The Brain, hovering in his precarious concealment behind that door, heard Su Thuar striding forward to investigate.
Simon Wright tensed himself mentally for desperate action. He could not escape discovery if Su Thuar searched the room. Nor could he regain the ventilation-tube without being seen.
Suddenly a wild yell rose in the night, outside the ship. It was echoed by a dozen excited voices.
“What’s that?” demanded Su Thuar, stopping and turning around.
“I don’t know — something must have happened,” exclaimed the man Rosson. “Look, the whole north sky is blazing.”
Su Thuar plunged out of the suite, into the corridors with the others following. “Lock and guard the door, Rosson,” he called behind him. “The rest of you come on.”
Simon Wright came out of his concealment like a flying shadow at the door was closed.
He was startled to notice that the whole heavens northward were now flaming with an increased lurid red light. Voices were still shouting outside the ship, and men could be heard running.
The Brain delayed to examine the oblong metal cases Su Thuar had brought. He opened one, and was amazed. It contained nothing but a number of long, hollow wooden tubes.
They were four-foot sections of thick, hard Jovian reeds, carefully polished.
“How in the world is Valdane planning to use these?” he muttered.
The excitement outside was increasing. The Brain hastily re-entered the ventilator tube.
He refastened its grating, whose absence had fortunately escaped notice. To it, he attached a tiny instrument.
Then he made his way rapidly through the dark tubes to the property-room. As he reached that room, Simon Wright felt a shuddering vibration that shook the whole ship.
He heard a low, thunderous roar from the north, and saw that the flaming brilliance of the heavens had deepened in bloody hue. The Brain was appalled, for he had been on Jupiter enough to know what it meant.
“Tidal eruption!” a wild voice was yelling outside. “The Fire Sea has erupted right where the telepicture troupe was making scenes!”
Chapter 6: Wrath of the Fire Sea
BACK in the location-camp by the Fire Sea, Captain Future had felt a sharp anxiety as he saw Otho hurry away on the jungle trail after Kin Kurd and Joan.
The only thing that moderated his worry about the girl was his confidence in the resourcefulness of Otho.
Curt had not a doubt that Jon Valdane had sent the Saturnian politician after Joan Randall with a sinister purpose. Why hadn’t he sent Su Thuar? Where was the Venusian criminal? He had disappeared when they first landed. “Chan Carson!” came the angry voice of Jeff Lewis. “Will you stop dreaming and listen to me?”
Curt Newton had to turn and give his attention to the producer, as Lewis outlined the scenes they were to make in this dangerous location.
The stocky director appeared insensible to the hazardous nature of this place. The terrific spectacle of the bubbling, infernal Fire Sea that washed the base of this promontory affected him no more than if it had been a painted backdrop, in his intensity of purpose. The others, though, were not so oblivious. Gasping and choking from the sulphurous fumes, they cast anxious glances at the molten ocean whose scorching heat partly penetrated even this zone protected by the anti-heaters. And Curt Newton, playing his part of Chan Carson, was careful to seem openly fearful.
“Now here’s the plot of this episode of ‘The Ace of Space’,” Jeff Lewis was saying crisply. “Lura and Ron, the two young sweethearts who are trying to give the Futuremen information about the Legion of Doom, are trapped here at the Fire Sea by some of the Legion. They’re going to be killed, when Captain Future and Grag appear.” He turned to bark at the little Martian technical director. “Lo Quior, have you got that automaton ready?”
“All ready,” affirmed the spectacled little Martian. “Just what will you want it to do?”
“It’ll come on the scene with Captain Future — Carson, that is,” Lewis explained. “It’s Grag, helping Future to save Ron and Lura. It should run forward, pick up Legion men, and toss them aside.”
“I can set its controls so it’ll run forward and make the tossing motions,” Lo Quior nodded. “The men can fake the rest.”
Big Grag was standing, as immobile as the lifeless automaton he impersonated. Curt Newton grinned secretly. He knew how Grag must detest this sham. Lo Quior began setting the control-buttons on the little switchboard on Grag’s back. The Martian never dreamed that this was any other than the dummy automaton the property department had prepared.
“All right — get those cameras ready to roll,” barked Jeff Lewis. “Ron, you and Lura take your places. You’re breathless, exhausted by your flight from the Legion. You can’t go any farther, for you’re at the very shore of the Fire Sea. They’ve got you trapped —” Lura Lind and Ron King began the scene. They crouched in the sunlight, silhouetted against the angry red immensity of the Fire Sea, gazing behind them in terror and despair. Into the scene rushed the half-dozen actors who represented members of the malign Legion of Doom. They wore gray uniforms with a black disk on the shoulder. They rushed the man and girl, overpowered them and dragged them toward the edge of the cliff above the Fire Sea.
The producer made a sharp signal. In obedience, Curt Newton plunged forward, an atom-pistol clutched in his hand.
At the same moment, Lo Quior pressed the “starting button” on Grag’s switchboard. Grag came to life. The big robot stalked forward in a clanking rush, at Curt’s side. Grag moved stiffly and jerkily, as though he were really the mechanical automaton which the others thought him.
“Captain Future!” yelled one of the Legion of Doom actors in simulated amazement and dismay.
“Get them, Grag!” shouted Curt Newton, repeating his line. His atom-pistol was spitting harmless low-powered charges as he charged. Grag went into action when he reached the gray-uniformed actors. He swung his mighty metal limbs and knocked the Legion of Doom about like tenpins. The actors yelled in real dismay, as Grag snatched Lura Lind out of their grasp so roughly it looked as if he were about to throw her into the Fire Sea.
In fact, Grag was thoroughly enjoying a taste of action. He had been forced to stand so long in stiff immobility and silence that he now took pleasure in showing what he could do. “Turn this automaton off before he throws me over the cliff,” shrieked Lura Lind.
“Cut!” shouted Jeff Lewis. “Lo Quior, switch off that thing.”
The little Martian ran forward and touched the dummy switches upon Grag’s broad metal back.
Grag stiffened as though he really were an automaton whose power had just been cut off, thus allowing the thoroughly scared blonde actress to slip from his arms to the ground.
“That automaton is too dangerous to work with,” Ron King declared indignantly. “It might have thrown Lura right over the cliff.”
“It’ll be all right next time — cut its power down, Lo Quior,” Jeff Lewis ordered. “We’ll have to do the scene over again.”
Curt Newton had taken the opportunity to edge close to the immobile figure of Grag, and whisper angrily to him.
“Quit clowning, you big mutt. I want to get this over with and get out of here after Joan and Otho.”
Jeff Lewis seemed indefatigable as he prepared to re-make the scene. Curt Newton was beginning to understand why this stocky Earthman was tops in the telepicture profession.
Was Lewis in on Jon Valdane’s plot? They had been undecided about that. But Newton began to doubt that any man so earnestly wrapped up in his job as the producer, could have an ulterior purpose.
They made the scene over again, and then made it over again, as the Sun rapidly westered.
The brief Jovian day was approaching its end, yet still Lewis was not satisfied.
“You’re too stiff, too unconvincing, Carson,” he lectured Newton. “Why in blazes can’t you act like Captain Future would?”
“It’s because this place scares me,”
Newton said nervously. “Can’t we get out of here?”
He pretended that increased fearfulness because he really did badly want to return to the ship, and find out what had happened to Joan and Otho. Otho had not returned, and Newton was increasingly worried.
“Why can’t you show a little courage?” stormed Jeff Lewis. “How can I make a picture with a Captain Future who’s afraid of his own shadow?”
The Jovian guide who had brought them here, plucked at Lewis’ sleeve. “It would be wise to leave here,” he declared nervously. “Night is at hand, and soon comes the Meeting of the Moons. That means danger.”
“Will you go back to Jungletown and let me make a picture?” Lewis barked at him. “We’ve got night scenes to make here, too.”
Captain Future understood the cause of the Jovian’s nervousness. For Curt Newton knew Jupiter, as the producer and others did not.
“When the four biggest moons of this planet clustered together in conjunction in the heavens, their combined gravitational pull always caused tidal disturbances of the Fire Sea. Sometimes, those disturbances were so powerful as to bring about the so-called tidal eruptions.
“Now we’ll repeat that scene once more, and then we’ll do the night-shots that show Future fighting off the rest of the Legion,” Lewis ordered. “Snap into it, for there isn’t much daylight left.”
They barely completed the re-make before the Sun dropped behind the horizon. Darkness came down upon the face of the giant planet. In that darkness, the Fire Sea below them cast a baleful, lurid glow.
Up into the crimson glow climbed two of Jupiter’s great moons, Ganymede and Calypso. They were quickly followed by Io and then by Europa, the two latter moons racing to overtake their slower sisters.
The sluggish little waves of the Fire Sea increased in magnitude as the four moons drew toward conjunction. Big maelstroms bubbled in the flaming ocean. But Jeff Lewis ignored the uneasiness of the molten flood as he directed the filming of the night scenes. “You’re down on the ground, firing your atom-pistol at the other Legion men who have attacked,” he outlined forcefully. “Ron is wounded, and he and Lura are crouching behind you. Camera!”
CAPTAIN FUTURE stretched prone, firing his atom-gun, his head silhouetted against the blazing glow of the Fire Sea.
Suddenly Curt Newton stiffened. He had felt a low, rhythmic reverberation of the ground upon which he lay. Its rhythm increased swiftly.
He knew what it meant, and the knowledge appalled him. It was the prelude to a tidal eruption. The Fire Sea, surging up into the cavernous spaces beneath these cliffs, was threatening to erupt in a geyser of flaming destruction at this very spot.
He jumped to his feet, having finished the scene. But Jeff Lewis shook his head dissatisfiedly.
“No, it won’t do,” declared the director. “We’ll have to film that scene again.”
Captain Future knew that he had to get them all out of this dangerous place at once. Destruction might burst forth at any moment, for the ominous rhythm of vibration was rapidly accelerating.
But none of them knew what it meant. The Jovian guide had returned to Jungletown. And if he told them what it meant, he would prove by so doing that he could not really be ‘Chan Carson,’ since no timid, Earthbound clerk such as he impersonated could know such a thing.
“Will you get back there and do that scene over again, Carson?” Lewis was barking impatiently.
Curt Newton made up his mind swiftly. There was only one way to get them out of here without betraying his real identity. And that way, distasteful as it was to him, he must take.
He cried out in a voice he made shrill with fear. “I won’t do the scene again,” he shrieked. “I won’t stay here any longer.” He pointed trembling at the heaving Five Sea. “This place is too dangerous.”
“Get hold of yourself, Carson,” said Jim Willard disgustedly. “Do you want everybody to think you’re a coward?”
“I don’t care what they think — I’m not making any more scenes here.”
Jeff Lewis threw up his hands. “I give up. That’s what I get for hiring a scary clerk to play my main role.”
His voice was bitter with disgust. “All right, folks — that’s all here. Since Carson’s got hysteria, we might as well make out with the scenes as we’ve filmed them. Load up the trucks, Jim.”
The others, though themselves a little nervous, cast contemptuous glances at Curt Newton as they prepared to return to the ship. Captain Future knew that all of them now thought of him as a shivering craven. But he was not thinking of that. He was holding his breath until they should be away from this increasingly dangerous spot. His keen ears told him that every moment the ominous underground rhythm of surging lava was growing stronger. He drew a long breath of relief when the rocket-trucks finally rolled away from the seething Fire Sea and entered the jungle trail. And at that moment, it happened. With a thunderous roar, the promontory they had just quitted exploded upward. The cliff had been cracked by the upward-surging lava, and the tidal eruption flung a terrific geyser of molten rock for hundreds of feet into the moons-light. “Good grief, it’s an eruption,” yelled Jeff Lewis, his eyes protruding in the lurid light.
“Hurry up, before that lava falls back on us,” Curt Newton cried.
The drivers of the rocket-trucks jammed their cyc-pedals to the floor, and the vehicles lurched wildly forward along the jungle trail.
Cries of panic came from actors and technicians as they saw their peril. The roaring geyser of fiery lava, shooting high into the light of the four moons, was about to rain down on them. Hot ashes and burning bits of rock hailed down around the racing trucks. A deluge of fire seemed breaking from the heavens. But the sudden spurt of the rocket-trucks saved them from being beneath the masses of molten lava that crashed down on the trail behind them.
LURA LIND was screaming in panic, others were chattering with terror, as the ground heaved sickeningly beneath the speeding vehicles. Curt Newton, seeing that they were out of danger, counterfeited a terror even more extreme than that of the others.
“Gods of space,” exclaimed Lo Quior, his spectacled face pallid as he looked back at the lurid, fire-shot sky. “If we hadn’t left just when we did, that eruption would have killed us all.”
Jeff Lewis mopped his brow shakily. “You’re right. It’s a lucky thing that Chan Carson got so scared, after all.”
Jon Valdane gave Captain Future a long, queer look.
“Yes, it is lucky,” the financier murmured. “It’s almost unbelievably lucky.”
Curt Newton felt a chill of apprehension. Had he betrayed himself to Valdane’s sharp eyes? Hastily, Curt Newton exaggerated his apparent panic.
“This world is a devil’s planet,” he shrilled. “We nearly got killed. I want to get away from here at once.”
“Quiet down, Carson,” snapped the producer. “There’s no more danger now. And we’re leaving Jupiter before morning. We’ve made all the scenes we’ll need for this episode of the picture.”
“I wish I were back at my dry-goods counter on Earth,” Captain Future complained. “You didn’t tell me how risky that role was going to be.”
Inwardly, as he kept up his pretense of dread, Curt Newton was tensely anxious to reach the ship and find out from Otho whether Joan was safe.
The tidal eruption behind them was still painting the northern heavens with a bloody light that mingled weirdly with the silver radiance of the four clustered moons. When they rattled into Jungletown, they found the interplanetary frontier-town full of excitement over the thing.
The trucks bumped across the rough spaceport to the big, looming bulk of the Perseus.
And Captain Future felt a throb of thankfulness as he saw that Joan Randall was there to meet them.
Joan Randall greeted Jeff Lewis indignantly. “That was a clever trick of yours to get rid of me — sending me a fake call from Earth!”
Jeff Lewis looked bewildered. “What in the world are you talking about?”
&
nbsp; “Someone sent me a fake message to return to Earth headquarters,” Joan said wrathfully. “I’d have gone, too, if I hadn’t suspected it was a trick and called headquarters myself.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” the producer said emphatically. “I’ve got troubles enough of my own right now. Sam! Lo Quior! Get ready for takeoff. We’re all through here on Jupiter.”
Though disappointed by the failure of his stratagem to get Joan out of this dangerous expedition, Captain Future nevertheless felt relief that she had come to no harm from Kin Kurri.
He looked around and saw Kin Kurri himself. The tall, cadaverous Saturnian had apparently been waiting at the ship.
Curt Newton didn’t see Otho, in the throng around the ship. Neither was Otho in the cabin they shared. Captain Future slipped down to the property-room, which by now had been re-loaded by Sam Martin’s men.
“Simon!” he whispered in the dark room. “Greg! Has Otho been here?”
Grag came stalking from the dark corner in which he had been stiffly standing, and the Brain also glided to Curt Newton from the shadows.
“Otho has not been here,” Simon Wright declared.
“I haven’t seen the pest, since he left us at the Fire Sea,” growled Grag.
“I sent him after Kin Kurri, whom I believed was trailing Joan,” Newton explained. “Kin Kurri is here, and so is Joan, but where is Otho?”
“Lad, I found out something when I searched Valdane’s suite today,” reported the Brain.
He went on to tell about Su Thuar’s bringing the cases of hollow wooden tubes.
“So that’s why Valdane left Su Thuar here — to get those aboard when no one was here to see,” muttered Captain Future thoughtfully. “Now what possible use has he got in mind for hollow wooden tubes?”
“We may be able to find that out,” the Brain said. “I took an Ear with me, and hung it inside the grating of the ventilator in Valdane’s suite.”
Captain Future uttered an approving exclamation. An Ear was a tiny supersensitive microphone and audio-transmitter which could pick up any nearby sound or speech and transmit it to a tuned receiver.
Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) Page 5