The kurus were the big, kangaroo-like animals which the Stygians used as steeds. A row of them, already saddled, was tethered outside the council tower. Both Curt Newton and Otho had ridden them before. They sprang into the saddles as the Stygians also hastily mounted. In a moment, their mounts were galloping in long, hopping leaps through the stone streets of Dzong. As they rode, the Brain glided swiftly beside them.
Otho called out to Captain Future. “Chief, what is it?” he asked. “What’s the danger to the telepicture caravan?”
“It’s Valdane’s plot,” exclaimed Curt. “I was blind not to see it before, when every clue pointed to it. I know now what he meant by ‘the loophole in the Stygian treaty.’ That treaty provides that the Stygians retain complete authority over their own world, but only so long as they maintain order on it!” Curt Newton reminded fiercely. “That’s the loophole in it. If Valdane can bring about an attack by the Stygians on this much-publicized telepicture party, the System will ring with resentment against the Stygians. The treaty will be broken, and the System Government will take over Styx.”
Qu Lur, riding beside them, had heard and now uttered a cry of unbelief. “But we Stygians have no intention of attacking anyone. We never use violence.”
“If I’m not wrong, Valdane has taken care of that problem too,” growled Captain Future.
There was no chance for further talk, for now they were outside the Stygian city and the kurus were galloping in a dead run. The big, leaping white steeds raced southward through the mist, back in the direction of Planet Town. Though their speed was great, they seemed slow to Curt Newton as he thought of Joan Randall’s peril.
The misty, subdued daylight was darkening to a deeper dusk as night approached. The shrouding fog through which they rode seemed to press more closely upon them. They had galloped a half hour when one of the kurus snorted and shied. There came a call from Th’ Thaan, its rider.
“There is a dead man here upon the ground.”
Curt Newton’s heart chilled. He rode swiftly with the others to Th’ Thaan’s side and dismounted. Upon the white turf lay the limp, dead figure of what appeared to be a Stygian. The white fur of his chest was scorched and blackened by the atom-blast that had killed him.
“One of our people-slain,” exclaimed Qu Lur.
“No, not one of yours,” Curt Newton said. “Look here.”
He had bent over the dead figure and was tugging at it. The white-furred skin seemed to come suddenly away from the body, and with it came the mask that had covered the face.
It was as Earthman who lay here dead. He had worn a close-fitted zipper-suit and mask which had made him an exact replica of a Stygian.
“It is a costume to make him look like us,” cried old Qu Lur in anger.
“Valdane’s planning,” rapped Captain Future, his face dark with passion. “He had to have Stygians attack the telepicture party, to set his machinations working. He knew real Stygians never would attack, no matter what the provocation. So he sent Su Thuar and his ‘bodyguards’ ahead, wearing these Stygian costumes from the telepicture properties, to ambush the caravan. That’s why they brought the Jovian blow-guns.”
HE AND Otho and the Brain made a quick search of the surrounding plain. They found no other bodies. But they did find clear signs of what had taken place. The telepicture caravan had fled back to Planet Town with the disguised attackers pursuing.
Qu Lur and Th’ Thaan and the other Stygians came riding up through the foggy dusk to where Curt Newton and the two Futuremen were searching.
The old Stygian’s face was solemn with purpose. “We have seen enough,” he told Captain Future. “We know now that our world is in danger from these ruthless men. So we must act now to protect it.”
His voice deepened. “This night, every alien visitor on Styx must leave our world. For if they do not go before Pluto rises tonight, we unloose the Destroyer on them.”
Curt Newton uttered an exclamation. “You must not do that, no matter what the danger. It would cause a planetary disaster.”
“Too long have we been patient,” Qu Lur declared firmly. “Because we will never use violence or take life, the alien men in Planet Town have believed that they could safely mock our laws. Now this final outrage forces us to use our great weapon of defense.
“For ages, we have guarded that weapon for such a need as this. It is why we have deliberately shunned mechanical progress and metals and machines, why we have kept our cities and our people primitive in many ways. So that, if the time came that we needed to protect ourselves, we could use the mighty Destroyer to do so.”
Captain Future pleaded desperately.
“Qu Lur, don’t unchain that catastrophe! Wait.”
“We wait only until the parent-planet rises,” answered the Stygian. “If the aliens have not gone by then, we act.”
He added an anxious admonition. “You Futuremen should leave at once, with your friends. For if we release the Destroyer, then you will never leave.”
Curt Newton recognized that no pleas would change the terrible resolution of the Stygians, whose wrongs had reached a climax.
“We’ll ride to Planet Town and warn them there,” he said. “If I can make them believe, they’ll all leave Styx.”
“Remember, at planet-rise the Destroyer will be freed if every alien is not gone,” warned Qu Lur, as he and the other Stygians mounted.
They turned rein and rode rapidly back toward their city, disappearing into the misty darkness.
Curt Newton called to Otho and the Brain. “We’ve got to get to Planet Town as quickly as possible. It’s only a couple of hours till Pluto rises.”
He leaped back into the saddle of his kuru, and Otho followed his example, for the Stygians had left the two steeds for them.
“Ride hard!” he cried as they spurred their mounts into the darkness. “Everything depends on our getting all the inhabitants of Planet Town to leave this moon at once!”
The Brain, rushing effortlessly through the mist beside him, called a question. “Shall I go ahead to warn them?”
“It would be no good.” Curt Newton groaned. “They wouldn’t believe you for they all think you only an ingenious mechanism, Simon. I may be able to convince them. I’ve got to — or doom falls on this world.”
“Doom, from those vials of gray dust?” cried Otho skeptically. “Doom that won’t take life or inflict injury? It can’t be so terrible a catastrophe if it wouldn’t harm anyone physically.”
“It would be the most awful disaster that ever struck any planet in the System,” Captain Future answered, the wind tearing the words from his lips. “Valdane’s greedy plot has brought on this danger.”
His mind was seething with mingled fears and doubts. He knew that the one hope of averting that catastrophe was to induce the brawling lawless population of Planet Town to leave Styx at once.
They would leave, if they believed. But would they believe the warning of doom that he was bringing?
Chapter 15: The Destroyer
PLANET TOWN was ablaze with lights, and its main street was jammed by an excited crowd of its motley interplanetary inhabitants. From the town, a dull, ominous roar of voices was wafted through the mist to Curt Newton and the two Futuremen as they approached.
Newton suddenly reined up his kuru. In the foggy darkness, he had suddenly descried a little group waiting out here on the northern edge of the town.
“It’s Grag and Ezra — and Joan,” he exclaimed, with a great leap of thankfulness in his heart.
Ezra Gurney and the girl, with the mighty robot towering beside them, had been peering into the misty night. They ran forward with eager exclamations as Curt Newton and Otho dismounted.
“Joan, you’re all right,” he cried anxiously, taking her into his arms. “We saw that the telepicture party had been ambushed —”
“I’m all right, thanks to Grag,” she interrupted. Her lovely face was pale in the darkness. “But Curt, all Planet Town is raging against
the Stygians because of that ambush. Three of the party were killed, and a half-dozen wounded.”
“And Jon Valdane has sent out a telaudio call to the Planet Patrol, demandin’ that they come here to restore order,” Gurney cried.
Captain Future’s eyes flashed. “I knew he’d do that. It was his game from the first, to get the System Government to move in here.”
Grag had sighted Otho, who still wore his Saturnian disguise. The giant robot wrathfully strode forward and gripped Otho’s neck.
“Shall I finish this rascal Kin Kurri, chief?” the robot called angrily to Curt Newton. “He tried to kill my pal Otho. Maybe he did!”
Otho uttered a choking yell. “Let go of my neck, you big cast-iron baboon! I’m your pal Otho.”
“Otho, it’s really you?” cried Grag joyfully. Then the robot hastily dissimulated his gladness. “You blasted rubber dummy, why didn’t you let us know you were safe?”
Joan Randall was speaking urgently to Captain Future. “Curt, we’ve been waiting for you out here on the edge of town. We’re sure that the Stygians who ambushed us were not really Stygians but were —”
“Su Thuar and his men, in costumes,” Curt Newton finished rapidly. “Yes, I know all about that.”
“But you don’t know that Jon Valdane is incitin’ the toughs of Planet Town to take revenge on the Stygians,” Gurney exclaimed. “He’s talkin’ to ‘em right now, stirrin’ them up.”
“The more disorder he creates, the more reason there’ll be for the Patrol to come here,” Captain Future declared. “And the Patrol must not come. Everyone here has got to leave, at once.”
He told them swiftly of the overshadowing doom which the Stygians would unchain if all aliens had not left Styx by planet-rise.
“We’ve got to make them go, and prevent the Patrol or anyone else from coming here,” he concluded swiftly. “Grag, I want you to hurry to the Comet and get a telaudio call through to Planet Patrol headquarters. Tell them not to come to Styx. And keep warning all ships.”
Grag nodded his understanding. “Okay, chief!”
The big robot clanked away through the misty dark, skirting the edge of Planet Town to reach the landing-field that lay more than a mile eastward.
“The rest of you come with me,” Captain Future exclaimed. “I must convince that mob of the danger.”
As he and Otho, with Gurney and Joan Randall, hurried into Planet Town, the Brain glided above them in the misty night.
Curt Newton glanced up at the dark sky as they ran. Mists hid the stars. But soon there would be a vague glow in the heavens, when Pluto rose above the horizon. It was not long until planet-rise, now.
“Curt, what is it that the Stygians are threatening to do?” Joan was asking breathlessly, as they hastened. “What can they do when they refuse to fight or take life?”
“Joan, they can do a terrible thing,” answered Newton. “They can cut off this moon from the rest of the System forever.”
There was no time for him to continue. They had entered the brightly-lighted main street of Planet Town.
AN ANGRY, seething mob jammed the street from one row of metalloy buildings to the other. The crowd was thickest in front of the pretentious metalloy structure that was the big gambling hall of Jos Vakos, the Jovian.
Jos Vakos himself was standing on the raised porch outside the entrance, bellowing something to the listening crowd. Beside the green Jovian was Jon Valdane, and also Jeff Lewis and others of his troupe.
Curt Newton fought through the crowd toward them, Otho, Joan Randall, and Ezra Gurney following him, while the Brain glided above them in the mist. “Mr. Valdane’s right,” Jos Vakos was roaring. “We ought to clean out the whole devil’s nest of Furries. They killed some of the picture people today, and next thing, they’ll be killing us.”
A roar of assent came from the crowd. Martians, Earthmen, Venusians and every other planetary race — their hard, brutal and sly faces were illuminated alike by furious mob-emotion.
Captain Future sprang up beside the green Jovian and the others. Valdane looked startled as he recognized Curt Newton and the disguised Otho.
“Chan Carson and Kin Kurd,” Valdane exclaimed. “We thought you’d been killed by the Stygians.”
Curt Newton ignored him. He turned around and faced the crowd, holding up his hand to gain their attention.
“People of Planet Town, you’ve got to leave Styx at once,” he shouted. “Unless you go before planet-rise, doom will fall on this world. There are enough ships out at the landing-field to take you all. Get into them and go.”
A bursting chorus of amazement and incredulity swelled up from the astonished throng. “What’s he talking about?”
“Carson, are you crazy?” Valdane was demanding furiously. “What’s got into you?”
Captain Future paid no attention, as he desperately repeated his warning to the incredulous throng.
“You must go,” he shouted. “The Stygians are coming here, and unless every one of you is gone, they will release catastrophe.”
A roar of laughter went up from the brutal throng, an outburst of contemptuous mirth.
“This poor nincompoop is trying to scare us with the Furries,” bellowed Jos Vakos in homeric laughter. “Why, those ignorant monkey-men don’t have a weapon to their names, and wouldn’t use one if they had it. We could wipe ‘em all out with our atom-guns in an hour.”
“Listen, you’re wrong,” cried Curt Newton desperately. “The Stygians possess the most terrible of all weapons —”
He was interrupted by a hand that yanked him around. It was Jon Valdane, his chubby pink face distorted with rage.
“Have you lost your mind, Carson?” he demanded.
“Who is he, anyway?” yelled a voice from the crowd.
“He’s just a scared telepicture actor, who was hired to play the part of Captain Future,” Valdane shouted back.
“You are wrong,” Curt Newton answered. “I am Captain Future.”
“He’s been playing the part so long he believes it himself,” exclaimed Jeff Lewis in amazement.
“No, he is really Captain Future,” Joan Randall exclaimed. “I would know, wouldn’t I? And I can prove it.”
She raised her head. “Simon!” she called.
Down from the misty darkness came flashing the weird cubical shape of the Brain. He poised beside Curt Newton, his strange lens-eyes calmly surveying the astounded onlookers.
“The dummy Brain,” gasped Jim Willard. “But it’s living!”
“It is the real Brain,” Joan Randall retorted. “All the way out from Earth, the Futuremen have been aboard the Perseus, impersonating themselves.”
“Good heavens,” gasped Lewis, overwhelmed by realization. “Captain Future, playing his own part in ‘The Ace of Space’ —”
JON VALDANE’S plump face seemed to sag and pale to a sickly gray as he stared, as if hypnotized, at Curt Newton’s face.
“Captain Future!” snarled a voice.
Blazing, bitter hatred was in that hissing cry. It came from Su Thuar. The Venusian stood at the edge of the throng below, his atom-pistol leveled at Curt Newton, his eyes burning.
“If I’d known, you’d have been dead before we left Earth,” the Venusian choked. “But there’s still time. There’s still time to pay you for what you did to my brother four years ago.”
Curt Newton had no gun. But with a movement faster than any ordinary human could have executed, Otho drew his gun and fired.
The blast grazed Su Thuar as the Venusian swerved wildly. His scorched hand dropped his weapon. Before Otho could blaze away again, he had flung himself back into the throng and was lost to view.
“Kin Kurd, what are you doing?” yelled Valdane hoarsely.
Otho grinned at him impudently. “Not Kin Kurd — Otho, the Futureman, to you.”
Valdane shrank back. “You can’t prove anything — none of you can prove anything against me.”
Curt Newton pointed to the eastern he
avens, where a faint glow of light was beginning to burgeon in the misty darkness.
“Look, Pluto is about to rise,” he shouted desperately to the seething crowd. “It’s your last chance to leave Styx.”
“To blazes with you and your warnings,” roared Jos Vakos, the Jovian. “You may be the real Captain Future but we’ve no more love for you Futuremen than we have for the Patrol. We take no orders from you.”
“You blind fools, Valdane has stirred you up against the Stygians for his own purposes,” cried Curt Newton. “Can’t you see —”
He was cut off by a loud yell that came from northward, a cry that raced along the crowded street like flame.
“The Furries are coming.”
Curt Newton looked northward and saw that a hundred Stygians, mounted on their kurus, were riding into Planet Town. He recognized the solemn faces of Qu Lur and Th’ Thaan in the lead.
“Good, now’s our chance to show ‘em what it means to ambush other-planet people,” roared Jos Vakos. “Let ‘em come on.”
The Stygians reined in their steeds, a block away. With unfathomable eyes they met the raging gaze of the motley mob that now had drawn its atom-weapons and was standing in sinister, waiting silence.
Qu Lur held up his hand, and spoke loudly in the lingua franca.
“Aliens, we give you one more chance,” he said. “Go to your ships and leave now. If you do not, we set the Destroyer free.”
Roaring laughter answered him, mirth that broke from the lips of every man in the crowd.
“Listen to the Furries. They’re still trying to scare us with their old bluff.”
Captain Future yelled hoarsely across their heads. “Qu Lur, don’t do it.”
His plea went unheard. For as the crowd rocked with laughter, Qu Lur had raised his hand in a signal.
“Let the Destroyer free,” shouted the old Stygian.
And instantly, the scores of Stygians behind him drew the tiny sealed vials of gray dust from inside their cloaks.
They hurled those vials in every direction, against the metalloy structures on either side, and out into the seething mob.
Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) Page 12