Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  She was picked up suddenly by the heavy-faced, vacant-eyed giant, Kallak. Roj had snatched the handle of the Brain’s serum-case. They followed Doctor Doom’s tall, gaunt figure into the rock tunnel, the Legionary lighting their way with a small atom-lamp.

  The tunnel was so cramped and narrow that Kallak had to bend his head. It had been blasted out of the solid rock under the city by atomic blasts, apparently a long time ago.

  “Fur-thieves opened this secret tunnel, years ago, in case you’re interested, my dear Brain,” Roj was saying gibingly. “The Doctor found it, and kept quiet about it. It serves us well.”

  The tunnel ended in a flight of steps upward. They emerged into the freezing, bitter night, on the rock plain far out beyond the wall of domed Tartarus. The blizzard was over. The stars shone brilliantly.

  A dark cruiser with the black disk of the Legion of Doom on its bows was waiting here. The brain and the pinioned girl were carried inside and flung into a corner of the main cabin. A moment after the door slammed, they felt the cruiser lift skyward with a roar of rocket-tubes.

  Chapter 14: Cobalt Clue

  CAPTAIN FUTURE, when he heard the cry of “Death to Captain Future” ring out, realized in a flash that it was not mere chance that had unleashed this mutiny at this time. Someone had released the convicts, someone had told them he was here in the offices.

  “Rundall Lane!” he gritted.

  He dashed to the door and locked it, slammed shut the heavy metal shutters inside the windows.

  Hardly had he done so when the mob of prisoners reached the door and began hammering furiously upon it.

  “You might as well come out and take your medicine, Captain Future!” yelled the hoarse voice of a leader.

  Curt snatched out his pocket televisor and pressed its call-button. Otho and Grag could get here in a few moments in the Comet, and scatter this mob with the ship’s proton-guns.

  But there was no answer to his call. Then he realized it was not getting through. All prisons were constructed with a rayproof layer inside all walls. He couldn’t call Grag and Otho.

  Coolly, the red-haired adventurer considered the possibilities of getting out of this murderous trap, paying no attention to the bloodthirsty mob hammering at the door.

  Curt thought of using his invisibility device, and then rejected it. Invisible or not, he couldn’t get out through that solid, murderous throng without being discovered.

  He could hear them blasting at the door now with their atom-guns. They’d be inside in a few minutes. He had to act quickly. Yet how?

  His keen eyes, running around the interior of three rooms that comprised the warden’s offices, lit upon a low, heavy metal door in one wall. It was marked “Arsenal.”

  A desperate expedient came to Captain Future’s racing mind. Down in that arsenal of the prison would be stored many cases of atom-shells, guns and atomic bombs. If he could get to them —

  He sprang to the door. It was locked, of course. And it was of impregnable “inert” metal that would defy any atom-blast.

  Curt examined the lock. It was a “permutation lock” — one especially devised by mathematicians to defy picking. There were twenty little buttons, in four color-groups. They had to be pressed in a certain numerical and color-order, to open the lock. There were millions of possible permutations, only one of which was right.

  Yet Captain Future did not despair. He had delved deeper into mathematical knowledge than any of the scientists who had made this lock. If he had time to get necessary data, he might be able to solve the secret of the lock.

  He snatched a piece of thin metal from his belt, a tiny steelite saw blade. Bending it double, he tapped it against the lock. It acted as an improvised tuning-fork, sending steady waves of sound into the lock, which were reflected back again.

  Curt listened, shutting resolutely from his ears the distant howling of the bloodthirsty mob outside. He jotted down a few figures. Then he tapped a different part of the lock with his tuning fork, listened, and again jotted down figures.

  In a few moments he had fathomed the construction of part of the intricate lock. He must discover the rest of the lock-secret by mathematical extrapolation from his scant data. It was a problem that would have daunted the most brilliant mathematician. Could he solve it in time?

  ROARING atom-guns outside were blasting away at the door. It might give way at any moment. Yet Captain Future, hunched by the arsenal door, computed with icy coolness.

  The door gave way partly. There was a hoarse howl from the leader of the mutinous convicts.

  “All together, boys — it’ll go downs now.”

  Curt sprang to his feet, his gray eyes flashing. At last he had found the permutation he sought.

  He pressed the twenty buttons swiftly, in a complicated series. He waited, with utter faith in his result. In a second, the lock clicked.

  He tore open the arsenal door. Cement steps led down from it into an underground chamber in which were stacked cases of atom-shells and atomic bombs, and racks of guns.

  Crash! The outer door went down. And the blood-mad convicts, led by the fat, gross-faced Earthman, rushed in.

  They stopped short, frozen momentarily by the unexpected sight that met their eyes. Captain Future stood, his tall, lithe form lounging at the open arsenal door, his curly red head cocked back as he surveyed them with a cool, scornful smile.

  His proton-pistol hung in his hand, not pointing at them but aimed down the stairs into the arsenal.

  The fat Earthman who led the convicts uttered a hoarse, exultant shout.

  “That’s him, boys — that’s Captain Future! And nobody kills him but me, you hear!”

  “Go ahead, Lucas!” cried the vicious throng behind him. “Blast him down!”

  The fat Earthman advanced a step. His atom-gun was ready in his hand. Yet Curt did not raise his own pistol.

  “Do you remember me, Captain Future?” hissed the obese convict.

  “Of course I remember you.” Curt Newton’s drawl was cold as the winds of Pluto. “You’re Lucas Brewer, who was mixed up in the Space Emperor case on Jupiter. You were given a sentence here for running atom-guns to the Jovians.”

  “You were the one that had me sent here, Captain Future!” hissed Brewer. “Have you got any last words before we finish you?”

  Curt’s voice cut like a whiplash as he answered.

  “I’ve got my pistol aimed down into the arsenal. If I fire, it will set off a ton of atomic bombs and shells down there. It will blow this building and the whole Interplanetary Prison clear off of Cerberus!”

  Brewer and the other convicts, staring beyond Captain Future down into the arsenal, suddenly gasped.

  “We’ll all go up together,” Curt mocked. “What do you say to that, Brewer?”

  “You wouldn’t do it!” gasped the fat criminal.

  “I would, and you know it,” Curt flashed. “I’d do anything rather than see a bunch of wolves like you turned loose upon the System again. Unless you drop your weapons in ten seconds, I’ll fire that shot.”

  There was silence, a tense, frozen silence. The cold gray eyes of Captain Future clashed the dazed ones of the convicts.

  IT WAS a test of nerve. And Curt won. For every man there knew, as all the System knew, that Captain Future never broke his word. He had said he would fire, and they knew he would.

  The weapons of the mutineers clattered to the floor. A tight band seemed to relax from across Curt’s breast. He had known that he was taking desperate chances, but he had resolved not to let these enemies of society escape.

  “Call the guards!” he ordered. “Shout to them that you surrender!”

  The cowed prisoners made no resistance as the guards herded them back into the main cellhouse. Only then did Curt Newton relax his tension.

  “A cursed ticklish ten minutes, that,” he muttered to himself. Then his tanned face hardened. “Now for Mr. Lane.”

  He went out searching, and found Rundall Lane lurking in a d
ark corner in one of the corridors of the big cellhouse.

  “Come on out, Lane,” Captain Future said stingingly. “Your little plot to stop me by letting the prisoners out on me has failed.”

  Lane babbled protestations of innocence, but Curt cut him off.

  “You’re relieved of office here — I’ll call Planet Police headquarters to send a temporary warden out. Unless you want to draw a long stay here as a prisoner, you’d better talk truthfully.”

  Rundall Lane seemed broken in nerve. “What — what do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what really happened to the prisoners you said escaped,” Curt rapped.

  “I released them,” Lane confessed. “I did it at night, secretly — there was a ship waiting to take them to Charon.”

  “To Charon? To Victor Krim?” Curt pressed.

  Lane nodded shakily. “Yes, Krim had made an arrangement with me. You see, Krim needed hunters but couldn’t get any men, because Charon is so dangerous, no ordinary hunter would sign on for there. So Krim offered to pay me a big sum if I’d let out a bunch of prisoners who would rather hunt for him than stay confined.

  “There didn’t seem any danger of discovery,” Lane added, “for the men wouldn’t dare leave Charon or show themselves in Tartarus or elsewhere, lest they be caught. They would have to stay on Charon and hunt for Krim, and he wouldn’t even have to pay them.”

  Captain Future stood a moment in deep thought. So that was how Roj and Kallak and the other prisoners had escaped.

  He called in the guards, who had the prisoners locked up now,and addressed their chief officer crisply.

  “Hold Rundall Lane under arrest — you’re in charge until the Government sends out a new warden,” he ordered.

  Then Curt asked them: “You men know all Cerberus. Have you ever encountered a queer, furred race living secretly here?”

  He described the Magician, but the guards shook their heads wonderingly. None seemed ever to have heard of them.

  “There’s no race like that here, sir,” they vowed.

  Curt accepted their assertion with reservations. He meant to find out for himself — by the cobalt clue!

  HE HASTENED back out into the chill, windy night and strode rapidly across the rock plain to the distant Comet. When Grag and Otho heard of his experience, the android’s green eyes blazed, and the big robot clenched his metal fist.

  “I ought to go back there and kill Lane for his attempt on you, Master!”

  “No time for that, Grag,” said the red-haired adventurer. “Otho, did you catch one of those moon-lizards?”

  “I did, and the devil of a job it was,” Otho declared disgustedly. “To think of me chasing lizards while you were in there having a rousing time —”

  “Why do you want the lizard, Master?” Grag asked puzzledly.

  Captain Future had put the wriggling little thing under a spectroscopic X-ray instrument of his own invention.

  “I want to find out if it has high cobalt content in its bones,” he answered, bending to the eyepieces.

  “The cobalt clue — I understand, Chief!” Otho exclaimed. “If the Magicians have so much cobalt in their skeletons, all life on the world they inhabit would have cobalt in its bones too!”

  “Yes, but this lizard doesn’t,” Curt said frowningly, straightening from his examination. “That means the guards told the truth — that there’s no such race as the Magicians on Cerberus!”

  The android was staggered.

  “But Rundall Lane is Doctor Zarro, isn’t he? Doesn’t the smear of nitrate that came from here prove that?”

  Curt shook his head. “It proves that Lane is not Doctor Zarro. I had guessed that before we came here.”

  “I don’t understand!” Otho exclaimed.

  “That smear in the observatory was left purposely by Doctor Zarro, to mislead us into thinking he came from Cerberus,” Curt explained. “Remember that Doctor Zarro was wearing a space suit when he entered the observatory, to protect him from the drugging gas. It was the shoe of his space suit that left the smear, then. But how could he have got that smear on his shoe here? He wouldn’t have been wearing his space suit here on Cerberus, which has an atmosphere.”

  “Of course, I see now it was a plant!” Otho exclaimed dumfoundedly. “But if the cobalt clue shows that the Magicians don’t live on Cerberus, their home must be on Charon!”

  “That’s the way it looks now,” Curt replied.

  “And if Lane turned Roj and Kallak over to Victor Krim, it’s Krim who is Doctor Zarro!” the android continued.

  “We’re going back to Pluto at once,” clipped Captain Future. “Gurney and Joan may have found Krim there by now.”

  A scant hour later the flashing Comet tore down through the cold atmosphere of Pluto, and landed in the dusky dawn beside the domed city Tartarus. The blizzard had blown itself out.

  Curt led first to the observatory. “I want to see Kansu Kane a moment before we go into the city,” he told them.

  KANSU KANE came hurrying to meet them. “You checked the positions of the fixed stars around the dark star as I asked?” Curt asked the little Venusian.

  The answer of the waspish astronomer was astounding.

  “Yes, I did. There hasn’t been any displacement of those stars whatever!”

  “There hasn’t!” Curt’s tanned face took on a queer expression. “Then that settles one thing about this business beyond all dispute.”

  “Settles what, Master?” Grag asked puzzledly.

  “Something tremendously important,” Curt snapped, and led the two Futuremen out.

  In Tartarus city, he hastened with his comrades to the Planet Police building.

  Ezra Gurney jumped to his feet as Curt entered. The old marshal’s weatherbeaten face was drawn and worn.

  “Did you locate Victor Krim yet?” Curt shot at him.

  “My men have combed the whole city and haven’t found him — he must have gone back to Charon,” Ezra declared. “And, Captain Future, Joan’s gone — I think she went lookin’ for Krim. And Cole Romer’s been seized and probably killed.”

  “Romer killed?” Curt’s eyes flashed. “How did that happen?”

  Ezra Gurney explained. He was just finishing the explanation when excited Planet Policemen crowded into the room, carrying with them a limp, hairy Plutonian in whose back was a scorched, gaping wound.

  “We found this Plutonian crawling in the street down off the Street of Hunters!” one officer cried. “It’s Tharb, one of our own guides.”

  “Tharb?” Captain Future sprang to the side of the Plutonian. It was evident that the hairy man was dying. Yet at the sound of Curt’s voice, he opened fading phosphorescent eyes.

  “Who did this, Tharb?” cried Curt, the wild anger he felt throbbing in his voice.

  “Doctor Zarro’s — men.” whispered the Plutonian. “They — seize Earthgirl and blast me down — in warehouse. They think me — dead — but I crawl out to street —”

  “Then Doctor Zarro’s got Joan, as well as the Brain!” cried Ezra. “We’re going down and search those warehouses!”

  “Look after Tharb, Grag!” Curt ordered the robot as he followed the old marshal hastily out to a waiting rocket-car.

  The car hummed through the dusky dawn of the streets, almost deserted at this hour. The Police driver drew up in front of the warehouse near which Tharb had been found.

  “Victor Krim’s company leased this old place not long ago, sir,” the officer reported.

  They hastened inside. In a moment they found the charred thing in the corner that had once been a living Earthman.

  Curt inspected the horribly blasted body closely. He was looking for something, but could not find what he sought.

  “All that’s left of Cole Romer!” gritted Ezra. “Poor devil — he was looking for Krim, and he found him.”

  Captain Future’s eyes roved, then spied the trapdoor. In a moment he was down through it to the rock room below.

  HE C
AME back, his tanned face grim. “There’s a tunnel leading out under the whole city. But there’s no one there now.”

  “Doctor Zarro has taken Joan and the Brain to his base, then!” Ezra cried. “And if Krim’s the Doctor, then at Charon —”

  They hastened back to the Police building. Grag was there, bending over Tharb. The robot said solemnly: “He is dying.”

  Tharb’s fading, grotesque eyes clung to the face of Captain Future.

  “I — liked you — Earthman,” the Plutonian whispered.

  Then his eyes dimmed as death relaxed his body. Captain Future felt a deep, moving emotion as he looked down at him.

  He turned to Ezra Gurney. “Where can I get full data about the moons?”

  “In the Pluto Survey office, I suppose,” Ezra answered. “Of course with Romer, the chief planetographer, gone —”

  A startled cry came from one of the Police officers who had been making a televisor call.

  “I was calling Elysia headquarters when they were crowded off the ether,” the man cried. “It’s another broadcast by Doctor Zarro!”

  Captain Future sprang to the televisor. In its screen had appeared once more the tall, black figure of the prophet of disaster, his hollow, burning eyes blazing out at all in the System as his powerful wave crowded onto their televisors.

  “People of the Solar System, this is your last chance to save yourselves!” thundered Doctor Zarro. “Look up at the Milky Way and see for yourselves how catastrophe is rushing upon you. The fateful sands of destiny are running out fast — the monstrous dark star approaching us from outer space is now so close to the System that it will require herculean efforts for even my knowledge and power to project the forces that will turn it aside.

  “That catastrophic visitant can still be turned aside by the forces I can bring to bear upon it, if the resources of the whole System are placed at once at my disposal. But there is only just time. A day or two more will be too late! Not even I can then save the nine worlds from cosmic wreck!

  “So you must act at once, to save your lives. The scientists who claimed there was no danger have fled from the System to save their lives. The Government, which claims there is no danger, is doing nothing to avert it. Unless you rise and force that Government to give me the authority that will save us in this fateful hour, you and your families, and your peoples, and perhaps all of your worlds, are doomed!”