Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  But to Captain Future, that dazzling aura of living light was a horror beyond description. He forgot his guards and stepped blindly and numbly forward, all the agony of his love and despair showing in his bloodless face.

  “Joan!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “My God, what have these devils done to you!”

  “Curt, stay back!” the girl cried in sharp alarm.

  It was too late. In the tumult of emotions that shook him, Curt Newton had reached hungry arms toward her. His hand barely grazed her shining shoulder — and he recoiled, his whole arm paralyzed by electric shock.

  “Don’t try to touch me, Curt! You can’t. “Joan Randall was telling him, her eyes full of apprehension.

  The voice of Khinkir captain of the Cometae guards, snarled from behind.

  “King Thoryx awaits you, prisoner. Move on!”

  Captain Future barely heard him.

  “Joan, I’ll kill these fiends for doing a thing like this to you!” he raged. “I’ll tear this devil’s city of theirs to fragments!”

  “But Curt, I wanted to be changed like this!” Joan exclaimed. “I wanted to become one of the Cometae.”

  He had thought he could receive no greater shock, but her words left him mentally gasping, eying her in incredulous disbelief.

  “Curt, the Cometae are not fiends,” Joan was continuing earnestly. “They are a fine and friendly folk, who are allied to a wonderful race of superhuman beings called the Alius. The Alius gave these people immortality, and they freely offered me the same priceless boon.

  “Think of it, Curt — I’m practically immortal! I’ll never grow old and ugly; I can live on and on and on! Is it any wonder that I accepted this wonderful thing they offered? And if you are allowed to join them, Curt, we two could live here forever!”

  Khinkir’s snarl came sharply then to Curt’s shocked ears.

  “Unless you move on, prisoner, you will be blasted where you stand,” said Khinkir sharply.

  “Please go, Curt. The king is waiting,” Joan said in distress. “And try to conquer this hostility of yours toward the Cometae. I want you to see their greatness, and to join them as I have done.”

  She drew back into the group of Cometae nobles in the background, and Curt lost sight of her. Khinkir and his subordinate guards had raised their electrode-weapons toward him, with grim purpose.

  Curt Newton stumbled along with them, on across the great, open throne room.

  The scene before him, the brilliant throne room and the shining figures of the Cometae nobles, was a somber blur to his eyes. It was difficult for him to breathe, as though iron bands had been clamped around his chest.

  Dimly he heard a voice through the confused throbbing of his thoughts. Then came the hissing, furious whisper of Khinkir who was standing beside him.

  “The king is speaking to you, prisoner.”

  CURT’S vision cleared. He was standing with his guards in front of the sunburst throne. He looked up at the man and woman who sat on the benchlike silver chair.

  Thoryx, hereditary king of the Cometae, was handsome as all his fair-haired race, his youthful figure invested by that alien halo of electric force that gave them all such an incongruously angelic appearance. But Curt read weakness in the smooth and effeminate features of the king, and in has suspiciously narrowed eyes.

  There was no weakness in the girl beside him, the queen Lulain. Her blond beauty, flaming with the electric glow, was brazenly revealed by her brief, richly jeweled silver garments. She sat with languorous, feline grace, looking down with insolently appraising eyes at Captain Future’s tall, red-haired figure.

  “You do not answer me, stranger!” Thoryx was saying. The king glanced petulantly at Khinkir. “I thought you said he had learned to speak our language.”

  Curt answered for himself, in the Cometae tongue.

  “I have learned it,” he said, a harsh edge in his voice.

  “Do not take that tone with me, stranger!” flared the Cometae king.” You are a prisoner here. If I but say the word, you will be dead before your heart beats twice.”

  The Cometae noble who hovered at Thoryx’ side hastily bent toward the angry king. Curt now noticed this councillor for the first time. The shinning halo of his electric vitality could not disguise the man’s advanced age. His elderly figure was slightly stooped, his hair thin and gray, his face a wrinkled mask of cunning with crafty, watchful eves.

  “The stranger does not know our ways, sire,” he was telling the king soothingly. “It would not be wise to order his destruction before we have learned more about him and his strange companions.”

  “Very well, Querdel,” Thoryx told the old noble fretfully. “But let him not look at me again so threateningly. I am master on this world — under the Great Ones, of course.”

  He added the last words hastily, with a nervous, involuntary glance around the throne, room. Curt surmised the reference was to the Alius.

  Lulain bolted half scornfully at her consort.

  “Are we to spend all day in examination of this prisoner?” she inquired.

  Thoryx addressed himself to Captain Future.

  “Why did you and your companions approach the orbit of this comet?”

  Captain Future had got a grip upon his raging emotions by now. Shaken as he was by the terrible surprise of his encounter with Joan, he still retained enough presence of mind to realize the wisdom of temporizing. So he answered the question.

  “We did not approach the comet of our own free will. You dragged our ship in here with your magnet-beam, as you have kidnapped many other ships of our worlds.”

  “Yes,” old Querdel agreed craftily. “But those other ships were all seeking to avoid the comet, while you were boldly approaching it. Why were you approaching it?”

  Captain Future saw no reason for concealing the truth.

  “We were searching for those other ships,” he retorted. “Now we find that it is you Cometae who have dragged them in here. What could be your reason? The people of the planetary worlds have never harmed your race.”

  “You are not questioning us, prisoner,” flared Thoryx angrily. “It is an order of the Great Ones that we seize as many ships as possible. Who are you to dispute the command of the dark masters?”

  So, Curt thought swiftly, it was the mysterious Alius themselves who were behind the capture of the ships.

  QUERDEL was asking him another question. “Who are the three strange beings who are your comrades? They are not human.”

  “No, they are not human,” Curt answered carefully. “But they are more than human in many respects.”

  “I thought as much,” muttered the old councillor. His cunning eyes narrowed. “I think that you are dangerous, stranger.”

  Curt perceived that the outlandish appearance of the Futuremen was what had made the Cometae take a deeper interest in him than in ordinary prisoners. He sensed doubt and apprehension in the attitude of Thoryx.

  “We had better destroy all four of them, Querdel,” declared the king uneasily.

  The crafty old councillor, who was obviously the brain behind the Cometae throne, demurred.

  “We should report to the Great Ones first, Your Highness. They told us to enlist into the Cometae all captives willing to join us. But these captives are different.”

  Thoryx nodded nervously.

  “Communicate with the Great Ones in the usual way, Querdel. Khinkir, return this insolent prisoner to his cell.”

  Captain Future turned without reluctance to leave the throne room, even though he felt he had learned nothing concrete about the Alius and their purposes. He was hoping desperately to get another word with Joan on the way out.

  But his hopes were dashed. For Joan Randall was no longer to be seen in the brilliant throng of Cometae. She had apparently withdrawn. Crushed by a heavy burden of fear and anxiety for her sake, Curt unseeingly accompanied his alert guards back across the plaza to the prison building.

  As they, approached the cell in which the Futurem
en were confined, prison Captain Zarn hastily made his exit. He showed confusion.

  “What were you doing in the cell with the prisoners?” Khinkir demanded.

  “The three strange ones were fighting among themselves. I went in to stop them,” Zarn explained nervously.

  “It might have been a trick to gain their escape,” snapped Khinkir. “Do not enter their cell again, for these four prisoners are dangerous. And where are the guards I ordered you to post at this door?”

  “I was just going to get them,” Zarn answered quickly. When Curt entered the cell, the Futuremen came toward him at once. Otho asked the question they all had foremost in their minds.

  “Did you find out anything about Joan?”

  Curt Newton nodded heavily.

  “I saw her. She is one of the Cometae now.”

  They stared incredulously. Then Otho began to rave.

  “The devils! They forced her to become an electric monstrosity like themselves!”

  “She said she became one of them by her own free will,” Curt told them miserably.

  But the Brain asked a shrewd question.

  “When you and she talked there — did you converse in English?”

  “Of course,” Curt nodded.

  “Then,” pointed out the Brain, “why did she have to pretend to you at all? Your Cometae guards couldn’t understand your conversation.”

  Fingers of doubt clutched sickeningly at Curt’s brain, poisoning his thoughts. With a violent effort he broke their grasp.

  “This isn’t a time to be doubting Joan, but to be helping her!” he exclaimed. “We’ve got to find a way to bring her out of that horrible electric existence!”

  “Yes, lad, everything depends on our finding such a way,” the Brain told him soothingly. Simon went on to relate what Zarn had said.

  “The Cometae people will revolt against their rulers,” he concluded, “if they can only be sure that we can retransform them afterward to normal men and women.

  CAPTAIN FUTURE paced agitatedly to and fro. “But how can we find the answer to that scientific secret in sufficient time?” he asked desperately.

  “We shall not be wholly without instruments, if Zarn does not fail us,” the Brain interposed. “He promised to try to bring certain apparatus from our ship, if it was possible ‘tonight’.”

  “Then we may have a chance, though it’s still a gamble,” Curt muttered. “When will he be here?”

  “Soon after the sleep-period begins, if he is successful,” answered Simon. “I described for him the electrochemical apparatus I thought we’d need.”

  Grag snorted gloomily.

  “Maybe these guards that Khinkir made him post outside our cell now will spoil the whole thing.”

  “Always cheerful and optimistic, that’s Grag,” Otho chimed in sarcastically. “Why don’t you get a job haunting some dead planet?”

  As they waited for “night,” Curt’s turmoil of spirit did not lessen. His feverish impatience was finally broken by the sound of steps down the corridor. The Futuremen listened tensely as the steps approached. Then they heard a low challenge from the guards posted outside their door, and the voice of Zarn replying.

  Chapter 7: Desperate Research

  THE door opened and Zarn came in. The prison captain clutched a bundle of scientific apparatus in his arms, and his shining face showed an extreme nervous excitement. With him was another man of the Cometae — a big, hulking, craggy-featured soldier who stared at the Futuremen.

  “This is Aggar, a captain and one of my friends.” Zarn introduced him quickly. “He is one of us Cometae who have long desired to revolt against our heartless rulers.”

  Zarn put down the bundle of apparatus.

  “I think I got everything you described from your ship,” he told the Brain. “It was not easy to do so unobserved. But I got in here safely with it, for I had taken care to post guards ‘tonight’ who are of our secret party.”

  “You have already spoken to your friends among the Cometae about a possible revolt?” Captain Future asked Zarn quickly.

  The prison captain bobbed his head.

  “We potential rebels have an undercover organization. I made contact with its heads, of whom Agar is one. They long to rise against the tyrants, against Thoryx and that old devil Querdel. But they will not do so unless certain that success will make it possible for us to be normal men once more.”

  The hard-fisted Aggar spoke bluntly to Curt.

  “Can you do that, stranger? Can you use those instruments to match the science of the Alius and undo what the Alius did to us?”

  “I can’t tell without some study,” Captain Future answered honestly. “And my comrades and I would like the help of the man in the next cell — the Martian scientist Tiko Thrin. Can you get him in here, Zarn, and also the man named Ezra Gurney?”

  “Yes, I can do that,” said Zarn, and hurriedly left the cell.

  He was back in a few moments and with him came two men. One was an elderly little Martian, a small, withered creature with an incongruously big and bald red head, and weak eyes which peered through thick spectacles.

  But it was the other man toward whom the Futuremen jumped with an exclamation of delight. This one was elderly, too, a wrinkled-faced Earthman with iron-gray hair and faded blue eyes, whose bleak depths now were sparkling with pleasure.

  “Ezra Gurney!” Captain Future wrung the old Planet Patrol veteran’s hand. “You old buzzard of space. If there’s trouble anywhere in the System, you’ll find it.”

  “Yes, an’ I found plenty of it in this cursed comet, Cap’n Future,” said Ezra earnestly in his drawling voice. “Did you find Joan?”

  Curt’s face darkened.

  “Yes. She’s become one of the Cometae.”

  Ezra uttered an incredulous oath.

  “It’s impossible! She’d never accept that Thoryx offer to join them!”

  “She did it only for some purpose we don’t know,” Curt declared stoutly. “I’m convinced of that.”

  Yet, even as he spoke, he had to force down that haunting doubt that had poisoned his thoughts ever since Joan had spoken to him so strangely.

  Meantime Grag and Otho were slapping the old veteran on the back in high glee at the reunion. Even Oog and Eek, recognizing an old friend, had come trotting up eagerly from their corner.

  Zarn intruded then. The face of the Cometae captain was anxious.

  “We may be interrupted at any moment!” he warned. “Khinkir and other officers loyal to Thoryx often come snooping about this prison.”

  Curt rapidly explained to Tiko Thrin what they had in mind.

  “You have been here, observing the Cometae, for some time,” he told the old Martian scientist. “What do you think of the possibility of re-transforming them?”

  Tiko Thrin wagged his head doubtfully.

  “We can only try. It will not be easy. The science of the Alius may be far beyond our own.”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE addressed Zarn and Aggar, who were waiting tensely, while the Brain and Otho set up the compact electron microscope, ray probers and other delicate electric apparatus.

  “We’ll need a sample of your tissues,” Curt said slowly to the two Cometae men. “It’s the only way we can make a thorough study of the altered cells of your bodies.”

  The big Aggar calmly drew his dagger and poised it over the skin of his glowing forearm.

  “Just tell me how much,” he grunted.

  Captain Future directed him. The big Cometae captain coolly cut a thin strip of skin from his forearm and placed it in the chamber of the electron microscope.

  Curt and the Brain bent over the instrument. The apparatus was a compact adaptation of the old-fashioned electronic microscope, magnifying almost indefinitely by using magnetic action to focus rays of free electrons, instead of a lens to focus rays of light.

  The strip of tissue still glowed with scintillating light under the microscope, although its luminescence seemed to be fading. Curt focused
down until he was examining a single cell of that changing tissue. He and the Brain, and then Otho and Tiko Thrin, studied the enormously magnified cell.

  As he straightened, Tiko Thrin shook his head.

  “I’m afraid it’s beyond me,” he confessed. “The whole molecular pattern of the cell has been altered beyond recognition. I can’t see how the Alius did it or how it can be undone.”

  “Curse it, the Alius must be gods or devils to accomplish a thing like this!” Otho swore.

  The Brain was looking at Captain Future.

  “Not only molecular change, but also atomic, lad,” said Simon.

  Curt nodded his red head, frowning deeply.

  “Yes. Some force has been utilized to break down each cell’s molecules, not only into atoms but into subatomic particles — and then recast them in a wholly new pattern.”

  Captain Future was feeling a sensation he had never experienced before. This unthinkable tampering with the finest units of life was evidence of a science vast and alien beyond conception.

  “Can you undo what was done to us, Captain Future?” Captain Zarn asked anxiously.

  Curt knew that the hopes of a race hung upon his reply. That the fate of Joan Randall hung upon it, too. Yet he couldn’t answer in an unqualified affirmative, much as he would have liked to do so.

  “I feel certain,” he said slowly, “that this process can be undone, that the molecular and atomic pattern of your cells can be recast to normal by the right force. But it will not be an easy thing to do!

  “You see,” he explained, “the living cell is normally a tiny electric ‘battery,’ that by chemical action produces the electric energy which we call life. But the Alius have worked deep and subtle changes in your cells. They have recast their molecules and atoms so that now each cell forms a tiny transformer, which simply receives its energy from the coma radiation which permeates everything here.”