Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) (5 page)

The town lay just beyond the field, a few straggling streets of metalloy shacks hemmed in by the towering fern-jungle. Tough-looking, bronzed Earthmen miners and squat green Jovians crowded around the telepicture troupe. The air was hot and steamy, and laden with strange scents and fragrances.

“What an uncivilized-looking place,” complained Lura Lind. The blonde actress wrinkled her nose. “What’s that sulphurous smell?”

“It comes from the Fire Sea — that’s only a few miles north from here,” Joan Randall informed her.

JON VALDANE, standing with his tall Saturnian friend, mopped his plump, pink face.

“This air is too soupy to breathe.”

They did not feel the increased gravitation, of course. The compact gravitation-equalizers which every interplanetary traveller wore at his belt compensated automatically for that.

“Sam — Sam Martin!” Jeff Lewis was shouting through the confusion. “Get those trucks out and start loading the stuff. Where the blazes is that guide we arranged to have meet us?”

The guide, a worried-looking green Jovian, appeared. “All is ready, sir,” he reported. “There’s a trail through the jungle to the Fire Sea, which your trucks can follow. But it is dangerous by the Fire Sea right now. It is the time of the Meeting of the Moons, which means there is risk of tidal eruptions. You had better wait a few days.”

“Wait, nothing,” Jeff Lewis retorted. “We’ve got a schedule to maintain.”

Curt Newton stood, looking around in assumed bewilderment at this scene that really was perfectly familiar to him. Actually, he was looking for Otho. Otho had disappeared, but now he reappeared.

Newton noticed Grag being loaded with other properties on one of the rocket-trucks that had been run out of the
Perseus’
hold. The big robot was playing his part of lifeless automaton perfectly.

Jim Willard shouted to the Martian technician. “Lo Quior, Jeff says we’re to go ahead with the anti-heaters and set up location-camp on the shore. Come on.”

The first rocket-trucks, loaded with the massive anti-heaters, rattled away. Property trucks followed.

Jeff Lewis had rounded up his actors. “We’ve a few short scenes to make here at the spaceport and in the jungle. They’ll show Ron and Lura fleeing from the men of the Legion of Doom who are pursuing them.”

Ron King and Lura Lind, the romantic leads of “The Ace of Space,” soon had enacted those scenes. They were filmed fleeing desperately from the spaceport into the jungle.

“All right, folks — now to the Fire Sea,” Jeff Lewis barked. “Into this truck here. And hurry — Jupiter’s days are short, you know.”

Curt Newton entered the truck with the others and they rattled through the bumpy streets of Jungletown. They followed the other trucks northward along a rude Jovian roadway through the jungle.

The great fern-forest was a towering, solid wall on either side of them. Suckerflies swarmed out of the green vegetation upon them. They glimpsed grotesque tree-octopi flitting through the ferns, and bulbous balloon-beasts floated by above them.

“What’s that place over there?” asked Ron King, pointing in awe at distant, cyclopean black towers that rose out of the jungle.

Captain Future knew what it was. In that Place of the Dead, as the Jovians called it, he had once reached the climax of one of his most perilous adventures. But he pretended ignorance, as Joan Randall answered the question.

“It’s an ancient, ruined Jovian city,” Joan said, her brown eyes fixed on those crumbling, enigmatic towers. “I was there once.”

Curt Newton knew what was in her mind. He and she had both been there, that terrible night when his struggle with the Space Emperor had ended.

Jon Valdane and Kin Kurri had come along, though Su Thuar had not. The financier’s chubby face was crimson. “Is it going to be much hotter than this?” he gasped.

The air was rapidly becoming more sulphurously superheated as the trucks wound on along the jungle trail to the Fire Sea. The jungle itself was thinning, as though withered by the increasing heat.

“Don’t worry — Willard and Lo Quior will have the anti-heaters going at our location,” Jeff Lewis reassured. “They went ahead.”

A mile more, and the jungle seemed to wither away around them. The trail emerged onto a black, rocky cliff of solidified lava.

A dozen voices exclaimed in astonishment and terror. They had come out into full view of the Fire Sea, that lay beyond the cliff.

“Gods of Saturn, we can’t stay long here,” cried Kin Kurri.

“Jeff, it’s suicide to try to film scenes in this place,” exclaimed Lura Lind, her voice shrill with fear.

THE scene ahead was enough to justify their protestations. Below and beyond this high black cliff there yawned a crimson ocean of molten lava which stretched to the distant horizons.

That vast sea of burning liquid rock flung a fierce, lurid glare into the sky. Little, sluggish waves furrowed its surface, and upon it danced changing flames. The wind from it was like the breath of a furnace, superheated air charged with sulphur fumes. “See, the boys have got the anti-heaters going,” encouraged Jeff Lewis. “We’ll be all right in a moment.”

On a promontory overlooking the fiery flood, Jim Willard and Lo Quior had prepared a temporary location-camp. They had set up the powerful anti-heaters. These machines “killed” radiant heat vibrations by a damping counter-vibration, greatly lowering the temperature.

With relief, the actors and technicians disembarked from the rocket-trucks into this slightly more comfortable zone. The spectacled little Martian technician, Lo Quior, was setting up the cameras.

“All right, folks.” Jeff Lewis called his troupe together. “The sooner we get these scenes made, the sooner we’ll get out of here.”

Captain Future edged toward Otho, who wore his “Rizo Thon” disguise since he would not be needed to play in these scenes.

“What did you do about Joan?” Newton asked in a whisper. “Remember, I’m counting on you to see that she goes no further on this trip.”

Otho grinned. “Don’t worry, I fixed it in Jungletown. She’ll get a hurry call back to Earth from the Patrol. I know the Patrol code!”

Jeff Lewis was barking at Curt Newton. “Carson, you’re not listening. Will you pay attention?”

Then Lewis continued. “This is one of the most important episodes of our picture. ‘The Ace of Space,’ as you know, re-creates the struggle of the Futuremen with the Legion of Doom. Most of it we’ll film on Styx, but the scenes here and in Neptune’s submarine cities are vital.”

Joan Randall protested indignantly. “I told you before that the Futuremen didn’t touch Jupiter in the Legion of Doom case. That was in the Space Emperor case.”

Jeff Lewis groaned. “I know, I know, but can’t I insert a few of their former adventures into my script to heighten the effect?”

Joan Randall looked as though she would protest further. But at that moment a breathless Jovian youngster came running into the camp and handed her a slip of paper. “Message for you that just came in on the telaudio.”

Joan Randall frowned as she read, and then turned. “I’ve got to go back to Jungletown.”

“There’s no truck ready to return —” Jim Willard began.

“I can walk,” she replied. “I’m not afraid of Jovian jungles.”

SHE hurried away and disappeared in the jungle trail. Curt Newton felt relief. Otho’s stratagem was working.

Then he noticed Valdane whispering rapidly to Kin Kurri. And in a moment the tall Saturnian also turned to leave the location-camp.

“It’s too hot for me here,” he explained. “I’m from a chilly planet, remember. I’m going back to the ship.”

Captain Future felt sharp apprehension as he saw Kin Kurri hastily take the trail by which Joan had left a moment or so before. Why had Valdane sent the Saturnian after Joan Randall?

He started to follow. But Jeff Lewis’ angry bellow halted him. “Where the devil are you going, Carson? Come back here.”

Curt Newton was stymied. He turned and whispered rapidly to Otho. “Kin Kurri is following Joan. I don’t like it. Go after them.”

Otho nodded swift understanding. The android slipped away while Jeff Lewis was angrily lecturing Curt Newton.

Otho, as soon as he was out of sight in the jungle trail, started forward in a run. He burst at full speed around the windings of the trail, anxious to get within sight of the Saturnian.

Always reckless, Otho this time underestimated his man. For as he rounded a turn, Kin Kurri stepped suddenly from the fern-forest with an atom-pistol that he held trained directly on Otho’s chest.

“Why are you following me?” the Saturnian demanded suspiciously. Then conviction suddenly flared in his eyes. “You’re a spy!”

AFTER the troupe had left the
Perseus
, the Brain remained in the dark property-room of the hold. Men had come and carried out Grag, along with other objects and equipment. But they had not disturbed the Brain, since he would not be needed for the scenes that were to be filmed by the Fire Sea.

Captain Future had known that. And that was why he had asked Simon Wright to search Valdane’s quarters during their absence from the ship. It was the Futuremen’s first real chance so far to look for clues to the chubby financier’s mysterious plot against Magic Moon. Simon Wright remained upon the shelf until the last rocket-trucks rattled away outside. Then the Brain glided off his shelf, moving soundlessly on the magnetic traction-beams he could emit from his queer ‘body’.

“Valdane probably left a guard outside his quarters,” Simon thought as he floated to the door. “But perhaps not. I can soon see.” He extended an ‘arm’ that was a beam of magnetic force, and opened the door into the corridor. For a moment he poised, listening.

The ship was quiet. The telepicture actors and technicians were all gone, and the navigation-crew had been given leave in Jungletown.

The Brain glided along the corridors to the middle-deck passage. He hovered in its shadows, peering aft. A tough-faced Earthman with a belted atom-pistol, one of Valdane’s ‘bodyguards’, stood outside his suite.

“That will make things a little more difficult,” thought Simon Wright coolly.

He glided back to the dark property-room. He had in mind a stratagem for entering Valdane’s suite, which he had used more than once in similar situations, during the past.

He first procured a few small tools and instruments which he and Grag had hidden in a corner of the property-room. Then he glided up to the square grating that covered the opening of the ventilator.

The labyrinth of hollow tubes which forced re-oxygenated air through the compartments of the
Perseus,
were each two feet square. As soon as the Brain had removed the grating, he glided into the tube.

It was a close fit. He had known it would be. He also knew the amount of toil that lay ahead. But it was the one way by which he could enter Jon Valdane’s quarters without being observed.

“The telepicture troupe will not return to the ship until late tonight,” Simon Wright thought. “It should give me enough time.”

Simon Wright was a strange personality. Some said that because he was a bodiless brain living in a mechanical case, he had lost all human emotions. That was not so. His emotions of love for and loyalty to Curt Newton had never dwindled through the years.

But it was true that there was something unhumanly austere about his imperturbable calm.

He could get excited about his scientific speculations and experiments, but not about much else. Personal danger left him completely unmoved.

He glided through the dark tube, feeling his way with his sensitive magnetic arms. The tube forked into a larger feeder-tube. He followed this unhesitatingly upward.

Presently he found his way blocked by one of the big fans which forced the reoxgenated air through the system. The fan was not running, since the oxygenators had been shut off when the
Perseus
landed.

“I hope there are not more than one or two of these in my way,” muttered the Brain, as he began to work.

With the tools he had brought with him, he proceeded to dismount the fan. It was a long, arduous task, working in complete darkness.

When he had removed the fan, he had to drag it back down to the property room before he could again go forward. He reached the main feeder pipe of the middle deck and started aft. As he had expected, he soon encountered another of the fans.

This one was larger and cost Simon Wright considerably more toil and time before he had dismounted it. When he had finally won past it and turned into the port-side tube which served Valdane’s quarters, he immediately ran into a third fan.

A man would have sworn, or at least uttered an ejaculation of annoyance. The Brain did neither. He set patiently to work once more, though he already had been in the pipes for hours.

AGAIN, when he finally got the third fan free, he had to haul it back to a point where he could get past it. Indomitably, he resumed his quest. And at last, success crowned his efforts. He came to the end of the tube, and looked out through the grating into the lounge-cabin of Jon Valdane’s comfortable suite.