Captain Future 03 - Captain Future's Challenge (Summer 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “But it’s a unique, valuable ring,” Curt Newton pointed out. “See how those nine jewels revolve around the central one, so that they duplicate exactly the movements of the nine planets?”

  The Uranian, though not at all tempted, did look at the ring more closely. Simultaneously, Curt pressed his thumb against the back of the ring, where was the switch of the ring’s tiny atomic motor. The brilliant jewels of the ring began to move imperceptibly more quickly. Revolving ever faster, smoothly spinning points of light, they seemed to fascinate the Uranian.

  “They move around and around,” Curt said softly. “Around and around — they never stop — they go faster and faster —”

  His voice was a soothing, soporific monotone. As he pressed harder against the ring’s switch, the jewels were spinning ever more swiftly, before the Uranian’s fascinated eyes.

  “Faster and faster — they keep going faster and faster —” Captain Future continued, his voice low, soft, hypnotic.

  Hypnotic — yes! The spinning jewels of the famous emblem-ring were a perfect device for inducing the hypnotic state. Curt had used it for that purpose before, for the red-haired scientific wizard was a past master in the science of hypnotism.

  The spinning little lights of the ring, and Curt’s drowsy, soothing voice, were having their effect. The Uranian’s eyes were wide, dilated, staring fixedly at the ring. For minutes Captain Future continued the dual process of revolving lights and soothing talk. Then he spoke suddenly, in low, authoritative tones.

  “You are asleep now,” he declared.

  The Uranian, without taking his gaze off the ring, answered slowly.

  “I am asleep.”

  “You will obey my command,” Curt said.

  “I will obey,” came the slow answer.

  “Untie these ropes around me at once,” Captain Future ordered.

  HE HELD his breath, then. But it worked. The Uranian was utterly hypnotized. The man bent slowly, and with motions like those of a sleepwalker, began to unfasten the flexible metal ropes bound tightly around Captain Future’s limbs.

  The instant he was free, Curt stood erect.

  “Sleep now and do not move,” he told the staring, swaying Uranian.

  The guard remained standing, frozen. Curt snatched the slender proton-pistol from the holster at his belt.

  “So sure I was helpless that they didn’t take this” he muttered.

  He sprang into the corridor. He had to get to the televisor room of this ship, at once. There wasn’t much time.

  There wasn’t any time! For suddenly a thin Venusian appeared at the other end of the corridor. The Uranian’s relief!

  The thin, pale beam of Curt’s proton-gun dropped the Venusian in his tracks before he could yell. Swift as a Plutonian ice-cat. Curt leaped down the passage. From inside a closed door came the snarling whine of generators. The televisor-room! He opened the door. A Neptunian looked up from the powerful televisor he was just turning off.

  Captain Future’s hissing proton-beam knocked the gray-faced operator back out of his chair, unconscious. In a second, Curt was in that chair, his hands flying over the switches and tuning dials of the powerful televisor transmitter. He was tuning to the secret frequency used by himself and the Futuremen alone. As he tuned, his eyes were swiftly reading the space-position of the ship from the dials above the set, A hissing, frantic voice came from the televisor receiver, and Otho’s wild face appeared in it.

  “Chief!” cried the android, back on the moon, as he glimpsed Captain Future’s face. “Devils of space, where —”

  “Listen, Otho!” Curt rapped. “I’m getting out of this ship. Come for me at once in the Comet — you’ll find me floating in space — near position 14 .2 outward, 34 degrees countersunwise, 2.7 below ecliptic plane.”

  “But that position’s close to the sun — you can’t live in space a minute in that heat!” Otho protested. “Chief —”

  “No time to talk — come at once!” Curt ordered, and snapped off the wave.

  Then he tore away the whole front panel of the televisor. His deft hands, working against time, unfastened two small transformers, a condenser, and a little auxiliary atomic power generator, that he fastened together into a compact mechanism. Finally he finished hooking together his improvised machine.

  Slinging it over his shoulder, Curt re-entered the corridor and hastened along it to the mid-ship airlock by which the ship was entered or left. In the inner chamber of the airlock, space-suits were hanging as usual. In a moment, Captain Future was inside a suit. The mechanism he had improvised, he kept slung over his shoulder, outside the suit. Then he opened the outer door of the lock. The air of the lock puffed out. Curt leaped out with it, jumping forth with all his strength so as to escape from the gravitational attraction of the ship.

  THE red-headed adventurer leaped out into an inferno of raging light and heat — into a hell of radiation flooding from the sun whose orb jammed the firmament. But as he leaped, Captain Future switched on his makeshift mechanism. Its generator and transformers began humming. It projected a spherical shell of blue light that completely enclosed Curt as he flew out into space — a “halo” or vibration-screen that would protect him from the solar radiation which otherwise would kill him instantly!

  Curt found himself floating in space. The raider ship was receding, a black mass surrounded by the blue flicker of its own halo. Then the ship was gone, his escape unsuspected as yet. And Captain Future, inside his space-suit and protected only by the fragile “halo” from the withering radiation, floated alone in space, only a few million miles out from the sun.

  “It’s going to be cursed close,” Curt muttered to himself. “If the Futuremen don’t hurry —”

  His position was a truly appalling one. For though he seemed floating in space, Curt knew that he was really falling at ever increasing speed toward the sun.

  The gigantic gravitational grip of the stupendous flaming orb was pulling him toward fiery death, by a speed that accelerated each minute. It would take but a few hours for him to fall right into the outer layers of the chromosphere. Could the Futuremen reach him in time, even in the super-swift Comet?

  “It’s a gamble,” Curt thought grimly. “And not the first one I’ve taken — but one of the biggest!”

  Even through the filter-glassite helmet, the glare of the sun was overwhelming. He seemed suspended above a titanic ocean of raving flame that filled the whole Universe. Soon heat began to invade Curt’s suit. Curt turned the generator up to higher power, increasing the intensity of the “halo.”

  “Generator can’t last long at this rate,” Curt thought.

  Before long, he had to turn it up again. And now the generator was beginning to falter, its small charge of atomic fuel depleted by the extraordinary demands made upon it to maintain the fragile screen of vibrations.

  Captain Future felt a queer chill, despite the stifling heat inside his suit. Could this be the end? Had he dared the space gods once too often?

  “No, they’ll come,” Curt muttered doggedly. “The Futuremen won’t fail me —

  And as though to confirm his loyalty, the Comet swept out of the upper void like a streak of flashing fire! The teardrop-shaped little ship, the swiftest thing in space, had its shrouding blue “halo” out. It volleyed around in a dizzy turn and drove level beside Curt, its air-lock door open. He clutched, scrambled into the air-lock. In a moment he was inside the little ship, divesting himself of his smoking hot space-suit in the mid-ship laboratory cabin.

  “Chief, we were afraid!” Otho was babbling wildly as he helped him shed the heavy suit. “We broke all our own records getting here. Grag flew the ship like a madman —”

  Grag had set the Comet on an upward course away from the sun, and now the great robot came clanking hurriedly back into the cabin.

  “Master, you’re all right?” he cried.

  “All right — yes,” Curt clipped. “But there’s work to do! You saw the signal-flare on Earth calli
ng us?”

  “We saw, lad,” rasped the Brain, his lens-eyes staring at Curt, “but we were helpless. We couldn’t answer the call — knowing that your captors would murder you, if we did.”

  CURT NEWTON’S gray eyes were flaring.

  “I’ll settle the score later with those raiders — and with their leader who calls himself the Wrecker. But right now, we’ve got to contact the President. That call meant an emergency!”

  In a few minutes, as the Comet sped out of the perilous solar neighborhood, Curt had got through a televisor call to Earth, to President James Carthew of the System Government.

  Carthew’s fine, aging face was haggard and pale as he looked out of the televisor screen at Curt.

  “Captain Future — thank God!” he cried. “I’ve been almost frantic, since you failed to answer the summons. Why —”

  “I’ll explain later why I couldn’t answer,” Curt said quickly. “Right now I want to know why you called me. What’s wrong? Is it something to do with gravium?”

  “How could you know?” faltered Carthew. “Yes, that’s it. Captain Future, at exactly ten o’clock solar time, an unknown organization struck and destroyed the gravium mines on Mercury, on Mars and on Saturn. They’re utterly wrecked!”

  “What about the mines on Uranus’ moon and on Neptune?” Curt asked.

  “They’ve not been harmed yet, but we’re afraid they too will be attacked,” Carthew replied. “I’ve had calls from the president of the Uranian Gravium Company, Zuvalo, and from Julius Gunn, of the Neptunian Company. They fear an onslaught also!”

  “Do the heads of the Mercurian and Martian and Saturnian gravium companies have any idea as to the identity of the wreckers?” Curt asked.

  “No, they say they haven’t,” was the President’s answer. “The officials of all five companies have been deluging me with televisor calls, asking me to do something. That’s why I called you.”

  Carthew continued haggardly, “Captain Future, this mysterious attack on the gravium supply must be stopped! You know what it means if the Uranian and Neptunian gravium mines are destroyed — no more gravitation-equalizers can be made, interplanetary travel and commerce will be strangled, all the System’s life will fast wither —”

  “I know, and that must be prevented,” Curt Newton clipped. “But we’ll have to work fast. First, I want to consult as quickly as possible with the heads of the five gravium companies.”

  “Shall I call them by televisor to meet you here on Earth?”

  “No, I want to meet them secretly,” Captain Future answered. “The Wrecker behind this plot will now think that I’m dead, killed by the solar heat. I want him to keep on thinking that — it will put him off his guard. So tell the gravium magnates to meet me at a secret rendezvous in space, in the asteroidal zone, at position 39.5 outward, 18 degrees countersunwise, 0.2 below ecliptic plane. I’ll be there on the 22nd, at noon solar time.”

  “I’ll televise the gravium officials to be there,” Carthew exclaimed, “and to keep the whole meeting an utter secret.”

  Captain Future snicked off the televisor and turned to his three comrades.

  “Get started for that space-position at once, Grag,” Curt ordered. “And save that space-suit I stole from my captors’ ship. It may give us a clue as to where that ship of the Wrecker came from.”

  “A clue in the space-suit? How?” Otho asked.

  “The air in that suit’s tank was pumped in at whatever world that ship came from,” Curt pointed out. “We can analyze that air and find out just what world’s atmosphere it contains.”

  Then he looked at the Brain. “This thing is serious, Simon.”

  “Aye, lad — deadly serious,” rasped the Brain. “Carthew is right — we’ve got to keep the gravium supply from destruction, or interplanetary civilization just can’t survive.”

  “We’ll do it,” Captain Future said, his tanned face determined. “The Wrecker dared to challenge us first — we’re going to answer that challenge!”

  Chapter 4: Conference in Space

  CURT NEWTON and the Brain, working intently on the space-suit atmosphere clue, listened to their televisor as the Comet hurtled out through the solar spaces beyond Mars’ orbit.

  An Earth news-caster’s taut voice reached their ears.

  “Grave situation caused by the mysterious disasters to the Mercurian, Martian and Saturnian gravium mines,” he was saying. “Panic is becoming evident as the public fears similar disasters to the Uranus and Neptune mines, which would shut off the gravium supply completely.

  “This panic is rapidly paralyzing space-traffic! Space-sailors of many ships are refusing to leave their native worlds, for fear their equalizers wear out on the voyage and new ones prove unobtainable. Shipping lines have had to cancel many sailings. And this is having disastrous effects already upon the life of every world in the System.

  “The grain-boats from Jupiter haven’t sailed, and most worlds face a bad grain-shortage. Meat shipments from the Saturn ranches are dwindling. Sea-food consignments from Neptune have dropped to a trickle. Worse still, industries which depend on metals and materials from other worlds are having to shut down. All interplanetary colonization projects are canceled, from lack of equalizers. Unemployment is mounting, prices skyrocketing, ruin threatening, on every world!

  “People fear a complete collapse of interplanetary traffic. If the remaining gravium sources are destroyed and no more equalizers can be made, we’ll be thrown back into the dark ages before space-travel began — the ages when each world was completely isolated. Progress will be set back by centuries!”

  Captain Future had been listening, his work with the spectroscope on the atmosphere-clue temporarily forgotten. Now his bronzed face was sober as he shut off the televisor.

  “That danger is real, Simon,” he muttered. “Danger of the collapse of the interplanetary civilization that has taken so many decades to build. No wonder people are in panic!”

  “Aye, lad,” rasped the Brain, his lens-eyes brooding. “But who would want such a collapse to occur? What can be the motive of this Wrecker whose organization is striking at the gravium sources?”

  “We’ve got to find that out,” Curt declared determinedly. “This air-sample from the space-suit may be a lead —”

  Captain Future had put into the chamber of a comparator-spectroscope a sample of the air from the space-suit from the Wrecker ship. Now he touched a button. Electric discharges swiftly heated the sample of air. He peered through the instrument, checking the elements shown in its spectrum.

  “Nitrogen and oxygen as usual,” he muttered, “but no traces of argon or krypton. Small traces of radon and xenon —”

  “Sounds like the atmosphere of Uranus’ fourth moon,” observed the Brain, watching keenly.

  In this mid-ship cabin laboratory was crowded the matchless scientific equipment of the wizard of science and his Futuremen. A cabinet held exhaustive files of star and planet spectra. There were racks of rolled maps of the planets, moons and many of the asteroids — maps which showed hidden lands and seas that only Captain Future and the Futuremen had ever visited.

  BESIDES the compact chemical and physical apparatus, there was a superb surgical outfit; there were mysterious psycho-scientific instruments; a philological file containing spoken records of scores of planetary languages; and an exhaustive scientific reference library whose countless books and monographs were all on microfilm.

  Curt took a thin vial from a cabinet that held atmosphere-samples of all the System’s worlds and moons in scores of containers. He put a sample of the air from this vial into the view-chamber.

  “I’ll check with this atmosphere sample from Oberon, Uranus’ fourth moon, to make sure,” he said. “But unless I’m way off my orbit, it’s the same.”

  A moment later, Captain Future looked up.

  “It checks,” he said tersely. “The air in that space-suit is from Oberon. Which means the Wrecker’s ship that captured me came originally
from Oberon.”

  “Then maybe the Wrecker’s base is on that moon of Uranus?” Simon Wright suggested.

  Curt scratched his red head, and stared with thoughtful gray eyes at the starry abysses outside the windows.

  “There’s a gravium mine on Oberon, remember,” he reminded. “It’s operated by the Uranian Gravium Company, one of the five companies. Wonder if that has any connection with this clue?”

  He got to his feet.

  “Well, we’ll look into it later. We’re nearing the asteroidal zone now.”

  Captain Future went forward into the transparent-walled control-room. The automatic pilot was maintaining the Comet on its course, while Grag and Otho sat playing “compound chess.”

  “Compound chess” was a semi-scientific game Curt had devised. There was a board of a thousand squares, and each player had ninety-odd pieces representing the different elements. The idea was to move the element-pieces onto squares occupied by the opponent’s elements, so as to form known scientific compounds. Whoever formed the most compounds, won the game.

  Otho was fidgeting restlessly, glowering at big Grag who sat like a metal statue studying the board with his gleaming photoelectric eyes, while Eek gnawed playfully at his impervious metal arm.

  “Well, go ahead and move!” Otho finally exploded. “You know you’re beaten — my next move will win the last compound.”

  “I’ll move when I’m ready,” Grag boomed calmly.

  Finally Grag reached his metal hand and moved his “radium” piece far across the board to the square of Otho’s “chlorine!”

  “Radium chloride — that’s the last compound and it’s mine,” the robot boomed triumphantly. “I win the game.”

  “Better luck next time, Otho,” chuckled Curt.

  “He always wins!” Otho said disgustedly. “I’m through playing him — how can a man beat a machine?”

  “Take control and pilot straight to the rendezvous, Grag,” Captain Future ordered. “We’re nearing the asteroid zone.”