Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) (4 page)

Yet this was only a corner of the flying-laboratory of the scientific wizard. The botanical section held hundreds of specimen plants and vegetable drugs from many planets. In the mineralogical cabinet were samples of minerals from Mercury to Pluto, The chemical section held containers of every element known to science, as well as wonderfully complete chemical apparatus. And the bio-medical corner comprised every necessary instrument for exhaustive biological research, as well as a folding operating table upon which Captain Future had more than once shown his superlative skill in surgery.

The laboratory was completed by an exhaustive reference library — a library without books. It was a square metal cabinet that held every scientific book and monograph of value that had ever been published, reduced to microfilm which could be read through a special apparatus.

“I’ll check all data on the dark star,” the Brain was repeating to Curt. “But you be careful, lad!”

“I’ll look out that he doesn’t do anything rash, Simon,” promised Otho importantly.

“And who’ll look out for you, you crazy excitement-hunter?” demanded the Brain witheringly of the android. “Trouble draws you like a magnet.”

Curt laughed at the crestfallen android.

“Come on, Otho — the observatory is on the other side of Syrtis, two miles away. We’ll have to hurry.”

They emerged into the nipping chill of the Martian night, tramped through the sands toward the lighted towers of Syrtis, Curt in a long, swinging stride, Otho moving as lithely and soundlessly as a shadow.

Curt looked up with a tingling of his blood at Phobos and Deimos, the two brilliant moons hurtling low across the brooding desert. It had been months since he had been on Mars, and the magic of this old world of whispering deserts touched him strongly.

Ahead bulked the city. It was a typical Martian city of slender stone towers whose upper stories were larger than the lower, giving them a top-heavy look. Dizzy galleries and stairs joined the towers. Only on a low-gravity world was such architecture possible.

Captain Future could see that the brightly lit center of the city was crowded. From it came a babel of excited voice.

“Shall we see what’s going on?” Otho asked eagerly. The devil-may-care android was always drawn by excitement.

“No,we’ve enough on our hands now,” Curt told him severely. “We mustn’t lose any time getting to the observatory.”

HE AND Otho skirted the crowded central streets, keeping their concealing cloaks and hoods wrapped around them.

Earthmen colonists, planters, prospectors and space-sailors were in the crowds. They were outnumbered by the throngs of native Martians, big-chested, stilt-limbed men with leathery red faces and bald heads.

Captain Future heard an Earthman colonial official speaking with hoarse earnestness to the seething crowd.

“Don’t let Doctor Zarro’s alarmist broadcasts drive you to rash action!” he shouted. “The Government and scientists have assured us there is no danger from the dark star —”

“The scientists!” jeered a fierce Martian voice. “They denied at first there was any dark star at all! And now most of them have fled out of the System for safety.”

“Yes!” yelled a chorus of supporting voices. “They can’t help us in this peril. Doctor Zarro is the only one who can save us. Give Doctor Zarro the power he asks!”

“The crazy fools!” muttered Otho. “Begging for a dictator, just because they’re scared by a pack of lies.”

Curt’s tan face was grave. “Unless Doctor Zarro and his broadcasts are stopped soon, he’ll be the System dictator. Things are worse than I thought — we’ve little time!”

HE AND the android pressed on across the city and soon reached the Syrtis Observatory. It lay a little outside the city in the desert, its huge dome bulking black and silent.

In the shadowy interior, a bald, red, middle-aged Martian sat at a lighted desk beneath the great telescope, calculating. He sprang up with a cry as he glimpsed Curt and the unhuman android.

“What — who —” he stammered. Then as Curt held out his left hand, he glimpsed the big ring. “Captain Future!”

“You’re Gatola, director here?” Curt said sharply. The Martian, staring awedly at him nodded.

“A party of the Legion of Doom is coming to kidnap you. They’ll be here any moment.”

Gatola’s eyes dilated. “Gods of Mars, if they —”

“But you’re not going to be here when they come, Gatola,” Curt continued. “Otho, my comrade, will take your place.”

He turned to the android.

“All right, Otho — make up as this Martian. And hurry it!”

“Do I ever lag?” hissed Otho indignantly. He was clawing his disguise-equipment from a square pouch at his belt.

From a small lead flask, Otho sprayed a colorless chemical oil onto his head and body.

Otho’s rubbery white synthetic flesh was wholly unlike ordinary flesh. It could be softened by chemical agents, and when soft, it was as plastic and easy to mold as clay. That fact made the android the greatest master of disguise in the System’s history.

In a few minutes Otho’s queer flesh became soft and putty-like — all except his hands, which he had been careful to leave unchanged. Now he began to mold the flesh of his own body into new outlines, like a sculptor working on himself!

His legs he molded into thin, stilt-like ones similar to the Martian’s. He expanded his chest. And finally he molded his face into an exact replica, feature for feature, of Gatola’s face.

Then his flesh hardened, grew rubbery and firm again, retaining the new outlines. Rapidly Otho stained himself with red dye from his make-up pouch. And Otho finally stood, an exact replica of Gatola, as though an uncanny twin.

“All done, Chief,” Otho reported to Captain Future, speaking in an accurate reproduction of the Martian’s voice.

Gatola’s eyes were protruding in amazement. But Curt gave the Martian no time to voice his bewilderment.

“Leave here at once, Gatola,” Captain Future ordered. “Otho will take your place here for tonight. Understand?”

“I don’t understand,” said the Martian dazedly, “but I’ll go. I’ll go home, and stay there.”

When the Martian had gone, Curt gave Otho his final instructions.

“If the Legion of Doom ship comes, it will land outside. Part of its crew at least will come in here to seize Gatola — you. I want you to argue with them, resist them, do anything short of getting yourself killed, to delay them in here. That will give me a chance to get into their ship and get Joan and Kansu Kane out.”

“It sounds dangerous for you!” Otho protested. “Why couldn’t we have had a squad of the Planet Police here to seize these mysterious devils when they come?”

“The Legion would resist and Joan would probably be killed,” Curt retorted. “And I’m counting on getting a lead to Doctor Zarro from what she’s learned.”

“And you are sort of anxious about this Police girl anyway, aren’t you?” Otho asked slyly.

Curt gave him a cuff that sent the laughing android spinning.

“This isn’t any time for your damned nonsense. Get over to that telescope and try to act as though you knew something about astronomy.”

“What do you mean, ‘act’?” Otho hissed indignantly. “I know more about other worlds than the old men who sit in these places and peer at them. I don’t study astronomy — I live it!”

Chuckling, Curt hastened back out of the shadowy observatory. He crouched down in the shadow, loosening his proton-pistol in its holster, and waited. Time passed slowly. But Captain Future had learned patience from Grag the robot, who could sit for a week without moving his metal limbs. The red-haired scientific wizard remained concealed, watching and waiting.

Presently Phobos set. The night became pitch dark, except for the thin rays of the great hosts of stars shining down upon the age-old deserts. A little wind moaned through the night.

Curt noticed a small black object circling high against the stars. At first, he thought it was a Martian owl. Then his super-keen hearing caught the dim throbbing of muffled rocket — tubes.

“The Legion of Doom ship!” he muttered. “Coming for Gatola —”

NOW the ship was swooping down in a wide spiral toward the observatory, swinging down out of the stars without lights and with its rocket-tubes almost silent, a black, phantom craft — its attached space boats and grim batteries of atom-guns vaguely outlined. It came to rest near the observatory, and Curt saw its door opening.

A dozen men emerged, soundlessly as shadows. Two took up their places as guards outside the ship’s door, the starlight glinting on their atom-pistols. The others moved silently and rapidly toward the observatory.

Captain Future crouched lower in the shadow as they passed. In the starlight, they appeared as Earthmen wearing a gray uniform, on each shoulder the black disk of the Legion of Doom. Led by hulking, heavy-treading giant, they entered the building.

“Damn those guards!” Curt thought, peering at the two Legionaries standing outside the ship door.

He drew out a disklike instrument from his tungstite belt. “Annoying, but necessary,” he muttered. “I’ll have to resort to invisibility, if I want to avoid their giving an alarm.”

One of the greatest secrets of the red-haired scientific wizard was his power of making himself invisible. He did it by giving his body a temporary charge of force which refracted all light around it, making him completely unseen. The effect lasted only for ten minutes — but that should be time enough, Curt thought.

He held the disklike instrument over his head, and pressed its stud. An unseen force streamed down through his body, tingling through every fiber. Looking down at himself, he saw his body becoming rapidly translucent, misty. At the same time, darkness seemed to close around him.

He heard an uproar from inside the observatory — Otho shouting in Gatola’s voice, a clatter of feet and banging of furniture. Otho was doing his part to hold up the Legion men in there.

Curt found himself in utter darkness. He knew that be was now completely invisible. All light was being refracted around him — and that left him entirely without power of vision.

But Captain Future had spotted the exact direction and distance of the door of the Legion ship. Now he moved toward it.

Curt, from long practice, and because of his super-keen sense of hearing, could move without sight almost as well as an ordinary man who saw. He crept hastily forward, and as he neared the ship he could bear the breathing of the two guards outside its door.

He passed right in between them, stepping up through the air-lock of the ship and into a metal corridor. He heard voices, throbbing cyclotrons. He stood, waiting tensely for the invisibility to pass — he must have sight, to find Joan in this ship. The uproar from inside the observatory was louder. Otho was doing nobly in the job of making trouble for his abductors. Curt could imagine that the android was having a wonderful time in there. The darkness enveloping Captain Future began to dissipate. His invisibility was passing. In a moment, he could see.

He stood in a corridor leading toward the stern of the Legion cruiser. Back there were the droning power-cyclotrons, and the voices of the men who tended them. Curt, from his encyclopedic knowledge of space craft, concluded the prisoners would be forward.

THE big red-headed young man found a corridor leading forward and raced soundlessly along its dim length, his proton-pistol gripped in his hand.

“Otho can’t keep that up much longer,” he muttered under his breath. “Where the devil —”

A Legion man popped out into the corridor from a compartment. He stared at Curt, then reached for his atom-gun.

Curt was already triggering his proton-pistol. It could be set either to kill or to stun, and it was a stunning ray that licked out now. The pale, thin beam dropped the man in his tracks.

Then Curt saw the door in the corridor that had a bar across it. He unbarred and swung it open. Inside was a dark little blank-walled chamber, but he could see two people.

One was an Earth girl in a gray silk zipper suit, sitting with her dark head bowed tiredly in her hands. The other was a little, withered, wasplike old Venusian.

“Joan! Kansu Kane!” Curt whispered tensely. “Come on — we’re getting out of here!”

Joan Randall looked up, and as she saw the tall, broad-shouldered, red-haired young man standing with pistol raised in the doorway, she uttered a little cry of pure, tremulous joy.

“Captain Future! I knew you’d come —”

“Not so loud!” Curt cautioned. Then he whirled round. “Too late — you’ve done it now!”

A shout of alarm from somewhere in the ship had followed the girl’s cry. Legion men from the stern appeared in the corridor, running toward them. Curt’s proton-beam flashed and dropped half of them. But others were yelling to the party in the observatory.

“It’s a trap of Captain Future! Come away!”

Curt plunged forward, triggering his proton-pistol. But one of the Legion men, an evil-faced Earthman dwarf, had produced a handful of wriggling things that he flung at Captain Future.

“Rope-snakes!” screamed Joan. “Lookout —”

It was too late. The pink, wriggling things were Saturnian rope-snakes, tamed and used by interplanetary criminals.

They flashed around Curt’s limbs with incredible speed and tightened, pinioning him. Others had fastened around Joan and Kansu Kane. Curt struggled to break the living bonds.

The evil-faced Legion dwarf was shouting to the outside.

“Kallak, come on! Let Gatola go — we’re blasting off!”

The Legion men from the observatory, led by a huge, hulking Earthman giant, came rushing back into the cruiser.

“Cyclotrons on — blast off!” the dwarf yelled.

The ship’s rocket-tubes roared. It lurched up from the ground as Captain Future fought furiously to free himself.

But Otho had come running toward the rising ship. His eyes blazing, his body battered by fighting, the synthetic man leaped up toward the still open door of the ship.

No one in the System but the android could have made the incredible leap. Otho’s hands clutched the edge of the door, and he dangled in space as the ship roared up across the dark desert.