Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “You fool, why did you kill him?”

  “He was trying to escape,” Curt answered in the whining voice of the real Chameleon Man: “I had to stop him.”

  “You could have called me,” snapped Ul Quorn. “I wanted the pleasure of seeing him squirm before he died.”

  “He wouldn’t have squirmed,” N’rala said thoughtfully, looking at the dead pseudo-Future. “He was too strong for that.”

  Quorn’s rage faded as he stared musingly at the dead man.

  “You are right,” he admitted. “There was real genius to that man, foolish as were the altruistic ideals he followed. Even now that I have settled part of the old feud between his family and mine, I almost regret having extinguished so great a scientist.” The mixed-breed shrugged. “Well, there is no profit in being sentimental about it. Toss his body out into space.”

  Curt helped the Hearer cast the dead body out through the air-lock. It gave Captain Future an uncanny feeling to see what looked like his own dead body drifting off into the starry void. Quorn gazed ahead through the swarming specks of light that were the numberless asteroids and meteor swarms of the zone.

  “Now for the Pleasure Planet — and the last two space stones,” the mixed-breed said to N’rala. “We have five of them. Just these last two to get, N’rala!”

  “They may be the most difficult,” the Martian girl warned. “Bubas Uum is wily. It will be hard to trick him.”

  “I beat the unbeatable Captain Future,” Quorn reminded her.

  Casually Captain Future sauntered back along the passage from the airlock vestibule, and entered the cyclotron room. The six squat, massive machines were droning steadily, producing the atomic energy which was released from the rocket tubes to drive the swift Rissman. Since the mechanisms were almost completely automatic and controlled from the pilot room, no one was on duty there. Curt grabbed up a wrench and sprang toward the Number One cyclotron. Again he began removing its radiation-proof cover.

  “If I can get the stones and escape from this damned ship, things will look up,” Curt panted. “The asteroid of the Hermit of Space isn’t far from here. I could contact the Comet there.”

  “What are you doing?” demanded a voice from the door.

  CURT spun in alarm. The Hearer stood at the door. The uncanny freak had detected the sound Curt made in dissassembling the cyclotron, and he had come to investigate. Curt knew he was about to shout an alarm, for suspicion was flaring in his eyes. Captain Future leaped in and brought his gun butt down on the Hearer’s head. But the freak uttered a broken cry!

  Shouts from the fore part of the ship answered it. Curt knew it was too late now to get the space stones. Quorn’s suspicions would soon expose the trick of imposture he had played.

  “Must get out of here now, or not at all!” Curt gasped.

  He plunged toward the air-lock vestibule, grabbed a space suit and an impeller. Hurriedly he scrambled into the suit, for he realized that the paramount necessity was to beat Quorn to the Pleasure Planet. Getting the last two space stones was vital. It was too late now to try to get the other five stones. Quorn already knew those parts of the formula, anyway.

  Curt glimpsed Quorn, the Plutonian dwarfs and the other freaks rushing down the passageway. Captain Future touched the stud that sent the outer air-lock door flying open. The air in the lock whiffed out into space. Curt made a powerful spring into the void, away from the traveling ship.

  His leap sent him flying far out into the empty, star-jeweled blackness, carrying him entirely clear of the ship’s gravitational attraction. Looking back, he saw the Rissman rocketing on at high speed. But a moment later, he bit his lip worriedly. The ship was turning around.

  “Coming back after me!” he exclaimed. His keen mind attacked the problem swiftly. “That swarm’s my best bet — if I can make it.”

  Not far from him rushed a cluster of glinting specks of light, one of the largest of the hurtling, tumbling meteor swarms of the zone.

  Curt turned on his impeller, using the rocket flash of the tube to kick him through space toward the massed planetoids. If he could get into the swarm, Quorn wouldn’t dare follow him in with the ship. The fact that he would also be in deadly danger scarcely mattered to Curt. Facing danger was a habit with him.

  He used the impeller continuously to urge him on toward the swarm. Now he could plainly see it as a great field of whirling, zipping meteors, from sand-grain size to enormous, jagged masses.

  He glanced back again. The Rissman was coming after him with all rockets blasting. Quorn had seen and understood the maneuver. He was using every erg of the cruiser’s enormous power in trying to cut off Captain Future before he could enter the swarm...

  Chapter 15: The Hermit of Space

  LOOKING back, Captain Future had seen the Rissman cruiser thundering down on him, plumed with tails of fire from its blasting rocket tubes. Now he realized that Quorn was trying to run him down in space, smash him against the cruiser’s bow! Curt floated in space, waiting, as the ship rushed toward him. It took steel nerve to let that monstrous murder craft boom toward him. But he made no move until the Rissman was a few hundred feet away. With a sudden flash of his impeller, he flipped aside.

  The Rissman grazed past, its rocket blast glaring in his eyes. The cruiser curved up sharply to avoid the meteor swarm, rolled over in a sharp space-spin. It came around in a broad curve to repeat the maneuver.

  “Not this time, Quorn!” Captain Future gritted.

  The minute the cruiser had passed him, Curt had turned on his impeller full force to carry him to the very edges of the rushing, tumbling, hurtling, whirling planetoids that swarmed between Jupiter and Mars. An instant later, he was flying along with the pack. All he could do was pray for fast reflexes. If one of those jagged rocks hit him, he knew his career was finished.

  He chuckled as he saw the Rissman veer sharply away from the meteor swarm, ending its pursuit. Ul Quorn apparently was of no mind to risk suicide by following Curt into the swarm. With visible regret, the Rissman turned and moved away, disappearing in a counter-sunward direction through the asteroid zone.

  “Continuing to the Pleasure Planet, to get Bubas Uum’s two space stones before I can interfere,” Curt guessed. “Now where is the Hermit of Space’s worldlet? If I can call the Futuremen from there to come in the Comet, I can still scramble Quorn’s orbit.”

  No man could know the entire complex wilderness that made up the asteroidal zone. But Captain Future knew that maze of tiny worlds and meteors better than any other man. He had friends on some of the little planets. One of those friends was the Hermit of Space. Curt had figured, before escaping from the Rissman, that the Hermit’s asteroid was nearby. Emerging with intense relief from the dangerous meteor swarm, Curt Newton floated in space. He peered through his helmet till he located the small green speck of the Hermit’s worldlet. He used the impeller to kick himself toward that small point of light. Before long, he was floating down to its surface.

  It was a green, forest-covered, parklike little planet, with a clear, thin atmosphere, shining little streams and lakes, and an abundance of strange animals and vegetable life. Captain Future fell toward an open glade in the forest. Though he used his impeller to brake his fall, he rolled over and over when he landed. He got to his feet, gasping for breath.

  "Now where is the Hermit?" he mused. "I suppose the old fanatic is as opposed to science as ever, but he must have a televisor stowed away somewhere for emergency use."

  CURT started traveling through the forest in a widening spiral. Presently he found a well worn path. It led from a fishing place on the shore of a small pond through the forest. After taking time out at the pond to remove his now useless Chameleon Man disguise, Captain Future followed the clearly marked path.

  Pale sunlight flickered down through the queer, flat fronds of the green-trunked trees. Grotesque little furred, winged creatures like flying rabbits flitted to and fro, nibbling on the high branches. Curt noticed other forms of the
strange indigenous life of this isolated little world. Borers inserted their serpentine bodies into tree-trunks and hollowed them out from within. Asteroid bees flew in a compact conical formation at such speed that they could drive through obstacles like a bullet.

  "Well, here we are!" the wizard of science exclaimed gladly.

  He stepped into a small clearing where stood a rough, sturdy cabin of green tree-trunks, with a thatched roof. There was a wattled chimney, and a small garden, and a number of queer little animals lounging in front of the heavy plank door.

  "Hello, Hermit!" Curt shouted cheerily. "You have a caller!"

  The door of the cabin burst open. Out of it bounded an irascible, elderly Earthman with a long white beard and mane of white hair. Dressed in tanned skin jacket and trousers, he waved a club threateningly.

  "You get the hell off this asteroid!" the old man roared angrily. "I won't have curiosity-seekers from all over the System coming here to bother me, and —"

  He stopped, peering more closely at Curt Newton. He recognized the tall figure, red hair and good-humored face of the young scientific wizard. The Hermit's anger disappeared.

  "Captain Future!" he cried in welcome, dropping the club. "Well, that's different. Don't mind you stopping, but this flood of visitors I've been having lately has got me good and mad."

  "How many visitors have been here?" Curt asked him.

  The Hermit scratched his head.

  "Well, there was one Mercurian explorer two years ago, and two Jovians hunting metals last year. I might as well be living back on one of those crowded, crazy worlds, if I'm going to have hordes of people like that dropping in here."

  "Three visitors in two years?" Captain Future repeated. He chuckled. "That's a lot, all right."

  "It's a lot too many!" shouted the Hermit. "If people keep swarming in on me like that, I'll have to find another asteroid."

  Captain Future had known the Hermit of Space for several years. The Hermit was an old Earthman who was fanatically anti-scientific, passionately convinced that mechanical progress was all wrong for the race. Disgusted with the super-scientific civilization of Earth and the other planets, the Hermit had sought out the remote little asteroid, where he had made a solitary home. Curt had once chased away a crew of space bandits who wanted to make the asteroid their base. Because of that, he was the one person the Hermit would tolerate.

  "But where's your ship?" the Hermit asked puzzledly.

  WHEN Curt told him the story, the Hermit roared with rage.

  "I always told you your gallivanting around in space would get you into trouble! That's what happens when people take up with these scientific ships and machines, instead of living a natural life."

  "I've got to call the Futuremen to come here in the Comet," Curt told him. "Haven't you a televisor here?"

  The Hermit looked outraged.

  "A televisor? I wouldn't have no such machine on my world! Why, I caught myself using a stick to pry out a stone with one day. I realized that I was using a lever, the first of all machines, so I threw it right away. Yes, sir. I wasn’t going to get that curse of machinery started here.”

  “All right, don’t blow your rockets about it,” Curt soothed hastily. “I guess I can make a televisor. I have the tools in my belt. It’s lucky I took it off my dead double and put it under my jacket.”

  “Hate to see any machinery built here, but I guess it’s all right if you’re really in trouble,” growled the Hermit.

  The old man watched with dour disapproval as Captain Future began building a televisor transmitter from raw materials. It was a task that only the wizard of science would have attempted. Curt first took from his belt the super-compact tools and instruments he habitually carried in it. Then he assembled the materials he needed. His tiny atomic torch melted certain minerals down into glassite, which he carefully fused for his two big vacuum tubes. Metal from his space suit he used for tube-elements and wire-strips.

  He did not attempt to create a visi-screen transmitter. He would be satisfied to get a vocal message through to the Futuremen. As he worked, the Hermit’s queer asteroid pets gathered around to watch, and the Hermit lectured him severely.

  “All this space flying and talking across the void and other scientific nonsense — how much happier has it made people?” the old fanatic demanded. “Weren’t people happier in the old days on Earth, when they didn’t know any science and lived a normal, natural life?”

  “According to that argument” — Curt grinned as he worked deftly — “people were happier still when they were just ignorant savages long ago, and didn’t even use fire.”

  “Now you’re twisting my words around,” complained the Hermit. “You’re like everyone else. You won’t argue reasonably.”

  Presently Captain Future straightened, his task finished. He had created a crude but powerful, efficient transmitter, powered by a chemical battery he had compounded of natural chemical salts.

  “Ought to work,” he mused. “As near as I can calculate, it’s tuned to the wave the Futuremen and I always use. Here goes, anyway.” He spoke loudly into the makeshift microphone. “Captain Future calling the Comet! I’m on the asteroid of the Hermit of Space. Come at once!”

  He repeated the message at intervals of five minutes, for an hour. Then he turned off the rough transmitter.

  “Nothing to do but to wait now,” he explained. “Hope they got it.”

  “It won’t work, you’ll find out,” prophesied the Hermit. “Machinery always fails you when you depend on it. But while you’re waiting, how about something to eat?”

  SHADOWS were falling across the small clearing as the brief day of the spinning little asteroid came to an end. The Hermit brought out fruit and odd cooked plants. He and the wizard of science ate at a little table in front of the cabin. Curt looked up into the heavens, blazing with a jungle of stars and spanned constantly by the fire-flashes of meteors. Far away in the starry wilderness, he saw a tiny yellowish point of light that he knew was the asteroid called the Pleasure Planet.

  “Quorn’s nearly there by now, preparing to take the last two space stones — the last trick of the game,” Curt muttered worriedly. “Why don’t the Futuremen come?”

  “Don’t have any meat, because the animals of this place are so tame, I can’t bear to kill any of them,” the Hermit was saying. “Look at that one there. It’s a meteor mimic. Ever see one before?”

  The meteor mimic was a small animal, so named because it was found only on some of the larger bodies of the asteroid zone. It was a fat, bulbous white creature with a doughy-looking body on four shapeless legs, and two solemn, staring big eyes. It had the unique ability of controlling the shape and appearance of its body at will. It could cause its cells to assume new forms with protean quickness, enabling it to mimic anything its size.

  It was sniffing around Curt’s televisor. Suddenly its body spun and changed — and there seemed two televisors resting on the ground! Then the one of them flowed back into the fat little animal.

  “See, isn’t the thing clever?” chuckled the Hermit. “It’s always fooling me, mimicking something or other. Pesky nuisance!”

  Curt declined the Hermit’s offer of a bunk in the cabin, and slept under the meteor-blazoned sky that night. He awoke with thin pale sunlight of the asteroid dawn in his eyes. He looked anxiously into the brassy heavens, but there was no sign of the Comet. Reaching down to pick up his belt from the ground, he discovered there were two belts, exactly alike. The one he tried to pick up writhed and changed in his hand. Instantly it became the meteor mimic.

  “Your friends didn’t show up, eh?” said the Hermit, emerging from the cabin. His beard waggled in satisfaction. “I knew it. Machines always let you down. Now you can stay here with me and live a natural, normal life without scientific nonsense.”

  “Not me!” Curt exclaimed, his eyes lighting. “Here comes the Comet now!”

  HIS ears had detected the thin, buzz-saw whine of rockets which came from only
one ship in the System. Around from the right side raced the Comet, landing with a roaring rush in the little clearing. Otho, Grag, the Brain, Joan and Ezra Gurney poured from the ship and ran toward Captain Future.

  “Chief, we couldn’t believe our ears when we heard your call!” babbled Otho, his green eyes gleaming joyfully.

  “We thought you dead, Master,” Grag boomed. “We found your body in space and gave it space burial. What happened?”

  Curt rapidly told them what had occurred. Ezra Gurney slapped his knee in delight when he heard.

  “You sure tricked that devil Quorn this time, Cap’n Future,” the veteran cried. “That double trick was the best yet.”

  Joan’s expression was soft with happiness.

  “We are glad you escaped, lad,” said Simon.

  That was all, but all knew what the words meant, coming from the austere Brain. Otho handed Curt the unique emblem-ring.

  “Took this from your body, Chief, as a memento of you.”

  “I’m certainly glad you did,” Curt said thankfully. “I hated to risk losing the ring. But Quorn would have noticed if it hadn’t been on my dead double. I meant to go back later, if possible, and find the body in space. I’d mentally marked the location, velocity, and direction. But we’re blasting now for the Pleasure Planet! I think the last round of this contest for the space stones and for Thuun’s secret is going to be fought there.”

  “Say, what in the Sun’s name is that thing?” Otho blurted.

  He was looking at the little meteor mimic. It had been mimicking a flying rabbit which had alighted nearby. After perfectly impersonating it, the mimic casually changed back into its own form. Captain Future explained to Otho, who had never seen the species before.

  “Why, that creature’s the best disguise artist in the System, outside of myself!” Otho exclaimed. His eyes sparkled mischievously. “Wouldn’t it give Grag’s moon-pup a fight? Eek wouldn’t have a chance against a creature as clever as that.”