Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941)

by Edmond Hamilton

  IT WAS Xexel, the old Saturnian, who was approaching the end of the cavern in which Curt and Grag and Johnny crouched in hiding.

  “That old rascal will find us here, Chief!” Grag cautioned.

  “I want him to — I’ve a swell idea,” Captain Future whispered.

  A daring but feasible expedient had entered Curt’s mind as he saw the old Saturnian approaching.

  Xexel, the Saturnian criminal, was growling to himself as he came on, turning his light into every shadow. Curt motioned Grag and Johnny to crouch lower. Captain Future himself tensed like a hunting cat, and crept around the big boulder to approach Xexel from the rear.

  A swift, silent leap sent Curt plunging onto the old Saturnian’s back. As he bore Xexel to the ground, his thumbs were pressing a vital nerve in the old man’s neck. Xexel went unconscious before he could cry out. Curt hastily dragged the limp form into the shadows.

  “I don’t get your move!” Grag exclaimed bewilderedly. “What are you going to do with Xexel?”

  For answer, Curt stripped off the drab zipper-suit worn by the unconscious old criminal. A moment later Captain Future was fishing out of the secret pockets of his broad belt, a small, compact make-up kit.

  “I’m going into Quorn’s camp, disguised as Xexel!” Captain Future declared in low tones. “It’ll give me a chance to sabotage Quorn’s new ship before he can take off into the co-existing universe.”

  “Chief, it’s risky!” Grag protested anxiously. “Your disguises can fool most people — but that Magician of Mars has X-Ray eyes!”

  “I’ll get past,” Curt affirmed confidently. “Hold up the old man so I can see his face.”

  In the dim light, working rapidly in stealth, Captain Future performed a miracle of make-up upon himself. He had learned the art long ago from Otho, the greatest master of disguise in the nine worlds.

  Blue dye from a tiny tube smoothly smeared his face and hands to the dull blue Saturnian complexion. A drop of eye-stain changed his gray eyes to black. A fine powder rubbed into his hair darkened it magically. Waxite pads inside his cheeks changed the shape of his features, and a cunning astringent produced a fine network of wrinkles on his face.

  “How does it look?” asked Captain Future, in the shrill, slightly quavering voice in which he had heard the old Saturnian speak.

  “You’re a dead ringer for old Xexel!” gasped Johnny Kirk. “Gee, Captain Future — I don’t know which of you is which.”

  Curt took off his “nine-planet” emblem ring and thrust it into his belt-pocket. Then he donned the old Saturnian’s zipper-suit over his belt and proton pistol, and picked up Xexel’s searchlight.

  “You and Johnny wait here, Grag,” he ordered the robot. “If I can get into that new ship without being challenged, I’ll make sure it doesn’t take off for a while! But if I do get into trouble, you stay out of it and wait for Simon and Otho to come.”

  Curt slipped from behind the boulder’s shadow and began moving about with the stooped stride of the old Saturnian he was impersonating. He flashed his lamp here and there as though searching.

  After some minutes of this, Captain Future limped back toward the lights and metal shacks of Quorn’s work-base. His heart was thudding with anticipation as he approached. If this disguise passed muster with the keen-eyed Magician of Mars, he could effectually checkmate Quorn.

  Curt found Ul Quorn standing by his new ship, the Nova, directing the half dozen men who were carrying lead boxes of radite into the ship.

  “Hurry it up!” Quorn was ordering imperiously.

  CURT instantly recognized the men. The hard-faced Earthman was Gray Garson, who had been behind the space ship hijacking ring on Mercury. The fatter, puffy-faced Earthman was Lucas Brewer, who had once nearly managed to kill him in the course of a gun-running plot on Jupiter. There were Lu Sentu, the cunning-faced, wizened Mercurian thief, and Athor Az, the drowsy-eyed Venusian murderer. The Martian and Plutonian were as familiar.

  “Nice crew that Ul Quorn has picked to help him hunt his treasure,” Curt thought grimly. “The most dangerous outlaws of the system!”

  Quorn turned toward him. Curt tensed as the fathomless black eyes of the Magician of Mars studied him.

  “Well, did you find the boy, Xexel?” snapped Quorn.

  “No, Chief, I couldn’t spot him,” answered Curt in quavering tones.

  “Then he’ll simply wander in the caves till he starves,” Ul Quorn declared. “We can’t waste more time hunting him. Help load that radite aboard. I want to get out of here before that devil Future comes.”

  Curt Newton pretended incredulity.

  “Why, Chief, Captain Future couldn’t follow us here!” he argued.

  “You’re an old fool, Xexel!” lashed Ul Quorn. “I know Future well enough to know that he’ll trail us here somehow. Get at the loading!”

  Curt limped away, toward the heap of leaden boxes which contained the radite Quorn and his men had quarried. Curt picked up one of the boxes and, pretending to hobble under its weight, moved with it toward the door of the Nova.

  As he entered the ship with the other toiling men, Curt’s eyes flashed around the interior. He saw in the fore-cabin of the craft a bulky machine whose main feature was a copper dome supported by three quartz rods above a complex of vacuum-tubes, condensers and wiring.

  Captain Future recognized the machine as the heart of Quorn’s ship — the dimension-shifting apparatus that would hurl the craft across the fifth-dimension gulf into the co-existing universe.

  “If I can get my hands on that thing a moment!” he thought.

  But he had no chance at present. The criminals were streaming in and out of the Nova, loading the radite. Curt Newton had to hobble back to the cyclotron room and dump the box of shining blue radite into the fuel bin.

  As he left he saw N’Rala come out of one of the metal shacks and join Ul Quorn. A cold chill of apprehension touched Curt as the slumbrous eyes of the lithe, beautiful Martian girl rested casually upon him.

  “That hell-cat penetrated my disguise once!” he thought, remembering how N’Rala had exposed him during the Space-Stones case. “If she recognizes me now —”

  But N’Rala only glanced indifferently at the limping old Saturnian. Reassured, he carried another box into the Nova. Again, Captain Future found it impossible to reach the vital machine in the fore-cabin. He would be noticed instantly.

  Curt began to feel a little desperate. He couldn’t get at the dimension-shifter. And he knew that it would be madness to try to overpower these dozen criminals, even with Grag’s help.

  “All the radite’s aboard, Chief!” announced Gray Garson as Curt started to emerge from the ship a second time.

  “Then we start at once!” Ul Quorn ordered. “Get aboard, all of you. Garson, you’ll take the controls. I’ll handle the dimension-shifter.”

  The criminals crowded into the ship. Captain Future was among them, still maintaining his impersonation of the old Saturnian.

  Curt’s brain was racing. What could he do? Was his best chance to keep up his imposture for the present, to go along with Ul Quorn in the guise of Xexel and take the first opportunity to seize the ship? He swiftly decided that that daring plan was the only one now practicable.

  The air-lock doors of the Nova were slammed. Its super-massive cyclotrons started droning with terrific power as the radite fuel fed into them. Then, under Gray Garson’s control, the ship rose from the cavern floor.

  “Stand by, everybody — I’m shifting over!” called Ul Quorn. And the Magician of Mars flung the switches of the dimension-shifter machine.

  Curt felt a rending shock tear through every atom of his body. He seemed thrust into a roaring darkness. Slowly, he emerged from it. He realized that he and Quorn’s treasure-seeking band had plunged into the co-existing universe.

  Chapter 10: Treasure Star

  CAPTAIN FUTURE perceived that the view outside the windows of the space ship had magically changed. The ship no longer poised
inside the dim cavern deep in Uranus. Instead, it was now hovering in empty space.

  It was the space of the other universe! The universe that co-existed with our own universe in the four dimensions of length, breadth, thickness and time, but that was separated from it along the fifth dimension. The Sun and nine worlds of the Solar System had disappeared. Strange constellations dotted the firmament.

  “Now, which way, Chief?” Gray Carson called back to Ul Quorn from the controls.

  “Yes, which way to the treasure?” asked Lucas Brewer, avidly. Cupidity was marked on the faces of all the criminals.

  Quorn consulted certain yellowed papers, and then pointed through the fore window at a blazing white star of this alien universe.

  “According to Harris Haines’ old notes,” said the Magician of Mars, “the treasure is on a world of that double star.”

  “Double star?” echoed Garson puzzledly. “That’s not a double — it’s a single white star.”

  “No, it’s really a double,” Quorn corrected. “A binary star, one of whose component suns is dead and dark and so cannot be seen.”

  Gray Garson cut in the rocket-tubes. Powered by the tremendous stream of energy that the super-powered radite generated, the Nova roared at mounting speed toward the distant white sun.

  Curt Newton, in the quavering voice of the old Saturnian he was impersonating, asked Quorn a question.

  “There won’t be any danger lifting the treasure, will there?”

  “There’ll be plenty of danger,” snapped Ul Quorn. “Harris Haines barely escaped with his life the first time he tried to seize it, and must have perished when he came back into this universe in his second attempt. But I’ve got some defenses that Haines didn’t have.”

  “Can’t you tell us now what this treasure is?” asked big Thikar, the Jovian. “We’re going to a lot of work just on your word.”

  “My word is what rules this organization, and none of you had better question it!” flared the Magician of Mars.

  The criminals recoiled, and were silent. It was evident to Captain Future that this hard-bitten crew had a healthy fear of their leader, and that Quorn did not trouble to hide his biting contempt of them.

  As the Nova throbbed at high speed toward the brilliant white star in the distance, Curt racked his brain for an expedient to give him command of this perilous situation.

  An idea suddenly came to Captain Future. If he could unexpectedly switch back the dimension-shifting apparatus and suddenly hurl the Nova back into his own universe, it would temporarily stun everyone aboard. He himself, expecting the shock, might be able to disarm the others before they recovered. But could he figure out the operation of the dimension-shifter?

  “A slim chance — but about the only one I can see,” Curt thought.

  But Curt saw that he could not put the hazardous plan into execution at once.

  Ul Quorn was standing by the dimension-shifter, going over the ancient, yellowed notes of Harris Haines. Now N’Rala joined Quorn.

  “Have to wait,” Curt Newton muttered disappointedly to himself.

  Hours ticked by as the ship roared on. Curt began to feel baffled. Ul Quorn had remained near the dimension-shifter all this time, engaged in intricate calculations while the girl watched silently. And now they were drawing quite near to their goal, since the super-powered ship had been flying at a speed that matched that of the Comet itself.

  CURT NEWTON stared ahead at the treasure-star. From this close, the star was clearly a binary. One of its suns was the great, hot white orb. The other was an equally large sun, but one that was dark and dead. No light came from its cindery, black sphere except a red glow of burning lava at a few points, which hinted of dying fires beneath. Around these two suns in a very elongated orbit moved three planets. The nearest of these planets was on the dark-star side of the double sun.

  Gray Garson called from the control-room.

  “Which of those three worlds shall I steer for, Quorn?”

  “I’ll give you the course,” Ul Quorn answered. He picked up his notes and calculations and went forward with N’Rala to the control room.

  Captain Future saw his opportunity. The criminals were pressed against the windows, staring eagerly at the spectacle ahead. No one noticed Curt as he hastened to the big dimension-shifter machine.

  Hastily, Curt examined the apparatus, peering beneath the copper dome at the complexity of instruments in its interior, and at the switches. Captain Future was trying to figure the exact combination of switches he must throw to hurl the whole ship back into his own universe. If he could fathom the control system of this apparatus —

  “What are you doing here, Xexel?” demanded a suspicious voice.

  Curt turned swiftly. Ul Quorn had come back from the control room and was staring at him with suspicion in his deep black eyes.

  “I was just looking over this machine, Chief,” Curt answered in the shrill quaver of the old Saturnian. “I was trying to figure out how it works, but I guess it’s beyond an unscientific old pirate like me.”

  “Why, you know how the thing works,” Ul Quorn exclaimed. “I explained the principle to all of you when I had you help me install it.”

  “Oh, sure, I guess I just forgot,” Curt said hastily, cursing himself for making such a slip.

  He limped casually over to the window and peered with the others at the double star close ahead. Inwardly, he felt dashed. He’d not had time to do anything with the dimension-shifter, and he couldn’t go near the thing again while the Magician of Mars was beside it.

  A bright yellow light suddenly played around Curt Newton’s head. He turned, surprised. Ul Quorn was holding a tubular lamp whose yellow beam was turned on Curt’s face.

  “Why, what —” Curt started to ask bewilderedly in shrill tones.

  Ul Quorn handed the lamp to N’Rala, its yellow beam continuing to bathe Curt’s head. A triumphant flare lit the eyes of the mixed breed.

  “So we finally meet again, Captain Future,” he said softly.

  “Are you crazy, Chief?” blurted Thikar amazedly. “That’s old Xexel.”

  “Look at his face,” snapped Quorn. “The fluoric beam cuts through the inorganic blue stain he’s put on it. You can see for yourself.”

  Curt realized that his imposture was a thing of the past. Under the fluoric yellow beam, his own tanned face showed through the blue stain. Instantly, Curt snatched for the proton pistol inside his jacket.

  Captain Future’s draw was legendary in its phenomenal swiftness. But this time, Ul Quorn was swifter.

  The Magician of Mars drew no weapon. Instead, he simply extended his hands toward Curt. From his outstretched fingers shot red rays of crackling energy. They struck Captain Future, and he felt a paralyzing electric shock that froze him in the very act of drawing his weapon.

  “Get his gun, Thikar,” snapped Quorn. “And then cover him — he’ll recover in about ten minutes.”

  The brutal Jovian snatched the proton pistol from Curt’s hand. And Curt could not resist. His whole body was paralyzed by that shock. Ul Quorn stood enjoying his triumph, a striking figure in his striped Martian turban and yellow-sleeved purple robe.

  “Your famous draw is slow compared to my electrostatic finger rays, Captain Future,” he mocked. “They’re my newest weapon. The charge of energy comes from a compact electrostatic battery inside my robe. When I extend my hands full length, a contact is made which allows the electric charge to flash along wires in my sleeves, and radiate from tiny wires that are attached on the under side of my fingers. You see, a weapon like this is not only swift — it enormously impresses people by its seeming magic.”

  Curt Newton made no answer. He could not speak, paralyzed as his muscles were by the stunning electric shock. But his gray eyes flamed.

  N’RALA and Thikar and Lucas Brewer and the other criminals had stared in amazement until now. But now N’Rala stepped forward. The dark eyes of the beautiful Martian girl were flaring as she faced Curt Newton.


  “Captain Future, at last!” she breathed. “Do you know that for hundreds of nights in Mars Prison I only dreamed of a chance to kill you? And now that chance has come!”

  “Let me kill the devil!” cried fat Lucas Brewer. “For four years, I sweated in Cerberus prison where he sent me!”

  “Let’s not kill him too quickly,” growled Thikar balefully. “I know a few Jovian tortures to try on him, first.”

  They were like wolves crying for Captain Future’s blood as they faced his stiffly paralyzed figure in the flying space ship. To them, the chance of at last destroying the great foe of crime was a dream come true.

  “I am sorry to disappoint you,” Ul Quorn told his followers, “but we’re not going to kill Captain Future just yet.”

  “Not kill him?” hissed N’Rala. “What do you mean?”

  The Magician of Mars smiled. “He can be useful to us, when we’ve returned to our own System with the treasure. Instead of killing him, I’ll implant one of my brain-controls in his skull. It will make him a mindless thing completely subservient to my commands. Think of the advantage of having Captain Future himself for our tool!”

  N’Rala’s silvery, merciless laughter rang.

  “That’s even better than killing him!”

  “Of course, we’ll do away with him later on when his usefulness is ended,” Ul Quorn added negligently. He smiled tigerishly at Curt. “You remember, it was to be no quarter between us, Captain Future.”

  Curt still did not move or answer, standing stiffly frozen. But he could now feel a tingle through his limbs as life began to return to his paralyzed muscles. Quorn had said it would be ten minutes before he recovered. But Captain Future’s superb physique was recovering more rapidly than normal.

  Yet Curt pretended still to be paralyzed, waiting for full strength to return. A plan had been born in his racing mind, as he felt the latch of the air-lock inner door pressing into his back.