Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “Otho can’t keep that up much longer,” he muttered under his breath. “Where the devil —”

  A Legion man popped out into the corridor from a compartment. He stared at Curt, then reached for his atom-gun.

  Curt was already triggering his proton-pistol. It could be set either to kill or to stun, and it was a stunning ray that licked out now. The pale, thin beam dropped the man in his tracks.

  Then Curt saw the door in the corridor that had a bar across it. He unbarred and swung it open. Inside was a dark little blank-walled chamber, but he could see two people.

  One was an Earth girl in a gray silk zipper suit, sitting with her dark head bowed tiredly in her hands. The other was a little, withered, wasplike old Venusian.

  “Joan! Kansu Kane!” Curt whispered tensely. “Come on — we’re getting out of here!”

  Joan Randall looked up, and as she saw the tall, broad-shouldered, red-haired young man standing with pistol raised in the doorway, she uttered a little cry of pure, tremulous joy.

  “Captain Future! I knew you’d come —”

  “Not so loud!” Curt cautioned. Then he whirled round. “Too late — you’ve done it now!”

  A shout of alarm from somewhere in the ship had followed the girl’s cry. Legion men from the stern appeared in the corridor, running toward them. Curt’s proton-beam flashed and dropped half of them. But others were yelling to the party in the observatory.

  “It’s a trap of Captain Future! Come away!”

  Curt plunged forward, triggering his proton-pistol. But one of the Legion men, an evil-faced Earthman dwarf, had produced a handful of wriggling things that he flung at Captain Future.

  “Rope-snakes!” screamed Joan. “Lookout —”

  It was too late. The pink, wriggling things were Saturnian rope-snakes, tamed and used by interplanetary criminals.

  They flashed around Curt’s limbs with incredible speed and tightened, pinioning him. Others had fastened around Joan and Kansu Kane. Curt struggled to break the living bonds.

  The evil-faced Legion dwarf was shouting to the outside.

  “Kallak, come on! Let Gatola go — we’re blasting off!”

  The Legion men from the observatory, led by a huge, hulking Earthman giant, came rushing back into the cruiser.

  “Cyclotrons on — blast off!” the dwarf yelled.

  The ship’s rocket-tubes roared. It lurched up from the ground as Captain Future fought furiously to free himself.

  But Otho had come running toward the rising ship. His eyes blazing, his body battered by fighting, the synthetic man leaped up toward the still open door of the ship.

  No one in the System but the android could have made the incredible leap. Otho’s hands clutched the edge of the door, and he dangled in space as the ship roared up across the dark desert.

  CURT, struggling, yelled a warning as he saw a Legion man stoop to drag Otho into the ship so the door could be closed. The Legionary, still believing that the android was Gatola, was trying at the last minute to capture him.

  Otho and the Legionary who had grabbed him were struggling when the ship lurched wildly as more rocket-tubes were cut in. Curt was struggling to get to the aid of the android but could not.

  Then Otho and his antagonist, dislodged by the sudden lurch, were hurled out of the open door and fell downward together into the darkness. And the Legion cruiser roared on up into the starry sky.

  Chapter 4: Flight into Peril

  CAPTAIN FUTURE struggled to break free of his living bonds.

  It was impossible. A half-dozen of the pink rope-snakes had wound around his arms and legs by now. These Saturnian serpents had incredible strength in their supple bodies. The criminals of the System had long made use of them, taming and training the creatures.

  The Legion dwarf came over and looked down balefully at Curt. He was an Earthman of past middle age, with a seamed, repulsive face and malevolent black eyes.

  Beside him stood the hulking Earthman giant he had called Kallak, an incredibly huge man with enormous shoulders, a small head, and a rather stupid face.

  The dwarf kicked Curt’s bound body viciously.

  “So the famous Captain Future decided to set a trap for the Legion of Doom?” he snarled. “And then fell into his own trap!”

  Curt, recognizing the futility of struggle, looked up calmly.

  “I know you,” Captain Future said levelly. “Your name is Roj — you were a biologist with criminal tendencies. You made that man Kallak a giant by glandular injection, and used him to help you in your crimes. You were caught five years ago, and you and Kallak were given life sentences on Cerberus, the prison moon.”

  “Your memory is good,” said the dwarf venomously. “But you forget to mention that it was the evidence you obtained against me that sent me to Cerberus.”

  His eyes were ugly. “I’ve a score to settle with you, Captain Future. And I’ll never have a better chance —”

  The dwarf was drawing an atom-gun from his belt when one of the Legion men stepped forward.

  These men of the Legion of Doom, Curt saw, were all Earthmen. Yet there was something queer about their appearance, something that did not escape Captain Future’s keen eyes. There was a whiteness and immobility about their faces, a lack of expression in their eyes. Even their clothing had a strange, stiff look.

  “Roj, you cannot kill this man,” said the one who had stepped forward, in a slurred, husky voice. “Remember the orders of Doctor Zarro.”

  The dwarf swore, but put his pistol back into his belt.

  “I’ll call the Doctor,” he said. “I think he’d want me to get this devil Captain Future out of the way.”

  The televisor apparatus of the ship was in a cubby off this corridor. Curt saw the dwarf approach it and switch on the set, then push the call-button.

  He heard Joan and Kansu Kane, pinioned like himself by rope-snakes, twisting futilely near him on the floor.

  “Take it easy, Joan,” he whispered. “We’ll get out of this somehow.” His mind had settled into a calm, stern resolve.

  The girl’s voice was choked.

  “It’s all my fault you got into it, Captain Future! If you hadn’t tried to rescue me —”

  Roj had got his call through. In the screen of the televisor appeared the head and shoulders of a man.

  It was Doctor Zarro. And Curt, lying helpless, stared up at the image of the supreme plotter he had vowed to smash.

  DOCTOR ZARRO’S gaunt, black-clothed figure was rigid, his enormous, bulging skull poised stiffly as he heard the dwarfs report. Then his burning, hypnotic black eyes looked down from the screen at the prisoners.

  “So — Captain Future, the supreme meddler of the System, tries to meddle with me,” rasped Doctor Zarro in a harsh, deep voice. His superhuman eyes flamed at Curt. “You fool! I am the only one who can save the System from the peril rushing toward it!”

  “Don’t try to tell me that,” Curt retorted, his gray eyes and tanned face contemptuous. “If there really was any peril and you could do anything, you’d put your abilities at the service of the Government. You’re simply scheming for power.

  “I’ve met others like you,” Curt continued stingingly. “The Lords of Power, who had half the System in their grip. The Space Emperor, who loosed an evil blight on Jupiter. I broke their devilish schemes. And I’ll break yours. That’s a warning.”

  “You warn me?” echoed Doctor Zarro violently. “You forget, Captain Future, that you’re the prisoner!”

  “Shall I kill him at once, Doctor?” the dwarf Roj cried eagerly.

  “No, you must not kill him — and you know why,” the black prophet rasped to the dwarf. “Bring him on out here to headquarters with the others. I think he’ll like our Hall of Enemies.”

  Roj sniggered with evil mirth, “Yes, yes, Doctor — he will enjoy the Hall, and so will the girl and the Venusian.”

  Kansu Kane, the captive Venusian astronomer, raised his voice in shrill protest.

&
nbsp; “This is all an outrage!” shrilled the waspish little Venusian to the image of Doctor Zarro. “I shall take extreme steps, unless you release us. I shall report you to the Police, sir!”

  Curt Newton, despite his situation, could not help smiling at the angry little scientist’s threat.

  Doctor Zarro paid the astronomer no attention. He was rasping orders to the dwarf.

  “Make all speed for headquarters,” he told Roj harshly. “And see that you keep that devil Future safe — he’s got the reputation of being slippery, remember.”

  “He won’t slip out of my hands,” Roj promised with malevolent emphasis.

  Doctor Zarro disappeared from the televisor. The dwarf turned and snapped orders.

  “Put all three prisoners back in the supply room, where we were keeping the girl and the Venusian,” he commanded.

  The huge, stupid giant Kallak stooped and lifted Captain Future’s bound form as though he were a child. Curt realized that this glandular giant’s strength was colossal.

  Legion men picked up Joan and Kansu Kane. They were tossed unceremoniously into the small chamber in the fore of the ship, where Joan and Kansu had previously been confined.

  Roj took Captain Future’s tungstite belt and proton-pistol from him, and tossed them out into the corridor. Then the dwarf brought out a small instrument which he touched to bring forth a long, twanging sound.

  AT THAT sound, the pink rope-snakes that pinioned the prisoners relaxed and uncoiled. The creatures flashed wrigglingly out to the dwarf in the corridor, and into the bag he held.

  Captain Future sprang up instantly. But as he did so, the door of the chamber was slammed and the bar fell across it outside.

  Curt helped Joan Randall and the Venusian to their feet.

  “This is a nice little cage to get myself into,” he declared disgustedly. He was feeling the sting of self-reproach.

  Kansu Kane, the withered little Venusian, was bursting with wrath, and his indignation exploded shrilly.

  “I have never been so rudely treated in my life! The idea of tossing the head of the South Venus Observatory, the discoverer of the Cepheid Nebula, the author of the double-spectra theory, like a sack of vegetables!”

  He fairly sputtered. “I shall make these men rue this! I’ll prosecute them through the interplanetary courts! I am not a vengeful man, but this treatment is too much!”

  Curt could not help grinning at the testy little man’s shrill indignation.

  “Calm down — you can’t prosecute them just yet,” he told the Venusian.

  Joan Randall had come to Curt’s side. She looked up at him, her brown eyes wide and her fine, firm little face pale with self-reproach.

  “If I hadn’t cried out when you appeared, this wouldn’t have happened,” she said heart-brokenly.

  Curt patted her shoulder. “You couldn’t help it, Joan. And you did more than any other secret agent when you got on the trail of the Legion of Doom at Venus, and gave us the tip that they were coming here to Mars to abduct Gatola. It’s too bad that the scheme Otho and I prepared fell through.”

  “Do you think Otho was killed when he fell from the ship with that Legion man?” Joan asked anxiously.

  “That’s worrying me, though Otho can stand a lot,” Curt said. His lips tightened. If any harm had come to him, God help these Legionaries, he thought. He’d have revenge for Otho!

  “What could you do about it?” said Kansu Kane gloomily. “We can’t even escape from this chamber.”

  Captain Future smiled at the morose little man. “I’ve been in tighter places than this, and got away.”

  Through the window, he looked out on interplanetary space. The Legion cruiser, quivering to the thrust of its rocket tubes, was throbbing at ever-increasing speed through the void.

  The red disk of Mars and the blazing sun lay dead astern. The cruiser was flying directly outward.

  “We’re heading for the outer part of the System,” Curt muttered. “The only two planets in the sector of space ahead of us are Uranus and Pluto. Doctor Zarro’s base may be on one of those two worlds.”

  “Captain Future, who are these men of the Legion?” Joan asked. “I don’t mean Roj and Kallak — I mean the others. They look like Earthmen, yet there’s something strange and stiff about them. Their voices are queer, too. And when one of them touched me, his hands didn’t feel like the hands of an Earthman at all.”

  “They’re certainly an odd-looking bunch,” Curt agreed, frowning. “I wonder if —”

  THEN he broke off impatiently. “This is no time for speculation. The important thing is to break loose before we’re delivered to Doctor Zarro. I don’t know what his Hall of Enemies may be, but I’ve an idea it’s something highly unpleasant.”

  Curt felt the loss of his tungstite belt. Inside that belt, hidden in secret compartments, were compact instruments and tools that had gotten him out of more than one tight spot.

  He inspected the window, a mere little glassite loophole.

  “If we broke this, we’d simply perish of asphyxiation when our air leaked out into space,” he muttered. “So that’s out.”

  The door was the only other alternative. It was solid metal, and the bar outside it was heavy. Strength would not avail here.

  But he thought he saw a glimmering chance. He sat down and took off the big emblem ring on his left hand. With deft fingers, he began taking the famous ring apart.

  “There’s a tiny atomic engine in this ring that keeps its ‘planet’ jewels moving,” the red-haired wizard of science told his companions. “But it’ll take me time to take it apart.”

  “I don’t see what good your tiny engine will do you,” said Kansu Kane, staring.

  Curt smiled. “You never can tell! Maybe I can book it up to the ship’s rocket-tubes, and make the craft turn around.”

  Kansu Kane looked astounded. “Hook it up to the —” Then the Venusian stiffened. “You’re joking, young man. And your jokes are in bad taste, considering our situation. My great work on the nature of the Andromedan binaries is only half completed, and here I am, being hauled off to the wild outer regions of the System! And you, sir, can make jests about it!”

  Curt chuckled. “Calm down, Kansu. If my idea works, we’ll get you back to the Andromedan binaries.”

  The cruiser throbbed on and on. As he worked on the minute parts of the ring mechanism, Curt was thinking of the Futuremen. He knew that they would never rest until they found him. But they would have no idea of whither he had been taken. Lacking a clue, they would have to comb space helplessly in blind search.

  “We must be well beyond the orbit of Jupiter,” Kansu Kane declared. “And still flying on outward. I thought you had some wonderful idea for getting us out of here.”

  “It isn’t very wonderful, but it may do the trick,” Curt replied, getting to his feet. He held out the tiny instrument in his hand. “I’ve made the little atomic engine of my ring into an atomic blast. It will spend all its energy in a few minutes, but it may be able to cut through the metal of the door and the bar.”

  “And even if it does, and we get out of this dismal chamber, what then?” asked Kansu Kane gloomily. “Are you going to try to capture the ship?”

  “Too many of them for that,” Captain Future said. “We’ll try to sneak away in one of the space-boats. If we can do that, we can get to a televisor somewhere and call the Futuremen to come in the Comet — and then we’ll find out whether Doctor Zarro’s secret base is at Uranus or at Pluto.”

  Curt approached the door, listened, and then, satisfied that no one was in the corridor outside, turned his tiny instrument against the metal at the edge of the door.

  A LITTLE jet of white atomic fire burst from the diminutive improvised blaster. It burned into the heavy metal in a ragged, scorched gash. Deeper and deeper it cut.

  Curt was tense. His little jet of force was now burning deep into the metal, but he knew that the atomic energy stored in the tiny instrument must be almost exhausted.
He played the jet up and down, seeking to cut through the bar outside.

  The hissing fire-jet sputtered, then went out. The little tool was exhausted, useless.

  Captain Future pressed gently against the door. It did not give. The bar outside still held.

  He felt a pang of disappointment. Putting his shoulder against the door, he heaved with all his strength.

  The door flew open. The bar had been almost cut through — and his strong push had broken it completely.

  “Come on!” Captain Future whispered to the others, his gray eyes snapping with excitement. “There’s a space-boat on the starboard side forward — I noticed it when the ship landed back there at the observatory.”

  They started forward in the corridor. Curt was looking for something as he advanced. Then he saw what he sought.

  There was a small gun-locker at the side of the corridor, hung with atomic weapons and tools. In there, upon a hook, hung his own gray tungstite belt and proton-pistol.

  “I was hoping I could find this,” he exclaimed joyfully, taking a rapid step toward the locker.

  “Captain Future!” Joan’s cry was low, agonized.

  A stiff-faced Legionary had just entered the corridor from the control-rooms forward. The man reached for his gun.

  Curt was already diving for the gun-locker. With the phenomenal speed that Otho the android had taught him, he snatched his proton-pistol, whirled, and fired.

  The thin, pale beam lanced down the corridor and dropped the Legionary stunned in his tracks.

  “Quick!” cried Captain Future, buckling his belt on hastily. “They’ll find this man in a minute.”

  He was leading them into a low, cramped compartment at the starboard side. Outside its wall, bolted to the hull of the cruiser, was one of the little space-boats intended for use as life-boats in case of wreck. A round door gave entrance through the wall of the cruiser into the little craft.

  Joan Randall scrambled through into the space-boat.

  Kansu Kane was following, when the little astronomer stopped.