Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946)

by Manly Wade Wellman

  “Plan H-Twelve,” snapped Captain Future into the speaker, and himself led the way in a long, buck-jumping dash to closer quarters.

  A few moments later the line of ten craft still active in his command were looping into a circle that spun around the great lumbering vehicle. The formation had some features of a minor planetary system — the big ship in the center might stand for the parent world, the ring of smaller fighters a series of satellites. But these were satellites impelled by deadly enmity. They gushed fire and destruction upon the body in the center, like Indian horsemen on the Western plains of old, galloping around a pioneer wagon and shooting into it.

  The volleys were utterly ineffectual. Mighty proton blasts and destroying rays, that would have ripped holes in solid rock or whiffed battalions into vapor, bounced from the impervious surface of the great egg, and the bulk and mass of the target was too great to allow it to shift in space, or even to stagger.

  Captain Future, whirling the Comet around the perimeter of the fighting circle, had time now to bark questions at Thai Thar.

  “How could your Overlord make so huge a fighting ship?”

  “It was made decades ago,” Thai Thar explained hastily. “The wealth and material of this System went into it. It has become the artificial master world of the System. The Overlord means to sail it into your Universe, attack and seize your Government center at New York and arsenals, proceeding then to arm and launch new attacks.” Thai Thar’s voice shook in fury. “Do you wonder that decent men hate him? That great mass of flying luxury and power, monopolized by himself while his subjects must live on a darkening, dying string of worlds?”

  There was no time to discuss the point. The Overlord was responding to the attack. From a host of weapon-ports burst forth volleys. The speed of Captain Future’s ships made aiming difficult, but one charge struck, then another. One of Thai Thar’s fleet was gone, and one of the police cruisers — smashed to fragments, all on board destroyed. Curt Newton growled between his teeth, his eyes flashed like steel.

  “Gurney!” he barked into the microphone. “Take over. Continue fire.”

  Shifting his controls, he swerved the Comet inward from the circle, and straight at the enemy he drove.

  “Open fire,” he said to Thai Thar, who stepped to the bow-weapons.

  A lean incandescent ray stabbed at the massive armored curve ahead. Along it, as on a path, tore proton charge after proton charge, bursting at the same spot, a concerted bombardment to force a breach.

  From ports all around the point sailed protruded weapons. They volleyed as one. The Comet was hurled back like a straw in a tornado, saved from obliteration only by the peerless defense devices of the Futuremen. Curt Newton somersaulted into a corner, momentarily stunned as his ship staggered away through space, out of control.

  Ezra Gurney’s voice, hoarsely yelling on the telaudio, brought back Captain Future’s half-scrambled wits.

  “They got the Comet!” Ezra thundered. “Got Captain Future! Next senior commander, take over. I’m going to peel off and hit them where it hurts, or die like my friend!”

  Wavering to his feet again, Future reached his controls.

  “No, Ezra!” he called into the speaker. “Continue your mission. Buck-jump, everybody, get hard to hit! Don’t worry about the Comet! We’re all right, I’ll see you later!”

  Thai Thar also got up, shaky but full of fight.

  “Back to the bow-weapons,” Future bade him. “ready to blast the same spot we aimed at. It was giving a little.”

  “They knocked us clear out past the attacking circle,” objected Thai Thar. “They’ve marked us for special attention. We’ll never get close enough for real damage. Another racking like that, even though you’ve got something of a triply defended craft here, might finish us.”

  “That’s what you think,” said the big red-haired Futureman, “That’s what the Overlord thinks, too. But you and he both forget — this!”

  HIS hand shifted again to the controls of the space-warp.

  In a single tooth-rattling trice of time, the Comet was moved across space to nuzzle the very flank of the enemy. Thai Thar, at the bow weapons, poured every ounce of his blasting power into the beginning of the breech.

  It was too quickly done for defense weapons to come to bear. Humming with the recoil from her own proton discharges, the Comet slammed home charge after charge. A seam appeared, widening to a crack, like ice floe breaking up in a spring freshet. A whole great flake of outer armor flew off into space. Another and another. Black emptiness showed beyond.

  “In, in!” Captain Future muttered fiercely, and, obeying his own voice, slipped the Comet forward as into a hangar. Thai Thar, doffing his dark goggles, peered from the bow port.

  “We’re in an inner chamber,” he reported at once. “Pierced many feet of outer plating, and now we enter an empty cushion-space. Beyond is an inner armor.”

  “Blast it,” said Captain Future. He urged the Comet forward at a crawl.

  Thai Thar obeyed, and suddenly stepped back from his weapons. His hands flew to his eyes, which he had not bothered to cover with the goggles again.

  “Light,” he stammered. “Beyond is light — blazing light!”

  It was true. A brilliant glow beat through the port, white as noonday at home on Earth. The Overlord lived in light, as all his subjects lived in darkness.

  “Your goggles,” said Future, and thrust them into Thai Thar’s hand. He shut off power as the Comet’s nose crept into the inner aperture.

  “Alert at all ports!” he commanded over the ship system.

  “Hand arms and respirator — goggles for Dimension X personnel. Prepare for sortie or to repel boarding attempt!”

  Through the bow port he could see a corridor, wide as a street, curving away out of sight to left and right. The heavy walls had door panels, and bright lights gleamed at intervals in the lofty ceiling.

  To him, from both directions, approached enemy, both the dwarfed lower order of the Pale People and, as officers, men of Thai Thar’s handsome type. They wore no goggles — these, the Overlord’s retainers, were plainly accustomed to light, by natural or artificial change.

  Shrewd policy, Captain Future agreed at once. The Overlord and his circle basked in radiance. The great throngs of common people would be unable to overthrow them here, even if they wanted to. How could the night-born eyes of rebels turn toward these brilliant hallways.

  The approaching forces had weapons, well-made proton guns and their native tendril-throwers. Their officers jabbered commands, pointing to the Comet’s nose and fanning their followers out into the skirmish lines.

  CAPTAIN FUTURE’S own men were coming into the control room. The first to arrive were all Solar System police, hard-bitten, peerless fighters. Curt pointed through the port at the two forces closing in.

  “Together, they outnumber us,” he said quickly. “But we’ll beat them here, with the same tactics we used out in space. ready for action?”

  “Dying for action,” said the nearest man for them all.

  “Cover me as I jump out,” directed Captain Future. “Pour all your fire into the enemy to the right. The rest of you follow, one at a time. Make every blast count.”

  Flinging open a port to the right, he sprang out and fell flat to make himself a smaller target. Air swept over and past him in a gale, rushing away through the hole the Comet had made.

  Leveling his proton pistol, he fired and brought down the nearest of the pallid figures approaching. At the same time there were shots from the open portway above him, and under the cover of the volley the men leaped out, each dropping to a prone position and resuming fire. The marksmanship was excellent. The enemy gave back, and some men slid into doorways or behind projections of the corridor wall.

  Captain Future had hoped and planned for that moment.

  “Thai Thar!” he yelled. “Fire on the enemy at the right, you and all your men. You others, follow me! Advance on the other party! Fire at will!”


  Abruptly they were on their feet, reversing position, running around the projecting nose of the Comet.

  With practiced efficiency they fanned out into open order, Captain Future in the lead, and charged.

  The enemy neither expected nor wanted that. The first shots of Future’s men were directed at officers. When these were down, the remainder was leaderless. A ragged, ineffectual fire was not enough to check the advance. A moment later the second enemy force fell back, and the shots of Captain Future’s followers whipped the retreat into a flight, away around the curve of the corridor.

  “Back, back!” Future commanded at once. “We hold the corridor both ways from the Comet for as far as we can see. Thai Thar’s fire has driven back the first group. Let’s keep what we have. One of you get out a space-scout, sail back and report to Ezra Gurney.”

  “I’m right here,” said Ezra’s gruff voice as they retired to the Comet.

  The old marshal, his white hair bristling with excitement, pushed forward among a throng of new men.

  “We whipped in after you when we saw that the weapon-installations to right and left of your breach were silenced.”

  “Silenced?” echoed Thai Thar, also out in the corridor with his begoggled companions. “We didn’t silence them.”

  “Those two parties we drove away just now must be the weapon crews,” said Captain Future. “Quick, Ezra! Send details — your toughest men — to grab those deserted weapon positions. Thai Thar, get back to the telaudio. Direct the rest of the ships to stand by for action — half to skirmish outside and keep the outer defenses busy, the rest to head in as they can. You,” he told a junior officer, “take a party to patch the outer hole and rig a temporary portway, so that we don’t lose all the air out of this big egg before we take it over.”

  He took time to sigh, as he saw the well-trained subordinates slip away to command their details, and fighting men of both his own universe and Dimension X rig defense shields to right and left in the corridor.

  “Only the Comet could have done it,” he said, half to himself. “This Overlord is like many another who planned to conquer the Cosmos. He reckoned without the little Comet, which can stand up and fight where whole fleets fail! Now, if only the others — hey!”

  Something had him around the ankle, tugging and joggling. He looked down. A miniature figure of Otho was hugging his leg, looking up into his face.

  “Oog!” cried Captain Future. “I’d almost forgotten you! You want to find Otho too, eh?”

  Oog, still as a vest-pocket Otho, let go of him and scampered across the floor toward a half-open doorway to a narrower corridor, looked back and beckoned.

  “But I don’t know how to find him, just now,” protested Captain Future.

  The little Otho pointed down the side corridor. Abruptly the shape shifted into a tiny replica of Joan. Then into a doll-size Grag, then back to Otho, still beckoning and pointing.

  “You mean — you know where he is?”

  Oog danced up and down, gesturing wildly.

  Ezra, returning from dispatching the details, faced around at Captain Future’s hail.

  “Take command here. We can concentrate our forces just inside the rind and fight our way to the core. But I — I’m going after my friends! No, nobody comes along, it’s a one-man job!”

  Captain Future followed Oog down the side corridor.

  Chapter 15: Re-union — and the Overlord

  SOFTLY Otho spoke, out of the quiet and the dark.

  “Are you all here?” he asked. “If so, where is here?”

  “I don’t know about you,” came Simon Wright’s rasp. “I’m shut in a box — heavy, massive, sealed with a ray-lock. It’s dark inside.”

  “And dark outside,” boomed Grag from another direction. “I’m helpless, too — hands and feet all magnetized together by a sort of electro-shackle.”

  “They were unoriginal with me,” added Joan Randall. “Just yards and yards of those metal tendrils. What about you, Otho?”

  “More of the same, with several strands run through a ring or staple in this corner. But how did we get here? The last I remember is the capture on Luna, and being shoved into a kind of coffin-like case.”

  “Wait,” broke in Joan. “Curt didn’t speak. Curt, where are you?”

  No answer.

  “Curt! They got you, too! What have they done with you?” Joan’s voice trembled.

  “Steady,” urged Simon Wright. “As Otho says, they pushed us into that cabinet, that must have been a dimension-shift. But before that, Ul Quorn took Curt away. If they saved us alive, they must have done the same for him. But, as Otho asks, where in Dimension X, or Dimension Y, or all the dimensions, are we?”

  Otho stretched himself cautiously. He lay full length on a hard floor, swaddled in bonds which went loose as his hyperelastic android tissues elongated themselves. He felt sudden hope, but did not speak of it.

  “If Captain Future was here, he’d set us free,” said Otho. “All but Grag. Maybe we can leave you behind when we go home.”

  “If I wasn’t magnetized here,” grumbled Grag, “I’d do your legs in a braid, you sneering mockery of normal existence!”

  “Save the fighting for Ul Quorn, who got us into this,” broke in Joan Randall.

  Came a sound of bumping. Simon Wright was experimentally poking inside his box prison.

  “Not a hairline of opening,” he said. “If I had to breathe, I’d smother in here.”

  “They didn’t put Joan in a box,” reminded Grag. “That means we’re being saved alive. Otherwise they’d be killing us now.”

  “Right, Grag!” applauded Simon. “Even Otho will admit that.”

  Otho admitted nothing. Silently he strove to escape.

  The metal bonds that held him were treated so as to adhere wherever they touched. In one place they stuck to his throat, in another to his naked left wrist.

  Elsewhere they clung tightly to his flying suit. It fitted snugly — Otho was justly vain of his trim, supple figure. Yet he had hopes.

  Silently he contracted his artificial lungs, relaxed his synthetic muscles and tendons. He went a trifle loose inside his garments. The light shoes twitched as his feet, elongating, wriggled clear. The shoes dropped off. Otho began to squirm out of his flying suit, like a snake shedding its skin.

  It was hard, sustained work, even for the supple Otho. He strained and struggled in grim quiet, though Grag was booming more taunts. At last he crouched on the floor, clad only in trunks and socks, beside his wire-festooned outer garments. He was free from the wall staple except for the coils of wire that stuck to his wrist and neck.

  “There, you have had a demonstration,” said a hated voice from somewhere. “Will you believe me now when I say that these Futuremen are perhaps more peculiarly dangerous than all the rest of their universe combined?”

  “Take the elastic one to our laboratory for dissection,” one of the Pale People made high-pitched response. “Continue to observe the others.”

  “Ul Quorn, you spy!” snarled Otho, trying to rise to his feet but prevented by the bonds still sticking to him. His eyes, adaptable like the rest of him, had grown used to the gloom.

  He could make out the dim cubicle in which he and his friends were imprisoned. A panel had opened into a blacker side-chamber, and two fungus-wan figures moved toward him, armed and cautious. From behind them came the laugh of Ul Quorn.

  “This, Otho, will go far toward clearing me of the disgrace of defeat,” he said. “My allies are only beginning to realize what a slippery hazard you and your comrades can be. Better not resist, Otho.”

  ONE word had caught Otho’s ear.

  “Defeat!” he cried exultantly. “You defeated — that means that Captain Future got away! Hear that, Joan and the rest of you? He’ll get us out of this!”

  One of the Pale People made a deft play with his tendril-weapon, snaring both of Otho’s hands. Another loop tethered Otho’s ankles so that he could barely totter. Hi
s captors snipped away the wires that held him to the wall and led him to the doorway. Beyond was a second panel that took him into a narrow corridor. Ul Quorn waited there, a bruise on his delicately handsome chin, but nattily clad in Martian robe and turban, and plainly triumphant.

  “Return and watch,” said Ul Quorn to the two Pale People. “You were told off to observe the captives and their strange abilities. At any moment, another escape method may be tried.”

  He took the loose ends of Otho’s bonds in his right hand, which also held a proton gun.

  “You — won’t really be dissected — yet,” he assured Otho mockingly. “That was said only to stir up your friends, to make them try to escape and so betray their methods and secrets. You’re all hostages just now.”

  “Hostages!” echoed Otho, again seizing on a word that revealed Ul Quorn’s situation. “In other words, there’s a real fight on, and not going your way. Captain Future is knocking at your door this instant, and you’ll try to baffle him by threatening to hurt us.”

  Ul Quorn’s smile grew wider and more bitter.

  “Why deny that your deductions are fairly good? Future, as you say, is knocking at the door. Indeed, he has one foot inside it. But we’ll fight back. He finds us in our stronghold, a very trickbox of weapons, pitfalls, defenses.”

  “What next?” demanded Otho.

  “New York next, and another hole through the dimensions by which we can bring armies to use the weapons we’ll seize there. Only an hour and a surprise are needed. And the night hours are wonderful for battle — Dimension X men are at their best, and Solar System defenses at their worst.”

  Otho stared past Ul Quorn.

  On the wall of the corridor was a bracket that held some sort of a mirror. In it Otho saw an image of himself, reduced to only a few inches. But it couldn’t be an image in a mirror. He stood still in his bonds, this little figure moved and was free. It made something like a gesture of greeting, then pointed up corridor. Finally its outlines melted. It turned into Captain Future.