Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) (11 page)

Hastily picking himself up from the ooze into which he had fallen, Newton scrambled away through the polyp forest. He breathed in shaky relief when he had left all sight of the raging monster behind.

“That would be one for Jeff Lewis’ picture,” he thought. “Fighting a ‘swallower’ with a stage-pistol. But he’d say it was too crazy.”

He plunged on through the shadowy submarine forest. Soon he had come within sight of the brightly shining lights of the
Perseus.

Newton carefully detoured to approach the resting ship from the tail, so that he would not be seen from inside it. He clambered through the ooze beneath the projecting tail of the craft, until he reached the little aft emergency air-lock. It was open, and he slipped inside and then rapped softly on the inner door in an agreed signal. There was a low humming of power, and the outer door slid shut and pumps rapidly expelled the water.

The inner door opened. And beyond it, inside the deserted keel passageway of the ship, poised the waiting shape of the Brain. Curt Newton hastily shed his wet seasuit, and strode to the side of his waiting comrade.

Simon Wright was holding a small, cube-shaped apparatus from which extended two insulated cables that ended in flat coils.

“You prepared a gas-tube as we planned?” Curt Newton asked in a rapid whisper, without further greeting.

Simon Wright handed him a silver tube, with a trigger at one end.

“Yes, it wasn’t hard. I synthesized the sleep-gas from rocket-fuel elements. Valdane is in his suite now with Kin Kurd. But the man Rosson is on guard outside it.”

“You bring the brain-scanner,” Captain Future said quickly. “Remember, I mustn’t be seen or the whole game is up.”

TAKING infinite care to avoid being sighted by anyone in the ship, the gliding Brain and he made their way up through the little-used aft passages to the middle deck. He peered around the corner into the main mid-deck corridor. Rosson, Valdane’s tough-looking Earthman satellite, was again lounging alertly outside his employer’s door. Captain Future raised and aimed the gas-tube silently. He depressed its trigger briefly. A tiny cloud of almost colorless gas shot from it and hit Rosson’s face. The tough Earthman sank to the floor.

Curt Newton now raced down the corridor, the Brain close behind. He listened for a moment at the door. A vague murmur of voices came from inside. Curt Newton applied the end of his gas-tube to the keyhole of the door. He depressed the trigger, holding it down so that the full charge of compressed sleep-gas would enter the rooms beyond.

He heard the beginning of an alarmed exclamation — then the thump and thud of two falling bodies. Instantly Captain Future was deftly working with the lock of the door. The door clicked open. He dragged the senseless form of Rosson swiftly inside with them as he and the Brain entered.

Jon Valdane and Kin Kurd lay unconscious. The sleep-gas had already been carried away by the repaired ventilation system, but it had done its work.

“Close the door, Simon,” Captain Future directed as he bent over the prostrate figure of Jon Valdane with the brain-scanner.

Carefully, Curt Newton strapped the two flat little induction-coils of the apparatus to Valdane’s head, so that one of the coils lay flat against each of the financier’s temples. He checked the cables leading from the coils to the machine. Then he snapped a switch and carefully turned a rheostat on the front panel of the apparatus. “There won’t be anything selective about this,” Curt Newton muttered as he waited. “But if we’re lucky, we’ll pick up enough from Valdane’s mind to enlighten us about his plans.”

“We haven’t unlimited time,” warned Simon Wright. “If some of Valdane’s men come here —”

He left the idea unfinished. For now, out of the little loud-speaker attached to the apparatus, a monotonous voice was speaking.

It was an artificially articulated “voder” voice. And what it was speaking were thoughts! The thoughts and memories of the unconscious Jon Valdane were being detected by the delicate induction coils of this incredible instrument, and translated artificially into intelligible speech.

“— must be powerful,” the machine was saying monotonously. “To be powerful, I must be rich. It is my only way of excelling. I —”

“Just subconscious stuff,” muttered Captain Future. He turned the rheostat a trifle. “We’ve got to pick up his recent memories.”

Two wizards of dark, unfathomable science he and Simon Wright seemed, as they crouched tensely listening to their machine drag the inmost mental secrets from the senseless man. Yet this thing which he and Simon Wright had years ago invented was based upon simple scientific principles.

Their brain-scanner was simply an advanced development of experiments that were very old. Long ago, the Harvard scientists of Earth had developed the electro-encephalograph which picked up the almost imperceptible electric currents of the brain which are the concomitant of thought. Those old scientists had been able only to record the thought-currents by the bobbing of a needle. Captain Future and the Brain had succeeded in translating them into speech.

“— with the Stygians,” the flat voice was saying. “They wouldn’t grant us the diamond concession. Only one way to get it from them —”

“This is what we want, Simon,” Curt Newton exclaimed eagerly. “Valdane’s thought a lot recently about his Stygian plan. If we can piece together enough of his thoughts and memories —”

“Listen, lad,” admonished the Brain, who was tensely alert.

BUT the flat voice that was reporting Valdane’s mind was on a different subject now, relating figures connected with some financial deal in which they had not the slightest interest.

Captain Future felt frustration. Their brain-scanner could not possibly operate selectively. It could only “scan” the complex synaptic pattern of the brain a little bit at a time, impartially reporting what it found there.

The mechanical voice spoke on, calmly reporting Jon Valdane’s most secret thoughts, desires, aspirations. But not until some minutes had passed, did it come again to that which interested them.

“— will be risky on Styx,” it said. “But those diamond-deposits are worth taking risks for. And that’s the only way that I can ever get my hands on them. The way nobody else ever figured, the loophole in the Stygian treaty —”

Curt Newton listened with intense expectation. But again, the report of Jon Valdane’s mind shifted to other matters.

“Once I have control of the wealth of Styx, I’ll be by far the most powerful man in the System. Then —”

Captain Future uttered an exclamation of disappointment. “We almost had the secret of what he’s planning.”

“We’ll get the rest, with patience,” said the Brain calmly. The brain-scanner was talking again. “Must take care that Chan Carson gets safely to Styx. The whole scheme will be easier to put through if we can use him —”

Newton was astounded. What did that mean? How was Valdane planning to use him, whom he thought a timid, commonplace actor?

But the rest of Valdane’s translated thought-memory on that subject, uttered by the scanner, swept that and all else from Newton’s mind.

“— but for that very reason, the Randall girl must not reach Styx. Should have taken care of her at Jupiter. Kin Kurri is a stupid blunderer. But Su Thuar will see to her at Neptune. His idea of fixing her oxygen-tank is good. When she smothers, it’ll look like an accident to her sea-suit. We don’t want any Patrol investigation —”

Captain Future sprang to his feet. His face was deathly white as terrible understanding burst upon him.

“Good gosh,” he exclaimed hoarsely. “Joan may be dying out there now. The devils have tampered with the oxygen tank of her suit.”

He lunged to the door. “Come on, Simon. I’ve got to get to her. You have to let me back out through the escape-hatch.”

The Brain hesitated a moment. “There’ll be no further chance to use the scanner on Valdane, for he’ll soon come to. And we haven’t anything more than a few dim clues.”

“To blazes with Valdane and everything else,” cried Curt Newton. “Joan may be dying.”

He plunged down the corridor with Simon Wright gliding close after him. Possessed by an overpowering fear, he was reckless of discovery but fortune was kind and they met no one in the aft corridors.

At the escape-hatch, Curt Newton delayed a moment to rip open the spacesuit locker beside it and snatch up one of the spare oxygen-tanks of the suits. He inspected its gauge swiftly, then clambered into his own sea-suit, tucked the spare tank under his arm, and entered the hatch.

The inner door of the little airlock slid shut as Simon Wright operated the emergency hatch from within. The outer door opened, and the sea smashed in on Captain Future. He flung himself out into the dusky waters. And with a cold dread clutching his heart and spurring his muscles, he started in a desperate, dragging run through the weird groves of the polyp forest.

“If she’s dead!” his brain throbbed. “If she’s dead, I’ll kill Su Thuar and Valdane and all the rest of them right here.”

He was heading back toward the undersea city of the sea-folk where he had left Joan with the telepicture troupe. Reckless now of the dangers of the depths, he took the straightest course toward it. Before Curt Newton had covered half the distance, he was suddenly galvanized by a faint call from the little telaudio inside his helmet.

“Joan, is that you?” he cried frantically. “Are you all right?”

FAINTLY the trapped girl’s voice came to him.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, her tones quivering with gladness as she recognized his voice. “My oxygen ran out. I’m down here in a ‘breather’s’ burrow. It was the only chance I had.”

“Joan, stay there — I’m coming,” Captain Future promised, his heart pounding with relief. “Keep speaking each few moments so I can know the way to you.”

He steered his way through the labyrinthine polyp forest by listening to her frequent calls. Their short-range telaudios, good for a radius of only a few thousand feet, made her voice quickly louder when he went toward her and as rapidly weaker when he was going away from her.

Thus Captain Future groped his way through the dusky undersea groves until he found the entrance of the “breather’s” burrow. He dived unhesitatingly down into the dark mouth of the tunnel, and clambered through it until he emerged up into the burrow itself.

By the light of Joan’s krypton belt-lamp, he perceived the interior of this air-filled pocket under the ocean floor. Joan was crouched upon a rock ledge above the water, and at the other end of the ledge a huge, turtle-like “breather” was protectively guarding its young. The beady eyes of the big, harmless creature watched Curt Newton with apprehension.

Curt Newton ripped off his helmet, and took the shuddering girl into his arms. Joan Randall was nearer to hysteria than he had ever seen her.

“It’s been like a nightmare,” she sobbed. “And yet it was almost funny when that ‘breather’ came back and found me in here. It was as scared of me as I was scared of it. I laughed.” He fitted the full oxygen tank he had brought to her suit, and they scrambled out of the burrow of the “breather.” Then they started hastily through the polyp forest toward the city of the sea-folk.

When they finally emerged from the submarine forest into full view of the telepicture troupe at the city’s edge, Jeff Lewis sighted them. “So you found Carson, Miss Randall. It’s about time.”

“He was wandering in circles only a quarter-mile inside the forest,” Joan Randall said in an exasperated voice.

“I’ve had a terrible experience,” Curt Newton shrilled in accents of horror. “I couldn’t find my way in that ghastly place.”

“Stop whimpering, Carson,” Lewis said brutally. “You’ve wasted enough of our time already. We’ve got to finish these scenes. Get over there with the automaton.” They again enacted the scenes the producer wanted, Grag striding in stiff automaton-fashion beside Curt Newton as he excitedly met Ron King and Lura Lind at the edge of the grotesque city.

The cameras whirred, the krypton spotlights eerily illuminated the scene. Through the dusky waters into the spotlights rushed schools of frightened fish, while the humanoid sea-folk swam around the beams in undiminished curiosity.

“Swell, all this is stuff no telepicture ever had before,” exulted Jeff Lewis as they finished the last scene. “With these and the Jupiter scenes, and the big climactic shots, we’ll make on Styx, ‘The Ace of Space’ will be a smash hit.”

Jim Willard and Su Thuar came out of the polyp forest. “We couldn’t find Carson anywhere,” the Venusian reported.

He stopped suddenly. His sea-suited figure grew stiff with amazement as he glimpsed Joan Randall.

“Where did she come from?” he gulped.

“Miss Randall found Carson,” growled Jeff Lewis. “All right, folks, that’s all. We’re going back to the ship.”

Captain Future realized the reason for Su Thuar’s stupefaction. The Venusian could not understand how Joan Randall had managed to survive without air. Curt Newton trembled with bitter anger toward the murderous scoundrel. It was not Su Thuar’s fault that Joan Randall was not dead in the polyp forest. The Futureman swore to himself that he would repay the Venusian for that.

They tramped back through the submarine forest to the
Perseus
without incident, accompanied part way by the swarming, swimming sea-folk. But when they entered the ship, they found excitement in it. Jon Valdane, with Kin Kurd, was talking angrily to Captain Petersen.

“There’s been a mysterious attack on Mr. Valdane while you were gone,” the captain told Jeff Lewis. “We can’t understand who committed it.”

Valdane’s eyes fell upon Joan Randall’s face as she removed her helmet. And he and Kin Kurd showed blank surprise for a moment.

Su Thuar spoke swiftly, meaningly, to his employer.

“We had trouble ourselves. Carson got lost, and Miss Randall was gone for a couple of hours searching for him.”

Valdane’s small eyes flashed suspiciously.

“She got lost, you say?” he snarled. “Hah! That is interesting!”

The financier did not say anything more, but Newton could readily surmise what he was thinking. Valdane believed that Joan had returned to the ship and gassed them.