Chapter 15: Monster Trap
DOCTOR ZARRO disappeared from the televisor as suddenly as he had appeared. Ezra Gurney uttered a cry.
“Doctor Doom’s done it this time! That warning, on top of all that’s gone before, will set the System peoples crazy! The Government won’t stand for twenty-four hours now!”
“Grag! Otho! Come on!” Captain Future crackled. “I’m going to the Pluto Survey office to get the data about the moons which I want. And then we’re blasting off — for Charon.”
In the Pluto Survey offices, in files and cabinets, was assembled all the planetographic and scientific information which Cole Romer and his men had gathered in ten years of exploring expeditions. Curt hauled out the material on Charon, the second moon. Cole Romer, the record showed, had made two exploring trips there alone — in the second trip, in the preceding year, the planetographer had spent three months exploring that wild world.
Krim had leased the whole moon Charon from the System Government some few years back. There were records that showed that Krim had shipped a fairly large amount of valuable korlat furs in those two years, and also a number of living korlats to the zoos of other planets. But there was little more that Curt could learn.
“What are we poking around here for?” Otho was demanding, restlessly pacing the office. “Why don’t we head right for Charon and seize Krim, if he’s Doctor Zarro?”
“Yes, there’s no telling what may have happened to the Brain,” said Grag anxiously.
Captain Future’s thoughts reflected the anxiety of the robot. His worry about the safety of Simon Wright was as overwhelming as that of the two Futuremen.
“We’re going now,” Curt rapped. Then as he turned from putting away the files, he asked hastily: “What’s that uproar?”
“There’s a big crowd gathering over there in the park in front of the Colonial Government building,” Otho reported from the window.
Curt stopped for a moment, looking at the amazing scene, as he and the two Futuremen left the building.
The park, in the distance, was crowded by a great throng. Most were men and women colonists from Earth, but there was a scattering of hairy Plutonians and other planetary natives.
The crowd was surging heedlessly over the green lawns and exotic interplanetary vegetation of the park. Its focus of attention was the big Colonial Government building.
“We call on the System Government to abdicate at once to Doctor Zarro!” a big Earthman leader was shouting.
A roar of approval went up from the milling throng, a shout that had in it the quality of hysteria.
“Give power to Doctor Zarro before it’s too late!” men and women cried. And others yelled, “Where’s the Governor? He’s got to petition the President to yield power to the Doctor!”
“Doctor Zarro’s last broadcast is working,” Curt said between his teeth. “Crowds like this will be swarming in every world and city in the System, right now!”
HE SAW Ezra Gurney and a half dozen Planet Police hasten from the nearby Police building, and run to hold back the crowd. The old marshal stepped up on the terrace and held up his clawlike hand to quiet the crowd.
“There’s not a bit of use in your yellin’ for the Governor, for he’s in Elysia, a thousand miles away,” coolly drawled the grizzled interplanetary veteran.
“Then we’ll take over the government here ourselves, and tender authority to Doctor Zarro!” yelled the crowd leader.
“You won’t do it while I am here,” crackled Ezra, his piercing blue eyes sweeping them, his gnarled hand dropping to the butt of his atom-gun. “You’re acting like children, letting yourselves be scared by Doctor Zarro’s fake warnings.”
“They’re not fakes!” yelled the crowd. “We can see that dark star coming on! The Doctor’s the only one who can turn it aside!”
Yet the crowd did not yet dare to advance against the threatening guns of Ezra and his officers.
“Shall we help Ezra scatter that mob?” Otho hissed to Captain Future.
“No! We’ve got work to do, and Ezra can keep them under control a little longer,” Curt replied. “To the Comet!”
As he and the two Futuremen hurried out through the streets of Tartarus, which had been emptied by the converging of the panicky population toward the central park, Curt looked up through the great dome at the dusky, starry daylight sky.
There, low on the horizon, swung the glittering constellation Sagittarius, and amid its star-clouds the little black disk of the dark star was perceptibly larger. So fatefully large it looked that Curt wondered if his idea was not wrong.
“No — it must be the answer to the riddle!” he told himself fiercely. “Crazy as it seems, the non-displacement of the stars around that dark star is clinching proof!”
They emerged from the balmy warmth of Tartarus into the icy chill of the Plutonian day, and hurried to the Comet.
Little Eek woke from the sleep in which the moon-pup had been curled, and joyously scrambled up to his usual perch on Grag’s shoulder as they entered. Otho jumped to the controls.
“Straight for Charon!” Captain Future ordered.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” exulted the fiercely eager android as he started the cyclotrons.
After more than an hour’s flight, Charon filled an space ahead, a great gray globe into whose thin atmosphere the little ship was now tearing.
They rushed down on a long slant through the dusk of the moon’s daylight side. Then Otho checked the Comet’s, descent a thousand yards from the surface.
“It’s a wild-looking little world, all right,” the android declared.
“It reminds me of the great plains of Saturn,” Grag boomed, his photo-electric eye staring. “Except it looks colder.”
YET there was life here. Herds of grazing Charonian deer galloped off wildly as the ship passed above them. They were big, gray animals, with the usual six legs — it was the unique characteristic of Charonian fauna that it was almost wholly sextupedal. Beside the deer were smaller sextupedal, tusked beasts.
“Moon-hogs,” muttered Otho, “I don’t see any korlats, though.”
“Bear northwestward,” Curt Newton ordered the android. “According to the maps in Cole Romer’s office, Krim’s fur-post is located a few hundred miles south of the north pole.”
Otho sent the Comet racing low across the gray tundras of the cold, forbidding moon. More of the Charonian deer, terrified by the speeding ship, darted wildly away below.
“There’s a korlat!” Grag exclaimed. All three of them peered down at the great animal, as they sped above it.
The korlat, ferocious beast as renowned throughout the System as the Jovian “crawler” or the Uranian cave-tiger, looked not unlike the grizzlies of Earth, except that it was much larger, had long gray fur, and possessed the six legs characteristic of Charonian life. The front pair of limbs were used to grip and tear.
The beast raised its enormous head and snarled at the passing Comet, showing great fangs.
“No wonder Victor Krim had to get his hunters from Interplanetary Prison!” Otho exclaimed. “No ordinary hunter would want to trifle with beasts like that.”
A little later Curt saw a low structure on the tundra far ahead.
“That’s Krim’s post! Land just outside it, Otho.”
“I don’t see any ships here,” Otho muttered as he swept the Comet to a landing. “Yet Krim must be here somewhere.”
Curt gave the android orders when they landed.
“While Grag and I are in there, Otho, I want you to hunt down a moon-hog for me, so that I can give it the cobalt test.”
“First I’m a lizard-chaser and now I’m a hog-hunter!” complained Otho loudly. “Why not have Grag do it?”
“Master and I have more important work to do,” the big robot retorted patronizingly.
Curt exploded. “Will you two prima-donnas drop it? Do as I say, Otho, and instantly.”
“All right,” grumbled Otho. “But be careful in
there Chief. Remember, Krim’s hunters are all escaped prisoners.”
Curt and the robot strode toward the gate of the walled post, Eek clinging to Grag’s shoulder and staring about this new scene with bright, curious eyes.
The air was thin and cold, but not so cold as on Pluto. For Charon, like the other two moons, possessed a greater store of interior radioactive heat than its parent planet.
The gate in the wall was open. Curt and the robot went, through, and then unceremoniously entered the main cement building, walking into a big room littered with piles of furs.
A half-dozen men — a Jovian, two Martians and three Earthmen — leaped up startledly and grabbed for their atom-guns as the big, red-haired young man and the huge robot entered.
“Hands off those guns!” Curt rapped, his own proton-pistol in his hand. “Grag, break those weapons.”
The robot instantly obeyed, grasping the heavy hunting atom-guns and breaking them with one motion of his metal hands.
“Now,” Curt Newton said harshly, “where is Victor Krim?”
THE green, flipper-handed Jovian had been staring at the big “planet” ring on Curt’s hand. Now the man looked up at the red-haired adventurer’s tanned, hard face in sudden fear.
“Captain Future!” he exclaimed.
“You’ve guessed right,” Curt retorted, his gray eyes boring the Jovian’s scared green face. “Where is Krim?”
“He’s — he’s in his office,” answered the Jovian. “This way.”
The Jovian led Curt and Grag to a door. Without opening the door, he called through it.
“Mr. Krim, here’s Captain Future to see you!”
Curt and Grag strode through the door. They were amazed to find themselves, not in an office, but in a cement-walled court or pen whose roof was a grating of heavy metal bars.
Curt whirled instantly. But too late. The door had slammed shut behind them, its lock clicking.
“A trap, and I walked right into it!” Captain Future exclaimed disgustedly. “But this won’t do those fools any good. Break that door down, Grag.”
Grag put his little moon-pup pet aside and put his shoulder against the door. Little Eek, set down on the floor, began to scramble fearfully to his master again, his eyes panicky.
“Eek senses danger telepathically,” Curt rapped, his bronzed face tightening. “I wonder — Grag!”
Curt’s yell of warning came as a section of wall at the other side of the court suddenly slid upward.
Out of the cage or room beyond that opening a huge, furry gray bulk was shambling forth into the court — a towering six-limbed monster.
“Devils of space, a korlat!” Curt shouted. “So that’s their game —”
He realized instantly the nature of the trap. This beast was one of the korlats captured alive by Krim’s men, to be shipped to some planetary zoo for a great price. Now it had been let loose in here to destroy them.
The korlat’s great head stiffened as its big, pupil-less eyes glimpsed the man and robot. With an appalling roar that shook the building, the beast charged them.
Curt’s proton-gun spat a thin, pale beam of highest power. He saw the ray bum deep into the huge beast’s side. But it was not enough — no weapon in the System was enough — to knock down a charging korlat.
The furry monster came on, with incredible speed. Its two great front limbs grasped Curt and its jaws darted toward him, its hot breath and blazing eyes right in his face.
Chapter 16: World of Illusion
CAPTAIN FUTURE ducked out of the korlat’s grasping limbs by a movement of incredible agility, the monster’s claws tearing the sleeve of his gray zipper suit. As he recoiled from the furry beast, Curt fired at it again with his pistol.
Again the thin proton-beam burned into the huge body, seeking a vital center. But the korlat, not fatally injured, reared up with an enraged roar to leap again at Captain Future’s tense, crouching figure.
Then Grag acted! The big robot sprang upon the furry back of the beast and grasped its neck from behind, encircling that massive neck with his metal arms, and straining it backward.
There followed an unbelievable scene. Big as was the great robot, he looked small in comparison to the mighty beast on whose back be clung. The korlat threshed and rolled and roared, seeking to dislodge its attacker. But Grag held on, exerting all his tremendous strength to jerk the beast’s bead backward.
Captain Future dared not fire at the struggling pair, lest he hit Grag and disablingly damage his mechanism. Eek was cowering nearby, his teeth chattering with fear. Then came the climax to the weird struggle.
Grag’s metal body tensed as be put all his strength into one mighty effort. His arms jerked back the korlat’s head still farther. There was an audible snap. And the great furry beast went limp, its neck broken.
Grag stood swaying over his dead conquest, his photo-electric eyes blazing, a booming roar of victory breaking from him.
Nothing else was said. But as the strange eyes of the robot and the brilliant gray eyes of the red-haired Earthman met, another link was forged in the chain that bound Captain Future to the Futuremen — the chain which had begun on that long-dead day on Earth’s moon when Curtis Newton, an orphaned infant, had looked up with trustful baby eyes at the robot and android and Brain who were to rear him to splendid manhood.
Curt sprang to the locked door of the trap into which they had come and which had so nearly proved deadly.
“See if you can get this open, Grag,” he asked. “Use your chisels.”
The robot obeyed, taking from a little locker in his metal torso several sharp chisels. He removed several of his detachable fingers and inserted the chisels in their place.
Then Grag, with his chisel-armed hands, attacked the cement around the door frame. In a few moments he had chipped an opening through it, and could reach through and unhook the lock.
Captain Future dashed out into the big room of Victor Krim’s post. The half-dozen hunters there were now fleeing in dismay as they saw their trap had failed.
“Stop! Come back here!” Curt ordered, firing his beam over their heads.
FEARFULLY, the men obeyed. Captain Future’s gray eyes bored into the face of the Jovian who had led them into the trap.
“You had: a neat little idea to murder me, but it failed,” Curt said bitingly. “Now talk fast. Is Victor Krim on Charon?”
“No, he isn’t,” answered the scared Jovian. “He hasn’t come back yet from Pluto.”
“Who ordered you to try to kill me?” Curt lashed.
“Nobody ordered me,” answered the cowed Jovian sullenly. “When I saw you were Captain Future, I thought you had come here to re-arrest me and the other hunters.”
“Shut up!” one of the Martian hunters told the Jovian harshly. “He doesn’t know about us.”
“On the contrary, I know all about you,” Curt answered stingingly. “You’re escaped convicts from Interplanetary Prison — Rundall Lane, the warden there, let you go on condition you become Krim’s hunters here. Where are all the others who escaped?”
Appalled by Captain Future’s knowledge, the Jovian answered. “The rest are out hunting. We were to guard the post.”
“The prisoners Roj and Kallak escaped at the same time as you other convicts, didn’t they?” Curt pressed.
“They did, but Roj and Kallak disappeared soon after we reached this moon.”
“How did you escape being detected as escaped prisoners by Cole Romer when he explored Charon last year?” Curt asked.
“Krim kept us out of the way during the week or so that Romer was here,” the Jovian criminal replied.
Curt Newton considered the information, his face thoughtful. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to take shape!
“I’m leaving here,” he rapped, “but you convicts aren’t going to get away. I see there’s no ship here, so you’ll be safe till Planet Police can come to return you an to Cerberus prison.”
And Curt led the way out of the p
ost, with Grag following in great strides, Eek perched again on his shoulder.
Otho was waiting in the Comet, and an unconscious moon-hog, stunned by a proton-beam, showed that the android had been busy.
“There’s the moon-hog you wanted — what did you find out in there?” the synthetic man demanded.
“We nearly found out what it’s like to be dead!” Captain Future said ruefully. “I was so busy thinking things out that I walked right into a trap like an absent-minded fool.”
Otho swore when he heard their story. “And while I’ve been chasing moon-hogs, you were fighting a korlat!”
“Yes, and Grag killed it with his bare hands,” Curt told him. The red-haired adventurer grinned at Otho. “No human could have done that. Remember that when you’re taunting Grag about not being human.”
Then, in the compact laboratory of the Comet, Curt began X-ray spectroscopic inspection of the stunned moon-hog.
“If the Magicians really do dwell in some secret part of Charon,” he muttered as he worked, “this animal and all native life here will have bones of high cobalt-content, the same as they.”
“It will have — there’s no doubt the Magicians are somewhere here on Charon,” Otho declared confidently. “For we know it’s on one of the moons their home is, and we ruled out Cerberus.”
They turned to the machine.
BUT a shock awaited them. When Captain Future finished his X-ray inspection, he looked up with an exclamation.
“There’s not a trace of cobalt in this animal! The Magicians can’t have come from Charon, either!”
Otho was staggered. “But they must have! We know from what old Kiri the Plutonian said that they came from one of the moons. And if it wasn’t Cerberus, it must be Charon —”
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