"Bah, he's a living man, even if he has all the science of future ages in his head," spat Zikal. "He can be killed like anyone else. You have a neutron tube?"
Reluctantly the spy nodded, drawing the weapon from his tunic. It was in appearance a thin glass tube mounted on a metal stock.
"Then you know what to do," said Zikal harshly. "Get this leader of the strangers and, if possible, the others, too."
Quirus' dark face was panicky.
"I'm afraid!" he gasped. "Those four — they're so weird, so strange —"
"Would you rather take your chance with them, or with me?" demanded his leader threateningly.
The spy gulped and nodded shakily.
"I'll do it."
"Report back as soon as you have," Zikal snapped. "I'll be waiting here."
With dread in his soul, the Katainian spy drove his gyro-car back through the city toward Darmur's home. Only greater fear of his merciless master forced him forward.
He left the car and stealthily began creeping through the moonlit garden toward the old scientist's dwelling. From open windows of the bubblelike black mansion came the soft glow of iridescent light and the sound of low voices.
CLUTCHING the stock of his neutron tube, Quirus wormed his way silently through the graceful flowers and trees, until he was peering through the window of a lighted room.
He saw Darmur in there, sitting at the end of a long table, with his daughter and son standing behind him. The old scientist was talking earnestly to the red-haired man called Captain Future, whose back was toward the window. Nearby poised the weird case of the Brain, floating without movement in mid-air, his strange lens-eyes fixed on the old Katainian scientist. In a chair sat the awesome metal giant.
Quirus could not see the green-eyed, unhuman one, nor the Earthgirl, but the ones he saw were enough to deepen the dread in his mind. How could he hope to slay such beings as these? Yet he must do it, or face the wrath of Zikal.
He raised his neutron tube, aiming at Captain Future's back. At that moment came a loud, hissing exclamation from behind him. He turned quickly, "Who the devil are you? What are you doing here?"
Quirus spun around, appalled. The green-eyed android and the Earthgirl had surprised him, In mad panic, the spy fired the brilliant, deadly neutron beam pointblank at them.
Chapter 14: Death Under Yugra
FUTURE and his comrades were experiencing Katainian hospitality. Not even the baffled desperation that old Darmur must be feeling, nor the awesome shadow of destruction that the premonitory shudder of the planet had cast upon them, could make the scientist forget his duties to his strange guests. He insisted upon postponing further discussion until the Futuremen had rested and eaten.
He introduced to them his daughter, Lureen. A slim, young girl in a graceful gold tunic, with dark hair braided back from a pale, beautiful face, she had been watching Captain Future and his strange companions with breathless wonder in her violet eyes.
"I'll get Ahla!" Otho said hastily as they started into the house. "She was afraid to come out of the Comet at first."
Ahla, indeed, was somewhat terrified by her succession of strange experiences. But the primitive girl of Earth seemed to trust Otho utterly, for she came hesitantly with him to the black mansion. Darmur's daughter promptly led the shy girl off, though Ahla looked back anxiously at Otho. The old scientist himself conducted Curt Newton and his comrades to a chamber of the dwelling.
Future looked around appreciatively. There was an austere, unadorned beauty about the curving black walls and simple, severe furniture.
"This is a beautiful world," he murmured. "Katain, the golden. No wonder its people are heartsick as its destruction approaches."
"They have certainly delayed leaving it until the last," the Brain, always coldly unemotional, commented raspingly. "They've little time left."
There was a sunken bath adjoining the chamber. Curt soaked with delight in the scented waters, as did Otho. Even Grag, following their example, polished up his metal limbs and hammered out a small dent in his knee with a tool he brought from the Comet.
"If you really want to improve your appearance, hammer yourself out a new face," gibed Otho.
Grag raised the tool threateningly.
"I'll hammer one out for you, you product of the residue at the bottom of a laboratory retort."
They went down to the softly illuminated dining hall where Darmur and the others were waiting. Ahla had been dressed in one of Lureen's gold tunics and the shy primitive flushed with pleasure at Otho's admiration.
The meal was a simple one of fruits, cakes and a mild wine. Curt and Otho ate with gusto. Grag replenished his own energies by inserting a small charge of copper fuel into the orifice by which his atomic machinery was fed.
The Brain basked in the stimulating vibrations of a small projector which Grag had brought from the strange Comet.
Curt looked past his wineglass at the moonlit garden outside. The flowering trees were stirring softly in the warm breeze and showering white blossoms over the golden ground like drifting snow. The beauty of this lost world of time caught at his heart.
"Aye, Katain is lovely," murmured old Darmur, sensing his thought. "No wonder my people dread abandoning it for such a perilous odyssey to a distant star as I had hoped to lead."
Captain Future pushed back his glass and bent forward keenly.
"Darmur, what is your plan? Why do you need so much uranium? Even if you had it, how could you transport all the hosts of this race across almost nine light years to Sirius? You haven't enough ships for that, surely!"
DARMUR for answer, pointed up at the little, yellow moon that was shining softly in the starry sky.
"There is the ship which I proposed to use to transport our race across the Universe," he answered.
"Katain's moon?" Curt asked, startled. "Do you mean that your proposal —"
"I planned to make our moon, Yugra, into a great ship to carry all our people to Sirius. It seemed the only possible solution. The satellite could be torn away from the System and hurled into outer space toward Sirius, by continuous explosions of atomic energy on a great scale. It could carry our entire race there. The Council allocated men and materials for me to use in making preparations for my plan, years ago.
"We built on Yugra semi-underground chambers extensive enough to hold our millions of people. We also constructed near the moon's equator a gigantic pit, lined with refractory material, which would be the rocket-tube that would propel the satellite. By continuous explosion of vast quantities of pure uranium in that colossal rocket-tube, Yugra could be accelerated finally to a speed half that of light."
"But even at that speed, it would take you nearly twenty years to reach Sirius!" objected the Brain. "How could all your people live so long on that little moon in the dark cold of interstellar space?"
Darmur turned his tired eyes on the questioner.
"Our people would be sleeping during that time. We know a way to cause complete suspension of animation by a freezing of the atoms of the body. The whole population would lie in artificially induced sleep in the protected subterranean chambers, except the few required to pilot the moon."
The old Katainian shrugged his shoulders wearily.
"But all that long toil of preparation has proved useless. The quantity of uranium needed to release sufficient atomic energy to tear Yugra from this System is enormous. I had been confident that we could amass enough uranium by sending prospecting expeditions to the other planets."
"But when you sent them, they found there wasn't sufficient procurable uranium in the System," Curt Newton finished for him.
Darmur nodded heavily. "Aye, that is what they found. Uranium is not a plentiful element, at best. And it constantly grows less in quantity as time passes, since it constantly disintegrates by radioactive decay into other elements, the final end-product being lead. There is much more uranium in the System now than there will be in your time, a hundred million years from now. Even so,
there isn't enough for my purposes."
He made a defeated gesture.
"There might be enough if we could get all that lies at the molten cores of the planets, but that would be impossible. There's not nearly enough of the element in deposits that could be reached. The expeditions we sent out prospected every planet, every possible source."
Jhulun spoke quietly to the Futuremen.
"I was leading such an expedition when the Martians captured us. They held us for hostages, since they have heard rumors of Zikal's plan to destroy them and are worried."
"Aye, and now Zikal's hideous scheme will receive the Council's approval at tomorrow's fateful meeting," said Darmur somberly, "It is all because there isn't enough uranium to operate my migration plan. You know now why my first question was whether you could synthesize uranium. That was my one hope. That is why I sent out the time message in a call for help. I had hoped that future science would be able to synthesize uranium artificially."
CAPTAIN FUTURE shook his head slowly, "It just can't be done," he declared. "Uranium is the heaviest and most complex of all the elements and it's inherently unstable. To force together hundreds of protons, electrons and other particles into that unstable pattern is beyond the power of any science."
"And since only uranium contains enough stored power to propel a body of Yugra's mass, the whole thing is hopeless," Darmur added hopelessly. "Tomorrow's meeting of the Council will indeed be a fateful one. When I confess defeat, the Councilors must approve Zikal's plan to murder all the Martian people and take their world."
"Say, I just thought of something!" Otho exclaimed. "Zikal's plan can't go through. There are Martians in our own future age and there wouldn't be any if they are all murdered now."
Curt looked at the android witheringly.
"Your reasoning is cockeyed. If the present Martian race is all killed now and the Katainians take their place, the Katainians will be the ancestors of the Martians of our time."
"Well, it was just an idea," grumbled Otho. "I'm going out to get some air. You great minds can figure it out. Want to come, Ahla?"
The pretty Earthgirl rose eagerly and accompanied the restless android from the room. The others sat in dull despair, thinking frantically. Grag's booming voice broke the silence.
"Couldn't we use the time-thrusting force somehow to transport all the Katainians to a future age?"
"Couldn't be done," rasped the Brain. "It would take far too long to build enough time-force generators to use on this whole race. Remember how long it took us to build just one? And even if you could send the Katainians into the future, where would they live? Their own world would be gone. Mars, a desert world, couldn't support them. The gravitation of the other planets would still be too great for them to live upon."
Captain Future had paid little heed to them. He had been staring at the wall with narrowed eyes, his mind racing with the impact of a new idea.
"Darmur, I've just thought of a way in which we might get enough uranium for your plan," he said tensely. "It came from what you mentioned about uranium disintegrating, growing less all the time. I —"
At that moment came a startling interruption from the moonlit garden outside the window. It was a loud exclamation in Otho's voice.
"Who the devil are you? What are you doing here?"
CURT and the others spun toward the window. Just outside it, Otho and Ahla were confronting a dark-faced young Katainian who held in his hand a glass tube mounted on a gunlike stock. The Katainian whirled in panic as Otho spoke, and fired a brilliant beam at pointblank range. Simultaneously, with a cry of alarm, Ahla thrust Otho aside. The thin beam struck the Earthgirl's chest. She collapsed without a sound.
Curt Newton was on his feet with his proton pistol out, plunging for the window. He was already too late. With a terrible, hissing cry of rage, Otho had leaped at the panicky spy.
The android's super-swift lunge carried him past the spy's deadly beam. The weapon fell from the Katainian's hand as Otho's fingers gripped his throat. When Curt reached them, the android had forced the spy down upon his knees and was squeezing his neck in a death-grip.
"Otho, wait, don't kill him!" Curt yelled. "We've got to find out who sent him —"
His exclamations had no effect. This was one time in which the android was beyond hearing Future's command. Otho's green eyes were blazing with superhuman rage.
Even as Curt Newton reached their side, the spy's neck gave way. The man sank in a lifeless heap. Otho turned, wild and dazed, toward the others who were now bending over Ahla's still form.
One glance at the Earthgirl was enough. The deadly beam had driven directly through her heart.
"She pushed me aside," Otho muttered blindly. "She sensed the danger and wanted me to be safe."
For the first time in his life, Captain Future saw a glimmer of tears in Otho's green eyes.
Darmur and his son had been examining the dead spy.
"One of Zikal's men," said the old scientist in a low voice to Curt. "I think Zikal sent him here to kill you men from the future, but we can prove nothing."
Curt nodded, looked pityingly down at the white face of the primitive Earthgirl who had come so far across the System to die.
"We can bury her here in the garden," Lureen was saying gently to Otho. "I think she would like that."
Grag dug the deep grave at the garden's end and carefully lowered into it a long chest of silvery metal, into which they had put Ahla's body. As the robot silently refilled the grave, white blossoms drifted onto it from the flowering trees. And then came another dim, quivering groundquake. The low, rumbling thunder was like a distant requiem.
They left Otho brooding there and walked silently back to the mansion. Lureen, crying, fled to her chamber, but old Darmur looked earnestly into Captain Future's somber face.
"Just before that happened" — the old scientist made a mournful gesture toward the garden — "you were saying that you'd thought of a way in which it might be possible to secure enough uranium for the migration plan. What is your idea?"
The old Katainian's tension was apparent. With an effort, Curt forced his thoughts back from the pathetic tragedy.
"Yes, I thought of something that will sound mad to you, but that might just work. You have the figures on the exact amount of uranium needed?"
"In my laboratory," Darmur answered eagerly. "This way."
He led them to a smaller spherical black structure behind the mansion. Its lighted interior was one large room, crowded with the apparatus of Katainian science. A few instruments were unfamiliar, but most Curt recognized. At the center of the room towered an object like a squat telescope, mounted upon gimbals over a complex of multilayered quartz disks. Darmur nodded toward it as he went to his files.
"The achronic beam projector I used to send into the future the message that brought you here."
He brought Captain Future a mass of calculations. Curt sat down with him, the Brain poised beside them. As Darmur explained the figures, Curt asked sharp, brief questions.
"That tells me the quantity of uranium you would need," he said finally, jotting it down. "Now what was the final estimate by your prospecting expeditions of the whole amount of uranium now procurable in the System?"
DARMUR told him. Curt jotted the figure down, also, and then began a series of rapid, complicated calculations. He finally looked up, his eyes far away. "It might just be done," he muttered. Then his jaw tightened. "It's got to be done! There's no other possible way to get enough uranium."
The Brain had followed the calculations and even his icy calm was startled by what he guessed of Curt's intention.
"It will be a great risk, lad," Simon warned. "Greater by far than any we have yet dared."
"Captain Future, what is this plan of yours for getting uranium?" old Darmur appealed.
Curt Newton explained briefly. As he did so, a look of wonder and awe came into the old Katainian scientist's eyes.
"Name of the Sacred Star!" he whis
pered. "You would try that?"
"I'd try anything before I'd let Zikal and his party murder the whole Martian race," Curt stated. "Hand me those papers and we'll go over my figures again. We've got to have this all prepared to submit to the Council tomorrow."
Chapter 15: Disaster
SINCE dawn thousands of Katainian men and women had been streaming through the streets of the capital, toward the towering black sphere of the Council Hall. From all over the golden world they had come. Those who could not crowd into the great building were packed in the surrounding park in a dense, motionless, silent throng.
Their absolute silence was proof of the terrifying gravity of this hour. The hopes and fears of generations were to come at last to a climax in today's fateful session of the Council. The millions of people of the doomed planet were to learn at last whether desperate urgency must drive them to the slaughter of a fellow-race, or whether they could somehow escape that crime.
The vast amphitheater interior of the Council Hall was gripped by the same taut silence. Far up into the shadows towered the curved tiers of seats, a sea of blurred white faces. Every eye was watching the dais at the front of the great fane. Pure white light from a concealed source beat brilliantly on the dais, but no one yet sat upon it.
Sharp trumpet blasts rang suddenly across the cavernous interior of the hall. Then a deep, amplified voice roared forth. "The Council of Katain!" Down the broad isle toward the dais, in a somberly silent procession came thirty men in the yellow silken robes of state, their faces pale and drawn. Wordlessly they took places on the dais, facing the throng.
"The Chief Councilor!" roared the same powerful, amplified voice.
Stepping forward a little from the others an old, white-haired man stood arrow-straight in his heavy robes. His voice came solemnly.
"People of Katain, for long we have lived in the shadow of a foreknown doom. There is none of us who is not aware that, within eight weeks, our planet will pass into a last conjunction with Jupiter, which will cause its explosion and final destruction. Nothing can save our world itself from that disaster, but we have long searched for a means to save our race.
Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941) Page 10
