he boasted. “Not Captain Future, even. He tried it, and he got his.”

  “Cain, I wouldn’t be in your shoes!” said John Gordon, showing his dislike. “The reason the Patrol made no charge against you is obvious — the Futuremen intend to take care of you themselves for wounding their leader. And heaven help you when those three catch up to you some day.”

  Curt Newton grew boastful. “I’m not afraid of them.”

  Gordon and most of the other emigrants turned away from him in disgust. But some of the tougher element remained, eying Rab Cain with new respect.

  “You really beat out Future himself in a gun-fight?” muttered Jok Kerrin incredulously. “I can hardly believe that Future couldn’t handle you.”

  “Maybe you think I’m soft?” rasped Curt Newton, scowling. “Maybe you’d like to try me out, Jovian?”

  “Take it easy, Cain,” advised the fishy-eyed Saturnian, Li Sharn. “Nobody here is hunting trouble.”

  Newton saw that he had made an impression as a tough, quarrelsome character. That was what he wanted, for his purpose was to penetrate the rebellious conspiracy on Roo as quickly as possible. The best way to do that was to join the rebellious party, to work from the inside. With Rab Cain already a marked trouble-maker, his chances of that were better.

  Time after time, in the hours that followed, the emigrants had to return to the recoil-chairs while the vibration-drive again went on. The Starfarer was methodically building up speed. Already it was streaking through the abyss ten times faster than light — a velocity thought impossible a century before, when there had persisted a faulty conception of the relation of velocity to mass.

  Captain Future heard John Gordon reassure his wife. “Only four more days of acceleration-periods. Then we get a week’s rest before they start decelerating.”

  “I’ll be glad when we’re safely in Roo,” murmured the girl.

  Li Sharn, the Saturnian, heard her and laughed mirthlessly. “Safety? There’s no safety on Roo, these days.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Gordon. “The Government emigration bureau told us that Roo’s natural conditions are good for System people.”

  “The Government paints a rosy picture to get emigrants,” retorted Li Sharn. “They got me to emigrate to Roo, four years ago, but now it’s so dangerous I’m trying to sell my holding. I’ve been back to the System for that purpose.”

  Captain Future saw dismay appear on the faces of the listening emigrants. “What’s so dangerous on Roo?” Gordon demanded.

  “The Roons,” answered the Saturnian. “The natives of the red jungles are an un-human lot of devils who have turned hostile in the last year. They raid the plantations on the fringes of the colony, burn and kill and destroy, and then vanish into the jungle.”

  “But surely,” put in a slow-spoken, stocky young Jovian emigrant, “surely the System Government will stop all that?”

  LI SHARN looked at him cynically. “When you get to Roo, you’ll find out the Government won’t raise a finger to protect the colony. What do those bureaucrats in Great New York care about our troubles when we’re trillions of miles away? Why, they won’t even give us arms to defend ourselves.”

  John Gordon spoke firmly. “I don’t believe it. The System Government isn’t perfect, but it has always worked for the good of all its peoples.”

  Li Sharn shrugged. “You’ll change your mind when you get to Roo.”

  Captain Future saw the emigrants were troubled after the Saturnian had strolled away. Li Sharn had sown a seed of doubt.

  “And he did it deliberately,” thought Curt Newton. “Maybe this Saturnian is a lead to the conspiracy.”

  Newton had suddenly realized the conspirators on Roo might have agents on these emigrant ships to foster anti-Government sentiment.

  “Devilish clever,” thought Captain Future. “They start their propaganda before they reach Roo.”

  He strolled after Li Sharn. “You’ve lived on Roo four years?” he said. “Maybe you can tell me what I can find to do there?”

  “The government office will give you a free land-grant for a plantation, and sell you tools and vitron-seeds at cost,” Li Sharn answered.

  “I don’t want to sweat raising vitron!” grumbled Newton. “I’m only on my way to Roo because this ship was the first craft out of Venusopolis when I was in a hurry.”

  But the Saturnian remained non committal. “You’ll find something to do. There are always opportunities on a world like Roo.”

  Curt was disappointed. But he still believed Li Sharn was connected with the rebellion party, and watched the Saturnian closely in the next few days.

  The acceleration-periods ceased, and the Starfarer now moved silently in what seemed no more than a crawl through these vast spaces. The oppressiveness of interstellar space was telling on the emigrants. They had been excited and noisy the first few days, but that had faded away.

  These people, Captain Future knew, were discovering the difference between interstellar and interplanetary travel. There was nothing out here but the vast gloom of darkness and the pinpoint stars. You didn’t feel as though you were traveling toward a destination. You felt as though your ship and all on it were falling headlong through an infinite abyss.

  Li Sharn increased the depression of the emigrants by spreading his propaganda of fear, until John Gordon flared up at the Saturnian, on the fifteenth day. “Why do you keep discouraging these people? You’ve got most of them worried sick.”

  Li Sharn shrugged. “It’s not my fault that things are like that on Roo. It’s the fault of the System Government.”

  “The System Government gave us our chance to emigrate to Roo, and I don’t want to hear any more criticism of it,” snapped Gordon.

  Captain Future saw the chance. He strode forward, scowling at Gordon. “Who says Li Sharn can’t talk? Do you think you own this ship?”

  Gordon eyed him with cold antagonism. “Cain, you stay out of this. You’re lucky that you haven’t been space-jettisoned by the decent people on this ship.”

  Newton uttered an angry roar and swung at John Gordon’s chin. Gordon ducked back. Next moment, they were exchanging blows.

  An excited ring of emigrants formed around them. Nine-tenths of them shouted for Gordon.

  Curt Newton meant only to prolong the fight until it was broken up. He didn’t really want to hurt Gordon, and purposely missed
most of his vicious-looking swings. Gordon was a hard, fast boxer. The young emigrant’s fist collided with Newton’s jaw and sent him sprawling back on the floor, half-dazed.

  A yell of jubilation went up from the throng of onlookers. “That’s giving it to the rat, Gordon!”

  Captain Future, seething with assumed fury, glared up at Gordon. “It’s lucky I ain’t got my gun on me!” he yelled.

  “That’s the only time space-scum like you are ever dangerous, with atom-guns!” said Gordon, turning away in contempt.

  CURT NEWTON got up and found himself deserted. Sullenly he slunk out of the salon and he stood rubbing his chin by a corridor porthole. Li Sharn came up to him.

  “It was foolish of you to mix into that, Cain,” said the Saturnian. “I can take care of my own arguments.”

  “You and your arguments weren’t what got me going,” Captain Future growled. “It was Gordon sticking up for the Government.”

  The Saturnian’s fishy eyes narrowed. “You don’t like the System Government?”

  Newton’s reply was a blistering oath. “The cursed Government and its prying officials broke up the best business I ever had. It wasn’t enough for them to get holy about what I was doing, they had to send Captain Future to pester me.”

  Li Sham’s voice was casual. “Well, I suppose I owe you something for your efforts. I may be able to get you some kind of a job on Roo.” The Saturnian made no further promises.

  But after he had gone on, Captain Future felt a small thrill of hope. He rubbed his chin ruefully and grinned.

  “I’m beginning to like that chap Gordon,” he murmured.

  “Deceleration-period!” warned the annunciators. “All into recoil-chairs!”

  They decelerated with increasing frequency in the next few days. For now Arkar, a small, flaring red sun, was becoming visibly larger.

  On the twentieth day, Arkar filled a quarter of the heavens ahead. The star, much larger than our Sun, shone with ominous blood-like splendor. Even through the glare-proof windows, its radiance blinded the excited, watching emigrants. But they could make out three planets that circled Arkar like gleaming specks of light.

  “Roo is the innermost planet,” Li Sharn told Captain Future. “The other two planets are uninhabitable.”

  Newton nodded. “So I’ve heard,” he said dryly.

  He was thinking of the time, ten years before, when he and the Futuremen had first explored this system.

  He looked back at the blur of space astern. The Futuremen must be somewhere back there now, secretly rushing on after the Starfarer in their own small ship. And Philip Carlin and the other two vitron-scientists must have already been on Roo for several days, for they had taken the first ship while Newton had been preparing the scene on Venus.

  Blood-red light beat fiercely through the portholes as the Starfarer swung in around Arkar. The vibration-drive had been cut off and the bow and lateral rockets exploded frequently to check and guide their rush.

  Roo loomed up big ahead, a dull red ball. Curt Newton’s heart beat faster at sight of it. Vitron meant health and life to nine worlds of people, back across the abyss. He mustn’t fail here!

  The crimson planet was circled by a smaller, dark sphere. It was a little moon, and one whose albedo was extraordinarily low, since it reflected almost no light. Black Moon, the Roons called it.

  “So this is Roo?” muttered one of the staring emigrants. “It looks plenty wild.”

  Wild and forbidding, indeed, was the planet spinning beneath them. Hardly bigger than Earth, its surface was blanketed by dense crimson jungles from horizon to horizon except that part covered by mountain-ringed, ocher-colored oceans in the south and the far north.

  “Recoil-chairs!” called the annunciator. “Everybody in their recoil-chairs for landing!” The scream of parting atmosphere came from outside. The Starfarer was rushing down across the jungles of the red world.

  “I didn’t know the place was as wild as this,” Newton growled to Li Sharn. “I wish to space I’d never come.”

  “You’ll get along all right here,” assured the Saturnian. “Stick to me when we leave the ship, that’s all.”

  Newton’s hopes bounded. But now the keel rockets let go with a deafening roar, as the big ship settled further toward the planet.

  Through the portholes, there came into view far ahead a large, roughly oblong expanse of clear land, near the equator. It covered fifty miles, like a great scar in the red jungle.

  Captain Future glimpsed tilled fields, small, isolated white plantation-houses. Soon a whole cluster of such white cement structures came in view, a town of some size.

  “That’s Rootown!” someone called. “That’s the colony center!”

  THE Starfarer’s bow tubes thundered and the big ship hesitated in mid-air. Then, on roaring keel-tubes, it sank slowly down through the sunshine toward a scorched landing-field at the eastern edge of Rootown. The small shock of landing was followed by a sharp ringing of bells through the ship. There was a grinding sound. Then a peculiar silence clapped down. It took a moment to realize that it was caused by the shutting off of the throbbing oxygenators, for the first time in three weeks.

  “We’re here, Ruth!” John Gordon’s eyes were shining. “Our new home, our new world!”

  “Something’s happening!” exclaimed Jok Kerrin, the big Jovian. “What’s going on there?”

  Captain Future was already at a window. Out on the landing field, men were running excitedly toward the town. Rocket-cars were racing in the same direction.

  Li Sharn uttered an exclamation. “That means trouble.” They crowded to get out of the ship.

  Weird and alien the new world seemed. The soil under their feet, blackened by rocket-blasts, was dull yellow. The grass that patched it was of the vivid red color of the distant jungles.

  The scorching mid-afternoon brilliance of monster Arkar stunned their eyes. Under its glare, the white cement structures of the nearby town stood out against the unearthly brazen sky. The air was hot, damp, heavy with scents.

  A dim, rising roar of voices came from the town. Men were still running from the spaceport in that direction.

  Li Sharn called to an excited spaceport attendant. “What’s up?”

  “Big riot of some kind!” yelled the man. “It looks like Harmer’s secession party is going to take over!”

  Captain Future felt a shock of alarm and dismay. Riot and rebellion already reaching a climax on Roo? Jed Harmer’s rebellious followers seizing the rule of the planet? Then! he had reached here too late!

  Chapter 6: The Roons

  DURING the night, before the Starfarer arrived, Dr. Philip Carlin, botanist, sat in a mood of profound discouragement in an isolated plantation-house near the edge of the Roo colony.

  This plantation lay miles south of Rootown, so near the jungle that the dank breath of that night hidden forest came through the screened windows in a miasmic exhalation, freighted with strange scents and spices and rot-smells, bringing murmurs of birds and insects.

  Carlin looked across the lighted room at solemn Zamok and worried Lin Sao.

  “So it boils down to the fact that we’ve been here nearly a week without accomplishing anything,” he muttered.

  Lin Sao shrugged fat shoulders. “We’ve had to be careful. Scientists can’t show too much interest in politics.”

  “But we still don’t know who’s behind Harmer’s plot, or who or what is inciting the Roons to these raids,” said Carlin.

  He looked gloomily around the room. They had leased this plantation, with its thousand acres of vitron shrubs, from an owner who was only too glad to leave Roo. They had fitted up the living-room as a laboratory, in line with their announced intention of carrying on research to better the strain of vitron plants.

  The tables of apparatus, the delicate microscopes and electro-scanners and testers, had dust on them. They gave Carlin a sick, sudden longing for his own shining laboratory in faraway Great New York.

  He
shook off the thought. After all, Captain Future had only asked them to establish an isolated headquarters here in the Roo colony and then wait for instructions. They had done that.

  Yet he wished they could greet Newton, when he came, with some real information or help.

  “That fellow Ka Thaar,” Zamok was saying, “the young Mercurian who’s constantly with Jed Harmer. Have either of you learned anything about him?”

  Lin Sao frowned. “Ostensibly, he’s Harmer’s plantation overseer. But it’s all sham. He doesn’t know a vitron shrub from a feather-tree. He looks more like Harmer’s bodyguard, to me.”

  “Wait a minute — listen,” said Philip Carlin, staring at the windows. There had been a sound — a faint something that did not fit the pattern of wind and bird and insect noises. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Carlin went to the door and stepped out onto the veranda of the long, low plantation house.

  Night lay solid over Roo. Black Moon was the merest shadowy ghost of a disk in the western sky. It illuminated the long, low fields of spiky vitron-shrubs beyond.

  A distant roaring sound, rising and falling on the breeze, came from the west. The feather-trees whispered to themselves. Then, two tiny jets of white fire low in the western darkness were followed by sharp, ripping sounds.

  “Atom-guns!” cried Zamok. “That means —”

  The siren came slashing across his words, a faraway keening wail that rose like a shriek of the damned.

  It had but one meaning. Every plantation out here on the fringes of the colony had such a siren these days.

  “Roon raid!” yelled Lin Sao. “That’s Horth Or’s plantation they’re attacking!”

  “Bring out one of the cars!” shouted Carlin. “I’ll get the guns!”

  He plunged back into the house and hastily belted on one of the heavy atom-pistols that always hung close inside the door. Then he grabbed two others and leaped back out.

  Confusion had shattered the night. The sirens were going now to east, north and west, plantation after plantation taking up and passing on the warning.