Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) (20 page)

The pathos of it struck to Captain Future’s heart. These courageous people had built a roof for their world, tapped the internal fires for warmth, huddled together, though they constantly faced inevitable extinction!

“Only a short time ago came the man who lies at your feet,” the old man said. “When we asked him if he were the Giant from the Stars, he said he was. He told us to make weapons, and obey him, and he would lead us into a new universe.”

“He lied, for he was not the Giant of the prophecy,” Future explained. “He sought to take you into war and disaster to serve his selfish ends. The system into which he would have led you would have repulsed you, had you followed him into it.”

A LOW wail of despair went up from the atomic men.

“Then our last hope is gone? Our race must die, despite all we have done?”

“No!” Curt Newton said emphatically. “I’m going to return with this man to my universe. But I promise you that before long your dead universe will become a vast new universe of countless young suns and habitable worlds.”

They looked at him doubtfully.

“How can a mere man cause that?” the old man whispered.

“Trust me, for I shall do it,” Future replied.

They looked into his steady eyes. The power that had won for Captain Future the trust of scores of different planetary races, won again.

“We trust you,” said the old leader. “We believe that you are indeed the Giant from the Stars, whom we have long awaited.”

Captain Future picked up the unconscious form of Ul Quorn, and donned again the helmet he had taken off in order to speak.

“Stand a little away from me, for now I return with this captive to my own universe,” Curt said. “And you may be sure that you will not wait long before this universe of yours is revivified.”

In awe, they moved back as Curt turned the switches of the generator at his own belt and then Quorn’s. The bright aura of force enveloped them. The transparent-roofed world, and the men standing nearby, seemed to grow rapidly smaller. Captain Future and his senseless prisoner were towering up rapidly in size.

A powerful blast of his impeller sent them floating free from that little world. Floating out into the interstellar space of the tiny universe, they were two ever-growing giants. Curt moved rapidly away from the little red sun, to avoid all chance of harming its worlds as he and Quorn grew. Now he and his unconscious prisoner were again colossal in size, and the dead suns about them seemed but swarming specks.

Those swarming specks were condensing into glittering spheres — molecules! And the molecule spheres, drawing together into a solid mass, were forming solidity around them. He used the impeller to drive them upward, till they were in a deep abyss between walls of jagged rock. The walls were closing in on them with terrifying rapidity, as they continued to grow.

He scrambled up to the lip of the abyss, drawing Quorn with him. He stood upon a great mass of rock that was steadily appearing to shrink in size as the two men grew. The rock mass shrank until it was a boulder set atop a smooth, rounded black hill — the sand grain imbedded in the black space stone!

Captain Future slid with his captive down the side of that hill, onto a smooth metal plain that he knew was the table in the laboratory-cabin of the
Comet.
He and Quorn were now an inch high. He looked up and saw the huge figures of Otho and Grag, Ezra and Joan Randall, bending over him. He waved his hand to them.

A FEW minutes later, both Curt Newton and his unconscious prisoner were normal-sized men, as big as the others who crowded around them in the laboratory of the flying
Comet.

“Chief, you brought Quorn back!” cried Otho exultantly. “What was it like down there?”

“It was a dying universe, as Thuro Thuun described it,” Curt answered. “I have promised its people it will be restored.”

“How can you do that, Master?” asked Grag puzzledly.

Instead of answering directly, Curt told them briefly what had happened.

“We’ve got Quorn and we’re going to get those freaks of his on the Pleasure Planet,” he declared. “With the evidence we have, and what those poor freaks will give to save their own skins, Ul Quorn is going to Interplanetary Prison for life.”

“Let’s kill Quorn!” Otho protested. “He’ll always be a danger, for he’ll always know that size-changing secret.”

“No, he won’t,” Captain Future said. “Simon and I are going to take that secret out of his brain, by the mental eraser.”

“Aye, lad, that would be a wise precaution,” rasped the Brain.

They stretched the senseless Quorn on the table. Joan and Ezra watched fascinatedly as Curt and the Brain utilized the mental eraser, one of Captain Future’s greatest inventions. The device could rearrange the neuron patterns which constitute memory in the brain, and thus wipe out any specific memory.

“That’s done it,” Curt said finally. “He’ll remember everything he ever knew — except the secret of the size-changing formula.”

HE TOUCHED Quorn’s neck, to release the pressure on nerve centers and let the mixed-breed awake. As he waited for the prisoner to regain consciousness, Captain Future turned to the lithe, tense android. “Otho, you and Grag rig up a big damper-beam projector, a hundred times the power of our small one. It shouldn’t take you long. And, Ezra, call Planet Police Headquarters for a strong force to raid the Pleasure Planet and seize Bubas Uum and Quorn’s accomplices.”

“But Cap’n Future, we can’t do that!” Ezra protested. “The Pleasure Planet doesn’t come under System law.”

“It’ll be under System law by the time the Police get here,” Curt retorted. “Ah, our friend is awakening.”

Quorn, returning to his senses and realizing what had happened, looked as if he would burst into livid denunciation of Curt. Surprisingly, though, the mixed-breed folded his arms and smiled.

“You win the game, Future,” he said calmly. “My congratulations. What’s it to be for me — Interplanetary Prison on Cerberus?”

“Yes, Quorn,” Curt answered. “You’ll be sent to Pluto’s prison moon for life.”

“Life is a long time.” Quorn shrugged. “I don’t think any prison can hold me that long. We may meet again.”

“Cerberus will hold you,” Curt predicted grimly.

“The damper projector’s ready, Chief!” Otho reported a little later.

He and Grag had built a heavy, cylindrical machine.

“Good. Turn its damper beam full power on that big rocket-propulsion plant of the Pleasure Planet.”

Ezra slapped his knee in delight.

“I understand now! At last Bubas Uum’s little hell-world is going to feel the law!”

They watched from the control room as Otho sent the invisible, powerful damper beam lancing down through space toward the flaring rocket tubes which kept the Pleasure Planet motionless in space. That beam of invisible force, tuned to inhibit completely the production of atomic force, began operating for only a few minutes. Suddenly the giant rocket-tubes of the planetoid ceased to flame. The damper beam had smothered the cyclotrons!

As they watched, they saw that the Pleasure Planet was beginning to move. No longer restrained from a natural orbit, it was drifting away, falling into an orbit.

“The Pleasure Planet is now revolving around the Sun, and therefore comes under System law,” Captain Future stated. “When the Planet Police get here, they can take over everything.”

“And one of the worst little hell-spots in the System will be wiped out forever!” Ezra cried.

Ul Quorn had watched with the others. There was a ring of real admiration in the mixed-breed’s voice when he spoke to Curt.

“Future, you and I together could have conquered the System. The praise they give you so unreservedly is all merited.”

Curt Newton grinned faintly at the arch-enemy he had finally trapped.

“I don’t mind admitting, Quorn,” he said, “that you nearly had me under a dozen times. I’ll never feel completely safe till you’re out on Cerberus.”

IN THE laboratory-home on the Moon, weeks later, Curt Newton straightened from the labor upon which he had been engaged. A flood of sunlight penetrated the glassite ceiling and drenched his unruly red hair and tall figure. Then it glittered off a bulky, tubelike instrument suspended in a metal frame on the table. Captain Future raised his voice, calling into the rooms that opened off the main laboratory.

“Grag! Otho! Bring Simon here. I want you all to see this.”

Grag came clanking into the room, carrying Eek upon his metal shoulder.

“Otho will have to get rid of that meteor mimic pet of his!” the robot boomed indignantly. “I can’t keep Eek away from him.”

Eek’s body underwent an astounding change, metamorphosing suddenly into a fat, white little animal with solemn eyes.

“It seems Oog has fooled you again, Grag,” chuckled Curt.

Angrily Grag dropped the meteor mimic to the floor.

“He’s always mimicking Eek, and I don’t know which is which!”

Otho had entered, carrying the Brain’s square case. He put Simon down on his pedestal by Curt, and wrathfully turned on Grag.

“Can’t you keep that damned moon-pup of yours away from Oog?” he stormed. “He’s a bad influence.”

“A bad influence?” bellowed Grag.

“Why, you thick-headed rubber doll —”

“Cut your rockets,” Captain Future ordered. “I want to show you something. I told you that I had promised those people of the sub-universe I would restore their universe to life.”

“Sure, I remember, and I still don’t see how you can ever do it,” Otho replied.

“I’ve been making a new type of electro-microscope, using Thuro Thuun’s carrier wave principle,” Curt Newton said. “It’s strong enough to permit clear vision of sub-atomic particles.”

“Say, that
is
something!” the android declared, impressed.

“Take a look through it at the sand-grain universe of the atomic people,” Captain Future invited.

He had placed the space stone that held the imbedded sand grain under the bulky microscope. Through the instrument, they could clearly see into the tiny universe of dead, dark suns.

“It is an extinct universe,” Grag boomed. “Nothing could restore it to life, Master.”

“Now look at this little crystal cube,” Curt directed.

He had placed a little inch-square cube of gleaming crystal under the microscope. They stared down at it, one after the other. Through the microscope, the crystal cube seemed to be another sub-atomic universe. But this was a new, young universe of tiny, flaming white suns and many planets.

“Now watch,” Captain Future said.

He carefully picked the sand-grain from the black space stone and placed it on top of the crystal cube. From a small copper tube, he loosed a tiny flash of force upon the sand grain. The grain of sand was instantly fused into the substance of the crystal cube, entering into chemical combination.

LOOKING through the electro-microscope, they saw that the dark suns of the sand grain universe were now scattered amid the flaming young stars of the crystal-cube universe. The red sun of the atomic people was now surrounded by countless hot stars and warm worlds.

“By all the imps of space, you have given those atomic people a new universe!” Otho cried. “One that they can expand into forever!”

“It’s a good deed that you’ve done, lad,” rasped the Brain.

Curt smiled at the crystal cube.

“WELL, their prophecy has come true at last. The Giant from the Stars kept his promise.” He picked up the crystal cube. “I’ll put this with the space stones in the trophy room.”

“That’s the biggest trophy we’ve brought back yet,” Otho yapped. “A whole universe, eh?”

Curt took the crystal cube and the seven space stones into the heavily locked room that had been excavated from the solid rock behind the laboratory. He put the items down amid the strange, unfamiliar objects, each of which represented one of his past exploits.

When he returned, he found the Brain looking up with his lens-eyes through the glassite ceiling, at the great green sphere of Earth that bulked in starry space. Captain Future stood for a moment looking thoughtfully up at it.

“They’ve no idea what you did this time,” Simon rasped gently. “They know only that the Pleasure Planet is now under System law, and that a certain Doctor Ul Quorn is in Cerberus Prison for life.”

“Better for them not to know,” Curt breathed. “The North Pole signal didn’t flash this time. They need never suspect the Futuremen were out.”

The Brain eyed the white, icy North Pole of Earth. From it always flashed the red signal to Captain Future on the Moon, when urgent peril demanded the aid of the wizard of science.

“No, the signal didn’t flash this time,” muttered the Brain. “But it will flash again. As long as there are unscrupulous men to plot against the peoples, as long as dark evil spawns danger to the System, just so long will that red beacon call to us for help. And just so long, while we live, will we answer.”

THE END