Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) (19 page)

Curt hung tautly upon the answer. For upon it, he well knew, depended the success or failure of his effort to halt the chaos threatening Jupiter.

“Yes — there are a number of the immaterialization mechanisms here,” Kenneth Lester answered quickly.

The big adventurer stared at him wonderingly, though his pulses leaped.

“Then why didn’t you use one to escape, and walk through the rock?” he demanded.

“You forget. I’ve been drugged every moment except when the Space Emperor was here!” Lester reminded. “And when he was here, he stood ready to kill me at my first wrong move. He never allowed me to touch any mechanism. He made me read and translate the inscriptions, and then he operated the things.”

Lester staggered to his feet.

“But at last I’m awake, and that devil’s not here! Come with me and I’ll show you what you want.”

Grag held the staggering young archaeologist to keep him from falling.

“The far end of the cavern,” Lester said weakly. “This way.”

Curt hastened excitedly with Lester and the robot along the dim length of the cavern, through the towering machines by the edge of the flaming lava river.

Captain Future saw that the end of the cavern was just ahead. There was a jagged aperture in its wall, through which flowed the molten lava stream to empty into unfathomable depths beneath.

Kenneth Lester stumbled toward a big metal rack upon which were ranged dusty rows of the instruments of the Ancients. There were many of the atavism-beam devices, like small flat lanterns with translucent lenses.

And there were a number of belts to which were attached hemispherical metal devices with a simple switch.

“Those are the immaterializers,” Lester said, reaching forward.

“Master, look out!” Grag yelled suddenly and pushed Captain Future aside with a violent push.

Curt spun around, though off balance, in time to see what happened.

The Space Emperor stood in the front part of the cavern, near their own rocket-flier. Curt knew instantly that the dark plotter had come down through the rock in an immaterial state, for he had not come in any flier of his own.

But the Space Emperor was material for the moment, for he had raised a flare gun and had loosed its beam at Curt’s back. Grag had knocked the red-haired man aside just in time.

“The Space Emperor!” Kenneth Lester cried wildly as he saw.

Curt wasted no time in words. His pistol was already in his hand and he was triggering.

But as he moved, his enemy moved his hand also, toward his belt. And Curt’s proton-beam again tore through the dark criminal without harming him in the least.

The Space Emperor had again made himself immaterial, just in time. They saw him glide swiftly back toward their rocket-flier and into it, through its walls.

“Get him!” Curt yelled, plunging wildly forward. “He’s going to take our flier!”

It was too late. Already the rocket-flier was rising swiftly from the cavern floor and darting toward the entrance of the fire-fall.

The Space Emperor had made himself material once more inside the little craft and was stealing it.

Captain Future shot at it, but though the proton-beam scorched the side of the darting flier, the craft did not stop. It zoomed up past the thundering cataract of lava, and disappeared up through the vertical shaft.

“He got away!” Grag boomed furiously, coming back from his vain” attempt to overtake the flier. “Master, how could he know that we were here?”

“He must have heard from Joan or the others when they returned to Jungletown of the quest we’d gone on,” Curt exclaimed. “And he came here to trap us.”

As he spoke, Captain Future was snatching out his pocket-televisor.

“If I can call Simon and Otho, they’ll soon be here in the
Comet
to get us out!”

Again and again he pushed the call-button of the little instrument. But no answer came.

“The devil!” Curt exclaimed. “The rock above us must contain a heavy metal content that screens off our televisor signals. The Space Emperor must have known that, damn him!”

“Then how can we get out?” Grag asked. “We cannot climb, up that shaft down which the fire-fall comes — not even Otho could climb out there.”

“No, we can’t climb out there, but we can get out
through
the rock above, us!” Captain Future cried. “We’ve got those immaterializing mechanisms, and Lester here knows how to use them.”

Kenneth Lester was white as death. He swayed as he stood, and shook his head in dull, hopeless despair.

“We can’t do it, Captain Future,” he said heavily. “We’d die if we tried it.”

“Why would we?” Curt demanded, puzzled.

Lester shrugged hopelessly.

“We have no suit such as the Space Emperor wears. We’d become immaterial, but we would have no air-supply to breathe in that state. We would suffocate long before we could go out through the rock!”

CAPTAIN FUTURE was undaunted by the archaeologist’s objection. The big red-headed adventurer squared his wide shoulders, and into his tanned face there came a determined fighting-look.

“You forget that Grag doesn’t need to breathe!” he exclaimed. “He can go up through the rock, and then get us out.”

Hope lit in Kenneth Lester’s haggard eyes.

“If he could do it —”

Curt hurried back to the rack that held the dusty instruments of the Ancients. He came back with two of the belts to which were attached the hemispherical immaterializers.

He belted one around the big robot, and the other one around his own waist.

“But you won’t need one, since you can’t go out through the rock,” Lester said puzzledly.

“I’ll need one if we do get out, when I meet the Space Emperor,” Curt said meaningly. “Show me how the things work.”

Lester explained.

“The hemispheres are projectors of a powerful electromagnetic radiation whose excitation acts to step up the frequency of atomic vibration of any matter. This action is confined to the wearer of the mechanism by means of this control on the side of the hemisphere, which limits the action to the wearer’s body and clothing.”

Carefully, with considerable doubt and anxiety, Lester set the control he spoke of on both the instruments.

“The hemispheres also embody a means of projecting speech, even when the wearer is in the immaterial state,” he went on. “As far as I can comprehend, it is done by translating the sonic vibrations of the immaterialized one’s speech into similar sonic waves in the matter around him, by means of a smaller auxiliary step-down transformer inside the hemisphere. A similar principle in reverse, takes care of hearing.”

“I wondered how the Space Emperor was able to speak and be heard when he was immaterial,” Curt muttered.

Kenneth Lester turned.

“It’s all ready,” he said anxiously to Captain Future.

“What shall I do, master?” Grag asked, looking toward the big redhead with his gleaming eyes quite calmly.

“First you must set your gravitation equalizer at zero, Grag,” Curt told him. The robot obeyed, touching the control of the flat equalizer which he wore upon his breast.

As he set the thing at zero, thus nullifying all gravitational attraction upon himself, the great robot hung floating an inch above the floor of the cavern, drifting slightly this way and that with every little movement.

“Take my proton-pistol, Grag,” Curt went on tensely, handing the weapon to the robot. “Now when you touch the switch of this hemisphere at your belt, it will make you immaterial. By firing the pistol downward, the reaction of its force will cause you to float upward.

“You will float up right through the rock above this cavern. You must wait until you have reached the outside surface, and then you must turn off the switch of the hemisphere at once. Is that clear?”

“Yes, master,” Grag said doubtfully. “But when I have done that, and am outside, how shall I get you two out of here?”

“You will have to get vines from the jungle and make a strong rope and lower it down that shaft through which the fire cataract falls,” Captain Future told him. “Then you can pull us up.”

“Very well, master,” the robot said docilely. “Shall I start now?”

Curt nodded.

“The sooner the better, Grag.”

THEY saw Grag touch the switch of the hemispherical instrument at his belt.

There seemed no immediate change in the robot’s appearance. But when Curt thrust forth his hand to touch Grag, it went through the robot as though he did not exist.

“I do not like this much, master,” boomed the big metal creature, uneasily. “It makes me feel as though I were not real at all, like those Mind Men we found on Saturn.”

Curt made an urgent signal, and the robot pointed the pistol down toward the ground and fired the proton-beam.

At once, under the reactive push of the beam, slight as it was, Grag’s huge body rose floatingly from the floor.

Curt and young Lester watched tensely. The scene was weird, incredible. The great, gloomy cavern of looming machines and deep shadows, bisected by the river of flaming lava that flowed down its center from the thundering fire-fall; the immaterialized robot, floating up toward the rocky roof.

The scene became even more weird a moment later. For when Grag’s slowly rising body reached the rock ceiling, the robot’s head, disappeared right into the rock. Then his metal shoulders were hidden, and finally his whole body was gone from sight above.

Curt drew a long breath. There had been a thrilling uncanniness to the sight of the robot entering the solid rock. Even though he understood the scientific principle of the process, that did not make it less weird to his eyes.

“He ought to be on the surface in a few minutes,” Curt muttered. “The rock above this cavern can be no more than a few hundred feet in thickness.”

Kenneth Lester looked at him fearfully.

“But what if he should lose his sense of direction while he’s floating blindly through that solid rock? He might move in the wrong direction and get lost in the rock mass of the planet!”

Captain Future had thought of that. His lips tightened, as he waited.

Minutes went by. Each minute seemed abnormally long to the big adventurer. What was going on southward while he was trapped here? What was the Space Emperor doing?

“Come on, Grag,” he whispered under his breath as he waited. “Hurry!”

Yet still, there came nothing to indicate that the robot had succeeded in escaping.

By the time almost an hour had passed, Kenneth Lester’s haggard face had lost all hope. The archaeologist sat down as though he had ceased to struggle against the inevitable.

“He didn’t make it,” he muttered. “We might have known he couldn’t.”

Curt did not answer. He paced restlessly to and fro, glancing every few moments toward the fire-fall.

Suddenly he shouted in excitement. Something had dropped down the shaft of the fire cataract — a long rope of tough vines tied together, that now dangled with its end swinging a little above the lava pool.

“Grag made it!” Curt cried.

They ran forward, stopping at the edge of the molten lava pool which lay beneath the shaft.

The vine rope hung out of their reach — more than a dozen feet out above the hissing, bubbling lava.

BLINDED by fumes and scorching heat from the thundering cataract of molten rock, Captain Future and Lester stared baffledly at the rope.

“I’ll jump for it, and once I get hold of it I can swing over
to
you,” Curt said rapidly, backing away from the edge of the pool.

“If you miss it when you jump, you’ll die in that molten rock!” Lester cried appalledly.

Curt grinned at him.

“Miss an easy little jump like that? Why Otho would never forgive me if I did.”

Before Lester could protest further, Curt ran forward. All the strength of his superb muscles he put into a springing leap that sent him flying out through the air above the glowing, hissing lava.

His fingers caught the vine rope, and held. There was a nasty slipping of the tough vine, as its knots tightened under his weight. But Grag had fastened carefully, and the improvised rope did not give.

Hanging above the lava, Curt began to swing back and forth like a pendulum, the arc of his swing increasing each time.

Finally, he was swinging widely out over the edge of the lava pool, where Lester stood.

The young archaeologist grabbed the vine rope also. They swung back together out over the lava pool. Curt quickly gave a jerk on the vine to signal Grag.

They began to be pulled up. It was a perilous situation, and the unnerving quality of it was increased by the cataract of molten lava that rushed down close beside them, to thunder into the pool below.

Lester’s face was ghastly, as he clung.

He cried chokingly to Captain Future, who barely caught the words.

“Can’t — hold on —”

The archaeologist’s grip upon the vine was slipping, weak as he was from his long, drugged captivity.

Curt grabbed him just in time with his left arm, hanging onto the vine with his right. The weight put a terrific strain on the red-headed adventurer’s muscles. No man less perfect physically could have withstood that strain.