Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  The solemn thought-message ceased to beat into the minds of Curt Newton and the others as they hastily moved on between the statues.

  “Warning of the Watchers!” cried Ber Del shakenly, looking wildly back at the strange statues. “It’s weird frightening —”

  “It didn’t frighten Larstan and his men,” rapped Curt, looking feverishly around. “They must be somewhere here.”

  “The big citadel!” exclaimed Otho, pointing at the great spire that towered from the center of the city. “That might be where the Watchers left their instrument, and if so —”

  “Larstan would be there now!” Curt finished. “Come on!”

  They started on a run through the streets, between the fairylike translucent towers that glistened beneath the flaming sky like transfixed dream palaces. They entered the street leading to the great citadel. Flash! The fire-streak struck like a bolt of lightning from behind a translucent building and just grazed Otho as he leaped wildly.

  “Take cover!” Curt yelled, his proton-pistol leaping into his hand. “Larstan’s men have set an ambush for us!”

  Futuremen and star rovers dived behind corners of adjacent buildings. Criss-cross of proton beams and fire-bolts wove a pattern of death through the street as the Korians and Curt’s followers swiftly shot at each exposed head.

  “We’ve got to get on!” Curt exclaimed. “They’re holding us up here while Larstan searches for the secret of the Watchers.”

  He made a movement to charge forward, in his superhuman anxiety. But Grag held him back.

  “No, chief!” boomed the robot. They’d blast you down in a second — they’re only waiting now for you to show yourself.”

  “Devils of Antares — can’t we find some way to get around them and take them from behind?” raved Hol Jor furiously.

  There seemed no way. The long street that had followed was without cross-streets, was merely a straight avenue leading to the central citadel.

  “Fiends of Pluto, I think I see a way!” Otho hissed. “That window! If I could get through the building —”

  THE window of the tower behind which they crouched was twenty feet over their heads. Yet Otho, doubling himself and then springing upward with inconceivable agility, reached it. He disappeared inside the translucent building.

  “Be ready to make a frontal rush at them when Otho surprises them!” Curt warned the others, gripping his weapon.

  A few moments dragged by like eternities. Then they heard a crackle of fire-rods, and Otho’s high, fierce battle yell from beyond the buildings.

  “Now!” Curt yelled, plunging out and up the street.

  The others were only a shade less swift than he, Grag booming out a deafening shout, Hol Jor’s eyes blazing, all of them triggering as they ran at the Korians ahead. The Korians were confused, some of them facing Curt’s party, others firing at Otho who was turning his proton beam on them from behind the other angle of the building. It became a mad whirl of fighting men and blazing streaks of death. Three of the dozen Korians had dropped, and Ki Illok had cried out and fallen upon one wounded knee, in the first moment.

  “The citadel, lad!” came the Brain’s high cry to Curt. “Larstan — in there —”

  “Go on, chief!” cried Grag, who had gripped one of the green men in great metal hands. “We’ll hold these devils off!”

  Captain Future plunged through the melee, triggering his proton at Korians who fiercely sought to bar his way, fighting toward the entrance of the towering citadel. He burst through the entrance of the building, closely followed by the Brain. In one quick glimpse, Curt got an impression of the awesome interior of this shrine of the Watchers. A vast, cathedrallike room of circular cross section, its translucent white walls soared in lofty curves up into dim immensity. And, like the altar of a cathedral, was the massive oblong mechanism at the center of this great fane. Upon its top were banks of hundreds of small keys, and from its face protruded a hundred nozzle-like spouts.

  Larstan was crouched over this mechanism. The Korian king’s handsome green face was tigerish as he looked up at Curt’s entrance.

  “Somehow I knew you would get here, devil stranger!” snarled the Korian ruler. “But you’ll never —”

  Curt shot! The proton beam from his pistol leaped forward like a lance of light — but was stopped by a barrier ten feet away. Larstan’s fingers had pressed down certain keys of the mechanism over which he crouched in the instant before Curt fired. The oblong machine had vibrated strongly, and from its nozzles had spurted a cloud of shining particles that instantaneously crystallized into a high wall of transparent glassy substance that completely surrounded and imprisoned Captain Future and the Brain. Curt dashed forward with a cry and battered with the butt of his pistol against the glassy wall. The thin substance utterly resisted his blows. From beyond it, Larstan’s triumphant laugh sounded.

  “It’s no use,” mocked the Korian king. “That wall around you is real, solid matter, even though I just created it out of nothing!”

  Larstan’s eyes flamed with triumph. “This instrument of the Watchers embodies the long-sought secret of the Birthplace, the secret of matter-creation. I’ve been studying it for hours, with the aid of the directions left by the Watchers in an easily deciphered code. I’ve mastered its operation.” The Korian king seemed intoxicated with triumph over his adversary. His whole bearing was one of mad exaltation. “I’m going to kill you, Future! But to make your death more bitter, I’ll first prove to you how I can use this wondrous instrument for conquest of all the worlds inside the cloud. Watch!”

  Larstan swiftly pressed other keys of the oblong machine. From the spouts on its face, another shining cloud spurted.

  IT CRYSTALLIZED into a block of solid gold, just outside the transparent wall that imprisoned Curt and Simon. Again the Korian touched the keys. This time the cloud formed a heavy-duty, perfect fire-rod mounted on a swivel. Again, the machine operated instantaneously brought into being a miniature space-ship.

  “You see, Captain Future?” flared Larstan’s triumphant voice. “With this creator I can produce weapons in limitless quantities!”

  “Lad, we’ve lost!” came the Brain’s hopeless whisper. “The secret — in Larstan’s hands —”

  “Get behind me, Simon,” gritted Curt. “I’m going to try to break out of here.”

  “Now you’re going to die, Future,” came the Korian’s snarl. “I need only —”

  Curt acted. He had noticed that his proton beam had faintly cracked the glassy wall around them. So he thumbed the intensity-ratchet to the highest notch and loosed the intensified beam at the slight crack. The blinding splash of the thin ray widened the crack! Curt instantly flung himself with all his force at that part of the wall.

  “No, that won’t work!” cried Larstan, his hands darting over the keys of the creator.

  Captain Future’s hurtling figure crashed through the cracked wall. But even as he did so, the creator-machine was spurting forth another shining cloud. This cloud crystallized instantly into a similar but much thicker wall of transparent substance that had a larger diameter. Its larger circle again held Curt and Simon prisoners. Captain Future ripped at this new barrier with his proton beam. But the beam could make no impression on this much thicker wall. Larstan’s face was livid.

  “You thought you’d best me at the last! You have one moment to live. I’m going to create a huge block of metal that will crush you both beneath it!” His hands hovered over the banks of keys with deadly purpose.

  Simon’s rasping voice came calmly to Curt. “I think this is goodbye, lad.”

  “No!” panted Captain Future. “Larstan made a slip! We’ve still got a chance —”

  Near him were the gold block and miniature space-ship and heavy fire-rod that Larstan had created in boasting demonstration of his power. They were inside this new, larger-diameter wall. Curt Newton jumped to the fire-rod. It was apparently as perfect as though created by human hands. He swung it toward the section of
the thick glassy wall facing Larstan. Larstan glimpsed his movement. The Korian’s eyes flashed wildly, and his hands clawed down toward the keys of the creator. But Curt triggered the heavy fire-rod in the same second. Blasting flare of energy exploded inside their prison, the shock hurling Captain Future violently backward. Stunned and groggy, he staggered to his feet, drawing his own proton pistol.

  “You won’t need it, lad,” came the Brain’s sharp voice. “That did it.”

  The bolt of energy from the heavy fire-rod had torn a gaping hole through the thick wall around them. It had blasted on, following Curt’s unerring aim, to strike Larstan’s head and breast. The man who had dreamed of conquest through creation lay a scorched corpse, sprawled behind the undamaged mechanism. Curt paid the machine no attention in this first moment, as he squeezed out of the hole torn in their prison wall.

  “The others!” he exclaimed, running back again to the entrance.

  His worries were relieved. Grag and Otho, with the three star captains, were approaching the building. Grag’s metal body was seared by fire-blasts, Otho had a burn on his arm, and Ki Illok was limping on his wounded leg, supported by Hol Jor and old Ber Del.

  “The Korians?” Curt cried.

  “Those whom we didn’t kill in that melee lost their nerve and surrendered,” Otho said grimly. “Chief, what of Larstan?”

  For answer, Curt pointed toward the altar-like mechanism behind which the Korian king lay dead. But it was not on the dead man, but on the wondrous mechanism that the eyes of all of them fixed. Slowly, reverently, the Futuremen and star captains approached the thing across the awesome, soaring white cathedral of which it was the shrine.

  “Its secret of creation — is it as you guessed?” asked Hol Jor in a low whisper.

  CAPTAIN FUTURE was examining the machine. His hands trembled slightly as they touched this thing of power incalculable which had been the goal of so many star-quests for long ages. Finally, after long study, he stood back. His eyes were shining, as he turned to the others.

  “This creator is built after the pattern of the Birthplace itself! My theory about the Birthplace, that it whirls electrical radiation into droplets of electricity or electrons by centrifugal action, must be correct. For this machine apparently sucks in the omnipresent radiation of the universe, coagulates it into electrons that combine into the atoms of the ninety-six elements and then spurts controlled clouds of those atoms to join in any desired combination to form any type of matter.”

  Ki Illok asked a breathless, quivering question. “Then with this thing limitless air and water can be created for our arid planets?”

  Captain Future nodded soberly. “It will take study to learn the instructions for its operations. But once we have learned them and have studied the design, we can make as many other creators like it as we wish.”

  There was a hush, as the star rovers looked tremblingly at the object of all their dreams, this thing that could bring life to faraway wasted worlds, this incalculable treasure that thousands of men from far stars had died vainly seeking. And then a strange scene took place. As though in a shrine indeed, old Ber Del knelt upon his knees before the mechanism. Ki Illok and Hol Jor unconsciously followed his example. Tears were streaming down the old Vegan’s face.

  “I am giving thanks,” choked the old star captain. “Thanks for this thing of power that means life for our dying worlds.”

  UPON the sunlit central plaza of the city of Thruun rested four ships. One was the Comet. The others were Thruunian cruisers which had been equipped with vibration drive in the days that had passed and manned by volunteer crews of Thruun. The Futuremen and their three star-roving friends were preparing to depart for their home stars. Curt Newton stood with Grag and Simon and Otho and the three star captains, facing Kwolok and Thyria and a great host of the people of Thruun.

  “You will come back through the cloud some day?” Thyria cried eagerly to Curt.

  “Who knows?” said Captain Future. “You’ll no longer be isolated here at any rate. The cruisers and crews you are lending my friends will be the beginning of new trade and travel between your worlds here and the universe outside the cloud.”

  Old Kwolok showed strong emotion as he bade Curt farewell. Curt had presented to the Thruunian ruler the creator machine they had brought from the world of the Watchers, after studying and copying its design so that he and his friends could build others.

  “I know not what to say,” stammered the old king. “The machine will enable us to bring new life, new air and water to Thruun. Yet the commandment of the Watchers —”

  Captain Future reassured him. “The Watchers left their secret to be used for the benefit of men, as I told you. It was only evil and ignorant races whom they sought to bar from that power. We are going to build other such creators for the benefit of our own withering planets. But rest assured that we will never allow the power to be misused.” He had told Kwolok of the world of the sleepers beneath the ice, at the dark star outside the cloud. “We are going to stop at that world on our way homeward,” Curt explained. “We shall wake those sleepers once more, and build for them a creator-machine. It won’t rekindle their sun, but it will enable them to build a great fleet in which they can migrate to another star.”

  Now Captain Future and his three comrades turned toward Hol Jor and Ki Illok and old Ber Del. All the others were silent as these men from far separated stars, who had adventured and struggled side by side for so long, now faced each other in farewell.

  “I hate goodbyes,” rumbled big Hol Jor. The Antarian’s red face was uncomfortable. “And I hate trying to thank people. But I’ll say this — you’ve given us new life for our own planets, and you’ll be conquering heroes if you ever come to Antares.”

  “Or to my own star deep in the greatest cluster of Sagittarius!” cried Ki Illok.

  They gripped hands, there in the brilliant red sunshine.

  “You’ll surely return to this part of the universe in time?” pressed old Ber Del, eagerly facing Curt. “You’ll always find friends here.”

  “Sure they’ll come back,” predicted Hol Jor confidently. “Once they’re back in their little System, they’ll get to thinking about the great star trails of outer space, and they’ll have to return.”

  “Say, you’ve got something there,” exclaimed Otho. “It’s going to be pretty dull in the System after all this, in a way.”

  “I doubt it,” boomed Grag. “You can make a cosmos full of trouble on one little moon, just by yourself.”

  They moved toward their waiting ships. Together, the ships rose from Thruun and arrowed through the glittering haze toward the inner surface of the cloud.

  Together, they fought their way out through the currents of roaring dust, flung on by the power of the vibration drive.

  They burst together out of the cloud, into the blazing beauty of the nebulae and stars and sun-clusters of the outside universe. And then the four racing ships moved away from each other on diverging courses — four captains of the great deep spaces, roaring down the star trails to their homes.

  THE END

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