Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) (16 page)

“It is stated that Captain Future led the Lunarian natives in opposition to the Patrol company, but was forced to retreat. The Patrol forces have cut off the outlaw and his followers from all possible escape, so that it is only a matter of hours until the inevitable capture of the man who murdered President Carthew.”

As the excited bulletin ended, Ezra Gurney furiously snapped off the instrument and leaped to his feet. The old marshal paced angrily to and fro in his little office here in Government Tower, on Earth.

“The cursed fools!” he exclaimed, his faded blue eyes bitter with rage. “The idiots!”

The door of his office burst open and Joan Randall hurried in. The girl agent’s dark, lovely face was flushed.

“Ezra, you heard that bulletin just now?” she cried. “The Futuremen trapped there inside the Moon — the Patrol closing in on them!”

“I heard, an’ it makes me feel like killin’ some of these space-struck imbeciles, who believe Cap’n Future is a murderer!” raged the old marshal.

“That wouldn’t help Captain Future!” the girl exclaimed.

Her dark eyes flashed. “We’ve got to do something!”

“I know what I’m goin’ to do!” Ezra said violently. “I’m goin’ to resign from the Patrol an’ go out there to the Moon an’ stand beside the Futuremen. I’d have done it before, if I’d known just, where they were.”

“I’ll resign and go with you,” Joan said promptly. Then her face fell. “But what can just we two do to help against a full Patrol company?”

Ezra Gurney’s faded blue eyes lighted.

“Listen, Joan, we two ain’t the only friends Captain Future’s got left in the System. There’s plenty of other people in the nine worlds that he helped, who know he couldn’t do anything like murder. If we could round up some of them people —”

“And form an interplanetary legion to go to Captain Future’s rescue?” Joan cried, her eyes shining, with excitement. “Ezra, could we do it? Let’s quit the Patrol and start sending out the call right now!”

Soon thereafter, secret televisor messages began to stream out from Earth through the nine worlds. They were summons to men who in past times had owed their lives to the Futuremen, and who knew them incapable of murder.

The summons went to a hawk-eyed Martian living on the little moon Deimos, one whom few people suspected had once been the greatest space pirate of the void. It went to a group of Saturnian engineers whom Captain Future had years before saved from a hideous fate.

To Jupiter went the summons, to a people of South Equatoria, who still reverenced the very name of the red-haired adventurer who had lifted a dreadful atavistic blight from their midst. To Venus it went, to a hardy band of swamp men who owed a debt no less. And to Mercury, where certain pilots of the famous Rocketeers leaped at the chance to repay the man who had once helped them.

From all, quarters of the System, swift ships came racing toward the rendezvous in space near the Moon which the summons had given. The friends of the Futuremen were rallying to give aid, even though they felt they could not possibly be in time to save Captain Future and his comrades from the slowly closing trap.

At the rendezvous in space, Ezra Gurney and Joan were waiting in a cruiser of their own. The hastily summoned interplanetary legion flashed toward the Moon. They swept down into Great North Chasm to land beside the mining dame there. But as they landed, they intercepted the televisor message, which spelled doom to their hopes of rescuing the Futuremen. It read:

Planet Patrol Company Seven reporting to Earth GHQ.

We have finally cornered Captain Future and his Lunarians down here and are about to rush them.

Down in the green-lit underworld, deep within the Moon, the retreating Lunarians had reached a desperate temporary refuge in the Marsh of Monsters. Those on foot had floundered through muck and reeds, and those in canoes had pushed up narrow, winding waterways from the black sea, to reach this momentary haven.

It was a small island of muddy ground deep in the dreaded marsh. Giant reeds towered for twenty feet in the air around it, growing from the mud and mucky pools. The quivering radiance of the distant radium peak filtered through the reeds, in a strange green glow that wanly illuminated the throngs of weary, exhausted Moon people gathered here.

Old Reh Sel’s wrinkled face was foreboding as he looked around the throng of his people who sat or sprawled, worn out by the long retreat. He spoke vehemently to Captain Future.

“We can’t stay here long! My people could bring little food, and there is no shelter here, and the great beasts of this marsh will scent us out and attack us.”

Curt Newton did not stop work to answer. Curt was toiling desperately with Grag and Otho to haul his half-completed wave-transmitter off the improvised scow of canoes, and set it up amid the reeds.

“It will be only a matter of hours here, Reh Sel,” he pleaded. “Only long enough to complete this thing. Then your fighting men can turn and drive back the invaders, without loss of a single life.”

“Oh, Chief, it’s hopeless!” blurted Otho discouragedly. “That Patrol force is still following us and they’ll soon find us here. And even if you could finish this transmitter and get fuel for it before they find us, how are you going to stop a heavily armed force like that with just an immaterial broadcast wave?”

Toiling breathlessly, Curt made no answer. But the Futureman’s black pessimism found an echo in his own worried thoughts.

Scouts had reported that the strong Planet Patrol force which had invaded this lunar underworld had marched past the Lunarian town. The enemy was now advancing rapidly along the marsh trail. Only a few hours were left!

“Grag, start welding together those copper sheets to form the transmitter’s radiation sphere,” Curt ordered. “Otho, you and Simon help me with the frame work.”

“You’ve gambled everything on this wave-transmitter, lad!” rasped the Brain as they labored. “If it doesn’t work —”

“It will work, if we complete it and get radium fuel for it in time,” Captain Future muttered. “It’s only an enlarged application of the same damping-wave principle we developed in the Moon laboratory, years ago.”

ALBERT WISSLER watched them with wide eyes. The captive scientist was trying to understand the purpose of their tense work, but could not.

A spherical copper radiation sphere grew slowly into being, enclosing the intricate apparatus of the wave-transmitter and the shielded atomic-power unit at its core. Yet progress seemed maddeningly slow to Curt.

A scream from a Lunarian woman suddenly ripped through the air, echoed by a score of terrified voices.

“The Patrol can’t have caught up to us yet!” cried Otho, jumping up from their work.

“Marsh monsters!” the Lunarian women were screaming. “They come —”

“Devils of space, look at those creatures!” yelled Grag, aghast.

Two enormous, oily black bulks were crashing through the giant reeds toward this recently crowded island of refuge.

The monsters giving this dreaded marsh its name were semi-aquatic beasts of elephantine bulk, lumbering forward on massive flipper limbs, their snaky necks hideous with round heads split by great jaws of terrifying fangs.

Captain Future lunged through the frightened throng, grabbing up a spear-bow. Fwar Aj and other Lunarians had jumped fiercely forward with their own weapons. But already, with blood-chilling, hissing shrieks, the foremost of the two charging monsters had thrust out its long neck to seize a hapless Lunarian in its jaws. Red eyes glaring, the creature raised its victim aloft, towering over the comparative pygmies at its feet.”

“Shoot at their heads!” Far Aj was roaring. “Only at that point is a marsh monster vulnerable!”

A blur of flying spears filled the air as the Lunarians loosed their shafts. Curt’s shoulder jarred to the recoil of the unfamiliar weapon, and he saw that the spear he shot went wide of its mark.

But Fwar Aj and the others had hit the nearest marsh monster in the neck. The creature dropped its dead prey and reared up, snarling and hissing. More spears flew toward it, feathering its head now.

“Got it!” yelled Fwar Aj. “Aim at the other!”

The nearest monster had keeled over with a crash that threw muddy water in their faces. The other creature hastily retreated.

Curt Newton heard a wailing begin as the kin of the dead Lunarian gathered over his body. Fwar Aj was gazing grimly at the slain monster.

“There will be others,” predicted the grizzled Moon-man. “They will keep scenting us out, and attacking.”

Captain Future, sickened by the tragedy, hurried back with Grag and Otho to their work.

“Hurry!” he urged. “These Lunarians can’t stay here for long.”

Hours passed — hours of maddeningly tedious labor to the Futuremen, hours of peril and alarm for the huddled Lunarians.

Twice again, marsh monsters came crashing through the reeds, to be driven back by concentrated fire from scores of spear-bows.

Still more alarming, Lunarian scouts slipping back through the swamp, breathlessly reported that the main Patrol force had reached the marsh, and was starting to beat through it in search of the fugitives.

At long last Captain Future straightened unsteadily.

“Done!” he exclaimed. “That was the last connection.”

THE wave-transmitter was complete, a complexity of apparatus cased within the spherical copper shell that was to radiate its force. The thing towered like a great metal ball over the heads of the Futuremen.

“Now all we need is the fuel to operate the atomic-power unit inside the transmitter,” Curt reminded them. It’s got to be radioactive fuel — nothing else will produce the superpower required.”

He turned to Otho.

“You and I are going to take a canoe and go out to the shining peak for the radium we need. Grag, get the spacesuits you coated with lead, and the lead crucible.”

But when the Lunarians understood the purpose for which Curt was preparing a canoe, they put up a strong protest.

“You cannot land on the Shining Mountain and bring back part of its sacred mass!” cried old Reh Sel. “It would be the blackest blasphemy!”

Curt struggled against their superstitious objections.

“Would you rather see the mountain desecrated by the invaders?”

He finally over came their protests. He and Otho donned the space-suits which had been coated with lead. With the improvised lead crucible Grag had made; they entered one of the canoes and poled and paddled out through the reeds toward the open sea.

They finally won through the labyrinthine waterways of the marsh to the open water. At once, Curt and Otho bent to their paddles. The canoe flew out over the dark waves toward the radiant peak.

The Shining Mountain was an appalling spectacle as they approached it from offshore. Its great mass, shelving up from the waters and soaring into a lofty two-pronged crag, emitted such blinding green radiance at close hand that it dazzled even through the glare-proof helmets they wore.

Its wild, shaking emerald radiance lanced around the two Futuremen like flashes of green lightning as they paddled nearer. It was like approaching a sun. Captain Future realized that they were now within the blast of alpha radiation from the giant mass of radium ores. Only the protective coating of their suits and helmets saved them from perishing.

The canoe grounded upon the shining rock ledge on the mountain’s northern side. Curt and Otho clambered ashore with the crucible.

“Gods of space, it’s like standing on the Sun itself!” muttered Otho, appalled.

“Hurry — the insulation on our suits may break down!” Captain Future warned. “We’ve got to fill this crucible and get out of here.”

With a metal bar he had brought for the purpose, he began digging out a quantity of the blazing rock. Otho used his lead gloved hands to shovel the ore into the big crucible.

Curt felt his skin itching and burning ominously. He realized that even through the super-insulation of their suits, the deadly radiation was beginning to penetrate. He dug furiously.

“That’s enough!” he cried finally.”Back to the canoe!”

They tumbled into the craft and urgently shoved off from the lethal mountain. With convulsive strokes, they paddled away.

They were more than halfway back to the Marsh of Monsters on the northern shore before they ventured to remove the suits. Then Otho uttered a cry.

“Listen to that!”

ACROSS the water from the recesses of the marsh, there came to their ears a dim babel of fierce yells and crackling atom-guns.

“We’re too late!” Otho cried despairingly. “The Patrol has rushed the Lunarians.”

“We are not too late if we can get the wave-transmitter going, even now!” Captain Future blazed. “Paddle hard!”

The yellow canoe almost flew over the waters toward the marsh. They forced it furiously up the winding waterways between the giant reeds.

Dark-uniformed men of the Planet Patrol, plunging through the reeds toward the battle ahead, glimpsed their canoe and lunged in front of it, up to their waists in water.

“It’s Future — get him!” rang the yell.

Curt sprang up, and as Otho paddled fiercely, he knocked aside the clutching Patrol men with his own paddle.

They shot on through the reeds, bending low as atom-guns blasted behind them and streaks of white fire cut through the long grasses. A few moments later they reached the island where the Lunarians had taken refuge.

The desperate haven as almost surrounded by squads of Planet Patrol officers approaching through the reeds! Fwar Aj and his Lunarian fighters were yelling defiance to the oncoming men, waiting till they got within range of the spear bows.

The Patrol force fired another warning volley from their atom-guns over the heads of the crowded Lunarians. The voice of the Patrol captain rang through the din.

“Captain Future! You and the Futuremen surrender and these other people won’t be harmed. Otherwise, we’re coming in shooting!”

Curt had plunged ashore with the crucible of blazing radioactive matter, toward the towering copper ball on the wave-transmitter.