“What has happened, Master?” he boomed bewilderedly. “How did you get out of the case?”
“Eek got me out — I gave him a thought-command to chew into the case,” Curt told him as he turned quickly to the others.
Little Eek had sprung onto Grag’s shoulder and was clawing the robot’s neck, in a frenzy of joy at seeing its metal master revived.
“Eek did that?” Grag cried. “For that, Eek, you shall have all the silver you can eat!”
Otho and Joan had released all the other prisoners in the Hall of Enemies. And those men and women of all planets, dazed by sudden deliverance from their weeks of horrible captivity, were stumbling to crowd around Captain Future, babbling incoherently.
“Lad, what’s your plan?” cried the Brain. “If you broadcast to the System that the dark star is only an illusion, you can maybe stop the Council’s action —”
“It wouldn’t work, Simon — the peoples of the System are too panic-stricken now to believe it,” Captain Future exclaimed. “There’s only one way to end their panic, and that’s to destroy the dark-star illusion that’s terrifying them —”
“Stygians are coming!” yelled Otho urgently. “They must have heard this uproar!”
Captain Future himself could now detect a chorus of alarmed cries and sound of running feet in the darkness outside the building.
“We’re going through them to the Comet!” he cried. “We’ve got to make it!”
He swung to the bewildered, newly-released mob of Doctor Zarro’s captives.
“You stay here — the Stygians won’t harm you and I’ll be back for you if I succeed.”
A STYGIAN appeared in the door, his hollow eyes goggling out of his white-furred face at the crowd inside.
“The Doctor’s prisoners are escaping!” the creature yelled back out into the night.
Curt’s proton-pistol shot a thin, pale beam of stunning force that dropped the creature unconscious in his tracks.
“Grag — Otho — come on!” Curt yelled. “Joan, you bring Simon!”
The girl snatched up the handle of the Brain’s case. Curt and the other two Futuremen were in front of her as they all plunged out into the cold, windy night.
In the dark Stygian city, lights were bobbing and voices yelling as a crowd of the white-furred beams swarmed toward the building in answer to the alarm.
“Through them!” Captain Future shouted. “It’s now or never — but use your pistol only to stun them, Otho!”
Triggering the pale knockout beams in all directions. Curt and Otho ran at the head of the little group. Joan followed closely with the Brain, and Grag brought up the rear with the moon-pup clinging terrifiedly to his shoulder.
They forced their way, fighting through streets into which more and more Stygians were pouring. But the beams knocked down those in their way, and those who sought to snatch them from the rear were swept back by Grag’s mighty, flailing metal arms.
They fought thus to the edge of the city, beyond which stretched the dark, grotesque forest of giant club-mosses.
“They’re following us!” Otho hissed as they plunged running through the towering mosses. “Name of a thousand sun-imps, how did we get out of the city?”
“Those Stygians are an unwarlike people, unaccustomed to fighting, or we couldn’t have done it,” Curt panted. Then his voice flared exultant. “There’s the Come? ahead!”
The little ship had not been disturbed. But two Stygian guards had been posted over it, who emerged wildly now.
Curt’s beam knocked them flat. Then he and his comrades tumbled into the ship.
A horde of Stygians, bewildered by unaccustomed violence and conflict, were still pouring after them from the city.
“Up, in the name of all that’s holy!” yelled Otho as Captain Future leaped to the controls.
Curt laughed recklessly as he slammed the cyclotron switch and then opened the throttles.
The Comet roared up into the dark sky like a living, leaping thing, pluming a great tail of white fire.
Curt drove it out at dizzying acceleration, through the semi-opaque curtain of the illusion-camouflage. Glancing back, Styx again seemed covered by rolling ocean.
They were out in open space now. Pluto bulked vast and white on their right, Cerberus and Charon setting beyond it.
Out in the brilliant stars of outer space, amid the star-clouds of Sagittarius, bulked a black disk incredibly big. And Curt headed the little ship straight toward it.
“We’ve got to end the dark-star illusion,” he cried. “Only that will convince the System peoples there’s no danger.”
THE tear-drop ship, fastest craft in space, picked up velocity at an appalling rate. Out of the System itself they were rushing, out into the shoreless sea of interstellar nothingness to meet the colossal, illusory dead sun that was coming toward the System.
The speed was the highest Curt had ever called forth from the Comet. So great was it that Pluto was diminishing visibly to a small white disk behind them, and the illusory dark star was expanding across the heavens at an incredibly swift rate.
“It can’t be just an illusion!” Joan exclaimed wildly staring. “It looks too utterly real!”
“Are you sure that it is not real, Master?” asked Grag uneasily.
The appearance of the unreal dark star was formidable enough to daunt the bravest. Utterly solid and real it seemed, a colossal, jagged black dead sun turning in ponderous majesty on its axis as it thundered toward them.
“You’ll soon see that it’s not real,” Curt told them with a flashing smile. “I’m going to drive right into it.”
The Comet hurtled toward the oncoming dead sun with what would have seemed suicidal intent to any observer.
The huge black mass filled all space before them. Its black, jagged, cindery surface rushed headlong to meet them. Joan closed her eyes with a little scream.
The ship hit the jagged black surface, and plunged on through it unchecked. They had felt no slightest shock or check. That black, jagged surface was no more real than a shadow.
The Comet was inside the vast dark-star illusion, now. All around them, enclosing them, stretched the semi-opaque curtain of force that maintained the illusion.
Curt Newton pointed ahead to a gleaming metal speck at the center of the great illusory image.
“That’s the illusion-ship that maintains the image!” he cried. “That’s where Doctor Zarro is.”
He sent the Comet zooming upward, and then dived down toward the illusion-ship in a dizzy swoop.
“Stand by the proton-guns, Otho!” he yelled. “I’ll blast them out of space!” hissed the android, catlike eyes gleaming brilliant.
“No, just disable them!” Captain Future ordered. “There are Stygians in that ship — poor, scared devils who were tricked into this plan by Doctor Zarro. Ready!”
Otho was at the breech of the Comet’s, heavy proton-guns. As the little tear-drop ship dived headlong, the guns spat pale, lacing beams at the tail of the other ship.
Curt saw the beams blast the tail rocket-tubes of the illusion-ship into a fusing wreck. The progress of the other craft faltered — it drifted on through space, still maintaining the vast curtain of the illusion.
“On space suit!” Curt cried to the android. “We’re going to try and board it.”
He had brought the Comet up behind the other craft, setting its throttles so that it clung beside the enemy ship. Now, struggling into his space-suit, he led Grag and Otho to the air-lock.
“Stay here with Simon, Joan!” he ordered the pale girl. “There’ll be fighting on that ship.”
Then Captain Future and Otho, in their suits, and Grag, passed out through the air-lock and leaped across the narrow gulf of space to the side of the drifting illusion-ship.
They reached the metal wall of the craft and clung there, floating with it.
“Get this air-lock door open, Grag!” Curt cried.
THE big metal robot had replaced two of his fi
ngers with drills. In a few seconds he had drilled holes into the metal. Then, hooking his fingers into them, he tore open the door.
They tumbled into the air-lock, shutting the outer door after them. Curt pressed the switch that opened the inner door. Proton-pistol in his hand, he plunged ahead of Grag and Otho into the interior of the illusion-ship.
Two blasts of atomic fire thundered down the main fore corridor at him the instant he entered. Doctor Zarro and Roj stood with Kallak a few feet down the corridor, firing at him.
Beyond those three huddled a half-dozen terrified Stygians, beside a big, throbbing cylindrical mechanism.
Grag’s great arm knocked Captain Future aside as the deadly gun-blasts thundered. The streams of atomic force hit the robot instead of the scientific wizard. They splashed harmlessly off the broad metal breast of Grag.
“Get them!” Curt yelled, plunging down the corridor, his proton-gun spitting its beam.
His beam grazed past Doctor Zarro as the arch-plotter, with a fierce, raging shout, lunged to meet him.
The black prophet’s empty atom-gun was raised to club Curt’s skull. The lightning swerve of Captain Future saved him from the blow but it struck his wrist, knocking away his pistol.
Savagely Curt’s hands sought the throat of Doctor Zarro. His fingers penetrated the immaterial illusion-disguise of the plotter and closed around the real man’s neck.
Doctor Zarro was hammering fiercely at him with the clubbed atom-gun. But Curt Newton, half-dazed by the shower of blows, hung to his grip.
He was aware of Otho and Roj standing and shooting, crackling atom-blast against hissing proton-beam. And he heard as from a great distance the booming battle-yell of Grag as the robot locked in titanic struggle with Kallak, the giant.
Then Doctor Zarro’s mad blows weakened, and finally ceased. The plotter went limp in Curt’s deadly grip. And Captain’ Future knew that the murderous would-be dictator was dead.
He dropped his dead enemy and staggered around. Roj had been cut almost in half by Otho’s beam, while Otho himself was holding his hand to a great blast-burn on one rubbery arm.
And Grag had smashed in the skull of the giant criminal Kallak with a tremendous blow of his metal fist.
“Gods of space, what a fight!” panted Otho, his green eyes blazing. “Is the Doctor dead?”
“Yes,” answered Curt shakenly. “I had to kill him — or be killed myself.”
He looked up at the terrified Stygians clustered around the throbbing cylindrical mechanism. It was that mechanism, Curt knew, that was generating the constant force-field which maintained, by subtle warping of reflection, the illusion of the dark star.
The Stygians shrank fearfully as the tall, red-haired young Earthman strode toward them. But he made a reassuring gesture.
“You are not going to be harmed”, he told them. “But turn that thing off — at once!”
HASTILY, the Stygians slammed levers and switches on the front of the big machine. And Captain Future, looking out, saw the vast semi-opaque curtain of the illusion suddenly disappear.
The dark-star illusion — the illusion that had almost changed the history of the System — was gone!
A worn smile lit Captain Future’s face. “I’ll bet the peoples of the System can’t believe their eyes when they see the dark star suddenly gone entirely.”
“Here are Joan and Simon!” Grag announced.
The girl, in space suit and carrying the Brain, had entered the ship. She looked sickly around the scene of battle, and then her eyes fastened on the prone figure of Doctor Zarro, still shrouded by his illusion-disguise.
“Doctor Zarro — Krim — is dead?” she faltered to Captain Future.
“He’s dead, yes,” Curt nodded grimly. “But it’s not Victor Krim.”
“What?” yelled Otho. “You mean that Krim wasn’t Doctor Zarro?”
“Who else could it be?” cried Joan dazedly. “You said it wasn’t Rundall Lane, and Romer is dead, and that leaves only Krim —”
For answer Captain Future reached down and fumbled till he found the little cylinder at Doctor Zarro’s belt which had maintained the arch-plotter’s illusion-disguise. He found a switch, touched it.
The illusion that Doctor Zarro’s forbidding appearance had been, suddenly vanished. A different-looking man lay there, a dead, middle-aged Earthman with a fine, scholarly face.
“Cole Romer!” hissed Otho wildly. “But it’s impossible — Romer was killed —”
“Romer was not killed.” Curt denied somberly. “That charred body in the Tartarus warehouse was not Romer’s — it was Victor Krim’s!”
“Then Romer was Doctor Zarro!” Otho gasped.
Captain Future nodded.
“When I inspected that charred body that was supposed to be Romer’s, I had already suspected three men of being Doctor Zarro — Rundall Lane, Victor Krim and Romer. But the nitrate clue which the Doctor planted to implicate Lane proved that Lane was not the Doctor.
“That left Krim and Romer. But Romer had supposedly been killed when he was calling Police office by televisors. He was supposed to have been blasted down by atom-guns as he was making the televisor call. But there was no sign of his pocket-televisor around his body — if he had been suddenly blasted, it would have been blasted too! I guessed then it was not his body, that the call was faked. Whose body was it? Who but Victor Krim’s? Krim had leased that old warehouse lately. I believed that Krim had stumbled on the secret hideout and tunnel which Romer, as Doctor Zarro, was using, and had been murdered by Romer who knew that Krim’s body would be thought his body. That’s why Romer made that televisor call and pretended he was killed while making it — so that the body would be found, he would be thought dead, and nobody would wonder about his absence when he took up the identity of Doctor Zarro permanently!
“Romer knew the fur-hunters’ quarter would be searched for him sooner or later, since he’d let it be known that he was going there to hunt for Krim. When the quarter was searched, the burned body would be found, his interrupted call would be remembered, and everyone would think that body was his — Romer’s.
“ONE more fact clinched my suspicion of Romer,” Curt continued. “I found in his offices of the Pluto Survey, samples of minerals from every moon of Pluto. He would have had easy access to a sample of Cerberus nitrate such as Doctor Zarro had used to point suspicion at Lane. No one else would be likely to have such a sample!”
“But Doctor Zarro — Romer — told you that he’d been on Styx for weeks,” objected Otho. “Why wasn’t he missed?”
“Because he said that he’d been exploring Charon,” Captain Future replied. “Actually, as I learned, he’d been on Charon only a short time — long enough to enlist Roj and Kallak in his scheme.”
And Curt Newton added, looking down broodingly at the dead plotter:
“It was a vast scheme, surely. He even maintained his identity as Romer to avoid suspicion being caused by his sudden disappearance. A vast, cunning scheme — and he almost succeeded.”
“He couldn’t succeed with you against him, Captain Future!” cried Joan.
Curt Newton shook his head, looking soberly out into the vast, awesome gulf of the eternal void.
“I think that it was not us alone who defeated Doctor Zarro, but the workings of some mathematics of fate that bring justice to all such as he,” he said.
“Aye, lad,” rasped the Brain. “And the workings of that mathematics are beyond even our science — and always will be.”
Chapter 20: Trail in the Stars
THE wan, dusky day of Pluto, cold world of eternal twilight, was drawing to an end. The stars were shining forth more brightly, and the big transparent dome of the city. Tartarus, shimmered like a brilliant bubble as the night closed in around it.
Freezing winds swept over the darkening rock plain outside the city. Here at an edge of the spaceport lay a small, tear-drop shaped craft that was poised for a leap into space. Captain Future and the Futuremen were ab
out to start home.
Captain Future and his comrades faced three fur-clad figures — Ezra Gurney, Joan, and little Kansu Kane.
“I can give you a lift back to Venus easily, Kansu,” Curt was saying. “It won’t be much out of our way.”
“Aye, and on the way I can prove to you the absurdity of your double-spectra theory,” the Brain added to the little astronomer.
Kansu Kane declined the invitation uneasily.
“I’d rather take the regular liner back,” he told Captain Future. “Too many things happen when a person travels with you, I’ve found.”
Curt Newton chuckled. “Well, maybe you’re right. What about you, Joan? Sure you don’t want to have us take you back to Earth?”
“I wish I could go with you,” Joan said, her brown eyes wistful. “But I have to obey the orders of the Planet Police headquarters. They want me to stay here a little longer.”
“Yes, there’s plenty work going to be piled on us, arranging things with this new world Styx and its people,” drawled old Ezra Gurney.
Curt nodded understandingly.
“You’ll find the Stygians only too anxious to be friends with the rest of the System, now that their fear of the Earthmen has gone.”
Days had passed since Captain Future and his comrades had destroyed Doctor Zarro and his vast plot. Days in which the Solar System peoples had dazedly awakened to the fact that they had been victims of a gigantic hoax which had nearly robbed them of their liberty, and which Captain Future had barely frustrated.
Curt had spent part of those days on Styx. He had found the Stygians terrified, believing that now the Earthmen would take terrible vengeance upon them. But Captain Future, always most skillful of men in dealing with native planetary races, had finally convinced the Stygians that the Earthmen would be friends, not enemies, and that their long dread was without reason.
Gladly, the Stygians had accepted the proffer of friendship. They had ended the planetary camouflage which made their moon appear sea-covered. An ancient, hidden race was about to take its place in the System’s friendly family of peoples.
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