“Are you after radium for the same reason as Ru Ghur?” Curt asked directly.
Bork King shook his head. “I don’t know what that Uranian’s motive is in gathering radium. Nobody does.”
He volunteered no further information as they emerged from the cruiser and began examining the unconscious men, all Martians like their leader. The men lay in drugged coma from the effects of the sleep-gas.
They worked for some time to revive the sleepers, and finally the score of men had all been roused.
Cries of rage broke from them when they learned of the theft of the radium. “We’ll follow that Uranian, blast his whole band, and get the stuff back!” cried a furious young Martian.
Captain Future spoke up quickly. “And I’m with you in that, if you’ll have me. I’ve got my own score to settle with that fat devil.”
“We’ll be glad to have you with us. Jan,” said Bork King promptly. “But it’s not going to be easy to follow Ru Ghur. He sabotaged the Red Hope pretty thoroughly. And even if we can get it repaired, we don’t know where the raiders’ secret base is.” He looked at Curt keenly. “Ru Ghur didn’t give you any hint of where his Outlaw World is when you were his prisoner, did he?” he asked.
Curt shook his head. “No. All he said was that it is a world of whose existence the System peoples don’t dream.”
A brooding look crossed Bork King’s massive face. “That fits the rumors you hear — that their mysterious Outlaw World lies far outside the Solar System. Yet I can’t believe that.”
He raised his voice, addressing his men, “We can’t make major repairs to the Red Hope here. The best we can do is to patch it up enough to get us to Iskar, the pirate asteroid. We can complete repairs there, then take Ku Ghur’s trail!”
The chorus of agreement from the outlaw Martians showed that their trust in their leader was absolute.
Bork King and his second in command, a lanky, solemn Martian named Qi Thir, inspected the wrecked cyclotrons of the Red Hope.
“They did a good job, blast them,” growled the leader. “Every one of the eight cycs is blown.”
“Number Three and Four cycs only have their heads blown off,” spoke up Captain Future, beside them. “They’d be the easiest to repair, and would give us enough power to get the ship off this low-gravity moon.”
Qi Thir looked at him with respect. “You know ships. Were you a cyc man with Zarastra?”
CURT NEWTON nodded hastily, seizing on that explanation.
“That’s right. Let’s look at the hull now. It didn’t seem to be ripped, though it’s pretty badly bulged.”
The explosion had bulged out the heavy triple wall of the Red Hope like tin. Girders had snapped, but the plates had held. Also, the telaudio transmitter had been wrecked. That quenched a hope Curt had had of sending a surreptitious message to the Futuremen of his whereabouts.
“The hull’s strained but it ought to hold together for a while,” he declared. “How far is it to Iskar?”
“Why, you ought to know where the pirate asteroid is,” Bork King said, surprised. “Only twenty degrees Sunwise from here in the inner belt of the asteroid zone.”
They began work almost at once upon the wrecked cycs, concentrating their efforts on the two least damaged ones. The solemn Qi Thir and Curt Newton superintended the repairs.
Bork King’s Martians worked without pausing for rest, jumping at the slightest command of their big roaring leader, with a sort of fanaticism. Curt sensed a mystery about this outlaw band from Mars.
“That’s all we can do here,” panted Qi Thir, hours later. “If the gods of Mars are good, we can limp to Iskar on these two cycs.”
The day of Leda was dying, the Sun sinking into the faery flower forest and Jupiter rising in huge majesty into the dusking sky.
“Get aboard,” Bork King ordered his tired men. “We take off at once.”
Captain Future stood beside the big Martian in the pilot-room as the two repaired cyclotrons began a ragged, irregular droning that shook the weakened ship. With infinite care, Bork King eased the cyc pedal down until the cycs seemed about to tear themselves apart.
Then he jerked the space-stick back. The Red Hope lurched clumsily up through the giant tree flowers, unsteadily riding the jets of its keel tubes. The ship shivered as Bork King fed power to the stern tubes and sent it limping shakily out into space.
“We got off, at any rate,” muttered the big outlaw. “Now for Iskar, then we take Ru Ghur’s trail.”
The asteroid zone stretched across the firmament ahead of them, a great band of shining specks that in reality was a cosmic jungle of whirling planetoids and spinning meteor swarms.
The Red Hope staggered toward it, and toward the secret pirate asteroid that was the rendezvous of the Solar System’s lawless underworld.
Captain Future, looking ahead, realized grimly that he was taking his life into his hands by going into this lair of the men who of all men in the System hated and feared him most.
Chapter 7: On the Pirate Asteroid
THROUGH the whirling wilderness of the asteroid zone limped a battered outlaw ship, For hours, the Red Hope had threaded a precarious course deeper and deeper into the great band of rushing planetoids and spinning swarms of meteor drift.
At spasmodic intervals, its rocket-tubes fired weakly, as it clumsily changed course to avoid a dangerous mass of drift. Sometimes the ship, barely managed to avoid disaster, for of its two working cyclotrons only one was now functioning with any degree of efficiency.
Captain Future, standing beside Bork King in the pilot-room listened with an intent expression on his brown face to the throbbing of the cyclotrons.
“Number Three is about gone, but Number Four may hold out a little longer,” he declared.
The big, bristling-haired Martian outlaw uttered a blistering oath.
“Curse that devil Ru Ghur for his sabotaging tricks! It’s hard enough to navigate this blasted jungle of swarms with full power, let alone with a half-dead space-stick.”
The Red Hope had entered one of the densest and most perilous sections of the zone. Curt Newton looked out into a black void crowded with moving crumbs of light. Those innocent sparks were rushing meteors or planetoids whose orbits were unbelievably complicated. Any one of those hurtling masses of stone could instantly destroy the ship.
“I don’t see how you can navigate in here at all,” Curt admitted. “Meteor meters would be useless in such crowded stuff as this.”
Bork King looked at him in surprise. “You surely must know the secret of navigating the zone if you were one of Zarastra’s pirate crew.”
Captain Future hastily covered his slip. “I was a cyc man — not a pilot. That’s why I don’t know anything about the piloting end of it.”
“Of course.” The big Martian nodded, satisfied by the explanation. “Well, Jan, any pirate can navigate the zone, but nobody else can do so safely. Listen to that buzzer.”
Curt Newton became aware that from the buzzer in question was coming a constant succession of sharp notes, in distinctly different groups of long and short buzzes.
“Long ago, pirates planted wave-projectors on the ‘toids and swarms here in the zone,” the Martian outlaw explained. “Each gives off a distinctive individual signal in that specially tuned buzzer. If you know the code of those signals, as all the pilots of the Companions of Space do, you can navigate the zone safely.”
“So that’s why the asteroid Iskar is such a safe rendezvous for space pirates?” Curt exclaimed, and Bork King nodded.
“Iskar is at the center of a region just choked with swarms, nobody but pirates ever try to reach it,” Bork said, and added thoughtfully, “Of course, some day the Patrol will find it and clean it up, just as they did Pallas and the other pirate asteroids in past times. But until then, it’s a safe base for all the Companions of Space.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a space pirate, Bork,” reminded Captain Future, looking at him curiously.
Bork King’s massive face darkened. “I’m not, though the Planet Patrol wouldn’t agree. Radium is the only thing my boys and I take. We wouldn’t have to take that by force, if it weren’t for Ru Ghur and his cursed band.”
Captain Future did not press his questions further, for he had already learned that Bork King was intensely reserved upon the motives for his activities.
They went deeper into the wilderness of spinning swarms and meteor drift, limping on precariously. Then at last the big Martian pointed to a small reddish speck of light not far ahead in the zone.
“That’s Iskar,” he said.
Blood-red as a glittering ruby, the almost inaccessible pirate asteroid beckoned like an ominous crimson beacon.
“Small, isn’t it?” said Bork King. “But not a world in System is as deep with blood and treasure as wild Iskar when the pirate fleets are in.”
“Does Ru Ghur never come here?” Curt asked.
The big Martian snorted. “Ru Ghur would be about as welcome in this place as Captain Future!”
CURT smiled grimly. He did not need that to warn him that he was thrusting his head into the jaws of a lion. But he had determined to string along with these Martian outlaws as long as he could, on the trail of Ru Ghur. These outlaws and their pirate friends might succeed in doing what the Planet Patrol had been unable to do, might find Ru Ghur’s mysterious secret base. It was worth the risk of the gamble, to Captain Future.
“Ru Ghur’s raiders have preyed on the Companions of Space as well as on commercial traffic, for radium,” Bork King was going on resentfully. “There isn’t a pirate in the System who wouldn’t be glad to kill that cursed Uranian.”
The Red Hope sagged toward the surface of the crimson asteroid. Now Curt saw that the scarlet hue of the little world came from the dense forests or brilliantly red club mosses which blanketed most of its surface.
At one point, just where day was passing into night on the little sphere, a large clearing had been blasted from the red mosses. A clutter of flimsy metalloy buildings was at the center of this clear space, and lights winked up from them through the gathering dusk.
“Corsair City,” grunted Bork King. “And plenty of the Companions must be here tonight, to judge by those ships.
He was bringing the Red Hope down toward a rough landing field beside the pirate town. There were dozens of space cruisers large and small resting here. All were heavily gunned, and many bore scars of battle.
The crippled Martian ship bumped to a landing in the darkness. Bork King called his crew together in the lower deck.
“I’m going in and bargain with Old Riah for new cycs,” he said. “And then I’m going to see, if any of the Companions can put us on Ru Ghur’s track. Half of you stay here in the ship. Qi Thir, Jan Dark, and the rest of you will go with me.”
They emerged into a night of velvet blackness. The sky was wonderful, the matchless night sky of the asteroid zone, with meteors streaking across the blazing heavens like crisscrossing trails of light. The air was soft and was freighted with pungent scents from the moss forests.
Captain Future and the Martians tramped past the rows of parked ships into the pirate town. Corsair City had a single straggling street, midway along which stood a brightly lighted metalloy structure from which came a roaring din of raucous music, and of bellowing voices.
Bork King stopped at a dark yard that was piled with shadowy masses of machines and metals — salvaged parts of space-ships.
“Old Riah’s salvage depot,” grunted the Martian. “I’m going to bargain with the old rascal for some new cycs.” He glanced around. “Qi Thir, you and Jan can go along with the rest to Meteor Jim’s place and see what you can learn from the Companions about Ru Ghur. I’ll be along later.”
Captain Future’s pulse thudded faster as he went on with the Martians to the gaudily lighted pirate rendezvous. He stopped with them at the open door of Meteor Jim’s and looked inside.
The place was a single big room, brilliantly illuminated by glowing uranite bulbs, and green rial smoke drifted in clouds, There was a long bar along one side, gambling tables along the other, and noisy music-machines going full blast from the rear.
The crowd held his eyes, The place was packed with the most motley, hardbitten interplanetary throng that could be assembled in the System. Jovians, Venusians, Neptunians, Earthmen, and men of every other planet, all of them wearing weapons and all of them drinking and carousing with equally hard-eyed women. The Companions of Space, the lawless corsairs whose depredations ranged from one end of the System to the other.
“Here’s Bork King’s band of Martians back!” went up a cheerful cry from a red-faced Earthman. “What luck this time, Qi Thir?”
“No luck,” growled the lanky Qi Thir. “We brought back nothing but a battered ship.”
Captain Future went to the bar with his Martian companions, and with them drank tawny sakra liquor from the Red Planet, their favorite beverage.
A hulking Jovian pirate who stood beside Curt Newton looked at him with curiosity on his green, prognathous face.
“Who are you, Earthman?” he demanded. “I never before saw Bork King’s outfit take in anybody who wasn’t a Martian.”
“I did Bork a favor on Leda and he took me in,” Captain Future answered. “My name’s Jan Dark, and I used to belong to Zarastra’s band.”
THE reaction was instant and dismaying. The Jovian, abruptly belligerent, glared into Curt’s face.
“You’re lying!” he bellowed. “You never belonged to Zarastra’s band in your life! I was his chief gunner for nine years, and I never saw you before. You’re a cursed spy!”
“A spy?”
The shout brought an electric silence and tension into the crowded place. Scores of hands instantly darted toward atom-pistols.
The least added impulse now would send them into immediate, deadly action, of that Captain Future was sure. Above all he had to avoid that.
Luck had failed Captain Future. He had been brought face to face with a real member of Zarastra’s crew. But there was nothing to do now but brazen it out. He stared at the Jovian coolly.
“I joined Zarastra before his last voyage and was nearly killed with him in that last battle off Titan,” he declared.
“I saw him off on that voyage, though I had to stay behind myself because of a wound,” the Jovian said violently. “And you weren’t one of his crew!”
“What’s all this about a spy,” said a cool, lisping voice from the back of the room, where a big table was reserved for the pirate captains. “Bring that man back here.”
Captain Future turned. He felt an instant apprehension as he saw the man who had spoken — a foppish young Venusian who sat alone at the table, his fingers toying with a goblet of swamp grape wine.
“Su Kuan!” thought Curt Newton, appalled. For this handsome young Venusian with the foppish ways was one of the most dangerous pirates in the Solar System.
Captain Future had tangled with him twice, and on the last occasion had nearly been killed by him in a lightning-fast brawl in Uranopolis. If Su Kuan recognized him, despite his disguise and darkened hair, there would be an explosion.
Curt and the Jovian had been herded to the Venusian captain’s table by the crowd. And the Jovian repeated his charge.
“This Earthman’s a dirty Patrol spy! He claims he belonged to Zarastra’s outfit, but he never did.”
Curt shrugged. “The Jovian was gunner and I was a cyc man,” he told the Venusian calmly. “That’s why he never saw me before.”
Su Kuan’s unfathomable black eyes remained fixed with a faintly puzzled expression on Curt Newton’s face.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before,” he murmured. “But I can’t remember just where.”
“He’s a spy, and there’s just one end for spies here in Corsair City!” raged the Jovian.
He snatched out his atom-pistol, leveled it at Curt.
There was a flash, a yell of pain. The Jovian staggered backwar
d with a blasted arm, and the hard-faced men gaped incredulously at the atom-pistol that had appeared as though by magic in Captain Future’s hand.
“I’m not used to being bullied and I don’t like it,” Curt said harshly. “Anybody else here want trouble?” He was playing the part of a swaggering pirate to the hilt, for in that course alone lay safety now.
“What the devil is going on here?” roared a deep bass voice. “What do you mean by ganging up on one of my men?”
Bork King was pushing through the crowd, his craggy red face dark with menace and his hand on the hilt of his atom-pistol.
“Your man, Bork?” repeated Su Kuan, his eyebrows lifting. “Then you can vouch for this Earthman?”
“Of course I can,” snapped Bork King. “Jan Dark saved my life a couple of times over on Leda, when that devil Ru Ghur and his raiders jumped me.”
Su Kuan shrugged. “If you vouch for him, that’s enough for me. Though I still wish I could remember where I’d seen him.”
Curt Newton did not. He knew what would happen if Su Kuan did remember. He knew the wolf howl that would go up from this fierce throng. All would vie for the honor of killing their greatest enemy, Captain Future!
He had seen their eagerness a moment before when he had been accused of being a spy. Their itchy hands had lost no time in darting for their atom-pistols. They were spoiling for a kill. They would need no urging to go into action once the word was spoken.
Bork King was telling Su Kuan of how Ru Ghur’s raiders had robbed him on Jupiter’s flower moon.
“I’m going to find that Uranian if I have to search the whole universe for him!” the big Martian swore. “I thought maybe you might have an idea where his base is.”
Su Kuan shook his head. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to help you catch Ru Ghur. But none of us can figure where his base is. Ak Az and Blacky Malone will be back with their bands tomorrow. They might know something.”
Bork King nodded. “I’ll drop back tomorrow night.”
Captain Future 19 - Outlaw World (Winter 1946) Page 5
