Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Captain Future’s gray eyes were blazing now.

  “It’s the only possible scientific explanation. And it gives us a thousand-to-one chance of ridding our cosmos forever of the Alius’ threat.”

  Otho gasped. “I get it, Chief! If we could close that door —”

  “If we could close the door, it would cut the filament connection between the Alius’ real bodies in the outer abyss and their photon-bodies here and thus end all their internal activities in this universe!” Curt finished for him.

  Chapter 14: Curt’s Way

  THE three comrades gazed at each other with a common excitement, crouching close together in the little black cell.

  “Can we do it, Chief?” asked Grag quickly. “Can we close that door?”

  “It should be possible,” muttered Curt Newton. “From Otho’s description, the mechanism consists of a frame of super-powered magnetic coils, which set up intersecting fields that cause an unprecedented spaces-train. Theoretically, scientists have always known that a strong enough strain would rip open an aperture in three-dimensional space. Actually, it’s never been done by any System scientist, because it would require vast power.

  “But the Alius are using vast power — power of this comet’s electric coma. By means of it, they keep the space-strain always operating, the door constantly open. They daren’t let it close.”

  “Then if we wrecked those magnet coils, the door would close?” cried Otho.

  Captain Future nodded.

  “It would. But can we get at the coils? You said the wall of electric flame around the court had no break in it.”

  “The devil, I forgot that!” exclaimed Otho, crestfallen. “And that stumps us. The photon-bodies of the Alius could go through that ring of electric fire, but it would blast you or me in an instant.”

  “I don’t think it would blast me.” Grag suggested eagerly. “You know the outer surface of my body is dielectric metal. I’ll bet I could get through it.”

  “I doubt it.” Curt hesitated. “Yet there’s no other possibility. Grag, if you’re willing, we’ll try it. Come on let’s get out of here.”

  “I thought you couldn’t pass through the barrier of mental force across the door of this cell?” objected Otho.

  “I can’t, of my own accord,” retorted Curt. “But you two can drag me through it.”

  “Great space-gods, I never thought of that!” exclaimed the android. “Come on, Grag — get hold of the chief.”

  Grasping Captain Future firmly by the arms, the two Futuremen approached the cell door. As they entered the curtain of hazy force across it, a frantic clamor awoke in Curt’s brain.

  “I don’t want to go out into the hall!” he thought fiercely. “I don’t want to leave the cell!”

  His obsession was so powerful that he struggled fiercely to pull back into his prison. But Grag’s great grip dragged him out through the hazy curtain, despite his resistance. The moment they were out in the corridor and clear of the mental barrier, Curt’s mental revulsion ceased to exist.

  “Thanks, boys!” he muttered. “Now we’ve got to find a way to that central court where the door is located. It should be in this direction. I suppose we have not much chance of reaching it without the Alius’ knowledge.”

  “I’ve got Eek here with me,” drag told him. “He’s scared to death of the Alius, and can sense them long before we can see them. He’ll warn us of any of them ahead.”

  They began the hazardous search through the labyrinthine halls and corridors of the vast black citadel. Twice in the next few minutes, Eek, showed wild panic when they were about to enter passageways. They hastily took other turnings, knowing that the little moon-pup had sensed Alius ahead.

  They passed unoccupied laboratories and supply rooms, in which lay great masses of mechanisms and apparatus of totally new and unfamiliar design.

  Curt guessed that these were part of the giant transformer the Alius planned to build, for the theft of limitless power from this cosmos.

  ONCE only Eek’s panicky warning enabled them to shrink back as one of the dark Alius glided across the corridor ahead. Curt was near despair. Their time was short, for soon Querdel would arrive with Joan. Then he Alius would summon him and find him gone from his cell.

  They entered a corridor, whose far end blazed with a sunlike brilliance that outshone the citadel’s sourceless illumination.

  “That’s the court of the door!” Otho hissed.

  They hastened forward to the end of the passageway, and then crouched concealed in its mouth and gazed out into the court, stunned.

  Ten feet from them towered the blinding, crackling wall of electrical fare whose unguessable energy poured down like a cataract from the tall electrode rods. This wall of electricity, encircling the whole interior of the court, formed a blinding barrier to their vision.

  Captain Future strained his eyes to peer through the flaming barrier. He could only dimly descry the massive apparatus at the center of the court — the ponderous copper arch of the door, and the heavy magnet coils that studded that arch.

  A few Alius were coming and going, passing through the wall of crackling flame as though it did not exist. They were fortunately using other entrances of the citadel than the one in which the Futuremen crouched, but Curt realized that discovery might come at any time.

  “Look, you can see all those filaments of energy that connect them with the door.” Otho whispered, pointing.

  Curt counted no less than twenty of the shadowy threads that led from the door through the electric barrier.

  “Then there’s no more than twenty of the Alius in the Citadel!” Curt muttered incredulously. “Twenty — and they’ve mastered a world!”

  “Shall I go through the electric wall now, Chief?” Grag asked eagerly. “See, there’s no Alius out there right now.”

  “Yes — try to make it, Grag,” Captain Future said tensely. “If you get through, wreck those coils around the door. All depends on you.”

  An opportunity had come to them sooner than Curt had hoped. For the moment, there were none of the dark Alius anywhere in the court. Grag hastily strode out toward the blinding, crackling wall of electric flame. The giant robot stalked right into the cataract of force.

  They saw Grag stagger and stop. The robot swayed drunkenly, half hidden from view by the torrents of raving, brilliant energy that were overwhelming him. Then Grag fell backward out of the wall of flame and lay motionless on the paving.

  “He couldn’t get through!” Captain Future exclaimed. “Quick, Otho — help me get him in here!”

  They darted out to the fallen robot. He had fallen clear of the crackling cataract, and they were able to seize his massive metal body and drag it back into the precarious concealment of their passageway.

  Grag lay utterly lifeless. Curt hastily undamped the broad metal chestplate of the robot’s mechanical body, then peered into the maze of intricate wiring and apparatus that constituted Grag’s vital organs.

  “The electricity of the wall got through his outer insulation and short-circuited his electric ‘nerves’,” Curt said quickly. “His nerve-fuses are blown out.”

  IT TOOK Captain Future but a few moments to replace the fuses, which were designed to protect Grag’s electrical nervous system from too great a voltage. Then he clamped down the robot’s chest-plate.

  Grag scrambled bewilderedly to his feet.

  “What happened? Didn’t I make it?”

  “No, and it’s useless for you to try again, Grag,” Curt said somberly. “The Alius’ photon-bodies can go through that wall, but we can’t.”

  “Nothing could go through that cursed torrent of power, except one of the Cometae!” hissed Otho in baffled rage.

  Captain Future suddenly stiffened. He stared fixedly at the android.

  “Otho, you’re right! One of the electric Cometae could get through that wall! I could get through, if I were a Cometae.”

  “Chief, what do you mean?” exclaimed Otho anxiousl
y. “You surely can’t be thinking of —”

  “Otho, the only way for me to slip through this barrier and close the door is to become a Cometae,” Captain Future declared.

  The grimness of desperate resolution had come into Curt’s gray eyes. His haggard face was set in lines of determination.

  “There’s one thin chance that I could do it,” he continued rapidly. “In the cruciform laboratory where they questioned me, I saw the converter mechanism which the Alius use to transform ordinary men and women into Cometae. I observed it as closely as I could. I believe that if I could get access to it without their knowledge, I could use it to make myself a Cometae.”

  “It’s crazy!” burst out Otho in a clamor of frantic expostulation. “Even if you do succeed in closing the door, then you’ll be one of those pitiful electric people!”

  “Remember that Simon and I believe we can find a way to retransform the Cometae back to normal,” Curt reminded rim. “When we find the way, I can become my old self again.”

  “But suppose you never find such a way?” said Grag, aghast. “Then you’d be a Cometae forever.”

  “That would be no sacrifice if I can save our universe,” Captain Future said quietly. “Anyway, if we can’t find the way to undo that metamorphosis, it would mean that Joan would have to remain a Cometae. And I’d want to share her fate, then.”

  The quiet statement put an end to the objections of the two Futuremen for a few moments. Then Otho made a hopeless gesture.

  “It’s foolish even to talk of it,” muttered the android. “How are you going to get access to that converter mechanism without the Alius’ knowledge? You said that it was located in what seemed their chief laboratory. Some of the Alius will be there, too.”

  “We’ll have to draw them out of there somehow — and at once,” Curt said swiftly. “We’ve little time to work.”

  He looked at Grag.

  “Grag, you can help divert the Alius’ attention. Will you do it? It means taking a chance they might destroy you.”

  Grag uttered an offended growl.

  “What do you mean — will I do it? Have I ever refused to take chances? And aren’t you yourself going to take the craziest chance of all?”

  “Then do this,” Captain Future instructed the robot. “Make your way back out to the entrance of the citadel. Set up a big uproar there at once. Start smashing everything you see. That should bring all the Alius in the citadel. Try to keep them out there as long as you can.”

  Grag’s photo-electric eyes gleamed with understanding.

  “I get it, Chief. I’ll make a racket that’ll go down in the history of this comet!”

  And the big robot, without further discussion, hurried away back along the passageway by which they had come. Little Eek, his moon-pup pet, went with him.

  A FEW minutes later, the dim sound of a distant, banging clamor reached the ears of Curt and Otho. From the volume of noise, Grag was more than living up to his promise of creating a disturbance.

  Crouched in their precarious concealment, Curt and his comrade glimpsed several Alius gliding swiftly through the inner corridors, in the direction of the citadel entrance. They passed out of sight.

  “That should have drawn every Alius in the place out there,” Curt muttered. “They’d be startled and alarmed by the fact that someone had entered their citadel, despite its barriers. Come on, Otho!”

  In a hasty run, the tall, red-headed planeteer led the way through the maze of labyrinthine passages in the direction of the cruciform laboratory. His remembrance of the citadel’s interior plan did not fail Captain Future. In a few moments, he and Otho reached the entrance to the fountainhead of Alius science. A glance inside showed them that it was unattended now.

  Grag’s disturbance had quite evidently drawn away its occupants. The distant clamor of that disturbance was still going on.

  “We’ve little time!” Curt exclaimed, panting, as they sprang into the laboratory. “It won’t take long for the Alius to gain mental mastery over even so unfamiliar a type of mind as Grag’s.”

  He ran to the big converter mechanism in an alcove which the Alius had utilized to make the Cometae into an electric race.

  Its central feature was a massive, barrel-shaped copper clamber, eight feet high. In the floor and ceiling of this chamber were set a very great array of clustered, tiny lenses. Around the copper chamber, and connected to it by complex cables, stood a number of totally unfamiliar mechanisms, whose purpose was quite unguessable.

  “Oh, Chief, this is hopeless!” groaned Otho after a look at the enigmatic mechanism. “We don’t know anything about Alius science. We couldn’t fathom the design of this apparatus in days of study — let alone in the few minutes we have.”

  “That’s true,” Captain Future admitted tautly. “But even though we don’t know how the thing works, we may be able to put it into operation. A savage wouldn’t have the faintest, idea how an electric light works, yet he could turn it on if he found the switch.”

  Curt was already tensely examining the complex mechanism.

  “The Alius used this machine for just one purpose — the conversion of men and women into electric beings,” he was muttering. “It stands to reason the Alius would have the thing set to project the correct forces that cause that metamorphosis in the cells of the human body, if we could find out how to turn it on —”

  Yet during the next few moments of frantic study, Curt Newton almost lost hope himself. The science and mechanics of the alien Alius were completely unlike those of the System. Even Captain Future, master of System science, could comprehend almost nothing of the converter’s design.

  But he did locate the heavy main cable that brought power to the machine. Hastily he traced the cable in search of a switch.

  He found no switch. The cable went straight into the complex apparatus around the copper chamber. At one point, the cable passed through a square box on which was mounted a silver disk. But though Curt twisted and tugged at the disk, it did not move nor was there any result.

  “It looks as though it might be a switch — but it can’t be moved,” Curt said in exasperation. His haggard face was dripping with sweat. “Yet there must be some kind of power cut-off.”

  FRENZIEDLY he retraced the power cable, but there was no break in it except that square box and silver disk. Captain Future felt his hopes sinking fast. His plan had been too fantastic to succeed, after all.

  He could hear the distant clamor of Grag’s disturbance dying down, as though the Alius were overpowering the robot. Few minutes were left now. Curt told himself wildly that he must not get rattled, he must think —

  “Thinking, that’s it!” Curt cried hoarsely. “That must be it! The Alius have immaterial photon-bodies. They could have had these machines built for them by their Cometae aides, but the Alius’ photon-bodies could not turn on a material switch. It’d have to be a switch embodying a telepathic relay, a switch they could turn on by thought!”

  “Chief, what do you mean?” Otho exclaimed bewilderedly.

  Curt paid no attention. He was staring at the silver disk on the enigmatic switch-box. He was concentrating every ounce of his mental power upon that disk.

  “Power on!” he was thinking, over and over.

  Something clicked inside the switch-box! The delicate electro-magnetic vibration of Curt’s projected thought had operated a sensitive relay.

  The massed apparatus around the copper chamber hummed with sudden power. From the myriad lenses in floor and ceiling poured a gush of brilliant blue light.

  “We’ve got it going!” Curt exclaimed. “I’m going to try it. Otho, if my attempt fails, you try to get away and warn the System of the Alius’ plan. Here goes!”

  Before Otho could protest further, Captain Future stepped into the chamber — into the full flood of blue force!

  He felt an awful, instantaneous impact through every fiber of his body. He reeled beneath the shock of a force cunningly calculated to effect the deepes
t molecular and atomic changes.

  There was a sharp clicking somewhere in the converter’s auxiliary apparatus. The blue force changed abruptly to deep purple. A new, staggering shock ran like lightning through Curt Newton’s swaying body.

  It seemed to him that every cell of his brain and being was on fire. Sick and fainting, he reeled against the side of the chamber. The tinge of the projected force that bathed him was now altering to green. It was running through the spectrum in quick, sharp changes.

  Captain Future realized dimly that each change was bringing into play a new frequency of unknown forces. Each alteration was patterned to break down the molecular and atomic structure of different elements of living cells, then remold them into new, strange patterns.

  Curt seemed swimming in liquid fire, he felt as though he were breathing flame through his burning body. The wrenching at his body’s subtlest and deepest structure made him think that his very flesh was exploding.

  The great waves of sickness and weakness that came over him began to dissipate. The fiery torment of his body passed into a strange tingling.

  “Gods of space!” he heard Otho exclaim hoarsely.

  Curt opened his eyes. He still stood in the chamber. But the spectrum-hued forces had reached the end of their gamut and had automatically cut off.

  Captain Future looked down at himself. His whole body glowed! It shone with brilliant electric radiance that matched the uncanny tingling which he felt in every fiber.

  “I’ve done it,” he said huskily as he staggered out of the copper chamber. “I’m a Cometae —”

  He swayed from sick weakness. Instinctively, Otho leaped forward to support him.

  But as Otho’s hand touched him, the android recoiled with a cry of pain. His arm hung limp, paralyzed by the electric shock of contact with Curt’s shining body.