Captain Future 15 - The Star of Dread (Summer 1943)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Curt Newton wobbled more wildly, pitched a little away from the two criminals, and then toppled over and crashed full-length upon the floor.

  He fell face-foremost, with bruising force. But he fell upon the proton-pistol.

  His bounds hands gripped it eagerly. Lying there, pretending to be stunned, Curt Newton’s fingers fumbled hastily at the little ratchet on the side of the weapon’s butt, which regulated the intensity of its bolt.

  He set the intensity-ratchet, to the lowest lethal point. As he did so, Chah Har strode forward and roughly grasped Curt’s shoulder.

  “You’re not so stunned as all that,” rapped the Uranian. “You’re acting, but it won’t do you any good.”

  The Uranian, hauling Curt Newton upright as he spoke, glimpsed the proton-pistol grasped by Curt Newton’s bound hands.

  With a hissing exclamation, Chah Har thrust Captain Future violently backward and raised his atom-pistol to fire.

  Falling backward, helpless to retain his balance, Curt Newton fired twice with that phenomenal swiftness and accuracy that had made his name legendary as a fighter in the System.

  The thin, needle-like beam of his proton-pistol flashed and burned a tiny hole between Chah Har’s eyes. It flashed again in the next fraction of a second, and drove through Kul Kan’s breast as the Martian raised his own weapon.

  THE next moment, Curt was sprawling on his back upon the floor. He rolled with catlike swiftness and came up on his knees, ready to fire again.

  There was no need. Both of the two criminals lay dead upon the moon-barred floor of the passage.

  Curt Newton listened. “If Norton and the others down there heard —”

  Because he had set the intensity of his weapon to a low point, its needle-like beams had made no more sound than a low, sharp crackling.

  The sounds had apparently escaped the attention of those on the lower floor of the tower.

  “If I’m not too late —” Curt Newton husked.

  He scrambled toward the dead criminals. A search of Chah Har’s pockets discovered a wicked-looking Uranian knife.

  In less than a minute, Curt Newton had cut himself free. He leaped to his feet, and as he did so, there came a dull, distant roar from far out in the surrounding dead city.

  He paid no attention to the turmoil. Joan Randall’s peril filled his mind to the exclusion of all else as he hastened toward the stairs.

  TALL and grim in the silver bars of moonlight he crossed, his red hair disordered, his face deadly with purpose, Captain Future started softly down those long, dusty steps to the first floor of the great tower.

  He heard the surging roar from the distance more loudly, and also heard a clamor of alarm and excitement from the floor below him.

  “The man-beasts!” a shrill Manling voice was yelling, down there.

  Curt Newton reached the foot of the stair and peered across the vast, dusty, torchlit hall of the Ancients in which Osorkon made his home.

  The Manling chieftain himself, and Cole Norton and the criminal Earthman Voories, were hastening out of the hall to the plaza outside, in evident response to the spreading alarm outside.

  Most of the Manling warriors who had been feasting here were going with them, though three of the barbarians remained. At one end of the rude feast-table, guarded by those three, Joan Randall sat with her dark head buried in her hands.

  The sharp eyes of one of the three Manling guards glimpsed Captain Future at the foot of the stairs. The savage shouted in alarm.

  “Joan, down to the floor,” yelled Curt Newton.

  She was between him and the three guards who were raising their bow-guns. She looked up, and her tear-stained face lit with sudden joy.

  Twang! Twang! Darts from the bow-guns rang viciously off the stairs behind Curt, as Joan Randall flung herself flat in obedience to his cry.

  The third Manling guard aimed his bow-gun at Curt with more deliberate care. He never released its dart. As Joan Randall flung herself out of the line of fire, Captain Future squeezed the trigger with vicious rapidity.

  The thin beam of his proton-pistol seemed to leap like a living thing from one to another of the savages. The three tumbled to the floor.

  Curt Newton was already leaping forward to snatch the girl up from the floor. “Joan, have they hurt you?”

  Joan Randall’s tear-stained face was pale with emotion, but she shook her head. “No, Curt, but —”

  “Captain Future!”

  That cry of rage came from Cole Norton, who with Voories had been hastening back into the torchlit hall.

  Curt Newton swung and shot, with deadly purpose. He meant to kill Norton without parley, for the ruthless physicist had forfeited all claim to mercy by his callous slaying of Philip Winters.

  But Norton, always quick-witted, had darted aside as he uttered that exclamation of amazement and rage. His own atom-pistol was in his hand and spat a crashing bolt of white fire across the dim, great room.

  Curt Newton dragged Joan Randall down beneath the shelter of the table as the deadly bolt of energy grazed them. Then he leaped to his feet and raced grimly forward.

  Norton had already turned and fled. By the time Captain Future reached the door, the two Earthmen were out on the firelit plaza, running toward the gleaming bulk of the Comet.

  For a moment, Curt Newton was staggered by the scene that lay before him. Raboon had become an inferno of nightmare battle under the two moons. A wild horde of the man-beasts was pressing the resisting Manlings backward toward this central plaza.

  “Joan, stay back,” Captain Future flung over his shoulder as he rushed out into the plaza. “The Clans are attacking Raboon.”

  Norton and Voories were already hastening into the Comet. With them were Osorkon, the chieftain, and a half-dozen of his Manling warriors.

  Captain Future immediately understood. Norton realized that the man-beasts were conquering the city, and was making his getaway in the stolen space-ship. And the craven Manling chieftain was accompanying him.

  Curt Newton fired as he ran across the firelit plaza. His beam cut down the last two Manling warriors crowding frantically into the ship, but Norton and Voories and the chieftain were already inside. The door of the Comet slammed, and the ship shot upward on thunderous, flaming rocket-tubes.

  Joan Randall had run fearlessly after him despite his order, and her face was white with horror as she saw the ship roaring steeply up past the tall white towers into the moonlit sky.

  “Curt, he’s getting away. Can’t you stop him somehow?” she cried.

  “Not without another ship, and there’s no other on Deneb,” he gritted. “But it’s all right, Joan — he didn’t succeed in taking you with them as he meant to do, and he hasn’t got the secret either.”

  SHE clung to his arm, sobbing something to him, but he could not hear her. The wild battle of Manlings and man-beasts was sweeping into the plaza itself.

  The outnumbered Manlings seemed to have fallen prey to despair at the flight of their chieftain. They were being pressed remorselessly forward by the wild hordes of trampling man-horses and raging man-tigers, by the teeth of the hunting pack and the talons of the swooping Winged Ones.

  The Manlings broke and fled in wild rout through the dead city. They and their terrified women and children sought refuge in the forest.

  “They’re licked!” rang a shrill, familiar voice across the din. It was Ezra Gurney, mounted on the big black man-horse. “We’ve beaten ‘em!”

  Golo, the great man-horse, repeated that cry in a trumpet voice to the raging hordes of the Clans.

  “The battle is over, Clan-brothers. The Manlings everywhere flee from us and their chieftain has deserted them!”

  A flying white figure leaped toward Curt Newton and Joan. It was Otho, and the android’s slant eyes were fiery with battle-light.

  “Chief, thank Space you and Joan are safe. I thought Norton had killed you both or had you in the Comet!”

  Grag came stalking like a grim steel gi
ant through the excited hordes of the man-beasts, as the Brain glided swiftly down from above. And Ezra Gurney was sliding off the back of Golo to join them.

  “Suppose Norton has left Deneb altogether with the Comet, how will we ever get away from here?” Grag exclaimed in dismay.

  “He won’t leave — he’ll stay to search for the artificial evolution secret,” predicted the Brain.

  Curt Newton nodded in swift agreement. “But he can’t find it, without the inscription-clue.”

  “Curt, listen —” begged Joan, clutching his sleeve.

  The yelping, excited voice of Zur, the man-dog, interrupted. He spoke eagerly to Curt Newton. “Can we of the Hunting Pack not harry the fugitive Manlings through the forests? Between now and sunrise, we could run every one of them down.”

  “Shih, his tawny body bleeding from a half-dozen grazing wounds and his eyes shooting green light, uttered a hissing snarl of agreement.

  “Not one of them will see tomorrow’s sun if we Clans take their trail.”

  “No — no slaughter,” said Captain Future. “You have won a great victory, but human peoples do not massacre their defeated foes. And are your Clans not soon to be human again?”

  That argument restrained the fierce bloodthirstiness of the man-beasts as no other could have done. Golo’s rumbling voice upheld Curt Newton.

  “Our Clan-brother speaks truth. The Manlings here are broken, and will be no menace to us again. We, who were human once and who again will be a human race, will commit no massacre.”

  “They are very sure that we can make them a human race again,” muttered the Brain to Curt Newton. “Even with the secret of artificial evolution, we may not be able to accomplish that.”

  That tormenting doubt was strong in Captain Future’s mind also. But he dared not show it, in the face of the man-beasts’ eager faith in him.

  “Before we do anything else, we’re going to find that secret,” he said rapidly. “After it is safe in our possession, and after we’ve run down Norton and our ship, we can study it and seek to apply it to the re-transformation of the Clans.”

  “It sure is a good thing you managed to get free when you did, Cap’n Future,” said Ezra Gurney warmly. “We’d have been too late to stop Norton from takin’ Joan along with him, an’ he might have managed to torture that clue out of her.”

  Joan Randall interrupted. “Cole Norton has that clue to the Chamber of Life’s location. I told it to him!”

  Curt Newton looked incredulously at the white-faced girl. “Joan, you’re joking.”

  Her lips were quivering, “No, Curt. I’ve been trying to tell you. Norton forced me to tell him the clue of the ancient inscription.”

  Chapter 16: Sea of Horrors

  REALIZING what this meant, Captain Future was thunderstruck.

  “I still can’t believe that you’d tell him that, no matter what tortures he threatened you with, Joan.”

  “Curt, it wasn’t me he threatened,” choked the girl. “It was you. He had you prisoner, remember. He told me that unless I yielded the clue to the Chamber of Life, he’d kill you at once.”

  “So that was why Norton temporarily spared my life,” exclaimed Captain Future.

  He understood it all now in a flash. Norton was as intelligent as he was ruthless. The physicist had realized that the strongest pressure he could bring to bear on Joan Randall was a threat against the life of the man she loved.

  Joan Randall was sobbing. “I had to tell him, Curt. He would have murdered you just as he had murdered Doctor Winters. I tried at first to deceive him, to give a false location of the Chamber of Life. But he appealed to Osorkon for verification of the places I mentioned, and Osorkon said there were no such places on Aar. So I had to tell the truth.”

  “Gods of Space,” gasped Ezra Gurney, appalled. “Then Norton’s on his way right now in the Comet to seize that secret.”

  A frozen silence gripped the Futuremen as in their minds unrolled again that apocalyptic vision of Cole Norton returning to the System with a secret knowledge that meant horror for the nine worlds.

  “And we can’t even follow,” muttered Otho, aghast. “We’ve no ship, not even a rocket-flier. Long before we could overtake him on foot, he’d have the secret and be gone from Deneb.”

  Curt Newton had taken the sobbing girl into his arms and was soothing her, though his own heart was leaden with weight of the disaster.

  “It’s not your fault, Joan. You did it for my sake. I know you would never have told him if only your own safety was threatened.”

  She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “I did manage to deceive him a little, Curt. I didn’t tell him quite all the secret.”

  “Just what did you tell him?” he asked, with new hope.

  She wiped her eyes. “You remember how the inscription read — ‘Beneath the Prism Peak, in the Crystal Mountains that lie beyond the black sea of the north, lies the Chamber of Life —’? Well, I left off the first four words. I said the only location given by the clue was simply that it was somewhere in the Crystal Mountains. I thought it would at least delay him in finding the secret.”

  She added, “Osorkon confirmed that there were such mountains in the north, so he knew I was telling the truth. But he was suspicious that I hadn’t told it all, and that’s why he meant to take me along with them when they went north to seek the secret.”

  A flash crossed Captain Future’s gray eyes. “Then there’s still a slim chance that we can beat Norton to it. It will take time for him to search those mountains, and during that time we can maybe overtake him.”

  The Brain expressed doubt.

  “It may not take Norton long to find what he seeks,” he said. “He is a scientist, and if there’s anything scientifically remarkable about that so-called Prism Peak, he’ll notice it.”

  “Still, there’s just a chance that he may search vainly for a long enough time for us to get there,” Curt Newton persisted. “We’ll have to go on foot, and we don’t know how far it may be, but —”

  “Clan-brother, I know the way to the black sea of the north,” said Golo in his deep voice. The intelligent eyes of the man-horse were fixed on Curt Newton. “It lies more than four days hard travel north of here. We Clan-leaders can guide you there.”

  “Yes, we follow this trail with you,” affirmed Shih in his hissing voice. “It is the quest of the Clans too, remember.”

  Skeen, the man-condor, spoke anxiously from where he stood with folded wings.

  “But how will you cross the black sea? It swarms with monsters of incredible ferocity, and it bars the way to the Crystal Mountains for half around this world. And I could not carry even one of you for so great a distance as across its wide expanse.”

  “We’ll figure out how to cross it when we get there,” Captain Future answered, a little desperately. “We should start at once. Every moment of delay adds to the odds against us.”

  “Just let me get Eek and Oog, and I’m ready,” exclaimed Grag.

  SHORTLY afterward, taking leave of the excited Clans, Captain Future’s small party moved out of moonlit Ra-boon into the giant Forests. They plunged due north upon their desperate pursuit of the man who was by now within reach of the greatest and most terrible scientific secret of the ages.

  Through the green gloom of the giant forests, a small and strangely-assorted company marched. For four days, with only night halts for sleep, they had maintained a killing pace.

  Captain Future, Joan Randall, Ezra Gurney and Otho were mounted on four of the big man-horses, for Golo had brought three of his fellow Hoofed Ones with him. Grag tramped beside them with huge strides. The Brain glided effortlessly along.

  Shih and Zur scouted ahead, and the keen eyes of the man-tiger and the man-dog had missed no danger of the forest during their urgent march. And high above the wilderness, circling in the sunlight and spying out the way for miles ahead, flew Skeen, the man-condor.

  “Skeen descends,” called Shih, loping back to the main par
ty as they entered a long glade. “It may be that he sees peril ahead.”

  The big man-condor was swooping down between the giant trees, out of the sunlit sky. He alighted with a rustling rush beside them.

  “The black sea is only two hours march ahead,” he reported in his whistling voice. “Head a little more to the west of north, to reach it in the shortest time.”

  Curt Newton’s drawn face lighted. “That’s good. We should be there by noon.”

  “And when we get there, how do we cross it to reach them Crystal Mountains?” old Ezra Gurney asked keenly.

  “We’ll cross it,” Captain Future replied confidently. “I have a plan.”

  Golo, the big man-horse whom he bestrode, looked around doubtfully at Curt. “I don’t know what your plan is, but I fear it will be of little avail against the monsters of that ocean,” rumbled the Hoofed One.

  Shih, the man-tiger, voiced somber agreement. “They are the most ferocious creatures upon Aar, those dwellers in the black sea. Only the Clan of the Swimmers is able to live in those waters.”

  “The Clan of the Swimmers? Who are they?” Joan Randall asked the man-beasts.

  Golo answered. “They are one of our Clans, descended like us from the semi-human races created by the experiments of the evil ones long ago. But they are a water-clan, not a land one — they are man-seals who dwell in this northern sea and who have a strange city or village on some rocks far out in its waters.”

  Zur chimed in, in his eager, yelping voice. “They are Clan-brothers of ours, but we have little real contact with them, since they are of the sea and we are of the forests.”

  Ezra Gurney shook his head incredulously. “All these semi-human peoples — incredible! I still half think I’m dreamin’! How could they have ever been created?”

  “I can understand the principle of their creation, though not the exact method,” Captain Future answered thoughtfully, as the whole party started forward at quickened pace. “I’ve been discussing it with Simon. We agree that it could be done by manipulation of the genes.”