His motley followers, taking courage from the fact that none of them had fallen, again rushed forward howling.
And the Patrol band vanished. They were gone like a snapped-out picture film. Qu Lur turned to Curt Newton, registering defeat. “We placed our hope in that illusion, and it’s failed. But maybe others will succeed.”
He and the Stygians proceeded in their desperate extremity to give a magnificent demonstration of their hypnotic powers of illusion.
Ravening monsters of hideous aspect appeared to hurl themselves toward the attackers. Tidal waves of water rolled menacingly upon them. A wall of flaming fire sprang up in their faces. And it was all illusion, mass hypnotism practiced on everyone here by the Stygians’ concentration.
But Su Thuar’s rallying voice kept his men advancing. They had plucked up confidence and now were defying the fearsome-looking obstacles in their path. And now they were but a few hundred feet from the wall.
THE Venusian yelled an order and they brought their blow-guns into play. A shower of keen darts swept the parapet of the wall. Poorly aimed as many of them were, still a half-dozen found their mark and four Stygians and two of the telepicture technicians fell back wounded.
“Get down under cover,” Curt Newton yelled. “You’re not doing any good exposing yourselves. Wait till they try to climb the wall and then use your swords.” He and Otho had provided themselves with two of the tough glass swords with which the telepicture men and Ezra Gurney were armed.
But they soon learned that Su Thuar had no intention of trying to scale the wall. They heard the Venusian’s ringing command. “Bring that battering-ram ahead. Quick!”
“They’re goin’ to bust in the gate, Cap’n Future,” cried Gurney.
“Down behind it, then,” Curt Newton cried. “Get more stones to brace it!” Curt ordered. He saw a score of the motley mob running forward through the others, bearing a massive club-moss trunk that had been shorn of branches.
As Curt Newton leaped down with the others to take a station behind the gate, the battering-ram crashed into it from the outside. He looked up wildly at the sky. The bank of mist was still drifting slowly across Dzong. Not yet had the sky cleared.
“They’ll be through in a minute,” Otho yelled with wolfish excitement, his green eyes blazing. “I wish old Grag were here with us now.”
Crash! The right leaf of the massive stone gate shattered off its crude, ancient hinge and was driven in against the stones that braced it. Through the opening, Su Thuar and his brutal horde came pouring.
“The city’s ours,” yelled the Venusian. “Kill all the Futuremen and the telepicture fools — but not the women.”
It was that command and its hideous implications that exploded cold fury in Curt Newton’s brain. He sprang forward with his little group of comrades to stem the entrance of the invaders.
Blown-gun darts whistled past his face. He was seeking Su Thuar, but in the cramped, choked confusion of that staggering fight, he came face to face not with the Venusian but with Jos Vakos, the Jovian.
The Jovian’s green face was a brutal, distorted mask of ferocity as he raised his stone-studded war-club for a shattering blow.
Curt Newton ducked and stabbed upward under his opponent’s descending arm. The slim glass blade of the sword ripped into the Jovian’s heart, and he staggered and fell. “There ain’t enough of us,” Ezra Gurney was panting as he fought beside Curt in the narrow combat. “They’re pushing us back.”
As he shouted, there was a great roar of voices and a horde of figures suddenly flung themselves into the battle from behind Curt and his little handful of men. “The Stygians,” cried Ezra Gurney, in unbelieving surprise. “The Stygians are fightin’.”
Qu Lur, his eyes raging, was in the forefront of the moon-men and exhorting them in a shrill voice.
“Strike to kill,” the old Stygian was shouting. “They seek to murder and enslave us. It is better to take life than to become slaves.”
Captain Future understood. The Stygians’ age-old creed of nonviolence had failed them, as it always would fail when opposed to predatory and ruthless men. At this last, fateful hour, the moon-men had seen the fatal mistake of their peace-loving tradition.
And the Stygians, who had never fought in their lives before, were fighting now like demons. They had no weapons, but they seized stones and used them, or hurled themselves into the melee with their bare hands reaching for the throats of their attackers.
“Kill the Furries,” came the ferocious howl of the invaders.
The battling Stygians went down by dozens as they threw themselves with bare hands against the blow-guns and clubs of the attackers.
“Push them in,” yelled Su Thuar’s exultant voice through the melee. “We’re winning!”
Captain Future wielded his glass sword like a madman, fighting to get through the crazy combat to the Venusian.
BUT the irresistible weight and weapons of the attacking horde was rolling his own few men and the raging, weaponless Stygians back away from the shattered gate. The invaders were pouring into the city. They were now all around Curt Newton and his comrades, who formed a little knot of resistance vainly striving to stem the tide.
Curt Newton, stabbing furiously at the motley horde, glimpsed Jim Willard go down from a dart in his leg. Ezra Gurney was stunned by a war-club’s grazing blow, and sagged to the pavement.
“Help him, Otho,” Curt Newton yelled, himself trying to fight to Gurney’s side as he shouted.
But Otho, at this moment, was being overwhelmed by a dozen attackers who were pulling down the deadly android by sheer numbers.
Captain Future lunged forward, and his glass blade slashed into two of the ring around Otho. His sword met a swinging war-club, and shattered.
“Look out, Future!” yelled the wounded Jim Willard from behind.
Curt Newton span around with his shattered sword in his hand — just in time to glimpse the big Uranian behind him who had his war-club raised.
He flung his sword-hilt and glimpsed it crunching in the Uranian’s yellow face. But in that same instant, the heavy club completed its blow and struck Curt Newton’s head. Blackness enveloped his mind.
Curt Newton came back to his senses to find himself lying prone, the sunlight in his eyes.
Sunlight? Yes, the drifting mists were finally clearing. But too late. The city had fallen to Su Thuar’s horde, and the surviving Stygians were fleeing from the brutal, triumph-flushed invaders who pursued them through the stone streets.
Captain Future tried to leap to his feet. Then he discovered that his hands were bound. He was in the central plaza of Dzong, with Otho similarly bound beside him and Joan Randall standing under guard nearby. And Su Thuar was contemplating Captain Future with burning eyes.
“Pull them up!” snapped the Venusian criminal, and Curt Newton and Otho were roughly hauled to their feet by the guards behind them.
Su Thuar laughed softly.
“I wanted you Futuremen to be awake and conscious when I killed you,” he told Curt Newton. “I wanted you to pay to the full for what you did to my brother and to me.”
Captain Future did not answer. His hopeless eyes were fixed upon the big heliograph in this plaza, its open shutters gleaming mockingly in the pale sunlight.
He could hear the creaking drone of his radiation-generator from inside the council tower, still neutralizing the blight in this area. He had struggled so hard to build those things, only to be defeated finally by the unpredictable vagaries of shifting mists.
Su Thuar seemed to gather rage from Curt Newton’s calmness.
“Yet I ought to thank you, Future,” he snarled. “I’ve got you to thank for the fact that I’m now master of this moon. Nobody can ever take it away from me. No ship of the System can ever land here to dispute my rule.
“And before you die,” the Venusian hissed, “I want you to know something else. I want you to know what will happen to her.”
He gestured toward the pale
face of Joan Randall. As he made that gesture, Su Thuar suddenly stiffened and glared past the girl.
A man was stealing out of the council tower — a chubby, disheveled man who was frantically trying to escape without being seen.
“Valdane,” yelled Su Thuar. “So this is what happened to you. You came here to warn them.”
“No, no, I didn’t,” shrieked Jon Valdane in accents of terror. “No!”
Wildly the financier started to flee, for he had read death in the Venusian’s eyes. But Su Thuar was after him with tigerish swiftness, raising his long stone dagger in his hand.
The crude knife plunged into the stumbling Valdane’s back. The financier choked, staggered and then fell forward, with his face crushed in death against the stones of the world whose wealth he had coveted.
AND in that moment, Captain Future acted. He had felt his two guards’ grip upon him relax a little as they turned to look. His body suddenly contorted and then broke free from their grip like an uncoiling spring.
Curt Newton plunged toward the lever that controlled the big heliograph, a score of feet away. His bound hands gripped the lever. He frantically jerked it back and forth. The glass shutters of the thing closed and unclosed swiftly as he began to spell code-letters in flashes.
“C-o-m-e.”
“Curt, look out,” screamed Joan Randall.
Captain Future leaped aside, and the reddened dagger which Su Thuar was bringing down on his back, dug into his shoulder instead. The Futureman’s bound hands seized the Venusian’s dagger hand. He struggled for that instant, Su Thuar’s raging eyes glaring into his.
“Kill him, you fools,” Su Thuar was yelling to his hastening men. “He was trying to signal to his friends.”
Fighting with mad ferocity, Otho was trying to get to Newton’s side. There was a sudden thunderous roar, growing to deafening pitch as a dark bulk dropped down upon them through the pale sunlight.
“It’s the Comet!” came Joan Randall’s frantic cry. “And the Patrol!”
Su Thuar’s horde was scattering in all direction as the little ship of the Futuremen and the half-dozen grim, big Planet Patrol cruisers that followed it, landed swiftly upon the central plaza.
Atom-guns of the descending ships sent bursting shells over the fleeing horde. And out of the Comet, the huge figure of Grag came plunging, his metal fists smashing heads like eggshells as he strode in the direction of Curt Newton and Su Thuar.
Su Thuar, his face livid, suddenly relaxed his hold on the dagger and turned to flee. His sudden relaxation of pressure turned the weapon in Newton’s hands, and it drove into the Venusian’s throat.
Su Thuar tore away, choked with blood, foam on his lips, as he staggered a few steps and fell. Then he lay still beside the dead body of the financier whom he had murdered a minute before.
“Curt!” cried Joan. She was free, running to him. After she had cut the bonds from his wrists, she wound her arms around his neck.
Grag’s booming, excited voice interrupted them. “Chief, we were watching and when you said ‘Come’, we came. You’ve got the metal-blight licked here, haven’t you?”
“The blight is conquered in this small area,” Captain Future answered. “The first thing we’ve got to do is to build a big enough generator and projector here to destroy the blight all over Styx.”
The Patrol was rounding up the men of Su Thuar’s horde. With no weapons except blow-guns and clubs and knives, facing the atom-guns of the grim Patrol officers, there was no resistance.
Curt Newton, Joan Randall and the Futuremen found Ezra Gurney in the heap of bodies by the shattered gate. Gurney was stunned, but no worse. Jim Willard and Lo Quior had suffered wounds, but would recover. But old Qu Lur, chief of the Stygians, had died fighting.
Curt Newton spoke earnestly to Th’ Thaan, who now would be leader of the Stygian people.
“Th’ Thaan, you’ve had a lesson in the perils of pacifism and isolation when they’re carried too far. I want your people to forget your old traditions, and join the rest of the Solar System, yielding authority to maintain order here to the Patrol.”
“We shall do so,” the Stygian declared fervently. “All we ask is that our world shall not be overrun by aliens.”
“The System Government will take care it isn’t,” Newton assured him. “The diamond-deposits here, which might draw more unprincipled seekers, are going to become the property and trust of the Government itself, if my recommendation has any weight.”
JEFF LEWIS approached Newton. There was an embarrassed timidity in the producer’s manner that contrasted oddly with his former bluntness.
“Carson — I mean, Captain Future,” he corrected hastily, “what about our picture, ‘The Ace of Space?’ Jim says we’ll find our films unharmed, but we still haven’t made any scenes here on Styx, and can’t make them without you.”
Curt Newton’s lips twitched. “I see your difficulty. All right, I’ll make a bargain with you.”
“What is it? Just name your conditions,” Lewis said eagerly.
“I’ll help you make the last scenes here you need, as soon as you get new equipment, on condition that you and the troupe keep it secret that the Captain Future in the film is the real Captain Future.”
Jeff Lewis’ face dropped. “But think of the worlds of publicity it will mean if I’m able to advertise that the picture has Future himself in it,” he wailed.
“You’ll have publicity enough, without that,” Curt Newton answered firmly. “Is it agreed?”
The producer nodded heavily. “All right, it’s agreed. But when I think of it, I could weep. The Futuremen themselves in my picture — and nobody will ever know it.”
ON A night three months later, there occurred in a New York telepicture theater the System-wide premiere of “The Ace of Space.”
A packed audience cheered for minutes when the film ended. And when they issued from the theater they found a tremendous crowd outside, who nearly crushed Jeff Lewis, Ron King and Lura Lind.
The most important telepicture critic in the System, on the next day, published what became an epitome of the general reaction to the film.
“ ‘The Ace of Space’ is the greatest adventure picture ever made,” he wrote. “The terrifying scenes by the Fire Sea of Jupiter, the incredible undersea episode filmed in an actual Neptunian submarine city, the wonderful special effects, and especially the scenes on remote Styx, have never been presented on a telepicture screen before.
“The hero-worship of our peoples toward the Futuremen who have performed such great exploits in our behalf, will make this film the biggest attraction in entertainment history. Its appeal is heightened by the fact that it was partly made on Styx at the very time of the mysterious, sensational catastrophe that recently struck that world.
“The story is a masterpiece of swift-paced writing that still keeps closely to the facts of the Futuremen’s past exploits. The direction and technical effects are superb. The performances of Lura Lind, Ron King and Rizo Thon have never been bettered.
“There is only one flaw in the picture to which exception can be taken. That is the new actor who performs in the title role, Chan Carson.
We hate to say it, but Carson is a misfit in this role. Let’s hope that the next time Jeff Lewis makes a film like this, he gets somebody for it who can really look and act like Captain Future.”
THE END
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Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) Page 15