Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “Up this way,” said Aggar, hastening up the stairs. “We’re working on scant margin of time now!”

  Curt Newton heard then, from somewhere deep within the great palace, a burst of thrilling, rippling music. Long, falling chords quivered in his ears with alien tonal beauty of muted strings.

  “That’s from the Lightning Feast,” Aggar grunted. “But it hasn’t begun yet or we’d hear it.”

  They came up into a long gallery, one of a maze of cross-halls and passages that intersected the palace’s vast bulk. Luxury was evident everywhere here, the alabaster walls hung with beautiful tapestries of red and gold, the floors soft with silken rugs.

  Aggar shot rapid orders at the score of Cometae he had brought along, directing them to work their way back through the palace and overcome the gate guards at the main rear entrances.

  “Then give the signal. Zarn and the others will pour in, and all will be on the knees of the gods!” finished the husky Cometae officer.

  He turned to Curt.

  “The main force of the palace guards is always close to Thoryx. They’ll be in the great court for the festival. This way!”

  They raced along deserted, splendid halls whose occupants had apparently all been drawn by the mysterious festivity. Soon they reached an upper gallery, from which they could peer down into a large court that was situated in a wing of the palace.

  The court was circular, open to the flaring coma-sky. It was two hundred feet in diameter, paved with alternating blocks of red and white that made a beautiful contrast to the alabaster walls.

  AT THE very center of the court bulked a thing like a squat, upright copper pillar. Not far from this stood a wide double throne, upon which King Thoryx and Queen Lulain were sitting. The old noble, Querdel, hovered close beside the king, as usual. Scores of Cometae nobles were standing expectantly around the court, facing their rulers.

  Captain Future perceived that a solid ring of palace guards encircled the rim of the court. In an alcove, musicians played instruments from which rippled the haunting, alien music that now was loud in all ears. It was music that pulsed with a fierce, feverish undertone of expectation and avidity, music that set Curt’s pulses pumping as he listened.

  The Futuremen gazed upon this strange scene with wonder. Upon no far world had they seen a more brilliant and unearthly spectacle than was presented by these radiant Cometae rulers, gathered here for festival beneath the glow of the comet sky.

  Thoryx raised his hand and the music died to an undertone. The king’s voice came clearly to the watchers in the gallery.

  “Let the Lightning Feast begin!”

  The squat copper pillar at the center of the court began silently to extend itself upward, like an unfolding telescope. Higher and higher it extended, until it was a slim rod reaching hundreds of feet into the sky.

  “They’re raising the radiance rod.” Aggar muttered tautly. “If we’re lucky, the feast will drown out the noise our men make at the gates.”

  The Brain hovered over Curt’s ear.

  “That rod is designed to attract increased electric radiation from the coma!” Simon whispered. “Is it possible that —”

  The sentence was never finished. The copper rod had now been raised to an unbelievable height above the palace. As it attracted electric energy from the vast coma overhead, its whole height was wrapped in a purple, brushlike flame that grew in intensity with each minute.

  A slender lightning bolt smote from above into the court! Its jagged white brilliance blinded Curt’s eyes for a second, and its reverberating concussion of thunder almost deafened him.

  But he had seen that thin bolt strike Thoryx, the king. He had glimpsed the white brilliance of unthinkable electric energy splashing over the ruler’s body.

  Then as Captain Future’s dazzled eyes cleared, he heard Thoryx laughing in exhilaration! The king was unharmed by that jolting stroke.

  Now bolt after bolt of dazzling flame was striking in the court, with continuous shock of thunder. The bolts were hitting the Cometae nobles, who threw their hands up as though to welcome and attract the crackling flashes, and who laughed in wild intoxication as the lightning struck at them.

  A mad, unbelievable phantasmagoria, it seemed, as the almost continuous lightning played like dancing witch-fires upon the luminescent, revelry-mad figures of the Cometae.

  “The Lightning Feast!” Aggar was shouting to the Futuremen. “Electric energy is food, is life itself to us Cometae. Even the concentrated energy of lightning cannot harm us, but serves only to stimulate and intoxicate.”

  Chapter 9: Dark Triumph

  THEY turned suddenly from the unearthly spectacle, as a mass of armed Cometae came pouring down the gallery in which they stood. Then they recognized Zarn at the head of these hundreds of men.

  “Our forces are inside the palace!” cried Zarn above the shattering reverberations of thunder. “I’ve ordered them to spread out through the building, to encircle the court.”

  “Good! When they’re all in place, I’ll give the signal for attack!” exclaimed Aggar.

  “Too late for that — look down! There!” yelled Otho.

  A Cometae — one of the palace guards — had flung himself into the mad festival of lightning in the court. The man was swordless, wounded, shouting something in chocking tones.

  “One of the gate guards who got away!” roared Aggar. “No time to wait now! Down at them, men! Let none of the nobles escape!”

  A mad roar of long-repressed hate answered him from the throats of the Cometae rebels. Swords gleaming, they charged behind Aggar and the Futuremen toward a stair leading from the gallery down into the court.

  Zarn was shouting alarmedly to Captain Future.

  “You strangers can’t go into that court! You’re not like us — the lightning will destroy you!”

  “A little thing like lightning isn’t going to keep us out of this!” Curt Newton exclaimed recklessly.

  The court was a scene of mad confusion. From a dozen entrances, Cometae rebels were pouring in and fiercely engaging the palace guards. Swords were gleaming, men going down in death, and the chaos of lightning and thunder still raged.

  Curt glimpsed Thoryx standing in appalled irresolution, his weak face distorted by alarm. But crafty old Querdel was fiercely shrilling orders to the guards.

  Then Captain Future and his companions clashed with the guards around the edge of the court. Curt glimpsed a roaring Cometae soldier lunging toward him, a shining figure whose sword was stabbing fiercely.

  Captain Future parried the blow by a swift stab of his own dielectric blade, then ran the point through the man’s throat. The guard crumpled to the floor. The Cometae, deathless as far as age or sickness were concerned, died as swiftly as ordinary men when a vital organ was stricken.

  “Cut through them — get to the king and the nobles!” Aggar was yelling fiercely, through the crash of thunder.

  “Demons of Mars, what a crazy fight!” gasped Otho. His blade flashed to one side, parrying a blow aimed at Curt’s back. “Die for him!”

  The Brain hovered above the battle, coolly calling warning to Curt and the others as the guards desperately shifted their tactics.

  All around the court, the defenders were being pushed inward as the maddened rebels sought to reach the royal tyrant. Curt as he fought was half blinded every few moments by the appalling hiss and crash of striking threads of lightning.

  As Captain Future had banked on, the dancing lightning bolts always struck Cometae, attracted by their intrinsic electric charge. The bolts could not harm the Cometae. But their blinding flare and the deafening explosions of thunder made infernal, unnerving background for this desperate assault.

  Somehow the ring of palace guards held firm around Thoryx and Lulain, spurred by the undaunted orders of the clever Querdel.

  “We’ve got to smash through them now before the other soldiers arrive here from their barracks!” Aggar was shouting to his Cometae rebels. “Think what you�
�re fighting for, men! Freedom, the end of tyranny, the chance to be normal men again!”

  And it was at this moment, when desperate resistance held the battle’s fate in the balance, that Grag tipped the scales.

  LIKE a monstrous metal genie, Grag strode forward from where he had fought beside Curt Newton. The great robot’s massive metal body could not be harmed by the swords of the Cometae.

  He advanced, flailing mighty arms, his huge balled fists knocking guards aside like tenpins. Swords stabbed in vain at his metal body. Cometae opponents leaped on him to pull him down, and were brushed away. Grag walked through them like a stolid, avenging giant.

  “Come on, Otho — what’s holding you back?” his voice boomed back through the thunder.

  “Grag’s broken the ring! Push through and cut them up!” Curt yelled.

  The attackers plunged forward through the breach. The circle of palace guards was disintegrating.

  A sword touched Curt’s right arm. The electric shock that flew along it from his opponent staggered him. He struggled fiercely to keep from falling. By superhuman resolve, he transferred his own weapon from the paralyzed arm to his left hand, and stabbed fiercely back.

  He downed his assailant and pressed on, fighting like a red-headed fury. Beside him, Otho uttered his hissing, heart-chilling battle-cry as he slashed and struck with uncanny swiftness. Ezra Gurney’s shrill, exultant yell came from behind them. Aggar was roaring orders through the inferno of crashing thunder and dying screams.

  Sheeted lightning flares illumined Grag’s figure as the dauntless robot strode forward in an orgy of destruction, his flail-like arms sweeping all before them. It was small wonder that the Cometae guards broke before this awful personification of inhuman vengeance, upon whom their swords could make no impression.

  “They’re breaking up! Cut through to Thoryx!” bawled Aggar’s stentorian voice. “Get the tyrant!”

  “We’ve won!” Zarn yelled to Curt, as they swayed together in the fight. The rebel captain’s face was flaming with triumph. “Look, they’re trying to flee — we’ve broken the tyranny forever!”

  “Curtis!” came the thin, urgent cry of the Brain from nearby. “Curtis, listen —”

  There was no time to listen. Captain Future was exchanging deadly thrusts with a raging Cometae guard, who seemed suicidally bent upon slaying Curt Newton at any risk, to himself.

  Curt got through the man’s guard, poised for the stab that would finish the fight. A blinding thread of lightning wreathed the Cometae for a second, the blaze and concussion staggering Captain Future backward.

  His opponent, as though drawing new strength from the lightning stroke, leaped forward as Curt stumbled over a fallen man. Captain Future desperately swung up his dielectric sword as he fell — and his antagonist literally spitted himself on it.

  “Nice swordwork, Cap’n Future!” cried Ezra Gurney. The old veteran’s wrinkled face was flaring with blood-mad excitement. “We’ve beat ‘em — we’ve got ‘em runnin’!”

  Curt saw that it was true. The remnants of the palace guard were being hacked to pieces. And the nobles whom they had protected were now being fiercely assailed by Aggar’s rebels.

  Aggar was bawling continuous orders to his followers, to cut through to the Cometae king who cowered at the center of his nobles.

  “Kill the tyrant!” echoed Zarn’s maddened cry. “Remember what we fight for, men!”

  “Curtis, listen!”

  This time, there was such taut urgency in the rasping cry of the Brain that Captain Future turned toward him.

  Simon right, hovering close by his shoulder, was the strangest figure in all that weird scene of infernal combat. Dancing flares of lightning glanced off the Brain’s glass lens-eyes as he spoke.

  “Curtis, the man Querdel whom you described to me is escaping! I saw him slip back from the fight a moment ago — yes, there he goes now!”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE, glancing a little wildly around the crazy, crowded scene, spotted the fleeing noble for himself. He barely glimpsed the sinister Cometae councillor as Querdel darted out of the court into a palace passageway.

  Instant alarm drummed in Curt’s mind. He remembered what Zarn had told them. “It’s said that Querdel has a way of communicating directly with the Alius.”

  Was that why Querdel was fleeing the fight? There was no time to weigh the possibility. Captain Future plunged across the court toward the passage in which the old wizard had disappeared.

  He had to fight his way half across the court, through still-resisting Cometae nobles and guards. He finally won past them and raced into the corridor.

  He was aware of the Brain gliding beside him, and of Grag and Otho racing loyally down the passageway after him. Then Curt burst into a small, vaulted chamber that had the look of a primitive laboratory. Unfamiliar electrical instruments stood around its walls.

  But Captain Future’s eyes flew to the center of the room. There stood the radiant figure of the old councillor, Querdel. The Cometae noble was facing an enigmatic object.

  The thing was a towering, dull-black globe that was ten feet in diameter. It rested upon a tripodal metal pedestal. The most arresting feature was the fact that its deadblack spherical surface was covered with a crawling, metallic film, whose gleaming substance constantly changed pattern.

  Querdel was standing utterly motionless and silent in front of this strange, looming object. But the terrible intensity in the old noble’s face and eyes as he confronted the globe was significant.

  “He’s thinking into that thing!” Curt exclaimed sharply. “It’s some kind of transmitter of mental force, connecting with the Alius —”

  Captain Future plunged forward with his sword poised. He meant to kill Querdel, without parley. For Curt sensed terrible danger in the superhuman efforts of the man to contact the mysterious Alius.

  But before he ever reached Querdel, something happened. The crawling metallic film upon the black sphere suddenly spun and seethed with inconceivable rapidity.

  Out from the sphere pulsed a wave of what looked like black light. An emanation of unguessable force, at sight of which Querdel’s strained eyes flamed in wild triumph.

  “Curtis, look out!” came the thin cry of the Brain. “He’s reached the Alius — that’s a wave of force —”

  The warning came too late. As it reached Curt’s ears, the pulsing wave of blackness took hold of him.

  He stood petrified, rooted to the floor. For he was experiencing a sensation of mental assault such as he had never felt before.

  Into his brain beat the sharp mental commands of other minds — a collective intelligence so vast and alien, Captain Future felt his mental defenses tottering and crashing before its assault.

  He knew, in a wild flash of perception, what was happening to him. He knew that the electric mental pattern of his own brain was no longer commanding his body. The will of more powerful minds, broadcast as a wave of electromagnetic force, had invaded and taken possession of his brain and body.

  “I must not oppose Thoryx and Querdel and their guards. I must submit to them.”

  THAT was the command of an alien will, flowing out from the sphere in a wave of dark, electromagnetic force to dominate Captain Future and all his fellow-rebels!

  Curt struggled wildly to resist that dominating, hypnotic wave of mental force. He could not. He was like a child in the grasp of a giant. He knew now that the Alius whose aid Querdel had called were mighty indeed.

  Yet Curt Newton’s fighting soul rallied for an instant against even this overwhelming attack. By extraordinary mental effort, he opened his lips.

  “Grag! Otho!” he gasped to the Futuremen, who were now bursting into the room. “Get away! Save Joan and — and —”

  He could not finish. His brain was reeling under the crushing mental attack.

  Curt staggered, still trying to resist as his last mental defenses crumbled. He glimpsed the triumph on Querdel’s evil old face. He saw the dark wave pulsing out thro
ugh the corridors and courts of the entire palace.

  Then his mind was crushed into complete senseless acquiescence.

  Chapter 10: Road to Mystery

  OTHO had been fighting furiously in the court of the Lightning Feast, helping Zarn and Aggar and their followers to break the resistance of the demoralized palace guards. Then the android glimpsed Captain Future and Simon racing into the corridor in pursuit of Querdel.

  At once, Otho broke off to follow them. Even in the fierce blood-madness that always swept him in battle, the android’s prime loyalty was always to his beloved, red-haired leader. As he plunged after Curt and Simon, he yelled to Grag.

  “Come on, Grag — the chief needs us!”

  Grag came hurrying clankingly with him, stolidly brushing aside unfortunate Cometae who got in his way. A moment later Otho and Grag burst into the vaulted laboratory of Querdel. They halted, appalled by the weird spectacle before them.

  From the great black sphere at the center of the room, the wave of dark, hazy force had pulsed out to engulf Captain Future and the Brain. It was flowing around Querdel, too, but the old Cometae councillor showed nothing but triumph on his evil features.

  But Curt’s face was ghastly as Otho had never before seen it. An agony of mental struggle was in Captain Future’s eyes as he gasped out a few words.

  “Grag! Otho! Get away — save Joan — and —”

  Curt did not finish the words. Grag and Otho saw Captain Future’s agonized face become suddenly masklike, expressionless. They saw Curt stand now as stiff as a statue, staring stonily into nothingness. And the Brain, too, was poised, speechless, motionless.

  Otho realized instantly that it was that pulsing aura of black force which had somehow overcome his leader. But the android plunged recklessly right into the dark, outward-welling haze. He clutched wildly at Captain Future’s arm.