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

by Edmond Hamilton

  He heard a new voice as he stumbled forward, the shrill, frantic voice of the old explorer, Harris Haines.

  “No, you can’t take the Crystal!” Haines was crying. “You told me you wouldn’t touch it, and I — ah-h-h!”

  Haines’ cry ended in a scream of agony, and Curt heard the old explorer fall.

  “I got the old fool — quick, now!” Ul Quorn was yelling.

  Curt Newton lurched forward. The Phantom-folk were rushing toward the scene, with a howl of hundreds of furious voices.

  But the door of the space ship slammed, just as Curt stumbled toward it. With a deafening roar of rockets, the invisible Nova took off. He could hear the receding drone of its tubes as it zoomed into the sky.

  “Quorn’s got the Cosmic Crystal, blast him!” Curt exclaimed.

  An astounding thing suddenly happened. Slowly, mistily, everything around Captain Future was now becoming visible. He could see more clearly each moment the great stone amphitheater in which he stood, the carved, empty altar, the horde of raging, white-skinned, sightless Phantom-folk pouring toward him.

  Captain Future understood. The Cosmic Crystal had been carried away in Quorn’s ship, and the matter which its polarizing vibration had kept transparent and invisible was rapidly returning to normal visibility as its atoms came back to normal state.

  Harris Haines, an old, wrinkle-faced, white-bearded Earthman, lay on the paving at his feet. Blood poured from a stab-wound in his breast.

  Curt stooped beside the old man.

  “My — fault!” Haines was choking. “I released Quorn’s men from their cell and led them out of the city to their ship, while all the Phantom-folk were here in the temple. And I guided their ship to land here, by the radiance of the Crystal, to pick up Ul Quorn.”

  Haines’ voice was an agonized whisper.

  “I did it because Quorn said they’d take me back to my own universe. But I made him promise not to take the Crystal. You see, in my years here I’ve come to like these Phantom-folk and didn’t want to take their only protection and leave them defenseless.”

  The old explorer’s fading eyes blinked.

  “Quorn tricked me — stabbed me. It’s all my fault. But I did — want to see Earth — before I died —”

  Harris Haines, with the words, stiffened. The old explorer of strange universes had ended his rovings, at last.

  PHANTOM-FOLK, warriors and priests, were pouring around the empty altar in a raging mob. Their eyes, atrophied and sightless, could not see the now visible scene. But they had learned by groping what had happened.

  “The Cosmic Crystal gone!” they wailed. “Now our only defense is taken from us. Now we will be at the mercy of any attackers who can see!”

  Captain Future understood their despair. While their world was invisible, they had been protected. But now that the planet was visible, they would be defenseless before any invader who could see.

  “Listen!” Curt spoke swiftly to the Chief Priest. “You know now that I told the truth when I said the man Quorn planned to steal the Cosmic Crystal. But I and my friends, if you free us, may be able to get it back.”

  The Phantom-folk caught at the straw with piteous eagerness.

  “You are free now, then!” cried the Chief Priest. “You will regain the Crystal?”

  “I’ll do everything possible,” Curt promised grimly. “As much for my own sake as for yours. Set my friends free at once, to help me.”

  Guards hastened down with him into the dungeons of the temple. He found Otho and Grag and the others, now completely visible and mystified.

  “Chief, what happened?” Otho cried. “We heard an uproar and then everything started to become visible again!”

  Curt explained rapidly, as the Phantom-guards untied them and freed the Brain from the confining net. They listened, horrified.

  “Then Ul Quorn is on his way back to our universe, our own System, with the Crystal!” cried Joan.

  “Yes, and we’re following him at once in the Comet,” rasped Curt. “We’ve got to catch up to him before he has time to use that Crystal to set up an invisible crime-world in our System.”

  THE Futuremen, and Ezra and Joan and young Johnny Kirk, hastily followed Curt out of the city. They hurried across the rolling, grassy plain until they glimpsed the welcome sight of the Comet glinting in the light of the white sun.

  Then Ezra uttered a cry.

  “Look at that!” he yelped. “Somethin’s wrecked the Comet!”

  The underside of the little ship’s stern had been blasted open by an explosion of terrific violence.

  “Quorn’s men did this!” Curt gritted, his gray eyes flaming. “They made sure we couldn’t follow, by setting an atomic fuse that exploded the radite in the fuel-bin of the Comet.”

  They found that to be the case. The fuel compartment under the cyc-room was a wreck, the whole hull having been torn open by the explosion of atomic energy. Two of the cyclotrons themselves had been badly strained by the explosion, only the thickness and strength of the ship’s interior walls having prevented the complete destruction of them all.

  “That devil!” raged Ezra Gurney. “Now we’re washed up for fair.”

  Curt’s voice rang. “Not us! We can repair this damage.”

  “But it’ll take days,” despaired the old marshal. “An’ even if you do get it fixed, we won’t have any radite for fuel.”

  “Jumping meteor-demons!” exclaimed Otho. “Ezra’s right, Chief! Without radite, we can’t get back across the billions of miles to where we must go to enter our own System!”

  “We’ll worry about the radite when we get the Comet fixed!” snapped Captain Future. “Grag, you go back with Ezra to the Phantom-folk city and bring back all the high-test alloy metal you can find there. Otho, get out every atomic tool in the locker. We’ve no time to waste!”

  There began a period of grueling labor. Hours passed, stretching into days as Curt Newton and the Futuremen toiled against time to repair their ship. Laboring almost without rest, they forged new plates to repair the Comet’s hull, replaced torn-away fuel-feed lines, dissembled and rebuilt the two strained cyclotrons.

  The Phantom-folk were eager to help, bringing metal and other materials as requested. The sightless folk showed in their pathetic eagerness that they felt Curt to be their last hope of regaining the Cosmic Crystal.

  Red-eyed from lack of sleep, almost exhausted, Captain Future finally straightened from the last connection of the two rebuilt cyclotrons.

  “That finishes it,” he said hoarsely. “She’s as good as new.”

  “But the radite?” Otho pressed “Where are we going to get it? There’s none on this world — nor on any of the others around here.”

  “We’ve one chance,” Captain Future muttered. “There might be radite deposits in the crust of the dark star.”

  “Chief, are you crazy?” cried Grag. “That dark star is boiling inside with dying fires that constantly erupt. We couldn’t land there.”

  “We’ve got to land there!” Curt said emphatically. “It’s the only possible source of the radite we must have to pursue Quorn. Head for the dark sun, Grag!”

  Chapter 15: Crime Citadel

  BLACK, monstrous and heaven-filling bulked the dead sun as the Comet neared it. Long ago, the fiery gases of the aging star had cooled to liquidity. Then as the eons passed, a cindery black crust had formed over the dying star.

  Now, this old sun had gone far forward on the road of death. But within its hardened crust there still pulsed dying fires. Here and there at many places in the gloomy black valleys and ashen plains of its surface there still burned the sullen red fires of erupting lava from its molten heart.

  As Grag brought the Comet to a hovering position over the dark orb, all in the ship except Captain Future and Simon looked down with awe.

  “Ghastly-lookin’ place,” muttered old Ezra. “There’s some-thin’ about the dyin’ of a great star that sort of chills you.”

  Curt and the B
rain were intently scrutinizing their supersensitive radite compass. The others turned, and waited tensely for the verdict that would mean release or imprisonment in this alien universe.

  “There is radite in the crust of this dying sun!” Curt Newton exclaimed jubilantly. “Head northward, Grag — the needle points that way.”

  Over the cindery black plains and valleys and the ominous red witch-fires of erupting lava, Greg steered the ship. Finally, they reached a point at which the needle of the radite compass pointed straight downward.

  “Cursed if I see any radite down there!” Otho muttered. “Nothing but hardened lava and ashes and fire-geysers.”

  “The radite’s there, but it must be buried beneath the surface of the crust,” Captain Future declared.

  The needle of the radite compass pointed down at a shallow valley along which dozens of fountains of molten red lava spurted upward.

  “We’ll have to use our heavy proton guns to blast open the surface and uncover the radite,” Curt stated.

  “I don’t like it,” declared the Brain. “It might stimulate a terrific eruption.”

  Curt shrugged. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take. Help me, Otho.”

  Curt and Otho manipulated the two heavy proton guns of the Comet. Powerful blue beams of force slanted down from the hovering ship and blasted the cindery black rock of the valley, churning and destroying it.

  Cracks opened in the valley floor, beneath the impact of the beams. Red fire gushed from those cracks as the lava underneath boiled upward. But finally, the beams uncovered a blue-shining mass of rock.

  “Hold it!” Curt cried to Otho. “There’s the radite — and lots of it! Land the ship, Grag, and you and I and Otho will get the stuff.”

  The Comet came to a landing on the valley floor near the radite deposit that had been uncovered. Curt and Otho had donned space-suits, and they and Grag now passed out of the ship. The great robot carried atomic drills and leaden containers to hold the precious radioactive fuel.

  Curt led the way toward the radite. The scene around them was enough to daunt even the Futuremen. The black cindery ground that crunched under their feet, the geysers of red fire seething up from new cracks and openings all around them, made them imagine they were in a nightmare inferno.

  “Devils of Pluto, I don’t like walking on a sun — even a dead one!” Otho called through the space-suit phone. “It gives me the creeps.”

  “Look out!” Captain Future warned. “There’s an eruption ahead!”

  Flaming red lava had suddenly burst up from a fissure just in front of them. They ran hastily aside, and detoured around the dangerous spurting fire-fountain. More urgently, they passed on toward the radite.

  In a few moments the trio were laboring at the deposit of blue-shining rock. As fast as Curt and Otho dug out the radite with the atomic drills, Grag carried it in great loads over to the Comet.

  The cindery rock heaved under them, and a few hundred yards from them there burst forth another of the appalling fire-geysers. It was accompanied by a rumbling roar, like the warning voice of the dying sun.

  “This whole valley is going to erupt because we disturbed it with our proton beams!” Curt cried. “Quick, back to the ship! We have enough radite.”

  They were not a moment too soon. Even as they tumbled inside the ship, and it drove upward with a roar of rockets, the whole floor of the valley they had toiled in was cracking and breaking out in red flame.

  Curt supervised the pouring of the precious radite into the fuel bins. Then he gave Grag the course to steer. The Comet hurtled with mounting velocity through the spaces of the alien universe, toward the spot where they must be when they shifted back into their own System.

  “Quorn’s got a long start on us,” Otho pointed out pessimistically. “By this time he’s probably used his Cosmic Crystal to set up his invisible world somewhere in the System. How the devil are we going to find it?”

  Curt Newton nodded.

  “It’s going to be hard,” he admitted. “But one way or another, we have to trail him down.”

  DRIVEN by the blast of energy from the super-powered radite fuel, the Comet plunged at a speed approaching that of light through the alien spaces of the strange universe. Hour followed hour as they hurtled across the billions of miles which could never have been crossed with ordinary fuel.

  At last, Captain Future brought the ship to a halt. He and Simon carefully consulted the dual space sextant.

  “We’ve reached the spot in this universe coincident with the Solar System in our own universe,” Curt told them. “Stand by — I’m going to shift back over.”

  He operated the dimension-shifter machine. As the burst of force from it hurled every atom in the ship and themselves across the narrow but unthinkable abyss of the fifth dimension, they all experienced the familiar sensation of being hurled through shrieking blackness. Shaken, as always, by the terrific shock, they gradually came to themselves.

  The Comet was back again in their own universe! The little ship was floating in space at a point inside the orbit of Uranus. Far away shone the familiar face of the Sun. In the starry heavens blazoned the familiar constellations.

  “Am I glad to be back here again!” Joan Randall cried in relief. “I want no more alien universes, for mine.”

  “Now how’re we going to find Quorn, Chief?” demanded Otho.

  Captain Future had given that matter thought during the voyage.

  “Quorn would undoubtedly take the Cosmic Crystal to some small little-known world in the System, either a moon or asteroid,” Curt declared. “The Crystal would make such a world totally invisible, and make it an ideal and invulnerable stronghold for Quorn’s cutthroat band. We’ll have a look.”

  With the powerful electro-telescopes of the Comet, Curt and the Brain rapidly checked the thirty-one moons of the System.

  “All the moons are as visible as ever,” he reported. “That means that the Magician of Mars has chosen an asteroid.”

  “And that means we’ll never find him!” groaned Otho. “Why, there’s hundreds upon hundreds of asteroids in the zone between Mars and Jupiter. One of those swarming little worlds could be made invisible and would never be missed. Most of that jungle of worldlets hasn’t even been explored.”

  Captain Future was feeling the dismay that was reflected on all their faces. But the wizard of science refused to feel daunted.

  “There’s only one thing to do,” he said incisively. “We have in our astronomical file here, a record of the orbit, dimensions and movement of nearly every asteroid. We’ll have to compute where each asteroid should be right now, and then check with the telescopes to see if it’s there. If one of them is missing, we’ll know that’s Quorn’s invisible crime-world.”

  “Holy sun-imps!” cried Otho, appalled. “That’ll take weeks, maybe months — to compute the position of each asteroid, and check it!”

  “We can cut the time required by using the mechanical integraphs to help figure the orbits,” Curt Newton replied. He added grimly, “I know it’s going to be a terrific job. But we’ve got to find Quorn before his powers grow too great.”

  There began one of the most formidable scientific tasks which had ever been attempted. Only the Futuremen would even have dreamed of computing the exact present position of hundreds on hundreds of asteroids. For only they had the file of data on which to base any calculations. And despite the aid of mechanical computers, the job would be a gigantic one.

  Ezra Gurney took the controls of the Comet and steered it toward the asteroidal belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Joan and Johnny Kirk remained silent, watching almost in awe as the Futuremen worked.

  CURT had instituted a routine process. Otho took from the file the card upon which was the data about each asteroid, and noted down the elements of its orbit and the possible perturbing gravitational influences. Captain Future and the Brain, working together in complex mathematical cooperation, computed from that data the exact present position of that
asteroid. And Grag, with the telescope, checked to see if it was really there.

  They reached the asteroidal belt, and hovered high above that whirling wilderness of booming planetoids and meteor swarms. Hours passed. The tremendous task went on. Curt and the Brain were like two machines as they unceasingly computed from the data that Otho handed them.

  “Check,” monotonously announced Grag every few minutes, from the electro-telescope. Another asteroid had been accounted for.

  “They can’t do it,” whispered Ezra Gurney to Joan. “Even the Futuremen can’t check every asteroid in the zone!”

  The hours dragged on. Curt Newton refused to halt work to rest. Every fiber of his brain was concentrated upon the terrific task.

  “Chief, here’s one that doesn’t check!” Grag called suddenly.

  Instantly, Curt and the Brain and Otho darted to the telescope. Captain Future glanced at the position he had computed, then peered long.

  “We’ve got it!” he said hoarsely. “The little asteroid Syrinx has disappeared. That means that Quorn has taken the Cosmic Crystal there!”

  “Syrinx?” echoed Ezra Gurney. “I remember that world-let. Space pirates had a castle on it in the old days, before the Patrol cleaned them out. It’s only a twenty-mile ball o’ rock, but it’s got an atmosphere.”

  “Quorn’s made it his invisible crime citadel,” Curt declared.

  His haggard, tired eyes gleamed. “We’re going there, at once.”

  He took the pilot chair and headed the Comet across the zone toward the computed position of the invisible asteroid.

  “They’ll surely see us approaching!” Ezra warned. “The Magician of Mars will be taking-no chances, Cap’n Future!”

  “We’re going to use a stratagem to get onto that asteroid without him suspecting,” Curt informed. “Watch.”

  Curt touched a big red knob on the instrument-panel. In response, clouds of shining ions burst from the rocket-tubes of the ship. They enveloped the Comet in a glowing, concealing cloud from which a long shining tail swept backward. They made the ship utterly resemble a small, real comet.