Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941)

by Edmond Hamilton

  "That is the difficulty. Katain is a small world. All the other planets except Mercury and Mars are much larger. We can visit those worlds for a short time, by wearing gravitation neutralizing devices, but they are impossible as a permanent home."

  "But that still leaves Mars and Mercury and some of the bigger moons of Jupiter," rasped the Brain. "Their size and gravitation are nearly the same as Katain's. Why couldn't you live on one of them? Is there any reason?"

  "The big moons of Jupiter are still semi-molten and therefore impossible. Mercury has only a narrow twilight zone that could not hold a hundredth of our people. Mars —" He paused, his face solemn. "On Mars we could live, but it is already overcrowded. There is no possibility of its supporting our millions also. Both races would die of starvation. The only way in which we could take refuge on Mars would be by first killing all the Martians."

  THEY stared at him. There was bitterness on Jhulun's face as he continued.

  "Some people in Katain favor doing that. Their leader is an unscrupulous man named Zikal, who has formed what he calls the Invasion Party. They say it is better for us to destroy all the Martians than to die ourselves. And they have many adherents."

  "But how the devil could you hope to kill the Martians?" blurted Otho.

  Jhulun shrugged grimly. "Zikal has a plan. He has had certain scientists prepare great quantities of a poisonous vapor that would be released into the atmosphere of Mars. In one day it would destroy all life on that world. The poison is so devised that after a few days it would precipitate as a fine powder, leaving the air pure. The Martians would all be dead and their planet would be ours. That is Zikal's plan.

  "But others of us, of whom my father is the leader, look on that plan with horror. We are a civilized people, the most civilized in the System. We believe that it would be better for us to go to death with our world than to commit such a ghastly crime. We have hoped, however, that we could devise a plan that would make such appalling sacrifice unnecessary."

  "What is your father's plan?" Captain Future asked.

  "He has maintained that we could find refuge without disturbing Mars, by migrating to a world outside the Solar System."

  "What?" exclaimed the Brain. "You mean a world of another Sun?"

  Jhulun nodded solemnly, pointing out into space at the green star, Sirius.

  "Several planets almost the exact size of Katain circle that star. Our astronomers long ago confirmed that. Those worlds would be a perfect refuge for our race, since observation has shown that they have atmospheres."

  "But Sirius is almost nine light years away!" exclaimed the Brain. "How are you going to transport all your people there?"

  "My father has been working on a great plan for many years," said Jhulun. His face was troubled as he added; "Yet it has begun to seem that his plan will not succeed, due to lack of one vital factor. It is for aid on that vital essential that he must have called for help across time. If you men of the future can give him that help —"

  "What if we can't?" Captain Future asked gravely. "What if his plan for emigration to Sirius proves impossible?"

  Jhulun's head sagged. "Then Zikal's invasion party will triumph and the murderous scheme to destroy the Martians will be carried out. That crime will be a black stain forever on the history of the System."

  The young Katainian was so pale and distraught that Curt did not question him further. Going forward to the control room, Captain Future thoughtfully eyed the golden planet that was growing larger ahead.

  The Comet finally swept in past the little moon, whose diameter was no more than a thousand miles. Future descried on the little, yellow satellite, the outlines of semi-subterranean structures and also a large, perfectly round pit or crater not far from its equator.

  Jhulun nodded when he mentioned these things.

  "My father will explain it all to you. Our moon, Yugra, is part of his great plan." The troubled young Katainian made a gesture with his hand toward the star, Deneb, which was shining brightly amid the heavenly hosts. "May the Sacred Star keep that plan from ruin."

  Curt was startled. These Katainians, like the Martians and the primitive Earthmen of this age, also reverenced Deneb. He asked Jhulun about it.

  "Yes, like every other people in the System, we cherish the belief that Koom is a Sacred Star," Jhulun answered. "Why do we believe it? No one knows. It is a religion that came down to us from the dim past."

  The ship of the Futuremen had dropped past the moon, Yugra, toward the parent planet. Katain lay beneath them, half in sunlight and half in dark.

  "Why, it's a golden world, just as it looked!" Otho yelped.

  Jhulun smiled sadly. "Yes, Katain the golden, we call it."

  THE predominant hue of this world's vegetation appeared to be yellow. Parklike fields and trees varied from ocher to the glitter of new gold. The rivers, and the seas into which they flowed, were saffron in shade, apparently because of dissolved sediment from the yellow land. The cities of the Katainians stood out upon this golden world like clusters of black bubbles, shimmering jet spheres grouped in fantastic, graceful architecture. The number of these fairy-like black cities indicated a dense population for the little world.

  Grag piloted the ship downward at Jhulun's direction. They flew over one of the saffron seas toward the night side of the planet. Here the shimmering lights of a large Katainian city starred the night.

  "Vavona, our capital and largest city," said Jhulun. "My father's house is here. I will show you where to land."

  A city of magical beauty was Vavona by night. Its bubble-like black buildings, each resting in its own garden, were grouped in concentric rings. At the center loomed huger bubbles, big public buildings. Nearly every building shimmered with iridescent light. There were moving lights in the streets, which radiated from the central area. Lighted aircraft or space ships flitted like fireflies overhead. And down upon the fairy city poured the warm, yellow glow of the small moon, Yugra.

  At Jhulun's direction, the Comet sank toward the garden of one of the outlying bubble dwellings. It came quietly to rest amid flowering trees. Curt was first outside and he felt a thrill as he stepped upon the velvet grass and breathed in the soft, scented air.

  "Katain, the System's lost world, and we're standing on it!" he whispered in awe. "It's like a dream."

  "I see my father and sister!" cried Jhulun. "Come!"

  A man and a girl had appeared in the lighted door of the shimmering mansion. They both wore sleeveless tunics of woven gold and were looking out in amazement. The man was elderly and stooped, with a thin, fine, wrinkled face.

  "Jhulun!" exclaimed the elderly Katainian. "My son, we gave you up for lost! Where have you been?"

  "In a Martian prison," answered the young man breathlessly. "Father, these are the ones who freed me and brought me back here. They were coming here to Katain in answer to your call."

  "My call?" repeated old Darmur, mystified. Then his eyes dilated. "You mean my message into time?"

  Curt Newton and his comrades had advanced through the moonlit garden into the light from the doorway. From Darmur and the girl came startled gasps. They stared wildly at Captain Future and his comrades. Curt knew how strange a spectacle they must seem to these eyes. He, a man of unfamiliar dress and appearance. Otho, the android, lithe, un-human, alert. The Brain, floating in the light upon his beams and watching with cold lens-eyes. Grag, the towering, awesome metal giant.

  FUTURE spoke quietly to the old Katainian scientist.

  "I am called Curtis Newton, also known as Captain Future. These are my comrades. We have come a hundred million years beyond this time. We heard your desperate call for help and we have come."

  "You four have come from the future?" breathed Darmur, his voice filled with amazement. "I hardly dared dream that anyone who heard my time message would be able to answer it, to come back across time."

  "Jhulun has told me of your plan to have the people of Katain migrate to Sirius," Curt said. "I don't understand ho
w you plan to do it, but I gather that you need help on some vital factor of the plan."

  "I do!" Darmur stated. "You men from the future can save my plan, can prevent Zikal's hideous scheme to slay a race, if you can do but one thing."

  "And what is that?" Captain Future asked quickly.

  "It is beyond my own science, but upon it all my plans now depend," choked Darmur. "Can you synthesize the element uranium? Can you manufacture uranium artificially in quantity from other elements?"

  Curt Newton slowly shook his head.

  "No, Darmur. Uranium, the heaviest and most complex of all the elements, can't be artificially synthesized. That feat is beyond our science."

  Darmur's aging face seemed to grow older as he heard. His shoulders drooped, as though a crushing weight had descended on them.

  "Then my last hope is destroyed. My plan to lead my people to refuge by peaceful migration is shattered. I have brought you on your tremendous journey across time for nothing."

  There was a dead silence. In that heartsick stillness came a low, distant rumbling, a quiver of the ground beneath their feet, like a premonitory tremor of planetary doom.

  Chapter 13: Zikal's Spy

  CROUCHED at the edge of the garden in the concealment of a tall clump of flowers, a dark-faced young Katainian had furtively listened. To his ear he held a small metal horn which contained an amplifying device capable of magnifying any distant sound. The eavesdropper was almost shaken from his feet by the rumbling quiver of the ground. He remained frozen in panic until the tremor died away. Then his fears quieted and he again applied himself to the task of listening to old Darmur and the four strange newcomers.

  "It is but another groundquake," he heard Darmur tell them. "Katain is an uneasy planet. Its tremors will grow worse and worse as it approaches the last conjunction with Jupiter."

  The spy heard the clear voice of the tall, striking, red-haired man who had called himself Captain Future.

  "Darmur, we must be able to help your people, somehow, now that we've come across so many millions of years for the purpose."

  "There is no way in which you can help, if you cannot synthesize uranium," replied Darmur's dull, hopeless voice. "My plan had only that one possibility left. It was beyond my own science, but I hoped future science could solve it."

  "It's beyond our science, as I said, but let's not give up hope so quickly. Maybe there's some other way. We certainly can't permit Zikal's party to murder a whole race."

  The dark-faced spy saw the four dissimilar strangers go into the house with Darmur and his children, taking with them a terrified-looking Earth-girl who had until now remained in their ship. Silently the spy withdrew from his concealment, keeping in the shadows of flowering trees until he reached the moonlit street.

  "Zikal must know of this at once!" he muttered excitedly.

  He hurried to his car, a low-slung, narrow vehicle poised gyroscopically on two wheels. Jumping into it and switching on the rocket motor, he streaked toward the center of Vavona.

  The streets through which he sped were lighted by iridescent glowing tubes set into the curbing. Many other gyro-cars were abroad. Overhead sped humming aircraft and occasional larger space ships from the big spaceport that lay to the north of the moonlit Katainian city.

  The dark-faced young Katainian was immensely wrought up. He paid little heed to the throngs of men and women that crowded the more central portions of this fantastically beautiful city of shimmering black bubbles. Rippling stringed music and shrilly gay burst of laughter and song came from every side. Half-intoxicated people were numerous.

  A certain section of the people were engaged in more and more frenzied pleasure-seeking as Katain rocked toward certain doom. The premonitory shudder of the planet tonight seemed to have stimulated their forced gaiety to an even higher pitch.

  A jam of gyro-cars held up the vehicle of the spy outside an extensive pleasure garden. He heard an ancient Katainian who was loudly exhorting a scoffing, half-drunken crowd.

  "It is because you have forgotten the Sacred Star that doom comes upon Katain!" the old man was declaiming shrilly, making a worshipful gesture toward the calm, bright spark of Deneb.

  "The Sacred Star is just superstition, and that won't save our world from destruction, old man!" jeered one of his listeners. "We'll go to destruction with Katain, unless we listen to Zikal."

  "Yes, Zikal's the only one who can save us now!" cried other voices readily. "There's no hope in Darmur's mad plan."

  A few voices cried for Darmur, but they were heavily outnumbered. The dark-face spy smiled in satisfaction as he maneuvered his gyro-car out of the jam and sped on through the city.

  His destination was a large, globular, black mansion not far from the giant spherical public buildings at the center of Vavona. As he reached its doorway, guards stepped out to challenge him.

  "It's I, Quirus!" panted the spy. "I must see Zikal at once. A report of the highest importance."

  A FEW seconds later he was in a luxurious room. The curving walls of black glass reflected back and forth interminably the iridescent glow that came from illuminated tubes set in the floor. A tall, powerful-looking Katainian came striding to meet him, impressive in the golden tunic that left his great limbs bare. His close-cropped black hair helmeted a harsh, massive face whose black eyes were impatient and purposeful.

  "Well, Quirus?" he snapped. "Your report. Darmur hasn't found a new uranium source at this late date, has he?"

  "No, Zikal," quavered the dark-faced spy servilely. "But something has happened. You remember, I was the one who told you about the strange message that Darmur tried to send out into future time."

  Zikal smiled sardonically. "Yes, I remember. I knew we had him beaten when he resorted to such fantastically hopeless devices."

  "It wasn't so hopeless!" Quirus exclaimed. "That call of his into the future has been answered. Men from the far future have come to Katain and are conferring with Darmur now!"

  "You're drunk or dreaming!" exploded Zikal. "Men from the future? Did Darmur pay you to tell me this crazy tale? By Koom, if he did —"

  His enormous hand gripped the throat of the terrified spy.

  "It's true, Zikal!" Quirus babbled hastily. "I saw and heard these men myself. They must be from the future, for no such men have ever been seen in our time. Their leader seems human like ourselves, a tall, red-haired man with eyes like ice. Another is a green-eyed devil who does not seem completely human. A third is a metal giant. The fourth is a brain — a living brain inside a transparent case, yet it moves and sees and talks with the others!"

  Zikal was a little incredulous still, but badly staggered.

  "Men from the future? How could they come back through time? In future ages perhaps there may be a science, greater than any we know, that would achieve time-travel. If such future scientists have really come back to aid Darmur —" He whirled back on the spy. "What did Darmur say to them?"

  "He seemed stupefied himself at their appearance," said Quirus. "Then, when he was convinced they had really come from the future, he asked them at once if they knew how to synthesize uranium."

  "And what did they answer?" demanded Zikal anxiously.

  "The leader of the strangers, the red-haired one who called himself Captain Future, said that the synthesis of uranium was beyond his science."

  An expression of relief and satisfaction crossed Zikal's powerful face.

  "So!" he exclaimed. "Darmur's help from the future has failed him as everything else has done. This explodes his plan completely. When the Council of Katain meets tomorrow, he'll have to admit it."

  "But that is not all," continued the spy hurriedly. "The red-haired leader of these strangers from the future told Darmur that he must not give up hope. He said that they might be able to find some solution of the problem!"

  "They won't," predicted Zikal. "Darmur's whole scheme hinged upon his securing an enormous amount of uranium. His exploring expedition have failed to find enough natural urani
um in the whole System. He can't synthesize it artificially, either, so his crazy plan is done for."

  AFTER a moment, though, the Katainian leader's massive face expressed a troubling doubt.

  "And yet this stranger, this Captain Future, might be able to find a way, somehow. The man must be a supreme master of science to have achieved the colossal feat of crossing time. Who knows but what he might just be able to find some way of implementing Darmur's plan?"

  Zikal's great fists clenched.

  "By Koom, that mustn't happen! When the Council meets tomorrow for the great decision, it must decide in favor of my plan. It's taken me months of weary work to overcome the faint-hearted, sentimental objections of our people to the killing of useless Martians. I'm not going to let all my work upset at the last moment by allowing these strangers from the future to come in and swing the Council to Darmur's scheme. His scheme, even if it worked, would gamble with the lives of all our race!"

  Quirus smiled thinly.

  "You need not pretend such great solicitude for our people to me, Zikal. The populace may believe you're considering only their safety, but I'm not one of the ignorant mob."

  "Well, what if I do gain dictatorial powers, once my plan is decided upon?" demanded Zikal angrily. "Don't I deserve such power? Isn't it I who have worked out all the preparations for destroying the Martians and taking their world? Wouldn't our people be better off with a strong master to guide them, rather than under this doddering, weak-hearted Council?"

  Zikal paced back and forth in the curving-walled black chamber, while the dark-faced spy watched him. Worried doubt increased on the leader's hard face.

  "Quirus, we're not going to take any chance of this man from the future upsetting all our work at this last moment," he rapped out, turning abruptly. "This Captain Future must be eliminated at once."

  Fear came into the spy's dark face.

  "You mean — kill him?" he muttered. "I don't know if it could be done. The man is strange, powerful —"