Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941)
Page 5
The boy took from his pocket a set of four flat rubberoid vacuum-cups, designed to be strapped to wrists and knees and often utilized by burglars for climbing sheer outside walls.
“Where’d you get these things?” Curt Newton demanded.
Johnny grinned.
“I won a kit of burglar tools, gambling by the spaceport docks with a Martian burglar. Figured I might need it some time. These folding vacuum-cup ‘climbers’ are part of that burglar-kit. They got me up the wall to the Tower top, and it was easy then to slip into the ship and hide out in that locker.”
“Blast me down!” swore Otho incredulously. “Can you figure this kid climbing up that wall like that? I’d hate to do it myself!”
“What are we going to do with him?” boomed Grag. “We don’t want to go all the way back to Earth with him.”
“No,” rasped the Brain impatiently. “We’ve no time to lose in this fight against Quorn.”
CURT NEWTON shrugged, with assumed rueful expression.
“Guess there’s nothing to do but toss him out into space, boys,” he declared.
Johnny Kirk wasn’t scared. The tough youngster gave Curt a wise, knowing grin.
“Aw, you can’t kid me, Captain Future. You wouldn’t do that. I know all about you, see? Since I was a kid down by the space-docks, I’ve been reading and hearing everything they tell about you.”
Curt laughed. “Okay, Johnny — you stay aboard. When we get to Uranus, we’ll have to turn you over to the Police for return to Earth.”
“Aw, you don’t have to do that, do you?” pleaded the youngster. “I’d make a swell Futureman. Give me one of them atom guns to use and I’ll show you I can blast ‘em down.”
“Bloodthirsty little devil, isn’t he?” commented Otho. “Come on, my embryo-Futureman, you can help me in my experiment. I need someone to hand me tools.”
Grag grunted in disgust.
“So you’re going on with your wacky scientific work, eh? I bet it’ll be good.”
“You’ll soon have your curiosity gratified, Grag,” grinned the android as he started to take his metal pieces from a cabinet.
The Comet throbbed on out through the solar spaces for hour after hour, toward the distant green spot that was Uranus. Finally Otho completed the work that had engrossed his spare time for many days.
“All done, Johnny,” he told the tough youngster. “You can put those tools back in the locker.”
“Say, what is this thing you’ve made?” Johnny Kirk demanded.
“Yes, what is this great scientific achievement you’ve been talking about?” asked Curt Newton, who had come over to them now.
The thing Otho had made was a crazy-looking little tin mannikin three feet high, with grotesque, round arms and legs and a bucket-like tin head in which were two staring artificial eyes.
“Goofy-looking, isn’t it?” Otho chuckled. “It’s got a little atomic power-plant in it, and a voice that speaks from records.”
“But what’s the idea of this wacky automaton?” Curt demanded.
“You remember that time Grag gave me a ribbing by pretending to make an android like me out of mud and old oil?”
Captain Future grinned.
“Sure, I remember. The old boy sort of put it over you, that time.”
“Well, here’s where I pay him back,” Otho declared. “Watch!”
Otho touched certain switches on the back of his goofy little tin-headed automaton. A humming of power came from within the little tin figure. It started to move, walking stiffly on its grotesque legs. It walked straight forward to the control-room where Grag sat in the pilot chair. The tin mannikin stopped beside Grag, looked up at the robot with staring artificial eyes, and then spoke in its mechanical record-voice.
“Papa!” it cried, in a loud, rusty voice.
Grag, thunderstruck with amazement, stared down at the little bucket-headed tin figure that was claiming him as its parent.
“Papa, don’t you know me?” cried the small tin figure in its rusty voice, “i’m Grag, Junior — your little sonny boy!”
Grag nearly fell out of the pilot chair with astonishment. The big robot could hardly find his voice.
“What in the name of space —”
“Papa, I’ll never leave you now that I’ve found you!” the tin mannikin was declaiming shrilly. “You may be just a mess of rusty old iron, but you’re all the family I’ve got!”
Grag looked wildly around. Then, as he saw Curt shaking with silent laughter and Otho doubled up with glee, he began to understand. He snatched up the declaiming tin mannikin and inspected it. A brief glance was enough to show Grag the record inside that was speaking.
He hurled “Grag, Junior” at Otho, with a roar of rage. Otho, helpless with mirth, just managed to duck the flying mass of tin.
“You cursed rubber imitation of humanity!” yelled Grag at the android. “I’ll get you for that joke! You just wait!”
Otho was choking with laughter. “I’ll — never forget as long as I lived how Grag looked when that thing cried Papa!” he gasped.
The Comet flew on and on. Uranus showed a small green disk ahead, and they could clearly see the four bright specks of its satellites. Young Johnny Kirk gazed dismally at the planet from beside Curt’s pilot-chair.
“YOU’RE not really going to turn me over to the sky-cops at Uranus, are you?” he begged Curt hopefully. “Aw, have a heart, Captain Future! I’d make a swell Futureman once I’ve learned some science from you.”
Curt Newton grinned.
“I believe you, Johnny. But we’ve got to drop you. We’re going into a struggle that’s too dangerous for any youngster. Besides,” he added consolingly, “before we leave you at Uranus we’re visiting its moon, Ariel. You’ll get a look at that wild little world.”
“Wild is right,” grunted Grag, over Curt’s shoulder. “That Skal Kar who built a laboratory there must have been crazy to pick that monster-ridden moon.”
“Skal Kar had his reasons, I’m certain,” Curt said thoughtfully.
Uranus soon bulked as a great, cloudy green sphere in the starry heavens. Captain Future expertly swung the Comet in around the darker, little globe of Ariel, the innermost moon. Soon they heard a whistling shriek outside the ship as it penetrated the atmosphere of the satellite.
“Skal Kar’s laboratory is around on the night side now,” Curt Newton muttered, peering down at the moon.
The nighted landscape of Ariel, illuminated by the soft green planet-glow of the great sphere overhead, was forbidding. As the Comet flew low over the green-lit jungle, they could make out strange, swarming creatures. They were nearly all of one species — shapeless white masses of flesh that flowed through the vegetation with a gliding jelly-like movement that required no limbs.
“There they are — the devilish things that give this place the name of Monster Moon,” Otho told young Johnny Kirk.
“Aw, they don’t look so tough,” declared Johnny skeptically. “They’re so slow I could put the blast on ‘em before they got near me.”
“You think so, do you?” Otho retorted. “You’d find out different. Those gas-beasts, as they’re called, have a very effective weapon. It’s a stupefying gas they generate inside their bodies and jet out for a hundred feet or more to overcome their prey.”
Captain Future uttered a relieved exclamation.
“Ah, there’s what we’re looking for — Skal Kar’s stockade.”
Ahead yawned a thousand-foot clearing that had been hacked from the jungle. It was surrounded by a wire stockade, to which were connected cables from a squat atomic electric-generator. The generator kept the wire stockade charged, and the gliding white gas-beasts that swarmed outside dared not approach it.
At the center of the clearing loomed the mysterious laboratory of the murdered scientist. It was a black cement tower, windowless, cylindrical in shape. Curt brought the Comet down to an expert landing inside the stockade. He cut the eyes, then rose to his feet.
Otho had the airlock door open. Johnny Kirk started out with them, but Captain Future held him back.
“Not you, Johnny. You stay here — we may meet trouble in there. If you want to help, remain here and watch the Comet.”
“Okay, Chief,” replied Johnny a little reluctantly. “If anybody comes fooling around our ship, I’ll let ‘em have it.”
Otho chuckled as he and Grag and the Brain started with Captain Future across the clearing toward the looming black tower.
“Our ship, eh?” laughed the android. “He’s a Futureman already, to hear him talk.”
Curt grinned. “I like that youngster, in spite of his tough talk. There’s good stuff in him.”
They approached the black tower. The only opening in it was a square chromium door. It was locked, but Captain Future fished an “all-wave” master vibration-key from his belt-kit that soon opened it. They entered a Stygian darkness, their hands ready upon their weapons. Groping about, Curt soon found the switch of the tower’s krypton-lights.
The blue radiance disclosed a bewildering interior. The whole lower two-thirds of the tower was a single enormous room. It had been the laboratory of Skal Kar. An array of scientific instruments, generators and reference books crowded the walls of the circular chamber.
BUT the central part of the big room was empty, except for a curious low framework of very heavy metal stanchions. It was only a few feet high, but was more than eighty feet long.
Curt Newton’s eyes fastened on it instantly.
“See that framework, Simon?” he muttered. “Our guess was right.”
“What the devil was your guess?” Otho demanded puzzledly. “What was this Skal Kar doing here?”
“Building a small space ship,” Captain Future retorted. “That low framework was the cradle upon which his little ship rested in building.”
“You’re joking!” Otho protested incredulously. “Who in the Sun’s name would be crazy enough to build a space ship inside this cement tower? How would he ever get it out? I just can’t understand it.”
“How did the ship that rescued Ul Quorn get in and out of Cerberus prison?” Captain Future countered meaningly. “It was this same little ship, built here by Skal Kar and stolen by N’Rala. A ship capable of shifting across the fifth-dimensional gulf into the co-existing universe!”
“Jumping jungle-cats of Jupiter!” gasped Otho. “Then that is the secret of Ul Quorn’s power to vanish and reappear at will?”
“I still don’t understand how it’s possible, Chief,” said Crag.
“It’s simple enough, Grag,” the red-haired planeteer told him. “That other universe of space and stars is co-existent with our own universe of space and stars, but doesn’t impinge on ours because they’re separated by the fifth-dimensional abyss. But Skal Kar’s ship could cross that abyss into the other universe. N’Rala, after she killed Skal Kar, simply shifted the little ship into the other universe, traveled a short distance in the space of that other universe, and then shifted back and reappeared at a different location which was in our own universe.”
“Aye, lad, there’s no doubt in my mind now that that’s it,” rasped the hovering Brain. “The Martian girl must have cajoled Skal Kar into showing her how his apparatus worked before she killed him.”
“But how can we catch Ul Quorn when he has this power to flee into the other universe?” cried Otho anxiously.
“We can’t follow him into the other universe — unless we have a ship with the same power,” Captain Future admitted.
HE STARTED a close search of the deserted laboratory. The atomic tools in it were of the highly ingenious type used for space-ship manufacture. With them one man could easily construct a small ship.
Curt peered into two big, empty lead bins. He fingered a trace of shining blue powder that still remained in them.
“Radite,” he said shortly. “The most powerful cyclotron-fuel known. He’d need such super-power to actuate his dimension-shifting ship.”
“Aye, and that’s probably why he had his laboratory here on Uranus’ moon,” said the Brain keenly. “Radite is only found on Uranus.”
Curt searched Skal Kar’s papers, hunting for the plans and diagrams of the murdered scientist’s dimension-shifting craft. But the papers had been ransacked, and all plans were missing.
“Here’s Skal Kar’s diary!” Grag boomed suddenly. “I found it among the books over there.”
CAPTAIN FUTURE eagerly inspected the diary. He was disappointed that it contained no scientific notes or plans about Skal Kar’s ship. But he found one entry revealing, and read it aloud.
Began actual work on the ship today. If this small model craft succeeds in entering the co-existent universe, I’ll be able to build a larger ship of greater cruising radius. Then at last I’ll be able to seek in that other universe for the great treasure that Harris Haines saw there. And I’ll succeed in getting that treasure, where Haines failed!
Curt looked up, his eyes gleaming. “So when Harris Haines went back into the other universe, it was to get some great treasure he’d seen there?” he muttered. “And he never came back. But Skal Kar knew about it from Haines’ papers, and was planning to go after it himself.”
“But Quorn had Skal Kar killed, and now has his and Harris Haines’ secret papers!” Otho burst out. “And I’ll bet a planet that —”
“That Ul Quorn’s planning to go after that mysterious treasure in the other universe himself!” Captain Future finished. “Of course! He —”
Grag suddenly interrupted. His sensitive microphone-ears had detected a distant sound.
“I hear a ship landing outside!” he cried.
Like a flying shadow, Captain Future darted to the door with the others close behind him.
He flung open the door, then uttered a cry.
“Quorn’s ship!”
A small, sleek-lined space ship had landed softly close beside the Comet in the green-lit clearing.
And a giant Jovian, a Martian and a fat Earthman were rushing toward the unguarded door of the ship of the Futuremen.
“They’re going to steal the Comet!” yelled Captain Future.
Chapter 6: Radite Trail
CURT plunged forward with a yell, his proton pistol flashing in his hand. But he knew, even as he and the Futuremen started, that they were too late to intercept the three men racing for the Comet.
A wiry little figure suddenly tumbled out of the ship, confronting the three criminals with a leveled proton gun. It was tough young Johnny Kirk. He fired the weapon, and its thin blue ray dropped the Martian in his tracks.
“Good work, kid!” yelled Otho exultantly. “We’re coming!” The “Futuremen couldn’t shoot, for Johnny was between them and the criminals.
The remaining two criminals, the giant Jovian and fat Earthman, heard the yell and they turned and saw the Futuremen rushing toward them. Hastily the two criminals turned and plunged back to their own ship. Young Johnny Kirk ran valorously after them, brandishing his weapon.
“Stay back, Johnny!” Curt cried hastily. “Don’t —”
His warning came too late. The audacious youngster had pursued the two outlaws right to the door of their craft. They turned on him suddenly, and the giant Jovian knocked his weapon aside before he could fire.
Neither Captain Future nor the Futuremen dared pull trigger for fear of hitting the youngster. As they lunged forward, they saw the great Jovian fell Johnny with a blow that sent the Earth lad reeling into the open door of the criminals’ ship. The door of that little ship slammed shut, and with a screaming roar of rocket-tubes it zoomed up from the clearing into the planet-light.
“After them!” Otho yelled furiously. “They’ve got the kid, blast them!”
“If he hadn’t been so crazy daring, it wouldn’t have happened!” Grag boomed. “When he followed them back to their ship
, they grabbed him for a hostage. They know we can’t attack them now.”
“We’re going after them nevertheless!” Captain Future cried.
He and the Futuremen were piling into the Comet by this time. Curt leaped into the pilot-chair, flicked the cyc-switch. He jammed the cyc-pedal to the floor and pulled the space-stick back. With a bursting roar of rocket-tubes, the ship climbed skyward.
Up into the green glow of great Uranus they roared, after the fleeing ship of the criminals. They were high above the moon Ariel by now, and the Comet was swiftly overtaking the fleeing craft ahead. But at this moment an amazing phenomenon occurred.
The fugitive ship of the criminals suddenly vanished from sight ahead. One moment it was clearly in view — the next moment, it was gone as though it had never existed.
“Hell-hounds of Venus!” raved Otho furiously. “They’ve given us a clean slip!”
It was the truth. Though Captain Future kept the Comet circling space for minutes, there was no sign anywhere of their quarry.
“Quorn’s vanishing ship!” Curt gritted, tingling with anger. “It’s gone, and we can’t follow it. All they had to do was to shift it into the co-existing universe, and then laugh at our pursuit.”
“There’s no doubt now that that is the secret of Quorn’s ship — the power to enter the other universe,” Simon rasped thoughtfully.
“Not a doubt in the world,” Curt agreed bitterly. “They’ll travel safely through the space of that other universe for a distance, and then shift back into our own universe — millions of miles from here.”
“Aren’t we going to do anything about it?” sputtered Otho.
“Calm down, Otho,” Curt advised, repressing his own anger. “We won’t accomplish anything by dashing around space like a runaway meteor.”
“But they’ve got young Johnny a prisoner!” Otho exclaimed. “I liked that youngster.”
“So did I,” Curt Newton said. “They’ll pay for it if they harm the boy. But that’s got to come later. Our task now is to find Ul Quorn. He and his band must have a secret base somewhere.”