Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) (10 page)

“I am going with you into that city, Master,” Grag declared firmly. “I won’t let Otho get you into trouble again.”

“Yes, Grag, I’m taking you, but not for that reason. You are impervious to cold. Go get that mysterious furry body Otho brought in. I’ll want Gurney to see it.”

Curt sent the door sliding open. A blast of freezing air struck in at them.

“Cold as ever!” Curt declared. “This planet will never be a winter resort, that’s sure.”

They stepped out into the bitter dusk, Joan on one side of the big red-headed adventurer, and Grag and his burden on the other. Eek, the moon-pup, was curled around Grag’s neck as usual.

Night was coming — the night of Pluto, hardly darker than its day. Charon, the largest of the three moons, shone as a white disk near the zenith. Cerberus and Styx, the other two moons, were just rising to cast a strange, mingled, shifting radiance across the frigid landscape of their icy parent planet.

CAPTAIN FUTURE glanced keenly up at the moons. Cerberus was the far-famed Prison Satellite, the bleak penal moon to which the worst interplanetary criminals of the whole System were sentenced. On Charon were trapping posts of the Earthmen who hunted the rare fur-bearing animals there. Only Styx had never been settled or visited by Earthmen, since it was completely water-covered and a landing on it was impossible.

Presently Curt and his two companions found themselves inside the dome of Tartarus, having entered by a sliding door automatically operated by an electric eye. Here inside the dome was a balmy warmth that was grateful contrast to the freezing chill outside.

Captain Future looked across the dusky city, whose streets were lighted by flaring atomic lamps. There were comparatively few people abroad. They met a few Earthmen colonists, who stopped and stared in wonder at the great metal figure of Grag, and the moon-pup clinging to his shoulder. They met a few native Plutonians too.

The Plutonians, indigenous natives of this frigid planet, were manlike people whose hulking bodies were completely covered by thick, long black hair. It covered even their round heads, and through its shaggy locks, their saucerlike, phosphorescent eyes peered forth as though from deep caverns.

This long black hair, evolved as a protection against the cold of the ice-fields in which they dwelled, seemed to make them uncomfortably hot in this warmed Earthman city. For most of the hairy Plutonians were visibly gasping, and had opened the leather tunics which were their customary garment.

“What’s that uproar?” Joan asked, as they passed near a bright-lit street from which came a continuous babel of cries.

Curt smiled. “That’s the Street of Hunters — the Earthmen who go out into the ice fur-trapping like to celebrate, when they get back to Tartarus.

“Here we are!” he exclaimed a moment later, as they approached a square, two-storied black cement structure.

The emblem of the Planet Police was over its door. And an officer in the black uniform of the service stopped them as they entered, staring a little wildly at Grag’s great figure.

Curt Newton held out his hand, showing the big “planet” ring whose mechanism he had rebuilt during the voyage.

“Captain Future!” exclaimed the officer. He stepped back, saluting respectfully.

Out of an inner office came hurrying a grizzled, gray-haired man who wore the Police uniform and a marshal’s badge. His cold blue eyes lighted up at sight of the tall red-haired adventurer of space.

“Captain Future!” he yelled. “Danged if you’re not a sight for sore eyes! And Grag an’ Joan, too! What the devil are you doing way out here on Pluto?”

EZRA GURNEY, veteran interplanetary frontier marshal, was pumping Curt’s hand as he spoke, his pleasure manifest.

“Is there trouble here?” he asked hopefully. “There must be if you’re here, Captain Future — you’re sort of the stormy petrel of the System.”

“Same old Ezra,” Curt grinned. “Always looking for a scrap. Don’t you think you’re too old for such deviltry?

“Me old?” cried the weatherbeaten marshal indignantly. “Why, I can take on any —”

He stopped suddenly. He had seen the grave look that lurked in Curt’s eyes.

“What is wrong, Captain Future?”

“It’s Doctor Zarro,” Curt answered. “You’ve heard his broadcasts?”

“Who hasn’t?” Ezra Gurney said soberly.

“I’m out to stop him,” said Captain Future.

A cold light sprang into Ezra Gurney’s eyes. “I remember a fellow back on Jupiter that got too ambitious for his own good,” he said meaningly. “You stopped him, all right.”

“Doctor Zarro’s a greater menace, for he has frightened the people of the System into supporting him!” Curt declared. “I’ve got to find the base of him and his Legion, quickly.”

Ezra stared. “You don’t think it’s out here on Pluto, do you?”

“I know it’s here somewhere,” Curt retorted. He told the old marshal of the captured Legionary of Doom who had turned into a furred, strange creature when he died, and had given them the clue that had brought them to Pluto. “There must be a race of such creatures here somewhere — and there’s where Doctor Zarro’s base is!”

“Let me see the critter you’re talking about.”

Grag unwrapped the stiff body. The old marshal stared wonderingly at the dead creature’s white-furred figure, its strange two-fingered limps, its flattened head and huge, pupil-less eyes.

“I never saw anything like this before,” Gurney muttered. “There ain’t any race like this on Pluto that I know about.”

“Who would be most likely to know about this, if anyone does?” Curt asked.

Ezra Gurney stroked his chin, considering.

“I guess Cole Romer would be the best bet. He’s chief planetographer here, head of the Pluto Survey that’s tryin’ to explore the planet. He’s here in Tartarus now — I can call him over.”

COLE ROMER, when he arrived a few minutes later, proved an Earthman of forty, whose fine, scholarly face was hardened and reddened by long exposure to the fierce, frigid winds of Pluto on many exploring expeditions. The planetographer’s intelligent eyes inspected the dead, furred creature with mounting perplexity.

“I never even heard of a race like this on Pluto, Captain Future!” he exclaimed. “Of course, there are vast stretches of ice-fields and marching glaciers out there which we know nothing about. But this looks like a member of an intelligent race, such as would have made themselves known before now.”

Curt’s tanned face was thoughtful.

“What about the moons?” he asked. “Could such a race exist on one of them?”

“It’s possible,” Romer admitted. “Of course there’s nothing on Styx, which is all water-covered, but a lot of Cerberus, and more of Charon is unknown.

“But I’m not the one to tell you much about those two moons,” he went on. “Victor Krim, the fur-magnate whose company has settlements on Charon, and Rundall Lane, the warden of the Interplanetary Prison on Cerberus, would know more about those two.”

“Krim and Lane are both in Tartarus now, Captain Future,” put in Ezra Gurney. “Krim came in today from Charon to meet fur-buyers from Earth, and Rundall Lane’s here about the supply-ship that goes from here to Cerberus each month.”

“Call them over here too,” Captain Future ordered. His keen gray eyes had narrowed.

The name of the warden of the Cerberus prison had made Curt remember a matter he had resolved to investigate. He wanted to know how it came that Roj and Kallak, the criminals who were supposed to be in that prison, were in fact leading the Legion.

Victor Krim, the fur-magnate of the moon Charon, was first to arrive. He was a stocky, aggressive man with a square face and suspicious eyes. Curt disliked him at first sight.

Rundall Lane, the warden of the famous Interplanetary Prison on Cerberus, did not look to Captain Future like the type of man who would be set to guard the System’s most dangerous criminals. He was thin, elderly, nervous-looking, constantly glancing around.

“I’ve heard lots about you, Captain Future,” Lane said, “you sent a good many men to our prison, you know.”

“I sent two there that didn’t stay there,” Curt said grimly. “I mean that dwarf biologist, Roj, and Kallak, the accomplice he turned into a glandular giant. Those two were sent to Cerberus for life some years ago. But I know they’re not there now.”

Curt saw Rundall Lane pale, as though taken aback by his knowledge.

“Roj and Kallak escaped a few months ago,” he admitted. “They’re almost the first men to escape Cerberus. We can’t understand how they accomplished it.”

The story sounded a little lame to Captain Future. He resolved to investigate further, but not now.

“Did either of you two men ever see or bear of a race of furred creatures like this on Cerberus or Charon?” he asked.

Both Rundall Lane and Victor Krim stared without recognition at the grotesque, white-furred body.

LANE shook his head. “I don’t think there’s any species of creatures like this on Cerberus. Of course, I don’t know much of the moon beyond the Prison, but my guards have explored it and they’ve never spoken of such creatures.”

“That thing, whatever it is, didn’t come from Charon,” said Victor Krim loudly. “In fact, it couldn’t have come from anywhere out here at Pluto.”

The stocky magnate sounded a little too certain about it.

“What makes you so sure?” Curt asked.

Krim answered boastingly. “I know Pluto and its moons better than anyone else. My trappers and hunters go places even the explorers don’t dare to go. You can take my word for it that there’s no such race here.”

“You can’t be so sure as that, Krim,” protested Cole Romer. “There’s lots of Pluto your men haven’t seen.”

Victor Krim snorted. “I suppose you and your Planet Survey know more about this world than I do? Well, I haven’t time to argue about it. I’m a busy man and I’ve got fur-buyers waiting for me right now. Anything more, Captain Future?”

“Nothing more, for now,” Curt answered evenly.

“You can all go — and thank you for your help, gentlemen.”

But as Krim and Lane and Romer left, Curt was thinking ruefully that they had not really been any help at all.

“You didn’t learn anything of value from them?” Joan asked.

“Nothing much,” Curt answered, though his face was thoughtful. He turned to the old marshal. “Ezra, I want to show this creature to one of the native Plutonians. Can you get one here?”

“Got one right here in the buildin’,” chuckled the old marshal. “A hairy devil named Tharb, we use as a guide when police business takes us out into the ice-fields.”

He stepped to the door and called an order, and presently Tharb, the Plutonian guide, entered doubtfully.

Tharb was a typical member of the hairy native race of the icy planet. His six-foot form was completely covered by long, shaggy black hair, from bullet head to toe-less feet. His round, phosphorescent eyes peered awedly at Curt and at Grag’s huge figure.

Then the Plutonian asked Ezra Gurney, in slurred, broken Earthman speech: “You want me go outside?”

“The hairy nuisances is always wantin’ outside in the ice,” Gurney told Curt. “It’s too warm in here for them.”

The old marshal pointed to the dead white-furred being that lay on the table.

“You see thing like that before, Tharb?”

Tharb turned his queer phosphorescent eyes upon the dead creature. Then the hairy Plutonian recoiled with a sharp cry.

“A Magician!” he yelled.

Curt jumped forward.

“You’ve seen such creatures before?” he asked quickly. “Why do you call it a Magician?”

Tharb was showing every evidence of an extreme superstitious fear and awe as he stared at the dead creature.

“I never see such things before,” he stammered. “But I hear of them. My grandfather, Kiri, who is very old, tell me of the Magicians.”

Curt dropped into the native Plutonian singing language.

“What did your grandfather tell you of them?”

THARB answered volubly in his own tongue. “My grandfather said that when he was a young man, long ago before the Earthmen came here, his people used to see the Magicians. They were furry white beings, who had great powers and strange wisdom.”

“Did he tell you where the Magicians came from?” Curt asked eagerly.

“He never told me that — I never asked him.” Curt felt baffled for a moment. Then he asked the Plutonian: “Your grandfather Kiri still lives?”

“Yes,” said Tharb, “he lives with my people in their ice-town, far north of the Marching Mountains and the icy sea, which you Earthmen call the Sea of Avernus.”

“I’m going out and see this chap’s grandfather.” Captain Future said decisively.

“It’s pretty forbidding country up there beyond the Marching Mountains,” Gurney said.

“Nevertheless, I’m going,” Curt rapped. “You’ll lend me a Police rocket flier, Ezra? I’ll take Tharb along as guide.”

“And me too, master?” cried Grag anxiously.

Curt saw the robot’s eagerness, and smiled. “Yes, you too. Grag — but you’ll have to leave that moon-pup behind.”

Grag seemed a little crestfallen. “Eek will be lonesome while I am gone. But I will leave him.”

Captain Future hastened back out of the city with Joan and the robot and Tharb, the Plutonian. He went directly across the frozen, dusky spaceport to the
Comet.
There he told Simon Wright of the lead that was taking him into the interior wilderness of Pluto.

“Otho and Joan will stay with you,” he told the Brain. “You can make your studies of the dark star over there in the Tartarus Observatory while I’m gone.”

Grag put little Eek into a corner of the ship and then told Otho: “Take good care of Eek while I am gone.”

Otho, already furious at being left behind, exploded.

“Take care of that drunken moon-pup? Do you think I’m cut out to be a nursemaid for that little metal-eating monstrosity?”

“If you were human like me, you would appreciate how nice a pet Eek is,” Grag calmly informed the raging android.

Ten minutes later, Captain Future and Grag and Tharb were in a small streamlined Planet Police flier, rocketing up from the spaceport and beading northward. Curt wore a suit of furs, but the hairy Tharb and the impervious robot needed no protection.