Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Chief, what’s the matter?” he cried. “Wake up!”

  Then Otho, too, felt a dim, chill sensation of alien forces seeking to invade and master his mind, of the attack of a powerful intelligence.

  But Otho resisted that mental assault to which Curt and Simon had fallen victims! The android resisted, and so did Grag. They stood their ground, unheeding the flowing dark haze from the sphere, trying frantically to awaken Curt and the Brain from their strange stupor.

  “Otho!” yelled Grag suddenly. “That old devil who did this has got away!”

  The android whirled fiercely. It was true. Querdel had taken advantage of their moment of desperate distraction to slip from the room.

  Both Grag and Otho raced furiously down the passage by which they had come to overtake and kill the Cometae wizard who had called forth the power of the Alius.

  That haze of unimaginable mental force, emanating from the laboratory Grag and Otho had just left had pulsed outward to invest the whole palace. It was all about them like a nightmare dusk as they sped down the corridor, yet still it seemed not to affect them.

  They burst back out into the palace court, looking about fiercely for Querdel. Then they forgot the wizard in the horror of the sight they witnessed.

  Fighting between Cometae rebels and palace guards had suddenly ended. It had been ended by the pulsing dusk of force that now pervaded everything. Under the influence of that terrible pall, the Cometae rebels had dropped their weapons and stood about like mindless automatons, where a moment before they had been shouting their victory.

  BUT the Cometae palace guards and nobles remained unaffected by the weird force. They were disarming the stricken rebels, who could no longer resist them. Thoryx was shouting angry orders.

  “Secure every rebel! Be sure to get the leaders!” he shrilled vindictively. “We’ll teach the people what it means to challenge us, chosen by the Alius!”

  Querdel, who had reached the king, pointed at the stunned Grag and Otho.

  “There are two of the strangers who were ringleaders!”

  Cometae guards leaped toward the robot and android from all sides. With a bull-like roar of rage, Grag met and hurled them back in broken heaps.

  An alarmed cry went up.

  “The power of the Alius has not stricken them! They are devils!”

  “They are only two and you are hundreds!” raged Thoryx. “Get the electric blasting weapons and finish them!”

  Grag was momentarily at a loss.

  “Otho, what in the name of all the sun-imps are we going to do?” he yelled. “We’d better get the chief and Simon and get out!”

  Otho whirled, his flaming green eyes instantly taking in their precarious situation. They were almost hemmed in by masses of charging Cometae guards, who had completely cut them off from the passage leading to the laboratory where Curt and Simon remained stricken.

  “We can’t get to Simon or the chief now!” Otho hissed. “And the chief told us to get Joan away. We’ve got to do that and come back later. Come on, Grag — this way out!”

  Otho had spotted their only remaining chance of escape. An entrance in one side of the court remained still unblocked by guards. The android realized that unless they escaped instantly by that opening, the now-triumphant Cometae guards would bring up weapons capable of destroying them. Otho knew that the revolt was now a disastrous failure.

  Ordinarily, Otho would not have dreamed of deserting his leader. But Curt’s frantic last order to assure Joan’s safety rang in the android’s ears. Also he knew that only by saving themselves from imminent destruction could they hope later to be of any help to their two stricken comrades.

  Grag comprehended his reasoning. The great robot plunged ahead with him toward the side entrance.

  “After them!” screamed Thoryx through the still reverberating crash of thunder. “They seek to escape!”

  Grag and Otho were hurling themselves along a corridor, the flying figure of the android paces ahead of the clanking robot.

  “Wait — I can stop them from pursuing!” Grag boomed, bringing up short in the corridor.

  Grag had spotted one of the barred metal gates designed to close off the corridor. He swung it shut. Then, instead of trying to lock it, Grag tore out one of the metal bars by main strength. He literally tied the heavy metal bar around the two halves of the gate, as though it had been a length of rope.

  “That’ll hold them for awhile!” he boomed triumphantly.

  They could hear the whole palace in wild uproar around them. And through it all pulsed the dark haze of incredible mental force.

  Otho and Grag burst into the open air, to find themselves at the rear of the looming palace.

  “Come on!” the android urged. “If we can reach the prison, get Joan away in the Comet —”

  Then as they came into sight of the great plaza before the palace, they halted, baffled. Companies of Cometae guards were running across it toward the palace, and other guards were pouring into the prison across the plaza.

  “Now we can’t reach the prison or the Comet!” Grag exclaimed. “It’s head for the jungle — or else!”

  INSTINCTIVELY he and Otho started on a dead run through the narrow streets, away from the palace and plaza. They encountered only a few Cometae as they plunged through the slumbering city, and these few hastily recoiled from the alarming spectacle presented by the fierce-eyed android and the monster metal robot. Within a few minutes, thanks to the city’s comparatively small area, they glimpsed ahead of them the green of the jungle.

  There was no zone of cultivated land around the city. The Cometae, who did not rely on food to maintain their strange electric life, needed no agricultural acreage. Only a few hundred yards from the outskirts brooded the green jungle that blanketed most of this fantastic world in the comet’s heart.

  Otho and his metal comrade flung themselves across the open space and into the jungle’s shelter. They found themselves in a forest of tall, queer trees whose trunks were green as well as their grotesquely geometrical foliage. Vines and brush choked much of the space between.

  The jungle was a place of translucent green light. At first, Otho thought this was wholly the effect of coma-light filtering through the foliage. Then as they slowed down, he realized that part of the glow came from the vegetation itself. Tree trunks and branches, as well as their leaves, shone with a faint, intrinsic luminance.

  “This is far enough,” Otho said finally, coming to a halt. “We mustn’t go too far from the city, for we’re going to have to get back in there somehow to help the chief and Simon and Joan.”

  His voice grated with frustration.

  “Gods of space, how did things fall to pieces so suddenly?” he exclaimed.

  “It was that old devil Querdel, who called the Alius!” said Grag, clenching his metal fingers. “That black sphere was some means of mental communication with the Alius.”

  “Yes, the sphere was both a transmitter and a receiver,” Otho muttered. “And those mysterious devils, the Alius, used it to project a wave of hypnotic mental force that seized every rebel in the palace.”

  “But why didn’t that wave of force seize us!” Grag wondered. “We felt it, but it didn’t overcome us as it did the chief and Simon and Ezra, and all the rest.”

  “Grag, I think I understand why we were able to resist it!” Otho exclaimed. “The others are all humans — even Simon’s brain is that of an ordinary homo sapiens. Apparently the Alius knew just what kind of mental force to utilize that would overpower a human brain.

  “But you and I are not ordinary humans, Grag,” the android went on excitedly. “Our bodies, our brains, are of artificial origin and differ in pattern. The Alius’ weapon of hypnotic force missed fire against us for a very fundamental reason. We’re a couple of minds such as they never ran up against before!”

  “Well, now what are we going to do?” Grag demanded practically.

  Otho shook his head gloomily.

  “I haven’t
figured it out yet.”

  He threw himself down upon the grass, leaning back against the faintly luminous green trunk of a big tree. But an instant after he did so, Otho bounded to his feet with an involuntary yell of pain.

  “What are you trying to do — howl out to everyone where we are?” Grag reprimanded him.

  “You touch that tree and you’d howl, too!” Otho exclaimed. “I got the devil of an electric shock from it.”

  “A shock from a tree? You’re dreaming!” Grag scoffed.

  THE robot advanced his metal hand toward the luminous green trunk. A spark immediately bridged the gap.

  “Why, it’s true! All these trees and this vegetation are electrically charged!” Grag exclaimed, marveling.

  “Now I understand,” Otho declared after inspection of the growths. “This vegetation relies on the electrical radiation of the coma, instead of on sunlight, for its agent of photosynthesis. It must contain either a variant of chlorophyll or a totally different substance, capable of absorbing the electric radiation as a photosynthetic force. The process builds up a small charge in every plant and tree —”

  Grag suddenly interrupted with a tense gesture.

  “Listen, someone’s coming!”

  Otho froze instantly. They stood in the middle of the glade, listening. Then Otho, too, heard the stealthy rustling.

  “Cometae coming after us!” he whispered hissingly. “Thoryx guards must have found our trail! And we have no weapons —”

  The stealthy sounds filtered to them through the brush from the direction of the city. Both the lithe android and the towering metal robot braced themselves for a hopeless battle.

  Then a small gray shape burst out of the brush and flew toward Crag, to caper in frantic, soundless joy around his metal feet.

  “Why, it’s Eek!” the robot said happily.

  It was indeed the little gray moon-pup. His beady eyes were glistening with joy and his whole body was wriggling wildly as Crag picked him up. An instant later, Oog’s fat, white little figure appeared also. The meteormimic waddled over to Otho and went through a bewildering series of protean changes expressive of his excitement.

  “Now how in the name of the sun did they get here?” Otho marveled. “We left them with Tiko Thrin and Joan, back there in the prison.”

  “Tiko and Joan must have been seized by Thoryx guards, same as the other rebels,” Crag asserted. “That would scare Eek and he’d try to find me. He could do it, with his telepathic sense. Oog just followed him.”

  The two Futuremen now held a council of war. They decided to circle around through the jungle to the other side of the city, to find a place of concealment until the next “night.” Then they would make the precarious attempt to get back into Mloon to free Curt and the rest.

  So robot and android started through the luminous green forest. They made a strange pair as they swung along — the giant metal robot with his moon-pup clinging to his shoulder, and the lithe, fierce-eyed android, whose fat little pet cuddled affectionately under his arm.

  Grag, who was leading, suddenly stopped. He made a gesture of warning. Otho hastily came to his side. There was a break in the jungle ahead. It was a narrow ribbon of smooth white synthestone road — a highway that began at Mloon and ran straight north through the forest.

  “I never noticed this road before,” Crag declared. “Since the Cometae didn’t mention any other cities, where do you suppose it leads?”

  “It leads north, and that means it leads to the citadel of the cursed Alius,” Otho guessed immediately. “Come on, let’s get across it and out of sight.”

  At that moment they heard a humming sound, rapidly growing louder. It came from the south. Grag and Otho hastily dived back into the brush.

  They glimpsed one of the torpedo-shaped, six-wheeled power vehicles of the Cometae approaching from the south with great speed. The vehicle whizzed past them. But its occupants remained photographed on their minds.

  A COMETAE soldier was driving the strange car. Beside him sat old Querdel. And in the rear of the machine lay a prone figure with red hair.

  “That was the chief!” yelled Otho as the car streaked out of sight. “That figure in the back — that was Curt himself!”

  Both he and Grag rushed back out onto the highway in a vain effort to overtake the car. But it had already vanished. After their first frenzied sprint along the highway, they realized the futility.

  “That devil Querdel is taking the chief to the citadel of the Alius!” raged the android. “Why didn’t we kill that wizard when we had the chance?”

  Grag balled his mighty fists.

  “They’re not going to do anything to him. We’re going to his rescue!”

  As indomitably as though they had but a few miles to go, the two Futuremen started forward along the white highway in a swinging trot.

  The endurance of Grag was practically limitless. And that of Otho’s artificial body was almost as great. These two could stand indefinite exertion that would kill an ordinary man. For hour after hour, they followed the highway north through the jungle.

  They met no one on that road. Hours passed, as they trotted grimly northward. It was hard to measure time, for the coma-sky that flamed overhead never changed. Oog whimpered with hunger. Eek cowered in fright on Grag’s mighty shoulder, as flame-winged birds or flying reptiles flashed across the highway from the jungle.

  They knew they had covered many scores of miles, and yet the road went endlessly on. Then, through the scintillating haze, they glimpsed the outlines of a small black mountain ahead of them.

  They came closer. Both Futuremen cried out in amazement. It was not a small mountain that loomed ahead. It was a black structure of mountainous bulk, rising stupendously from the luminous green forest.

  “The citadel of the Alius!” whispered Otho, his slant eyes aflame. “Gods of space, what kind of beings are they?”

  The Futuremen had come to the jungle’s edge. A few hundred feet away rose the sky-storming black, eyeless walls of the sinister enigmatic castle.

  The citadel had the shape of a squat, truncated cone. Its massive walls of black synthestone were blank and windowless, and sloped slightly inward. The only break in those walls was an arched entrance, without any kind of gate or door. The white highway led into this passage.

  “Say, that’s a break for us!” Grag exclaimed. “There’s no gate or guards — we can walk right in.”

  “Don’t be an idiot!” hissed Otho. “If the Alius have no gate or guards, it’s because they don’t need them. Get it through your iron skull that we’re up against creatures such as our cosmos has never seen before. I’d as soon dive into the sun as to walk through that entrance.”

  “But the chiefs in there — we’ve got to get inside,” Grag anxiously protested.

  “Not that way,” Otho insisted. His eyes keenly inspected the looming wall. “I believe I can climb that slant wall and get on the roof.”

  “What good will that do you?” Grag demanded skeptically.

  “I won’t know until I try it, will I?” Otho flared. “But there ought to be some ventilation or other aperture in the roof.”

  “But I can’t climb it!” Grag complained anxiously.

  “I know — you’ll have to wait here,” Otho said hastily. “Keep Oog and Eek here, too. I’ll reconnoiter and come back for you.”

  THEN the android wormed himself through the high grass toward the wall of the mighty citadel. His rubbery flesh crept at the sensation that he was being watched by alien eyes from within the blank, massive pile.

  Yet he reached the wall without mishap. It resembled the side of a steeply sloping mountain, above him. Otho could see that the great blocks of synthestone were tightly joined together by cement.

  The Joints gave his incredibly nimble and deft fingers a precarious hold. The inward slant of the wall helped him. With spidery agility, the android started up the wall. Clinging to holds from which a bird might have fallen, using his phenomenal litheness
and skill, Otho climbed higher.

  The climb seemed endless. He had ascended a thousand feet when he finally reached the roof. He drew himself onto it with a sigh of relief.

  Now he made a startling discovery. The citadel was ring-shaped. At the center of its roof yawned a circular opening a hundred yards across. From it projected a ring of copper electrodes, pointing at the coma-sky.

  “What the devil is the meaning of it?” Otho wondered.

  He crawled silently across the synthestone roof to the lip of the circular opening. Then he froze, petrified by the unimaginable terror and strangeness of the scene which lay before his eyes.

  Chapter 11: The Alius

  CURT NEWTON awoke from the hypnotic trance that had crushed his senses into oblivion. Wonderingly, he looked around him.

  He was lying on a couch in a small room. The walls, floor and ceiling were of black synthestone. There was no window, but there was a door, and the door was open to a brightly lighted hallway.

  “Now what in the name of Pluto’s ice-fiends —” Curt began bewilderedly.

  Suddenly, he remembered everything: the revolt of the Cometae whom he had helped Aggar and Zarn to lead; their triumph in the court of the Lightning Feast; then the escape of Querdel and the dark wave of force from the black sphere, which had plunged him into unconsciousness.

  Sharp dismay invaded Captain Future’s mind, as he realized that the others had been overcome like himself. They must have succumbed, he knew, as he had done. That meant that the Cometae rebellion was by now completely crushed, that Thoryx and Querdel — and the Alius — still ruled. It meant that Joan Randall must remain one of the deathless Cometae.

  That thought brought Curt Newton to his feet in an excess of raging emotion. He was not through yet! He’d find a way to undo the devilish thing that had been done to Joan, to overthrow the tyranny that made the Cometae slaves of unguessably alien masters...

  His rage faded away, and a queer chill possessed him as he glanced around. This black, cell-like room did not look as though it was part of any building of the Cometae City. He had seen not one such black structure in all that alabaster city.