“We know there is no air now on the surface, for our adventurous young men who follow game upward in the caves report that the air grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. How can you men live on the surface?”
Captain Future explained briefly.
“We are men from another planet, the Earth, of which this Moon is a satellite. We can live on the surface of your Moon, because we dwell in air-tight shelters.”
“You are very welcome among us, strangers,” Reh Sel said eagerly. “For you can tell us of that surface world our ancestors long ago left.”
“We shall tell you all you wish to learn,” Curt Newton agreed readily. “But that can be later. Now, we need help from you.”
“We will help you in any way we can,” promised Reh Sel earnestly.
Captain Future nodded.
“We shall need metal of various kinds. And also we shall need a canoe, so that we can go to the Shining Mountain.”
To Curt’s surprise, the old Lunarian chieftain shook his head instantly in stern refusal.
“You cannot approach the Shining Mountain! It is death to go too near it, and it is forbidden by our laws. The mountain is sacred!”
“The devil!” muttered Curt to the Brain. “They’ve got some sort of superstitious religion centering on the radium peak. That’s bad.”
He tried another method with the old Lunarian.
“But we only wish to protect the mountain from other strangers, who are on their way down here at this very moment. They intend to possess it and to take it away piecemeal.”
Both, Reh Sel and the grizzled Fwar Aj showed excited alarm.
“Other strangers are coming to desecrate the mountain? How many of them?”
“They will be strong in numbers and weapons,” Curt warned them. “The captive whom my metal comrade brought down is one of their lot.”
The reaction of old Reh Sel was fierce and instant.
“Then your captive shall die at once, for his wicked intention to desecrate the mountain. He shall suffer the death our laws decree for all such sacrilegious deeds. He shall perish in the blaze of the Shining Mountain itself!”
The old Lunarian chieftain snapped out a command. “Fwar Aj, summon warriors and place the captive stranger, bound, in a canoe. Set him drifting toward the mountain to perish, as is our custom.”
Fwar Aj, his eyes blazing, sprang out of the building to obey. Captain Future heard his strong voice summoning warriors.
“Good heavens, they’re going to execute Wissler in that hideous way!” exclaimed the Brain.
Chapter 13: Battle in the Moon
CAPTAIN FUTURE had no reason to love Albert Wissler. The sneaking scientist’s discovery of the radium inside the Moon had been responsible for all that had happened, for King’s plot and the outlawing, of the Futuremen. Yet Wissler was an Earthman, and Curt could not see him die in the peculiarly horrible manner that was contemplated.
He pleaded earnestly with the old Lunarian chieftain, but Reh Sel was adamant. It was apparent that the Moon-men’s superstitious veneration for the Shining Mountain was such that no death was too horrible for one who meditated desecration of this supreme object of their worship.
“The man dies at once in the manner prescribed,” retorted the old Lunarian, rising and stalking out of the building. “Already the people come to witness.”
The Lunarian town was filled with excitement, throngs of the Moon people hastening down to the beach of the black sea. Curt hastened with Simon through the excited crowd toward their own lodging.
He found Grag and Otho coming to meet him.
“Fwar Aj and some of the Lunarians took Wissler away,” reported the big robot. “I gathered they were going to do something unpleasant to him, so I let them have him.”
“Why did you do that?” Curt flared. “They’re going to execute him by sending him to drift out to the radium mountain, to be burned alive.”
Grag shrugged.
“Weil, it’s a nasty end, but he deserves it.”
“We can’t let an Earthman die that way!” Curt rapped. “Give me that atom-pistol you took from him.”
“Chief, be reasonable!” cried Otho.”You can’t save him. You’ll just get us massacred if you try to take him from the Lunarians.”
Curt, unheeding, handed the atom-pistol to the Brain.
“Take this and fly out over the radium mountain as quickly as you can, Simon. Keep high so the radiation won’t affect you. Drop the pistol on the peak.”
“It will explode and cause a minor atomic eruption in that radium!” the Brain protested, started.
“Exactly,” Curt clipped. “Get going — and don’t let yourself be seen by the Lunarians.”
The Brain, clutching the atom-pistol in one of his tractor beams, flashed up out of view in the throbbing green radiance, flying with all the swiftness of which he was capable toward the distant mountain.
Captain Future, with Grag and Otho at his heels, plunged down toward the beach of the black ocean. Thousands of the Lunarians were gathered there, watching in awed silence as Fwar Aj’s warriors bound Albert Wissler hand and foot and dumped him into a canoe.
Wissler was a pitiable spectacle, seeming more dead than alive with terror. He had evidently guessed the fate in store for him. Old Reh Sel was sternly watching as the sentence was carried out. Fwar Aj’s men were ready to start towing the canoe out toward the mountain.
“Wait!” exclaimed Captain Future in the Lunarian tongue. “You do wrong to kill this man. The Shining Mountain itself will be wroth at you.”
“It is our law!” rejoined Reh Sel inflexibly. “Carry out the sentence, Fwar Aj.”
Curt glanced anxiously toward the distant peak out there in the black sea. Then he saw that he had been hoping for.
“Look!” he cried, pointing dramatically. “The Shining Mountain itself shows its wrath at this thing you intend to do!”
A BURSTING blaze of dazzling white was exploding from one point on the radiant peak. It was the result of the minor atomic explosion caused by dropping the pistol there, and it lasted but briefly.
But its effect on the Lunarians was tremendous. They fell to their knees in superstitious panic.
“It is true — the Shining Mountain is angry!” gasped Reh Sel. “Set free the captive stranger!”
Wissler was hastily unbound and staggered ashore. The panic of the Lunarians gradually lessened as they perceived that the eruption of the radiant mountain had ceased.
“Thanks, Captain Future!” exclaimed Wissler hoarsely. “You saved me from a horrible death, I’ll never forget it.”
“I don’t know why I did it,” Curt retorted disgustedly. “You deserve it, for helping Larsen King murder the President.”
“I had no part in the murder of President Carthew!” Albert Wissler exclaimed earnestly. “I didn’t even know it was planned until after it occurred. I may have done some wrong things, but I’m no murderer.”
“Who did help King with the murder, then?” Curt demanded.
“It was Gil Strike,” Wissler replied nervously. “Strike operated the remote control of the telautomaton that killed Carthew. And he also substituted that faked Ear-record that placed the blame on you. King told him to do that and destroy the real Ear-record at once. I didn’t know about it till later.”
“I don’t think even Strike wanted to do it,” Wissler added. “But he was afraid that if he didn’t, King would freeze him out of his share of the radium profits. Strike hasn’t trusted King from the first. I wish I hadn’t trusted him at all. Look what he’s got me into!”
Captain Future had listened intently. He thought he saw in this information a gambling chance to clear himself of the murder. But he knew he would do nothing until the radium deposit was made safe.
Next morning, Curt found that his prestige among the superstitious Lunarians was greatly enhanced by the previous night’s incident. He took advantage of this to outline to Reh Sel and Fwar Aj his urgent need of c
ertain metals. Curt discovered that, as he had hoped, there were lead and copper deposits in this lunar underworld.
“I shall need a quantity of both metals,” he told the Lunarian chieftain. “If I have them soon, they will help me achieve my plan of protecting the Shining Mountain from those who will be coming from above.”
“I will send our young men forth for the metals at once,” Reh Sel said promptly. “The deposits are in the cliff wall near the Marsh of Monsters, on the north side of our world.
They can be back by evening.”
By the end of the Lunarian day, the young Moon-men sent upon the mission had returned with the needed metallic ores. They already know how to smelt them down, for they used the metals themselves for weapons, instruments and vessels. Curt set them to work smelting at once.
He assigned Grag a special task.
“Use that molten lead to coat our space-suits. It’ll make them rayproof, so we can land on the mountain.”
“I’d hoped you had given up the crazy idea of visiting that blazing peak,” Grag groaned. “Why is it necessary?”
“We’ve got to have a mass of radium ore to power the big wave-transmitter I’m building” Curt retorted. “It’s the heart of my plan.”
“With a wave-transmitter, he’s going to stop a whole armed company of the Planet Patrol!” Grag exclaimed incredulously. “Maybe I’m the crazy one.”
Curt and the Brain labored on the construction of the enigmatic machine in their dwelling, through the hours of that night. Copper sheets and bars, cast to Curt’s order by his Lunarian smelters, were rapidly welded together into the frame of a large, round mechanism.
The heart of the big machine would be an ordinary super type atomic-power generator, designed to use radioactive ores for production of a terrific potential. Around this unit, Curt fastened the transformers, condensers and other apparatus he had brought down from above, so that the machine began to take form as a powerful wave-transmitter.
“I don’t get it, “Chief,” declared Otho, watching. “You’ve built your atomic-power unit inside the wave-transmitter. How come?”
“That’s vital,” Curt told him. “It will prevent the power unit that operates the transmitter from being affected by the transmitter’s waves, which will be radiated outward.”
“But what kind of wave are you going to broadcast, that you have to take such precautions?” Otho demanded.
The Brain interrupted. Simon Wright’s keen scientific mind had already gained a strong clue to Curt’s intentions from the circuit of the transmitter as it took form. Now Simon uttered a sharp exclamation.
“Lad, now I see how you’re planning to stop King and the others! But it’s mad, fantastic —”
“It will work if we get this transmitter finished in time,” Captain Future declared determinedly.
“But this transmitter’s too powerful — it will broadcast a wave for nearly a million-mile radius!” the Brain declared. “It’ll affect not only everything on the Moon, but everything on Earth as well!”
“Exactly what I want to do,” rapped Curt Newton. His gray eyes gleamed. “Then Earth will find out that we Futuremen are not mere hunted outlaws, but that we can turn and strike for ourselves.”
He labored far into the “night” upon the big, half-finished mechanism; before he lay down to snatch a few hours sleep. Curt was awakened by frantic, shouting voices. He leaped to his feet. There was a wild uproar of excitement all through the Lunarian town. He could hear voices yelling, the thud of hurrying feet, the clatter of a brazen gong from the house of the Lunarian chieftain.
“Something’s wrong!” Captain Future exclaimed. “We’ll soon see —”
He and the others ran toward the center of the spiral town. Wissler was shoved along with them by Grag, who did not wish to stay behind. Reh Sel, the old Lunarian chieftain, was addressing a throng of excited Moon-men in shrill tones. The old man saw Captain Future approach.
“The others from above have come, as you predicted!” he cried to Curt. “Those who plan to desecrate the Shining Mountain!”
Captain Future’s sharp questions soon revealed the situation. Two hours before, a small group of young Lunarian hunters had started up the ancient path into the dark caves, to hunt for the giant centipedes whose ivory fangs were much esteemed as jewelry. And the two young men had seen a powerful force of strangers forging down through the caves along the path.
“There were hundreds of them!” cried the leader of the young hunters, in excited answer to Curt’s queries. “They wore strange garments and carried unfamiliar weapons, and had many lights to illuminate their way.”
“Larsen King’s planetary miners and the company of Planet Patrol officers that’s come to guard them!” exclaimed the Brain.
“Yes — no doubt about it,” rapped Captain Future. His tanned face was grim. “This is bad. They’ll be down here soon. And it’ll take at least a couple more days to complete the wave-transmitter.”
FWAR AJ, the big, grizzled Lunarian leader, was brandishing a heavy spear-bow in the air. His face was flaming with passion.
“We will destroy these sacrilegious ones who cower the Shining Mountain!” cried the big Moon-man furiously. “We’ll assemble every man and his weapon in the eastern jungle and strike them when they emerge from the caves.”
“Go, and may the power of the Shining Mountain aid you!” exclaimed old Reh Sel.
Curt Newton leaped forward and turned to face the enraged throng, raising his voice in a desperate plea.
“Wait!” he cried. “You can’t meet those men in open fight. They have weapons a hundred times more powerful than your spear-bows. They’ll destroy you. You must wait until I have finished my work.
Then they can be overcome without shedding a drop of blood.”
His plea had no effect on the outraged Lunarians. They poured down to the beach and shoved off in their canoes, Fwar Aj leading the force.
“They’ll be massacred — trying to fight a full company of the Patrol with those spear-bows!” exclaimed Otho.
“I’m going after them and stop it,” declared Captain Future. “Grag, you stay here with Simon and gather together the rest of the metals we need to finish the wave-transmitter. We may have to leave this place to gain time to finish the machine.”
“If you see that devil Larsen King in the fracas, finish him off for me!” cried Grag.
“King won’t be here — he believes in letting other men take the risks for him,” said Albert Wissler bitterly. “King will be back on Earth, waiting till everything here is cleaned up and he can reap the profits.”
Curt and Otho jumped into a canoe and paddled out onto the black sea. They steered toward the eastern shore which Fwar Aj’s force of Lunarian fighters had already reached.
Across the, dark, heaving ocean of the lunar underworld, through the ceaseless, throbbing green, radiance of the distant radium peak, Curt and the Futuremen paddled on. By the time they reached the eastern shore, Fwar Aj and his fighters had disappeared into the towering jungle.
“They’ll head for the place where the path from above debouches, and seek to waylay the Patrol and King’s men there!” Curt exclaimed.
He and Otho lunged forward along the jungle trail. Before they had gone far, they heard a dim clamor of raging yells and whizzing spears from ahead. It was quickly followed by the ominous blast of atom-guns.
“Too late — they’re fighting already!” Curt groaned “Hurry!”
They came around a bend of the trail into sight of a dismaying spectacle. A solid band of dark-uniformed Planet Patrol men was emerging from the fissure that formed the mouth of the path to the surface. The Patrol men carried heavy atom-guns, and they were using them.
For Fwar Aj and his Lunarians, rashly advancing through the truck jungle to attack, were trying to get close enough to use their spear-bows. Most of their whizzing spears were falling short. And as the Lunarians tried to close the range, streaks of fire from the atom-guns were beginni
ng to take a costly toll.
THE Moon-men seemed appalled by the power of the unfamiliar weapons opposed to them. Yet they were continuing to advance with unabated courage behind the raging Fwar Aj, until Captain Future leaped in front of them.
“You must retreat — you’ll all be killed if you try to face those atom-guns!” Curt yelled to the Lunarians.
At the same moment, he heard a shout from the advancing Patrol men as they recognized his tall figure and red hair.
“That’s Captain Future! He’s leading these Moon-devils! Get him!”
“Unless we get out of here, we’re lost, Chief!” cried Otho urgently.
Curt pleaded with Fwar Aj.
“Order your men to give way, to retreat to the town. I promise to save the mountain from these invaders.”
Swayed by Captain Future’s earnest promise, Fwar Aj shouted the order to his fighters. The Moon-men hastily drew back from the advancing Patrol company, and began a retreat toward the sea.
They knew every bend of the jungle trails, and they soon left the Planet Patrol force out of sight behind. When they reached the beach, they at once shoved off in the yellow canoes.
Looking back, Curt Newton saw the Patrol squads reaching the beach. A full company, six hundred fighting men armed with heavy atom-guns, deployed there. Presently the Patrol squads started a determined march along the southern shore of the black sea, toward the distant Lunarian town.
“They’ve seen our town and are marching for it!” exclaimed Fwar Aj smolderingly. “They’ll reach it before evening.”
“We can be back there in less than an hour, if we hurry,” Curt rejoined. “Tell the men to paddle fast.”
The yellow canoes shot over the black sea at high speed. The Moon-men were badly upset, fearful of the ultimate outcome of events.
Crossing directly over the dark sea, they soon reached the town on the western shore. A great throng of excited, apprehensive Lunarians met them on the beach. Reh Sel was there, and also Grag and Simon and the captive Albert Wissler.”
Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) Page 11