Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  The dark prophet turned brusquely to the little dwarf.

  “Roj, watch these two until we reach Styx. The girl is clever, and I won’t feel sure of her till she’s in the Hall of Enemies.”

  “She won’t get away again, be sure of that,” chuckled the dwarf. “There’s no chance of Captain Future finding her where she’s going.”

  The dwarf seated himself in a chair farther down the compartment, his atom-gun on his knee and his beady eyes constantly watching the helpless girl and Brain. Doctor Zarro went aft.

  Joan felt a wave of hopeless despair sweep her.

  “They can’t really be taking us to Styx, can they?” she asked the Brain desperately.

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid so,” muttered the Brain. “There’s some great mystery here.”

  That mystery was soon explained. The cruiser slowed down, and through the window Joan and Simon saw that they were dropping toward the raging waves of the sea covering Styx.

  Then, to their utter amazement, the cruiser plunged down into the waves — and the waves vanished. They glimpsed a solid landscape of white mosses and grass, and a pale stone city toward which they were descending.

  “The sea wasn’t real!” Joan cried amazedly. “It was just —”

  “An illusion,” the Brain finished for her. And Simon’s lens-eyes glittered. The cruiser landed. Its door opened and chilly air, with a pungent sharpness to it, rushed in upon them. Roj picked up the Brain. The big, slow-moving, silent giant, Kallak, took the bound girl.

  They followed Doctor Zarro and the furry crew outside. Joan and the Brain, as they were carried along, had their first glimpse of the secret city to which they had been brought.

  Octagonal towers of pallid stone rose all around them, bordering paved streets in which were many of the furred Stygians. Some of the creatures were afoot, others riding hopping beasts. All of them wore only a leather harness, seeming not to feel the cold.

  The Stygians crowded forward, staring with their great, solemn black eyes at Doctor Zarro and his followers. There was a strange quality of disapproval in the attitude of the crowd.

  The Brain heard Roj mutter to Doctor Zarro in a low voice.

  “They don’t like us bringing more prisoners to the Hall of Enemies. And they’ll be angrier still when they hear that we had to kill two people on Pluto.”

  “I can handle the Stygians all right,” replied Doctor Zarro’s harsh voice confidently.

  Simon and Joan Randall saw that they were being carried toward a squat stone structure from which arose a slender metal column topped by a glowing sphere.

  The prisoners were carried into the squat structure, through corridors and ante-chambers into a circular room of great size that blazed with light.

  AT ONE side of this room was a massive cylinder from whose interior came a drone of electrical machinery, never ceasing. Cables from it led into the slender, hollow metal column that rose up through the roof and far above it.

  Near this, Joan and the Brain saw a powerful televisor transmitter of a design unfamiliar to both of them.

  The rest of the room was filled by a weird and appalling collection.

  “My Hall of Enemies,” stated Doctor Zarro grimly, with a gesture of his black arm. “It should interest you two, for you are about to join it.”

  The collection was one of several dozens of glassite cases, several feet high. A few were empty. But most of them were occupied — by men, women and even children, who sat utterly motionless as though in death, each in one of the transparent, airtight cases.

  Joan’s eyes ran appalledly over the unmoving faces. There were men of all planets in this strange collection, many Earthmen and also Martians, Mercurians and others.

  “I know those men!” she cried to the Brain. “There’s Robert Jons, the Mercurian astronomer, and Henry Gellimer, the Earth astrophysicist, and their families too! These are the missing abducted scientists!”

  “That is correct,” stated Doctor Zarro grimly. “My Legion, composed of disguised Stygians led by Roj and Kallak, brought these men here. And the System peoples thought that the scientists had fled out of the System to escape the oncoming dark star catastrophe. Which is what I wanted the peoples to think.”

  “To further your plot, you killed all these men!” Joan accused, loathing in her brown eyes.

  “Not killed — they are not dead,” Doctor Zarro corrected harshly. “I would much prefer to have killed them, for that would have been far less trouble. But my Stygian followers have certain prejudices against killing anyone, as you have doubtless noticed. It would have turned the Stygians against me to have killed all these scientists, so instead I have consigned them to a living death in which they are safe as though they were dead.

  “They are in suspended animation, in those cases. The cases are filled with a gas of Stygian invention which paralyzes absolutely the vital processes of a living body. Even the smallest cell, even the metabolism process, is paralyzed by the gas. So those men cannot move a muscle, cannot breathe — and yet they are entirely conscious and can see and hear us at this moment.”

  Joan was shaken by a shuddering horror. “And you’ve kept them in that awful state for weeks!”

  The Brain’s strong scientific curiosity, even in this desperate moment, had been aroused.

  “It is the same gas, I suppose, that you pumped into the observatory at Tartarus?” he rasped to Doctor Zarro. “I would be interested in learning its formula.”

  “I am afraid there is no time to gratify your curiosity,” Doctor Zarro replied grimly. Then the black prophet turned to the dwarf. “Put the girl in one of the empty cases.”

  “ And the Brain?” inquired Roj.

  “He doesn’t breathe, so the gas wouldn’t affect him. Besides he can’t move, so he’s powerless to escape. Just put him down by the cases — but disconnect his speech-apparatus so he can’t bother us by his talking.”

  Roj approached the girl, whom Kallak was still holding. The dwarf produced a small instrument, which he used to sound the twanging note that was signal for the rope-snakes to release their hold.

  The pink living ropes scuttled into the bag Roj held for them. Joan struggled with cramped limbs, but the giant Kallak silently held her in inescapable grip.

  KALLAK, at an order from the dwarf, carried the weakly struggling girl to one of the glassite cases, whose door swung open. She was tossed inside. As she tried to sit up, the door was shut and locked, prisoning her in the air-tight case.

  Joan glimpsed Roj turning a valve at the side of the case, A cold, invisible vapor with a faintly pungent scent was rapidly pumped into the case, from a source somewhere below.

  Joan tried frantically not to breathe, as she struggled to a sitting position. But her lungs, starved for air, opened against her will, and the gas rushed into them.

  Instantly the girl felt a sensation of freezing cold, and at the same time all power of muscular movement left her. She could not stir from the seated position into which her helpless body had sagged. She could not wink an eyelid, or stir a finger.

  And yet her mind was as clear as ever. She could see out through the glassite wall of her case, though she could not turn her gaze even a fraction of an inch.

  She saw them place the Brain beside her case, and saw the glass lens-eyes of Simon Wright look up at her as though trying to convey a message. But Joan could not move a muscle in return.

  Then she saw, across the room, Doctor Zarro advancing to the powerful, unfamiliar televisor transmitter. Roj had started the transmitter throbbing — she could hear it quite plainly. And then the screen broke into light, as Doctor Zarro stood facing it.

  Joan knew that the black prophet’s image was crowding onto every televisor in operation in the System. She heard Doctor Zarro thunder forth his warning.

  “People of the Solar System, this is your last chance to save yourselves!”

  Joan heard him go on, warning the System peoples that dark star doom was close at hand, that
they must force the Government to yield authority to him if they wished to escape disaster.

  When Doctor Zarro finished and turned off the transmitter, she saw him turn to the dwarf.

  “That ought to do it, Roj! If that warning, and the appearance of the dark star as it is now, doesn’t scare them into yielding power to me, nothing will!”

  “It will work, Doctor!” grinned the dwarf across all his ugly face. “They’ll pitch out the Government and beg you to take the rule before another day has passed.”

  Doctor Zarro and the dwarf left the great circular hall, and Joan saw that they had left no guards. No guards were needed in this Hall of Enemies whose prisoners could not even move an eyelash!

  The girl valiantly fought to keep the horror of her position from crushing her. She knew that in this living death, it would be easy to go mad. And the thought of going mad and still not being able to move was a terrible one.

  Time passed — time that to Joan was utterly unmeasurable, frozen as she was. She thought it must have been at least a few hours, yet it might have been years, centuries, eternities, so far as she could tell.

  She heard a tumult and babel of voices outside the Hall.

  Doctor Zarro and Roj came striding in. Excitement of the highest pitch was visible in the dwarfs face.

  “Your friend Captain Future has come with the other two Futuremen, to visit you!” Roj shouted to the Brain.

  JOAN’S heart bounded with wild hope. But next moment, that hope crashed into blacker despair than ever before.

  For into the Hall of Enemies came a mass of the furred Stygians, bearing three captives helplessly pinioned in strong metal nets.

  And the three new prisoners were Captain Future and Grag and Otho!

  Chapter 18: Dark Star Secret

  WHEN the hunting-nets of the Stygians had fallen on Captain Future and his two comrades, Curt had made a violent effort to tear away the clinging mesh folds, but could not. The flexible metal nets had been designed to hold great animals.

  Near him. Otho was struggling and swearing, the lithe android exerting all his strength to win free of the meshes and failing. Big Grag, by dint of his tremendous strength, started to tear away the net around him. But hastily the Stygians cast two more nets over the robot, which held even him powerless.

  Little Eek had disappeared at the moment the Stygians charged. The moon-pup, which had telepathically sensed the nearness of the trailers before the others realized, had bolted into the giant grasses and vanished.

  “Curse these furry devils!” Otho was hissing in foaming rage. “Trap me in a net like Neptunian fishermen, will they? I’ll show them what kind of fish they’ve caught if I get loose!”

  “Take it easy, Otho,” Captain Future called. “We can’t break these nets. Wait till our chance comes.”

  Despite his encouragement to the android, Curt’s heart was like a stone. He felt a bitter humiliation and self-reproach. He, Captain Future, surprised and captured in this simple fashion!

  Curt could hear Grag’s booming, anxious voice, as he was borne along.

  “Are you all right, Master? And did you see where Eek fled? He was terribly frightened.”

  “That’s right, worry about that cursed moon-pup,” hissed Otho’s voice furiously from the head of this strange procession. “We three are captives, the Brain is in danger somewhere, and Doctor Zarro’s plot is destroying the system Government right now, but all that doesn’t matter! All that matters is that little Eek may be frightened!”

  Curt Newton, despite the gravity of the situation, could not help chuckling at the furious indignation of Otho.

  “Eek is free and he’ll take care of himself and be all right,” Curt reassured Grag, and added ruefully: “Which is more than we can,say for ourselves, I’m afraid.”

  Their Stygian captors carried them into the big, circular room inside the squat building. And there, three persons, evidently apprised of their capture, stood waiting.

  The three were Doctor Zarro and Roj and Kallak. Curt Newton and the two Futuremen were dumped down in front of them.

  “You have done well to capture these three!” Doctor Zarro commended the Stygians. “They are the deadliest enemies of your race. Now you may go.”

  As the Stygians departed, Curt was glancing swiftly around the interior of the great room.

  He saw the great machines, and then his eyes fell on the collection of glassite cases in each of which one of the missing scientists sat frozen motionless.

  Curt’s lips tightened as he saw Joan Randall sitting in one those cases, rigid, unmoving, her eyes staring fixedly toward him. And beside her case rested the Brain.

  “Simon!” cried Otho as from his prone position he too glimpsed the Brain. “What have they done to you?”

  The Brain did not answer, but his lens-eyes twisted on their stalks to glance down significantly at his speech-resonator.

  “So we meet face to face at last, Captain Future!” said the black doctor in harsh, loud tones.

  CURT looked up coolly into the burning black eyes. “We have met face to face before,” he told Doctor Zarro bitingly, “but you were not then wearing that illusion-disguise and using a disguised voice.”

  Roj and Kallak, and the two helpless Futuremen, were watching tensely. For there was drama in this moment.

  Here in this secret city of a hidden race, the two great antagonists at last faced each other in the open.

  DOCTOR ZARRO, the mysterious figure whose power and cunning had cast the whole Solar System into panic, and whose vaulting ambitions toward dictatorship stood on the brink of success!

  And Captain Future, legendary adventurer of the flying fists and reckless smile and scientific wizardry, who had bestrode the System like a championing colossus for years!

  “I will admit, now,” Doctor Zarro was saying harshly, “that I have been a little afraid of you, Captain Future. I know what you have done in the past. I have not felt safe until this moment.”

  “We’re not safe while Captain Future lives!” burst out Roj, the dwarf. “More than one man has thought he had this red-headed devil in his power, and thought wrong. I say, kill him now!”

  “No! We dare not do that yet!” the Doctor declared. “The Stygians are already uneasy about the two we killed — we daren’t kill any more at present. Don’t worry — Captain Future will be safe enough with the others, here in my Hall of Enemies.”

  “So that is what you call your pitiful collection of prisoners?” Captain Future said scathingly. “You keep them frozen in the same gas you used when you raided the observatory, do you? It’s a thing worthy of your criminal mind.”

  The bitter contempt in his voice seemed to sting the arch-plotter.

  “My mind is great enough to win lordship of the System for me, against all your efforts!” Doctor Zarro declared. “Yes, even now on every one of the nine worlds, terrorized people are rioting and forcing the Government to yield all its powers to me! To me, to the only person in the system who can turn aside the approaching dark star!”

  “You needn’t keep up your boasting wiit,”th me,” Captain Future said cuttingly, “I know the core of your plot. I know the secret of the dark star.”

  “You know?” exclaimed Doctor Zarro, seeming startled.

  “Yes, I know,” Curt said grimly. “I know that the dark star does not really exist at all — that it too, is only a gigantic illusion!”

  DOCTOR ZARRO stared amazedly down at him. Roj uttered a cry.

  “Didn’t I tell you this redhead was the devil? He’s ferreted the whole secret out!”

  “Is it true, Chief?” cried Otho from his helpless trussed position nearby.

  “It’s true — that dark star which looks so huge in the heavens doesn’t exist,” Curt answered. “Out there in space is some kind of ship or craft which for weeks has been approaching the System, and which carries apparatus that creates a great illusion similar to the illusion which camouflages this world — a huge, real-looking image of a da
rk star.

  “That huge image is unreal and immaterial, except to the eye. Therefore it has no mass. When the System astronomers could not measure any mass of the dark star, they could hardly believe their measurements. It seemed so incredible such a huge body would be without mass. That fact cast doubt on all their measurements.

  “But the check I had Kansu Kane make of the fixed stars around the dark star settled the matter in my mind,” Curt concluded, “If the dark star had any mass, it would have deflected the rays from those stars by the Einstein effect of gravitation on light, and the stars would have seemed displaced. But they were not displaced, hence the dark star was wholly without mass. That meant it could only be an image of some sort — an illusion deliberately created to terrorize the System!”

  Doctor Zarro replied to this softly.

  “You are clever, Future — cleverer even than I had thought. If you guessed all that, why did you not go out and destroy the dark star illusion?”

  “The Brain was in deadly peril here, and I meant to rescue him first.”

  Doctor Zarro laughed harshly. “Your loyalty to your comrade will cost you dear. For the ship which produces the dark-star image is rushing on toward the System, and the terrified System peoples who see the monster dead sun coming ever closer are at this moment overturning their Government.”

  The dark prophet chuckled. “And when that Government has been overturned and power has been yielded to me, I will only need to turn that image-ship away from the System, and then tell the System peoples that I saved them by turning aside the dead sun that would have destroyed them. And I can use my powers of illusion to keep myself in power indefinitely, by again terrifying the System with illusory perils should there be any future revolt against me!”

  “Your powers of illusion?” Curt Newton repeated contemptuously. “You never invented this secret of illusion. These Stygians developed it, long ago. You are an Earthman who somehow persuaded these people to become your allies and give you the illusion-secret for your own use.”