Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  The Lunarians quickened their pace. They were traveling down a very steeply slanting passage now. At its further end, there shone a strong glow of throbbing green light. The Moon-men were talking to each other in excited, cheerful accents.

  “Looks like they’re getting home, murmured Otho. “But where the devil does that light come from?”

  They came to the end of the fissure. It debouched into a vast, green-lit space. Captain Future, Otho and Simon Wright stopped short, uttering cries of amazement as they stared at he stupendous and incredible scene.

  Chapter 12: Mountain of Light

  THEY were looking out into an amazing world, deep inside the Moon. It was a cavernous space, so vast the eye could not perceive its roof or farther wall. Their first stunned impression was of an underworld illuminated by throbbing green radiance, whose weird landscape stretched for a score of miles and out of sight.

  Captain Future, his two comrades and their alien escort stood at the east wall of this underworld. From their feet, the ground sloped gently downward in a dense, unearthly jungle. This towering forest was of grotesque, pale green fronded trees, interspersed with giant mosses and tangled, snaky vines.

  The jungle ended two miles away, at the shore of a great inland sea. This black, heaving body of water was of great extent. Its farther shore was only dimly visible. But, most wonderful of all, miles out upon the black sea there rose from its waters a towering mountain that shone with dazzling green radiance. And that shining mountain in the sea was the source of the quaking green light for this incredible world inside the Moon.

  “That sea is water!” choked Otho wildly. “Water, here inside the dead Moon!”

  “The water of the surface lunar oceans of long ago,” muttered the Brain. “We might have guessed it. It drained down into the interior, just as did the lunar air.”

  But Captain Future was gazing neither at the grotesque jungle nor the black sea beyond it. His eyes were riveted to that radiant, shining mountain which rose from the dark waters far away.

  “Don’t you two understand what we’re looking at?” he cried to his companions. “That shining mountain out there must be of radium ores. It’s the great radium deposit itself!”

  “A mountain of radium ore?” cried Otho incredulously. “But that’s not possible!”

  Then the inescapable reality crushed down their dazed doubt. Only radioactive matter could be self-luminous to such high degree as that radiant peak in the distance. Its quivering light illuminated the whole cavern-world with rays of unearthly splendor.

  Curt Newton felt a surge of wild hope. They had reached the radium deposit at last. And if he had time to prepare his startling plan, he could harness the terrific potential energy of that shining mountain to forestall all Larsen King’s schemes.

  The Lunarian leader was pointing now, urging Curt and his comrades to move on. Slowly, rapt in the wonder of the magnificent spectacle, they accompanied the Lunarians down the slope into the pale green jungle.

  The Moon-men followed a worn path through the weird forest. All around them towered the grotesque, fronded trees and great mosses. The air was warm and soft. Quivering green rays penetrated the foliage fronds like strange sunlight. Insects and small, batlike birds flashed in the branches.

  The path led toward the black sea. The Lunarians shrank back as there came a crashing in the undergrowth ahead. With a loud, bellowing sound, a sluglike creature that resembled an enormous black seal lumbered across the path in frantic flight. After it flashed its pursuer, a writhing, tentacled monstrosity, like a land-octopus. They disappeared in the jungle.

  “Life within the Moon,” murmured the Brain with intense interest, Life that once inhabited the lunar surface, until the dying satellite drove down here after the dwindling air and water.”

  “And these Lunarians live here, have been living here ever since their great migration ages ago!” Otho exclaimed. “Yet how can they exist? The light from that radium mountain isn’t sunlight.”

  “No, but it seems that animal and plant life was able to adapt itself to the different radiation and live in it as we live in the open air,” Captain Future declared. “Who would have dreamed it?”

  The Lunarian leader abruptly made a gesture that commanded him to silence. The Moon-men were standing, listening and looking back along the trail in obvious alarm.

  Curt heard a dim, thudding sound as of monstrous, heavy feet in rapid tread. The Lunarian chief uttered a sharp whisper of warning. He and his men raised their spear-bows, facing back along the path.

  “What kind of creature is this that’s coming?” whispered Otho. “They’re scared. But it can’t be worse than those other monsters, surely.”

  The heavy tread came closer. Then around a bend in the trail came a towering, man-shaped metal figure, dragging a smaller figure along with him.

  It was Grag! Curt was about to utter a joyful cry of recognition. But then he perceived that the Lunarians beside him were exhibiting astonishment and terror at sight of the great metal robot. They were hastily aiming their queer weapons — Captain Future yelled and sprang forward to stop them. They had already fired. Their short metal spears whizzed from the bows and struck Grag squarely. But they only rattled harmlessly off the robot’s metal torso.

  Curt sprang in front of the Lunarians, motioning them not to shoot again.

  “Put up your hand in sign of friendship, Grag!” he yelled.

  “Chief, is that you?” boomed the robot joyfully. “I was hoping you had taken the ancient path, and I followed down all this way.”

  The Moon-men were lowering their spear-bows in bewilderment. It had apparently penetrated their minds that the strange metal newcomer was a friend of Captain Future’s group; but they regarded Grag with some fear.

  On his part, Grag stared perplexedly at the Moon-men.

  “Why, they’re Lunarians!” blurted the robot. “Real, live —”

  Otho and Simon Wright were hurrying forward with Captain Future to greet the robot. Now they discovered that the figure Grag had been dragging along was an Earthman.

  All recognized him instantly.

  “Albert Wissler!” exclaimed Otho. “How the devil did you get him down here, Grag?”

  “Dragged him down, when his strength gave out,” Grag retorted grimly. “He’s a flabby little fellow for endurance.”

  Albert Wissler was an almost pitiful sight. He seemed near collapse, his thin face haggard with exhaustion, his blinking eyes dazed in their wildness as he looked drunkenly around the group and the incredible lunar underworld.

  “I brought him down as a hostage,” Grag explained. “We can threaten to take it out on him if King’s men persist in following us.”

  Wissler choked in panic.

  “Larsen King wouldn’t pay any attention to such a threat! He wouldn’t care whether you killed me or not.”

  “Don’t worry — your worthless hide is safe,” Curt Newton assured him sharply. “Grag, how did you come to find us?”

  Grag rapidly told his story.

  “When I saw that blood in the fissure,” he concluded, “I was worried about you. I figured you’d stick to the ancient Lunarian path, so I followed that down here at top speed.”

  Then the robot remembered.

  “I’ve bad news for you, Chief! King himself has gone back to Earth, to get the Government to send a full company of the Planet Patrol to the Moon. The Patrol company will guard the miners as they penetrate down here.”

  OTHO swore in dismay. “That is bad! We can’t fight a whole company of the Patrol.”

  “No, we’ll have to put my plan into operation before they get here or we’re lost,” Captain Future agreed. “Yet there may still be time —”

  The Lunarians were approaching them now. The Moon-men still eyed Grag fearfully, and kept their heavy spear bows ready for use. Their grizzled leader touched Curt’s shoulder, pointed with peremptory urgency forward along the jungle trail.

  Curt understood. There was d
anger from strange forms of life while they lingered here in the jungle. So with Grag and the captive Wissler now added to their company, they resumed the hasty march through the pale green forest toward the sea.

  Wissler, already drunken with fatigue, seemed stunned by everything in this underworld of throbbing green light. Grag had to lift him along at every step, the towering robot keeping a tight hold on the man’s shoulder.

  The anxious Lunarians soon led them out onto the beach of the black sea. Its waters, laden with sediment that gave them their dark hue, were swelling in an abnormally high tide. The Moon-men went to two long heavy canoes of yellow wood that were pulled up on the sand. They pushed these out onto the swirling black waters, and gestured Captain Future and his companions to enter them.

  There was a bad moment when Grag climbed into one of the big canoes, for his weight threatened to capsize it. Hastily the passengers were rearranged. Then the grizzled Lunarian leader gave a signal, the Moon-men dug deep with broad-bladed paddles, and the two yellow crafts shot out on the surface of the heaving black sea.

  The Lunarians steered toward the western shore of the black sea. Far to their left, they glimpsed great marshes on the north shore. Their course took them within a few miles of the shining mountain of radium ores. Grag, to whom Curt had explained the mountain’s nature, stared at it unbelievingly as did the terrified Wissler.

  “It can’t be radium ores, all that mountain!” Grag exclaimed. “If it were, wouldn’t its radiation be fatal even at this distance?”

  “Not at this distance,” Curt denied. “You forget that ninety percent of the energy emitted from radium lies in its alpha rays. And alpha rays are quickly absorbed by air. So that more than nine-tenths of the powerful radiation from that mass can’t reach far through the air.”

  “All the same, I wouldn’t want to get too near it,” Grag muttered.”

  Captain Future’s face was thoughtful.

  “An unprotected man who approached that mass too closely would receive the full blast of its unsoftened alpha rays and would perish. But if we wore some kind of ray proof protection —”

  “We?” yelped, Otho. “You mean you’re going to try landing on that blazing mass?”

  “We’ll have to,” Captain Future told him. “My plan depends on it. And we’ll have, to do it as soon as we get this apparatus ready.”

  Curt tried to get the Lunarians to stop paddling, so that he might make a longer inspection of the shining mountain. But though they seemed to understand his gestures, they shook their heads vigorously and resolutely paddled on away from the radiant peak.

  CURT’s eyes stung to the great mass as they pulled away. Its value in monetary terms would be almost incalculable. It would make Larsen King the richest man in the System’s history — if he could possess it. But Captain Future was grimly determined that it should remain here untouched, conserved for the future and not needlessly squandered now.

  The two yellow Lunarian canoes forged on over the heaving black sea, until they were close to the western shore. It, too, was blanketed by pale green jungle that sloped up toward the west wall of the gigantic cavern-world. But there was a large cleared space on the slope, in which they described the black structures of a big town.

  The canoes were run in and pulled up on the beach beside scores of similar craft. Lunarian fishermen glimpsed Captain Future and his band disembarking, and came running with excited shout. They formed a trailing retinue as Curt and his companions were escorted up a path to the town.

  The Lunarian town was almost a city in size. Its buildings were of black basalt quarried from the neighboring cliff wall. They were built in the same style as the ancient cities whose ruins dotted the Moon’s surface. The structures were low and windowless, faced by porticoes of fluted spires. The town plan was a spiral, as in the surface cities.

  The grizzled Lunarian leader, whose name Curt had gathered to be Fwar Aj, led them toward the center of the spiraling streets. Moon-men and women and children gaped at them in highest excitement. Many fled in panic. Especially did the sight of the stalking metal robot and the gliding shape of the Brain appear to alarm them.

  Captain Future perceived that the population must run into the thousands. He doubted if this lunar underworld would support more. He noticed that there were no evidences of machinery or application of any scientific knowledge.

  The Lunarians, as on the surface long ago, were essentially a non-scientific people. They appeared to support themselves by hunting in the jungles, fishing from the black sea, and cultivating fields cleared near the town.

  Fwar Aj, their grizzled guide, led them to a rambling black building, outside which were a small group of older Lunarians. One of these was a wrinkled, withered oldster who wore a curious metal emblem on his breast.

  “Reh Sel, di lao thur!” Fwar Aj said to Curt, at the same time bowing respectfully toward the oldster.

  “Apparently this old Reh Sel is the chieftain of the Lunarians,” Captain Future murmured to his companions.

  He made gestures of friendship. To his relief, old Reh Sel repeated them. Then the aged chieftain gave orders in a shrill voice.

  Fwar Aj conducted Curt’s group to a nearby dwelling, a low windowless stone vault. He gave them to understand it was their lodging. Then he departed, though a curious crowd of Moon people remained outside.

  “So far, so good,” muttered Curt; “They appear to be accepting us as friends, though I imagine they’re keeping tabs on us.”

  “I’ve got to learn their language as soon as possible,” he added determinedly. “We may need their help to put my scheme into effect before the Planet Patrol and King’s men get here.”

  ALBERT WISSLER crouched fearfully in a corner of the dim room, watching as Captain Future keenly inspected the mass of transformers, condensers and other apparatus he had brought with him.

  “We’ve got to build this equipment into a super-powered atomic generator and wave-transmitter,” Curt declared.

  “We’ll need metal for cables and other parts, and that’s where we’ll require Lunarian help.”

  Otho stared skeptically.

  “You’re going to build a big wave-transmitter of some kind? What for? How the devil will that protect the radium mountain out there from the forces King is mustering?”

  “If my plan works, it will protect the radium from the biggest army that could be brought down into the Moon,” Curt replied. “But we’re short on time. We don’t know how soon King’s forces will get down here.”

  Curt went outside to find Reh Sel and Fwar Aj. But he found that the streets of the lunar town were now deserted, except for a small group of armed Lunarians loitering nearby, whom he guessed were watching them.

  He came back ruefully.

  “It seems that it’s night there now.”

  “What do you mean, night?” exclaimed Grag. “It’s light as ever. That radium mountain out there never quits shining, does it?”

  “No, but apparently the Lunarian have a ‘day’ and ‘night’ period artificially defined,” Captain Future surmised. “Probably it corresponds to the day and night of their ancient life on the Moon’s surface, back ages ago before the Moon’s diurnal period had lengthened to a fortnight.”

  He spent some hours starting to connect up parts of his intricate apparatus, in a circuit that would form the basis of a wave-transmitter of peculiar and unprecedentedly powerful design. It would need to be powerful, Curt thought grimly, to do the stupendous thing he meant it to accomplish.

  Simon Wright watched keenly. Grag was standing guard, fingering the atom-pistol he had taken from Wissler. Wissler himself was sleeping exhaustedly, and so was Otho.

  After some hours of work, Curt slept, too.

  He awoke to find the city of the Moon-men stirring with life. It was “morning,” it seemed. Lunarian men were setting off with tools of cultivation for the fields, with spear-bows for the jungles, or with nets and lines for the fishing boats on the beach.

 
Curt and Simon went through the town to find Reh Sel. A curious yet friendly Lunarian throng followed them, wonderingly eyeing the Brain. Captain Future found the old Lunarian chieftain and the grizzled Fwar Aj, earnestly conversing in the rambling building at the center of town. They greeted Curt and Simon with friendly gestures, and the two sat down.

  “Now to see if I can’t get the hang of their language,” Curt murmured. “They look like an intelligent people, so it shouldn’t be hard.”

  Curt began the task. Captain Future had become expert in learning strange planetary tongues. He had perfected his own system of acquiring a working vocabulary of an alien language in brief time.

  He worked with Reh Sel and Fwar Aj through the hours of that “day.” By the time evening came, as evidenced by the return of the Lunarian workers, hunters and fishers, he was getting along fairly well.

  OLD Reh Sel’s first question was tremulously eager.

  “You came from the outer surface of our world? Fwar Aj told me he thought you did.”

  “We did. But we were amazed to find air, water and living men down in these spaces. We deduced that you Lunarians yourselves migrated here from the surface of this world.”

  “It is so,” admitted Reh Sel. He gestured upward with his webbed hand. “Thousands of generations ago was our great migration. We had lived always upon the surface of this world. As its air and water failed, we had retreated to the deeper chasms.

  “Then, when life even in these became almost intolerable, explorers of our people discovered that air and water had drained into these deep spaces underground, and that in this underworld the Shining Mountain gave light that would support life.

  “So our race left the surface and came down here, and here we have lived ever since. We have nothing to fear except the bigger beasts that haunt the Marsh of Monsters, on the northern shore of this sea. They, like the smaller animals of our jungles, migrated down here as we did.