Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) (10 page)

“I don’t like it, Captain Future,” confessed big Hol Jor. The Antarian star captain shook his head, his bluff red face uneasy.

“It was either come with them or fight at odds of ten to one,” Curt reminded them. His gray eyes gleamed. “And I wanted to come here! I want to find out what these Korians know about the Birthplace. They surely know something about it. They may even have learned from it the secret of creating matter, the secret we’re all after.

“They’ve brought us here, I’m sure, because they want to learn something from
us.
That’s why they’ve showed this pretended friendliness. Very well, what we must do is learn everything we can from them without telling them anything until we know just how things stand.”

“Sounds like a precarious situation, to me,” Otho muttered. “These green men are no fools.”

“I’m aware of that,” Curt nodded. “We’ll have to be careful. Let me do the talking when we’re taken to their king.”

The rasping voice of the Brain interrupted. “Lad, I think that I could get out of here if I wished. Come here and look at this.”

Curt hurried across the chamber. The Brain indicated a small square aperture high in the copper wall — a ventilation opening from which came a constant flow of cool, scented air.

“My ‘body’ is small enough to get through that ventilation tube.” Simon declared. “Do you want me to try it?”

“Not now, Simon,” said Curt Newton rapidly. “You remain here in the chambers when the rest of us go down tonight. I’ll make excuse for you. Then try it, and if you can do it, find a way out and return. It might be a card up our sleeve in this game.”

THE brilliant green sun was sinking behind the copper range. As its last rays died away, night came quickly on the palace and city of Kor. There was no moonlight, but the darkness was relieved by the shooting radiance of the electronic haze that filled the heavens.

Light came on softly in their chambers from hidden sources. They saw many other lights blossoming in the streets of the city, and heard the dim murmur of the crowds of green people in those streets. Conical ships cruised like dark fish over the city, seemingly in watch. The door opened without warning, and old Uzhur stood on its threshold. The noble now wore brilliant jeweled belts over his dress.

“King Larstan will now grant you audience before the feast begins, strangers,” he told Curt.

Captain Future gestured toward the Brain. “My friend here does not eat, and therefore does not enjoy feasts. He wishes to remain.”

“Is he really a living being?” asked Uzhur, staring curiously at the square, transparent case of the Brain. “He looks more like an instrument or machine. But he may remain here if he wishes.”

They went back down the great silver stair with the old Korian noble, entered a hall of truly kingly dimensions. Its copper walls towered the full three levels of the palace, and it was crowded with ranks of the green Korian men and women, brilliantly garbed and jeweled. They stared with intense interest at Curt’s company.

Down the hall toward the throne-dais at its farther end strode the eight star-rovers. Upon one side of Captain Future marched Otho, insolently staring around the crowd. On his other side stalked the mighty metal form of Grag. Close behind them came the swaggering star captains — hulking Hol Jor and his Antarian companion, fat, waddling Taunus Tar, tight-faced, brown Ki Illok, and old Ber Del, the blue Vegan. Curt Newton halted before the throne-dais and looked up calmly at the man and woman who sat in silver chairs facing him.

“The star-strangers from outside the cloud, highness!” Uzhur was announcing. “Strangers, King Larstan and Queen Liane!”

Curt felt a shock of amazement as he looked at the king. He had expected some aggressive, bullying, half-barbarian ruler. But Larstan was a handsome young man, his dark hair brushed sleekly back from his high forehead. His pale green face wore an almost sleepy expression, his lids drooping over dark eyes that studied Curt Newton and his comrades with apparent disinterest.

“Intelligent —
too
intelligent,” Captain Future thought sharply. “It won’t be easy to fool this man!”

He bowed politely to Larstan and his queen. The woman was hardly more than a girl, her perfect, pale-green face extraordinarily beautiful in its frame of dark hair, her haughty eyes showing a flicker of interest as they rested on Curt Newton’s tall form and tanned face. Larstan’s handsome face was smooth and impassive as he considered Curt’s group. His voice was velvety.

“Uzhur says that you have come here in search of secrets of the universe, strangers. Just what secret is it that you seek”

“He thinks we’re hunting the Birthplace!” Curt thought quickly. “But he can’t be sure —”

Aloud, Captain Future spoke blandly. “We had heard vague rumors of marvelous things here inside the cloud and wished to see if they were true. So we came, from different outside stars, into this place.”

“Was one of the tales you heard a tale of the Birthplace of Matter?” Larstan suddenly asked him.

“Yes, that was one of the tales. Can you tell me, is there any truth to it?”

Larstan laughed softly. “I like you, stranger — you are not stupid. Yes, the Birthplace of Matter exists here within the cloud.”

“Have you Korians been able to learn the secret of matter-creation from it?” Captain Future asked. He hung tensely upon the answer.

Before Larstan could answer, Ber Del, the old Vegan, made a fatal interruption. He whispered loudly to Curt.

“Ask about the Watchers.”

Larstan and Uzhur and all the other nearby Korians heard. And the effect upon them of the old Vegan’s words was astounding. They were stricken into a dead silence, an unnatural hush falling on the hall. Then Larstan jumped to his feet, his dark eyes blazing in tigerish suspicion at Curt. “What do you know about the Watchers?”

THE BRAIN waited for some time after Captain Future and the others had left, before moving from the table on which he rested. Then he rose smoothly into the air.

“Now to see if there’s a way out of this trap we’re in,” Simon muttered to himself.

The Brain detested action. His icy mentality, almost completely divorced from ordinary emotions by his lack of a human body, took its chief delight in scientific speculation and experiment. He would often remain motionless, brooding for hours on end, wrapped in some intricate problem.

But one emotion still beat strongly in the mind of Simon Wright. That was his utter devotion to Captain Future. Since the long-dead day upon the Moon when he and Grag and Otho had undertaken the guardianship of the helpless infant who then was Curtis Newton, the devotion of the Brain to his brilliant pupil had never wavered. It was anxiety for Curt’s safety that now spurred Simon into action. He glided softly across the room, moving with a smooth effortlessness upon his traction beams. Those magnetic beams, which Simon could jet from apertures in his square case in any direction, not only gave him great powers of free movement, but could also be used as arms and hands. He made a weird sight as he softly approached the door, opened it by means of one of his beams and peered down the corridor outside with his lens-like eyes.

“As I expected,” he murmured to himself, closing the door. “These Korians are taking no chances.”

A dozen Korian guards were still on duty in the corridor outside. Exit by that way was impossible. So Simon turned toward the windows.

He examined the latticework of silvery metal outside the windows. Its interstices were much too small to permit him to pass through. Investigation showed him that the metal bars of the lattices were extremely heavy, composed of an unknown alloy of great hardness and strength which would resist almost any force.

“This suite,” the Brain decided, “is a disguised prison, as we thought. But there still remain the ventilation tubes.”

He directed his effortless movement toward the square opening high in the copper wall of this corner chamber. Hovering outside it, he peered and listened intently for a few minutes. The aperture was obviously the mouth of a ventilating tube. A constant current of cool, fragrant air poured out of it. The aperture was not barred, for it was too small for a man to enter. But the Brain could enter it! He found by cautious test that his square case would pass through the opening into the squared tube behind it, with a few inches of room to spare.

“There must be a network of such tubes inside the walls of this palace,” he thought. “And if I can find a way outside —”

Without hesitation, he glided into the darkness of the tube. It dropped vertically, inside the wall. The Brain sank cautiously down its shaft upon his traction beams, hearing the rush of air pumped upward all around him. The tube joined a larger, horizontal duct. Simon entered this, proceeding in a westerly direction somewhere within a wall that he estimated was on the ground floor of the great palace. Then he heard an ever louder whistle of air, and detected a pumping sound from ahead.

“Just what I was afraid of,” he thought annoyedly. “Perhaps I can get past, though.”

He had come to two of the power-driven fans which pumped the air upward through the ducts. The whirring fans completely blocked the tube, being set side by side in the large duct.

SIMON cautiously glided along the duct until he was a few feet from the left fan. He peered toward it. The darkness was absolute, yet the Brain could see a little even in utter darkness, for his lens-eyes embodied an ingenious infra-red sensitivity. The whirring fan was powered by a small atomic motor sunk in the side of the duct. Simon used two of his tractor beams to take the cover off this motor. A turn of a screw was sufficient to close the injector valve of its tiny cyclotron unit. The motor gradually died and the left fan stopped its whirling.

The Brain approached and began to disassemble the left fan from its mounting. He made a strange picture, hovering in the dark duct within the palace wall, working deftly with his tractor beams. He finally got the whole left fan and housing out, leaving one half of the big duct open.

“Better leave the right fan working,” he muttered to himself as he glided forward in the duct. “They’d soon notice if the pumping of air through these tubes stopped completely.”

Twenty feet farther along the duct, the Brain emerged suddenly into the open night. At once, he darted back into the concealment of the duct.

From that point, he studied his situation. The mouth of this duct was in the northern facade of the palace, near ground level. The tube was designed to suck in fresh air at this point, by the help of the fans. Before the Brain lay the obscurity of the palace gardens. Tall, graceful trees and beautiful flowering shrubs were silhouetted against the hazy, glowing sky.

From, the palace above him came a distant sound of laughter, song, clinking glasses.

“It’s a way out, but only for me,” Simon thought. “I don’t see how this is going to help much.”

He decided to retrace his way to their chambers and report his findings to the others when they returned. The tubes along which he returned were now less noisy, due to his stopping of the fan. As he glided over the mouth of one of the branch tubes leading downward, the Brain heard an unexpected sound, A low sobbing came from one of the downward tubes, so faint as to be almost inaudible even to his keen microphone-ears. The Brain, intrigued, decided to investigate.

He dropped softly down that particular tube, found that this ventilation duct opened into the ceiling of a small, windowless cell deep in the underground levels of the palace. Faint light came from a door loophole. He could dimly make out the interior of the cell. In one corner, a slim girl lay sobbing. But some consciousness of watching eyes made her suddenly spring to her feet and look around. She instantly glimpsed the square case of the Brain, floating above her.

“Make no sound,” warned Simon quickly in a rasping whisper.

He had divined at once, from the fact that this was a dungeon, that the girl was a prisoner. She stood now, looking up at him, wide eyes peering incredulously.

“What — who — are you?” she whispered, awed by the unhuman appearance of the floating Brain, whose lens-eyes were fixed on her.

Simon Wright was thinking swiftly as he took in her appearance. This girl was white, not green-skinned like the natives of Kor.

HER bright yellow hair, cut short at her shoulders, glimmered through the semi-darkness. He could hardly more than glimpse her pale, strained face and dilated eyes. Her garment was a knee-length white kirtle and tunic that left her legs and arms and shoulders bare.

“You’re some new device of Larstan’s to torture me,” she said bitterly after a moment, in the language of Kor.

“You are Larstan’s prisoner?” the Brain asked her.

She paid him no attention. “So the Korians try now to torment me with speaking machines,” she said. “Do they think such a childish device will shatter my resistance?”

“Listen to me, girl,” rasped the Brain. “I am no machine. My human brain lives and speaks to you from within this case. Nor am I a friend or tool of the king of Kor. I and my comrades are ourselves detained by the Korians, upon whose world we landed for the first time today.”