Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) (15 page)

They had come into a domed chamber, of only, medium size but richly decorated, set with luxurious furniture, and containing several banks of strange, intricate-seeming machinery. In its center with a great throne-like chair, and on this sat one of the most magnificent specimens of humanity the Futuremen had ever seen.

The man, standing erect, would tower a good two inches above Curt Newton’s six feet four. His facial features had the classic mould of ancient sculptures. His broad shoulders and superbly muscled legs, revealed by the glittering body-armor he wore, might make envious a championship athlete.

Over the back of his throne lay folds of a rich scarlet mantle, and his temples were bound with a fillet of blinding gems. His eyes were deep, lustrous black, his skin as white as a night flower, his hair like closely curled silver floss.

“Ul Quorn!” this person was saying. “To incompetency you now add impudence.”

“Wait.”

It was N’Rala, moving into view from behind the throne. She was radiant, mocking, beautiful as always.

“You might forgive Ul Quorn, Overlord, when he brings you Captain Future as a captive.”

The Overlord’s dark eyes fixed themselves on Curt.

“Captive?” he echoed. “No, it’s a trick! I’m tuned to every kind of warning ray here. They tell me that he’s armed!”

Captain Future reached back to his holster. But the Overlord’s great white hand moved to a table beside his throne, studded with levers and push-buttons.

Captain Future felt as if lightning had struck him. Then he felt nothing at all.

REGARDLESS of the fact that impersonation had always been second nature with Otho, nevertheless he was all but jolted out of his Ul Quorn pose. For, under his very gaze and within arm’s length of him, he saw a great yellow block — gold, or some metal like gold — materialize instantly where Captain Future had stood.

It was a block seven feet tall, three feet wide, three feet thick, large enough to enclose Captain Future like a coffin.

“Don’t gape like that, Ul Quorn,” came the amused voice of N’Rala. “One would think that the Overlord had never spoken of how easily he can do what he has done.”

Her words called Otho back to himself and his job.

“I’ve heard, yes,” he took up the cue. “But the actual sight, the unthinkably weird performance was wonderful!”

“Very simple, like most amazing things.”

The Overlord was intrigued with Otho’s blank surprise, and half forgot his displeasure at the unapproved entry. He gestured toward the push-buttons on the side table. One had been pressed home, and stayed down under an automatic catch.

“Don’t you remember that I explained how this whole chamber is hollowed out of solid alloy — by action of the atom-lock?”

“Like the ray that opened a way for us to enter,” supplied Otho.

“Yes. It affects the alloy of the chamber in such a way as to make its every molecule and atom stand still — cease its activity — in short, remove it from its solid nature. Turn off the rays which I control by these buttons, and the open space, or any segment of it which I choose, fills up on the instant. I can create or banish emptiness.”

“Captain Future,” said Otho, trying to keep his voice from trembling as he eyed the gleaming slab of metal that stood where his chief had been. “He’s disintegrated now? His substance destroyed by the solidification?”

“No,” the Overlord smiled loftily. “I use a special alloy, as I said. It’s atoms, reactivated to solidity, cannot replace another solid which is already there, but they can surround and clamp it tightly. Captain Future is still alive, can hear what we say. But if he remains long as he is, he will smother.”

“Keep him alive,” urged Otho. “He knows science that I could never tell you.”

“That doesn’t sound like Ul Quorn,” spoke up N’Rala. “You used to feel very generous when you called Captain Future your equal in mind and training. In any case, the Overlord is well advised to let him perish there. Captain Future may be the difference between victory and defeat.”

“You are not complimentary,” said the Overlord, a little sharply. “Many have tried to defeat me, and failed. For instance, the force from that other dimension, even now assailing me here in this space-fortress, thinks I am almost overthrown. No man of them all will escape.”

“How will you do that?” demanded Otho.

The Overlord lounged, one arm hanging over the arm of his throne. Otho could see big white fingers hooked on the edge of the side-table with the buttons. The other arm jerked a thumb toward a mechanism at the rear of the chamber.

“That lever,” he said. “A tug upon it, and this whole flying planetoid will explode into atoms. It would kill my enemies, as well as some servants who have been faithful and helpful and whom I would be sorry to lose, but whom I must sacrifice. Among the enemies thus doomed are Thai Thar and his handful of rebels who might cause trouble if spared.”

“And you would escape?” prompted Otho.

“This chamber, made as it is of the material I have chosen, would survive that blast, or a greater one. It would ride clear, with myself inside. Meanwhile, the invasion is shelved for the time, Ul Quorn. Already I have had the great dimension-bridge at the Asteroid closed. The smaller one, to the Futuremen’s lair on the imprisoned Moon, will be done away with likewise, as soon as I evacuate my men and supplies there. With Captain Future gone, and his imprisoned friends blown up with the rest, you and I can rebuild a successful invasion machine, striking your native System when we will be least expected and most deadly. Agreed?”

OTHO fixed his eyes again on Captain Future’s confining block.

“To stifle,” he ventured. “A miserable death.”

“Again you don’t sound like yourself,” said N’Rala. “Are you Ul Quorn, or a cheap imitation?”

Otho felt that his unmasking was more than likely.

“Who else?” he snapped on inspiration. “I suppose you think that I’m Otho, escaped and in makeup. This,” he suddenly improvised, “is the thanks I get for helping your plan along, N’Rala — and keeping it secret from the Overlord.”

“What’s this?” demanded the Overlord, sitting up. “Plans? And kept from me?”

“He lies!” protested N’Rala, her voice sharp with anger. “He wants to make you mistrust me!”

“I don’t lie,” insisted Otho, improvising as he plunged ahead. “Why should I make up a story that would condemn me as an enemy of the Overlord? It’s true, and I tell it because I refuse to be insulted by N’Rala, when I’ve worked with her and come so close to overthrowing —”

“Don’t listen!” N’Rala screamed at the Overlord. “He’s mad with jealousy — because I neglect him and turn to you — .”

She started toward the great pale man on the throne-chair, but he pushed her roughly back.

“Stay clear, until this is explained,” he told her. “Ul Quorn, finish what you began. What plotting has been done behind my back?”

Otho’s invention had run out. He folded his arms with a great show of dignity.

“Ask N’Rala,” he said.

“N’Rala?” said the Overlord, turning to her. “I trusted you. I suppose the proverb is extra-universal about not trusting beautiful women.”

Her face twisted grotesquely in her fury, and her hand dropped to the dagger at her belt. The Overlord lifted his eyebrow and jabbed his finger at another push-button — Otho had a notion that there were an amazing number of fingers on his hand.

Where N’Rala had stood was another block of metallic yellow. The Overlord touched a third button, and Otho felt sudden clamping solidity around his limbs and body. But his head remained free.

“I left you able to breathe and observe, Ul Quorn,” the Overlord told him. “Plotter or not, you will remain useful to me. I’ll find ways to render you harmless. But first, the vibrator-warnings sound an initial success for the attackers. Most of their craft and personnel are where an explosion will wipe them out. Watch.”

Rising from his throne, he strode toward the lever that, with one twitch, would disintegrate the mighty fabrication that served as capitol of Dimension X.

But Otho’s gaze remained fixed on the side table. The Overlord had departed, but he had left something there, white and hand-shaped. A glove? A dummy?

The hand, detached as it was, crept forward like a big bloodless crab. It was fussing with the release of the automatic catches.

Oog again had come to the rescue!

Otho saw the catches fly back. At the same moment he stood free from the massive yellowness that had materialized about him. And Captain Future was visible, resting on a knee, gulping air into his starved lungs. N’Rala staggered and swayed, a hand to her throat. She saw what had happened, whirled to cry a warning to the Overlord.

“Ul Quorn sprang forward sweeping N’Rala aside with one arm even as he reached the other for the Overlord. He pushed the big pale form sidewise and flung his own lean, active body in front of the lever.

“There’ll be no disintegration,” said Otho.

“There was a plot, after all,” said the Overlord. His handsome lips curled into the most deadly grin Otho had ever seen. “I was wrong to think you worth keeping alive, Ul Quorn. I’m going to render you thoroughly harmless.”

“He’s not Ul Quorn, I tell you!” N’Rala was yammering. “He’s Otho! That android play-actor!”

THE Overlord moved quickly, almost as quickly as Otho himself. Before Otho could squirm away, a huge hand like a multiple vice clutched him, driving its fingers deep into his synthetic flesh.

“I’ll tear you into shreds,” promised the Overlord. “Little, little shreds.”

But other fingers closed on the Overlord’s shoulder, tanned against the whiteness.

“Let him go,” said Captain Future, panting still but in command of his faculties.

The Overlord started. His grip slackened, and Otho twitched free. He ran back to N’Rala, in time to snatch her away from the table with the pushbuttons.

She struck at him, tried to draw her dagger, then a little proton pistol. Otho was too quick for her, and took both weapons away.

“Watch,” he bade her, turning her forcibly around. “This will be a battle well worth seeing.”

Captain Future had torn the Overlord’s weapon belt away. Now he threw it across the floor.

A moment later the Overlord exerted all his strength, broke the grip on his shoulder, and turned to fight it out.

The Overlord was the bigger of the two, mightily strong, and filled with a rage that cried for the blood of a universe, but Captain Future did not offer to draw the pistol he wore.

He wanted the ruler of Dimension X as a prisoner.

His red head ducked smoothly under a flying white fist, and Captain Future’s own hands played for the midriff. But his knuckles bounced back from the body armor, and next instant the Overlord landed his own right to the chin.

Future blinked and stepped back. The Overlord whirled toward the lever once again.

“Don’t let him!” yelled Otho, and Captain Future sprang after his enemy. His sinewy left forearm whipped under the Overlord’s big, handsome chin from behind, tightened across the throat. Captain Future’s right hand grasped his left wrist, doubling the pressure. The Overlord, in the very instant of grasping the lever, yielded to instinct. His hands flew up to claw at the great bar of bone and muscle that strangled him.

Otho, holding N’Rala by the collar of her robe, watched fascinated. He had not the slightest doubt or worry about the result of the battle, but his chief’s fighting methods were ever a wonder.

In vain the Overlord struggled. Captain Future began to tramp backward, dragging with him the strangling, heaving bulk, away from the lever and toward Otho. Already the Overlord’s arms and legs thrashed less frantically. He would soon subside into unconsciousness.

“Bravo!” cried Otho, and moved a step nearer, and N’Rala with him.

Captain Future had heaved his victim several strides toward the center of the room. He was no more than two yards from Otho. N’Rala threw herself at him.

She did not free herself from Otho’s grasp, but for a moment she was within touch of Captain Future. Her hand gained and grasped the proton pistol at the holster just rearward of his hip. She paused only an instant, to touch with her thumb the little stud on the hilt that would modify power of the charge, enough to destroy only Captain Future without burning through and into the Overlord beyond. That instant was enough for Otho — not enough for him to disarm her, but enough for him to scream a warning.

“What’s the trouble?” demanded Captain Future, and turned. As he did so, he heaved the Overlord bodily around, between him and N’Rala.

As he did so, she was leveling the gun, pressing the trigger.

The proton charge meant for Captain Future’s back slammed into the center of the Overlord’s chest, glowed a moment there like some garish ornament or medal. And the mighty pale body went utterly slack, and Captain Future let go of his strangle hold, because the Overlord was breathing no longer.

Otho moved to disarm N’Rala, but she handed him the weapon and burst into tears of unutterable rage.