“There’s danger here, anyway,” retorted Otho ruefully. “Those cursed machine guards are still patrolling.”
The brilliantly lighted city, which the three comrades were approaching, was one of the strangest and most mysterious relics in the whole System.
Long ages ago, a human race with a highly advanced civilization and great scientific powers had flourished in this part of Mars. They were known even to have achieved space travel and to have explored other worlds. But with their passing, this achievement had been lost.
That ancient Martian people had had wonderful mechanical aptitude. They delighted in constructing ever more complex labor-saving machines to spare them the necessity of any drudgery. They had called themselves the Machine-masters because all labor in their metropolis was eventually performed by imperishable, self-powered machines that worked in fixed, unalterable routines.
But the Machine-masters, with no toil or struggle to stimulate their energies, soon fell into decadence. There was no need to worry about food. It was all raised and brought to them by machines. Their clothing was made by other machines. They had not even any enemies to fear. Around their city, mindless machine guards patrolled which would instantly slay any intruder.
So the Machine-masters, sinking further into decadence, had finally passed away. But their wondrous Machine City remained. In it, the imperishable machines continued the unalterable routine of labor and guarding that their masters had started. For age upon age, the machines of this place had been working on in the same old way. Everyone in the System had heard of the Machine City. But few had ever dared even to approach it, so formidable were the great mechanical guards that still protected the place.
“See, there’s the patrol making the rounds the same as ever,” Otho commented. “Those monsters could make me grow hair!”
Captain Future nodded, raising the box he carried.
“It’s going to be risky, slipping past them. This contrivance may help us.”
They were within a few hundred yards of the Machine City. Seen thus close, the metropolis was a vast city that covered square miles of the desert, its brilliant towers looming up for hundreds of feet. Every building flamed with white light that was automatically maintained by machine engineers.
INSIDE the illuminated city was ceaseless activity. Moving sidewalks whirred smoothly through the lighted streets. Elevators in the buildings ascended and descended. Big metal trucks lumbered through the streets, depositing their loads automatically at their destinations. Other vanlike vehicles scooped up only the rubbish of time and carried it away.
Around the outer edge of the city there ceaselessly rolled a patrol of four-wheeled, carlike vehicles. Upon each was mounted a device like a small searchlight. The cars moved purringly, a hundred feet behind each other. These were the machine guards who protected the lost city of a dead race as they had been doing for countless ages.
The Machine City of Mars, blazing brilliant in the lonely desert beneath the hurtling moons, was tenanted only by the mindless mechanical devices who labored still for their stead masters.
“There’s a moral in this place for the rest of the System,” muttered the Brain. “Any people who rely too much on mechanical devices cannot but perish.”
“Well, I wish the people who built this joint had turned off their machines before they perished,” Otho muttered. Then he exclaimed: “Look at that sand-owl!”
Captain Future saw what Otho pointed at. A small Martian sand-owl was winging down to investigate the lighted city. The batlike creature alighted on a street just inside the city.
Instantly, with superhuman swiftness, one of the patrolling guard cars dashed toward the owl. The creature rose startledly on flapping wings. But the guard car was too quick. From its searchlight appliance, a pale ray smote accurately and blasted the winged creature. Then the guard car rolled back to rejoin the patrol around the city.
“Ice fiends of Pluto!” swore Otho. Did you see that? Those mechanical guard cars must be intelligent.”
“No, they’re just machines,” Curt said. “The old Machine-masters were cold-blooded. They built into their guards some kind of delicate thermo-couple instrument that was sensitive to warm-blooded life. It automatically makes them detect and kill intruders.”
Curt Newton was turning a switch in the side of the box as he spoke.
“This little generator will emit a heat shield that will prevent the guard cars from sensing us. But we’ll have to stay close together. Come on.”
With Otho, who still carried the Brain, directly beside him, Captain Future strode forward. As they approached the patrolling guard cars, Curt hoped fervently that his theory was right.
They skipped between two of the rolling cars. The mechanical guards made no movement toward them!
“Looks like you figured it right, Chief,” the android declared with a sigh of relief.
They entered the lighted streets. A huge truck was rushing toward them. They dodged hastily, but the truck automatically detoured around them. It was loaded with bolts of newly woven cloth.
Theaters were in full swing, the three-dimensional illusion shows constantly being made and presented mechanically. They heard recorded music of the old Martian type, weird, rippling arpeggios. But all the seats were empty.
SELF-STEERING vehicles rolled up to the doors of warehouses. They unloaded containers of synthetic foods, and took away similar containers whose contents had been untouched. Other mechanical workers rolled about, servicing the machines, replenishing their atomic power charges, oiling them.
Curt Newton and his comrades inspected the sculptured reliefs and inscriptions on the walls of several mansions and towers they passed. Presently a great palace of crescent cross section loomed directly ahead of them.
As they entered its semi-circular court, Captain Future uttered an eager cry of discovery. On the palace wall, facing them, was a mosaic picture of jewels — depicting a leaping, shining fountain!
“That must represent the Fountain of Life,” Curt exclaimed. “The inscriptions under it should give us the clue we want.”
They hastened into the semi-circular court. Odd metal statues stood about the court. They recognized the life-size figures of men. Most of them were Martians but a few were natives of other planets.
Curt, Otho and the Brain were just a few yards inside the court when an amazing thing happened.
A round quartz disk set in the stave wall ahead suddenly blazed with saffron radiance. It deluged the whale court with a throbbing, yellowish force.
Curt felt his body freeze! He couldn’t take a step forward. Directly beside him Otho was similarly frozen, in the startled act of drawing his proton pistol.
Curt could still breathe, though. His reflex motor-nerves were unharmed. Though he could not articulate, he managed a humming speech.
“That — dish in — wall,” he muttered sibilantly, as he stood frozen. “Some device — to guard — clue to Fountain.”
“Paralyzing force?” hissed motionless Otho, unturning.
“Worse — than that. Force that — will transmute — elements of our bodies — into metal elements. That — what happened — to other men — who entered here. These statues — once men!”
The Brain, though unaffected in his insulated case by the force, could move only his eyes. Curt and Otho couldn’t wave at all. They were doomed to stand there until they were slowly turned to metal statues...
Chapter 5: Grag Plays Dumb
WHEN GRAG the robot went outside the mansion in Venusopolis, to watch for the coming of the Lifewater vendors, he took Eek with him. Grag seldom left his pet behind him unless it was absolutely necessary.
The big robot took up his station in the shadows outside the mansion. He stood still as a statue, watching and listening.
“Be quiet, Eek,” he whispered, as the moon-pup stirred uneasily on his shoulder. “We must not make any sound.”
Two hours passed. Abruptly, Grag’s sensitive amplifier detect
ed the sound of rocket-tubes. He glimpsed a small, swift space cruiser spiraling out of the Venusian night, into the mansion grounds.
It landed near the house. A Martian and a spectacled Mercurian came from it. They paused outside the door to state their errand iota the televis-announcer, and then entered as Captain Future admitted them.
While the two syndicate criminals entered the mansion, Grag was already stealing toward the parked space-cruiser. He was remembering Captain Future’s order to prevent the escape of others who might leave come with them. The fact that this was a space ship with possibly many occupants, instead of the mere flier Curt had expected, didn’t change Grag’s orders. The robot would not have dreamed of disobeying just because an order meant peril.
He stepped into the cruiser and started down its main corridor. A Plutonian operator in the little televisor room looked up at the big robot in the door. He sprang up with a yell, tried to escape.
Grag’s mental hand knocked the operator back, stunned. But a motley interplanetary crew of criminals poured from the fore part of the cruiser. They had been aroused by the shout of alarm.
Things happened so swiftly that Grag could hardly follow them. The men charged him. Instantly the Martian who had just gone into the mansion came running wildly into the cruiser.
“Blast off!” the Martian yelled. “This is a trap of Captain Future’s —”
The pilot in the control room heard. The cruiser jerked skyward with a shattering roar of rockets.
The wild lurch of the ship flung Grag from his feet, into a small cabin opposite the televisor room. Before he could regain his feet, the men had slammed and locked the heavy metal door.
Grag heard the hatches of the cruiser slamming shut. The scream of air outside swiftly died away as the ship tore up through the cloud layers and into space. The robot, with Eek clinging frightenedly to him, stood erect and peered through the window in the door.
The motley criminals out in the corridor were clustered around the scared Martian, who had barely escaped Captain Future’s trap.
“One of the Futuremen came into the ship. We’ve got him locked in there. What happened in the house, Thorkul?”
Thorkul, the Martian, explained. “That devil, Future, is on our trail,” he finished. “And he nearly got us, too!”
Grag began to beat at the locked door with his huge metal fists. The clamor of the angry robot was deafening inside the ship.
“Quick, dismount one of our atom cannon and set it up in the corridor,” Thorkul ordered. “If the robot breaks out, destroy him.”
Grag saw them hastily bring and mount the heavy atom gun. He stopped thundering on the door. Grag was no fool. He realized that he couldn’t buck a super-powered cannon.
HE TOOK stock of the situation. He had lost his proton pistol and pocket televisor in the struggle. Eek was shivering with fright. They were both being carried off into space.
“I’m going to call the Life-lord and report this,” Thorkul said loudly. “He’ll want to know immediately about Captain Future coming in against our syndicate.”
Grag watched through the window as Thorkul went into the televisor room across the corridor and sent out a call wave. Presently there appeared in the televisor screen the figure of a man shrouded in a brilliant aura of blue light.
“Yes, Thorkul?” demanded the Life-lord harshly.
The Martian made a hasty, anxious report. From the Life-lord’s concealed figure came a sharp exclamation.
“Captain Future mixing in? I might have known the System Government would call him when they found they couldn’t break up our syndicate themselves.”
“Dril Iffik, the Mercurian who went into the house with me, was killed,” Thorkul told his leader. “I had to leave his body, too.”
“He didn’t have Lifewater or any other clue to our headquarters on him, did he?” the Life-lord asked brusquely.
Thorkul hesitated. “He didn’t have any Lifewater on him. But he did have an inscribed jewel from the Machine City of Mars. I gave it to him a few days ago for doing me a favor.”
“You blockhead!” shouted the Life-lord furiously. “Didn’t I tell you to destroy all those jewels so no one else could learn the secret from them?”
Thorkul cringed. “I did destroy almost all of them. But they were so valuable that I saved a few.”
The Life-lord paused, seemed to be thinking.
“Captain Future will trace that jewel back to the Machine City,” he said slowly. “He and that Brain are smart enough to do that. But it won’t do them any good to go to the Machine City. They’ll just fall into the trap that nearly got us.” The voice of the mysterious leader cleared. “It may be a good thing this happened, after all. Future and his friends will surely perish there.”
Thorkul was visibly relieved.
“We caught one of the Futuremen — the robot,” he reported. “Shall we destroy him?”
“No, bring him here to me at headquarters,” the Life-lord ordered. “If by some miracle Future should escape from the Machine City, we can use the robot as a hostage.”
Thorkul snapped off the televisor. The Martian’s criminal followers, Grag saw, had been gathered around, listening.
One of them, a squat green Jovian, spoke doubtfully.
“I don’t like this business much if that dammed Captain Future is out to break it up. That red-headed devil is bad luck to have against you.”
“That’s what I say,” muttered a vicious looking Earthman. “I wish I’d kept on as a pirate out around Saturn’s moons. I shouldn’t have listened to this Life-lord when he came enlisting men for his outfit.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Thorkul snapped. “You’re all making more money than you would have made after years of harrying the Saturnian commerce. Future and his pals have been the doom of a lot of your pirate friends, haven’t they? The Life-lord is too smart for Future. You two keep a watch on the door there. Blast the robot down if he tries to break out.”
GRAG heard all that. When the criminals had left the corridor, leaving only the two on guard, the robot felt desperate anxiety.
His anxiety was entirely for Captain Future. It seemed that the criminals expected Curt to follow a trail of some kind to the Machine City. There they expected him to perish in some unsuspected trap.
Grag paced worriedly to and fro. Somehow he must get to Mars, to the Machine City, in time to warn Curt. But how could he?
The cruiser was rocketing at tremendous speed through the void. Grag looked out the tiny loophole window in the outer wall, and glimpsed the red spark of Mars far to the left. The cruiser was heading toward the distant, bright speck of Saturn.
“Saturn?” Grag thought. “That must be where the Life-lord’s base is, the center of the Lifewater traffic. These men are former pirates of the Saturnian moons. They joined the syndicate, too.”
But the cruiser was on its way to Saturn. How could he get to Mars in time to warn the other Futuremen?
To break out into the corridor was out of the question, for that big atom-cannon would blast him down in a twinkling. But Grag patiently kept pondering until he had evolved what he thought might be a practicable plan.
The ponderous robot unscrewed three of his metal fingers from each hand. He went for a hidden locker in his torso. From among similar tools, he chose a set of drills with which he replaced his fingers.
The brag started drilling holes in the outer wall, the atomic motor of his powerful robot body operating the drills. He made the holes contiguous. Slowly he cut out a section of the wall.
The guards in the corridor came now and then to the window and looked in at him.
Each time the robot stood impassively, hiding his work.
“Quiet, Eek,” he whispered as the little animal pawed his face in fright. “Grag is busy now.”
Eek was a scared moon-pup. The little beast had been absent when courage was given out. He could put up a bluff of ferocity, but anyone could tell it was ail bluff. Now even that bluff had
evaporated.
Presently Grag had cut a large square through the outer wall. The air inside the little room puffed out. But that didn’t bother either Grag or Eek. Both of them were non-breathing.
Grag waited, then, standing in front of the hole so the guards couldn’t see it through the door-window. He waited for hours, till he judged the cruiser was crossing the Earth-Mars space ship lane.
Clutching Eek carefully, Grag squirmed through the hole. Suddenly he leaped far out into empty space with all his superhuman strength.
He shot floating into the void, out of the ship’s gravitation pull.
The cruiser throbbed on through space and vanished toward Saturn. The robot’s escape would not be discovered for another half hour. Grag and the moon-pup drifted in the vast vault of space.
Grag was not alarmed. He had been in this position more than once. Besides, he knew he was right on the Earth-Mars space lane. A ship would be along sooner or later. They had to sight him, because his metal body reflected sunlight so brightly. They would think him a space-suited human castaway and pick him up.
But he did hope that a ship would come soon.
HOURS passed before he finally saw the lights of a big space liner on its way to Mars. Grag watched anxiously, and felt great relief when the liner slowed down. A space boat put out toward him. It was as he had hoped. They thought him a castaway from some wrecked ship.
The boat came up to him, and he was dragged in through the air-lock. The space-sailors in the boat stared at him amazedly.
“Why, this isn’t a man!” one exclaimed. “Looks like an ancient automaton. And there’s a moon-pup hanging onto it.
Grag quickly decided to play dumb. If he showed life, they might be afraid to take him into the ship.
Of course he might tell them he was one of Captain Future’s aides. But would they believe him? People were usually afraid of him, Grag knew. He’d better be an automaton until he got to Mars.
So Grag did not move or speak as the space boat took him back to the liner.
Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) Page 5