“This camouflage will keep Quorn from suspecting we’re near,” Curt explained rapidly. “Simon, you take the controls and drive the ship close to the invisible asteroid. As you pass the asteroid, Grag and Otho and I will drop on it in our space-suits. We’ll become invisible ourselves as soon as we’re within the Crystal’s aura.”
“You mean that we others just go on past, and let you three fight it out there with Quorn?” cried Ezra rebelliously. “Not much, we won’t!”
“It’s an order!” snapped Captain Future authoritatively. “We three can settle with Quorn. He only has a half dozen or so men left.”
The shining little pseudo-comet curved through the planetoids and meteor swarms of the zone, toward the position of the invisible asteroid. The Futuremen were staking everything on the accuracy of their calculations. Meanwhile, Curt had prepared a roll of fine gauze of dull gray metal.
The camouflaged Comet passed a few score miles above the position of invisible Syrinx. Curt and Otho had their space-suits on, and were waiting in the air-lock with Grag, who needed no suit. Curt gave a signal, and the three leaped out of the camouflaged ship.
They fell straight downward, pulled by force of the invisible asteroid. Beside the peculiar roll of gray metal gauze he had prepared, Captain Future had the radite compass slung over his shoulder. In his free hand he held an impeller, and Grag and Otho had hand-rockets also.
They fell toward what seemed mere empty space. But, suddenly, Curt Newton and the two Futuremen became wholly invisible.
“We’re in the Cosmic Crystal’s range!” Curt called on the space-suit phone. “Our calculations were correct. Start braking your fall!”
With the impellers, they slowed their plunge downward A few moments later, they alighted with a little shock on an invisible rock plain. They had landed on Syrinx, its slight gravitation making the shock light.
Curt fingered the invisible radite compass, to learn which way its needle pointed. It would point toward the radite left in Ul Quorn’s ship.
“Come on,” he whispered. “This way. Keep close beside me.”
Like disembodied phantoms, the Futuremen moved across the invisible asteroid toward their final reckoning with the Magician of Mars.
Chapter 16: Solar Funeral-Pyre
THE three comrades moved over a barren surface of rock, feeling their way cautiously. Far up in the void they could see the little shining comet of their camouflaged ship receding.
Captain Future stopped every few minutes to check the radite compass by feeling its needle. The needle was now pointing very strongly ahead, attracted by the radite fuel left in Ul Quorn’s ship, the Nova.
“Go slow,” he muttered to the others. “We must be very near the old pirate castle where Quorn has made his headquarters. At least, we’re near his ship.”
“I hear someone in front of us!” Grag announced in a low voice.
Curt Newton stiffened, listening. He, too, now heard heavy steps crunching the rocky plain somewhere close ahead of them. Approaching steps!
“One of Quorn’s men!” Curt whispered. “He can’t see us any more than we can see him. Wait till he’s right to us, and then jump him.”
The heavy steps came closer. The Futuremen tensed to attack the invisible other. But the heavy footsteps halted, only a few yards away.
“Captain Future, I’ve got you and your two Futuremen covered with an atom gun!” rang a gloating voice. “I can see you, you fools!”
“That’s Lucas Brewer’s voice!” exclaimed Otho wildly. “But he can’t see us — he’s lying —”
Lucas Brewer laughed, out of the nothingness.
“You imbeciles, do you think you can match scientific powers with the Magician of Mars? I can see, and you can’t. I was on guard outside the citadel and saw you coming, and could have killed you before now, but wanted you to know who killed you before you died. It’s me, Brewer, that’s killing you, Captain Future!”
Curt Newton knew that by some hell-born magic of Quorn’s science, Brewer could see them, while they were unable to see anything. He knew Brewer was going to release a bolt of atomic energy on him.
Curt acted. He still carried the impeller hand-rocket in his hand. He touched its stud, and the blast of force from the tube sent him hurtling forward like a human projectile to the location of Brewer’s voice.
He heard Brewer yell and felt the crash of an atom gun’s discharge past his cheek. Next instant, Curt had collided with the other. The fat Earthman tried to turn his atom gun on Curt, but Captain Future swiftly knocked the gun-muzzle back.
Next moment, the blast of the gun was followed by a gurgling groan from Brewer. The fat criminal sank prone. Curt, examining him with searching fingers, discovered that his own gun-blast had torn into Brewer.
“Hell’s-imps of Jupiter!” Otho was swearing. “What happened?”
Captain Future told them. Curt’s fingers had found that Brewer wore a pair of big-lensed spectacles. He put them over his own eyes.
At once, Curt could see. By a dusky light quite unlike ordinary light, he could make out the dead body of the criminal, the rocky plain on which they stood, and Otho and Grag beside him.
Curt looked ahead. From the barren rock plain rose an ancient castle of black stone, with a looming tower. Near it was parked Quorn’s ship, the Nova. Atop the castle tower, there dimly shone a spherical object from which emanated the strange light.
“Quorn has illuminated this part of the asteroid with black light!” Curt exclaimed. “Light that’s beyond the ordinary spectrum, that can’t be seen except with such spectacles as Brewer was wearing. To everyone except those who wear such spectacles, this world is invisible.”
“Melt me down!” exclaimed Grag. “We might have known the Magician of Mars would figure out a way to avoid not being able to see, himself, on his invisible world.”
They crept forward toward the old pirate castle, Curt leading the way by virtue of his ability to see. Apparently, Lucas Brewer had been the only guard on duty outside. Curt approached a window of the castle.
HE PEERED inside. Ul Quorn sat at a table, with N’Rala beside him. The Magician of Mars was explaining something to Thikar, the Jovian, Lu Sentu, and his three other remaining criminal followers.
“It’ll be the most daring theft in the history of the System!” Quorn was saying. “And it’ll be easy, with this new weapon —”
Captain Future drew back from the window. He looked up, and saw that from the windows of the tower flickered a queer radiance.
“The Cosmic Crystal is up in the tower,” he told Grag and Otho in a rapid whisper. “I want to get to it first. Grag, you feel your way to Quorn’s ship and sabotage it so they can’t escape. Wreck its dimension-shifter mechanism and cyclotrons thoroughly.”
Grag moved off on the mission, Curt having set his steps in the right direction toward the Nova. Then Curt turned to the android.
“Otho, we’ve got to get up into the tower without Quorn’s knowing it. There’s a window twenty feet above us. Can you jump it blindly?”
“I think so,” muttered Otho. “Get me set right, and I’ll try.”
They were beneath the tower wall, on the other side of the old castle from the chamber in which Quorn’s band was conferring. Curt carefully placed Otho in the correct position. Then the android sprang upward. His rubbery form bounded up and he blindly grabbed and caught the edge of the window above. Quickly, the android unbuckled his belt. With it he hauled up Curt.
Curt found himself in the chamber of the Cosmic Crystal. The giant, diamond-shaped thing of pure photons had been mounted on a pedestal in this room. The stone walls and roof could not interfere with the penetrating cosmic rays from which the Crystal derived its energy.
“Get ready for action, Otho!” Captain Future warned. “All hell is going to break loose!”
“But I can’t see anything!” Otho protested, drawing his weapon.
“You’ll be able to see in a moment.”
Curt
unrolled the great sheet of gray metal gauze he had brought. The gauze was of a synthetic dielectric metal absolutely impervious to cosmic rays. Swiftly, Curt flung it over the Cosmic Crystal.
The Crystal was screened from the cosmic rays which provided its power, now. And the polarizing vibration from the Crystal which kept all this asteroid invisible was stopped. The black stone walls of the old pirate tower became rapidly visible around Curt and Otho. Curt ripped away the spectacles he no longer needed, drew his own proton pistol.
“I can see now, Chief!” Otho exclaimed eagerly.
“Listen!” Curt ordered. From the room below had come a loud babel.
“Everything’s visible again!” Ul Quorn was crying startledly. “Something must have happened to the Crystal. Come on!”
They heard Quorn and his band come racing up the stairs to this tower-room. Then the Magician of Mars and his criminals stopped, frozen with appalled surprise. Curt and Otho faced them with leveled proton guns.
“Captain Future!” screeched Lu Sentu.
“Get him!” raged Quorn, flashing out his atom pistol.
Proton beams and atom flashes criss-crossed in the dusky tower chamber as Curt and Otho and their enemies pulled trigger. Curt felt a blast from Quorn’s gun sear his shoulder. But his own proton beam had sent Thikar, the Jovian, and the Plutonian beside him stumbling to the floor.
With a curse, Ul Quorn darted back down the stairs. Lu Sentu and the remaining two criminals raised their hands in terror.
“Don’t kill us!” yammered the Mercurian. “We surrender!”
“Hold them, Otho!” yelled Curt. “I’m going after Quorn!”
Captain Future plunged down the black stone stairs. He emerged from the tower onto the rock surface of the asteroid.
Quorn and the girl N’Rala were running toward the Nova. Grag, his sabotage of the ship interrupted by the uproar, came charging out of it toward Ul Quorn.
The Magician of Mars had exhausted his atom pistol in the fight in the tower. But Quorn extended his hands toward Grag.
RED electrostatic finger rays flashed from Quorn’s hands and struck the great metal robot. Grag staggered back, stunned by the shock.
Captain Future was plunging forward, gun in hand. But Quorn and N’Rala had already entered the Nova. Next moment the space ship took off with a scream of tortured rocket-tubes and vanished into the sky.
“Grag, are you all right?” yelled Curt, bending over the robot.
Grag staggered to his feet.
“All right — now,” he managed to say. “Those rays from Quorn’s hands deranged my electric ‘nerves’ — stunned me.”
The robot saw the ship was gone.
“Quorn’s got away! And it’s my fault. I’d finished wrecking the dimension-shifter in the Nova, but before I could smash the cyclotrons, I heard Quorn running toward the ship.”
“It’s not your fault — it’s mine, for forgetting Quorn’s electrostatic finger rays,” Curt accused himself. “But I didn’t think he’d have prepared a new battery for them so soon, after the Phantom-folk took his former apparatus.”
Otho came bursting out of the old pirate castle. “I tied up Lu Sentu and the rest, Chief! But Quorn and N’Rala have got away?”
“Yes, but they won’t get far!” rang Curt’s voice. “They can’t shift their ship into the other universe for refuge, for Grag wrecked the dimension-shifter. And Simon will be bringing the Comet back here now that he sees this asteroid has become visible again.”
In fact, the Comet soon roared down onto Syrinx. Curt and his comrades tumbled aboard. They explained swiftly what had happened.
“Call Planet Patrol Headquarters, Ezra!” Curt cried. “Ask them to watch for Quorn’s ship and notify us which way it’s heading.”
The Patrol report came soon. “Space ship Nova sighted heading Sunward past Mars’ orbit! We gave chase, but it was too fast for us.”
The Comet roared out of the asteroid zone and flew Sunward in that general direction. Soon another Patrol cruiser reported.
“Ship Nova sighted ten million miles inside Earth’s orbit, flying four degrees Sunward!”
“Quorn’s driving to slip around the Sun and across the System!” Captain Future guessed. “He’s probably got some refuge on the other side of the System he’s heading for. We’ve got to overtake him first!”
The nine mighty cyclotrons of the Comet thundered and threatened to tear loose from their foundations as they were pushed to the limit. Pouring incalculable energy from the super-powerful radite they disintegrated, they drove the little ship in through the System like lightning.
They were inside Mercury’s orbit and the Sun was a colossal sphere of yellow fire across the “firmament, when Otho yelled and pointed.
“There he is ahead, Chief!”
A black speck ahead resolved itself into the fleeing Nova, as Curt drove the Comet closer after it. He grabbed the televisor mike, snapped on the solar filter, and shouted into it on an all-wave range.
“Ul Quorn! This is Captain Future speaking. You can’t escape us. Will you surrender?”
OUT of the televisor came the cool, mocking laugh of Quorn.
“Surrender? You must be dreaming to think I would. This was to be no quarter, remember?”
“No quarter, then!” gritted Curt. “We’re bearing down on you! Stand by the proton guns, Grag and Otho!”
“Quorn’s clear crazy!” Ezra was shouting wildly. “Look, he’s headin’ right into the Sun!”
It was the truth. The Nova, moving at nightmare velocity, was hurtling into the vast glow of the solar corona, into unimaginable heat.
That heat was almost overpowering in the Comet itself, by now. They knew it must be actually buckling the plates of the ship ahead, which was far deeper in it. Yet Quorn’s craft was plunging straight on.
Curt Newton, his mind awhirl, yelled again into the televisor.
“Ul Quorn! You’re running into death! Turn back and surrender!”
Quorn’s voice, calm and ironical to the last, came from the televisor.
“Sorry, Future — but N’Rala and I prefer this to execution by the System Government. I always did want to go out in the grand manner.”
Curt brought the Comet to a halt. Already the air was stifling. They could not have gone further into the solar corona without danger.
They watched in awed silence as the Nova sped on and on into the fiery outer atmosphere of the great solar orb. They finally saw Quorn’s ship flare into a pinpoint of burning light. Then it was gone.
“An’ that’s the end of him,” muttered Ezra Gurney incredulously. “The end of the Magician o’ Mars!”
“Even now, I can’t entirely believe it!” Otho cried. “Not unless I saw his dead body before me could I believe. But it must be so.”
“Yes, Quorn’s gone,” Captain Future said, slowly and somberly, gazing with dark, bleak face at the mighty flaming orb. “And somehow, I can’t feel entirely glad. He was evil — but he was great. So great that, for a funeral-pyre, he had to have the Sun itself!”
IT WAS much later that the Comet swept down through the soft night of Earth to land upon the tip of Government Tower in New York.
Captain Future had made a final trip into the other universe. He had taken the Cosmic Crystal back to the Phantom-folk. The sightless race had hailed him as their savior for returning their invisibility protection.
Ezra Gurney opened the door of the ship. But Johnny Kirk hung back to make a final earnest plea to Curt.
“Gee, Captain Future, have I got to go to that school before I can be a real Futureman?” he pleaded.
“I can’t have a Futureman who doesn’t know his stuff, Johnny,” Curt answered soberly. “That’s why I want you to enter the Planet Patrol Academy and get an education.”
“All right, if you say so,” Johnny reluctantly agreed. His face brightened. “But I’ll still be a Future-Futureman, won’t I? None of the other kids at that sky-cop school will be able to say t
hat!”
Joan Randall lingered as Johnny followed old Ezra out of the ship.
“Aren’t you going to report to the President?” she asked Curt.
He smiled at her. “You do it, nuisance. We’re going home.”
“You wouldn’t take a girl along?” she asked half-seriously.
Curt grinned.
“Maybe some day, if she can stand life on the Moon. Some day when there aren’t so many criminals to keep a fellow busy.”
The Comet roared upward, vaulting into the skies toward the full Moon. Joan watched it disappear. Then she smiled to herself.
Soon, she knew, an emergency would arise that would require the flashing of the North Pole beacon light, the summoning of the Futuremen. It would not be long before she saw Captain Future again!
THE END
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Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) Page 15