“Wait a minute, Norton!”
The shrill voice lashed across the torchlit corridor and struck them to silence. It came from Philip Winters.
The little biologist stood between the others and the head of the stairs. Winters’ thin face was deadly pale, he was trembling, but behind his spectacles his eyes blazed and his atom-gun was covering Cole Norton.
“You’re not going any further with this,” shrilled the biologist. “I’m not standing by and letting you use torture on Joan Randall. Stand still, Cole Norton, or I’ll kill you!”
Chapter 14: Fight Against Oppressors
BRIEFLY, for a moment Cole Norton stood as if paralyzed with astonishment at the little scientist’s intervention. Then an expression of rage suffused his features and he began to expostulate.
“Come to your senses, Winters,” he cried. “Torture is the only way we will be able to find the Chamber of Life and the secret of artificial evolution.”
“That’s just it,” cried Winters. “We’re not going to find that secret and let you turn our Solar System into a purgatory of monstrosities.”
Norton’s brows drew together contemptuously. “So you’ve gone sentimental on me?”
“I’ve come to my senses, if that’s what you mean,” Winters retorted. “I’ve realized the horror that you’d turn loose on our System, to gain power and riches for yourself. I know now Captain Future was right —”
Curt Newton glimpsed Chah Har, beside him, secretly raising his weapon. He yelled a warning to the biologist. Winters turned in confusion.
Instantly, with the speed of a wolf’s snap, Cole Norton drew and fired his atom-pistol. The crashing bolt of fire hit Winter’s breast and he fell in a crumpled heap.
The fanatic biologist who had come across the galaxy to search for the secret of life had found death. He had died in an attempt to right his disastrous mistake.
Norton coolly holstered his weapon. “I knew I’d have to do that sooner or later,” he remarked. “He was getting too many scruples. But it was awkward for a moment.”
Joan Randall was dragged on down the stairs by the Manlings, past the dead biologist’s prone form. Norton called back a final caution to the Martian and Uranian guarding Curt Newton.
“If Future gets free, you two will be the first to die,” he warned. “Keep remembering that.”
That the two criminals appreciated the fact was evidenced by the extreme care with which they watched Captain Future. They had forced him down into a sitting position on the floor of the corridor, and they stood over him with their atom-pistols trained upon him.
Curt Newton’s mind was a seething turmoil of dread. It was dread for Joan Randall that turned his veins to ice. He knew Joan Randall’s character. She would die under torture before she would ever reveal an iota of the secret to Norton. She might be dying down there, now!
Curt Newton strained convulsively at his bonds, at that thought. It was useless. And as though to torment him further, his strained ears caught the sound of a distant, strangled cry of horror. The voice was that of Joan Randall.
While this was taking place, back in the moonlit glade of the great forest, Grag and Otho and old Ezra Gurney waited tensely for the return of Captain Future.
Shih, the man-tiger, the shaggy Zur and big Golo waited with them. And Shih moved restlessly to and fro in feline strides, halting every now and then to raise his human head and listen.
“There has been no sound of alarm from Raboon,” he hissed. “They have at least entered the city without discovery.”
“They should have taken me with them,” muttered Otho. “I’d be a lot more help to the chief than Simon.”
“And how would you have flown with Skeen and Simon?” demanded Grag. “Maybe you think you could fly by flapping those big ears of yours.”
Otho was outraged. “My ears are real ears, which is more than you can say of the tin microphones you hear with.”
Ezra Gurney intervened testily. “For Space’s sake, do you two have to start scrappin’ now? Cut your rockets before you wake the dead.”
The big man-horse, Golo, had been watching the argument of the Futuremen with puzzled eyes. Now he spoke in his deep voice to Ezra.
“Are they angry with each other, clan-brother?” he asked puzzledly.
“No, they’re not really mad,” drawled the old veteran. “They’re worried about Cap’n Future, and whenever they’re worried, they get to bickerin’ to relieve their minds.”
“Men and their ways are strange to us of the Clans,” said Golo thoughtfully. “Yet our forefathers were men once.”
EZRA, oddly moved by the words, patted the shoulder of the mighty man-horse. “And your descendants will be men again, if Cap’n Future succeeds.”
Zur, the man-dog, said eagerly: “We of the Hunting Pack would die cheerfully to help him succeed in that.”
Grag had seated himself and was soothing his moon-pup pet. Little-Eek, never the bravest of creatures, had been in a state of nervous panic ever since their first encounter with the man-beasts.
Oog, who was more phlegmatic, frisked around Otho’s feet in the moonlight. But even he shrank back fearfully as the great man-tiger suddenly uttered a low, reverberating, hissing whisper.
“Listen!” cried Shih. “There is trouble in the city!”
They heard faintly through the distance the sound of excited cries. A few moments later came the muffled crash of an atom-gun.
“The chief’s in trouble!” cried Otho. “I’m going in there!”
“Wait a minute!” Ezra Gurney exclaimed. “Somebody’s coming —”
They all at the same moment heard the swift rush of wings from the upper night. A few instants later, two flying figures shot down between the giant trees into the moonlit glade.
One of them was Skeen. And the other was the Brain, gliding swiftly down beside the man-condor.
“Where’s the chief — and Joan?” cried Otho in alarm.
“Prisoners, both of them,” rasped the Brain. He told swiftly what had happened. “We got away, and came back here for help.”
A cry of rage broke from Grag. “Then we’re going into the city after them, right now.”
“Wait,” Shih’s green eyes were blazing and his feline tiger-body was quivering as though to spring. “We few can do nothing against the hordes of the Manlings. This is the Clans’ fight, too.”
“Shih speaks truth,” rumbled Golo quickly. “Your leader is our one hope for the redemption of our race. And he is clan-brother of all of us, now.”
“We shall gather the Clans and attack Raboon in force,” the man-tiger continued swiftly.
“Skeen, carry the clan-call across the sky to all the Winged Ones,” Golo told the man-condor. “Shih and Zur, take it back through the forest. Gather all the Clans to meet here for the attack.”
Shih and Zur were already gone, loping swiftly away through the thickets. And Skeen was on the wing, flapping up above the moonlit forest and flying swiftly southeastward.
“Hai—ooo! Hai—ooo!” echoed the clan-call, across the sky and through the forests.
Dimly, from far and wide, came back the answer of the forest Clans.
“They are coming,” the man-horse said finally.
Gathering of the Clans! The sky was alive with the rustle and flap of great wings. Skeen had brought his Clan, and in an interminable flock, the man-condors wheeled overhead in the moonlight.
Rush and thunder of countless hoofs reverberated along the ground as the herds of the man-horses arrived. As they stamped and whirled excitedly, hundreds of fierce voices yelped the clan-call, and Zur and the shaggy hordes of the man-dogs poured into the clearing.
“Hai—ooo!” yelped Zur across the tumult. “The Hunting Packs are here. Where is the Tiger Clan?”
“Shih and his brothers come now,” called Golo. “See yonder.”
Not with excited roaring, not crashing through the brush, came the hosts of the Tiger Clan. They came like tawny, gliding g
hosts, green eyes blazing ferally in the moonlight, with big Shih leading them.
“Are you all here?” Ezra cried to the man-horse. “We daren’t wait any longer or Cap’n Future will be dead.”
“If he’s not dead already,” hissed Otho.
“We are ready,” rumbled Golo. “We do not wait to summon the other Clans, for they could help us little in the attack on Raboon.”
SHIH raised his voice in a snarling shout that was like a trumpet-blast to the man-beasts gathered around and the man-condors above.
Golo was speaking swiftly to Ezra Gurney. “Up on my back, clan-brother! You will not be able to keep pace with us otherwise.”
Ezra Gurney gingerly climbed onto the back of the big man-horse. Otho, at Golo’s suggestion, vaulted to the back of the Hoofed One next him.
“I need no strength but my own,” bellowed Grag. He had placed Eek and Oog in the hollow of a tree, with instructions for them to wait.
“To Raboon,” roared Shih.
Next moment, Ezra Gurney found himself clinging for dear life to the mane of the man-horse as Golo and the Hoofed Ones and all the gathered Clans plunged through the forest.
It was like a broad, surging tide of ferocious life, sweeping through the moonlit forest toward Raboon. Even ahead of the galloping man-horses raced the tawny, loping hordes of the Tiger Clan.
Behind him, Ezra heard the wild, yelping chorus of the man-dogs of Zur.
Branches whipped Ezra’s face, and the wind Whistled shrilly past his ears. He glimpsed Otho, close beside him in the trampling, thundering herd of Hoofed Ones, bunched catlike on his own strange steed. Grag was keeping pace, his mighty metal limbs plunging like pistons.
Of all the experiences that had filled Ezra Gurney’s life in the long years pent on wild interplanetary frontiers, nothing had ever matched this headlong, crazy rush with the man-beast Clans. It seemed only minutes to him before they were all surging up a ridge of thinning thickets beyond which stupendous white towers soared into the moonlight.
“Raboon is ahead!” Golo called back over his shoulder. “Now cling tightly, clan-brother, and we will try to get through the Manlings to the tower of their chief.”
Ezra glimpsed the breath-taking magnitude of the moonlit dead city, the titanic towers and weed-grown streets, the red fires of the Manlings far in toward the center of the place. Then —
“The man-beasts attack,” shrilled a wild Manling voice in warning, somewhere ahead.
Horns, blown in the city streets, bellowed hoarsely, and out of towers came pouring the hordes of the barbarian humans with their odd crossbow weapons.
“Fang and claw, for those who have oppressed and enslaved us,” roared Shih’s great shout.
And as they plunged forward into Raboon, the Clans answered.
“Fang and claw,” they roared.
Twang! Twang! Like singing notes of plucked strings came the sound of the Manlings’ bow-guns loosing their metal darts at the man-beasts.
Darts whizzed past Ezra Gurney’s ear, and others found their mark in Hoofed Ones who crashed to the pavement in mid-stride. The old veteran had his proton-pistol in his hand, and fired its bolt of blazing force at the foremost of the Manlings ahead.
Otho, leaning far forward over the neck of his man-horse steed, was loosing bolt after bolt of crashing energy from his own pistol. But Grag disdained all weapons but his own mighty metal fists as he plunged forward.
The surging horde of the Clans crashed into the Manlings. Then everything seemed to whirl around Ezra Gurney in a mad phantasmagoria of nightmare battle.
The Manlings fought fiercely. And their bow-guns were deadly at this short range, the heavy metal darts striking down man-beasts on all sides.
But the Clans were blood-mad tonight. Thousands of years of hatred for the barbaric humans who had so long hunted and trapped and slain them had now reached frenzied culmination.
“Gods of Space,” gasped Ezra Gurney, as he clung to Golo’s back and shot.
For Golo himself had plunged in a thundering full gallop at the Manlings, and the great man-horse was rearing and striking down with deadly hoofs at the savages. And the Hoofed Ones all around them were dealing out trampling death to their foes.
BUT Shih’s man-tigers had been ahead of them, springing through the air and alighting among the Manlings, and striking with great claws that ripped and tore faster than the eye could follow. And down from the moonlit sky had swooped the hordes of Skeen, the man-condors whose taloned fingers slashed at the enemy from above and whose wings blotted out the sky.
“Hai—ooo!” came a new, mad, yelping chorus to Ezra’s ears, through the din of the crazy fight.
The Hunting Pack, a little behind the others, had reached the scene and thrown itself into the battle. And the shaggy hordes of Zur’s man-dogs, whose teeth gleamed wolflike in the moonlight as they sprang and pulled down fighting men, seemed to overweight the balance of battle.
The Manlings gave back! Terrorized by the scale and ferocity of this attack of the forest hordes, they retreated fighting toward the plaza.
Grag’s booming shout rose above all other sounds, as the giant metal robot who had been tossing Manlings aside like straw, plunged onward. The fierce hunting-yell of the man-beasts answered with a note of triumph.
But Ezra Gurney heard the metallic, high-pitched cry of the Brain, who had flashed down to hover beside him.
“Norton and his men are preparing to take off in the Comet” Simon Wright cried. “See yonder.”
Ezra Gurney, clinging to Golo’s back, peered beyond the raging fight and glimpsed the big, metallic bulk of the Comet gleaming in the firelight at the central plaza.
The door of the space-ship was being closed, as he looked. And instantly, he understood.
“Grag! Otho!” he yelled frantically. “Get through and stop the ship from takin’ off. They must have Gap’n Future and Joan in it prisoner, if they haven’t already killed ‘em.”
Otho and Grag uttered shouts of anger, and started to fling themselves through the retreating Manlings, regardless of risk.
It was too late. At that moment, there was a thunderous blast of fire from the keel-tubes of the Comet and the ship rushed steeply up into the sky!
Chapter 15: Joan Randall’s Blunder
ON THE verge of desperation bound hand and foot in the upper level of the chieftain’s tower in dead Raboon, Captain Future tensed in every muscle as he heard that cry of horror that came in Joan Randall’s voice from the floor below. He knew with terrible clarity what it meant. It meant that Cole Norton was carrying out his threat to torture the secret of the Chamber of Life out of Joan.
Captain Future’s veins froze. “She won’t tell,” he thought, appalled. “She’ll let them kill her before she tells.”
Curt Newton faced a ghastly dilemma. He could stop whatever they were doing to Joan Randall, by telling Norton the secret. The words of that ancient Denebian inscription rang at this moment in his mind.
Beneath the Prism Peak, in the Crystal Mountains that lie beyond the black sea of the north, lies the Chamber of Life —
Those few words would save the girl he loved. But they meant releasing an ancient horror, giving the ruthless Norton the key to that power of artificial evolution which could make the words of his own Solar System haunted by hideous semi-human creatures such as in this world of Aar.
“I can’t do that — we came all this way to Deneb to prevent that,” Curt Newton thought frantically. “Yet I can’t sacrifice Joan.”
There seemed no third course. He was helpless otherwise to intervene. He sat here in the moonshot corridor, his hands bound in front of him and his legs trussed at the ankles, with with Chah Har and Kul Kan sitting watchfully with their atom-pistols resting on their knees.
Into Captain Future’s seething mind came a sharp thrill of sudden memory. His own proton-pistol! He had flung it to stun Voories, and then had been unable to find it before Norton and the Manlings had overpowered him. The we
apon must still be somewhere here in the corridor.
Curt’s eyes rapidly roved the passage, though he was careful not to arouse the suspicion of his guards by too intent a stare.
In a moment, he saw the proton-pistol. His eyes, accustomed now to the semi-darkness of the moon-barred passageway, detected the dull gleam of the weapon from the dark floor ten feet further down the corridor.
“If I could get my hands on it,” thought Captain Future.
He had heard no further sound from below. And that sudden cessation of Joan Randall’s horrified cry was more sinister to him than the cry itself had been.
NEITHER Chah Har nor the cadaverous Martian had glimpsed the pistol lying in the darkness further down the passage. No one would have noticed it unless, like Curt Newton, he had been looking for it.
“But I daren’t try to make a spring for it,” Curt Newton thought desperately. “With hands and feet both tied, I could never reach it before they blasted me.”
A hazardous stratagem formed itself in his mind. He began to twitch his arms and legs, stirring painfully.
“You’ve tied me too tightly — my legs and arms are going numb,” he complained to Chah Har.
The fat, beady-eyed Uranian criminal sneered. “Save your talk. You don’t think we’re simple enough to loosen the cords, Future?”
“At least, let me stand for a little while to restore circulation,” protested Curt Newton.
Kul Kan uttered a sound of harsh mirth. “Get on your feet if you want to. We won’t stop you.”
Curt Newton unsteadily rose to standing position, bracing himself against the wall. He staggered there, purposely wobbling as though unable to keep his balance on his bound feet.
“Hold me up — I’m going to fall,” he exclaimed in pretended alarm, staggering helplessly.
“Go ahead and fall — a bump on this hard floor will help restore your circulation,” mocked Chah Har.
Both criminals were standing well back out of reach of Curt, their atom-guns in their hands, as they enjoyed the spectacle of helplessness he presented.
Captain Future 15 - The Star of Dread (Summer 1943) Page 11