Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) (18 page)

“The Ancients?” Grag said wonderingly as they paused beneath one of the statues. “But they look just like the Jovians.”

“Yes,” Captain Future nodded, his gray eyes gleaming. “I believe that the great Ancients
were
nothing but Jovians such as inhabit this world today.”

The big robot stared at Curt, his simple mind trying to comprehend the statement.

“But the Jovians today do not build great cities and statues and machines,” — Grag objected. “They cannot do the things the Ancients are supposed to have done.”

“I know,” Curt said thoughtfully, more to himself than to the robot. “Yet, I’ve felt all along that the Jovians are simply the descendants of the mysterious Ancients of whom they tell legends — that the great race of the Ancients had its civilization swept away by some catastrophe.

“If I’m right,” Curt added, “the present Jovians have not even a suspicion that the Ancients they revere were their own forefathers. All they have are vague legends, distorted by ages.”

“They look as though they were warning us to stay out of here,” said Grag, peering up at the solemn statues.

“We’re going on,” Captain Future said, striding forward, his big figure animated by driving determination.

They passed the silvery figures, and moved on along the edge of the fiery lava river whose dancing flames eerily illuminated the cavern.

Sulfurous smoke from the lava drifted about them, and the heat from it was fierce on their faces. From behind them came the perpetual booming thunder of the awful fire-cataract.

“See, master!” called Grag, pointing ahead with his metal arm. “Machines!”

Vague, towering metal shapes loomed up out of the dim shadows ahead. They were big mechanisms of so alien and unfamiliar a design that their purpose was unfathomable.

ONE was a complexity of cogged wheels of silver metal, geared to a,sliding arm whose end suggested the muzzle of a gun. Another was a huge upright metal bulb that suggested a cyclotron in appearance.

Upon the base of each machine was a lengthy inscription in the queer, wedge-shaped characters of the Ancients.

“If I could only read those!” Captain Future exclaimed tensely. “Here, for some mysterious reason, were gathered all the powers and weapons of that perished race. And I can’t translate the key to this riddle, discover those powers!”

“Maybe you can decipher those characters in time, master,” Grag suggested.

“Time? There is no time, now!” Curt exclaimed. “Unless we find in here the powers we need to crush the Space Emperor, and return to do that at once, the Jovians will have trampled Jungletown and the other Earthmen towns out of existence!”

Curt was feeling the strain of agonizing apprehension. The knowledge that somewhere southward the Black One was spurring the Jovian hordes on to the attack was like a prodding goad in his mind.

“But we can’t decipher these inscriptions at once. Nobody could,” he muttered hopelessly.

“I hear someone in here,” Grag suddenly said uneasily. “Someone living!”

“Be quiet and listen,” Captain Future commanded. “Your ears are keener than mine, Grag.”

Curt’s hand had dropped to the hilt of his proton-pistol. Standing motionless, listening intently, he cast his glance quickly around.

He could see nothing but the mysterious, silent mechanisms towering about him in the red-lit shadows, the dim spaces of the cavern stretching southward. And he could hear nothing but the thunderous reverberation of the fire-fall.

“I hear it again,” Grag asserted in a moment. “Someone moving —”

“I hear too, now!” Curt exclaimed, his keen ears catching the slight, shuffling sound above the thunderous roar. “It’s from farther along the cavern.”

He drew his pistol swiftly, and Grag imitated him.

“Come on,” Curt muttered. “There’s someone else in here. If it’s the Space Emperor —”

His pulses leaped at the thought, even though he knew that his next encounter with the mysterious plotter might be his last.

They crept forward, big Grag moving soundlessly on his padded feet. They moved around towering, dusty machines, on along the flaming river, deeper into the great cavern.

“There — an Earthman!” Grag boomed, pointing his metal arm.

Curt had seen the man at the same moment. He was not a hundred yards ahead.

A slight-looking figure in a worn brown zipper-suit, the man lay sprawled on his face on the rock floor of the cavern. Near him stood a table which bore an extinguished argon-lamp, and many papers covered with wedge-shaped characters.

“He’s either unconscious or sleeping, master,” said the robot.

Captain Future saw that the man’s limbs were moving restlessly, as though in sleep. It was the sound Grag had heard.

Curt bent over the man, and as he did so he smelled an acrid, unforgettable odor.

“This man’s been drugged,” he declared. “He’s been given a shot of
somnal,
the Mercurian sleep-drug.”

He turned the man over on his back. The face of the drugged sleeper was exposed to the red glow of the fire-river.

It was a serious, spectacled, haggard young face that Curt had never been before. The red-haired adventurer stared down at the man, utterly perplexed.

Then he noticed a monogram on the sleeper’s synthesilk jacket. The letters were “K.L.”

“Kenneth Lester!” Curt cried. “That’s who this is — the missing archaeologist!”

CAPTAIN FUTURE’S pulses throbbed with excitement as he raised the drugged man to a sitting position.

He had felt all along that Kenneth Lester was somehow the key to this whole great’ planetary plot. And now at last he had found the young archaeologist.

“He’s been drugged more than once,” boomed the robot. “See the needle-scars on his wrist.”

“I can bring him around, I think,” Curt muttered.

He fished in his belt for his medicine-kit. It was hardly larger than his finger, but inside it were minute vials of the most powerful drugs known in the Solar System.

Captain Future dipped a sterile needle into one of those vials, and then pressed its wet point into Kenneth Lester’s veins.

As the tiny drop of super-powerful anti-narcotic raced through the young archaeologist’s bloodstream, he began to stir. In a moment he opened dazed, dark eyes. He looked haggard, worn.

“Why don’t you kill me, and get it over with?” he asked hoarsely, looking up unseeingly. “This horrible existence —”

Then as Lester’s vision cleared and he saw Captain Future and the towering metal robot bending over him, he uttered a startled cry.

“Who — what —”

“I’m Captain Future,” Curt told him rapidly. “You may have heard of me.”

“Captain Future?” Lester cried incredulously.

The young archaeologist knew that name, as did everyone in the Solar System. As it sank into his fogged mind, a wild relief showed on his haggard face.

“Thank God you’re here!” he sobbed. “It’s been a hellish death-in-life for me here, these last weeks. The Space Emperor —”

“Who is the Space Emperor?” Curt asked swiftly, hanging on the answer.

But again he was doomed to disappointment.

“I don’t know!” cried young Lester. Then he raged feebly, “Whoever he is, he’s a fiend from hell! He’s kept me here, for how many weeks I can’t guess — forcing me to decipher these ancient Jovian inscriptions for him, and leaving me drugged whenever he went away.”

“You were the one who found this place originally, weren’t you?” Curt asked.

He had been sure of that, from the
Gist.
And he found now that his reasoning had been correct.

“Yes,” nodded Lester weakly. “I found it, and I thought I had made the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of the Solar System.”

He was sitting up, now, talking with feverish rapidity as he looked up into Captain Future’s tanned, set face.

“I came to Jupiter because I had heard of Jovian legends that spoke of a great, ancient race who had once inhabited this planet. I believed that there must be some basis to those legends, and resolved to track it down.

“From Jungletown, I went northward into the fern-jungles and there I tried to learn more from the Jovians, but those primitive creatures became sullenly silent and suspicious when I mentioned the legends of the Ancients. I did learn that they gathered now and then for strange ceremonies at a spot they called the Place of the Dead, so I trailed them there and found it to be a ruined city of the Ancients.

“There was a world-globe map of Jupiter made by the Ancients there. It showed the sites of their cities. But one site was marked differently than the rest, and I guessed it was more important. It was situated on the shore of the Fire Sea, where no city could ordinarily have been.

“So I came north alone in my little rocket-flier and searched along the shore of the flaming sea until I found the opening down into this place. I got down into it with my flier — and found it to be a wonderful storehouse of the powers and knowledge of the Ancients.”

KENNETH LESTER’S haggard face lit for a moment with scientific passion as he continued.

“I succeeded in deciphering some inscriptions here, and learned something of the history of those great Ancients. I learned that ages ago they had had a mighty civilization, as high if not higher than that of Earth today. Along certain scientific lines, they had gone farther than we have.

“They had succeeded in solving many a problem that has baffled Earth physicists. They had achieved intra-atomic means of power. They had even been able to perfect a means of making matter effectively immaterial, by causing a step-up of the frequency of atomic vibration which allowed such matter to interpenetrate other matter freely as though it did not exist. They had used this immaterialization process to explore even the bowels of the planet.

“Also their biologists had found a method of causing atavism at will, which allowed them to study the past evolution of their own and every other race. The method depended upon the fact that every living organism has a glandular organ which is the real control of its physical and mental characteristics, and which, if it is paralyzed or atrophied, allows the subject to degenerate rapidly into the past forms from which its race evolved.

“The Ancients had done all these things, but apparently they had not risen above the reach of passions and emotions. For an internecine war broke out finally between their cities. It was carried on with unbelievable ferocity, and it laid their great civilization in ruins.

“Finally when only a few of the Ancients retained the former scientific knowledge, and the rest had become half-civilized tribes wandering amid the ruins of former cities, those few remaining enlightened ones sought to preserve the triumphs of their race. Hoping that some day their people might be — willing to forget war and again rise to peaceful civilization, those few Ancients gathered in this secret cavern all the scientific powers and instruments they could collect, so that they might not be utterly lost.”

The worn features of young Kenneth Lester showed his deep, bitter emotion as he continued.

“All this, I say, I learned by deciphering some of the inscriptions in this cavern. I realized this was a wonderful storehouse of scientific secrets, which only the proper authorities should know about, lest they fall into the wrong hands.

“So I wrote a report of my find, for Governor Quale. I flew down to Jungletown and mailed it to him, and then flew hastily back here to stand guard over my find. I expected the governor to come here at once.

“But two nights later, as I was sleeping here, I awoke to find myself bound and blindfolded. Someone had learned of my report and had come here to secure the scientific powers of which I had spoken. And that person tortured me into telling all that I had learned so far.

“He learned the secret of immaterialization from me, thus. He used it at once to make himself immaterial, and also he learned the secret of the atavism weapon and took one of the instruments that produce it with him.

“This man whose identity I did not know, the Space Emperor as he called himself, has come here many times since. Each time, he has forced me under threat of instant death to decipher for him more of the secrets of the Ancients. Each time he has left, he has drugged me so that I could not escape while he was gone.”

LESTER’S eyes flashed with wild fear as he concluded.

“The Space’Emperor boasted to me of what he has been doing with these powers, Captain Future! He has said that he has used the atavism beam on Earthmen, to convince the Jovians that the Earthmen are cursed. He intended to use the Jovians to establish his power over this whole planet!”

Captain Future nodded his red head grimly.

“Yes, that black devil has been doing that. And this plot is reaching its climax, for right now the Jovians are gathering to attack the Earthman towns.”

Lester’s haggard face went white.

“Can’t
you
stop him some way, Captain Future?”

“Not until I too can achieve the immaterialization that protects him from all attack,” Curt replied. “That’s why I came here, looking for the means to do that. Can you tell me the secret of that?” he asked tensely.