Captain Future 15 - The Star of Dread (Summer 1943)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “Somebody’s stolen our ship,” roared Grag, beside himself with rage.

  “Joan!” Curt Newton cried, plunging across the camp.

  There was no answer. He dived into one after another of the metal huts, and then into the Lightning. But the huts and the cruiser were empty.

  “Norton ain’t here and neither is Philip Winters,” shrilled Ezra Gurney, running up to him. “What does it mean?”

  “They took the Comet and they took Joan,” cried Captain Future swiftly.

  His brown face was a stiff mask, but there was a raging flame in his gray eyes and his hand gripped the butt of his proton-pistol convulsively.

  The Talking Trees of the Titanians began their thunderous throbbing suddenly, but none of the appalled group paid it attention in this moment.

  “I was a fool not to see it,” Curt Newton cried. “Winters was crazy to go to Deneb for that secret of artificial evolution, to search for the Chamber of Life. Only the Comet could take them to that far star. So he and Norton plotted to grab our ship, and they’ve taken Joan with them because she knows the clue of the inscription.”

  “Why in Space are we standing here talking about it?” snarled Otho furiously. He darted toward the Lightning, “We may be able to head ‘em off in this cruiser, before they can get clear.”

  “Not a chance,” Captain Future said bitterly. “Norton has taken the injectors of the cruiser’s eyes. I saw it when I searched the ship.”

  “Then we’re stymied till we fix new injectors?” gasped Grag. “Holy Space-fiends, this is a mess.”

  The Brain was speaking in his cold, rapid way. “The plot was a clever one. Winters must have planted an atomite charge in the ruins last night, and used one of our own radio-detonators to touch it off this evening, just as Norton returned. They knew we’d run to the ruins, and Winters detained Joan here so they could seize both her and the Comet.”

  “And they’re on their way to Deneb now, hang it, raged Otho. “But we’ll follow them, and when we run them down we’ll pay off the score.”

  “How are we going to follow?” cried Grag. “No ship but our Comet has a high-speed drive capable of taking it to Deneb in a reasonable time. We haven’t got a chance of ever overtaking them.”

  “Nevertheless, we’re going to pursue them, across the galaxy and clean out of it, if necessary,” gritted Curt Newton. “It’s not only our ship and Joan, it’s that fiendish scientific secret that Winters wants to find and turn loose on our System. We must get it away from him.”

  “Listen,” cried Ezra Gurney sharply. The old veteran’s faded blue eyes were bulging.

  THEY became aware that the tumultuous throbbing of the Talking Trees had risen in these last few moments to tremendous volume. It had become a rolling thunder that was reverberating louder and louder through the deepening dusk.

  “The Titanians know their Sacred Stones have been destroyed, an’ they must be clear out of their heads with rage,” gasped Ezra. “Every one of the moon-tribes will be pouring down on us in a few minutes.”

  “And we can’t get away in that crippled cruiser,” cried Grag. “Norton and Winters certainly made sure we couldn’t follow them.”

  That the Titanians were gathering for a mass attack, could not be doubted. The rolling thunder of the Talking Trees had risen to a feverish tumult that throbbed deafeningly through the gathering darkness.

  “Them green tribesmen will be bursting out on us any minute,” Ezra warned Captain Future. “An’ no talkin’ will stop ‘em this time.”

  “We’ll have to mow down the poor lunatics with our atom-guns,” growled Grag. “We can’t get away, and we can’t let them murder us without resistance.”

  “No, wait,” Curt Newton said sharply. “I have a better idea than that. It may work.”

  Curt was still determined not to massacre the superstitious Titanians. Searching his mind for an alternative, he had hit upon a possible expedient on which he resolved to risk their fate.

  “Get out that big field-generator we used for the X-ray photography,” he ordered Grag. “Otho, you help me with the power unit.”

  “What in space good is that outfit going to be to us?” Grag wondered.

  But he did not disobey Captain Future’s command. Between them, the Futuremen hauled out from their equipment-cabin the two heavy pieces of apparatus.

  The field-generator was a mechanism which emitted a broad zone of radiation of X-ray type, which had enabled the scientists of the expedition to study the inmost structure of the Denebian ruins. Its power-unit was a small cyclotron mounted with electric dynamotors and transformers.

  Uranus had lifted its monstrous green disk above the horizon, drenching the encampment with viridescent light. By that weird glow, Curt Newton labored hastily to alter the circuit of the X-ray generator.

  “Here they come, Cap’n Future,” yelled Ezra Gurney a few minutes later. The old veteran, who had been watching the jungle, raised his atom-gun.

  “Hold fire, everybody,” rang Curt Newton’s order. “Let them come right out into the camp.”

  “It’s crazy,” Ezra Gurney protested.

  Yet he did not fire. Nor did the nervous, fearful technicians and scientists behind them use their weapons when the Titanians appeared.

  That was a bare moment later. With a hoarse cry of rage and hatred that broke from hundreds of throats, a great horde of the green moon-tribesmen burst from the fern-jungle. Their blow-guns and primitive spears were raised as they rushed forward to slay these men whom they believed to have destroyed their Sacred Stones.

  “No firing,” cautioned Curt Newton loudly again, as the yelling horde rolled forward. “One more second —”

  His hand was on the switch of the X-ray generator. The power-unit was already throbbing.

  Curt Newton waited until the Titanian attackers were only a hundred yards away and were about to loose a shower of blow-gun missiles. Then he suddenly closed the circuit of the altered generator.

  An incredible phenomenon followed. Captain Future and every one of the men around him suddenly became — skeletons!

  Chapter 4: Race Against Time

  TRANSFORMED in a flash, the entire scientific party stood there, a group of hideous skeletons with ghastly skull-faces. It was breath-taking. Even the Futuremen felt amazed.

  “Devils of Mars,” Ezra Gurney’s bony jaws seemed to open horribly as that stupefied cry came from him. The superstitious Titanians uttered cries of horror at the sudden awful transfiguration of Curt and his party.

  They stopped their mad forward charge. A few of the Titanians who did not stop in time suddenly became skeletons also in appearance. That was too much for the moon-tribesmen.

  With wild panic, they recoiled to the fern-jungle. In a few moments, they were gone. Cries of terror came back from them as they fled.

  Captain Future hastily shut off the big field generator. “We only had a few seconds of the radiation,” he said breathlessly. “Not enough to harm us, considering that our spaceman’s clothes are radiation-resistant.”

  “Wha — what did that?” Ezra Gurney gasped, looking down unbelievingly at himself. They had lost their skeleton guise, were all normal once more.

  “I simply amplified the generator to blanket the whole camp with X-ray radiation for a few seconds,” Captain Future told them. “It scared them, plenty. They won’t bother us again.”

  His lips compressed, he looked up at the starry sky toward the brilliant white star Deneb.

  And his voice was rapid and hard. “We’ve no time to waste now if we’re to overtake Norton and Winters. We must make new injectors for this cruiser, and get away from here.”

  “Chief, what good’ll it do?” Otho protested hopelessly. “This tub, the Lightning, can never overtake the Comet. There isn’t a ship in the System that has a vibration-drive powerful enough to match the Comet’s speed.”

  “I know that,” Curt Newton rapped impatiently. “But remember, we have spare generators and projectors f
or the Comet’s vibration-drive, stored away in the Moon-laboratory. We’ll install them in this cruiser, and they’ll give it a speed equal to that of our own ship.”

  The Brain spoke coolly. “You realize, of course, the great risk we’ll be taking in doing that? No cruiser like this — no ordinary ship — is built to endure the thrust of such a super-powerful drive. The whole ship will be liable to crack under the thrust, as we build up acceleration.”

  “We can nurse the craft along if we’re lucky,” Captain Future retorted. His voice flared. “Blast it, we have to take any risk.”

  That outburst, breaking the usual self-control of the red-haired planeteer, told them the strain under which Curt Newton was laboring.

  Not only was Joan Randall’s safety at stake, not only their beloved ship, but also an age-old scientific secret that could unchain disaster on the System if ever it was used.

  By two hours later, they had hastily contrived makeshift injectors for the Lightning. At once, Curt Newton and the Futuremen and Ezra Gurney took off in it.

  “I’ll leave word at Uranus to send a relief ship here to you,” he told the other members of the scientific expedition in parting. “You’ll be able to finish investigating the ruins without fear of Titanian interference.”

  From Uranus, the Lightning flashed Sunward at the highest speed of which it was capable. Curt chafed at the slowness of the craft by comparison with his own superswift Comet. Every hour that passed saw Norton and Winters — and Joan Randall — plunging farther into the vast cosmic abyss toward distant Deneb.

  “Norton is the man behind this plot,” remarked the Brain. “I observed both men during our stay at Titania. Winters is an impractical visionary, a fanatic of science. But Norton is intelligent, unscrupulous and self-seeking. He was always trying to pry out valuable knowledge from us.”

  Captain Future nodded somberly. “He thinks that that ancient secret of artificial evolution would bring him riches and power. And it probably would — but at the cost of ruining our System’s civilization.”

  They swept finally past the green old world of Earth and rapidly approached its Moon. That barren, lifeless, airless sphere was home to the Futuremen.

  THEIR famed Moon-laboratory lay beneath the surface of Tycho crater. No more than a few minutes after landing the Lightning in the underground hangar designed for their own ship, they and old Ezra Gurney were entering the wonderful citadel of science that connected with it.

  “Here’s Eek and Oog, and at least they’re fat and happy,” said Otho as two small, dissimilar animals came gamboling comically toward them.

  The two little creatures were the mascots or pets of Grag and Otho, respectively. Eek was a gray, bearlike little moon-pup, while fat, solemn-eyed Oog was that queer species of animal known as a “meteor-mimic.”

  “Did you get lonesome, Eek, while you were penned up here with that nasty little pet of Otho’s?” Grag fondly inquired of his joyously-wriggling moon-pup.

  “What do you mean — my nasty little pet?” demanded Otho indignantly. “If that moon-pup just had a tenth of my Oog’s intelligence you’d feel fine.”

  “Cut your rockets and drop those mutts before I throw them both off the Moon,” exploded Captain Future. “There’s work to be done.”

  He led the way toward the big subterranean chamber that was the storeroom of the Moon-laboratory. Here were all kinds of spare equipment that the Futuremen bad prepared against emergency need.

  Included in the stores, was a full set of the massive generators which powered the vibration-drive of the Comet. Curt Newton began at once the toilsome task of installing them in the Lightning.

  His taut voice rapidly sketched plans. “We’ll tear out all the Lightning’s cyclotrons except the four rear ones. That’ll give us space in the cyc-room for the generators. We’ll have to dismount the rocket-tubes and rearrange them to fit a drive-ring over the stern.”

  The driving intensity of Captain Future goaded them all to the work. Mighty Grag hauled the massive, cylindrical generators into the cruiser, after room had been made for them. Curt Newton and Otho labored to prepare strong platforms and bolt the mechanisms into place. The Brain, deftly using his tractor-beams as hands, unerringly connected the complicated electric cables.

  Ezra Gurney watched the feverish toil. He had offered to help, but had been bluntly told that he would only be in the way.

  “Sure, I know,” drawled the old veteran, unoffended. “Give me a plain old-fashioned rocket-ship and I can tear her down or build her up again. But this newfangled vibration-drive of yours is out of my depth.”

  Captain Future and the Brain had invented the vibration-drive. It generated and projected from the stern of a ship, a flood of high-frequency electromagnetic vibrations so uniquely spaced that they hurled a craft through the ether at incredible speed.

  Velocities many times the velocity of light could be built up. This fact made possible voyages into the vastness of interstellar space outside our System. The Futuremen had made several such voyages, and other bold System navigators were lately venturing to the nearer stars.

  Only super-powerful generators such as the ones designed for the Comet could build up a space-eating speed great enough to permit a voyage to Deneb, six hundred and fifty light-years across the galaxy. But the Comet had been designed and specially strengthened to take the tremendous back-thrust of such a drive, and their present ship had not.

  “Shell crumple, I tell you,” Otho muttered pessimistically as they worked. “Her frame just won’t take the thrust. Shell fold up like a tin can when we try to use full velocity.”

  “Not if we put in extra thrust-girders to take the strain,” Captain Future said tensely. “She’s got to hold, do you hear?”

  His voice was raw, his face colorless from strain. It was not these two days and nights of incessant toil that had taken toll of Curt so much as his constant, gnawing fear for the girl he loved.

  Otho looked at him startled, and then with quick contrition: “Sure, she’ll hold all right, Chief. I was only kidding.”

  “No, you meant it, and we both know you were right,” Curt rasped. “There’s about one chance in two that the Lightning will hold up under the strain. But we have to take it.”

  The feverish toil drove swiftly to its conclusion. The drive-ring had been fitted over the stern of the cruiser, the new thrust-girders had been welded into place to brace the hull inside that ring, and the projector for the “cushion-stasis” had been installed in the cabin.

  CURT NEWTON wearily brushed back errant locks of red hair from his haggard face.

  “All set,” he told Ezra Gurney in tired tones. “Grag has checked the oxy-generators, rations and copper fuel. We’d better get aboard.”

  There had never been, even for a moment, any question about whether or not Ezra Gurney was going with them in this grim pursuit. The grizzled old veteran comrade of the Futuremen would have drawn his gun if they had attempted to leave him behind.

  Otho met them at the door of the cruiser. He was holding his fat, solemn-eyed little pet, and Grag’s mascot peered from behind him.

  “Chief, we can’t leave Oog and Eek behind,” Otho said anxiously. “We may be gone too long.”

  “All right, all right, take them if you must but don’t stop to talk about it now,” Curt snapped. “You checked the space-suits and spare tools and parts?”

  “Yes, they’re all ready,” retorted the android.

  “Then in with you. Come on, Ezra — we’re wasting time.”

  Captain Future’s feverish intensity hurried them all aboard. The lock of the cruiser was bolted and sealed. The oxygenerators started.

  Curt Newton hastily shouldered forward to the narrow control-room of the Lightning. He started the eyes droning, pulled back the space-stick as far as it would go, and pressed the cyc-pedal lightly.

  The Lightning rose from the floor of the underground hangar, riding the flaming blasts of its keel rocket-tubes. Photoelectric apparatus auto
matically swung open the great ceiling-doors of the hangar. The cruiser shot up vertically into the glare of the Moon’s surface.

  Curt Newton sent the cruiser darting away from the barren satellite with the full power of its rocket-tubes leaving a plume of fire behind it. They climbed steeply in space until they were well clear of the plane of the Solar System. Earth and Moon were now a large green ball and a small white one far underneath them.

  Captain Future swung the cruiser until its prow pointed toward the brilliant white star that shone out amid the great drifts of the galactic sky.

  “Stasis on!” he ordered sharply.

  Grag shut the switches of the projector in the cabin. A dim, almost invisible glow of force pervaded the whole ship.

  “Stasis on!” the huge robot reported.

  That dim glow of force was a “stasis”-producing field of energy which would cradle every atom of their bodies against the terrific pressure of acceleration that was soon to come.

  Curt Newton had cut the rocket-tubes completely. He touched a button. The massive generators of the vibration-drive began their deep drone. He waited until a dial showed them running at peak, and then partially opened the throttle that released the powerful vibrations from the drive-ring around the stem of the ship.

  The Lightning leaped forward in space with a velocity that would have made its namesake seem stationary. Cradled as they were in the “stasis” they could not feel the acceleration, but they could see through the heavy windows that the cruiser was flashing headlong from over the Solar System.

  “Half light-speed — three-quarters — one and a half,” read the Brain in his metallic voice from the instrument dial. His lens-like eyes turned questioningly to Curt. “You’re building her up fast, lad.”

  “She’ll take it,” Captain Future said between his teeth. “She may take it, but she’s doing plenty of groanin’ about it,” muttered the uneasy Ezra Gurney.

  The whole fabric of the cruiser was creaking and shuddering beneath the terrific reaction of the drive. The screek of grating metal came loudest from the heavy thrust-girders that braced the stern.