Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Ten minutes later, in a small, torpedolike Planet Police flier, Curt flew up above the blazing, turbulent streets of Jungletown and headed northward.

  Black, brooding jungle unreeled beneath an endless blanket of dark obscurity. Ahead, the whole northern sky flamed shaking scarlet from the glare of the Fire Sea.

  Dark, low ranges of hills showed far ahead, standing out blackly against the quivering red aurora.

  Curt hummed a haunting Venusian tune as he flew on, keenly eyeing the blank blackness of jungle. He sensed himself closer on the trail of the Space Emperor, and the thought of coming to grips with his unknown adversary brought a cheerful gleam to his eyes.

  At last he saw what he was looking for — a little cluster of lights far ahead and below. At once, he swooped downward in the flier, hovered hummingly above the dense dark tangle of jungle, and then landed expertly in a small clearing.

  In a few minutes, Curt was slogging steadily through the moon-drenched jungle of tree-ferns toward the lights.

  Tree-octopi flitted overhead. Bulbous balloon-beasts sailed slowly by high above the ceiling of foliage. Once Captain Future’s foot crashed down into the mouth of an underground tunnel made by “diggers.” They were big, bloodthirsty burrowers who seldom appeared above ground.

  Sucker-flies swarmed around him, cunningly injecting a tiny drop of anaesthetic to deaden their sting. And once Curt fancied he heard the distant, flowing passage of a “crawler,” one of the most weird and dreaded of Jovian beasts.

  He came finally to the edge of a mile-wide blasted clearing in which lay the mine. Out there in rock quarries scores of Jovians clad in protective lead suits were digging radium ores, working by the brilliant light of uranite bulbs, and superintended by Earthmen overseers.

  Further away lay the field-office of the mine, and the warehouses, smelters and other buildings. Their windows glowed with light.

  “Looks innocent enough,” Captain Future muttered, “but there’s something damned queer about it. Who ever heard of Jovians doing dangerous labor like that, for any Earthman?”

  He loosed his proton pistol in its holster.

  “I think we’ll see whether the corpulent Mr. Brewer is here or not. And first, a look inside those warehouses —”

  Curt started along the edge of the clearing, keeping inside the shadow of the jungle. He had gone but a few rods when a faint sound behind him made him whirl quickly.

  A dark Earthman guard stepped out of the shrubbery, his flare-pistol leveled menacingly at Curt’s head.

  “Spy, eh?” rasped the guard. “You get it now!”

  And he loosed a blazing flare from his gun that shot straight toward Curt’s face.

  Chapter 11: Brain and Robot

  GRAG was worried. The big robot paced restlessly, back and forth inside the Comet, in ponderous stride. Every few minutes he went to the door and peered out.

  He had run the ship into the jungle outside Jungletown. The boom-town lay out there, beneath the thin wash of red light from the setting sun. The lights were coming on in its streets, the uproar commencing as night came once more.

  “Something has happened to our master,” the robot boomed as he came back from the door to the midship laboratory. “He said he would be back soon. That was last night. A whole day has passed, and he has not come back.”

  Simon Wright’s eye-stalks turned irritatedly toward the robot.

  “Will you quit worrying?” the Brain demanded. “Curtis isn’t a boy any more. He can take care of himself, better than any man in the System. You seem to think you’re still his guardian and nursemaid.”

  Grag answered.

  “I think you worry about him as much as I do.”

  From the Brain’s vocal opening came something that might have been a rasping chuckle.

  “You are right, Grag. We all three worry about him, you and I and Otho. We cannot forget the long years of his babyhood and boyhood on the moon, when we alone protected him.”

  “But there is no need to worry, really,” Simon went on. “He’ll be back soon now surely. And in the meantime I can’t go on with the synthesizing of this new formula without your help.”

  “I am sorry, I will help now,” Grag said simply.

  Simon was about to prepare still another chemical formula which he hoped would prove capable of reviving the paralyzed pituitary glands of the blight’s victims, and bring about their recovery. He had tested several such formulae already on the stricken Earthman who still lay here in drugged sleep, but without success.

  Now, from the pedestal upon which his chromium case rested, Simon called out the exact measures and actions which must be combined, and Grag performed them with an exactitude of which only a robot was capable, pouring, mixing, weighing and heating as the Brain directed.

  Simon and Grag had worked thus together for many years. Otho was too restless and impatient to make a perfect partner for the Brain. But Grag, with his superhuman patience and precision, was an ideal partner.

  The formula was finally finished. Darkness had come, by then. Simon directed the robot as he injected the pinkish fluid into the drugged Earthman’s veins.

  Then, after some minutes, the Brain had Grag turn on the X-ray lamp, and peered into the drugged man’s skull for long minutes through the fluoroscopic glasses.

  “It works!” he rasped finally. “We’ve found a cure, Grag!”

  “But the man looks just the same,” objected the robot, staring down dubiously at the drugged, brutish victim.

  “Of course — he won’t recover all in a minute,” Simon snapped. “But now that his pituitary gland is functioning again, his body and mind will again come back to human semblance in a period of days.”

  Grag stalked to the door and looked out. The flare of light and noise from rioting Jungletown rose against the red, distant glare of the Fire Sea.

  Three moons were in the sky, and the fourth was rising. But the anxious robot did not see by their light the big, red-haired figure he yearned to see.

  “Still master has not come back,” he boomed. “And neither has Otho come. Something has happened.”

  “You may be right, at that,” Simon muttered. “It shouldn’t have taken Curtis all this time to go out to that mine and back.”

  “Perhaps he did not go there?” Grag suggested. “Perhaps he went somewhere else?”

  Simon thought.

  “We’d better find out,” the Brain finally declared. “Curtis went into the town to see Marshal Ezra Gurney, so Gurney ought to know just where he went.”

  “Pick me up, Grag,” the Brain continued. “We’re going to find the marshal.”

  Quickly, the robot grasped the handle of the Brain’s transparent case in his metal fingers. Then he strode out of the Comet and stalked with mighty strides across the moonlit fields toward the flaring, noisy town.

  They could hear the chatter of deep and shrill voices from the streets. The heavy throb of the Jovian ground-drums seemed louder tonight.

  “Avoid the streets,” Simon ordered the robot who carried him. “Keep behind the buildings, in the shadows, until we see Gurney.”

  Grag obeyed, stalking behind the rows of metalloy structures, pausing at breaks between them so that he and Simon could peer into the bright, crowded streets in search of the marshal.

  But neither the Brain nor the robot could spot the veteran peace-officer. As they continued their search an intoxicated Earthman came staggering back from the street toward the shadows from which Grag and Simon were watching. He stopped suddenly as he glimpsed them in front of him.

  The drunken man tipped his head back and looked up unbelievingly with bleared eyes at the blank metal face and gleaming photoelectric eyes of the huge robot.

  “Go ‘way,” he muttered thickly. “I know you’re not real.”

  “Shall I silence him, Simon?” asked Grag in his deep voice.

  “No, he is only a drunken fool,” rasped the Brain.

  As the intoxicated one heard the voices fro
m the robot and the transparent brain-case he carried, he uttered a wild shriek.

  “They’re real!”

  And with the cry, he stumbled wildly back out into the street.

  “Police!” he yelled. “Where’s the Planet Police?” Ezra Gurney came along the street quickly in answer to that cry, and the drunken one grabbed his arm.

  “There’s a couple of — monsters — back there,” he babbled wildly, pointing.

  Gurney was about to reply in disgust, when Simon Wright’s rasping voice reached him. “Marshal Gurney! This way!”

  Gurney started at the sound of the metallic voice, then pushed the drunk away and hastened back into the shadows. He uttered an exclamation as he glimpsed the big robot and the Brain he carried. He knew Captain Future’s aides well.

  “Simon Wright! And Grag!” he exclaimed. “What’s wrong now?”

  “Curtis hasn’t come back,” Simon told him quickly. “Did he go to the Brewer mine last night?”

  “That’s where he said he was goin’,” Gurney declared. “And he’s not back yet? That don’t look so good.”

  “Is Brewer in town now, or out at the mine?” Simon demanded keenly.

  “I don’t know but we can soon find out,” the marshal answered. “His company office is over in the next street, and if he’s in town he’ll be there.”

  THEY started through the shadows, keeping out of the moonlight of the four silver satellites, toward the next street.

  It was a sober business thoroughfare rather than a carnival street, bordered by small metalloy offices. Gurney led the way to the door of one whose windows glowed with light.

  As Gurney walked in, followed by the huge robot with the glittering-eyed Brain, a man alone in the room uttered a startled cry.

  “Good God, what are those creatures?” It was Mark Cannig. His eyes bulged as he stared at Grag and Simon Wright.

  “They’re Captain Future’s pals,” Gurney replied sharply. “Is Brewer here?”

  “No — I don’t know where he is,” Cannig answered uneasily.

  The nervousness of the young mine superintendent did not miss Simon Wright’s keen lens-eyes. Then the Brain glimpsed something lying on the floor near the wall.

  “Pick that up, Grag,” he directed sharply, looking toward it.

  Grag obeyed, and held the little object so the Brain could inspect it closely.

  It was a small badge with the letters “P.P.” on it, and a number on its back.

  “That’s a Planet Police secret-agent emblem,” Gurney said sharply. “And the number is Joan Randall’s number.”

  He turned on Cannig.

  “When was she here?”

  Cannig flushed uneasily.

  “I don’t know if she was here or not. I just came myself.”

  “Call the hospital and find out if she’s there, Marshal,” Simon Wright suggested raspingly.

  Gurney went to the televisor on the “desk and made the call. His face was grim as he straightened.

  “She left the hospital an hour ago and didn’t come back. They don’t know why she hasn’t, either.”

  “I don’t know where she is!” Cannig exclaimed. “I don’t know anything about that badge.”

  “In other words, you just don’t know nothin’,” Ezra Gurney said sarcastically.

  There was a rush of feet, and into the room came a flying figure. It was a green Jovian, moving with amazing speed, his round, dark eyes blazing.

  “Get out of here, greenie,” ordered the Marshal. “We’re busy.”

  “You’re no busier than I’ve been,” answered the Jovian in a hissing, familiar voice. “And I’ve got news.”

  “Otho!” exclaimed Simon instantly, as he recognized the android’s voice through his disguise. “What have you learned?”

  “I’ve learned the exact spot where the Space Emperor will appear to these benighted Jovians tonight, an hour from now!” Otho declared, “I was supposed to be there with them, but I slipped away to bring Captain Future the news.”

  His eyes swept the room. “But where is Captain Future?”

  “We don’t know!” Simon Wright exclaimed. “It’s beginning to look as though something has happened to him, and to Joan Randall too!”

  Chapter 12: Secret of the Mine

  CURT NEWTON’S physical and mental reflexes were a shade faster than those of any other man in the System. He could not quite match the blurring speed of the android who had taught him quickness, but his reactions were almost as instantaneous. As the Earthman guard fired his flare-gun at Captain Future, the big red-head was already diving beneath the whizzing flare in a low, swift tackle. Curt had started moving in the second before the guard could pull his trigger.

  He knocked the man crashing from his feet. Before the fellow could utter a cry, Curt smashed his fist hard upward to the chin. The guard’s head snapped back and he went limp and senseless.

  Captain Future straightened, tensely listening. The scuffle and the whizzing shot had not aroused alarm among the laboring Jovians and alert overseers out in the radium diggings.

  But dawn was coming. Already the sky was reddening. Hastily, Curt dragged the senseless guard into the jungle and tightly bound his hands and feet with strips from his jacket.

  “You shouldn’t be so free with your little flare-gun,” Captain Future told the man pleasantly as he groggily opened his eyes. “You might hurt somebody one of these days.”

  The guard looked up at this big red-haired young man grinning down at him, and uttered a vicious curse.

  “Such language!” Curt deprecated. “By the way, don’t attempt to cry out, or I’ll have to knock you out again.”

  “What do you want here?” the guard snarled to him.

  “I want to know just what the estimable Mr. Brewer is carrying on at this mine,” Captain Future told him. “There’s something funny about this place, and you can tell me what it is.”

  “I can, but I won’t,” the guard declared. “What are you, anyway, a Planet Police agent?”

  Curt held up his left hand so that the man could see the big, odd ring he wore.

  “Captain Future!” muttered the man appalledly. He looked up at the big red-head in sudden fear. Then his lips compressed. “You’re not getting anything out of me, anyway.”

  “So you don’t want to talk?” Curt said mildly. “Very well, then I shall make very sure that you don’t talk, or shout either.”

  And coolly, he efficiently gagged the bound guard with more strips that he tore from the man’s own zipper-jacket.

  By this time, the Jovian day had fully dawned, the sun throwing a pale flood of light across the clearing of the mine. From his hiding place in the dense jungle, Curt studied the place.

  He saw at once that be could not hope to venture out during the daylight. The scores of Jovians were still working out there, and with them were the half-dozen or more armed overseers.

  “Have to wait for night,” Curt muttered to himself. “Lucky the days are so short here on Jupiter.”

  Curt settled down to wait. The big red-haired man had learned patience from Grag, and he exercised it now. As he waited through the five hours of the Jovian day, he watched every move out in the mine.

  He saw nothing of either Lucas Brewer or Mark Cannig. But the work went on steadily under the direction of the overseers. Hour after hour, the Jovians labored at digging the radium-bearing rock and hauling it in hand-trucks to the smelter.

  Curt would have liked to call Simon Wright by his pocket-televisor, to tell them where he was and what he was doing. But he feared that his call might happen to be picked up if someone in those mine-offices was using a televisor, and decided not to risk it.

  NIGHT finally came down, the dramatically sudden Jovian night that clapped down after only a few moments of twilight. Callisto and Europa and Ganymede were in the heavens, moving toward conjunction, while Io hurtled up to join them.

  Curt made sure of the bound guard’s safety, then rose to his feet to ve
nture out into the clearing. But he stopped a moment, peering.

  “Now what goes on?” he muttered to himself. “Are they quitting for good?”

  The Jovians who had worked through a shift of ten hours during night and day were now dropping their tools, and streaming with the overseers toward the mine-office.

  The green natives discarded their protective lead suits as they left the radium diggings. They clustered in the moonlight outside the office.

  Captain Future moved hastily around the edge of the clearing until he had the smelter-structure between him and the office-building. Then he moved out, silently as a shadow.

  From behind the smelter, he watched. And he saw that the overseers were now distributing some objects from big boxes to the Jovians who crowded eagerly forward.

  “Paying them off in trade goods,” Curt muttered to himself. “But what —”

  Then his keen eyes made out what the Earthmen were passing out to the Jovians. And his big crouching figure stiffened as though he had received an electric shock.

  “So that is how Brewer induces the Jovians to work for him!” he muttered, his eyes suddenly blazing.

  The things that the overseers were passing out to the green natives as reward for their labor were — flare-guns.

  Guns! The one thing that Earthmen were utterly forbidden to sell or give to the planetary natives! The strictest laws forbade it on every world in the System.

  Captain Future felt like rushing out to stop the distributing of the weapons. But he knew well that it would be suicide to try it. Those Jovians, armed with the deadly flare-guns, would destroy any man who tried to take the weapons from them.

  “Have to wait,” Curt told himself fiercely. “But by Heaven, Brewer will have to account for plenty!”

  As the Jovians received the weapons, they streamed away from the mine into the jungles eastward. From those moonlit jungles, the ground-drums had begun to throb. The deep, pulsing rhythm was now loud to Curt’s ears, as though it came from nearby.

  Finally all the Jovians had received weapons and hurried away into the moon-shot fern-forest. The overseers went into the office-building.