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

by Edmond Hamilton

  “Kings of the hidden sea-folk!” Curt muttered to himself. “And it’s the minds of sea-men like those that have been put into the bodies of the kidnaped fishermen.”

  The wizard of science had previously guessed from consideration of the evidence that something like this was the explanation. But now he had been given proof.

  Somehow, Curt knew, the Wrecker had made contact with this hidden race of sea-folk, and had induced them to become his allies in the great plot to destroy the System’s vital gravium supply. But the Wrecker had needed followers who could go across the System to other worlds, and these sea-men couldn’t leave the water.

  So, Captain Future reasoned, the mind-exchange process which the super-scientific sea-men must have discovered had been brought into play. The minds of sea-men had been transferred into the bodies of scores of kidnaped fishermen, here in this cavern. The thing was wholly practicable — the sea-men were basically human, and their minds would approximate the human. And that was where the alien minds of the Wrecker’s possessed followers had come from!

  “A hell-born, cunning plot!” Captain Future thought grimly. “But why should these sea-folk help the Wrecker strike at the gravium industry?”

  One of the men beside him was calling-

  “Bring the ‘talker’ so that our kings can speak to us.”

  A small instrument was hastily brought. It consisted of a boxlike electrospeaker, with a small microphone attached to it by a long cord. The microphone was put down into the water.

  The sea-men down there swam toward it, with smooth, graceful strokes of finned arms and tail. Then, with their intelligent eyes looking up through the water, the sea-men moved their lips in speech. The speech came loudly out of the electrospeaker. It was an almost unrecognizably distorted, thick Earthspeech that the seamen were using.

  “Where is the Wrecker? He was to meet us here at this hour,” demanded the sea-man speaking.

  “The Wrecker comes now!” sounded a cry from one of the men beside Curt.

  Captain Future stiffened, gazing with the others toward the water-tunnel that was entrance to this cavern. The faint light of dawn was seeping from outside along that tunnel now. And Curt saw the ripple of a small submersible speedboat that was throbbing into the strange and sinister cavern.

  The craft rose, breaking surface and heading toward the ledge. Its cover was slid back, and out of it rose a figure.

  The Wrecker! The mysterious plotter whose unearthly conspiracy against gravium supply was fast paralyzing interplanetary civilization!

  “So he’s keeping his disguise on, even here?” Curt Newton muttered to himself. “Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I know who’s inside that suit —”

  The Wrecker was garbed in a black space-suit, whose glassite helmet had been painted black except for two small eyeholes. The man inside that suit might be of any planetary race.

  CAPTAIN FUTURE yearned for a chance to call the Futuremen on his pocket-televisor, and bring them with the full force of the Planet Police to crush this hell-nest of plotters. But he dared not risk it. Not since he had left Amphitrite had he been out of sight of the Wrecker’s men for a moment.

  The Wrecker was speaking, his voice coming muffledly from the resonator in the front of his black helmet.

  “The sea-kings are here?” said the master-plotter. “Good!”

  Curt saw the Wrecker approach the water-edge. The black conspirator and the weird sea-men down in the water faced each other, speaking through the boxlike electric “talker.”

  “Your people have done well!” the Wrecker told the sea-kings. “Mines One and Two were wrecked exactly at the scheduled time.”

  “And shall we go ahead at once with the destruction of Mine Three?” came the sea-king’s thick-voiced question.

  Captain Future felt an inner tension as he heard that exchange. Curt had been sure, since he first deduced that a hidden sea-dwelling race were the Wrecker’s allies, that it was the seamen who had wrecked the submarines domes of Mines One and Two. For he had seen, when he was almost trapped in Mine One, that the thing had been done from outside. But this revelation that the mine-domes were destroyed at an exactly scheduled moment gave final corroboration to the clue Curt had gained to the Wrecker’s identity. He was sure now that the Wrecker could be only one man!

  “Yes, you will proceed now to destroy Mine Three, the last gravium mine on Neptune!” the Wrecker was saying to the sea-rulers. “But the Earthmen have posted guards in sea-suits around the outside of Mine Three.”

  “We can easily overpower those guards, and then weaken the dome wall with atomic flame-torches as we did the others,” the sea-king replied.

  “You will strike at exactly noon tomorrow. Then we will proceed, as we planned, to destroy Amphitrite island completely and rid Neptune forever of the intruders here.”

  “Good!” exclaimed the sea-man ruler. “All my people are eager for the hour when the Earthman city shall be destroyed.”

  Captain Future felt an incredulous amazement. The Wrecker, renegade to his own human race was planning to help the sea-folk utterly destroy Amphitrite? That would wipe out all interplanetary industry on Neptune, for that city was the center that contained almost all the interplanetary colonists who had come here.

  Cold, furious anger gripped Curt. Anger not so much at the hostile sea-folk as at the Wrecker. What could be the motive of the mysterious plotter in thus seeking to destroy all interplanetary industry and colonization on Neptune? What would he be likely to gain by it?

  “We shall have to be careful,” the Wrecker was saying. “The Earthman of whom I told you — that devil Captain Future — is still alive and working against us. He must be eliminated somehow before we make the final great stroke tomorrow.”

  The Wrecker turned and spoke sharply to the hairy Plutonian who stood beside Captain Future.

  “Hab Haro, you and your men failed to do as I ordered — to capture Captain Future’s ship. That would have crippled him!”

  “We tried to do it,” The Plutonian replied. “But the Futuremen were on guard. They killed two of us and captured Ki Iri. But Ki Iri escaped later from them.”

  THE Wrecker swung toward Captain Future, and the disguised scientific wizard stiffened slightly as the eyeholes in that black helmet stared at him.

  “You escaped from the Futuremen, Ki Iri?” exclaimed the Wrecker. “How did you do that?”

  “It was easy,” said Curt Newton, taking care to keep his voice hollow and slurred. “They thought me unconscious and didn’t secure me — I shammed until their backs were turned, then dodged out.”

  “Then the Futuremen and Captain Future are probably looking for you now,” muttered the Wrecker. His dark form became rigid. “I’ve an idea! A way to get rid of that cursed redhead!”

  He went on quickly, to Curt.

  “Ki Iri, I am going to send you back to Amphitrite — to kill Captain Future!”

  “What?” said Curt, in amazement. Then, he recovered himself. “I mean, how can I do that?”

  “It will be easy,” declared the Wrecker. From an outer pocket of his concealing black suit he extracted a tiny glass tube.

  “This tube contains spores of the terrible Saturnian ‘death-fungus’,” he declared. “If one spore touches a living creators, it germinates and proliferates with incredible swiftness and the victim becomes almost instantly a mass of bursting, dying fungoid flesh.

  “You will conceal this tube in your hair, and go back to Amphitrite, Ki Iri,” continued the Wrecker. “Captain Future and the Futuremen are undoubtedly seeking you. Let them find you. And when they are around you, crush the tube in your hair and Captain Future will die one of the most horrible deaths in the System.”

  “But I will die that death, too!” objected Curt Newton.

  The Wrecker stiffened, “Are you not willing to give your life for the great cause that means so much to your sea-people?” he demanded.

  “Yes, it is your duty to do this,” one of the sea-men
in the water admonished Curt through the “talker.”

  “Very well, I will do it,” Curt Newton agreed, with apparent reluctance.

  Inwardly, Curt sensed the grim humor of it. He was being sent to kill Captain Future! Curt resolved swiftly upon a course of action. He couldn’t hope to do much here, one against a hundred. He had thought for a moment of smashing the fungus-tube when he got it, but it wouldn’t affect the Wrecker, inside his space-suit, nor the sea-men in the water.

  So Curt Newton had decided to return to Amphitrite, ostensibly to kill himself. Once back in the city, he would seize the Wrecker when he returned. For the corroboration of the clue he had nursed had given Curt direct proof of the Wrecker’s identity. He and the Futuremen would seize the Wrecker, and then deal with the sea-folk.

  “I had hoped at first to capture Captain Future, for that would have vastly aided our plans,” the Wrecker was saying. “But that’s impossible now, and it’s safest to kill him.”

  “I will see that he does not live long,” promised Curt, reaching for the fungus-tube.

  At that moment came an interruption. From one of the sea-men in the water came a startled warning.

  “A boat is coming!”

  The Wrecker, on the point of handing Captain Future the fungus-tube, swung around alarmedly.

  “But it can’t be one of us coming!” he exclaimed. “All of us are here now! It must be an enemy — maybe Future himself! Stand ready!”

  ATOM-GUNS flashed out in the hands of the possessed men who crowded the ledge. And down in the water, the sea-men waited with their curious metal rods raised and ready.

  Curt was tense. His first thought was that Grag or Otho had found the location of this secret Base and was blindly barging in.

  The boat appeared, a small submersible rocketing into the red-lit water cavern at crazy speed. It bumped the dock, and the atom-guns of the Wrecker and all his throng covered the man who leaped up out of the craft.

  “Why, it’s Ki Iri!” cried the Wrecker incredulously. “Another Ki Iri!”

  Curt’s heart jumped at sight of the man leaping out of the boat. It was Ki Iri — the real Ki Iri whom he had left a prisoner in the Comet!

  The possessed Venusian’s hollow eyes were flaming with excitement, his clothing was a mere harness, his body was scratched and bleeding. Somehow, he had escaped from the Futuremen, Curt realized.

  Captain Future’s brain raced. No chance to draw his hidden proton-pistol and fight his way out of here! The eyes of all the scores of armed men around him had turned toward him, gazing incredulously at the two Ki Iri’s who exactly duplicated each other.

  “Devils of Neptune!” swore the Wrecker’s muffled voice. “What is this? Which of them is the real Ki Iri?”

  Captain Future tried to bluff his way out of it. He pointed accusingly at the panting, bleeding real Ki Iri.

  “That man’s a fake — an impostor!” Curt charged. “Everyone knows Captain Future and that android follower of his are experts at disguise. One of them has made up to look like me!”

  “It’s a lie!” yelled the real Ki Iri in his thick, hoarse voice. “It’s he that’s the impostor — it’s he that’s Captain Future!”

  “Cover them both!” rang the Wrecker’s voice ominously. “One of them is lying. We’ll soon find out which.”

  Curt inwardly cursed the turn of events that had brought the Venusian here. But he kept up his audacious bluff.

  “It’s he that’s trying to deceive you,” Curt asserted loudly. As he talked, he was working his hand slowly into his jacket toward his proton-gun.

  “There’s one sure way to tell immediately which of them is Ki Iri and which is Captain Future,” snapped the Wrecker. “Ki Iri is a Venusian and Captain Future is an Earthman. Look at their gravitation-equalizers. The man who has his equalizer set to the gravity strength of Venus is Ki Iri, and the man who has his equalizer set to Earth gravity is Captain Future.”

  Curt Newton realized instantly that his bluff was finished. There was no escape for him — but he’d take the Wrecker with him!

  He drew the proton-pistol from inside his jacket with blurring speed and leveled it at the Wrecker. But the dark plotter had been on the alert for just such an action.

  “That’s Future — get him!” yelled the Wrecker, and at the same time threw himself down.

  Curt’s pale proton-beam blasted over the Wrecker’s head and missed. Before Captain Future could fire again, men were piling on him from all sides. The rage he felt at being trapped drove Curt’s fists in furious blows. The proton-pistol had been snatched from him and tossed aside, but the big disguised Earthman fought like a trapped Plutonian korlat.

  HIS fists beat a devil’s tattoo on the faces of men trying to pull him down. He felt his knuckles crunch flesh and bone and heard the yells of pain and anger of those he got home to. But they pulled him down, finally, and held him by force of numbers.

  “We’ll make sure this is Captain Future,” the Wrecker snapped. “Bring water and oil — clean off that disguise.”

  Helplessly, Curt felt them wiping away the white pigment on his face, the black dye that stained his hair. His own tanned face and red hair re-appeared.

  “It’s Future, all right,” gloated the Wrecker. “Cunning devil — and I was going to send him to kill himself!”

  “You’ll wish you had killed yourself before I get through with you!” gritted Curt Newton, gray eyes flaring his hatred at the disguised figure bending over him. “Do you think you can get away with this black plan of yours? You can’t — I’ve seen schemes just as clever as yours thwarted.”

  “I know you’ve spoiled more than one man’s ambitions, Future,” throbbed the Wrecker’s voice. “But you won’t ruin mine! I’ve been one step ahead of you from the first. And capturing you here makes my success certain. For from now on, you are going to help me. You are going to be my ally, Captain Future!”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” Curt retorted icily. “There’s about as much chance of me helping you as there is of the planets running backward.”

  “Yet you’re going to help me,” repeated the Wrecker. He laughed harshly. “That’s why I wanted my men to capture you at the very first — so I would have you for an ally. With Captain Future, the great, revered champion of law on my side, how can I lose? Of course,” added the Wrecker ironically, “it won’t be really you who helps me — only your body, with another mind in it!”

  Curt Newton felt the hair bristle on his neck as he fathomed the dark, appalling significance of the plotter’s words.

  “You begin to understand, do you?” laughed the Wrecker. “Yes, you’ve guessed it, Captain Future. The secret of mind-exchange — the secret developed by the scientists of these super-civilized sea-folk in their hidden cities — is going to be used on you, here and now. A sea-man’s mind is going to be put into your body, and your mind will be transferred into that sea-man’s body!

  “Do you see the beauty of it, Captain Future? One of my loyal allies inside your body, doing my bidding, helping my scheme to success! The renowned champion of the System peoples, whom everyone in the System respects and obeys, my henchman! Why, I can’t lose with that set-up!”

  Curt Newton felt freezing horror. It was not of his own fate that he was thinking, not of the terrible idea of having his mind transferred into the body of a water-dwelling seaman.

  The thing that left Curt aghast was the prospect of having his physical body, his reputation, made a tool of this arch-criminal and used for evil purposes. Why, even the Futuremen would accept the pseudo-Future as their chief, not knowing that only physically was he the same, that mentally he was an alien enemy!

  “Take him into the exchange-chamber!” rang the Wrecker’s voice. “One of the sea-kings’ guards will undergo the exchange with him.”

  STRUGGLING futilely, Curt Newton felt himself carried into the small, square metal structure at the water’s edge. He was forced down into one of the two metal coffinlike chambers. Straps
across his body buckled him down. Then the big, bulky electrical helmet was fastened on his head, its wires connecting directly to his nerve-system by a tiny incision made in his neck by the Wrecker.

  The second coffin-chamber of the machine, the one filled with water, was directly connected with the water outside. Into that chamber swam one of the finned white seamen. The other helmet was put upon the sea-man’s head by the Wrecker, and its wiring connected to his nerves. Captain future could see the sea-man’s large, intelligent dark eyes staring at him out of his water-filled coffin.

  The Wrecker had gone to the panel switchboard of the mind-exchange machine, and was setting its controls with feverish eagerness in his concealed figure’s posture.

  “A few more moments, and Captain Future will be my obedient servant!” he mocked, over his shoulder.

  Curt strained his muscles to cracking point to burst the metal straps that held him down. Impossible! He must do something, think of something, or in a moment he’d be prisoned in an alien body! But what —

  Click! The Wrecker had turned a switch. Generators whined on a crescendo scale of sound. The Wrecker touched another switch. And Curt Newton felt a strange, rushing force sweeping through his brain, a tingling flood of energy that seemed tearing him away into darkness.

  The electric web of his mind, his personality, was being torn away from his own body! Curt Newton’s consciousness was hurled into complete oblivion.

  Chapter 16: Futuremen on the Trail

  THE real Ki Iri was the first outlaw who had ever managed to escape from the Comet. After Captain Future and Otho had departed in disguise upon their respective missions, old Ezra Gurney had left for the spaceport to get the information Curt wanted. The Brain, Grag and Joan Randall were left alone in the little tear-drop ship with the unconscious prisoner.

  Joan stared out of the window into the darkness, as though to follow Captain Future with her eyes upon his dangerous mission to the nearby city. When the girl turned finally, she found the Brain examining the unconscious Venusian.