Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  He gripped Joan’s shoulders firmly. Then, with infinite care to make no sound, he drew the girl back from the loudly declaiming Space Emperor.

  In the darkness, Curt was tensely listening for signs of discovery. But he heard no sound of alarm from the Jovian throng. Intently listening to their leader, Curt guessed that they were not watching the half-hidden shape of the girl.

  Captain Future’s hopes were soaring when he heard a wild cry from a Jovian in the throng.

  “See! A spirit of the Ancients appears to us now!”

  At the same moment, faint light began to penetrate the rayless blackness in which Curt moved.

  He looked down at himself. His ten minutes of invisibility had expired. He was becoming visible again!

  Chapter 15: Doom of An Earthman

  THERE was a taut silence in the little office of Jovian Mines in Jungletown, as Simon Wright and Grag and the disguised Otho realized the situation.

  Mark Cannig stood before the incredible trio of comrades, fear evident in his eyes. The young mine superintendent’s face was flushed and queer, as though he labored under strong emotion.

  “You know what happened to Joan, Cannig,” rasped the Brain. “You’d better talk, quickly.”

  “I tell you I don’t know anything,” asserted Cannig desperately, his voice thick and hoarse.

  “We can make you talk, you know!” hissed Otho ominously, his eyes blazing. “Where is the girl? And where is Captain Future?”

  Grag took a ponderous step forward toward the young man, and half-raised his enormous metal hands.

  “Shall I squeeze the truth out of him, Simon?” boomed the great robot questioningly.

  Mark Cannig appealed wildly to Ezra Gurney who stood beside the unhuman trio.

  “Marshal Gurney, you can’t let them harm me!” cried the young man hoarsely.

  Ezra Gurney’s weatherbeaten face was grim and his blue eyes cold.

  “I’m with them on this, Cannig,” he said uncompromisingly. “You’ve done something to that girl, and you’re going to tell what.”

  Cannig made a bolt for the door. But before he reached it, Otho had moved with blurring speed to intercept him.

  The android hauled him back despite his struggles and yells.

  “He’s guilty as hell or he wouldn’t have tried to get away!” cried Ezra Gurney.

  “What’s going on in here?” demanded a startled voice from the door.

  Sylvanus Quale stood there, and behind him was the vice-governor, Eldred Kells. The governor’s colorless face was amazed as he looked in at the strange tableau presented by the brain and robot and android, and to the two Earthmen.

  Quale and Kells strode inside. And at once Cannig appealed hoarsely to the governor.

  “Captain Future’s comrades are planning to torture me!” he cried.

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea, at that,” Gurney said.

  The marshal told the governor what had happened and showed him the Planet Police badge they had found upon the floor.

  “Captain Future and Joan both missing?” Quale exclaimed. His face grew strange. “I was afraid things were going wrong up here at Jungletown. That’s why I just flew up here to check.”

  “Do you suppose that Cannig could be the Space Emperor?” Eldred Kells exclaimed excitedly.

  “I’m not — I’m not!” howled Cannig, his face distorted and his cry almost unrecognizable.

  “Where’s Lucas Brewer?” Quale demanded of him, but he did not answer.

  “Brewer may be out at the mine, or he may be lying low somewhere here in Jungletown,” Gurney answered. “I’ve an idea hell is going to pop tonight.”

  “And meanwhile we’re wasting time here!” Otho hissed fiercely.

  “You’d better talk fast, Cannig,” rasped Simon Wright to the young superintendent. “Grag and Otho will do some unpleasant things to you if you don’t.”

  CANNIG’S nerve seemed to break. His voice babbled hoarsely all of a sudden.

  “I’ll tell you what I know! I don’t know anything about where Captain Future is, but Joan was taken from here tonight by the Space Emperor, because she saw us together.”

  “You’ve been an accomplice of that criminal, then?” Simon rasped instantly.

  Mark Cannig nodded, slowly and dazedly.

  “Yes,” he muttered. “There’s no use denying it now.”

  “Who is the Space Emperor, Cannig?” the Brain demanded quickly.

  “I don’t know,” Cannig choked. “I never knew who he was.”

  “Tell the truth!” Otho hissed, his voice threatening.

  “I’m telling the truth!” choked Cannig dazedly. “I was just a pawn of the Space Emperor, like Orris and Skeel and a few others. The Space Emperor never appeared to me except inside that concealing suit. And he was almost always immaterial. He didn’t take any chances.”

  Cannig seemed struggling for words, his glazed eyes wild and his voice thick and stumbling.

  “He told me he would soon hold supreme power on Jupiter, and that I would share that power if I helped him. I agreed, like a fool. Then when the atavism cases began, I realized that he was causing that horror.

  “He said he’d found powers beyond any Earth science, and that one of them was the atavism force. He was using it on Earthmen at random, to create a demoralization of horror and influence the superstitious Jovians, through whom he meant to win power over the whole planet. He inflicted the blight with an invisible beam. Victims didn’t feel it at the time, but a few days later the horrible change began.”

  “And you were helping him?” cried Eldred Kells, looking at the young man in utter loathing.

  “I had to obey him. I was afraid of him!” Cannig cried hoarsely. “That black devil has been more and more menacing to me of late, because of the protests I made to him against the horror he was causing.”

  “Did he say just when he intended to lead the Jovians against the Earthman towns?” Simon Wright demanded.

  Mark Cannig nodded dazedly.

  “Yes, he said that —”

  Cannig stopped, the words trailing from his lips, his eyes glazed and strange. He passed a hand unsteadily over his face.

  “He said that —” he started to continue, in the same stumbling voice.

  But again, his thick voice trailed off. He looked from one to another of them with blank, empty eyes.

  “Why,” he said hoarsely. “I feel —”

  “Look out!” yelled Ezra Gurney an instant later.

  MARK CANNIG’S flushed, strange face had suddenly stiffened into an animal-like snarl, his lips writhing back in a bestial grin from his teeth, his eyes blazing with new feral light.

  Growling like a suddenly enraged beast, he wrenched himself from Otho’s grasp with a superhuman surge of strength, and launched himself at the throat of Sylvanus Quale.

  “Grag — get him!” cried Simon Wright.

  The robot seized the maddened Cannig, and tore him from Quale. The stricken man struggled ferociously, frothing at the lips, until Grag’s metal fist knocked him senseless.

  Cannig went down, unconscious. Yet even in unconsciousness there were bestial lines in his flushed face.

  “Good God!” muttered Ezra Gurney. “The blight has got him!”

  For a moment there was a strained silence. And in that silence there came to them from northward the distant, persistent throbbing of the Jovian ground-drums.

  Boom! Boom! They throbbed, in faraway, ominous quivering vibration that was felt rather than heard.

  “Cannig said that he’d been afraid of the Space Emperor lately,” Simon rasped. “He had reason to be. His protests against the atavism horror had made the black devil suspicious of him, and the thing was turned on him.”

  “And he didn’t know that poison was working in him till it hit him just now!” exclaimed Ezra Gurney, aghast.

  “But what of master, Simon?” asked Grag anxiously of the Brain.

  The robot’s unswerving devotion to Captain F
uture ruled him now as always.

  “We’re going to find Curtis,” Simon declared. “We’ll go first to Brewer’s mine, where you said he’d gone, Ezra.”

  “I’ll go with you!” Ezra Gurney declared instantly.

  “You can take Cannig up to the hospital,” the Brain rasped to the staring Quale and Kells. “And tell them up there I now have a cure for the atavism horror which I’ll use on the victims when we get back.”

  “A cure?” echoed Quale unbelievingly.

  “Come on — what are we waiting for?” Otho interrupted. “Let’s go.”

  THE three unhuman comrades and Ezra Gurney hastened out into the night. By dark back-streets they hurried to the jungle-edge where the Comet waited.

  Presently, with Grag at the controls, the little teardrop ship was hurtling northward over the moonlit jungles. Otho removed his Jovian disguise as they flew on.

  Gurney directed their course. Presently the little cluster of lights at the Brewer mine came into view, and with a rush, the Comet landed beside the lighted offices.

  A half-dozen men bound in chairs met their eyes as they entered the office. The men, now thoroughly surrendering to the inevitable and hoping for judicial mercy, told them of Captain Future’s visit and the flare-gun traffic with the natives.

  “Giving the Jovians guns!” Ezra Gurney cried wrathfully. “By heaven, Brewer will spend the rest of his life in prison out on Cerberus for this.”

  He went to the televisor and called Planet Police Headquarters in Jungletown.

  “Send a flier up here to pick up some prisoners. I’ll wait until you come,” the marshal said. “And if you see Lucas Brewer anywhere, arrest him at once!”

  “We’re not going to wait here,” Simon told the marshal. “Curtis isn’t here. That means he’s gone to the Jovian meeting where the Space Emperor was to appear, the meeting of which Otho brought us news.”

  “The place is only a little west of here!” Otho cried. “It’s a ruin the Jovians call the Place of the Dead.”

  “Let us go, then,” boomed Grag anxiously.

  “Go ahead — I’ll see you when I’ve taken these men back to Jungletown,” Gurney told them. “And save that girl, if you can!”

  The Comet, with only the three weird comrades aboard it now, split the night like a shooting star, plunging westward over the moon-drenched jungle.

  The throb of the ground-drums had ceased for the time being, and that fact was like an ominous warning to the three.

  “There’s the place!” Otho cried, his green eyes peering intently ahead. “That big clearing —”

  “There’s a fight going on there!” boomed Grag suddenly. “Look!”

  The sinister flash of a deadly beam was visible amid a group of struggling figures in the moonlit ruins.

  Chapter 16: Prison Pit

  CAPTAIN FUTURE realized that his concealment was gone. The invisibility-charge was now dissipating by the second, and he was already almost solidly visible.

  The Jovian throng was uttering a chorus of cries and surging toward him. The dark shape of the Space Emperor had turned, and from the mysterious plotter came a low cry.

  “Captain Future — here!”

  Then the Space Emperor uttered a deep shout to the Jovians.

  “Seize the Earthman spy!”

  The green natives surged forward with wild bass yells of rage, incited by that shout.

  Curt sprang erect, drew his pistol and triggered at the sinister black figure. Now that he was discovered, he would at least make one more attempt to destroy the dark plotter.

  The attempt was as futile as he had known it must be. The proton-beam splashed through the immaterialized form of the Space Emperor without harming him.

  “Run!” Curt was calling fiercely to Joan Randall as he fired. “I’ll hold them off —”

  The pale ray of his pistol leaped like a thing alive, and knocked down Jovians in their tracks. The weapon was only set at stunning force now. Even in this desperate moment, Curt could not bring himself to kill these misguided natives.

  Joan had gained her feet. But the girl had not tried to make an escape.

  “I’ll not leave you, Captain Future!” she cried pluckily.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Curt cried, his gray eyes blazing. “You can’t —”

  “Captain Future!” screamed the girl. “Behind you —”

  Curt whirled. But too late. Jovians who had rushed around to get at him from behind now leaped up upon him.

  For moments Curt stood erect, struggling with superhuman strength, his red head and straining face towering out of the mass of green flipper-men who sought to pull him down. The proton-pistol had been torn from his hands but his big fists beat a devil’s tattoo on the faces of the natives.

  But the struggle was hopeless. He felt himself pulled down by the smothering mass of enemies. His belt, too, was torn from him and flung aside like the pistol.

  Then he was hauled to his feet, held by the flipper-hands of so many Jovians that escape was impossible. He saw Joan, similarly held, nearby.

  “Why the devil didn’t you get away when there was a chance!” Curt panted to the girl. “Now we’re both in for it.”

  The Space Emperor, a dark, erect shape of mystery, glided forward until he towered in front of Curt and Joan.

  “So the famous Captain Future meets defeat at last,” mocked the mysterious criminal.

  Curt felt an emotion as near despair as he ever could feel. Yet the big red-head let no trace of it enter his voice as he stared contemptuously at the black figure.

  “Just who are you inside that suit?” he demanded. “Quale? Kells? Lucas Brewer?”

  The Space Emperor jerked, as though startled by Curt Newton’s guesses.

  “You’ll never know, Captain Future!” he declared. “You’re going to die. Not a quick, easy death, but the most horrible one that any man could die.”

  THE uncanny plotter raised his voice in a command to the Jovians who held the man and girl.

  “Drop them into one of the ground-drum pits!” he ordered.

  Captain Future struggled suddenly, used every trick of super ju-jitsu that Otho the android had taught him. But it was futile.

  He and Joan were dragged to one of the deep pits that had been used for the ground-drums. They were lowered into the big dirt pit by the Jovians, and then released.

  Curt dropped over twenty feet, and struck the dirt floor of the pit. Joan was crumpled beside him.

  “I’m not hurt,” she gasped. Then horror came into her eyes. “Is he going to leave us in here to starve to death?”

  “I’m afraid it’s something a devil of a lot worse than starvation,” the big redhead answered tightly.

  He looked up. The dirt walls of the pit sloped upward toward each other, and at the small opening at the top he could see Jovians armed with flare-guns looking down at them.

  The dark, helmeted head of the Black One became visible at the top, against the brilliant moonlight. The super-criminal leaned down toward them.

  Curt saw that the Space Emperor was again material, since in his hand he carried a small, flat metal lanternlike thing, with a big translucent lens in its face.

  “You wanted to find out how I produce the atavism effect, Captain Future,” mocked the plotter. “Now you are going to have your curiosity gratified.”

  He held out the little lanternlike apparatus as he spoke.

  “This apparatus produces a super-hard vibration that paralyzes the pituitary gland of any living creature and allows atavism to occur,” rumbled the black figure. “Allow me to demonstrate it for you.”

  “Back, Joan!” yelled Captain Future, sweeping the girl behind the shelter of his own big form, against the wall.

  It was too late. The lens in the thing the Space Emperor held had glowed palely for an instant, and a dim, almost wholly invisible ray had flickered from it and bathed the heads of Curt and Joan. They felt a momentary sensation of shivering cold.

  Joan sc
reamed in horror. Curt felt a blind, raging fury. He had not felt anything but that momentary sensation of cold, but he knew that the deadly work had been done. The pituitaries of Joan and himself were paralyzed, and inevitably the atavism would begin in them —

  “You will suffer the change now, Captain Future!” mocked the sinister black shape. “Down in that pit, you and the girl will become hideous creatures within a few days. And I am leaving a few of my faithful Jovians here to watch and make sure that you stay in the pit to suffer.”

  Curt kept his voice steady, by a supreme effort, as he looked up at the mocking figure.

  “I have never promised death to a man without keeping my promise,” he said in chill, even voice. “I am promising it to you now.”

  He said nothing more. But something deadly in his tones made the Space Emperor stiffen.

  “Not you or any other Earthman can harm me, protected as I am by immateriality,” the criminal retorted. “And you forget that you, and the girl too, will soon be raving, hideous brutes!”

  The Space Emperor withdrew. They could hear the Jovians above being dismissed by the plotter. A number of Jovians remained on guard above the pit, however. They could hear the excited bass voices overhead.

  JOAN RANDALL was staring at Captain Future with dark eyes wide with dazed horror. It was as though the girl could not yet realize what had happened.

  “We — becoming beasts down here,” she choked hoarsely. “Changing more horribly, day by day —”

  Curt’s big figure strode to her, and he grasped her shoulders in strong hands and shook her.

  “Joan, get a grip on yourself!” he commanded harshly. “This is no time to get hysterical. We’re in a devil of a bad jam and it will take all our brains and nerves to get us out.”

  “But we can’t get out!” sobbed the girl. “Those Jovians above would kill us if we could manage even to get out of this pit. And even if we did, we’d still change and change — like those horrors in the hospital —”

  She buried her face in her hands. Curt soothed her and spoke encouragingly.

  “There’s a strong chance we can escape the atavism if we can escape from here and get back to Jungletown quickly,” he told her. “Simon Wright should have found a cure by now. He was working on it when I left.”