Captain Future 03 - Captain Future's Challenge (Summer 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Grag shook his metal head ponderously.

  “You’re away off the orbit, Otho,” declared the robot. “It’s that Saturnian, Quarus Qull. He’s had as much reason and opportunity as Orr Libro.”

  “Your brain must need oil, Grag!” cried the android; “You think the same as I do, don’t you, Simon?”

  “No, I do not,” replied the Brain witheringly. “It could be any one of the four, as Curtis says. But it seems to me that Julius Gunn is the type of man capable of such a really gigantic plot.”

  Joan appealed to Curt Newton.

  “What do you think, Captain Future? Haven’t you any idea which of the four it may be?”

  “I have an idea, yes,” Curt answered, frowning. “But an idea based on a mere single clue isn’t enough in this thing. We’ve got to find the Wrecker’s base here on Neptune in order to smash him.”

  He turned to the grizzled old interplanetary marshal.

  “Ezra, the Wrecker’s organization must have a secret base on some island here, one used by their space ships and surface boats. Where could it be?”

  EZRA GURNEY shook his head. “Can’t hardly say, Captain Future,” he drawled. “Wouldn’t likely be here in the Rock Isles — too near Amphitrite. Might be in one of the other archipelagoes — the Boreal Isles, or the Bird Islands, or maybe even the Black Isles that lie west of the Great Maelstrom.”

  Captain Future considered quickly. Time was precious, he knew. They must strike at the heart of the Wrecker’s plot before it destroyed the last remaining gravium mine.

  His keen mind saw two possibilities. Either one might lead to the mysterious plotter. Curt decided to try both.

  “Otho, can you make yourself up as a fisherman from some other planet and play the part well?” he demanded of the android.

  “Sure, chief!” exclaimed Otho, scenting adventure. “You ought to know I can pass myself off as anybody in the System,”

  Captain Future gave his orders.

  “Then you disguise yourself as an Earth fisherman just arrived on Neptune. Go over to that rowdy fisherman’s quarter in Amphitrite. Mix with the others there and try to find out about all those fishermen who vanished. Especially, find out where on Neptune they disappeared.”

  “I get it, chief!” exclaimed Otho eagerly, snatching out his make-up pouch. “The Wrecker’s secret base must be in the approximate region where all those fishermen vanished, eh?”

  “Before you go,” Curt continued to the android, “you can check my disguise. I’m going to try a little imposture myself. I’m going to pass myself off as this Venusian, Ki Iri.”

  Joan Randall looked wonderingly from Captain Future to the unconscious, delirious Venusian prisoner.

  “You’re going to impersonate this man, one of the Wrecker’s men?” the girl exclaimed. “Then you’re planning to —”

  “To see if I can’t in that way penetrate the Wrecker’s organization,” Curt finished for her. His tanned, handsome face was eager as he explained. “Impersonating Ki Iri, I’ll go and confront Quarus Qull and Orr Libro and our other two suspects, one by one. Whichever of them is the Wrecker will recognize me as one of his own followers, and will give himself away to me. With his identity known, we can seize the Wrecker at once and if Otho’s mission helps locate the secret base, we can get all the plotter’s followers, too!”

  “But, lad,” warned the Brain worriedly, “it won’t be easy for you to impersonate this man Ki Iri. He’s not just an ordinary Venusian, but a Venusian with an alien mind in his body!”

  “I know, it’ll be tough going to pass myself off as him,” Curt admitted. “But I’ll have to chance it.”

  Otho had been working speedily, and had finished his own disguise. The android, whose synthetic flesh could be softened and molded into any desired shape, was the greatest master of make-up in the System. He had now changed into a typical swaggering, bronzed Earthman fisherman, dark-haired, hard-faced, pugnacious. He had put on a soiled, stained zipper-suit.

  Captain Future, under Otho’s critical eyes, began making up as the unconscious Venusian. Except for Otho, supreme in the field, few people in the System could match Curt in the art of disguise. And the android who had taught him that art now supervised.

  Curt’s red hair was darkened and straightened by a quick wash of stain. Waxite pads inside his nostrils and cheeks made his features a replica of the Venusian’s. His bronzed skin was whitened to the milky hue of the other man by a smooth pigment. Finally, he donned Ki Iri’s clothing, putting his emblem-ring in his belt and concealing the belt and proton-pistol under his zipper-jacket.

  “All right?” Curt asked the android. He spoke in a thick, slurred, hesitant voice like that the Wrecker’s man had used.

  “Good, chief,” approved Otho. “But be sure you move a little stiffly and jerkily, as all the Wrecker’s men do.”

  “You can get going for the fishermen’s quarter now,” Curt Newton told him. “We mustn’t be seen together.”

  OTHO slipped out of the Comet. Captain Future gave rapid last orders.

  “Simon, while I’m gone I want you to bring this Ki Iri back to consciousness if you can, and try hypnotizing him to make him tell what he knows. Grag will be here to help you.”

  Curt turned to Ezra Gurney.

  “Ezra, will you go back to the city soon and check something for me about those four gravium space ships that disappeared from their run weeks ago? Find out if those ships had any trouble of any kind when they were here on Neptune. Understand?”

  “Don’t understand but I’ll do it,” drawled Ezra.

  “Joan, better stay here with Grag and Simon,” Captain Future said to the girl. “I may need you when I return.”

  Then Curt strode out of the Comet, and hurried through the night back toward the city Amphitrite. He took care to walk with a stiff jerkiness such as was characteristic of all the Wrecker’s men. Curt played his part with utter care. He well knew the hazards involved in this dangerous impersonation — but it might lead to the Wrecker.

  People were coming back into Amphitrite’s drenched streets now that the storm was diminishing. Nobody noticed the Venusian fisherman striding along toward the docks. And when Captain Future reached the docks used by the gravium companies, he peered keenly along them.

  Julius Gunn and Brand would be together in their offices, he knew. He must wait for a chance to approach them separately. In the meantime there were his other two suspects, Orr Libro and Quarus Qull.

  Light shone from the window of the small office-building on Quarus Qull’s rented dock. Curt went to the structure and pushed boldly inside. If Quarus Qull were the Wrecker, he’d surely betray himself when he saw one of his own followers entering.

  Captain Future stopped short inside the door. For Quarus Qull lay prone on the floor, dead. His breast was scorched and torn.

  “Why, it’s Ki Iri!” said a thick voice behind Curt.

  Curt whirled. Behind the door were two hollow-eyed Jovians and a Neptunian. They were the Wrecker’s men and had just murdered Quarus Qull!

  The Jovian came forward, in his hand the atom-pistol that had just slain the blue-skinned magnate.

  “What are you doing here, Ki Iri?” he demanded of Curt in his slurred voice. “It was reported that you had been captured earlier tonight by Captain Future’s men!”

  Captain Future’s mind raced. The Wrecker had ordered these men to murder Quarus Qull, and they had just done it.

  His disguise had deceived these men into thinking he was their comrade, Ki Iri. But they had been made suspicious by his appearance here. If their suspicions deepened, he was lost!

  Chapter 13: Otho Goes Fishing

  OTHO the android, perfectly disguised as a hard-bitten Earthman, swaggered through the dark, noisy streets of the far-famed Fishermen’s Quarter. The mission Captain Future had given him — to find out just where had disappeared the scores of fishermen who had become the alien-minded followers of the Wrecker — was in the back of Otho’s mind. He
meant to carry out that mission, but he fervently hoped there’d be some excitement while doing it. For he was bored!

  “Where do most of the fishermen here hang out?” Otho asked a passing Neptunian.

  The gray-faced, peaked-headed planetary native pointed toward the waterfront.

  “You’ll find most of the fishing-captains at Zin Ziro’s drinking-shop. There’s always some of them there.”

  Otho strode on, in the lordly manner always assumed by Earthmen, proudest of the planetary races, when on another world. He soon reached the dingy street that bordered the waterfront. Loud voices and raucous music spilled from tawdry establishments. In front of the noisiest place, Otho glimpsed a swinging metalloy sign that bore in several planetary languages the legend, “Fishermen’s Haven — Zin Ziro, Prop”

  The disguised android pushed into a dim cave of a place, hazy with smoke of rial and tobacco, and crowded with tables at which set the motley throngs of fishermen drawn from five other planets to Neptune by the watery world’s great sea of teeming life.

  Otho saw that the captains sat at a long central table apart, as befitted their dignity. The android walked boldly up to that table and met the dour, unfriendly gaze of the men at it.

  “I’m Jan Ullman of Earth,” Otho announce brashly, coolly taking a seat at the table. “Don’t mind if I join you, do you?”

  A yellow-faced Uranian across the table stared at him.

  “You’re a stranger to us,” he said angrily. “You Earthmen seem to think you own every planet, just because you opened up interplanetary travel.”

  Otho sneered.

  “At least we Earthmen don’t ask leave of any saffron-skinned Uranians to do anything.”

  The Uranian jumped up, his hand going to his belt.

  “No stranger can come in here and talk to me that way!” he hissed.

  “You draw that atom-gun,” said Otho levelly without rising, “and I’ll blast you down before it’s half out of your belt.”

  Otho was playing the part of a swaggering, domineering Earthman to the hilt. And the android was thoroughly enjoying himself — he itched for a fight.

  But a half-drunken, good-natured Venusian captain pulled the enraged Uranian back into his seat.

  “Cool down, Akk,” he said.

  Akk appealed to the man who sat at the head of the fishing-captains’ table, a huge, ponderous green Jovian.

  “Is this Earthman to come in here and insult me, Groro?” he demanded angrily of the Jovian.

  Groro, the big Jovian, regarded the two parties of the dispute with a gravity befitting an interplanetary judge.

  “You’ll both sit down,” he rumbled, “and stop bickering. By the demons of the Fire Sea, there’ll be no blood shed at any table I sit at — unless I shed it myself.”

  Grinning, Otho sank back into his chair, and the angry Uranian subsided. A hurrying gray Neptunian waiter was at Otho’s side. “Some real Earth whisky, sir?” he suggested.

  Otho nodded.

  “Drinks for everybody here,” he added grandiloquently. Otho smiled. “It’s on me, gentlemen.”

  A MUTTER of approval sounded. Otho took the opportunity to glance at his new acquaintances. Around the table, in addition to Groro, the big Jovian, and the Uranian and Venusian, were two Neptunian captains, and a hairy, solemn-eyed Plutonian.

  Groro quaffed down a big bumper of marsh-apple brandy from his native world, wiped his mouth with his flipperlike hand, and then looked at Otho with more friendliness.

  “Just get in from Earth, Jan Ullman?” he asked.

  “From Pluto,” Otho corrected. “I was out there fishing in the Sea of Avernus. We got caught in the equinoctial blizzard, ran into an ice-pack, and I barely got out alive. I came here to Neptune to see if I could get started again. I’ve heard a long time of the great fisheries here.”

  “It’s the best fishing in the System,” rumbled Groro.

  “Ah, but the great days are over now,” mournfully said the Venusian captain. “What’s the good of catching fish if there’s no market for them, no ships to take them to other worlds? And this gravium business that has paralyzed interplanetary traffic will soon do away with our market altogether.”

  “It is true,” said the hairy Plutonian solemnly. “I am going back to Pluto, before I get caught on this world with my equalizer worn out and no way to get a new one. The days of interplanetary travel are over, when the gravium supply disappears.”

  “Nonsense!” rumbled Groro scornfully. “You’re like a lot of other people getting scared by these gravium disasters, and going panicky. Me, I’m going right on fishing — I’m not letting a lot of scared sheep all over the System frighten me.”

  Otho addressed a quick question to the big Jovian. “But they say fishing here on Neptune’s pretty perilous lately. I’ve heard that a lot of fishermen disappeared a few weeks ago.”

  Groro nodded his bulbous green head.

  “That’s the truth, Earthman. Some of my best friends were among ‘em, and nobody knows what happened to ‘em.”

  One of the Neptunians contradicted him.

  “We know what happened to those men,” the gray planetary native declared. “The sea-devils got them.”

  “Sea-devils? Ho-ho!” guffawed Groro. “Are you still stickin’ to that crazy yarn?”

  “It’s not crazy,” replied the Neptunian earnestly. His eyes flashed. “You strangers who come here from other planets think that we Neptunians are babbling superstitious nonsense when we tell of the sea-devils. Just because you’ve never seen them, you say they don’t exist. But we know they do exist, in the remoter depths of the sea, cunningly keeping out of sight always.

  “They are manlike but they are not men,” the Neptunian continued solemnly, “for they breathe the water, not the air. They have powers and weapons beyond anything we have. Legends of our fathers say, indeed, that the sea-devils have great cities far down in the dim green depths, and ways of life we cannot guess. And they hate all intruders into their ocean, which is why they seized all those fishermen who vanished so strangely.”

  Groro winked at Otho.

  “Ever hear such crazy talk? And these Neptunians actually believe it — all of ‘em.”

  “Where did all those fishermen disappear — in what part of the ocean?” Otho asked him keenly.

  Groro waved a flipper hand northwestward.

  “Up there beyond the Great Maelstrom and the Spider Islands — some where near the Black Isles. Leastways, that’s the way they were heading. I’m sailing back there at dawn for some fishing, and no sea-devils will bother me!”

  OTHO’S brain worked rapidly. The audacious android rapidly made a decision. If the fishermen had disappeared near the Black Isles, the Wrecker’s secret base might be somewhere there. So he, Otho, would go there and find out!

  Otho knew very well that by doing so he would be exceeding the orders Captain Future had given him. But the android could never resist the temptation to find adventure.

  “How about taking me into your crew, Groro?” he asked. “I’m at a loose end, and I’ve got to do something.”

  “If you can handle nets and dories, I’ll sign you on,” Groro replied promptly. “I’ve had trouble getting men.”

  “No wonder — no fisherman in his right mind would go up there beyond the Great Maelstrom,” muttered the Neptunian.

  Groro guffawed, and called for more liquor.

  “Here’s luck to our cruise, Earthman,” the Jovian toasted.

  An hour later, a little the worse for drink, Groro rose ponderously to his feet.

  “Nearly dawn,” he told Otho. “And it’ll take me a little time to round up my crew.”

  Otho had drunk as much as the Jovian, but liquor never affected the android. He steadied Groro as they left the place. They started along the row of tawdry taverns on the waterfront. Groro peered into each one, and whenever he spied any of his crew, he strode in and pulled the men out bodily. Soon these rough methods had assembled his full
crew of twenty mixed Neptunians, Jovians, Venusians and others.

  The Spray, Groro’s craft, was a ninety-foot aluminoy hull, with steelite masts, an auxiliary rocket motor, and a mess of piled nets and metal dories crowding its decks.

  “Cast loose those lines! Up foresail!” Groro bellowed at his men. “Step, you scum of space!”

  The black sail rose quickly. A Plutonian steersman had taken the tiller, and now the fishing-boat began sliding out into the darkness of the harbor, away from the lights of Amphitrite. Otho saw that the eastern sky was paling as dawn approached. By the time they were clear of the harbor, and sliding over the great tidal waves of the open ocean toward the northwest, the morning mists were already lifting as the small, bright sun rose.

  Otho saw the small brown dots of the Rock Isles, on one of which was Amphitrite City, receding on their right. The islands, mere slender peaks of land projecting up from the deep sea-bottom, were soon out of sight behind them.

  “Better test our motor,” Groro grunted, bending to the controls. “We always need it, to run past the Maelstrom.”

  The roar of its under-water rocket-tubes satisfied the big Jovian captain and he shut it off. Then, straightening, he clapped Otho on the back in a blow that nearly knocked him down.

  “Well, how do you like Neptune, Jan Ullman?” he rumbled heartily. “No oceans like this on little Earth, eh?”

  “Nor on Jupiter,” Otho retorted.

  Groro laughed. “You’ve been on Jupiter, eh? Do you know South Equatoria? I was born and raised on that jungle coast.”

  The big Jovian suddenly growled and reached for an atom-gun standing handy in a rack.

  “Damned ‘swallower’ over there,” he warned.

  Otho glimpsed one of the monstrous, disclike, white creatures gliding along under the waves nearby. The Jovian fired, but the streak of atom-flame missed the monster, and it disappeared swiftly into the depths.