Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941)

by Edmond Hamilton

  "Time!" Future cried.

  Darmur pushed the button. The springs of their recoil chairs creaked torturedly as a shock rocked the whole control house madly on its piers. Curt Newton, shaken, peered out. Far around the surface of the little moon, a gigantic column of white fire was shooting into space. The uranium that the Futuremen's time engineering had procured was being exploded into pure atomic energy in the great firing tube.

  "We've started!" Otho yelped. "We're being torn away from Katain!"

  Chapter 21: Planers End

  YUGRA was moving ever more rapidly out of its orbit around Katain, flying out at a tangent toward the outer edge of the Solar System plane. That tremendous push of atomic energy had made a rocket of the little moon.

  They moved on and on, hour following hour as Darmur fired the great rocket-tube at precalculated intervals. Jupiter and Katain, now almost in conjunction, dropped behind, but Saturn and its twelve moons bulked ahead.

  "Are we going to collide with Saturn, Chief?" Grag asked anxiously.

  "No, though we'll go pretty close," reassured Captain Future. "The whole course has been carefully calculated. The only thing that couldn't be calculated is the exact way in which the fragments of Katain will fly when the planet explodes. If a fragment should rush out after us and hit this moon —"

  He did not finish, but he knew that that danger was what weighed on Darmur's mind as the old scientist looked constantly back toward Katain. Saturn's huge gravitational pull drew them closer and closer. A collision with the outlying moons seemed inevitable, but Darmur steadily fired the great blasts at the proper times. They began finally to draw past the spinning moons of the great planet.

  "Look at Katain!" yelled Jhulun hoarsely.

  They stared back. The small golden sphere of Katain and the mighty globe of Jupiter had almost reached full conjunction. The telescopes showed that Katain's surface had become a playground of crazy forces. Molten lava broke up through splits in the crust. They saw great cracks appear around the planet's surface. The seas appeared to sink. "There it goes!" came a shriek.

  Katain suddenly exploded in bursting steam. The white vapor swirled away quickly, but the planet was gone. Thousands of large and small fragments of its mass were flying out in every direction.

  "Katain — Katain the golden!" whispered Jhulun. "Katain no more!"

  Lureen was sobbing wildly. Curt's eyes were riveted through the telescope upon those great fragments of the exploded planet.

  "One of the bigger fragments is hurtling almost straight after us," he reported, controlling his voice with iron discipline. "It may miss us. Can't tell yet, but it'll be close."

  "Holy sun-imps — look at that chunk hitting Jupiter!" Otho yapped.

  One of the great fragments of the lost world had been flung straight toward equatorial Jupiter. They saw it strike that world, saw a great up-rush of red, molten lava where it collided.

  "The fragment drove through Jupiter's crust into the molten interior and released the lava inside," declared the Brain. "Lad, we've seen the origin of Jupiter's Fire Sea, its Great Red Spot."

  Yugra was moving on and on toward the orbit of Uranus, on its way out of the System. For hours Curt, Darmur and the other technicians watched the progress of the threatening mass that was hurtling after them.

  "If it passes Saturn, it'll collide with us," Curt said. "There's a chance that Saturn's gravitation may pull it in —"

  The Solar System was in wild chaos from the effects of the exploded planet. During the following hours, one incredible astronomical phenomenon succeeded another. They saw the greater number of the fragments of Katain spreading out in a broad, shapeless band between Jupiter and Mars.

  "The beginning of the Asteroid Zone of our own time," the Brain commented. "But look at that piece flying toward Earth!"

  One of the bigger masses of Katain had hurtled past the orbit of Mars. They thought it would strike Earth, but as hours dragged on, it became apparent that the fragment would pass somewhere close to Earth, within the orbit of its two Moons.

  "It's going to hit the smaller Moon!" Otho chattered. "See that?"

  THE fragment was rushing toward the smaller, nearer one of Earth's two Moons. They collided squarely. Both the fragment and the little Moon burst into a shower of blazing meteoric debris.

  The meteor masses hurtled, from the momentum of the original impact, toward the silvery, blank sphere of the farther Moon of Earth — the Moon of the Futuremen's own time. They saw the meteors raining upon it in a cosmic hail of fire, each plunging into the lunar plain and throwing up a great ring of splashed matter around it.

  "The origin of the lunar craters!" marveled Otho. "So that's what became of Earth's second Moon!"

  "The fragment that's flying after us," Jhulun was appealing anxiously to Curt, "will it pass Saturn and hit us?"

  "It's going to be close," muttered Captain Future, peering through the telescope.

  "There's nothing we can do but wait and see."

  Hours of superhuman tensity dragged on. Everyone in the control house knew that their fate depended upon the course of that flying fragment of Katain, which was coming after them with far greater speed than Yugra had yet been able to attain. The hour approached when the fragment neared the orbit of Saturn. Would it be deflected by that planet, or would it pass safely and bring destruction to fleeing rocket moon?

  "It's not going to hit Saturn," Curt called tensely from his post of observation.

  "Then — then we're fated to be destroyed?" Jhulun stammered. "All our tremendous labors is to go for nothing?"

  "Wait, there's still a chance!" Captain Future exclaimed. "The fragment's going very close to Saturn. If it hits one of those moons —"

  They crowded to watch, knowing their lives hung upon the event. With the naked eye they could clearly perceive the tiny, gleaming point of the cosmic fragment, closely approaching the twelve-mooned planet, Saturn.

  From the shadow of Saturn came one of its inner moons, closely followed by another. The first moon and the gleaming fragment rushed toward each other.

  "They're colliding!" yelled Jhulun exultantly.

  The fragment of Katain had met the moon almost squarely. In a fusing, flaring mass, they rocked close to Saturn, moving toward the oncoming inner moon. Then the blazing mass struck in and this second collision resulted in an explosion of flaming fragments. They could see the innumerable pieces spreading out in all directions around Saturn, drawn in conflicting courses by the pull of the planet and the ten remaining moons.

  "And Saturn will be a ringed planet henceforth," Curt Newton whispered. He looked at the breathless Katainians. "But Yugra is safe. There is no other hazard between us and the edge of the System."

  The edge of the System! The rocket-moon, moving at ever accelerating speeds in these last days had finally reached it. Yugra had passed the orbit of Pluto and now was launching out into the vast void of interstellar space. Out there, bright and beckoning, shone the brilliant green star, Sirius. And toward that star beacon the little moon of lost Katain was moving on its titanic journey.

  STANDING in the domed control room beneath the bright eye of the green beacon star, the Futuremen bade farewell to the Katainians.

  "You should have no more trouble," Curt Newton said earnestly to Darmur. "When you finally reach Sirius, the rocket-tube can be used to cause Yugra to fall into an orbit around one of the habitable planets you observed there. It will be like living in Katain again."

  Darmur nodded gravely. "Yes, a new home for my people — worlds upon which they can expand into a great civilization. We all owe our lives to you four, who came from the future to answer our call for aid."

  His voice choked as he and Jhulun wrung Curt's hand.

  "Not even in your future time can there be other men who could do what you four did!" he declared. "The gratitude of an entire people will be yours forever."

  Curt flushed under the praise.

  "We merely helped, Darmur. The plan was you
rs — and an epic plan it is, this great migration starward."

  "Yes, we go out to a far star, never to return," Darmur replied solemnly. "But I think that a little part of our hearts will always be here in the System with lost Katain."

  The Brain, who disliked shows of emotion, moved restlessly.

  "Shall we get started, lad?"

  Curt took Lureen's small hand. The girl's violet eyes had tears in them as she looked up at him. Impulsively he kissed her.

  "Good-by, Lureen."

  "Good-by, man from the future."

  The Comet flashed up off the surface of Yugra in a blaze of rocket-fire. Twice Captain Future circled the towering control house in farewell. Then he turned the prow of the little ship back toward the Sun.

  Not until they were within the System again did he turn on the time-thruster. For the last time the force rocked and shook them as they leaped across a hundred million years to their own age.

  CURT finally shut it off. They looked out. The familiar planets of their own time were like the faces of old friends.

  Grag gave a long metallic sigh of relief.

  "No more time jaunts for me! I vote we scrap that thruster."

  Curt was looking toward the bright star, Sirius. There was an unusual intensity in his gray eyes.

  "In this time," he murmured, "the remote descendants of the Katainians must still live on Sirius' worlds. Maybe some day —"

  "Maybe some day we'll go and see?" Otho cried eagerly.

  Captain Future did not answer, but the bright spark of Sirius, glimmering across the vast void, was somehow like a shining promise.

  THE END

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