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

by Edmond Hamilton

  Grag’s furious bellow reverberated as the robot strove to free himself. Even his giant strength could not snap the many tough bonds.

  Carlin heard Gaa’s excited voice, addressing his fellow tribesmen.

  “You will have to drag the metal one back to the village. The other one can be carried.”

  Doubt and fear were in the voice of one Roon who answered. “But this metal one is no star-man like the others. Maybe he is a demon?”

  For a moment, Carlin had a wild hope that Grag’s superhuman appearance would swing superstition to their aid. But Gaa shattered that hope.

  “The metal one is of the star-men,” Gaa asserted firmly. “He is not a man, but he and the other forced me to guide them here for an evil purpose. They were searching for the Crypt of the Old Ones!”

  Exclamations of fanatic anger greeted that information. The Roons roughly picked up Carlin and started back with him to the village.

  He could hear a group of them dragging Grag’s mighty, trussed form along the trail behind him. Grag kept up a running fire of furious threats, for his pride had been pricked by Gaa’s statement.

  “Not a man, am I? You bird-beaked son of perdition, if I get my hands on you, I’ll choke that insult back down your throat!”

  A dense crowd of excited tribesmen swarmed around them as they were hauled into the village and dropped roughly inside one of the huts.

  “Remain here and watch them closely,” Gaa snapped to the warriors who had brought them.

  “The Sacred One is here!” exclaimed a Roon, in tones of awe.

  Carlin, looking up from where he lay bound, saw Crazy Jonny staring down at them. The mad Earthman, whom the Roons surrounded at a respectful distance, gave Carlin a faint new hope.

  “Jonny, can you get them to let us go?” he asked earnestly. “They’ll listen to you.”

  THE madman shook his head. “Not even I can save you now, for they know you have committed the sin of seeking the Crypt of the Old Ones.” His voice rose, shrill with insane fervor. “You were fools to come here searching for the Crypt! Didn’t I warn all in the colony to keep out of the jungle? Didn’t I warn you all to leave Roo before your presence awoke the Old Ones?”

  Carlin, hearing that mad voice, gave up all hope of assistance from the crazed Earthman. Jonny was as fanatically superstitious as the Roons.

  Crazy Jonny had turned and now he was loudly addressing all the awe-stricken Roon people who had gathered in front of the village.

  He pointed up into the southern sky. “You have seen for yourselves that the Crypt of the Old Ones already has begun to open?”

  A shiver of superhuman fear went through the parrot-beaked red tribesmen. “We have seen.”

  “I bring you final warning!” shrilled the madman. “Warning that tomorrow night the Crypt will open completely!”

  A gasp of horror came from the Roons. Crazy Jonny raved on. “You will see it happen with your own eyes. And you will know then that unless you act swiftly to drive the star-men from Roo, the Old Ones will come back to this world and will again establish their dark domain of dread.”

  “But each night we are offering sacrifice to the Old Ones,” a Roon chieftain exclaimed. “Will that not assuage their wrath?”

  “Nothing will prevent their waking but the driving of all strangers from Roo!” declared the insane Earthman. “Tomorrow night when you see the great Crypt open, remember that.”

  Crazy Jonny stalked away without further speech, and disappeared into the dark jungle. The Roons looked after him in fearful silence.

  It was clear now to Philip Carlin that the crazed Earthman had become obsessed with superstition about the Old Ones, to the point where he was urging the tribesmen to drive his own fellow-colonists from Roo. How had that obsession become planted in the madman’s mind?

  The Roons out there were talking in awed voices, and looking fearfully up into the southern sky where Black Moon was rising higher. Seeing that, and remembering the madman’s words, Philip Carlin suddenly experienced a blinding enlightenment.

  “Grag, I’ve got it at last!” he gasped. “I know now where the Crypt of the Old Ones is. Good grief, we were fools not to see it before!”

  “What do you mean? Where is the Crypt?” demanded the bound robot.

  “It’s on Black Moon, the satellite of Roo!” exclaimed the botanist.

  “You’re out of your mind!” exclaimed Grag. “But wait — maybe it’s possible, at that.”

  “It’s the answer, I’m certain,” declared Carlin. “We thought the Crypt must be near this Roon village because we knew the Roons were able to observe the ‘omens’ of its opening. We never figured it might be on Black Moon, which they can look up and see in the sky each night!”

  Before Carlin could elaborate on his stunned surmise, he was interrupted by the loud voice of Gaa speaking to the tribesmen. He was haranguing the fearful crowd, and presently they spoke loud assent.

  Gaa came into the hut a little later with horrifying information for the two captives.

  “You are to be sacrificed tomorrow night to the Old Ones,” the Roon said. “Despite the warning of the Sacred One, we still hope that the Crypt will not open, that they will not awake. Since it is you star-men whose presence is stirring them to wakefulness, the sacrifice of two of you may appease them.”

  Carlin felt the muscles around his heart contract at the hideous prospect. “You’re going to give us to the night-dragons, you mean?”

  “Of all the crazy nonsense I ever heard, this stuff about the Old Ones is the wackiest!” roared Grag. “Don’t you know that the Old Ones, as you call them, disappeared from the universe a million years ago?”

  Gaa nodded somberly. “Yes, they were vanquished and destroyed on many worlds by our ancestors of old. But here on Roo they were not entirely destroyed. They merely retreated into a sleep like death, from which they planned some day to awake and reestablish their ancient domain.”

  “You believe that the Crypt of the Old Ones is on Black Moon, do you not?” Carlin asked him.

  Gaa nodded again. He pointed through the doorway of the hut at the shadowed face of the rising satellite.

  “Do you see that round white spot near the center of the moon’s face? That is the Crypt of the Old Ones, where they sleep.”

  “How, then, can you believe that it is opening?” Carlin argued. “You can’t see from here.”

  “Yes, we can see,” Gaa contradicted. “Look, and you will see dark cracks on the face of the white Crypt. They appeared there only months ago, and have widened several times. They mean the Crypt is opening.”

  CARLIN, straining his neck to peer upward, did faintly make out the horizontal dark cracks across the face of that white patch on the moon.

  “The cracks are there, all right,” he said to Grag when Gaa had gone. “Some accidental landslips, I suppose.”

  “Landslips, nothing!” Grag retorted. “I’ll bet a planet against a meteor that those cracks were made to appear, just to excite the Roons. They’re the ‘omens’ with which Harmer’s bunch have incited the tribesmen.”

  Carlin felt the force of the robot’s reasoning. He felt a bitterness to think that they had finally penetrated the mystery, too late.

  Darkness finally gave way to dawn. The long hours of the hot day dragged by without presenting the slightest chance of escape. They were never unbound, and Roon warriors watched over them every minute.

  Grag broke the silence in the late afternoon with a troubled comment. “Do you know, I’m worried.”

  “I don’t blame you, in a fix like this,” said Carlin dully.

  “Oh, it’s not that I’m worrying about — it’s Eek,” said the robot. “The poor little fellow must be lurking out there in the jungle, afraid to come to us. Suppose one of those hunting-worms gets him?”

  Carlin could not repress a half-hearted grin. It seemed weird for his companion, in their present situation, to worry about Eek.

  Night came, and the Roon village s
tirred with a fever of fearful anticipation. The great dragon-drum began to throb in a muted grumble as the shadowy face of Black Moon rose out there above the ocean once more. It was only a low, foreboding pulsing, not the thunderous drumming that called the night-dragons. But Philip Carlin’s skin crawled as he realized what soon was coming.

  There was a sudden uproar a little later at the jungle edge of the village. He glimpsed Roon warriors running, and heard the distant crash of an atom-pistol.

  “That was an atom-gun!” Grag exclaimed hopefully.

  Then Gaa and a small crowd came excitedly dragging a prisoner into the hut.

  “Another spy of you star-men whom we have caught!” cried Gaa fiercely. “There will be three sacrifices to the Old Ones tonight!”

  Chapter 15: Satellite Secret

  BOUNCING and dipping on the rushing flood, the rude raft that bore Captain Future and his three comrades was racing down the broad current of the jungle-bordered river of mystery.

  “Is that critter still followin’ us?” asked Ezra, looking anxiously back into the yellow flood. “Yes, I can just see the ripples of it — I guess it still hopes one of us will fall overboard,” replied Otho.

  Just behind the raft, low ripples in the yellow river told of a big, swimming body that was trailing them beneath the surface. They had glimpsed it once or twice and had recognized it as a cyclopscrab, a giant, sluggish crustacean monster that lived in sea and river.

  Otho drew his atom-pistol. “I’ll try to kill it.”

  “No, let it alone,” Curt Newton said. “The thing is too big. You might only infuriate it.”

  For hours, they had been trailed by the sluggish, unseen monster. The Yellow River was bearing them swiftly southward in their quest for the Roon village and the mysterious Crypt. The river now ran between shallow, sloping rock of a canyon.

  The red disk of Arkar was sinking behind the horizon. In the gathering darkness, stars began to appear. Newton estimated that they must now be approaching the sea. That meant they were near the Roon village, and the mysterious Crypt of the Old Ones. “We’ve got to reach the Crypt, before they create more omens there and excite the Roons to boiling-point,” he muttered.

  “Listen!” said Otho suddenly. “Do you hear that?”

  Darkness had fallen. The river was running between sloping rock walls. The lessening of its turbulent roar enabled them to hear the sound Otho mentioned. “Boom — boom —”

  A low, deep grumbling sound, it throbbed faintly to their ears from somewhere ahead, in a regular rhythm.

  “Roon drums,” Captain Future said. “We’re near their village and the sea. We daren’t go farther on the open river. Push to shore!”

  They urged the clumsy raft toward the bank and, once ashore, Curt Newton rapidly mapped his plan of action in the darkness.

  “The Roon village is on the cliff above the sea. We’ll go downstream along the river bank and reconnoiter. It’ll be less risky than going through the jungle. Joan, you stay here. No, I don’t want any argument! You’re not going along.”

  Joan Randall was still protesting as the three left her. Despite her indignation, she made no move to follow Newton. She knew that Captain Future had only her own safety in mind.

  She sat down on the edge of the beached raft in the darkness. A few minutes later a rustling in the shadowy bushes caused her to leap to her feet and draw her atom pistol. Then she laughed in nervous relief. Out of the darkness scuttled a small animal which flung itself upon her ankles in an ecstasy of joy.

  “Why, it’s Eek!” Joan exclaimed, astounded. “Grag must have taken you with him. But where is Grag and Dr. Carlin?”

  Eek got her thought, if not her words. The moon-pup pawed her feet, then ran a little way up the bank, then came back and repeated. It was obvious that he was anxiously trying to get her to follow.

  “He wants to take me to Grag,” Joan thought. She quickly made up her mind. “All right, Eek — you lead the way and I’ll follow.”

  Joan delayed only to scribble a few words of explanation on a sheet from her pocket-pad. She put the leaf in a cleft stick on the raft, where Newton would find it if he returned here before she did.

  “Now go ahead, Eek,” she told the moon-pup. “Take me to Grag.”

  Eek eagerly obeyed, starting up the bank. She followed him into the jungle. Eek led southeastward through dim game trails. The distant pulse of drumming came louder.

  Before long, they came suddenly to the end of the jungle. Joan looked out in amazement at the Roon village. Torches were alight among the distant huts. She could see the big drum that was being solemnly pounded by a tall Roon warrior.

  Eek was now acting tremendously excited. Joan understood now.

  “You mean Grag and Carlin are in the village and in trouble,” Joan said. “What shall I do next.”

  She soon made up her mind. “I’ll find out just where they’re being held, and go back for the others.”

  SHE started slipping through the dark jungle at the edge of the clearing, but Eek ruined her plan. The Moon-pup figured that now that he had brought Joan here, everything was clear sailing. He ran out of the jungle toward the huts.

  She motioned for the moon-pup to come back, but the damage was already done. A Roon warrior had sighted the little animal, and as he ran back toward Joan, the warrior saw her also.

  The Roon uttered a yell of alarm. Instantly a score of warriors were pouring through the jungle. Realizing her rashness too late, Joan turned to flee. Before she had gone ten yards, dark forms rose around her.

  She drew her atom-pistol, but brawny arms seized her from behind. Then, as she was dragged out into the clearing, she recognized Gaa’s fierce face.

  “I know this girl — she is another of the star-men who captured me, another of them who has come to spy on us!” Cried Gaa. “Bind her!”

  They lashed Joan’s arms and legs with tough vine ropes, dragged her to one of the huts, and flung her down upon its dirt floor. Nearby she glimpsed Grag’s mighty form and the prostrate figure of Philip Carlin, both tightly bound.

  “There will be three sacrifices for the Old Ones tonight!” exclaimed Gaa. “Joan, how did you get here?” cried Grag.

  “That precious moon-pup of yours showed me the way here, got me discovered, and then escaped,” she answered indignantly.

  In a few further words, she told them of the quest for the Crypt which had brought her with Newton and Ezra and Otho.

  “But the Crypt isn’t near here at all — it’s on Black Moon!” groaned Carlin. She stared, incredulous.

  “Then the chief and Otho and Ezra will be here soon to spy out this place?” Grag was saying hopefully. “They’ll get us out of this jam — if we’re not sacrificed before they get here!”

  Joan heard an ominous, gathering uproar of fierce voices outside their hut, and her heart sank. “Grag, it looks as is the sacrifice is now.”

  A crowd of the tribesmen had now entered the hut to drag the three captives forth. Some of the Roons looked doubtfully at Grag’s metal figure.

  “Maybe the Messengers of the Old Ones will not be able to eat this one,” suggested one. “He is not of flesh.”

  “If they cannot, we will destroy him ourselves after they go,” shouted Gaa. “Thus the sacrifice will still be consummated.”

  Joan and Carlin and the big robot were dragged out onto the little promontory that jutted over the sea. She had a glimpse of the deep waters that washed the base of the cliff, far below.

  The Roons left the three lying bound and helpless, side by side. Hastily the tribesmen returned toward the village. In a few moments, the great drum that had been throbbing so long now began a thunderous summons. “Boom — boom — boom —”

  Joan felt an unreality that almost robbed her of fear. The weirdness of the scene was like that of a nightmare. Carlin felt it too.

  “Surely this is all a crazy dream,” she heard him saying in a dazed way. “I’ll wake up back in my Great New York rooms!”

>   It was no dream! For over the now thunderously loud booming of the dragon-drum, their ears caught the flap and thrash of great wings up in the sky. Joan’s veins seemed to flow ice-water as she glimpsed a dark, hideous shape gliding down across the shadowed face of Black Moon. “They’re coming,” she breathed.

  Grag was making herculean efforts. Joan thought he was making a vain attempt to break his bonds. But the robot had another idea.

  “Brace yourself, you two,” Grag muttered as he strained. “I’m going to try to roll on top of you. Protect you from the dragons.”

  Almost with the words, Grag’s attempt succeeded. His giant metal figure rolled almost crushingly on top of Carlin and Joan.

  Next moment, the night around them seemed alive with threshing wings and screeching, demoniac cries. The night-dragons were swooping to claim their victims.

  Joan and Carlin, almost crushed by the bound robot’s weight, heard the clash of teeth and talons on Grag’s metal body. But that giant metal form protected the girl and the botanist from the ravening horde.

  “Hope they keep it up,” rumbled Grag. “They can claw at me all night without doing anything more than break their talons.”

  The night-dragons’ onslaught had become furious as the winged horrors found that their fangs and claws made no impression on the metal body of Grag. They clawed and tore with screeching rage at the robot.

  Grag suddenly uttered an exultant cry. “That did it! I was hoping for it!”

  He got to his feet, his bonds dropping from him. Joan understood. The claws and fangs of the night-dragons had finally severed the robot’s bonds.

  GRAG leaped erect, bestriding Joan and Carlin protectingly, and striking with his huge metal hands at the flapping horde around them. He gripped two of the dragons’ necks and twisted them, flung them away and smashed another of the swooping horrors with his fist.

  Until she died, Joan would not forget that nightmare scene of epic combat — the giant robot towering over her against the shadowy sphere of Black Moon, bellowing as he fought the swooping dragons — the screeching of the attacking monsters — the thunder of the dragon-drum.