Captain Future 18 - Red Sun of Danger (Spring 1945)

by Edmond Hamilton

  The low-slung rocket-car roared out of its shed with a blast of fire from its tubes, Lin Sao in the driver’s seat. Carlin scrambled in with the Martian and tossed them the gun-belts.

  Bucketing along the mud road by the faint splash of the headlamps, Carlin saw other car-lights approaching at high speed. Every planter here was obligated by mutual defense to respond in such emergencies. “They’ve fired the sheds!” yelled Zamok.

  YELLOW flame splashed the darkness a mile ahead, licking up golden tongues from a half-dozen points. They heard shrill cries, and then again the crash of atom-guns. Carlin’s heart slugged his ribs. What was he doing here in a speeding rocket-car, clutching the butt of a heavy atom-pistol in his sweating palm, he who knew nothing of battle or conflict?

  “There they are!” cried Lin Sao. “See ‘em?”

  Carlin saw them. Red humanoid figures, outlined against the leaping flames of Horth Or’s bunkhouse and vitron-sheds, looking like medieval devils as they battered at the door of the plantation-house.

  An earsplitting crash beside him deafened Carlin, and a scorching breath hit his cheek. Zamok was firing at the leaping figures ahead.

  Lin Sao had slewed the car around into the zone of fire light. Carlin was dimly aware of the hellish scream of distant sirens, of the roar of other cars coming up the road, of the atom-gun kicking vigorously in his hand.

  He had triggered too hard and the weapon kicked up like a bolt of lightning above the Roons outside the house. He piled out of the car with his two friends, as a dozen planters and workers hastily disembarked from cars now rushing up. Guns crashed deafeningly. “There they go!” yelled the hoarse voice.

  The Roons had turned. Carlin glimpsed parrot-beaked red faces, smooth-muscled red bodies clad in soft gray leather tunics, arms raised with queer wooden weapons.

  Roon darts pattered around them. The door of the plantation-house opened and Horth Or and another man appeared. The Jovian planter was yelling and firing at the Roons.

  The Roons had no intention of facing the gathering forces. A weird signal-call shrilled among them, and they darted back into the jungle.

  Carlin found himself running with the others up to the blazing plantation. Horth Or met them, his Jovian green face contorted with rage.

  “They killed two of my workers, the devils! Caught us by surprise!”

  A stern-faced Venusian planter shouted to the gathering throng of armed colonists.

  “Cut them off before they get back into the deep jungle! Horth, you and half the men take the left — the rest of us will take the right.”

  Carlin and his two companions were swept along by the rush of vengeance-hungry men toward the jungle. They spread out and started to beat the undergrowth.

  Everything was still a whirl in Carlin’s mind. His feet tripped in loose earth, and crushed spiky little shrubs under his soles.

  “We’re spoiling one of Horth Or’s fields of vitron-seedlings,” he thought, absurdly. “We ought to have gone around.”

  Crashing atom-guns let go some distance to his left, but Horth Or was shooting in mere blind rage. There was a movement of shadows into the dark jungle wall ahead, and nothing more. “Fan out,” yelled their temporary leader.

  They were at the edge of the jungle — not the vast impenetrable forest that covered most of Roo, but a region of brush and scrub.

  Alone, Carlin shoved through the damp, undergrowth. Yells ripped the night to right and left of him. A startled, demoniac screech came down from the sky as unseen night-dragons flapped away. Carlin’s heart was pounding with excitement.

  Something shadowy stirred ahead, and Carlin pressed trigger and speared a white bolt of energy into the dark brush.

  Then he felt foolish. “Shooting at shadows! I just don’t know anything about this sort of thing.”

  He moved forward. And in twenty steps, he stumbled over the body of a man.

  Carlin recoiled with a little startled yelp, got his pocket-flash out and turned its beam down. What he saw made him feel sick.

  It was the body of a Roon warrior, crumpled up. The side of his head was freshly scorched and bleeding. Carlin knew then it was no shadow he had fired at.

  BUT the humanity of that pathetically limp, curled body! He’d thought of the Roons, always, as something less than human. Their curious red skins, the parrot-beaked faces and big, round eyes — these didn’t keep this man now from seeming to Carlin as human as himself.

  “Buck fever,” Carlin told himself, trying to laugh. “First time I ever killed anyone. An inevitable nervous reaction.”

  It wouldn’t work. He couldn’t make himself feel like a tough, relentless fighting-man.

  He noticed the Roon’s chest was heaving slightly. Bending over, he examined the tribesman. The Roon had been merely grazed by his gun-blast. The fellow was stunned, not dead.

  Carlin felt weak with relief. He swore shakily to himself. “I’m just not cut out for this kind of work.”

  He raised his head to yell to the others. Then a sudden thought kept him silent.

  “Why,” he thought excitedly, “this fellow would be valuable — to us.”

  His brain raced. Captain Future had stressed the paramount importance of finding out who was inciting the Roons to these raids. Why not question a captured Roon?

  Carlin heard Lin Sao blundering through the brush nearby, and called in a low voice. The Venusian scientist came stumbling to him.

  “Devils of Venus — you’ve killed one of them?”

  “Not killed — stunned,” Carlin said swiftly. “Listen, Lin, I want to get this Roon back to our plantation without the others knowing. Tell Zamok and bring our rocket-car. Hurry!”

  Darkness and the fact that Horth Or and the others were still searching the brush, aided them. Ten minutes later they loaded the unconscious Roon into it. Carlin had bound the tribesman’s wrists.

  “Stay here so our absence won’t be noticed, Zamok,” he whispered. “Then come back as soon as you can get away.” The Martian nodded understandingly.

  Carlin drove the low-slung car past the smoldering ruins of the sheds. Two dead workers lay there, with darts sticking in their throats. Dawn was paling the sky as they drove rapidly homeward. Carlin was feeling a curious exhilaration that lifted him above fatigue. For the first time, the sedentary young scientist understood the queer lure of danger.

  Their plantation-house, half hidden by the surrounding grove of pinkish feather-trees, glimmered in the full morning light of Arkar when they pulled up before it. Lin Sao grunted as they carried the unconscious Roon into the house. The tribesman was heavy.

  They used insulated cable to bind their captive tightly into a chair in Carlin’s bedroom. Then the Venusian sterilized and bandaged the scorched wound on the Roon’s head.

  The Roon awoke under these ministrations. In the parrot-beaked red face, black eyes flashed alarm and he sought to jump up. Then, glaring at them like a trapped jungle-cat, he tried to break his bonds.

  Carlin knew the dialect of the Roons. He had learned it on Roo eight years before, when the tribes were friendly. It was, like most languages of humanoid races throughout the universe, based on the language of those ancient Denebian pioneers of space whose descendants all human races were.

  “We are not going to hurt you,” he told the Roon earnestly. “We want you to tell us things.”

  The glare in the enormous black eyes of the Roon warrior died down a little, but he regarded them with sullen defiance. “What is your name?” Carlin asked.

  “I am Gaa,” said the Roon. “When I get free, I will kill you. You star-men must leave Roo. We shall keep attacking you until all of you go.”

  “But why, Gaa,” demanded the Earthman. “Formerly, your tribes were friendly. Now suddenly you turn hostile and demand we leave. Why?”

  Gaa’s face became like red stone. “All star-men must leave Roo. If you do not, disaster will overtake our world.” He would not say more. Carlin looked helplessly at Lin Sao. “What do you mak
e of it?”

  The Venusian scientist’s plump face was thoughtful. “Somehow, their superstitions have been aroused.”

  They plied the Roon with questions, for hours. But Gaa would not speak another word. He only stared stonily at them.

  It was hot afternoon by the time they wearily desisted. At that moment came the roar of a rocket-car stopping outside. The car went on again quickly. A moment later, Zamok burst into the room.

  THE elderly Martian was exhausted and worried. “The devil is popping!” he exclaimed. “Horth Or and a lot of the other planters have gone into Rootown. They’re wild with rage at this new raid, and swear they’ll rouse the whole colony if Governor King doesn’t take action this time.”

  Carlin was dismayed. “This is bad. We’ll go into Rootown and see if we can’t quiet them down a little some way. You come along, Zamok — Lin, I want you to stay and watch this Roon.”

  The rocket-car took him and the Martian northward along rude roads that ran between endless fields of spiky gray vitron-shrubs and isolated plantation houses.

  Rootown came into view ahead, a low and unimpressive mass of white blocks. A few rocket-fliers were buzzing above the town, and the streets that led to its plaza were streaming with rocket-cars and excited people. As they pulled up their machine and hurried toward the plaza on foot, they could hear a roar of voices.

  No one in Rootown was paying any attention to the spaceport a mile away where the weekly liner from the System was berthing. Ordinarily, a crowd would have been there to watch the Starfarer landing.

  “There’s Horth Or!” exclaimed Carlin as they entered the plaza.

  Horth Or stood on the hood of his rocket-car, above the crowd. The Jovian planter’s massive face was dark with emotion under the brim of his sun-helmet, as he pointed to two bodies that lay in his car.

  “Two of my workers, killed by those murdering red devils!” he was shouting to the crowd. “My sheds burned, my equipment wrecked. How long do we have to put up with these raids?”

  A roar of angry voices chorused agreement. “It’s time we taught the Roons a lesson!”

  “There comes Walker King, the Governor,” muttered Zamok to Carlin. “He’s a fool to show himself here now. It will only provoke them more.”

  Walker King was a thin, aging Earthman whose short-sighted, worried eyes blinked through his spectacles as he pushed through the crowd. His graying hair was uncovered in the red glare, and he had apparently come hurriedly to the scene.

  The furious Jovian planter saw him, and pointed to his dead workers. “That’s more Roon work! What are we going to do about it?” King showed he was nervous.

  “The Roons must have overpowered the sentinels I posted in the southern jungles,” he answered. “We’ll try — to devise a better system. You must be patient —”

  An angry roar from the crowd drowned his words. The roar changed to one of applause as a pudgy man made his way through the throng.

  “Harmer! Jed Harmer! Speak for the colonists, Harmer!”

  Jed Harmer was a plump, benevolent-looking Earthman of fifty. He wore the sun-helmet and zipper-suit of a planter, though he was innocent of any stains of toil. His bland, round face and mild eyes mirrored concern as he climbed up beside Horth Or.

  Close behind him came a young Mercurian. Boyish in years, there was nothing youthful in his lean face and contemptuous eyes.

  “Harmer, and Ka Thaar!” groaned Zamok. “There’s going to be a blow-off. This crowd is ripe for action.”

  Philip Carlin looked around in desperation. He sensed the imminence of immediate rebellion, the thing he had feared.

  “ — and last night’s outrage was no isolated thing,” Jed Harmer was saying to the crowd. “It will happen again and again until we organize and go into the jungle and wipe out the Roon villages.”

  He looked down at Walker King. “We demand that you give us heavy atom-guns and other weapons for such a punitive expedition.”

  The Governor shook his head. “I can’t do that. It’s utterly against the System Government’s policy to massacre the native inhabitants of this world. But the Government will set up better defenses.”

  “To blazes with the Government!” flared Horth Or furiously. “If it won’t protect us, we should secede and form our own independent government.”

  “Yes, independence for Roo!” yelled scores of voices instantly.

  “Fellow-colonists, it is a grave thing to secede from the System Government,” Jed Harmer oratorically told the crowd. “But we must protect our homes and families.”

  “The rebellion’s going to break and Captain Future and his friends aren’t here yet!” groaned Carlin. “I’ve got to try to stop it.”

  “Ka Thaar will stop you before you can say a word!” warned Zamok. But Philip Carlin was already striding desperately forward. Useless as the attempt might be, he couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

  Chapter 7: Planet of Intrigue

  AS SOON as he emerged with the other emigrants from the Starfarer, Captain Future realized he had arrived on Roo in the middle of a crisis.

  There was almost no one at the spaceport to greet the ship. Everyone was streaming excitedly toward the white buildings of Rootown, a mile westward. One of the running colonists, to whom Li Sharn called a question, shouted a reply that inflamed the Saturnian. “Jed Harmer’s speaking to the colonists now. There was another Roon raid last night, and the whole colony is seething!”

  Li Sham’s pale eyes glittered. He grabbed Curt Newton’s sleeve. “Cain, come with me. The rest of you people — you’d better come along, too. This concerns all of you.”

  He was addressing the emigrants who were bewildered by the turmoil into which they had come.

  Curt Newton followed the excited Saturnian across the spaceport toward the town. John Gordon and his wife, and the other emigrants, uncertainly followed. A few officials on hand to check the passenger lists tried to restrain them, but were swept aside. They were running now, unfamiliar sun-helmets bobbing. Captain Future was dismayed. “If the rebellion breaks now, nothing can stop this planet from becoming a devil’s playground!” Newton thought, groaning inwardly.

  No secret agents’ work would be of any avail then to stem the torrent! Either the System Government must admit the independence of Roo, and permit a fatal monopoly of vitron, or use force to quell the rebels.

  Li Sharn was talking rapidly as they ran. “Stick close to me, Cain. This may be the blow-off, though I hadn’t figured it was time yet.”

  They had now entered the circular plaza. Here were gathered several thousand colonists.

  They were a hardy-looking crowd, these men and women. Many were Venusians, the race most at home in the scorching sunlight and damp heat of this world. But also there were large numbers of Earthmen, the proverbial pioneers and trail-blazers of the Solar System.

  Newton’s eyes lifted to the pudgy, pompous Earthman whose oratory was arousing the crowd — Jed Harmer. His eyes flicked to the young man standing just behind and below Harmer.

  “Dangerous!” rang the thought in Captain Future’s mind.

  That cool, bored young Mercurian had something in his tight, dark face that Curt Newton had seen in killers’ faces before.

  “He’s Ka Thaar, one of our party’s top men,” muttered Li Sharn in reply to his question. “The skinny man’s Walker King, the Governor.”

  He was referring to the man now trying to make himself heard against Harmer — a spectacled Earthman with uncovered gray hair.

  “I admit that my plan of defense against the, Roons has failed, but in time I’ll work out a better defense-system,” King was saying.

  “In time, all our families will be murdered by the Roons!” Jed Harmer retorted, with fierce agreement from the crowd. “We’ve got to smash the Roons.”

  A shrill voice screeched through the red afternoon sunlight.

  “You go into the jungles and you won’t come back! You’ll die! Stay out of there! Leave Roo to the Roons!”r />
  It was a strange figure who screeched that warning from the crowd. A hunched, grizzled Earthman who wore a battered sun-helmet and ragged zipper-suit. His face was gaunt and unshaven, with mad blue eyes that glared at the angry colonists.

  “Remember I warned you all!” he shrilled. “Remember that Jonny warned you! The Roons will keep coming and keep killing you, until you all leave Roo!”

  His shouts added fuel to the anger of the crowd.

  Rough hands pushed the hunched, grizzled figure out of the plaza.

  “They won’t hurt him,” said Li Sharn. “Even the Roons won’t hurt Crazy Jonny.”

  “Crazy Jonny’s right, in one thing,” Jed Harmer shouted to the crowd, adroitly utilizing the interruption. “The Roons will keep coming and killing us unless we stop them. Secession is the only way we can protect ourselves.”

  Captain Future saw a crisis at hand. Somehow, it must be averted. Desperately glancing around, Captain Future’s eyes fell on John Gordon and the other newly-arrived emigrants from the Starfarer. Curt Newton instantly saw a possibility. He jumped up onto a rocket-car.

  “Me, I just got here but I’m for secession!” he shouted. “And so are the rest of us new emigrants!”

  LI SHARN angrily plucked his ankle. “Get down, Cain! Let Harmer run this!”

  A cheer from Jed Harmer’s supporters had greeted “Rab Cain’s” declaration. But that declaration was instantly challenged by John Gordon, as Captain Future had well known it would be.

  “This man has no right to speak,” Gordon cried, his clean-cut face flushed with anger. “He’s a criminal!”

  Curt Newton uttered a roar of pretended rage. “You can’t call me a criminal, just because I gunned down Captain Future in fair fight.”

  Excitement increased. “Is that true?” a man asked. “Did this Earthman shoot Captain Future?”

  “Yes,” rasped Gordon. “On Venus, the night we left. Future was badly hurt in the fight.”