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

by Edmond Hamilton

  Thunder Moon — a rugged wilderness of mountains, valleys and gorges, illuminated now by the ghostly green radiance of the huge planet that hung in the heavens overhead, and also by the ominous red flare of countless volcano craters that seethed and smoked at innumerable places.

  WILD and forbidding indeed was this unearthly moon, whose core was a mass of molten lava that was forever bursting up through the craters in violent eruption.

  “Only the lure of gravium would ever induce men to stay long on this moon,” mustered the Brain, staring downward.

  “There’re the lights of the gravium mine — down in, the valley beyond that big volcano!” Otho exclaimed.

  Captain Future had seen. In a long, narrow valley at whose head a huge black volcano smoked; were clustered lights.

  “That should be the office building at the side of the valley,” Curt commented keenly. “Land there.”

  Presently the Comet came to a landing in the semi-darkness near the metal office structure.

  Curt turned, to the Brain.

  “Simon, will you use the electroscopes and see if you can detect the rocket-trail of any ships that have landed here recently? We know the Wrecker ship that got Kerk El came on to Uranus, and it may have landed here on Oberon.”

  “I’ll see what I can learn, lad,” Simon promised.

  “Grag, stay here and help Simon with the instruments,” Curt ordered the robot. “Come along, Otho.”

  He and the android emerged from the ship into the darkness. The gravitation equalizers had already automatically compensated for the changed gravity.

  The spectral green light of huge Uranus overhead illuminated the deep, narrow valley in which Curt and Otho stood. The semi-dormant volcano at the head of the valley flung a sullen red glare that clashed weirdly with the viridescent light.

  The air was sulfurous, pungent to the nostrils. And there was a constant, dim tremor of the rocky ground beneath them, a ceaseless faraway muttering of thunder as of distant storm.

  “I don’t like this cursed moon any more than Grag does,” declared Otho. “Always feel that when I’m here, I’m walking on thin ice over the mouth of hell.”

  Curt nodded agreement.

  “Eruptions are pretty common here. Zuvalo has lots of courage to go in for mining here.”

  Farther up the valley, under suspended lights, yellow Uranian laborers were excavating gravium ores from open workings. But Captain Future and Otho made toward the offices.

  Curt and the lithe android strode into the offices. There was only one man in the lighted rooms — Zuvalo, the gravium magnate. The fat, moon-faced yellow Uranian looked up amazedly at them.

  “Surprised to see us, huh?” hissed Otho suspiciously. “Maybe you thought we were all as dead as Kerk El, by now.”

  “Kerk El — dead?” exclaimed Zuvalo startledly.

  — “Shut up, Otho,” Curt Newton ordered. Then his gray eyes bored the Uranian’s moonlike face. “Yes, Kerk El’s yacht was attacked by one of the Wrecker’s ships. They got him, all right.”

  “Poor Kerk El,” murmured the fat Uranian. “I’m sorry to hear about his murder.”

  “How do you account for the fact the Wrecker hasn’t bothered your gravium mine here?” Curt demanded.

  Zuvalo shrugged.

  “This mine isn’t large. There wouldn’t be much reason for the Wrecker to bother it.” Then he added, “I trust that the fact we’ve escaped here doesn’t make you think I have any connection with the Wrecker?”

  “The Wrecker is connected with Oberon somehow,” rasped Captain Future. He told of the atmosphere-clue. “That shows that one of the Wrecker’s ships, at least, came from this moon.” The Uranian’s small eyes narrowed. “Describe that ship for me, please.” Curt did so. And Zuvalo looked relieved.

  “I thought so!” he said. “Your atmosphere clue doesn’t mean anything, Captain Future.”

  “Why not?” Curt demanded.

  ZUVALO explained. “The ship you describe was formerly one of the gravium ships, used to transport the metal from the various planetary gravium mines to the equalizer factories on Earth. They’re specially swift ships, and they have always called at Neptune, at Oberon here, and at Saturn, Mars and Mercury to pick up gravium.

  “In the last few months,” the Uranian continued, “four of those gravium ships disappeared strangely in space. The ship you describe as being one of the Wrecker’s craft now is one of those four vanished gravium ships! Not long before it disappeared it had taken on air here on Oberon, when it stopped here, which is why you found Oberon air in that space-suit.

  “Therefore, it now seems certain that the Wrecker’s men stole those four gravium ships somehow, and are using them,” Zuvalo concluded. “No doubt, they chose them because they were so swift, and would make ideal outlaw craft.”

  “Then our atmosphere-clue isn’t a lead to Oberon, after all?” Otho exclaimed dismayedly.

  Captain Future’s lips tightened. “I don’t know. Zuvalo may be lying,” he clipped. “I’m going to search this moon, and search it well. First the mine, the ship-decks, everything in this valley, and then —”

  At that moment came a clanking, pounding sound. Grag, the robot, came running into the office.

  “Master, Simon says he has located the trail of a ship that is circling in fast toward Oberon!” the robot exclaimed.

  Curt jumped.

  “We’ll go — what was that?”

  Boom! Boom! With deafening sound came the two heavy detonations. The windows of the office rattled wildly. Captain Future sprang to the door. He emerged into the greenish dark, then uttered a cry.

  “Look at that volcano!”

  The huge volcano that towered at the head of the narrow valley was now throwing a wild red glare against the heavens.

  “There’s a ship up there!” Otho yelled, “See —”

  Curt Newton had already seen. Over the volcano crater hung a black space ship. Curt divined its purpose instantly.

  “That’s one of the Wrecker’s ships!” he cried. “It’s dropping atomic bombs into the crater to stir it into eruptions!”

  “Gods of Uranus — look!” shouted Zuvalo wildly.

  Even as they had glimpsed the Wrecker ship, it had dropped a black object that struck the crater-wall on the side nearest the valley. It was an atomic bomb that exploded with a terrific white flash. It blew out part of the crater-rim.

  And out of the broken crater came boiling the red hell-fires of lava that had been stirred up by the previous bombs — a fiery, molten flood that roiled down the volcano-side into the valley of the gravium mine!

  “Get your miners out of the valley!” Captain Future yelled to the Uranian magnate. “That lava is going to cover everything here!”

  Zuvalo seemed stunned.

  “No!” the fat Uranian gasped. “I can’t desert my mine — it’s taken years to develop it —”

  In the ghastly light, the Uranian’s fat face was sagging and frozen, like a grotesque mask of unbelieving horror.

  A Uranian mine-foreman came running terrifiedly up to them. The man’s eyes were distended with terror, as he raced against the fiery flood pouring into the valley.

  “What are we going to do?” he yelled to Zuvalo.

  THE fat magnate seemed too stunned to answer. But Captain Future’s whiplash voice answered the foreman.

  “Get the men out of the valley at once!” Curt cried. “I’ll try to hold back the lava until they’ve all escaped!”

  “You can’t hold back that fire-flood — nobody can!” shouted the fear-crazed foreman. “We’re all doomed —”

  “Do as I say!” Curt flashed, pushing the man away.

  Then, with Otho, he raced toward the Comet. Curt sprang toward the controls, sent the little tear-drop ship zooming up above the valley.

  Zuvalo’s doomed valley was now an appalling sight. The great flood of glowing red lava was still pouring into the valley down from the broken crater. The Uranian laborers in the graviu
m workings were fleeing wildly to escape.

  “There goes the Wrecker’s ship!” yelled Otho, pointing fiercely at a fleeing black ship. “We can catch them this time and gun them down!”

  “No time to chase them now!” Captain Future cried. “Unless we hold back that lava a little, not a man in the valley will escape. Cut the banks with our proton-beams to make a temporary dike!”

  The Comet streaked halfway up the valley toward the volcano. Curt kept the little ship hanging, while Otho swept its powerful proton-beams to slice at the steep, overhanging sides of the narrow valley. Masses of soil and rock fell, dislodged by the beams, and formed an irregular dam or dike across the valley.

  He was not a moment too soon! The hissing, blazing flood of lava pouring down the valley reached that dike a moment later. Balked for the moment, the molten flood stopped, rapidly rising higher.

  “Cut down more of the sides — make the dike higher!” Curt ordered. “Give the men a few more moments to escape!”

  Again the terrific beams sliced, and more rock and soil fell, keeping the burning lava dammed back a little longer. The Uranian laborers in the workings were scrambling up the valley walls.

  “There goes the dike!” Grag boomed a minute later.

  The precarious makeshift dam had suddenly given way under the pressure of the lava. The molten rock poured down the valley triumphantly, covering the gravium workings with a hissing flood.

  “The laborers all got away in time,” Captain Future panted. “If we hadn’t held that lava back —”

  “Look — Zuvalo!” cried Otho. “He’s gone crazy!”

  CURT saw, farther down the valley by the office building, the fat gravium magnate. Zuvalo had not fled. He was standing in the path of the advancing lava, gibbering and shaking his fists at the approaching deadly flood.

  “He’s gone clean crazy at seeing his mines destroyed!” Captain Future exclaimed. “We’ve got to save him —”

  “Too late, master!” cried Grag an instant later.

  Even as Curt had started the Comet swooping down toward the crazed magnate, the fiery lava had rolled over him. A few minutes later, and the whole valley was covered with molten, seething rock, from end to end.

  Curt’s face was grim as he looked down.

  “The Wrecker scores,” he said between his teeth. “He’s destroyed the Uranian gravium mines, like the others. Only the Neptunian mines are left now.”

  “Who is the Wrecker?” cried Otho. “We know now it wasn’t Zuvalo. And Kerk El is dead —”

  “And that leaves four men, one of whom must be the Wrecker,” Curt said. “Julius Gunn, Carson Brand, Quarus Qull and Orr Libro. And they’re all on Neptune, or on their way there.”

  “Neptune!” rasped the Brain. “Then the Wrecker and his base are somewhere there — on the eighth world!”

  Captain Future nodded grimly.

  “And there too is the greatest menace to the System. For the great submarine mines of Neptune are the only source of gravium now. If they are destroyed, the Wrecker wins the game.”

  Curt’s voice rose like a trumpet calling to battle.

  “We’re rocketing for Neptune at top speed! That’s where we’re going to trap the Wrecker!”

  Chapter 7: On the Ocean World

  Freezing out by Pluto,

  Roasting near the sun,

  Branched, by the rains of Saturn’s plains,

  It’s all a space-man’s fun!

  Tramping old Mars’ deserts,

  Or sailing Neptune’s sea,

  Or wading the damp Venusian swamp,

  Oh, that’s the life for me!

  LUSTILY, Otho sang the old space-song as he sat at the controls of the Comet, racing on through the void. A vast distance had been covered since leaving Uranus. Now Neptune was only a few million miles ahead.

  “I didn’t know that you could sing, Otho,” said Grag, who stood in the control-room and had been listening intently.

  “Sure I can sing. I can do anything humans can do because I am human, see?” retorted the cocky android.

  “Do you suppose you could teach me to sing too?” Grag asked eagerly in his booming voice.

  “You?” Otho’s slitted green yes were disdainful. “Your brain must need a little oil, Grag. You’d sing just about as well as an old-fashioned steam-engine, with that mechanical voice.”

  “Is that so?” Grag said angrily. “Your singing would not last long if I were to squeeze your putty neck.”

  “Putty?” The reference to his synthetic flesh infuriated Otho. “You call me that again and I’ll stop your clockwork for you! I’ll —”

  “You’ll shut up and watch where you’re going,” came the severe voice of Captain Future from behind him, “Start cutting speed, you idiot! You can’t go barging in to a planet like Neptune with the velocity of light.”

  Curt yawned and stretched his broad shoulders. He had been sleeping until Otho’s lusty singing had awakened him.

  He looked over at the Brain. Simon Wright, his serum-case resting on his special pedestal, was staring thoughtfully with his lens-eyes at the great planet and its big moon.

  “Orr Libro and the others must be there already, lad,” rasped the Brain. “I hope Ezra Gurney and Joan have checked on them as you asked.”

  Curt grinned. “Old Ezra would go to any lengths to get in on a scrap. He’ll have the dope, never fear.”

  Upon leaving Uranus, Captain Future had hurled a televisor call to Planet Police Headquarters on Neptune, asking them to keep a close watch on Orr Libro, Quarus Qull and the other two suspects when they arrived.

  To Curt’s surprise and delight, he had previously learned that two old acquaintances of the Police were at Neptune. They were Ezra Gurney, veteran old interplanetary marshal, and Joan Randall, girl secret agent. They had worked with Curt and the Futuremen in the Space Emperor case on Jupiter and the more recent and dangerous Doctor Zarro case on Pluto.

  “Police Headquarters switched us from Pluto to Neptune to investigate the sabotage in the submarine gravium mines here,” old Ezra had drawled to Curt on the televisor. “And if you’re comin’ here, Captain Future, this must be the storm-center of the thing.”

  Curt had named the four suspects.

  “One of them is the Wrecker, Ezra!” he had warned. “Have them all watched when they arrive on Neptune.”

  Now, looking toward giant Neptune and its big moon, Triton, Curt’s eyes twinkled, “It’ll be good to see old Ezra again,” he said.

  “And Joan Randall too, huh?” asked Otho slyly. Then he ducked hastily. “Don’t blow your rockets, chief — I was only doing some harmless kidding.”

  Captain Future stared thoughtfully at the moon, Triton. “I think we’ll land on Triton first,” he declared.

  Otho showed uneasiness.

  “Why land there, Chief? That place gives me the creeps.”

  “We know the Wrecker’s base is somewhere here at Neptune, but it might just be on the planet’s moon,” Curt reminded him. “I want to find out for certain before landing on Neptune, The Tritonians can soon tell me if anything’s going on on their world.”

  Skillfully, the android sent the Comet circling in toward the big moon. Soon they were dropping in its atmosphere. Triton was not an ocean-world like its parent planet. The moon was covered with rolling green plains, and seemed a peaceful, inviting place. Yet Captain Future was the only person in the whole System who ever dared to land on that innocent-seeming world!

  “There’s the Tritonians’ city,” Curt said soon, pointing. “Land just outside it, Otho.”

  “The queerest city in the System,” growled Otho. “A city without buildings,”

  “The Tritonians are too far advanced mentally to have need of material buildings,” commented the Brain in his rasping voice, his lens-eyed peering keenly.

  THE Tritonian “city” was nothing but a great smooth metal platform of circular shape, several miles across. The Comet landed nearby. Curt and the Futuremen eme
rged, Grag carrying the Brain. As they stood in the thin sunlight, they became conscious of a tingling force pervading them.

  “We’re inside the Tritonians’ zone of ‘creation force’!” warned Captain Future. Watch your thoughts!”

  “That’s the devil of this place!” complained Otho. “You think of something like a Plutonian ice-tiger, and right away —”

  “Look out — you’ve done it now!” Curt shouted.

  For as Otho spoke the words, the very beast he had mentioned appeared suddenly out of thin air beside him, miraculously solid and real.

  A Plutonian ice-tiger, a great, hairy, snarling beast that reared up furiously to charge the android!

  “Think him away quick, Otho!” yelled Captain Future. “Think him into something else!”

  Desperately, Otho thought of the snarling monster changing into a harmless rodent. And, immediately, the ice-tiger changed miraculously into just such a scared little rodent.

  “Haven’t you learned yet?” Curt asked. “You know that inside the Tritonians’ ‘creation force’ zone, every thing you think of materializes. If you’d thought of a Jovian ‘digger’ —”

  Instantly, the horrific, ratlike shape of a big Jovian “digger” appeared in front of Curt. Hastily, Captain Future shifted his thoughts to flowers. The ratlike monster faded into a great clump of Venusian swamp-lilies.

  “Hell take this cursed world!” gasped Otho. “I’m going back to the Comet if this keeps up —”

  “Look what I’ve got, master!” cried Grag happily.

  The big robot had thought of gold, and a great nugget had magically appeared by him. “It’s for Eek,” Grag explained.

  “Keep your thoughts on flowers and birds and things like that,” Curt chuckled. “Come along.”

  As they moved toward the nearby metal platform of the Tritonian “city,” brilliant flowers and flashing birds and wonderful jewels appeared magically all around them, all of them solid and real but all vanishing as they thought of something else.