AT LEAST twenty of the tentacle-like limbs had now coiled around Grag. They were lifting his massive figure toward the central trunk. This as a cylindrical mass of fiber twelve feet in diameter. The tangle of branches grew from its sides, and its top was a huge, hollow calyx.
Curt and the other two sprang forward to aid the robot. But they were themselves gripped by other branches. As they sought to free themselves, Grag’s struggling form was being hoisted up into the air and held above the hollow calyx of the tangle-tree.
From inside the huge calyx spurted up streams of sticky green liquid that smeared the helpless robot from head to foot. Grag yelled with fury at this, but the sticky juices continued to spurt over him.
“The thing is covering Grag with its digestive juices before it eats him!” exclaimed Curt. “Try to reach him.”
But they couldn’t reach him. Each of them had a coiling branch around him. Only the fact that most of the tangle-tree’s branches were occupied with Grag made it possible for them to avoid being drawn in also.
Grag, bellowing in rage and completely covered by sticky plant-juice, was now being drawn remorselessly down into the hollow calyx of the trunk. He disappeared inside it, though his muffled roaring still sounded.
“Good Lord, he’s g-g-gone!” stammered McClinton. “The thing has d-d-devoured him.”
But after a few moments, during which they fought to free themselves, Grag was suddenly drawn up again from the calyx of the tree.
The robot was held as before, while the sticky digestive juices of the carnivorous tree spurted again over his raging figure.
Otho uttered a mirthful shout as he tore himself free from the branch holding him. “The tree couldn’t digest Grag’s iron carcass that time, so it’s going to try again.”
In fact, Grag was now being drawn back down into the calyx of the massive trunk. Again came his muffled bellowing. Curt and McClinton had by now managed to release themselves also.
But there was no need for the three to spring forward to Grag’s aid. For now the robot was being hoisted up again out of the calyx. And with an almost human gesture of disappointment and disgust, the tangle-tree’s gripping branches hurled the robot away. He flew through the air and lit upon the soft ground some distance away, with a resounding thud.
Otho collapsed in a fit of laughter when they reached Grag’s side. “The thing couldn’t digest Grag, nohow! I’ll never forget how he looked squirming up there with the tangle-tree hopefully squirting sap over him!”
“Laugh, you misbegotten son of a test-tube!” roared Grag furiously.
The big robot was a ludicrous figure, smeared from head to foot with thick green plant-juice.
Curt, too, was shaking with mirth. “It’s lucky the tree did happen to grab you instead of one of us,” he consoled the angry robot. “Any one of us would have found it no joke.”
Grag ruefully tried to clean himself off. “Of all the screwy forms of life that I ever —”
Captain Future suddenly interrupted, holding up his hand sharply. “Listen! I heard a cry!”
A distant yell came to them through the green gloom of the weird forest.
“One of the other parties has run into trouble!” Curt exclaimed. “Come on!”
They plunged through the jungle in the direction from which the cry had come. Now they could hear a chorus of alarmed voices.
It was one of the work-parties headed by Grabo, the Jovian, that was doing the shouting. The squat Jovian pirate turned as Curt and his companions appeared.
“Look at those things!” he exclaimed. “We don’t know what to make of ‘em.”
CURT NEWTON stared. He too, in all his extensive experience with the strange life of far worlds, had seen no creatures such as these.
There were six of the creatures, and they were busily working in a little open glade of the forest. Each of the things looked like a giant centipede, with an oddly geometrical body eight feet long and many square legs set along it. They were carrying slabs of stone along.
A closer look revealed the amazing details of their appearance. Each of these big creatures appeared to be composed of scores of small, living fleshy pink cubes. Each cube was four inches square, and had two twinkling, bright little eyes and a small mouth-opening.
“Why, I never saw anything like these before,” Captain Future muttered, stepping forward.
“You haven’t seen the half of it yet!” exclaimed Grabo. “They can split themselves up when we start toward ‘em. Look at ‘em! They’re doing it again!”
The weird, geometrical creatures had until now ignored Curt Newton and the others, diligently resuming their work of carrying away the stone slabs.
But now, as Captain Future approached, the centipede creatures suddenly dropped the slabs and then underwent an incredible transformation.
Their big, geometrical bodies disintegrated. They broke up into the scores of living cubes of which they were composed. Each cube was revealed to be a separate, living creature. Each had eight tiny claws or legs, one at each corner of its cubical body, as well as its own eyes and mouth and ears.
These hundreds of cube-creatures scurried swiftly together, and joined into a single big figure. The living cubes joined tightly, each to the next, by instantly hooking their tiny claws together.
Silently and quickly as though by magic, the cubical creatures had combined to form a towering, semi-human figure ten feet high. It advanced on square, stocky legs with its massive arms raised menacingly toward the Futuremen.
“Get back!” Curt Newton cried warning. “The creatures think we’re hostile.”
They hastily recoiled. Grabo and the mutineers already had fallen back, and George McClinton was gaping incredulously.
The geometrical monster halted its advance. As though satisfied they had nothing more to fear, the cube-creatures that composed it broke up into separate units. Quickly, they recombined into the six centipede-figures. Then, carrying the stone slabs, they calmly disappeared into the jungle.
“Did I dream that or have I been drinking radium highballs?” gasped Otho. “What the devil are those freakish little cubics?”
“That’s a good name for them — the Cubics,” Captain Future commented. “As to their nature, it seems pretty obvious that they’re small animals who have developed to a great degree the faculty of living in a cooperative community. Just like a hive of bees or a colony of beavers, only more so.”
“But how can the little devils go through those quick formations of theirs without any hesitation or discussion?” marveled Grabo.
Curt thought he could guess. “They must be constantly in telepathic rapport with each other. Something like the ‘hive mind’ of the bees, even further developed. Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group-intelligence, just as their bodies combine. They’re at least semi-intelligent, judging from the way they were working.”
THE discovery of the Cubics made all of them more cautious in the hours of work that followed. It was increasingly evident that their former surmise was correct, and that evolution in plant and animal life had indeed followed strange paths upon this age-long isolated planetoid.
What other uncanny forms of life might haunt the dense fern-jungles, they wondered? And what if the Cubics themselves should prove definitely hostile? They could be, Curt Newton realized, formidable enemies. And the tangle-trees, which seemed numerous, were a constant danger.
By sunset of that day, they had gathered in the clearing a mass of strong poles sufficient to build a stockade. The foraging parties had also brought back a mass of fruits, berries and nuts. These were of every shape and color, and most of them were utterly unfamiliar in appearance.
The Brain, whose knowledge of planetary botany was encyclopedic, had inspected the fruits and had ruled out a few which he considered likely to be poisonous. The castaways ate hungrily of the others, finding a big, spherical, meaty nut the most nourishing.
“We’ll need meat, too,” Captain Futur
e declared. “There are small animals in the jungle. Any of you know anything about trapping?”
Grabo, the squat green Jovian, nodded. “I used to trap ‘diggers’ in the jungle north of Jovopolis, when I was a kid on Jupiter. All I needed was a cord to make into a snare for their runways.”
“Take a couple of men and get some snares set tomorrow,” Curt suggested. “You can make the cords from strips of clothing.”
George McClinton distastefully put down a very ripe, squashy yellow fruit of egg shape which he had been eating.
“Too m-m-messy,” he said. “And it doesn’t have the f-f-flavor of a p-p-prune.”
The tiny disk of the Sun was sinking again toward the horizon. The shadows of the grotesque, towering cacti in the center of the clearing grew longer.
Night was falling. The stars were already pricking forth in the dusking sky, and the heavens eastward showed a quivering red glare from the volcanoes and lava-beds there.
“I think,” Curt decided, “that we’d better keep a fire going nights until we have our stockade up. We’ve already learned that there are formidable forms of life on this worldlet.”
A fire of dry fern-logs soon blazed up near the center of the clearing. Curt had kindled it by striking sparks from his steelite belt-buckle against a hard stone. The castaways gathered around it as though taking comfort from it as the night deepened.
Captain Future musingly looked around the circle of many firelit faces. What an oddly assorted company they were, he thought. Joan’s lovely face, and McClinton’s spectacled, serious countenance. Otho lolling indolently with slant eyes watching the blaze, and young Rih Quili’s bandaged head. Kim Ivan’s massive, jovial red face, and Grabo and old Tuhlus Thuun and fat Boraboll, and Moremos’ sulking features and secretive eyes. And the Brain poised outside the circle a little, while big Grag stood in the shadows keeping watch upon the raving John Rollinger.
“We’ve got a fire and some food,” Kim Ivan was saying, “and tomorrow we’ll put up a stockade and some huts. Then what?”
“Yes, what then?” Moremos asked Captain Future with an open sneer. “Just how do we start building a space ship with our bare hands?”
Curt answered tersely. “Our first need will be tools — durable metal tools. Let’s see how much metal we have among us.”
The result of the inventory of their possessions was discouraging. They had a few metal trinkets and buckles. One of McClinton’s engineers had a small chromaloy wrench.
OF COURSE, they all had their gravity-belts. Every interplanetary traveler constantly wore his belt, whose compact gravitation-equalizer made his weight the same on any world. But they couldn’t sacrifice their belts, without suffering dangerous effects from the low gravitation of the little planetoid.
“I also got a big package of chewin’ rial, if that’s any good,” shrilled old Tuhlus Thuun.
“And I have this c-c-case of p-prunes,” stuttered McClinton.
“There isn’t enough metal here to do us any good,” Curt Newton declared. “We’ll have to make our own steelite tools, from scratch.”
“Say, what about Grag?” Otho asked. “There’s a ton of metal in his carcass. If we melted him down —”
“I heard that!” bellowed Grag from out in the shadows where he was watching Rollinger.
Kim Ivan asked gloomily, “How’re we going to get steelite for tools?”
Captain Future shrugged. “We’ll have to locate iron deposits, and smelt the metal out, and make our own alloys. It won’t be easy, but it’s the first essential step toward building a ship.”
“And then what will be the next?” Boraboll squeaked skeptically.
“Then we’ll try building an atomic smelter for large-scale operations,” Curt answered. “Some of us can be reconnoitering this worldlet in the meantime for the raw materials we’re going to need. Chromium, beryllium, manganese, copper, calcium, and about forty or fifty others.”
They all seemed dashed by the magnitude of the task proposed. To many of them, the difficulties looked insuperable.
“How do we know we’ll find any of those elements here?” Ezra objected. “Those are elements of our own Solar System, but this planetoid ain’t a part of our System. It’s from way off in the Galaxy, you said.”
The Brain woke from his brooding reverie to answer that. “The matter of the whole Galaxy is largely homogenous in nature, for all its stars had a common cosmic origin. The remotest suns show the spectra of much the same elements as our own Sun. We should find most of the needed elements here, though on this small body a few of them may not be present.”
“Is this planetoid really a wanderer from some distant star-system?” Joan asked Curt with eager interest.
He nodded. “It must be. Probably it was torn away from its parent-star by some gravitational disturbance, and has been drifting through the void ever since.”
“A little star, falling alone through space for ages,” Joan murmured. “Let us call it by that name — Astarfall!”
The fire died down, and they split into separate groups to prepare for sleep. George McClinton had prepared a mattress of soft fern-fronds for Joan, which the lanky engineer shyly showed her.
“It’s not m-m-much, but it’s b-better than the ground,” he stuttered, and retreated awkwardly from her thanks.
She looked at Captain Future with pretended indignation. “Why didn’t you think of that?”
Curt grinned. “I don’t believe in pampering my women.”
“Your women!” she echoed scornfully. “There’s no other girl beside myself who’d waste time on a crazy, foot-loose planeteer like you.”
He chuckled as he turned away. The others were already stretched out, asleep. The fire had died to glowing embers, but the red glare of the smoking volcanoes eastward cast weird, flickering shadows in the camp.
Curt went to where Grag was standing guard beside John Rollinger. He had bound the crazed scientist’s feet to prevent him from fleeing. For Rollinger was still muttering and babbling in unabated terror.
“I hear,” Rollinger was muttering, his mad, brilliant eyes staring into nothingness. “I hear, but I cannot obey —”
Grag asked uneasily, “What do you suppose he’s raving about? He gets on my nerves.”
“He’s just delirious,” Curt said. “It’s a pity — a fine mind like that, irretrievably wrecked.”
Captain Future stretched out tiredly on the ground nearby. The night air was growing chill, and he wrapped his zipper-jacket more tightly around him.
As he dropped off to sleep, the low, babbling mutter of the crazed Earthman scientist was the last sound in his ears.
Chapter 9: The Work Begins
CURT awakened suddenly. It was still dark, and everything was drenched with a cold dew. But by the shifting of the starry sky, he perceived that he had slept for several hours.
He soon discovered what had awakened him. Rollinger’s ravings had become louder and shriller, were ascending to a frenzied pitch. Curt quickly rose and went over to the spot where Grag was standing watch over the madman.
“No, do not make me!” Rollinger was gasping.
“I can’t do it — I can’t!”
The man’s face was frantic in the starlight, and his body was writhing and shuddering.
“Chief, he’s been getting worse by the minute!” Grag reported. “He keeps talking to somebody he calls the Dwellers.”
Curt knelt by the bound madman, and spoke earnestly in an effort to reach that dimmed, distorted mind.
“Rollinger, what are you afraid of?”
The man’s wild eyes looked up at him, as though dimly recognizing him.
“The Dwellers!” gasped the madman. “The hidden lords of this world, whose powers are strange and mighty! They have been speaking to me in my mind, have been commanding me to do that which I cannot do.”
Captain Future frowned. There was something uncanny about the raw, shuddering terror of the crazed scientist.
“C
hief, do you suppose there could be malign creatures on this world that he can sense but we can’t?” Grag asked in a low voice. “There’s scientific proof that an unhinged mind is more sensitive to outside telepathic influences than a sound mind,” muttered Grag.
Curt felt definitely uneasy. He straightened and looked around the starlit, sleeping camp.
“There don’t seem to be any intruders here. You didn’t see anything strange, did you?”
Grag shook his head. “No, nothing at all. And everyone else has been sleeping, except for that Neptunian mutineer, Luuq, I saw moving around a little bit ago.”
“Maybe Luuq saw something,” Captain Future murmured. “I’ll see if he did.”
He went through the camp, searching the sleepers for Luuq. To his surprise, he could not find the Neptunian anywhere in the camp. The ex-bandit had disappeared.
Kim Ivan awoke with catlike alertness as Curt renewed his search for the missing man. The big Martian, instantly got to his feet.
“What’s the matter? Something wrong?” he demanded.
“I’m afraid so,” answered Captain Future. “Your friend Luuq is missing. Grag saw him moving about, but now he’s gone.”
Others were awakening, aroused by the Martian’s loud voice. They looked at each other uneasily.
“See if anyone else is missing,” ordered Kim Ivan, frowning.
They soon discovered that one other of the mutineers had also disappeared, a little Mercurian ex-thief.
“Maybe the two of them just went out into the jungle and will come back,” suggested Boraboll, the fat Uranian, hopefully.
“They wouldn’t go prowling around in that jungle by night,” Kim Ivan said emphatically. “If they left the camp, it was because they were dragged out of it.”
“Future seems to know more about it than anyone else,” said Moremos insinuatingly.
The gathered mutineers understood the Venusian’s veiled accusation. They turned hard eyes upon Curt Newton.
“I know no more than you do,” Curt said quietly.
“Future couldn’t have made away with Luuq and the other,” Kim Ivan said loudly. “Not without some sound that would’ve roused us all.”
Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) Page 7
