Oog. He was telling Otho that rescue was coming!
Otho tore his eyes from the little mimic. He must keep Ul Quorn’s attention riveted.
“Of course you don’t intend to keep us alive,” he sneered. “If you make a pact with Captain Future, you’ll break it later.”
“Why not? We’re enemies to the knife, and closer. That,” and he snapped the fingers of his free hand, “for any promise to Captain Future. When it pleases me I make, when it pleases me I break.”
“Poetry,” taunted Otho. “Bad poetry. I’ll try a second verse of your jingle. You’ll be smashed, rayed, or shot, and later forgotten.”
“That’s a lie!” blazed Ul Quorn, his vanity wounded. “No matter who wins, all the universes will remember me to the end of time!”
He lifted the hand with the gun and wire-ends and Oog sprang from the bracket behind. His little body, still in the semblance of Captain Future, stuck and clung to Ul Quorn’s wrist, forcing the muzzle away from Otho.
Shrieking a curse, Ul Quorn shook off the little body. But in that moment, Captain Future sprang from behind a corner of the corridor. His fist shot out like the head of a Venusian swamp-cobra. Ul Quorn dropped as limp and still as an empty garment from a hangar.
Quickly Captain Future pried the sticky coils from Otho’s limbs, and used them to tie Ul Quorn’s unconscious body. Otho caught up Oog and hugged him with fierce affection and gratitude.
“The others,” said Otho. “Just inside here.”
CAPTAIN FUTURE nodded.
“I know, I’ve listened,” he answered. “Oog and I slipped this far alone, while the battle goes on at our landing-breach. The corridors are like a labyrinth, but Oog seems to tune in on your mental wave-length.”
“Battle?” Otho was repeating. “Landing-breach?”
“I’ll explain fully when we have time. Suffice it to say that you’ve been held captive near the center of a spaceship almost the size of a satellite. Most of its garrison is giving our gang — a battle near the surface. Twice I almost ran into guards, but Oog warned me twice by turning into a little Dimension X warrior, and I was able to strike first.” Captain Future’s big hand tapped his holstered gun. “Now, let’s free the others.”
From the still silent Ul Quorn he took cloak and turban, offering them to Otho.
“How do you mean?” demanded Otho, staring. “Oh, disguise, and then what?”
“Disguise, and then surprise,” finished Future for him. “You and Ul Quorn were swapping rickety little rhymes, why shouldn’t I? Hurry.”
Otho had neither makeup nor the oil that could make his face plastic, but he grimly modeled his face into a likeness to Ul Quorn and drew the turban low above it. He walked back into the side-room, and peered through the door into the prison cubicle.
The two pale observers stood next to the sealed case that imprisoned the Brain. Their proton-guns were drawn. One chattered in his native tongue at Otho.
“In the language of the Solar System,” Otho commanded harshly, imitating Ul Quorn’s accents. “You know that we must practice constantly.”
“I said, the creature whose Brain lives in a transparent box seems to solve our raylock,” answered the Pale Man. “If he emerges, we will slay him.”
“No,” growled Otho. He walked close. The observer who had spoken drew back a little.
“You are pallid, Ul Quorn. And why do you leave the other captive unguarded? The Overlord does not trust you completely, and neither do we.”
Ul Quorn shot out his arm, inches longer than normal. He pinned the creature’s weapon wrist, whipped the pallid form close to him. His other hand, balling into a knuckly fist, drove for the scrawny jaw. The apelike figure collapsed.
“Captain Future could have done no better,” thought Otho.
“Ul Quorn!” squealed the other. “You are going mad — or traitor to us, as you have been traitor to your own! Stand where you are!”
Captain Future sprang on the speaker, subduing him like a child.
“No cheers,” warned Captain Future. “No celebrations, no congratulations. Just get everybody free — quickly.”
It was done. Two blows with the butt of a pistol smashed the magnet device that held Grag helpless. Joan caught her breath and suppressed a gasp of pain as Otho pried the adhesive coils from her. Simon Wright’s traction beams had already searched out and opened the lock of his cage. The Futuremen stood up at last, free and exultant.
“Now what?” asked Otho.
“Now for the Overlord. You’ll have to perfect your disguise, Otho.”
“Easily done.” Otho had repossessed his garments. “Here in my belt-bag is an adequate makeup kit — oils and pigments.”
“As Ul Quorn, you’ll take me prisoner to the Overlord,” went on Captain Future. “Drag the real Ul Quorn in here, Grag. He’s bound tightly, but gag him. Put him in that box that held Simon, and close it just loosely enough to give him air. Then loop it around with tendrils so he can’t get away.”
“Why not kill him?” demanded Grag bluntly.
“For the same reasons he didn’t kill you,” said Captain Future. “He may be a valuable hostage. Otho, come with me. The rest stay here, Simon in charge. Let nobody in or out.”
They regained the corridor. Otho, in the character of Ul Quorn, carried a pistol and led Captain Future in a deceptive fabric of bonds. “Which way to this Overlord?” asked Otho.
“Oog will show us,” said Captain Future.
“But how?” Otho stooped toward his pet. “How, Oog?”
THE meteor-mimic’s molecules stirred and changed. He stood up as the tiny figure of a supple woman.
“N’Rala!” exclaimed Otho.
“Exactly. She’s close to the Overlord. Oog has some way of leading us to her — thought impulse, scent, vibrations. Which means, to the Overlord. Follow him.”
Oog scampered off along the outer corridor, through a door. There was a guard in a niche beyond, and further along another, but both saluted the apparent Ul Quorn, and neither noticed the tiny guide that stole past. The third guard they met was at a dead end of a corridor. He saluted with a bright new proton-rifle.
“You were ordered to appear?” he asked Otho.
“No, but —”
“You know the procedure, Ul Quorn. One appears before the Overlord only by his order.”
“But,” argued Otho, “I’ve just taken Captain Future prisoner.”
The guard stared, but remained stubborn.
“Only by order. Otherwise —” He gazed down at Oog. “What’s that?”
Oog was mimicking the guard himself. The fellow scowled and brought his weapon to the ready.
“I don’t like this, whatever it is,” he muttered, and aimed.
“No, by the holy sun-imps!” growled Otho. His own proton-pistol leveled and exploded. The guard dropped and lay still.
“Sorry, Chief,” said Otho. “Couldn’t let him kill Oog. But who’ll show us the way now?”
“Oog will.”
Oog had turned again to a tiny N’Rala, and stood facing a seeming blank stretch of wall. Future stepped close, shedding his simulated bonds, and his knuckles tapped the surface.
“Hollow behind. Must be a secret panel. Look for a lever or button.”
But they could find none, not even a hairline crack. Captain Future stooped above the dead guard.
“He has a ray-thrower of some sort.” He detached it from the belt. “Look Otho. It has features of the atom-lock — can make solids penetrable. Let’s see.”
He directed the force against the hollow section of wall. Abruptly a tunnel seemed to come into being, almost clear transparency into a room beyond.
“In,” commanded Captain Future. Otho stepped boldly forward, and Captain Future, holding the ray above and behind him, followed.
“What is this intrusion?” demanded a high, harsh voice.
They had come into a domed chamber, of only, medium size but richly decorated, set with luxurious furn
iture, and containing several banks of strange, intricate-seeming machinery. In its center with a great throne-like chair, and on this sat one of the most magnificent specimens of humanity the Futuremen had ever seen.
The man, standing erect, would tower a good two inches above Curt Newton’s six feet four. His facial features had the classic mould of ancient sculptures. His broad shoulders and superbly muscled legs, revealed by the glittering body-armor he wore, might make envious a championship athlete.
Over the back of his throne lay folds of a rich scarlet mantle, and his temples were bound with a fillet of blinding gems. His eyes were deep, lustrous black, his skin as white as a night flower, his hair like closely curled silver floss.
“Ul Quorn!” this person was saying. “To incompetency you now add impudence.”
“Wait.”
It was N’Rala, moving into view from behind the throne. She was radiant, mocking, beautiful as always.
“You might forgive Ul Quorn, Overlord, when he brings you Captain Future as a captive.”
The Overlord’s dark eyes fixed themselves on Curt.
“Captive?” he echoed. “No, it’s a trick! I’m tuned to every kind of warning ray here. They tell me that he’s armed!”
Captain Future reached back to his holster. But the Overlord’s great white hand moved to a table beside his throne, studded with levers and push-buttons.
Captain Future felt as if lightning had struck him. Then he felt nothing at all.
Chapter 16: The Fate of Universes
REGARDLESS of the fact that impersonation had always been second nature with Otho, nevertheless he was all but jolted out of his Ul Quorn pose. For, under his very gaze and within arm’s length of him, he saw a great yellow block — gold, or some metal like gold — materialize instantly where Captain Future had stood.
It was a block seven feet tall, three feet wide, three feet thick, large enough to enclose Captain Future like a coffin.
“Don’t gape like that, Ul Quorn,” came the amused voice of N’Rala. “One would think that the Overlord had never spoken of how easily he can do what he has done.”
Her words called Otho back to himself and his job.
“I’ve heard, yes,” he took up the cue. “But the actual sight, the unthinkably weird performance was wonderful!”
“Very simple, like most amazing things.”
The Overlord was intrigued with Otho’s blank surprise, and half forgot his displeasure at the unapproved entry. He gestured toward the push-buttons on the side table. One had been pressed home, and stayed down under an automatic catch.
“Don’t you remember that I explained how this whole chamber is hollowed out of solid alloy — by action of the atom-lock?”
“Like the ray that opened a way for us to enter,” supplied Otho.
“Yes. It affects the alloy of the chamber in such a way as to make its every molecule and atom stand still — cease its activity — in short, remove it from its solid nature. Turn off the rays which I control by these buttons, and the open space, or any segment of it which I choose, fills up on the instant. I can create or banish emptiness.”
“Captain Future,” said Otho, trying to keep his voice from trembling as he eyed the gleaming slab of metal that stood where his chief had been. “He’s disintegrated now? His substance destroyed by the solidification?”
“No,” the Overlord smiled loftily. “I use a special alloy, as I said. It’s atoms, reactivated to solidity, cannot replace another solid which is already there, but they can surround and clamp it tightly. Captain Future is still alive, can hear what we say. But if he remains long as he is, he will smother.”
“Keep him alive,” urged Otho. “He knows science that I could never tell you.”
“That doesn’t sound like Ul Quorn,” spoke up N’Rala. “You used to feel very generous when you called Captain Future your equal in mind and training. In any case, the Overlord is well advised to let him perish there. Captain Future may be the difference between victory and defeat.”
“You are not complimentary,” said the Overlord, a little sharply. “Many have tried to defeat me, and failed. For instance, the force from that other dimension, even now assailing me here in this space-fortress, thinks I am almost overthrown. No man of them all will escape.”
“How will you do that?” demanded Otho.
The Overlord lounged, one arm hanging over the arm of his throne. Otho could see big white fingers hooked on the edge of the side-table with the buttons. The other arm jerked a thumb toward a mechanism at the rear of the chamber.
“That lever,” he said. “A tug upon it, and this whole flying planetoid will explode into atoms. It would kill my enemies, as well as some servants who have been faithful and helpful and whom I would be sorry to lose, but whom I must sacrifice. Among the enemies thus doomed are Thai Thar and his handful of rebels who might cause trouble if spared.”
“And you would escape?” prompted Otho.
“This chamber, made as it is of the material I have chosen, would survive that blast, or a greater one. It would ride clear, with myself inside. Meanwhile, the invasion is shelved for the time, Ul Quorn. Already I have had the great dimension-bridge at the Asteroid closed. The smaller one, to the Futuremen’s lair on the imprisoned Moon, will be done away with likewise, as soon as I evacuate my men and supplies there. With Captain Future gone, and his imprisoned friends blown up with the rest, you and I can rebuild a successful invasion machine, striking your native System when we will be least expected and most deadly. Agreed?”
OTHO fixed his eyes again on Captain Future’s confining block.
“To stifle,” he ventured. “A miserable death.”
“Again you don’t sound like yourself,” said N’Rala. “Are you Ul Quorn, or a cheap imitation?”
Otho felt that his unmasking was more than likely.
“Who else?” he snapped on inspiration. “I suppose you think that I’m Otho, escaped and in makeup. This,” he suddenly improvised, “is the thanks I get for helping your plan along, N’Rala — and keeping it secret from the Overlord.”
“What’s this?” demanded the Overlord, sitting up. “Plans? And kept from me?”
“He lies!” protested N’Rala, her voice sharp with anger. “He wants to make you mistrust me!”
“I don’t lie,” insisted Otho, improvising as he plunged ahead. “Why should I make up a story that would condemn me as an enemy of the Overlord? It’s true, and I tell it because I refuse to be insulted by N’Rala, when I’ve worked with her and come so close to overthrowing —”
“Don’t listen!” N’Rala screamed at the Overlord. “He’s mad with jealousy — because I neglect him and turn to you — .”
She started toward the great pale man on the throne-chair, but he pushed her roughly back.
“Stay clear, until this is explained,” he told her. “Ul Quorn, finish what you began. What plotting has been done behind my back?”
Otho’s invention had run out. He folded his arms with a great show of dignity.
“Ask N’Rala,” he said.
“N’Rala?” said the Overlord, turning to her. “I trusted you. I suppose the proverb is extra-universal about not trusting beautiful women.”
Her face twisted grotesquely in her fury, and her hand dropped to the dagger at her belt. The Overlord lifted his eyebrow and jabbed his finger at another push-button — Otho had a notion that there were an amazing number of fingers on his hand.
Where N’Rala had stood was another block of metallic yellow. The Overlord touched a third button, and Otho felt sudden clamping solidity around his limbs and body. But his head remained free.
“I left you able to breathe and observe, Ul Quorn,” the Overlord told him. “Plotter or not, you will remain useful to me. I’ll find ways to render you harmless. But first, the vibrator-warnings sound an initial success for the attackers. Most of their craft and personnel are where an explosion will wipe them out. Watch.”
Rising from his
throne, he strode toward the lever that, with one twitch, would disintegrate the mighty fabrication that served as capitol of Dimension X.
But Otho’s gaze remained fixed on the side table. The Overlord had departed, but he had left something there, white and hand-shaped. A glove? A dummy?
The hand, detached as it was, crept forward like a big bloodless crab. It was fussing with the release of the automatic catches.
Oog again had come to the rescue!
Otho saw the catches fly back. At the same moment he stood free from the massive yellowness that had materialized about him. And Captain Future was visible, resting on a knee, gulping air into his starved lungs. N’Rala staggered and swayed, a hand to her throat. She saw what had happened, whirled to cry a warning to the Overlord.
“Ul Quorn sprang forward sweeping N’Rala aside with one arm even as he reached the other for the Overlord. He pushed the big pale form sidewise and flung his own lean, active body in front of the lever.
“There’ll be no disintegration,” said Otho.
“There was a plot, after all,” said the Overlord. His handsome lips curled into the most deadly grin Otho had ever seen. “I was wrong to think you worth keeping alive, Ul Quorn. I’m going to render you thoroughly harmless.”
“He’s not Ul Quorn, I tell you!” N’Rala was yammering. “He’s Otho! That android play-actor!”
THE Overlord moved quickly, almost as quickly as Otho himself. Before Otho could squirm away, a huge hand like a multiple vice clutched him, driving its fingers deep into his synthetic flesh.
“I’ll tear you into shreds,” promised the Overlord. “Little, little shreds.”
But other fingers closed on the Overlord’s shoulder, tanned against the whiteness.
“Let him go,” said Captain Future, panting still but in command of his faculties.
Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) Page 11