“I’ll kill that pest if you let him mock me like that!” bellowed Grag.
“Why, Oog means no harm,” Otho chuckled. “He just wants to play Grag and mama.”
Grag started forward, but Simon Wright intervened with a sharp command.
“Get in that pilot-chair and take the ship off! We’ve lost enough time as it is.”
The Comet roared up across the sunlit, rocky surface of Zuun and tore out through its thin atmosphere into space.
“Ru Ghur’s ship can’t have got far from here yet,” the Brain declared. “See if we can spot them before they get clean away.”
Ezra Gurney and Otho manned the look-out-lenses as Grag skillfully steered the Comet through the meteor swarms and planetoid families. They cruised in a widening spiral around Zuun, since they had no idea of the direction taken by the radium raiders. But as minutes passed without their sighting the four black cruisers, they were oppressed by a realization that they had lost the trail.
“They could be a hundred thousand miles from here now, on their way back to Outlaw World,” Ezra Gurney said heavily.
“And we still haven’t got the faintest idea where Outlaw World is,” muttered Grag. “Unless Bork King knows.”
The big Martian shook his he. “Not even we Companions of Space know that, and we know the System from Vulcan to Pluto.”
“I see something far ahead!” yelled Otho suddenly. “A flare of light at the edge of the meteor-swarm!”
They rushed to the lenses. Far ahead, at the edge of z cloud of sparks they knew to be a big meteor swarm, there had suddenly burgeoned a little flare of intensely brilliant light.
“Maybe one of Ru Ghur’s ships collided with a meteor!” cried Bork King.
“Head toward it at top speed, Gag!” exclaimed the Brain.
Chapter 13: In the Meteor Swarm
DESPERATION was in the heart of Captain Future, bound hand and foot and sitting in a chair beside Joan in the cabin of Ru Ghur’s flagship. He realized the imminent peril to Joan and himself, for soon the Uranian would return to enforce his ultimatum and Curt could tell him nothing about the Citadel of the Guardian of Mars. Then Ru Ghur would use the Lethe-ray on both Joan and himself.
“There must be some way out of this,” Curt thought feverishly. “What is it Otho always says — There’s never been a knot tied that can’t be untied? But how am I going to untie this one?”
Joan gave him a brave smile, which he tried to return. Then his gaze fell upon the tall Lethe-ray apparatus directly beside his chair. Soon the drugging rays of that diabolical machine would plunge him and Joan into an unreal, dream-bound existence.
“By glory!” Curt thought suddenly. “Why the apparatus might help us escape!”
“The idea that had shot into his mind seemed fantastically impossible of success. But it might succeed, and that was the only slim hope left.
“If I could point the ray-projector in the right direction,” Curt thought tensely.
He looked at Kra Kol. The watchful Saturnian’s chair four feet in front of him.
Future stretched painfully, as though cramped bonds. He started to rise clumsily, His head bumping against the swiveled projector of the Lethe-ray apparatus.
“Sit down!” ordered Kra Kol.
“I was only stretching,” Curt complained. “I’m getting numb.”
“You’ll be number when Ru Ghur gets back,” threatened Saturnian. “If I had my way, you’d be dead now.”
Curt glanced up surreptitiously. His apparently accidental bump against the projector had accomplished what he sought. Its quartz lens was now pointing straight at Kra Kol’s head, and the intensity control was at nearly full. Apparently Ru Ghur had been using the machine for some nefarious purpose since Curt’s escape.
The switch of the Lethe-ray was near his shoulder. He leaned in his chair slightly, pressing his shoulder against the switch, and coughed loudly to cover the instant humming.
Kra Kol looked more and more suspicious at this sudden coughing fit following Captain Future’s attempt to rise.
“What’s the matter with you now?” he demanded harshly.
“These bonds are so tight they’re making me sick,” choked Curt, and kept the coughing spasms going.
The invisible force of the Lethe-ray was streaming from the projector and bathing Kra Kol’s head!
The Saturnian looked queer, in a moment. He opened his mouth as though to shout, tried to rise and could not. He slumped against the back of his chair, rendered unconscious by the malign power of the dream-carrying rays.
“Curt, what is it?” exclaimed Joan, astonished. “What’s happened to him?”
Captain Future quickly explained. Joan looked first hopeful, then dismayed.
“But what good does it do us? We’re still, bound hand and foot.”
“You can get up and shuffle toward me if you’re careful,” Curt told her. “If I can use my teeth on those cords, we’ll be out of here soon.”
Joan rose to her feet precariously, and unsteadily made hopping movements that finally brought her to the chair in which Curt sat.
He hastily chewed at the bonds around her hands. In a few moments, Joan had her hands free.
She as hastily unbound her ankles, then set Captain Future free of his hands.
“Kra Kol is waking up!” she exclaimed.
The Saturnian had fallen back out of the radius of the Lethe-ray when he had slumped back in his chair. Now he was beginning to stir. Curt grabbed the atom-pistol from his limp hand and brought the butt down on the Saturnian’s head. Kra Kol lapsed into unconsciousness again.
Curt turned off the Lethe-ray machine and wheeled toward the door, the atom-pistol in his hand.
“Joan,” he said swiftly, “our only chance is to get off this ship in space-suits and use impellers to reach a habitable planetoid. But half the crew would see us before we reached the main-space door amidships.” He pointed to one of the port-hole windows. “We can get out that way. But first I’ll have to get space-suits and impellers. They’re in a locker off the corridor forward of here. I know where — I was a prisoner on this ship before.”
HE OPENED the door softly and looked along the corridor. There was no one in it. Ru Ghur must be with his officers in the pilot-room.
“Wait, Joan,” he whispered. “I’ll be back with the suits in a minute.”
He slipped forward along the corridor, reached the locker, and hauled out two space-suits and four of the small hand-rockets called impellers — two for each of them. Then he heard voices in the pilot-room just forward.
“— swing in around Mars and come down its shadow,” Ru Ghur was saying.
“How will we know where the place is, if Future doesn’t give in and tell you?” demanded another voice.
“We can still use the radium compass, can’t we?” retorted Ru Ghur. “There isn’t a chance we can miss.”
Captain Future’s mind was illumined as by a lightning flash from the few words he had just overheard.
“Radium compass?” he muttered. “That’s the answer to part of the whole mystery! Why didn’t I guess it?”
There was no time for speculation. He raced back to the cabin where Joan was standing guard over the unconscious Kra Kol.
“Joan, I’ve finally got a clue that may lead us to Ru Ghur’s base, if we get a chance to work on it!” he said. “But on with the suits, now!”
They rapidly donned the space-suits. Curt was starting toward the port-hole window when Joan spoke hurriedly through the short-range telaudio inside each suit.
“Curt, wait!” she exclaimed. “What about Kra Kol?”
He knew what she meant. The unconscious Saturnian would die if he remained in this cabin when the window was shattered.
“I suppose we can’t kill him in cold blood,” muttered Captain Future. “Though I’ll bet Otho would call me a big ninny for doing this.”
He tossed Kra Kol’s limp form out into the corridor, and closed the door. Then he fired
his atom-pistol at the window.
The crackling blast of atomic energy ripped the tough glassite window into fragments. With a loud whoosh the air in the cabin rushed out into space. There was a sharp click from the door as it was locked, automatically functioning to seal off the rest of the ship.
“Out of the window!” Curt Newton exclaimed. “I’ll get outside and help you through, we’ll have to leap clear at once.”
He scrambled through the port-hole and hung to its edges outside. The girl quickly followed, and for a moment the two clung precariously to the smooth metal side of the Falcon as the ship rushed through space, their impellers thrust in their belts.
All around them stretched the abyss of space, black, unplumbed, stirred by the shining sparks of the meteor swarms and planetoids. The ship was throbbing through the void, its tail-rockets flaring. The other three raider ships were on the other side, out of sight.
Captain Future gripped the girl’s arm. “Leap, Joan! We’ve got to clear the rocket-flare, remember!”
They braced their heels against the side of the ship and sprang out like swimmers diving into space. They shot away from the rushing ship, turning over and over. So tremendous was the speed of the Falcon and its companion ships that in the next moment all four were out of sight.
“So far so good,” encouraged Curt Newton. “But they’ll soon discover our escape and come searching for us.”
They were near the edge of one of the big meteor swarms the squadron had been skirting.
“We’ll make for that swarm and hide,” he said tensely. “The ship won’t dare to enter that.”
He unhooked the impellers from his belt. Holding the hand-rockets, he eased open their catches. They spat flame, kicking him toward the swarm.
Joan was using her own impellers in the same fashion. Side by side, they floated toward the hive of meteors.
“Curt, look!” she called suddenly and with sharp urgency.
She was pointing in the direction the raider ships had gone. He glimpsed a tiny, distant jet of rocket flame.
“Ru Ghur’s ships are firing their lateral rockets — turning around!” he exclaimed. “They’ve missed us already.”
Tension grew by the minute as they floated with agonizing slowness toward the meteor swarm. The raider ships would soon be back, and the little impellers could not thrust them faster.
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” Joan asked steadily.
“It’ll be close,” Curt gritted.
SUDDENLY Joan did an astounding thing. She snatched his impellers from Curt’s hand and dropped them and, with a blast of her own impellers darted away from him.
“Joan!” he cried. “You’re heading; back toward the raider ships!
Her voice had a catch in it when she answered. “Curt, you must get away, at any cost, now that you have a clue to the raiders. I don’t matter!”
Captain Future’s horror made his voice a strangled shout, Joan was going to let herself be found by the returning ships, knowing that the time they spent in picking her up would give Curt minutes enough to reach the concealment of the meteor swarm.
“I won’t let you do it,” he cried hoarsely. “Come back here! I order you to!”
“It would only mean that both of us would be captured,” came her answer. “That would destroy your chance of crushing Ru Ghur.”
She was already almost out of sight, as she used the impeller vigorously to thrust her toward the returning cruisers. And Curt Newton was unable to follow her! He was floating toward the meteor swarm, and without an impeller could not change his direction.
Frantically he begged, but now without reply. Joan was already out of reach of his space-suit telaudio.
“Joan — Joan!” he called fruitlessly, again and again.
Then, straining his eyes for sight of her, he glimpsed spurts of rocket fire from the raider ships. They had sighted her floating in space, were halting to pick her up.
Captain Future himself was now floating into the meteor swarm! Totally helpless to steer himself, he found himself entering a region thronged with rushing, spinning masses of jagged stone.
A ponderous ovoid meteor as large as a space-ship rushed toward him like a monster juggernaut of the void. It swung through space only a dozen yards from him, and mutual gravitational attraction sucked him gently toward it so that he circled it like a human satellite.
But the circles of his orbit around the meteor were rapidly diminishing as he was drawn to its surface. He hit the jagged rock surface with a gentle jar. Instantly he was on his feet.
“Here I am, blast your black souls!” he raged. “Come on and get me!”
Curt Newton, in his rage at Joan’s recapture, would have welcomed it himself at that moment.
But the four raider cruisers that had picked up the girl were now coasting slowly along the edge of the meteor swarm at a respectful distance.
“They know I’m in here, but they don’t dare come after me,” Curt gritted.
Captain Future knew that keen eyes and powerful telescopes were peering into the swarm. But they would not be able to make out his dark, space-suited figure on this spinning meteor. And his telaudio could not reach them.
The cruisers could not enter the swarm. Nor would Ru Ghur dare to delay long enough to send men in space-suits to search the whole hive of meteors, since the radium raiders were already fearful that the Planet Patrol was racing to this sector.
“So that’s it!” Curt muttered in a moment. “He’s going to make sure of me.”
Ru Ghur’s cruisers had come around to present their sides to the swarm. From their batteries of heavy atom-guns, a barrage of atomic beams began to play upon the meteors. One by one, each was seared by the blinding rays. The four cruisers advanced slowly, their fire coming nearer and nearer to the meteor on which Captain Future stood.
Despite his overmastering rage, Curt Newton realized that to submit unresistingly to being killed would not help Joan. He spotted a cavity in the jagged surface, and dived into it a moment before the beams hit his little world.
Blinding atomic force crackled, searing and splitting the rock, touching veins of magnesium ore to flame. Then the beams swept on.
Curt scrambled out. Ru Ghur’s cruisers were systematically raking the meteors. Finally they ceased firing and sped off into space.
Captain Future watched them vanish, his heart sick. “Heaven help Ru Ghur if he harms Joan!” he muttered hoarsely.
He tried desperately to take a more hopeful view of the girl’s danger. Ru Ghur had not seemed to think that Joan could know anything of Bork King’s Martian secrets. That made her peril a little less.
Yet he realized blackly that although the Uranian might not immediately harm her, he would consider her a hostage, and also, as an agent of the Patrols, a source of information about their plans.
“I’ll smash him if I have to track him to the farthest galaxy in the universe!” Curt swore. “And I can do it now, if I can just get out of here.”
That brought him back to his immediate predicament. He was hopelessly marooned on this meteor. Without an impeller, he could not leave it. And the Futuremen were entombed on Zuun!
When he had escaped with Joan, he had planned to use the charges of the two impellers to make a signal of atomic fire that would be seen by any ship in this part of space. But that was impossible now. An inexorable time limit pressed upon him also. The oxygen in the tank of his space-suit would last only so many hours. Then he must inevitably perish.
Chapter 14: Secret of Mars
NEWTON refused to surrender to despair, however. His overmastering anxiety for the girl he loved strengthened his fierce resolution to find some way out. But there was only one possibility of escape, and that was to send out a distress signal that would bring some ship to his rescue. A telaudio signal was out of the question. It must be a flash signal.
Captain Future suddenly remembered the way the magnesium veins in the rock surface of the meteor had flashed i
nto flame when struck by the atom beams. Considerable metallic magnesium was in meteors. If he could collect enough of it, he could make a brilliant beacon.
At once, he started hunting for the metal. It looked hopeless at first. All the surface veins of the element had been burned out when the atom beams had blasted across the meteor. And he couldn’t dig beneath the surface, without tools.
There remained the other side of the meteor. It had not been strafed by Ru Ghur’s cruisers. Captain Future trudged around the blackened surface of the meteor to the other side. The atomic gravitation equalizer at his belt made him able to walk normally even on this small celestial body, for it maintained a fixed artificial gravity field.
He reached the unblasted side of the meteor and hopefully searched that jagged rock expanse.
“Not much surface magnesium,” he muttered. “But maybe enough, if I have time to get it out.” Time was the vital factor — every minute lessened the supply of oxygen in his tank.
He began to dig out scraps of magnesium with the butt end of his atom-pistol. But he could not follow any vein more than a few inches deep, so his little pile of magnesium grew but slowly.
He had no time to notice the weirdness of his surroundings. And weird indeed was the dark surface of the spinning meteor, beneath a sky blazing with rushing lights like stars.
Captain Future finally realized that no more than a few hours’ oxygen was left him.
“Got to try it now or never!” he thought.
The heap of magnesium he had so painfully accumulated was not half as large as he had desired. Still there was a good chance that its flare might be seen. For although the space lanes did not run through this dangerous zone, they ran not far above and below it.
Curt Newton retreated to a safe distance from his pile of magnesium. Then he aimed his atomic-pistol at the metal and pulled the trigger.
A blinding white brilliance lit up the whole surface of the asteroid as his atom beam touched off the magnesium. He had mixed mineral oxides with the metal to furnish sufficient oxygen for the flare, and the resultant flash was so terrific it blinded him even through closed eyelids.
Captain Future 19 - Outlaw World (Winter 1946) Page 9
