Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Grag turned angrily toward the android, but Captain Future intervened hastily between the two.

  “You must stay with Simon and guard the Comet, Grag,” he said. “We’ll be back soon if we catch the one we’re after.”

  “Be careful, lad,” muttered the Brain. “This Space Emperor is the most dangerous antagonist we’ve ever encountered.”

  Curt smiled pleasantly.

  “A foeman worthy of our steel, eh? Don’t worry, Simon. I’m not underestimating him!”

  CURT and Otho emerged from the Comet and started toward the bright-lit Street of Space Sailors that ran eastward from the spaceport. The Jovian night lay soft and heavy upon them, the warm air laden with fetid scents of strange vegetation. The three bright moons cast queer multiple shifting shadows around them.

  Curt knew the Street of Space Sailors well. It was usually roaring with lusty life, for in its dubious taverns gathered Earthmen who knew swampy Venus and desert Mars and icy Pluto, men who would be here for only a few days and who made the most of them before they went back.

  But now the street was less crowded than usual. A pall seemed to lie over the motley interplanetary throng, and fewer rocket-cars came and went than was usual. There were many space-bronzed Earthmen drinking in the disreputable taverns, but they drank in unnatural silence. It was evident to Curt’s keen eyes that the dark shadow of the plague lay over this city.

  In the street were many Jovians, the planetary natives of this world. They were manlike, man-size creatures, but their green-skinned bodies were squatter than the human, their heads were small, round and hairless, with large, circular dark eyes, and their arms and legs ended in queer flippers instead of hands or feet.

  Their clothing was a scanty black leather harness. They seemed to watch the passing Earthmen with unfriendliness and distrust.

  “The Jovians don’t seem to care much for Earthmen any more,” muttered Otho.

  Curt’s gray eyes narrowed slightly.

  “According to what Orris told us, it’s the Space Emperor who’s stirred them into unrest.”

  “Look out!” yelled a wild voice suddenly from somewhere in the throng ahead. “He’s got it!”

  “Atavism — get away!” roared other voices.

  Curt saw men darting away from an Earthman who had been wandering dazedly along the street, but who now was beating his breast, frothing at the lips, his glazed eyes glaring bestially around.

  All shrank from the man thus suddenly stricken by the dread evolutionary blight. For a moment there was a frozen silence except for his growling cries. Then whistles shrilled and a rocket-car dashed along the street.

  Haggard-faced hospital orderlies grabbed the struggling man who had just been stricken, pulled him into the car, and dashed away.

  The tense silence lasted for an eternal moment, in which men stared sickly at each other. Then, as though desirous to get away from the spot, the motley throng moved rapidly on.

  “So that is what it is like to be stricken by the horror!” hissed Otho.

  A dangerous light flared in Captain Future’s gray eyes, and his big form tensed.

  “I think I’m going to enjoy meeting the black devil who’s causing this,” he said between his teeth.

  They moved on along the Street of Space Sailors, out of the lighted section of the dark end of the avenue. Before them lay the black, vague fields beyond the city. Curt’s keen eyes glimpsed a dark little metalloy cabin, that stood a little beyond the street end, beside a clump of towering, moonlit tree-ferns.

  “Orris’ cabin,” he muttered, his hand dropping to his proton-pistol. “Come on, Otho.”

  HE LISTENED at the door of the cabin, then pushed it open and entered the dark interior. The place was deserted.

  Curt pulled the cord that uncovered the glowing uranite bulb in the ceiling. The illumination revealed a slovenly metal room, with a bunk in one corner, some zipper-suits and a couple of Jovian leather harnesses on hooks. The wide windows were screened against those pests of the planet, sucker-flies and brain-ticks.

  Captain Future slipped his pistol inside his jacket. Then he stretched himself out on the bunk in the corner.

  “The Space Emperor should be here soon,” he told the android crisply. “When he comes, tell him you captured me, drugged me, and brought me here. Maneuver to get between him and the door.”

  Otho nodded his disguised head in understanding. There was a fierce, throbbing glitter in his eyes.

  “No more talk now,” Curt ordered tensely.

  Lying sprawled stiffly on the bunk in perfect simulation of a drugged stupor, Curt watched through half-closed eyes. The android walked nervously back and forth, as though awaiting someone.

  Eager suspense, gripped Curt’s mind. He, Captain Future, who had met and conquered so many evil ones in the past, was about to confront the most formidable adversary he had yet faced. His reckless soul almost exulted in the prospect.

  Curt heard a sudden, low exclamation of astonishment from Otho. He opened his eyelids a trifle more, and received a surprise that was like an electric shock.

  A black, weird figure now stood inside the cabin with them. The door had not opened, for Curt had been watching it. It was as though this dark visitant had come silently through the walls.

  The Space Emperor! The mysterious figure who was turning Jupiter into a planetary hell! Curt knew that he looked upon his unknown antagonist.

  The Space Emperor wore a grotesque, puffy black suit and helmet of mineraline, flexible material. The helmet had small eye-holes, but the eyes inside could not be seen. His real appearance was perfectly concealed by that puffy suit. It was impossible even to tell whether he was an Earthman or Jovian.

  “You — you’re here!” stammered Otho, in Orris’ voice, putting into it and into the expression of his disguised face the same dread that Orris had shown in speaking of the Space Emperor.

  Out of that helmet came a voice that rasped the fibers of Captain Future’s spine. It was not a human-sounding voice. It was more like the deep voice of a Jovian, yet instead of being soft and slurred it was heavy, strong, vibrating with power.

  “I’m here, yes,” the Space Emperor said. “Did you and Skeel succeed in killing Captain Future?”

  “We did better than that,” Otho said, with assumed pride. “We captured him and I brought him here — see!”

  Otho pointed toward the bunk upon which Curt Newton lay sprawled in apparent coma.

  “Skeel was killed in the fight,” Otho went on, “but I got Captain Future, all right. I gave him a shot of somnal to keep him quiet, and brought him here for you.”

  “You fool!” came the deep voice of the Space Emperor, shaking now with rage. “Why did you not kill him out there at once? Don’t you know that this Captain Future is deadly dangerous as long as he is alive?”

  The Space Emperor advanced a little in his rage, his dark figure not walking but moving with a queer, smooth glide across the metal floor.

  Otho, pretending to shrink aside in fear, edged slowly to get between the dark visitant and the door.

  “I thought you’d want him alive,” Otho was apologizing abjectly. “I can kill him now, if you want me to.”

  “Kill him, at once!” throbbed the Space Emperor’s voice. “This man has spoiled great plans before. He is not going to spoil mine!”

  CURT NEWTON had been gathering his muscles for action. Now, as the last word vibrated, the red-haired adventurer launched himself upward in a flying spring at his enemy! Straight at that dark, erect figure plunged Curt. He expected to knock the mysterious plotter to the floor, overcome him. But Curt received the greatest surprise of his life.

  For Captain Future felt himself plunge through the Space Emperor as though the latter did not exist! Just as though the Space Emperor were but an immaterial phantom, Curt hurtled through his solid-seeming body and crashed against the wall with stunning force.

  “So!” cried the criminal’s deep voice. “One of Captain Future’s trap
s!”

  Otho had charged in almost the same instant as Curt. And the disguised android also had plunged through the dark figure.

  Curt had his proton-pistol out, as the black form started to glide swiftly across the room. Astounded, dazed as he was by the incredible thing that had happened, Captain Future did not lose his presence of mind for a moment.

  He pulled trigger, and a pale thin beam lanced from the slender pistol toward the gliding dark figure.

  Curt’s proton-pistol was more deadly than any of the atomic flare-guns used by other men. It could be set either to stun or kill, and it was set to kill now. But its concentrated jet of protons merely drove through the Space Emperor without harming him in the least.

  “At last you meet someone with powers greater than your own, Captain Future!” the hidden voice taunted.

  The dark figure glided away. The solid-seeming shape passed through the solid metal wall. Then it was gone.

  Otho stood still, numbed by the incredible sight. But Captain Future leaped toward the door, galvanized into action.

  He burst out into the moon-shot darkness and swept the obscurity with his eyes. There was no sign of the Space Emperor. He had disappeared completely.

  “He got away, that devil!” Curt cried, anger and self-reproach flaring in his voice.

  “He wasn’t real at all!” Otho exclaimed dazedly. “He was only a shadow, a phantom!”

  “A phantom couldn’t talk and be heard!” Curt snapped. “He’s as real as you or I.”

  “But he came and went through the wall —” the android muttered bewilderedly.

  Captain Future’s tanned face frowned in thought, as he tried to comprehend his enemy’s secret.

  “I believe,” he announced, “that the Space Emperor is using some secret of vibration to make himself effectively immaterial whenever he wishes.”

  Otho stared.

  “Immaterial?”

  Curt nodded his red head slowly.

  “It’s always been considered theoretically possible that if the frequency of atomic vibration of an object or man were stepped up higher than the frequency of ordinary matter, that object or man could pass through ordinary matter, just as two electric signals of different frequency can pass through the same wire at the same time.”

  “But if that were the case, he would sink right down through the ground to the center of gravity of the planet!” Otho objected.

  IMPATIENTLY, Captain Future shook his head.

  “Not if he set his gravity equalizer at zero. And he could use reactive force-push of some kind to achieve that gliding lateral motion. Of course, he couldn’t breathe ordinary air, but inside that suit would be an air-supply whose atomic frequency would be changed along with his body.”

  “But how could he talk, and see, and hear us?” Otho wanted to know.

  “That I can’t understand yet myself,” Captain Future admitted ruefully. “The whole thing embodies a science that is not human science. No Earthman scientist has ever yet achieved such a vibration set-up.”

  “Then where did he get the secret, and the secret of the evolutionary horror?” the android demanded. “There’s supposed to have been a great civilization on Jupiter in the dim past. Now there’s nothing here now but these half-civilized Jovians who have no science. Do you think the Space Emperor could be a Jovian?”

  Curt shook his head. He felt baffled, for the moment. The sinister mystery around the dark plotter had deepened.

  And his pride in his scientific knowledge had received a bad blow. He had run up against someone who apparently possessed scientific secrets beyond even his own attainments.

  “We’ve got to find out who the Space Emperor is before we can even hope to get him,” he declared. He looked at Otho. “You can make up as a Jovian, can’t you?”

  Otho stiffened.

  “You know there isn’t a planetary being in the System I can’t disguise myself as, when I want to,” he boasted.

  “Then go ahead and assume Jovian disguise,” Curt said quickly, “and go back into the crowded quarter. Mingle with the Jovians there. Try to find out what they know about the Space Emperor, and above all, if he is a Jovian or an Earthman.”

  Otho nodded understandingly.

  “Shall I come back here if I learn anything?”

  “No, report back to the Comet,” Curt ordered. “I’m going to the Governor. There’s a lead there somewhere to the Space Emperor. For the Governor, remember, would be the only person here notified that we were coming to Jupiter — and yet the Space Emperor knew of our coming and set an ambush for us!”

  In surprisingly few minutes, Otho had shed the disguise of Orris and had assumed the likeness of a native Jovian.

  The android had used the oily chemical spray to soften the synthetic flesh of his face, hands and feet. Then he had molded his head and features into the round head and flat, circular-eyed face of a Jovian, and his hands, and feet into the flipper-like extremities of the planetary natives.

  He smeared green pigment from his make-up pouch smoothly over all his body. A skillful hunching of his rubbery figure gave him the squat appearance of a Jovian. And finally, he donned one of the black leather harnesses hanging beside the zipper-suits on the wall of the cabin. Earthmen often wore those scanty harnesses in the damp, hot jungles of Jupiter, for the sake of coolness and freedom.

  When Otho spoke, it was in the soft, slurred bass voice of a Jovian.

  “Will I pass?” he asked Curt.

  Captain Future smiled.

  “I wouldn’t recognize you myself,” he said. “Get going, and watch yourself.”

  Otho slipped out of the cabin, and was gone. In a moment, Curt emerged also into the moonlit night.

  The red-headed space-farer strode rapidly toward the silvered metal mass of buildings of the city, heading toward the central section where was located the seat of colonial government.

  Somewhere there, he was certain, was a key to the mystery that had shrouded this planet in a spell of dark horror.

  Chapter 6: Monsters That Were Men

  THE governor’s mansion stood in parklike grounds of big tree-ferns and banked shrubbery. It was a large rectangular structure, built of gleaming metalloy like all the rest of the Earthman city. Tonight, its many wide windows were glowing with light.

  Curt approached it silently through the dark grove. Brilliant rays of the three big moons struck down between the fronds of the towering tree-ferns and glistened on his determined face. Perfume of beautiful but forbidding “shock flowers” was heavy in his nostrils. High above glided moon-bats, those weird, iridescent winged creatures of Jupiter that appear only when one or more moons are in the sky.

  He reached a terrace on the west side of the big metal mansion. Soundlessly, Captain Future advanced to an open window that spilled forth the bright white glow of powerful uranite bulbs. He peered keenly into the office inside, and at once recognized the governor of the Earth colony, from the President’s description.

  Sylvanus Quale, the colonial governor, sat behind a metal desk. Quale was a man of fifty, with a stocky, powerful figure, iron-gray hair, and a square face that had a stony impassivity. He looked as inscrutable as a statue, his colorless eyes expressionless.

  Captain Future saw that Quale was talking to a girl in white nurse’s uniform.

  “Why didn’t Doctor Britt bring the report from Emergency Hospital himself, Miss Randall?” Quale was asking.

  “He’s worn out and on the verge of collapse,” she replied. Her eyes were shadowed as she added, “This terrible thing is getting too much for us.”

  Curt saw that the girl was strikingly pretty, even in the severe white uniform. Her dark, wavy, uncovered hair framed a small face whose brown eyes and firm lips gave an impression of cool steadiness and efficiency. Yet deep horror lurked in her eyes.

  “Mr. Quale, what are we going to do?” Curt heard her appeal to the governor. “There are over three hundred cases of the blight in Emergency Hospital now. And some
of them are getting — ghastly.”

  “You mean they’re still changing, Joan?” Quale asked, forgetting official formality in his deep thoughtfulness.

  The girl nodded, her face pale.

  “Yes. I can’t describe what hideous monsters some of them have become. And only days ago they were men! You must do something to stop it!”

  Curt stepped into the office through the open window, silently as a shadow.

  “I hope there is something that I can do to stop it,” he said quietly.

  Joan Randall turned with a little startled cry, and Sylvanus Quale half rose to his feet as he saw the big, red-haired, gray-eyed young man who stood inside the room, gravely facing them.

  “Who — what —” the governor stammered, reaching toward a button on his desk.

  “You needn’t call guards,” Curt told him impatiently. “This ring will identify me.”

  Curt Newton held out his left hand. On that hand he wore a ring with a curious, large bezel. At its center was a little glowing sphere of radioactive metal, representing the sun. This was surrounded by nine concentric circular grooves, in each of which was a small jewel.

  The jewels represented the nine planets. There was a tiny brown one for Mercury, a larger pearly gem for Venus, and so on. And the jewels moved slowly, circling the little glowing sun. Motivated by a tiny atomic power plant, they moved exactly in accordance with the planets they represented. This unique ring was known from Mercury to Pluto as the identifying emblem of Captain Future.

  “Why, you’re Captain Future!” Sylvanus Quale exclaimed startledly.

  “Captain Future?” echoed Joan Randall, staring with sudden eagerness at this big, red-haired adventurer.

  “President Carthew notified you that I was coming here?” Curt asked the governor.

  QUALE nodded quickly. “He televised me when you started.”

  “Did you tell anyone else I was coming?” Curt asked keenly.

  He watched Quale narrowly as he awaited an answer. If the governor admitted having told no one, it meant —