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

by Edmond Hamilton

  But by the dim starlight, they could see no such valley as they sought. Simon Wright’s hopes were waning fast. The search was an almost impossible one. He dared waste no more time in it.

  “Look down there behind us,” exclaimed Lin Sao. “Afire is springing up.”

  Simon swept the ship sharply around. A pinpoint of red flame had appeared in the jungle over which they had flown a few moments before. It was spreading out into an irregular patch of fire.

  “It’s a thicket of reeds and brush burning,” said Zamok. “Maybe a spark from our rocket tubes —”

  “No! That’s a signal!” exclaimed the Brain. “See those gun-flashes!”

  The tiny, brilliant streaks of atom-gun blasts had spurted in the dark jungle close by the spreading flames. The flashes made a code.

  He sent the Comet roaring downward without hesitation, for he knew that code. The ship landed between two giant trees. When they opened the door, they had the welcome sight of Captain Future and the other two Futuremen, and Joan and Ezra and Carlin, running toward them.

  “Simon!” cried Curt Newton. “Thank space you saw our signal! We heard and recognized the rocket-tubes of the Comet, and set fire to the reeds and brush in the hope you’d see. How did you come here?”

  The Brain’s explanations were quickly made as they piled aboard.

  “Lu Suur and Ka Thaar and their men are on their way to the Crypt, Curt! They headed in the direction of Black Moon.”

  Curt nodded. “That’s where the Crypt is, and that’s where the showdown is going to be. We’ve got to overtake them before they create more omens.”

  NEWTON sprang for the pilot-chair. Now he shouted for Otho to close the space-door, and at the same moment jammed down the cyc-pedal and yanked back the space-stick.

  The Comet screamed up out of the jungle and tore out through the atmosphere of Roo on wings of flame and thunder. Straight toward the rising sphere of Black Moon it shot, accelerating at a nightmare rate.

  As the little ship tore out into space, Joan Randall was excitedly questioning the Brain.

  “Then you saw Lu Suur? Who was he? What did he look like?

  Curt Newton, hunched over the space-stick, said over his shoulder: “He was an elderly-looking Earthman, wasn’t he? Gray-haired, with a wrinkled face and heavy spectacles?”

  “Yes,” said Simon.

  “But that’s a description of Walker King, the Governor!” exclaimed Joan incredulously.

  Newton nodded grimly. “Joan, Walker King is Lu Suur. I guessed it hours ago, and should have known it from the first.”

  He explained in rapid, jerky sentences as his haggard eyes searched the sphere of Black Moon, expanding across the sky ahead.

  “We figured, remember, that since no Venusian remotely resembling Lu Suur was known here, Lu Suur must be posing as an Earthman. I should have surmised Walker King was an impostor that first afternoon I arrived, when King came out into the sunbaked plaza and expostulated with Harmer.

  “King wore no sun-helmet! No Earthman can stand the full glare of Arkar on his unprotected head for more than a few minutes without collapsing. You saw it happen to me. But a Venusian can stand that glare. I should have known then King was a Venusian; Lu Suur in disguise.

  “But I didn’t see it, until that touch of sun I got in the Valley made me remember. Then I realized something else. It must have been King who informed Ka Thaar that you and Ezra were looking for Crazy Jonny. He was the only one who knew you were. King had to be our man!”

  “But the man’s a System Government official!” protested Ezra. “Government officials don’t betray their trust and throw in with traitors!”

  “No regular Government man ever does,” Newton rapped. “But Walker King was not a regular Government officer. He was, as he told you, simply a colonist here whose friends petitioned his appointment as Governor when New York decided to appoint a colony man who knew local conditions.”

  “Of course, and it would be easy for Lu Suur to make up as an Earthman when he first came to Roo!” exclaimed Otho, “A chemical bleach to turn his hair gray, an astringent to wrinkle his skin, and thick spectacles for his eyes were all he needed.”

  “Then King is the one who sent poor Crazy Jonny in to the Roons with that mad story to arouse their superstitions?” questioned Joan.

  Newton nodded somberly. “Jonny’s dimmed mind would be impressed and convinced by the assertions of the Governor. It would be easy. We’ve faced no more dangerous antagonist than this man. When Lu Suur’s vitron monopoly on Venus was broken years ago, he came to Roo. And he came with just one purpose — to set up a new monopoly here and absolutely control the vitron supply.

  “Step by step, he’s followed a path to that purpose. Harmer has been merely his figurehead, Ka Thaar and the others his hired gunmen. His has been the brain and will behind the whole black scheme. When he had worked himself into the key position of Governor, he could start to act. In that position, he could do everything that would provoke revolt even while he pretended to be trying to repress it.”

  Black Moon now loomed huge ahead of them, its shadowed rocky hills and plains wearing the round white central plateau on their breast like a dazzling jewel.

  Black yawned the ominous cracks and chasms in the plateau, the omens that had touched frenzied fear in the tribes back on Roo. And now their ship was rushing down toward the mysterious satellite.

  Chapter 17: Crypt of the Old Ones

  SPITTING jets of yellow flame, the Comet screamed down through the thin atmosphere of Black Moon, and scudded low across the face of the shadowy satellite.

  The planet Roo, like a giant ruddy moon in the heavens above them, cast a pink glow upon the whole wild scene. This weird planet-glow illuminated arid, lifeless plains and low rocky hills, and was reflected brightly by the round white plateau at the center of the moonscape. The plateau was dozens of miles in diameter, of a white rock quite different in appearance than the dark stone of the rest of the satellite. The yawning cracks across the face of the white area were clearly visible from here as deep chasms. Around the plateau lay low, black rocky hills.

  “That white plateau is the legendary location of the Crypt,” Captain Future said. “Lu Suur’s ship, the Firebird, will be somewhere nearby. Watch for it.”

  He steered their own rocketing craft around the rim of the white plateau. Their eyes tensely searched the planet-lighted defiles and shadowy gorges of the surrounding hills.

  They were skirting the eastern rim of the white area when Otho’s sharp eyes detected what they sought. The android uttered a cry.

  “There’s the Firebird! In that little valley back in the eastern hills!”

  Curt Newton instantly glimpsed the ship of their enemies. The rocket-cruiser was parked in the deep shadows, a mile from the plateau in the hills.

  “Stand by our guns!” he shouted to Grag and Otho. “If they try to escape, we’ll have to shoot them down.”

  “No, we’ve caught ‘em by surprise,” yelled Grag. “Look there.”

  Two men were running frantically across the valley toward the Firebird as the Comet roared down and landed beside a crumbling rock monolith. The Futuremen burst out of their ship and Curt Newton fired his atom-pistol in a crashing blast that ripped up the ground beside the two fleeing men.

  “Stop and raise your hands or you get the next blast in your backs!” he shouted.

  The two turned wildly. More than by the menace of the leveled atom-guns, they seemed overwhelmed by the inhuman appearance of Grag and the Brain as they advanced through the pink planet-glow.

  Newton recognized the men as two yellow Uranians who had belonged to Jed Harmer’s hirelings.

  “Otho, take their guns. Then watch them while we rush the ship.”

  But the Firebird, when they approached it, proved to be deserted. Captain Future returned to his two captives. The two Uranians seemed stunned by the fact that. “Li Sharn” and. “Rab Cain” were allied with the Futuremen and their comrades
.

  “Where are Lu Suur and Ka Thaar and the rest?” snapped Newton.

  The men maintained a sullen silence. Captain Future spoke to Grag. “You can make them talk, I know. You have my permission.”

  “With pleasure,” exclaimed the robot. He stalked forward.

  The sight of the giant, menacing metal figure approaching them broke the nerve of the captives as Newton had thought it would.

  “Wait, we’ll tell you,” babbled one of the Uranians. He pointed westward. “Ka Thaar and the others are over there by the edge of the plateau, planting explosive charges to blow the whole plateau. They left our cruiser here to avoid risk of damaging it. Those trinite charges are so powerful they didn’t want to take any chances.”

  Curt Newton swung toward his friends. “Then we’ve got to hurry. Otho, tie those men up. Joan, you stay here with Zamok and Lin Sao to guard them.”

  “I won’t stay!” Joan retorted. “You know I can handle an atom-gun better than most men, and you’ll need every weapon.”

  Curt Newton turned to expostulate with her. But the words never left his lips. For as he turned, his eyes had fallen upon the massive, crumbling stone monolith beside which the Comet had landed.

  The monolith was no work of nature. It was too squarely symmetrical in outline for that. And upon its face were graven long rows of half-crumbled hieroglyphics of curious shapes.

  “Why, that’s ancient Denebian writing!” exclaimed Captain Future, amazed.

  “What if it is?” cried Otho. “This is no time to be thinking of planetary archaeology. We’re ready to start, chief!”

  NEWTON paid no attention to the protest. He strode toward the monolith. The presence of the ancient hieroglyphics on this lonely moon had suddenly brought the whisper of a terrible suspicion into his mind.

  His eyes tensely scanned the half-crumbled inscription. Captain Future was one of the few people in the universe who could read the ancient Denebian writing — he had learned to do so at Deneb itself.

  As he read, he was seized by an apprehension close to horror. And the Brain, who had glided to his side and was also searching the writing with his lens eyes, seemed frozen by an equal emotion.

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed Curt Newton, thunderstruck. “We never guessed, we never dreamed.”

  “Curt, what is it?” cried Joan.

  Newton’s brow was damp despite the chill of the thin air and his eyes had a dazed look.

  “This inscription — it proves that the belief of the Roons about the Old Ones is true!”

  Joan and the others stared incredulously. “Curt, you can’t mean that some of the ancient Kangas are really sleeping in that Crypt?”

  “The Kangas all became extinct a million years ago,” protested Ezra.

  “We always thought they did,” Newton said hoarsely. “But the evidence of this inscription is incontrovertible. The ancient Denebians placed it here as a warning. Listen!”

  Huskily, rapidly, he translated aloud the half-defaced inscription upon the monolith. His lips moved with words:

  “ — disturb not the white plain, for beneath it... crypt in which lie the last of the Kangas. We of Deneb... fought and conquered them on many worlds, but on this world a remnant of them fled from us and... buried themselves in hiding here, passing into suspended animation by their power of self-hypnosis.

  “These were the most powerful of the dark ancient ones and we thought it wisest not to attempt to destroy them lest we wake them and be unable to overcome them. It was safest... let them sleep on, and place... warnings for those of future ages.

  “Heed the warnings! Disturb not the buried dark ones! They will not wake until ages from now this moon approaches so close its planet that it breaks up and thus uncovers the crypt. When... far future day comes, be on guard then against the waking of the dark ones.

  “Until then, seek not to unearth them! Let this moon be deserted and shunned of men. Let the dark ones sleep on until the far future break-up of this moon, for by then... our race will be powerful enough to be in no danger from them.”

  Captain Future’s hoarse voice seemed to have cast a spell of horror on the others. They stared at him wildly in the pink planet-glow.

  “Then, if Lu Suur and the others blow the plateau and uncover the Crypt, the Kangas inside it will awake?” cried Joan.

  “Yes, and that means awful danger for all humans on Roo, perhaps for all the humans in the universe,” Curt Newton said thickly. “Those monstrous survivals of the dim past, those alien ones whom even the mighty Denebians of old could hardly conquer, coming forth —”

  He broke off, his face glistening with perspiration. “No time to lose now! Lu Suur’s got to be stopped before he blows the plateau.”

  Newton dived back into the Comet, came bursting out in a moment. He was hastily shoving an object into his blouse. He ran forward.

  “Come on! And if we have to shoot, shoot to kill! We can’t take any chances now!”

  In the terrible urgency that drove him, he made no protest at Joan Randall accompanying them. He led the way in long, running strides eastward through the low rock hills toward the plateau.

  Grag and Otho kept pace with him despite his fierce haste, the Brain gliding beside them. And Ezra and Joan and the bewildered, stunned Philip Carlin were close behind.

  Newton’s soul was a turmoil of ancient and awful fears, fears that had stalked the shadowy history of the universe for ten thousand centuries.

  They ran through the rocky defiles, and approached the last ridge between them and the plateau.

  “Up this way!” Captain Future said hoarsely. “We should be able to spot Lu Suur and the others from that ridge.”

  “Look out!” cried the Brain sharply, at that moment.

  FROM behind the crest of the ridge toward which they had just started to climb, a small, square black object hurtled up into the air. It curved up and outward and then started to fall directly toward them.

  Newton instantly recognized the terrible nature of the missile. It was a sealed charge of trinite, most powerful of explosives. It would fall directly among them, and the resulting blast would obliterate them.

  Captain Future took the only action possible. The atom-pistol in his hand came up with blurring speed, and from it a streak of white fire lanced upward.

  “Down, all!” Newton yelled at the same moment he fired.

  His aim had been unerring, and the concentrated atom-blast from his pistol hit the trinite charge falling toward them.

  Next moment, a terrific blast exploded in the air above them. The tremendous wave of compressed air from it smashed down at them in a stunning shock.

  Curt Newton had thrown himself flat, protecting Joan with his own body. But the smashing shock smacked his head against the ground with such force that consciousness flowed out of him. As he fought fiercely to retain his reeling senses his atom-pistol had been snatched from his hand. Realization of the fact spurred his stunned mind back to clarity. He scrambled wildly to his feet.

  Too late! As they had lain stunned, a half dozen men had seized all their weapons and now confronted them with the threatening muzzles of their own atom-guns.

  “Devils of space!” raged Otho. “Lu Suur’s men!”

  A voice called down from the ridge. “Bring them up here, if they’re still living.”

  Curt Newton, appalled by the suddenness of the disaster, perceived that none of his comrades had been more than dazed. But resistance to the menacing weapons leveled at them was hopeless.

  The vicious-eyed, squat green Jovian who covered Newton with his weapon pointed up the slope with it. “March, Cain! All of you!”

  Grag was swearing blisteringly in his rumbling voice. Two atom-guns covered the giant robot and the Brain. A movement at resistance by any of them meant death.

  Newton felt a bitter despair raging in his soul. But not yet had he given up hope of preventing ultimate disaster. No matter what happened to them, the ancient horror that slept on this moon
must not be awakened.

  They reached the ridge. It was higher than the plateau, and they could look out across that cracked, glaring white expanse. Four other men were running from the plateau toward the ridge.

  But the eyes of Captain Future and his comrades were riveted for the moment on the man who faced them. A gray-haired, elderly-looking Earthman, whose thick spectacles glinted at them mockingly in the pink glow —

  “Walker King!” hissed Otho. “You were right, chief. He is Lu Suur!”

  Lu Suur in turn seemed amazed as he looked at Newton and Otho. “So you and Cain turned traitor and helped these Futuremen, Li Sharn?” he snapped. “You’ll wish you hadn’t done that.”

  The Venusian plotter’s eyes flicked toward Grag and the Brain. “Yes, I recognized you two as two of the Futuremen as soon as I saw you coming. And the girl and old Gurney.” He laughed. “You’ve proved pitifully stupid without Future himself to lead you. You should have known that we’d see your ship landing and would expect you to come after us.”

  Lu Suur nodded toward a half-dozen small black cases which lay on the ground near a piece of electrical apparatus with a protruding antenna.

  “Lucky we had a few trinite charges we hadn’t planted yet, wasn’t it? That one we tossed should have blown you to tatters. But you are quick with a gun, Cain.”

  Before Curt Newton could speak, the four men who had come running up from the white plateau reached the ridge.

  Ka Thaar was the leader of the four. The Mercurian youngster’s thin face wore a look of alarm as he exclaimed to Lu Suur.

  “What was that blast? We heard it just as we were planting the last charges, and were afraid you’d used the detonator prematurely.”

  KA THAAR’S voice trailed off into silence. The young Mercurian had now noticed the captives. His tawny eyes seemed to distend in amazement as he looked at the giant metal figure of Grag and the hovering Brain.

  “Two of the Futuremen!” he exclaimed in a low voice.

  “Yes, two of the famous Futuremen,” said Lu Suur satirically. “Those living wonders you have always talked about. They look pretty harmless now, don’t they?”