Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) (23 page)

HOW many hours had passed? Captain Future could not be sure. Time had become almost meaningless to him as he sat frozen here in his case.

He knew that at least several hours had elapsed, for night had come. His field of vision took in the door, and outside it he could see a dark sky.

He had heard a ship land outside, before night came. And he had known that it was the return of the ship which had taken Doctor Zarro and Roj and Kallak out to the “dark star.”

Nothing else had happened. No one had come into this brightly lighted Hall of Enemies where he and Joan and Otho and the Brain sat on in dreadful stillness and silence, along with all the other frozen prisoners.

Captain Future had been in terrible situations in the past. But never one so terrible as this. Never had he been so utterly helpless. He could not stir a muscle, could not even speak. The only thing that he could do was think. And his thoughts were torture!

Curt could picture James Carthew, the President, frantically trying to delay that fatal vote that would set up a dictatorship in the System. He knew that Carthew would be wondering wildly why Captain Future had failed him.

He would not fail the President! The old indomitable resolution that had brought him through a thousand ordeals rose in Captain Future’s soul. He made a terrific mental effort to force his frozen body to stir, to shake off the drugging influence of the freezing gas that filled his case.

The effort was useless. His body, gripped by cold paralysis of the freezing gas, could not obey his mind. There was absolutely no way in which he could move while be sat in this ghastly, indestructible, gas-filled case.

Fiercely, he fought back despair. There must be some way out of this hideous captivity. But what?

He could think of nothing. He and the Futuremen and Joan and all the others were helpless as though in their graves.

Captain Future became suddenly aware of movement at the door, of some small thing peeping hesitantly into this room.

A sharp, inquisitive little snout poked around the edge of the door, and two bright, fearful eyes peered in.

It was Eek, the moon-pup!

Curt had not thought of the little pet of Grag since their capture, when the moon-pup had frightenedly escaped. Now he realized that Eek had trailed them through the city to this room.

Shivering with fright, Eek peered until his bright black eyes rested on Grag’s prone, motionless metal form. Then the little gray beast scampered gladly toward the lifeless robot.

It nuzzled Grag’s head, seeking to arouse him. And when the robot did not stir, Eek pawed his metal face distressedly.

And Captain Future, watching, saw the thousand-to-one chance of escape for which he had been praying!

Fantastic, impossible — yes! But still the only slender chance left of getting out of this terrible captivity.

Curt concentrated all his mind on one strong thought, a thought projected at the moon-pup.

“Eek, come to me!” he ordered telepathically. “Come to me!”

HE KNEW that the moon-pup’s method of communication was by telepathy — Grag talked to his pet in that way, and Curt had sometimes given the little beast telepathic orders.

Could he do that now? Could he get Eek to do the thing that would give them a fighting chance for freedom? “Eek, come toward me at once!” he thought fiercely.

The gray moon-pup stopped its dismayed pawing of Grag’s face and looked up sharply. It turned its eyes toward Curt.

It had got his thought, Captain Future exulted! He repeated that thought-command with redoubled force. “Come toward me, Eek!”

Slowly, doubtfully, the moon-pup started toward the glassite case in which Curt sat imprisoned. The little animal stopped in front of the case and looked up at Curt puzzledly.

“Eek, you must chew out a piece of the glassite at the bottom of this case!” Curt thought. “It is very good to eat — it contains much precious metals such as you love.”

Eek’s whole appearance brightened as he got that thought. Temporarily forgetting its dismay over its lifeless master, the moon-pup approached the bottom of the glassite case.

It nosed a corner of the glassite, as though sniffing it with its own strange senses. Then it looked doubtful.

“It is very good to eat,” Curt repeated his telepathic blandishments. “It contains much metal.” he lied.

Persuaded by Captain Future’s telepathic assurance. Eek fastened his jaws on the glassite corner of the case. His chisel-like teeth bit into the glassite as easily as into metal or rock.

Eek had almost bitten through the glassite — but not quite. The moon-pup chewed the bite and then looked up at Curt with visible indignation.

Eek seemed almost to be saying: “You told me that stuff was good but it has no flavor at all”.

“It is better further in — it is rich in silver that you love. Eek.”Curt thought urgently. “One more bite!”

Doubtfully, as though persuaded against his better judgment. Eek took another bite of the glassite. He chewed it, then looked up with an injured, crestfallen expression as he found it no more flavorsome than his first sample.

But the moon-pup had bitten through the glassite this time! And Curt could hear the heavy freezing gas in his case hissing, leaking away.

Swiftly as the gas poured out, powers of movement came back to Captain Future. The blessedness of being able to move again, he thought, as he tried to stagger up.

He found himself still tangled in the hunting-net that had been used to capture him. It took minutes to wriggle free of it. Then, Captain Future burst open the glassite door of his case with a heave.

He sprang out onto the floor, his heart pounding. He dashed to the case in which Otho sat frozen, and tore the door open. As the freezing gas rushed out and dispersed, the rubbery android came back to life. Curt freed him of the net that held him.

“Devils of space. I thought I was going to sit like that forever!” swore Otho wildly. “I’ll kill that cursed Doctor by torture for doing that to us!”

CURT was freeing Joan Randall. The girl staggered, weeping, as she revived and left her glassite prison.

“Curt, I knew you would get us out somehow!” she sobbed. “I couldn’t see how anyone could, but I knew you would.”

“Steady, Joan,” the big red-haired young adventurer told her urgently. “Help Otho release all those other prisoners while I see to Simon and Grag.”

Curt bent over the Brain first. Simon’s speech-apparatus had been disconnected — a moment’s work set that aright.

“Good work, Lad,” rasped the Brain then. “But I fear it’s too late, maybe.”

“Not too late if we can get to the
Comet,”
rapped Captain Future. “But Grag has been disabled —”

He tore away the nets around the robot and examined him. Then Curt rapidly removed two of the metal plates of Grag’s neck, exposing the robot’s electrical nerves.

Three of Grag’s vital nerve-wires had been severed. Curt worked tensely with tools from his belt, resplicing those wires and then replacing the neck-plates.

Grag’s photo-electric eyes shone with revived life, and the great robot stirred and rose clankingly to his feet, none the worse for his experience.

“What has happened, Master?” he boomed bewilderedly. “How did you get out of the case?”

“Eek got me out — I gave him a thought-command to chew into the case,” Curt told him as he turned quickly to the others.

Little Eek had sprung onto Grag’s shoulder and was clawing the robot’s neck, in a frenzy of joy at seeing its metal master revived.

“Eek did that?” Grag cried. “For that, Eek, you shall have all the silver you can eat!”

Otho and Joan had released all the other prisoners in the Hall of Enemies. And those men and women of all planets, dazed by sudden deliverance from their weeks of horrible captivity, were stumbling to crowd around Captain Future, babbling incoherently.

“Lad, what’s your plan?” cried the Brain. “If you broadcast to the System that the dark star is only an illusion, you can maybe stop the Council’s action —”

“It wouldn’t work, Simon — the peoples of the System are too panic-stricken now to believe it,” Captain Future exclaimed. “There’s only one way to end their panic, and that’s to destroy the dark-star illusion that’s terrifying them —”

“Stygians are coming!” yelled Otho urgently. “They must have heard this uproar!”

Captain Future himself could now detect a chorus of alarmed cries and sound of running feet in the darkness outside the building.

“We’re going through them to the
Comet!”
he cried. “We’ve got to make it!”

He swung to the bewildered, newly-released mob of Doctor Zarro’s captives.

“You stay here — the Stygians won’t harm you and I’ll be back for you if I succeed.”

A STYGIAN appeared in the door, his hollow eyes goggling out of his white-furred face at the crowd inside.

“The Doctor’s prisoners are escaping!” the creature yelled back out into the night.

Curt’s proton-pistol shot a thin, pale beam of stunning force that dropped the creature unconscious in his tracks.

“Grag — Otho — come on!” Curt yelled. “Joan, you bring Simon!”

The girl snatched up the handle of the Brain’s case. Curt and the other two Futuremen were in front of her as they all plunged out into the cold, windy night.

In the dark Stygian city, lights were bobbing and voices yelling as a crowd of the white-furred beams swarmed toward the building in answer to the alarm.

“Through them!” Captain Future shouted. “It’s now or never — but use your pistol only to stun them, Otho!”

Triggering the pale knockout beams in all directions. Curt and Otho ran at the head of the little group. Joan followed closely with the Brain, and Grag brought up the rear with the moon-pup clinging terrifiedly to his shoulder.

They forced their way, fighting through streets into which more and more Stygians were pouring. But the beams knocked down those in their way, and those who sought to snatch them from the rear were swept back by Grag’s mighty, flailing metal arms.

They fought thus to the edge of the city, beyond which stretched the dark, grotesque forest of giant club-mosses.

“They’re following us!” Otho hissed as they plunged running through the towering mosses. “Name of a thousand sun-imps, how did we get out of the city?”

“Those Stygians are an unwarlike people, unaccustomed to fighting, or we couldn’t have done it,” Curt panted. Then his voice flared exultant. “There’s the Come? ahead!”

The little ship had not been disturbed. But two Stygian guards had been posted over it, who emerged wildly now.

Curt’s beam knocked them flat. Then he and his comrades tumbled into the ship.

A horde of Stygians, bewildered by unaccustomed violence and conflict, were still pouring after them from the city.

“Up, in the name of all that’s holy!” yelled Otho as Captain Future leaped to the controls.

Curt laughed recklessly as he slammed the cyclotron switch and then opened the throttles.

The
Comet
roared up into the dark sky like a living, leaping thing, pluming a great tail of white fire.

Curt drove it out at dizzying acceleration, through the semi-opaque curtain of the illusion-camouflage. Glancing back, Styx again seemed covered by rolling ocean.

They were out in open space now. Pluto bulked vast and white on their right, Cerberus and Charon setting beyond it.

Out in the brilliant stars of outer space, amid the star-clouds of Sagittarius, bulked a black disk incredibly big. And Curt headed the little ship straight toward it.

“We’ve got to end the dark-star illusion,” he cried. “Only that will convince the System peoples there’s no danger.”

THE tear-drop ship, fastest craft in space, picked up velocity at an appalling rate. Out of the System itself they were rushing, out into the shoreless sea of interstellar nothingness to meet the colossal, illusory dead sun that was coming toward the System.

The speed was the highest Curt had ever called forth from the
Comet.
So great was it that Pluto was diminishing visibly to a small white disk behind them, and the illusory dark star was expanding across the heavens at an incredibly swift rate.

“It can’t be just an illusion!” Joan exclaimed wildly staring. “It looks too utterly real!”

“Are you sure that it is not real, Master?” asked Grag uneasily.

The appearance of the unreal dark star was formidable enough to daunt the bravest. Utterly solid and real it seemed, a colossal, jagged black dead sun turning in ponderous majesty on its axis as it thundered toward them.

“You’ll soon see that it’s not real,” Curt told them with a flashing smile. “I’m going to drive right into it.”

The
Comet
hurtled toward the oncoming dead sun with what would have seemed suicidal intent to any observer.

The huge black mass filled all space before them. Its black, jagged, cindery surface rushed headlong to meet them. Joan closed her eyes with a little scream.