"Grag, Otho — use your rays on the same spot!" Curt yelled as the Futuremen came rushing after him.
Three brilliant proton beams tore into the towering horror's breast, enlarging the charred hole in its scales, yet the creature was not fatally wounded. The seat of its reptilian life was tiny, difficult to find, compared with its great body.
IT CHARGED forward with ground-quaking rush, directly toward Otho. With an agility no human being could have matched, Otho sprang out of its path.
"Its eye!" Curt shouted desperately. "We can't kill it through that armor. Use your beams on its left eye!"
He shot as he spoke, driving his proton beam toward the glittering red eye of the looming monster. With a heart-stopping bellow of rage and pain, the tyrannosaurus whirled again. Full in its path now was the girl, who had regained her feet and was darting away. One huge paw was held out to grab her as it charged.
Swifter than thought, the Brain flashed forward. With a thrust of his traction beams he sent the girl staggering aside an instant before the great paw descended.
"The eye — our only chance!" Curt yelled.
Three beams began driving into the blinded eye. The tyrannosaurus' wild rush slowed down. The monster rocked and swayed above them. Then it toppled and crashed into the swamp, splashing up a geyser of mud and water.
The proton beams had finally pierced through eye and bone to the creature's tiny brain. Yet even now, as it lay there, its mighty heart was throbbing audibly and its great jaws mechanically closing and unclosing.
The Futuremen looked at each other a little wildly. They had seen death a hundred million years before they were born.
Curt turned to look for the girl, half-expecting to find that she had fled. But she was still there, eying him and his comrades in silent awe. She was young and pretty, even by the standards of his own time, with dark hair and eyes and a supple, shapely figure revealed by the sleeveless, short, white, skin tunic she wore. Around her neck was a necklace of uncut green stones. The spear she carried was long and tipped with stone.
Curt could guess how alien and impressive they must appear to her dilated eyes. A man whose clothing and weapons were completely strange, the bodiless Brain, the lithe, unhuman android, and the great metal robot.
"She's a highly advanced human type," came the Brain's rasping voice. "But here in the Mesozoic age! This means that Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal had no connection with the real human stock, but were lower orders. The anthropologists have been completely wrong."
"To you, Simon, a pretty girl's nothing but an interesting problem in anthropology," Curt chuckled.
The girl's wide, dark eyes clung longest to Captain Future's tanned face.
"Nyrala di athak Koom?" she asked in a tense, undeniably feminine voice.
"That's no language I ever heard before," declared Otho. "I suppose she's asking you who's the handsome fellow with the green eyes."
The girl, puzzled by their failure to answer, pointed up into the starry sky, making a queer, quick gesture.
"Nyrala di Koom?"
"Looks like she's asking if we came from the sky," Curt guessed. "Maybe she saw the Comet falling." He nodded smilingly, pointing up at the stars. "Yes, that's where we came from, all right. From space — and from time, too, for that matter."
He knew the girl could not understand his words, but he saw an expression of utter awe and reverence appear on her pretty features.
"Di Koom!" she breathed, her eyes shining.
THE girl began a rapid-fire chatter, pointing to the dead tyrannosaurus, then to herself, finally along the southern shore of the marsh, where the scared brontosaurs had stopped and were quietly grazing. Curt listened intently, watching her every gesture. He turned to his comrades when she was finished.
"I don't understand any of her words, but I can get a part of what she means by her gestures. Her name is Ahla, she says, and I gather that the village of her people is not far south. She wants us to go back there with her. I think we ought to go. We may be able to learn from her people where the nearest deposits of the metals we need are located."
"Maybe she's figuring they can feed us to those pet dinosaurs of theirs," suggested Grag suspiciously.
"Nonsense, she's fallen hard for me and wants me to meet her folks," scoffed Otho. "Can't you see the way she's been eying me?"
"Sure, she never saw a rubber man before," Grag retorted.
The girl, Ahla, chattering excitedly in the incomprehensible tongue to Captain Future, led the way along the marsh. They followed, approaching the huge brontosaurs. The Futuremen could not help feeling a certain trepidation at going so close to the mountainous beasts, but Ahla confidently walked right up to them, uttering the ululating cry and pricking their massive legs with the tip of her long spear.
The brontosaurs docilely fell in behind the girl and the Futuremen, following them along the shore. Their heavy tread shook the ground and their forward-craning, snaky necks were high above the Futuremen.
"Don't crowd us!" Otho exclaimed nervously to the gigantic brutes behind them. "There's no hurry."
Captain Future felt an intense curiosity about this unsuspected people of the Mesozoic. What had been their origin? Why had later man never dreamt that human beings existed in this early age?
They came into sight of a village, consisting of several scores of thatched huts on high ground above the marsh. It was surrounded by a high, thick wall of massive, roughly hewn stone blocks. There was but one narrow gate.
"They'd need such a wall to protect them from the carnivorous dinosaurs," explained the Brain.
Curt described behind the walled village a corral-like enclosure of great area, surrounded by a similar wall. In this corral the huge, dark shapes of a number of brontosaurs moved ponderously in the moonlight. Ahla's gigantic reptilian charges lumbered toward the corral. Curt glimpsed men opening an immense gate of wooden bars to admit the creatures. There was a bellowing from the enclosure.
"So that little place is their cattle pen," remarked Otho. "Grag, how'd you like to be a cowboy here?"
"Here come your girl-friend's folks," the robot said mockingly. "How'd you like prehistoric in-laws?"
Chapter 7: Star Worshipers
THEY had followed Ahla through the gate of the village wall, a gate wide enough to admit only one man at a time and far too narrow to permit any of the huge carnivorous surians to enter. The moonlit village of thatch huts was aroused by Ahla's cry. Men and women who had been inside the huts, or gathered around cooking fires outside them, came running forward in a disorderly horde.
"Stand still and let Ahla do the talking," Curt ordered the Futuremen. "I don't think we'll have any trouble with these people."
The Earthmen before them were a primitive crowd. All wore short tunics of soft white hide that Curt guessed to be snakeskin. The men had snatched up stone-tipped spears and throwing knives. Physically they were a handsome people, with alert, intelligent faces.
They stared in the deepest awe at Curt and the three Futuremen. Ahla was explaining at a great rate, her dark eyes flashing with excitement. Curt heard her repeat the word "Koom" and point toward the starry sky. A sigh of emotion went up from the crowd. The awe in their faces increased.
A massive-faced warrior who appeared to be leader of the tribe stepped toward Curt. He, too, pointed into the northern sky, making a quick, reverent gesture such as they had seen Ahla use. "Rata di Koom?" he asked. "Sure, we came from the sky," Curt answered, pointing at the sky and nodding vigorously, "if that's what you mean."
A shout of excitement came from the crowd before him.
"What are they all so excited about?" Otho demanded puzzledly. "They seem to have a tremendous superstitious interest in the stars."
"Do you notice," rasped the Brain, "that when they make that gesture at the sky, they always point to the star, Deneb? I wonder why."
"I can't understand it myself," Curt admitted. "Some primitive star-worship, I guess, centering on that particula
r one." He looked around. "We'll have to stay here until we can learn their language and find out where the nearest metal ores are. Then we can repair the Comet and go on to Katain."
The chief, whose name they learned was Kor, ceremoniously allotted a big hut to Captain Future and his companions. Presently Ahla and other girls brought wooden platters of smoking food, meat and boiled wild grain.
Grag never ate. His mechanical body required only an occasional charge of fuel to maintain its atomic energy. Nor did Simon need nutrition, though sometimes the Brain used stimulating vibrations as refreshment. But Curt was hungry and so was Otho. The android, who could eat ordinary food, though he preferred synthetic chemical nutrition, looking dubiously at the slabs of roasted meat.
"I suppose this is brontosaur steak," he said experimentally, biting into it. "Say, it isn't bad at that! Hope they didn't kill a whole brontosaur for us, though."
"Not likely," replied Curt, grinning. "I imagine they need to butcher only one of the brontosaurs a month to keep this whole village in meat."
He and Otho slept that night on grass pallets in the dark hut. Grag, who did not need sleep, stood watch. The Brain, who required but short rest periods, brooded in one of his trance-like reveries the problems that were certain to face them.
Next morning they found a crowd of the primitives waiting outside to greet them. Breakfast of the same food was brought them. As he ate, Curt heard the brontosaurs in the nearby corral being herded out to the marshes for the day's grazing. He sat in the sunlight with Kor and Ahla after the meal, working hard to learn the language of these strange people. Captain Future's long experience with strange races had given him a knack with languages. His task was made more easy by the fact that the tongue of these primitives used many forms and words that approximated those of far later ages. By evening, he and the Futuremen could speak it in halting fashion, using gestures when they lacked the words.
HIS first question to Kor was about metal-bearing ores. When the chief finally understood, he nodded.
"There are many such rocks as you describe, back in the jungle near the Place of the Old Ones."
"The Place of the Old Ones?" Curt asked keenly.
"It is where we go to worship the sacred star, Koom," explained the chief, making that reverent gesture toward the star, Deneb.
"Kor, why do your people worship that star?"
The chief looked blank. "Because it is sacred. We have always worshiped Koom, as our fathers did."
"Mystery here," Curt said in English to the three Futuremen. "Why should they worship the star, Deneb? They don't even know themselves."
"But I thought that you four came from Koom, the sacred star," Kor was asking. "Ahla said that you did."
"Ahla misunderstood us," Captain Future replied quickly. "We came from the sky in our ship, but not from Koom. We came from the future."
Kor could not comprehend the idea of time-traveling, nor could Ahla. They still seemed to think the Futuremen must be from the sacred star.
"You are not like the other men we have seen come from the sky in roaring ships," Kor insisted, glancing at Grag, Otho and Simon.
"What other ships?" Curt demanded quickly. "Where did they come from?"
Kor waved vaguely toward the sky.
"From up there. They are men like ourselves, though they have roaring ships and strange weapons. Several times we have seen them land and go away. We kept hidden, lest they attack us."
"Hear that?" Curt exclaimed. "Other space ships have touched Earth in the mesozoic! Maybe they came from Katain. We know from Darmur's time message that the Katainians must have a well developed science."
Curt was burning with eagerness to get on to that doomed world whose people had called desperately across time for help.
"The shattering of Katain might occur before we can even get there," he said anxiously. "Our leap back across time, accurately as we tried to gage it, might still be in error by weeks or months. Theoretically we should be right in the period when Darmur sent out his plea for help, but we may be much later than that."
Kor promised to lead them the next morning to the place of metal-bearing rocks. The tribesmen were apparently too well acquainted with the dinosaurs' habits to go that far from the protected village by night.
The dawn of the next day saw Kor and Ahla and a dozen stout warriors leading the Futuremen through the jungle eastward. They followed well beaten game trails through the dense primeval forest. Twice they glimpsed or heard great brutes crashing through the palms and vines. Once it was a herd of stegosaurs, the next a single specimen of the dreaded tyrannosaurs.
The procession wound toward the low hills eastward and finally debouched from the jungle into a large, clear space. It was a vast ruin of white stone. Shattered alabaster pillars and arches lay strewn about cracked white paving that had been gouged and split by immense forces.
"Holy sun-imps!" yelped Otho. "There was a city here once, but these primitives never built it!"
Curt was amazed.
"This place has been a ruin for ages, but its builders had a high order of science. Look, Simon, that isn't natural stone. It's a synthetic marble."
"Aye, lad," agreed the Brain, his lens-eyes surveying the scene with intense scientific curiosity. "This place has been wrecked by glacial action. You can see the gouge-marks and striations clearly."
"I get it now!" Curt exclaimed. "This place was destroyed by the great glaciation that swept across most of Earth in the late Paleozoic age. And I'm betting that these primitive people are the descendants of a few survivors, retrograded to savagery from their former civilized state."
"It looks like it," the Brain admitted. "But that means there was a human race — an intelligent, civilized one — on Earth still farther back, in the Paleozoic!"
"This is the Place of the Old Ones," the chief Kor stated, solemnly gazing across the ruin. "It is here that we come to worship the sacred star. The rocks you wish are not far from this place."
Kor and Ahla led the way past the brooding ruin, up and over the grassy slopes of the low hills. They came upon a great, deep rock declivity, partly filled by silt and glacial detritus. One glance around its shelving rock walls told Captain Future its story.
"This was a quarry in the far past," he said. "The people of that dead city once got metal ores from here." He made a quick examination of the outcrops of rock. "There's ore of almost every kind we need here — tungsten, chromium, magnesium, as well as veins of uranium-bearing minerals. We'll rig up a little atomic smelter here and work out the metal we need to repair the Comet. Before long we'll be able to go on to Katain."
The Futuremen immediately began the urgent task. From the crippled Comet they brought equipment, which they set up at the ancient quarry, constructing a small, improvised, but highly efficient atomic smelter.
Then the real labor began. Kor's tribesmen, eager to help the strange beings they still stoutly believed were from the sacred star, toiled to quarry out masses of the metal-bearing rock. Otho and Grag ran the smelter, pouring from it a constant flow of pure molten metal.
The ingots, when cool, were carried by other tribesmen to the Comet. There Curt Newton and the Brain worked tirelessly at the job of repairing the riven hull, casting new cyc parts, assembling new cyclotrons to replace those damaged by their disastrous collision with the second Moon. Curt drove them and himself almost feverishly, day and night, for his mind was far out in the System, on the doomed world he had resolved to help.
By the sixth morning, the repairs to the Comet were almost finished. Curt and Grag were fitting the last new rocket-tubes, while Kor's tribesmen watched.
"Otho, go back to the quarry and bring the last of those smelter parts," Curt told the android. "We'll soon be ready to take off."
Otho departed and with him went Ahla. The girl of the past seemed to have developed a strong admiration for Otho and had been his constant companion.
Less than an hour had passed when Curt heard a familiar, yet utterly
startling distant sound — the roar of a space ships' rocket-tubes! He, Grag and Simon hastily emerged from the Comet. Kor's tribesmen were shouting and pointing excitedly toward the east, in apparent fear. A long, pencil-like craft was sinking toward the low hills there.
"One of the space ships Kor told us about that visit Earth occasionally!" Grag boomed. "Chief, maybe they're Katainians!"
"And maybe they're enemies," Curt warned, staring eastward. "They're landing up near the quarry, where Otho and Ahla are. I don't like it. Come on and finish the Comet. We've got to get up there at once!"
They worked with furious haste to install the last rocket-tubes. Before they had finished, however, they heard a distant roar and saw the strange pencil-like black craft take off again and vanish quickly in the sky.
"Hurry!" Curt cried, his apprehension growing. "There's something queer about their leaving so soon."
The last big rocket-tube was hastily fused on. Curt fairly leaped to the control room and started the massive cycs throbbing loudly. The Comet bounded upward on the flame-blast of its keel tubes, then screamed low across the jungle toward the hills. Gigantic dinosaurs bolted in mad panic through the forest underneath them as they passed.
Curt landed deftly in the ancient quarry. As they raced out and peered frantically around, his heart sank. Neither Otho nor the girl was here-Ahla's spear lay on the ground, broken, and there were other signs of struggle.
"Whoever was in that space ship has killed or captured Otho and Ahla!" shouted Grag furiously.
Chapter 8: Planets of the Past
OTHO gayly hummed an old future space song as he and the girl Ahla made their way through the jungle to the ancient quarry. The adventuresome android was always most cheerful when he had new scenes about him, and this Earth of the Mesozoic age was certainly a strange new world. Dense towered the jungle about them, a mass of mixed palms, conifers, giant club-mosses, lianas and big ferns. Swarms of weird insects hummed in the shade, and featherless birds hopped amid the higher branches.
Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941) Page 5
