Curt Newton would have given a year of his life for the opportunity to study and analyze the products of an unhuman science which were all around him. But he recognized that it was impossible, with time and danger pressing upon him as they were.
Reluctantly, he left the gloomy, mysterious vessel. Once outside, he wished that the door would close. And silently, the aperture shut.
“Those others in there they’ll sleep on, perhaps forever now,” he said, staring at the strange ship.
Explorers from far off in the Universe, sleeping on eternally at the heart of the graveyard of space ships!
CURT looked around at the jumbled ships of the wreck — pack, at whose center they were.
“We’ll work back to the space-boat,” he decided, “and search the newer ships out at the edge of the pack. We ought to find more good cyclotrons out there.”
And so it turned out. As Curt freed each cyclotron, he dragged it out of the wreck and hauled it along the edge of the wreck-pack to their little space-boat.
Hours passed as Captain Future toiled. Finally he had ten cyclotrons crowded into the stern power-compartment of the space-boat, and bolted precariously to its floor.
He was panting as he finished the task and looked up at Joan, who had helped him as much as possible.
“Will we be able to get out now?” she asked eagerly. There was a most unbecoming smear of grease on her nose.
“We’ll either get out or blow ourselves into the next dimension. You and Kansu all ready? Here go the fireworks!”
He switched on the cyclotrons as he spoke. A dozen huge conical generators of atomic energy began throbbing back in the compartment that had originally housed but two. Their droning became a quivering vibration that seemed to be shaking the craft apart. It was deafening. Unnerving — yet Curt turned the power higher still.
Then when the space-boat seemed about to come bodily apart from the vibration, Curt opened the throttles of the stern rocket-tubes.
They were slammed deep into their recoil-chairs by the crushing thrust of an unimaginable acceleration. A torrent of atomic flame was bursting back from the rockets, hurling the little boat forward at dizzying speed.
The wreck-pack dwindled behind them. Curt held the throttles tense, ready. Then they hit the maelstrom of ether-currents that raged around this central dead-area.
For a moment, Curt thought the end had come. That hell of boiling, invisible currents batted at the space-boat like giant hands, seeking to force it back into the center of the vortex, while its super-powered rocket-tubes forced it wildly forward.
But the space-boat’s super-power was driving it out of the vortex of currents!
Curt dared not cut down the power yet. Tense minutes passed, as the small craft fought out through the weakening currents. Then abruptly they were out of the last current; and the space-boat was hurtling through undisturbed space like a meteor.
Instantly Captain Future cut all the cyclotrons but two.
“Whew!” breathed the big red-haired young man.
“You’re the only man in history who ever brought a ship back out of the Sargasso Sea of Space!” cried Joan, her brown eyes shining.
“And now that we’re out, what?” Kansu Kane demanded, looking sourly around the vast emptiness of space.
“We’ll run back toward Jupiter,” Captain Future snapped. “Get a call through to the Futuremen from there.”
“And I can get a ship back to Venus from there,” said Kansu Kane emphatically. “This knocking around space may be all right for those who like it, but I don’t.”
THE little craft throbbed Sunward, toward the white speck of Jupiter. But in a few moments, Curt Newton peered closer ahead, the muttered a joyful exclamation.
“Here come the Futuremen now!” he cried. “They must have got onto our trail somehow.”
Joan Randall and the little astronomer peered with him, but saw only an ordinary-looking, little, glowing Comet that was approaching in an outward direction.
“I can’t see anything but that little Comet,” complained Kansu Kane.
“What Comet is it?” Curt asked him blandly.
Kansu scratched his head. “Why, I don’t know — come to think of it, there’s no Comet follows an orbit like that.”
Captain Future laughed. “It’s not a Comet — it’s the Comet, my ship. The boys are using my Comet-camouflage.”
“How are you going to hail them without a televisor?” Joan asked anxiously.
“I’ll have to take a chance to stop them,” Curt said. “Hold tight!”
He moved the throttles and sent the space-boat diving straight down into the path of the Comet as though intending to bring about a collision. And that was what Grag and Otho had seen!
As the two ships rushed together, Curt’s keen eyes got a lightning-glimpse of Grag and Otho and the Brain in the control room of the camouflaged ship. He waved his hand, and at the last moment to avoid collision sent the space-boat curving upward.
“They’ll have seen me!” he told Joan confidently. “The eyes of those three don’t miss much!”
In fact, the glowing Comet was rapidly decelerating. Presently it and the battered space-boat hung side by side in space.
Captain Future and his two companions, in their space suits still, floated in a few moments to the side of the Comet. A moment more and they were all shedding their suits and helmets inside the little tear-drop ship.
“Master, I knew nothing could happen to you!” boomed Grag the robot in deafening tones, gripping Curt’s arm in a metal grasp that was almost crushing. “I told Otho that we would find you safe — though it’s small thanks to him.”
“What happened to you on the Legion of Doom ship, Chief?” Otho hissed eagerly. “Did you fight your way out? Did you kill many of the scum?”
“No, my bloodthirsty friend, I did no killing,” Curt laughed. “I contrived to get us out without that — and then like a fool, I blundered in my flight right into the Sargasso Sea of Space.”
“The Sargasso?” Simon Wright’s lens-eyes hung questioningly on his face. “How did you get out of there, Curtis?”
Curt told them. “I’m sure now that the base of Doctor Zarro and his Legion is on Uranus or Pluto,” he finished.
“It’s on Pluto, boy,” the Brain told him. And Simon went on to tell of his study of the strange, white-furred body of the disguised Legionary, and of their start for Pluto.
“Pluto, eh?” Curt muttered, his gray eyes staring thoughtfully. “Then my guess was right.”
HIS eyes flashed. “We’re going on to Pluto at once, then! There’s not much time for us to smash this Doctor Zarro. The whole System is already in such panic that a few more days will see that plotter given the dictatorial powers he wants.”
Kansu Kane, the little astronomer, had been staring in appalled wonder at the trio of unhuman Futuremen. The little man shrank back in panic when great Grag turned his photo-electric eyes on him.
“Who is this, Master — a captive?” boomed the metal robot.
“No, it’s Kansu Kane — the Venusian astronomer the Legion kidnapped,” Curt said hastily.
Simon Wright’s lens-eye fixed on the little man. “The Kansu Kane who was author of the double-spectra theory?” asked the Brain.
Kansu straightened proudly. “Yes, that was my work.”
“That theory is the most impossible hypothesis I ever encountered,” rasped the Brain. “How could you possibly advance it?”
The little astronomer bristled. He forgot his awe of the Brain in his indignation.
“You must be crazy to question it!” he cried furiously. “I proved conclusively in my calculations that —”
“Let’s postpone the scientific arguments till later,” Captain Future suggested hastily. “We’re wasting time here. Grag, start up again — the course is straight for Pluto.”
“Yes, Master,” boomed the big robot joyfully, and hastened with clanking strides to the control room. “I’ll get up full
speed again.”
“Later, I want to inspect that furry body you spoke of,” Curt told the Brain rapidly. “Meanwhile, what about your observations of the dark star?”
“I’m puzzled, Curtis,” the Brain confessed. “That dark star is undoubtedly of tremendous size, according to my photographs and visual observations. Yet the measurements of its mass show a small mass such as is impossible for so large a body.”
“Could some unknown factor be putting your mass-measurements in error?” Curt asked.
“It’s possible,” admitted the Brain. “I’d need more and bigger equipment to ascertain that.”
“When we get to Pluto, you can make some studies with the equipment at Tartarus Observatory. If it turns out that that dark star really possesses large mass, it will threaten the System with disaster, Simon.”
“I know,” muttered the Brain. “The whole thing is puzzling.”
Captain Future turned and found Joan sitting in a space-chair, her face pale.
“Grag,” he ordered, “set the automatic pilot and get out some food. Joan is starved.”
The big robot obeyed, coming back and unfolding a jointed table, and then bringing forth a queer variety of substances and instruments for the “dinner.” To Joan and Kansu Kane, sitting around the table with Curt Newton and the Futuremen. It was the strangest meal they had ever partaken.
CURT, Joan and the Venusian ate ordinary interplanetary food brought from a vacuum preserving-compartment. There was frozen Earth beef, Martian desert-apples, flat, hard cakes of “space-bread” made from Jovian grain, and a big flask of black Venusian swamp-grape wine.
Otho could eat ordinary food in case of necessity, but preferred the pure synthetic chemical food-elements by which he best satisfied his hunger. The android quaffed down an unappetizing-looking glassite bowl of pure chemical liquid, and was done.
Simon Wright had no need to eat, for he had no body to keep alive. The Brain habitually took his refreshment in a stimulating massage of vibrations. Grag had put a little projector of such vibrations over the transparent case of the living Brain, and Simon silently basked in the refreshing force.
Grag himself, whose huge metal body was powered by atomic energy, calmly opened a hinged plate in his mighty metal torso, and placed a small mass of copper in the receptacle there, to keep his power-plant going. He closed the plate, and then fed the rest of the copper to Eek. The little gray moon-pup gulped up the pure metal instantly, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction.
“Will he eat any metal at all?” Joan asked the robot wonderingly, as she watched Eek.
Grag showed his pleasure at having his pet noticed.
“Yes, he will eat any metal,” he boomed, “but he likes the heavier metals best.”
“Why doesn’t Eek eat your fingers?” Joan asked the robot curiously. “They’re metal — and he’s always chewing on them.”
“My body is of impregnable ‘inert’ metal which even Eek’s teeth can’t make any impression on,” Grag told her. “Besides, he prefers copper, and especially silver or gold, to anything else.”
“He certainly liked the flavor of my silver tube of make-up dye,” hissed Otho, staring belligerently at the moon-pup. “He must have, for he ate it an up.”
Joan took a heavy gold bracelet from her wrist and held it out to the moon-pup.
“Take it, Eek,” she said.
“He cannot hear — you must think, and he will hear your thought,” Grag told her.
Joan obeyed. As the moon-pup telepathically sensed her permission, it accepted the bracelet instantly.
It chewed the gold with every appearance of extreme pleasure. In a few moments, though, its limbs began to wobble.
“Too much gold makes Eek a little sick sometimes,” Grag said anxiously.
“Sick? You mean drunk!” jeered Otho. “Any metal of higher atomic number than zinc gives that beast delirium tremens. Look at him now!”
In fact, Eek was unsure of his movements and his bright little eyes seemed somewhat glazed.
“He’s probably singing at the top of his voice, telepathically,” laughed Captain Future.
WHEN the strange meal was over, Grag returned to the controls with a definitely intoxicated Eek. The Comet fled on through the void. Simon Wright and Kansu Kane resumed their argument about the Venusian’s theory. Otho, always easily bored, amused himself by trying one disguise after another. It made Joan shudder despite herself to see the android time after time soften his flesh, and mold it into new features and shapes.
She looked back at Captain Future. The big red-haired young man was lounging back in a space-chair, staring off into nothingness while his strong fingers plucked absently at his pet instrument, a twenty-string Venusian guitar.
Haunting music of a half-dozen different worlds, drifting snatches of subtle, unearthly melodies, came from the instrument. Yet Joan watched Captain Future’s brooding, handsome face and abstract gray eyes, knew that his mind was far from music.
She knew that it was of Doctor Zarro he was thinking, of the struggle with that dark prophet-plotter and his weird Legion that lay ahead of them at Pluto, the perilous life-and-death battle for the System toward which they were rushing through space.
Chapter 8: On the Arctic World
DOWN through the dusk of Pluto’s day, toward the great dome of the colonial capital Tartarus, flashed the Comet.
Captain Future himself held the controls, and his keen eyes were fixed on a beacon a little north of the domed city.
“That’s the space port beacon,” he commented, “you remember, Simon — we’ve been here before.”
“I remember too,” muttered Otho. “We almost froze to death out in one of the equatorial blizzards.”
The android was staring with intense dislike at the dusky forbidding landscape beyond the city — a vista of frozen black plains stretching into vast white ice-fields that rose far away into vague, gleaming ranges. Otho hated cold.
Grag, to whom heat and cold were all alike, stared imperturbably beside the Brain. And Joan Randall and Kansu Kane had crowded into the control room too, and were watching anxiously.
“Who’s in charge of the Planet Police on Pluto now?” Curt asked the girl agent.
“Marshal Ezra Gurney,” answered Joan. “You remember him?”
“Old Ezra? Of course I remember him — that hardbitten old interplanetary marshal and I have met all over the System. Last time was at Jupiter in the Space Emperor case.”
“He was promoted for his bravery during that awful time on Jupiter,” Joan said. “He’s chief of this whole division of the Police now, with headquarters down here in Tartarus.”
“We’ll see him first thing, then,” Curt declared.
Just west of the spaceport, a little out from the great dome of the city, rose a squat, curved-roofed building.
“Tartarus Observatory,” Curt observed. “It bas to be outside the city so its telescopes won’t be impeded by the dome. As soon as I come back from talking with Ezra Gurney, I’ll take you over there for your research on the dark star, Simon.”
“I am going with you into that city, Master,” Grag declared firmly. “I won’t let Otho get you into trouble again.”
“Yes, Grag, I’m taking you, but not for that reason. You are impervious to cold. Go get that mysterious furry body Otho brought in. I’ll want Gurney to see it.”
Curt sent the door sliding open. A blast of freezing air struck in at them.
“Cold as ever!” Curt declared. “This planet will never be a winter resort, that’s sure.”
They stepped out into the bitter dusk, Joan on one side of the big red-headed adventurer, and Grag and his burden on the other. Eek, the moon-pup, was curled around Grag’s neck as usual.
Night was coming — the night of Pluto, hardly darker than its day. Charon, the largest of the three moons, shone as a white disk near the zenith. Cerberus and Styx, the other two moons, were just rising to cast a strange, mingled, shifting radiance across th
e frigid landscape of their icy parent planet.
CAPTAIN FUTURE glanced keenly up at the moons. Cerberus was the far-famed Prison Satellite, the bleak penal moon to which the worst interplanetary criminals of the whole System were sentenced. On Charon were trapping posts of the Earthmen who hunted the rare fur-bearing animals there. Only Styx had never been settled or visited by Earthmen, since it was completely water-covered and a landing on it was impossible.
Presently Curt and his two companions found themselves inside the dome of Tartarus, having entered by a sliding door automatically operated by an electric eye. Here inside the dome was a balmy warmth that was grateful contrast to the freezing chill outside.
Captain Future looked across the dusky city, whose streets were lighted by flaring atomic lamps. There were comparatively few people abroad. They met a few Earthmen colonists, who stopped and stared in wonder at the great metal figure of Grag, and the moon-pup clinging to his shoulder. They met a few native Plutonians too.
The Plutonians, indigenous natives of this frigid planet, were manlike people whose hulking bodies were completely covered by thick, long black hair. It covered even their round heads, and through its shaggy locks, their saucerlike, phosphorescent eyes peered forth as though from deep caverns.
This long black hair, evolved as a protection against the cold of the ice-fields in which they dwelled, seemed to make them uncomfortably hot in this warmed Earthman city. For most of the hairy Plutonians were visibly gasping, and had opened the leather tunics which were their customary garment.
“What’s that uproar?” Joan asked, as they passed near a bright-lit street from which came a continuous babel of cries.
Curt smiled. “That’s the Street of Hunters — the Earthmen who go out into the ice fur-trapping like to celebrate, when they get back to Tartarus.
“Here we are!” he exclaimed a moment later, as they approached a square, two-storied black cement structure.
The emblem of the Planet Police was over its door. And an officer in the black uniform of the service stopped them as they entered, staring a little wildly at Grag’s great figure.
Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) Page 7