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

by Edmond Hamilton

  “The Futuremen, and Joan and Ezra, and everybody else — they’ll all think it’s really me!” Curt groaned inwardly, “They won’t know that Captain Future is now their enemy!”

  He forced that agonizing thought from his mind. No use torturing himself with it now! His job was somehow to escape from this horrible situation and undo the ghastly thing done to him.

  Now Curt and his guards were emerging from the water-cavern into the open ocean. The sunlight illumined the green waters in which they swam with warm radiance. The sea-men conducting him headed southwestward, swimming with tireless energy and speed at a depth some dozen feet beneath the surface.

  Curt found that he could see for great distances through the water. His eyes were now a sea-man’s eyes, evolved and adapted to the sea. And as he and his captors arrowed southeastward under the waters, Curt Newton was seeing a world no man had ever seen before from such a viewpoint.

  Looking down through the waters as he swam, Curt could see in the dusky depths great forests of submarine vegetation. Big groves of polyp-trees, pink and white and green, interlaced fantastic branches. Giant sea-weeds like great green underwater prairies rippled and waved in the currents.

  ON AND on southwestward they swam. Presently Curt Newton perceived that his captors were beginning to slant down to a lower level. The waters changed from a brilliant green to a duskier hue. And far ahead beyond the fairy glades of submarine trees, Curt Newton glimpsed dark stone spires and towers.

  “The city of the sea-folk!” he realized, awed. “Cities, people, civilization — hidden all this time under Neptune’s waters!”

  His thoughts were wrenched sharply from the distant spires to a thing close ahead — a huge, dinosaurlike creature with enormous scaled body and small head, swimming toward them.

  It was an ursal, biggest and most feared of all monsters of the Neptunian ocean. Few people had ever glimpsed one, but all who lived on Neptune dreaded the creatures. Curt’s guards were swimming straight toward the monster as though careless of its approach.

  “What’s the matter with them?” Curt wondered. “Don’t they see it?”

  Then in a moment he saw the reason for their unconcern. The ursal was a tame one — tamed by the sea-folk! On the back of the scaled monster crouched a sea-man who urged it forward with a short, spearlike goad. And the ursal was pulling a great metal scow loaded with metallic ores.

  It gave Curt Newton a new insight into the amazing life of these undersea people. He had known that they were necessarily high in scientific progress to have attained such a secret as that of the mind-exchange process. But to have succeeded in taming the fierce ursals!

  The black submarine city ahead grew larger as Curt and his guards approached. Amazedly, Curt looked upon this weird metropolis at the bottom of the sea. It was built of black stone quarried from the sea-bottom. The buildings were cubical, with barred windows and roofs to keep out wandering beasts of prey. Many of the structures were of considerable size, and near the heart of the city was a massive pyramidal building that seemed the center of its strange life.

  As Curt Newton was taken across the roofs of the black metropolis, he looked in wonder at the thronging population that swam in flocks and swarms above the roofs. Men, women and children — all were supple and finned of body, all wore metal-mesh tunics, and all seemed to have their own occupations or professions just as in any city of the land.

  Curt glimpsed buildings that might have contained factories, metal-working shops where unquenchable atomic-flames were used for underwater foundry work, other structures that seemed scientific laboratories. He marveled at the astounding webwork of an alien civilization beneath the waters!

  “And nobody in the System ever guessed it,” he thought, staggered. “Nobody but the Neptunians with their age-old legend of the sea-devils —”

  HE WAS being conducted, he now saw, toward the massive central pyramidal structure. Behind that building was a big open court in which were large, barred metal cages. A moment later, and he was yanked right down toward those metal cages by his guards. He saw now that some of the cages contained ursals. That apparently was the reason for these enclosures’ existence.

  One barred cage of the series held within it scores of sea-men, who were swimming idly around their prison or lounging dully on the bottom. Curt Newton was taken to the door of that prison. It was unlocked by one of his guards. His wrist-chains were unloosed, and he was pushed into the cage.

  The guards swam away. And from behind the bars of his weird prison, Curt Newton looked after them.

  “This is one place that nobody could get out of,” he told himself with sinking heart. “For even if I did get out, I’d be still prisoned in this alien body.”

  Then Captain Future’s unquenchable courage reasserted itself in the face of the appalling situation.

  “No, there never was a captivity that couldn’t be escaped from! But how, in the name of a thousand space-devils?”

  Curt turned to inspect his new prison. It was a cubical enclosure of strong, close-set metal bars, a hundred feet square. It was one of a row of such great cages, only the one barrier of metal bars dividing it from the next in line. In that next cage, one of the great ursals was penned, and in cages beyond, other ursals.

  Curt looked at the sea-men imprisoned with him. There were more than a hundred of them, and they had shown some sign of excitement at his entrance.

  “They think I’m really a sea-man like themselves,” Curt told himself with grim amusement. “Wait till they find out that I can’t even speak their language.”

  One of the sea-men addressed him in a thick, distorted speech. But, to Curt’s utter amazement, the sea-man was using Earthspeech!

  “Who are you?” he was asking Curt eagerly. “Are you a land-man too?”

  Curt gasped, then found his voice and tried to speak in answer. But it was some moments before he could make his new and different vocal organs utter the sounds of Earthspeech.

  “Yes, I’m an Earthman!” he exclaimed. “Do you mean to tell me that you prisoners are men like myself — land-men whose minds have been put in sea-men’s bodies?”

  “Yes, that’s what happened!” cried the other. “I was Dhul Uvan, a Uranian fisherman working with a boat out of Amphitrite. I and my crew — were attacked near the Black Isles by sea-men who capsized our craft and dragged us away to a cavern in one of those black islands. In that cavern was a land-man in a space-suit they called the Wrecker, and a queer machine. He transferred our minds into the bodies of these cursed sea-men and kept us prisoners ever since.”

  “That’s what happened to me, too,” Curt answered grimly. “I’m an Earthman they got.”

  He realized that these were really the kidnaped fishermen, whose bodies were now being used by sea-men minds to carry out the Wrecker’s orders. But why were they being kept prisoners here?

  Dhul Uvan answered that.

  “It’s because, when those sea-men are through with our bodies, they’ll want their own bodies back. And a body can’t live without a mind in it, so our minds keep their bodies living till they need them, curse them! Then, when they have them back, we will all be killed. Until then, they hold us here.”

  “And escape from this place is impossible,” Curt said bitterly. “Is the Wrecker to triumph?”

  Chapter 18: Battle Beneath Ocean

  NIGHT came down on the undersea city, as the Neptunian day waned above. The waters grew dusky, and then dark. And from windowed towers and buildings of the submarine metropolis, yellow atomic bulbs cast their illumination throughout the sea.

  Curt Newton, in his weird new body, swam back and forth in the big metal cage. A fierce unrest possessed him. He must do something, anything to escape from here and save Mine Three and Amphitrite. But what could he do?

  “I’ll find a way!” he vowed fiercely. “This isn’t my body, but my mind is still my own to work with!”

  Sea-men came swimming through the dusky gloom toward the cages, with
flat containers of metal which they thrust between the bars. Curt saw the containers held white mushy substance.

  “Our food,” Dhul Dhul informed him. “Better eat, for we won’t get more until tomorrow.”

  Curt forced himself to eat, for all his strength might soon be needed. The food was a mixture of grated, uncooked vegetables grown in the sea-gardens outside the submarine city.

  “What is your name, Earthman?” Dhul Uvan asked.

  “They call me Captain Future,” Curt replied.

  “Captain Future!” — The exclamation came, from all the other prisoners. They looked at him in awe. “You a prisoner, too?”

  “But not for long,” Curt said grimly. “We’re going to get out of here somehow.”

  “I fear it’s hopeless,” Dhul Uvan said sadly. “Even you can’t do anything here, Captain Future.”

  Curt almost agreed with that discouraging estimate as the night hours passed. He had examined the metal bars on all four sides and roof of their cage. They could not be bent by any ordinary strength. They had been made to confine the great reptilian ursals like the one that drowsed in the adjoining cage.

  As morning neared, Curt noticed a party of a score of sea-men issue from the pyramidal building and swim away swiftly toward the southeast. They carried heavy metal tools that he recognized as atomic cutting-torches.

  “They’re going to wreck Mine Three at noon today as they promised!” Curt told himself, appalled. “They’ve got to be stopped.”

  Curt, watching the party depart, noticed now a large cylindrical metal mechanism which stood outside the pyramidal building, on a scow intended to be drawn by ursals.

  “What’s that thing?” he asked Dhul Uvan sharply.

  “I don’t know — some machine the sea-men have been working on for days,” the other said dully.

  Curt thought he recognized vaguely the design of the mechanism. It looked to him like the type of machine used to generate seismic waves for sounding the interior of a planet. Suddenly the purpose of the thing flashed over him. That was the way the sea-men and the Wrecker meant to destroy Amphitrite! The horror of the threatened disaster appalled him.

  All at once an inspiration, the hope for which he had been searching, came to Curt. His eyes swung to inspect their cage. Yes, it might be done —

  He called the prisoners around him.

  “We may be able to get out of here,” he told them rapidly. “Will you follow me and help prevent those sea-men from wrecking Mine Three? If they succeed in that, the whole System will be stricken, remember!”

  “We would help,” Dhul Uvan replied, “but how can you get out of here? There’s no way.”

  “Take off your tunics,” Curt Newton replied. “Bring them all to me.”

  He took off the tunic of woven metal-mesh that he, like all the other alien-bodied prisoners, was wearing. The other did the same. Curt at once began unraveling the strong, flexible metal cords of the mesh weave, and set them to following his example. In a short time, they had a large mass of the metal threads. Now Curt set them to twisting the tough threads together into a heavy rope.

  WHEN they had finished, they had a heavy, flexible metal rope of immense strength, almost eighty feet long. Curt took the rope and tied one end of it securely to the locked, barred door of their cage. Then, with the other end of the rope, Captain Future approached the side of the barred cage which adjoined the neighboring cage in which a great ursal drowsed.

  Curt quickly fashioned the end of his rope into a running noose which would just reach into the ursal’s cage. Then he had the men bring him what was left of the food given them.

  “Hope the beast likes this stuff,” he muttered, putting it just inside the ursal’s cage. He made a sharp sound.

  The ursal awoke, looked at Curt with sleepy reptilian eyes, then noticed the food on the floor. The monster at once stirred its vast, scaly bulk, and with a gliding movement swam around and thrust its long neck and snaky head down to the food.

  Captain Future was ready, and instantly he had reached through the bars and thrust his metal noose around the neck of the great beast. The ursal, alarmed, recoiled quickly. But the movement caused the noose to tighten on its neck.

  Thoroughly enraged and frightened by the constricting pressure around its neck, the ursal pulled backward with all the enormous brute strength of its mighty body, upon the rope. That metal rope, fastened at its other end to the door of Curt’s prison, threatened to break. But the tough twisted metal strands were thick. Instead of the rope, the barred door of the prison gave way — ripped off its hinges by the ursal’s mad pull.

  “By the four moons of Uranus, you’ve done it!” cried Dhul Uvan excitedly to Curt. “Captain Future, we can escape now!”

  “What good will it do us, when we can’t ever regain our own bodies, and must stay in the sea?” another demanded.

  “Stay with me and maybe you will get your own bodies back,” Curt promised. “Now out of here, quickly. We’ve got to get to Mine Three by noon!”

  The submarine city was still dark and slumbering. Without detection, Curt and his comrades rocketed up through the dark waters and headed southeast. Curt knew the location of Mine Three, and steered their course by the sun, whose rays struck down through the green waters. Through teeming sea-life, over submarine forests, they swam.

  An hour passed, and another and still another as he and his hundred sea-man comrades with human minds swam on beneath the surface. It would soon be noon. And Mine Three was still a long way off, and they were tiring.

  “Faster!” Captain Future urged the others fiercely.

  An hour later they glimpsed a great metal tube far ahead that dropped downward from the floating depot on the surface.

  “There’s Mine Three — and there are the sea-men starting to destroy it!” Captain Future cried.

  The tubeway led down into one of the great metal submarine-mine domes. And outside that dome, down in the dusky depths, sea-men were turning their atomic cutting-torches on the curved walls. A dozen land-men in sea-suits who had stood guard lay dead, blasted.

  “At them!” Curt yelled through the water to his weird company. “They’ve killed the guards posted outside the dome!”

  DOWN through the sea Curt’s band shot, like projectiles toward the crew of sea-men attacking the dome. The sea-men, seeing them coming, startledly dropped their work of destruction and drew their atomic force-rods. Streaks of fire flashed and blasted a half-dozen of Curt’s comrades.

  Curt and his band had no weapons but their hands. But they outnumbered the sea-men five to one. They locked with the sea-men in weird battle, giving no quarter, asking for none.

  Captain Future had rocketed down at a sea-man who was raising his force-rod to aim at him. The blasting streak of fire grazed Curt — and then he grabbed his opponent. The two whirled and wrestled in the water, the sea-man seeking to use his weapon, Curt seeking to wrest it from him. And the seaman had the advantage in this struggle, for this was his element, and his body was not alien to him as Curt Newton’s was.

  Over and over they turned in the green gloom, locked in death-combat. Curt made a fierce final effort, and tore away the creature’s weapon. He used the metal rod as a mace with which to crush his enemy’s bulbous head. Then, half-dazed by that fierce fight, Captain Future looked around. The battle was already almost over. The sea-men had had no chance against their outnumbering, furious attackers.

  “Got them all!” cried Dhul Uvan, swimming up to Curt. “What now, Captain Future?”

  Curt answered swiftly.

  “The main force of the sea-folk will already have left their city, going with their seismic machine to destroy Amphitrite. But we can’t stop them with this little force. We’ve got to get our bodies back, if possible.”

  “Gods of Uranus, can we do that?” cried the other. “I’d go through hell to get back into my own body!”

  “And I! And I!” cried the others.

  “We’ll head north for the Black I
sles,” Captain Future told them. “If the mind-exchange apparatus is still at the Base there, and if we can overcome the guards somehow, we’ll have a chance to get our own bodies back.”

  They left the dome of Mine Three. Straight northward they swam through the sunlit waters. But now their progress was slower — all of them were almost exhausted by the long swim from the city, and the struggle. Even their new sea-man bodies, adapted to such superhuman efforts, were tiring.

  At last the Black Isles came into view, like giant black stalagmites rising from the sea-floor. They swam toward the mass of Black Peak, and presently Captain Future was leading his strange band in beneath the water to the buried water-cavern.

  FROM beneath the water, Captain Future inspected the scene. The red fluoric lamps that lit the cavern showed that only a few dozen of the Wrecker’s men were here.

  Curt’s hopes soared as he saw among those men a tall, red-haired figure. Himself! His own body, possessed now by the sea-man whose body he had!

  “The Wrecker isn’t here,” he muttered. “And some of his men must have been sent elsewhere.”

  Curt looked hungrily at the square structure that contained the mind-exchange apparatus. He knew enough from his own past experiments to operate that apparatus. But how could he, when he couldn’t live a minute out of water?

  “Who are those two who are chained up at the edge of the ledge?” Dhul Uvan was asking. “They don’t even look human.”

  Curt looked, and his hopes rose excitedly. The two chained prisoners to whom the other referred were Grag and Otho!

  “If I can get Grag and Otho free!” Curt whispered excitedly. “They could help us.”

  “How can you free them when you can’t leave the water?” the other demanded.

  “There’s a chance,” Curt declared. “Keep down — I’m going to try.”

  He swam deep under the surface, toward that farther end of the ledge. Then he approached the shore, rising to the surface. He saw Otho and Grag glimpse him, and stare at him without interest. They couldn’t recognize him in this alien body, of course. But Curt acted now.