Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) (3 page)

“Why do you come here, Si Twih? Do you want everyone to know I belong to your organization?”

“Doctor Quorn, the High Council of the Sons of the Two Moons sent us to you. The Council demands to know why you have not made more progress.”

“I told you it would take time.”

“You have had time,” retorted Si Twih. “A year ago, you promised to bring complete success to the great purpose of our cult — the restoration of the glory that was ancient Mars. What purpose should command more loyalty than that? What Martian would not give all to see our world regain its rightful position?”

“Have I not devoted myself heart and soul to that great purpose since I joined the Sons of the Two Moons?” Quorn demanded.

“Aye. You promised that you could restore the glory of Mars soon. You have done nothing but wander from world to world with this circus. Our members grow impatient.”

QUORN’S smooth face was cold as he answered.

“The only thing that can restore the glory of Mars is the tremendous secret power discovered ages ago by Thuro Thuun, greatest scientist of ancient Mars. I told you that until I have that secret, we cannot do anything openly. The seven space stones on which Thuro Thuun wrote his secret were scattered in later ages among the worlds of the System.

“One of those space stones was on Mercury. I got that stone last month. Another was brought recently from Jupiter to Earth. That stone I secured today. There is a third one here on Earth, which I intend to secure tonight. There is another stone on Venus, which I’ll get when the Circus goes there. That will make four of the space stones. But where are the other three? Haven’t our members located them yet?”

“We are trying hard to locate those three,” old Si Twih answered apologetically. “We believe one is on Mars.”

“Then my freaks and I will stay with the Interplanetary Circus until it reaches Mars,” Quorn stated. “It affords an excellent blind for my activities.”

Si Twih stared at him gloomily.

“I suppose we can trust you, Doctor Quorn. Yet there are many who say we should not. After all, you are only partly Martian.”

“My blood may be only part Martian, but that part is from the veins of the mightiest kings of old Mars,” Quorn answered haughtily.

“But you expose the secrets of ancient Martian science to make a show for the vulgar crowd!” protested another fanatic.

Quorn shrugged. “What would you have me do? I must have funds to search for the space stones. Anyway, those who see my feats think them merely cheap magical illusions.”

Si Twih rose to depart. But he turned at the door of the pavilion.

“We hope to have definite information on the location of the other three stones by the time you reach Mars, Doctor Quorn. Farewell till then, Son of the Two Moons.”

Quorn bowed. “Farewell, Sons of the Two Moons.”

When the Martians had gone, the handsome face of the mixed

breed scientist twisted in scorn.

“The poor fools, to believe that I really have faith in their crazy plan to restore the glory of old Mars!” he said contemptuously to N’rala. Then he laughed. “But they and their cult are damned useful in helping me to find the seven space stones.”

“When we have all the stones, and the secret of Thuro Thuun is in our grasp, it will be ours alone!” N’rala cried eagerly.

Quorn, still laughing, patted her shoulder.

“It will be mine, N’rala, not ours. I trust no one completely. But you shall share my power when the secret of Thuro Thuun is mine.”

UL QUORN went to the door of the pavilion. The cadaverous Saturnian called the Hearer was waiting outside.

“What had you to tell me?” the mixed-breed demanded.

“Master, you ordered me to listen to our audiences, when I was not performing, that I might detect any spies among them.”

“Yes, yes,” Quorn said impatiently. “What have you heard?”

“There were two men and a girl in the audience tonight,” the Hearer continued hastily. “I discovered from their talk that one of them was — Captain Future!”

“Captain Future?” Ul Quorn gasped, his small fists clenching.

“Yes, Master,” said the freak. “The other man was the Futureman they call Otho, and the girl was a secret agent of the Planet Police.”

Quorn’s handsome face was dark with passion as he stared past N’rala and the freak.

“Captain Future,” he muttered. “So he was here, and I didn’t know. The one man in the System I hate most bitterly!”

“Why?” N’rala asked wonderingly. “I never knew that you’d met Future.”

“I never did meet him, yet he and his Futuremen have a debt to me that they’re going to pay some day,” Quorn said between his teeth. “That debt goes back many years.”

He was silent, brooding. Neither the Martian girl nor the fearful, cadaverous Saturnian freak dared his anger until he spoke.

“What were they talking about? Why were they at our show?”

“I gathered that they only came in from curiosity,” the Hearer said quickly. “But the girl received a pocket-televisor call from Planet Police Headquarters, asking her to help investigate the murder of Professor Lester. She left, and Future went with her. He said he would help investigate to bring the murderer to justice.”

“If that devil Future is mixing into Lester’s death,” said Quorn harshly, “he might learn about the space stones and the secret —” Quorn made a quick decision. “We’ve got to get the other space stone that’s here on Earth, before Future can block us!”

“Surely you are not afraid of anything this Captain Future could do?” N’rala asked in amazement. “You, with your mastery of ancient and modern science?”

“I never underestimate an opponent,” Quorn said. “Too many smart men have been taken by that redheaded devil because they made that mistake.” The mixed-breed paced rapidly to and fro.

“The other space stone on Earth is in the private collection of Harrison Yale, whose estate is a hundred miles north of New York. I sent Juho to examine the place. I’ll need only the Hearer and the Chameleon Man for this job. Get a rocket-flier ready.”

TEN minutes later, Ul Quorn’s swift little Tark flier rose with a growl of rockets from the field near Amusement City, and headed northward.

The main show at the Interplanetary Circus had just ended, and the concessions were closing. A few miles southward, the shining pinnacles of New York challenged the moonlit sky. Behind Quorn in the little cabin crouched the Hearer and the lanky Saturnian called the Chameleon Man. Both freaks were silent, peering anxiously ahead. Quorn’s face was dark and inscrutable as he steered. His thoughts were less on the task ahead than on the man against whom he cherished a blood-feud.

He cut the rockets and opened the flier’s metalloy wings, on which they swooped, down through the moonlight, silently as a bat. Below was a big chromalloy mansion, set amid gardens along the river.

“Harrison Yale’s estate,” muttered the mixed-breed. “We’ll land in that grove at the far edge.”

Softly as an alighting bird of prey, the flier landed amid the trees. Quorn and the two freaks emerged.

“The collection is housed in a special vault near Yale’s mansion,” Quorn whispered. “Follow me.”

He led the way through the shadowy grove, holding in his hand a watchlike instrument he had taken from his pocket. They advanced five minutes, and then the thing in his hand buzzed weakly. Its sensitive detectors were warning of atom-traps ahead that would loose a terrific blast upon an unwary prowler.

Quorn spent ten patient minutes using his detector to find the hidden trap. He disconnected the concealed guns before they risked continuing. Finally a massive structure only thirty feet in diameter stood before them.

“Is anyone awake at the house?” Quorn asked the Hearer.

They waited as the freak listened intently.

“Not a sound, Master. But I can hear the breathing of two guards at the vault.”

“I expected that,” Quorn said. He turned to the Chameleon Man. “Get those guards out into the open.”

The Saturnian silently glided forward, keeping his hand on the mechanism at his belt. He softly approached the door of the massive vault and knocked. At once, the Chameleon Man faded from view as his skin took on the exact hue of the moonlit concrete wall. Two guards, armed with heavy atom-guns, came to the door. They looked around puzzledly.

Quorn had put away his watchlike detector and held a small cube in his hand. He pressed its switch. A pulsing conical radiance sprang out and enveloped the two guards. They choked, fell, and lay in writhing heaps of dead-alive flesh.

“Haul those bodies out of sight,” Quorn ordered.

As the two freaks obeyed, the mixed-breed entered the vault. Inside was one brightly lit room at whose center was an enormous cylindrical safe. Quorn bent and feverishly examined the complicated controls.

“Permutation lock,” he muttered. “I expected that.”

He applied a tubular eye-piece to the edge of the lock, and prepared to use the penetrating vibrations of a little projector. It would enable him to see into the lock’s interior and decipher the permutation that would unlock it.

“Master!” came a frantic whisper from the Hearer outside. “A rocket is flying straight toward this place!”

Quorn stiffened. “Can it be Future? If it is, I’ll have a chance to settle our old accounts!”

CAPTAIN FUTURE looked away from the hideous thing that had been Kenneth Lester, and stared around the softly lit study of the murdered archaeologist. Joan, Ezra Gurney and the Planet Police commander were silent, waiting for the wizard of science to speak. But Otho spoke first.

“I say it’s damned queer that we should have just been talking about ancient Martian science and then find that Lester was murdered by an ancient Martian weapon.”

Old Ezra Gurney stirred uneasily.

“I’ve seen men die in a lot of mighty bad ways, but I never saw anyone die like that.”

“Nobody else has, for ages,” Curt Newton replied somberly. “Simon and I have read of a weapon, used by the old Martians during the wars of the Ninth Dynasty, which caused this horrible disintegration. The nature of the weapon is still a mystery.”

Halk Anders, the bulldog-faced commander of the Planet Police, turned to Future.

“I had a call just before, from North Bonnel, the President’s secretary. He says that Professor Lester had called him tonight, asking to contact you.”

Curt Newton’s brows drew together.

“Contact me? Why?”

“Lester said he’d discovered something tremendous. He was excited.”

Curt felt that he was somehow touching the fringe of the mystery around this ghastly murder. His gray eyes swept the room, crowded with relics and unopened cases.

“Lester had been studying the fragments of Jovian civilization he brought back from the Cave of Ancients of Jupiter,” he said thoughtfully, “he told me he was eager to begin examining them.”

Captain Future’s memory swept back to that strange cavern on the shore of the great Fire Sea of Jupiter, where he, Grag and Lester had been trapped by the Space Emperor. The relics of Jovian science there had been given into Lester’s charge by the System Government.

“Maybe we could find out from his notes just what he was up to, Chief,” suggested Otho.

Curt nodded. “That file looks as though it contained his observations.”

For half an hour, while the others watched, the scientific wizard and the android leafed swiftly through the dead archaeologist’s notes. But when he had finished, Curt felt baffled.

“Nothing there,” he muttered. “Apparently he was just making a routine examination of the relics. But wait a minute! Here’s a list of all the things Lester brought from Jupiter. Let’s just check it to make sure they’re all here.”

Curt called off the objects while Otho, Ezra and Joan, who were familiar with Jovian relics, checked off each object in the study.

“One space stone,” Curt read at last.

He waited for the others to find it.

“Nothing like that here, Chief,” Otho reported.

Curt frowned. “Let it go for the moment. We’ll see if everything else is here.”

All the other listed objects proved to be present in the study. Captain Future went back to the matter of the missing space stone. He read the description on the list.

“ ‘A space stone cut and faceted in the ancient Martian fashion, apparently brought to Jupiter from Mars when Jovians had contact with other worlds.’ The space stone is the only thing that’s missing. Could that be the reason for the murder?”

“Would it be that valuable?” Ezra asked skeptically. “I don’t know much about ‘em.”

“They’re the most valuable jewels in the System,” Captain Future declared. “Only about half a dozen of them have ever been found. They’re actually a rare isotope of carbon, found only in meteors that enter the System from outside.”

Halk Anders, the Police Commander, looked interested.

“There was a space stone involved in a murder case on Mercury a few weeks ago, Captain Future. A gem merchant was murdered and a space stone stolen,”

Curt stiffened. “Was the murder committed in the same ghastly fashion as this one?”