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

by Edmond Hamilton

  The girl examined the door, but it was of a shining metal that remained completely uncorroded by the ages that had passed since it was hung. She turned to the tiny window. It too offered no hope of escape. Its small square aperture had been closed by three vertical bars of the same rustless metal by the ancient builders, probably for safety’s sake. Whatever glass or similar material had covered the opening was no longer there.

  Joan Randall sat wearily down by the window. She looked down through the bars at the plaza and her spirits sank.

  “How will Curt ever follow this far in any other ship?” she asked herself.

  Darkness swept down upon the dead metropolis and two moons rose above the forest, casting a silver, pure light upon the dreamlike towers of the dead city.

  Joan Randall was not aware that the man Voories was on guard outside her door until she heard his rough voice challenging someone who approached. A moment later, the bar was lifted, and Philip Winters entered her prison.

  The little biologist looked as though he were suffering from shock. His thin face wore a sick pallor in the moonlight, and his hands were trembling.

  “I’ve come to tell you that you must give Norton the information he wants,” he stammered fearfully to Joan. “I shan’t be able to stop him from forcing it out of you. I would if I could, but I can’t.”

  “Then you haven’t learned anything about the artificial evolution secret from these savages?” Joan Randall asked.

  Winters shook his head. “No, no — these Manlings are only barbarians. They’ve been able to tell us little except that there have always been semi-human man-beasts on this world, and that there are great numbers of them in the forests.”

  “Doctor Winters, you’ve seen now the monstrous result of artificial evolution applied to humans,” Joan Randall said in earnest tones. “Do you still want to take such a secret back to our own System?”

  “No, I don’t,” confessed the little biologist, shaking. His voice was an agony of remorse. “I didn’t realize the hideous potentialities of such a power. But what can I do now? Norton’s resolve is unshaken.”

  “You could help me get out of here, and we could escape together in the Comet” Joan Randall proposed quickly.

  Winters was sweating with fear.

  “I’ll try — but I can’t guarantee anything,” he promised. “Norton would murder me in a minute if he suspected.”

  When the little biologist had left, Joan Randall felt new hope. Slim as was the chance for freedom, it had been enough to banish her despair.

  She waited tensely as the next few hours went by. The brawling, savage revelry below did not quiet down, nor did the biologist return.

  Finally she was startled to her feet by the sound of a rustling rush outside her door. She heard a low, muffled, choking cry from Voories, and the thud of a body falling to the floor.

  The bar was lifted, and her door was opened. With wild hope, Joan Randall turned toward it. Then she recoiled with a scream of terror.

  It was not the biologist who was standing in the dark doorway. It was a vague, monstrous figure out of a nightmare, a dark and unhuman devil’s-shape that was advancing toward her.

  Chapter 13: By Wings at Night

  PEERING out, Captain Future, crouching with Otho between the fierce man-tiger and the man-dog at the edge of the dead metropolis, felt a sudden electrifying thrill.

  “Look at the plaza away in the center of the city,” he told Otho. “Do you see it — something gleaming in the firelight? It’s the Comet.”

  “Chief, look — there’s Cole Norton now,” exclaimed Otho.

  Captain Future’s lean, crouching figure tensed as though to spring forward as he too descried the figure of the traitorous physicist.

  Norton had come out of the biggest tower, into the circle of the firelight. The traitor was accompanied by a tall Manling, to whom he seemed earnestly explaining something as he pointed toward the Comet.

  Presently, Norton and the barbarian went back into the tower. Curt Newton realized Norton had succeeded in making friends with these savages.

  “Do you suppose Joan’s in the Comet?” Otho asked.

  Captain Future shook his head. “I don’t think Norton would leave her in the ship. He’s aware she would be likely to escape in it.”

  “Then she must be held in that biggest tower somewhere,” exclaimed Otho.

  Curt Newton’s voice was metallic. “Yes. And I’m going in there and find her, and settle with Norton.”

  He was actually starting forward out of their concealment, drawing his proton-pistol, when Shih’s great paw caught and dragged him back.

  “There is a way you can get into the tower of the chieftain, unobserved,” Shih said rapidly. “Come back with me to the others.”

  Captain Future hesitated. His burning rage against Norton and Winters, his anxiety for Joan Randall and his strong desire to recover his ship, all impelled him to take any risks rather than delay.

  But Zur had seconded Shih’s appeal. Reluctantly, he crawled back through the thicket with the two strange creatures and Otho.

  They soon had returned to the moonlit glade in which Skeen and Golo waited with Ezra, Grag and the Brain. Curt Newton quickly explained to his comrades what they had discovered, and the need of his entering the city.

  “Skeen can take you into the tower of the Manling chieftain, from above,” Shih declared. “Can you not, Skeen?”

  The big man-condor nodded, unfolding his mighty wings in readiness for flight.

  “Holy sun-imps, he means that Skeen can fly with you over the city and down to that tower, Cap’n Future!” gasped Ezra.

  Captain Future instantly grasped the possibilities. He asked the man-condor, “Are you sure you can carry me?”

  Skeen smiled. “I have carried an injured clan-brother many times. I can bear your weight if it is not for too long.”

  “I shall go with you,” the Brain said coolly to Curt Newton. “You may need all the help you can get.”

  Skeen approached, grasped the belt of Captain Future’s space-jacket in his strong claws, and leaped upward. At the same moment his mighty wings thunderously threshed the air.

  Curt Newton felt himself rising swiftly. The wind of the great wings buffeted his face as he glanced down and saw the moonlit glade of giant trees dropping rapidly below them.

  They shot up into the full brilliance of the two moons. Skeen flew over the silvered roof of the forest, heading away from Raboon and climbing steadily. Curt Newton guessed that his bearer intended to gain altitude before approaching the city.

  Higher and higher flew the man-condor on tireless wings. Captain Future glimpsed the square, glittering shape of the Brain gliding close beside them as they climbed. Presently they were almost a mile above the surface of Aar.

  “It is high enough,” murmured the whistling voice of Skeen. “Now make no sound, clan-brother, for our danger begins.”

  HE HAD turned back toward Raboon. His broad wings were set now in fixed planes, and from that dizzy height he began descending in a long, smooth glide.

  Down through the chill air they rushed, the Brain still silently keeping pace nearby. With no other sound than the rustling rush of air past the great pinions, the Winged One swooped down toward the dead city.

  Curt Newton saw the tips of the triangular white towers directly beneath, and the tiny red fires of the Manlings on the ground far below. Soundlessly they dropped toward the truncated top of the tallest tower. And softly Skeen came to rest on that narrow space, and set Curt down.

  “We were not seen,” whispered the man-condor. “There would have been an alarm otherwise.”

  The Brain had dropped with them and was hovering beside them as Captain Future and the man-condor peered down at the fire-lit plaza far below.

  Curt Newton turned toward the stair leading downward into the giant structure.

  “You had better wait here, Skeen,” he told the man-condor. “Your wings would not be of much use down inside
the building, if we’re discovered.”

  “I go with you, clan-brother,” said Skeen quietly. “Are you not working for the redemption of all our race?”

  Captain Future felt a pang of apprehension as he realized how whole-souledly the man-beasts were counting on him to restore their race to full humanity.

  Suppose, even if he finally found the Chamber Of Life, he could not do it? Suppose the secret power of artificial evolution could not be used to right that ancient wrong, and he had to disappoint these loyal creatures?

  Curt Newton forced down that apprehension and started for the stair. It was no time now to worry about the future — the present was perilous enough.

  “Do the Manlings occupy none but the lowest level of these towers?” he whispered to the man-condor as they descended the steps.

  “They rarely venture into the upper levels,” Skeen murmured. “They think them haunted by the ghosts of the dead Ancients.”

  The stair was in tenebrous darkness, and Curt Newton felt rather than saw his way. His feet softly crunched dried leaves and other debris that the wind had brought into the tower. The Brain glided noiselessly at his side, while the great man-condor followed silently with his wings folded across his back.

  They came down thus into the highest level of apartments in the tower. It was a dusty labyrinth of corridors and chambers, eerily illuminated by bars of silver moonlight from the windows whose glass had long ago been destroyed. Curt Newton looked around, his proton-pistol in his hand.

  He spotted the continuation of the stair. They went on down, through level after level of the stupendous tower — through moon-shot halls and rooms where the dust of ages lay thick upon the wrecks of ancient furniture or mechanisms and upon the wonderful murals of the Ancients.

  In other circumstances, Captain Future would have given half a lifetime to examine these mysterious relics of the mighty race who had been the ancestors of his own and every other human race in the galaxy. But his pressing anxiety for Joan Randall drove scientific speculation from his mind.

  Curt Newton’s legs were tired from descending countless steps, and considerable time had passed, before they began to approach the lowest levels.

  “Do you hear them?” whispered Curt Newton. “Quiet, now — you keep behind me, Skeen.”

  They could now hear the riot of savage revelry that came from the Manlings feasting in the lowest level of the tower. Their nerves were strung tensely as they went down another stairway, to the second level.

  Captain Future froze abruptly in the moonlight at the foot of the stair. Further along the corridor, he had glimpsed the hulking figure of a big, armed Earthman standing guard outside a barred door.

  “One of Norton’s men — and he must be standing guard over Joan,” Curt Newton thought instantly. “If I can get him —”

  He meant to steal forward, strike down the unsuspecting Earthman, and get Joan Randall out without the knowledge of those whom he could hear below.

  CURT NEWTON never had a chance to carry out his intention. He had stopped so suddenly that Skeen, behind him, bumped into him. The man-condor threshed his wings half-open in recovering his balance.

  The hulking Earthman swung around at the sound. He was clear in the bright moonlight from the tall, open windows along the corridor, raising his atom-pistol in alarm.

  Captain Future could have shot before the other. But to do so was to betray their presence to those below. He took a gambler’s chance. He flung his proton-pistol at the Earthman’s head with a lightning movement.

  “What —” the hulking guard started to exclaim.

  The butt of the flying weapon hit his forehead and he collapsed with a groan.

  Curt Newton plunged down the moonlit corridor on flying feet, and the big man-condor was beside him in a rustling rush as fast as his own.

  The hulking figure over which Curt bent was only half-stunned. Groping at the man’s neck, Curt Newton called over his shoulder.

  “Unbar that door and get Joan out while I fix this fellow,” he said.

  His fingers were pressing into the neck nerve-centers of the semi-stunned guard, a pressure that would leave him unconscious for hours. He did not realize the fatal mistake he made in letting Skeen unbar the door.

  For as the great man-condor lifted the bar and opened the door, the girl prisoned inside came running forward. Then as she glimpsed the towering, winged, weird shape of Skeen in the doorway, she uttered an involuntary cry of horror.

  “Joan, it’s us Futuremen!” Curt Newton said frantically. “Quiet!”

  His warning came too late. Joan Randall’s single scream had been followed instantly by shouts of alarm from the lower level.

  A horde of Manlings poured up the stairs into the moonlit corridor. As he scrabbled vainly on the dark floor for his lost proton-pistol, Captain Future recognized Cole Norton’s tall figure in the forefront of the horde.

  He and his friends were hopelessly trapped in the corridor, for the barbarian tribesmen had come upstairs at both ends of it.

  “Simon — Skeen — the window!” Yelled Curt Newton. “Get away!”

  “We’ll not leave you, clan-brother,” cried the great man-condor, starting toward Curt Newton and Joan.

  “Go, before they have you too,” shouted Captain Future.

  As the words left his lips, he was borne to the floor by the yelling horde of Manlings.

  He fought fiercely, still struggling to find his gun on the floor. He glimpsed Skeen and the Brain, who apparently now realized the hopelessness of joining him, plunging toward the tall open windows in the side of the hall.

  “Don’t let those two escape,” yelled Cole Norton.

  The crash of Norton’s atom-gun synchronized with the twang of the Manlings’ bow-guns releasing their pointed metal darts at the two plunging figures.

  But Skeen and Simon had already hurled themselves through the big glass-less window into the outer night. The thresh of wings, swiftly receding, told that the man-condor and the Brain had made good their escape.

  Curt Newton heard the sound only vaguely through the tumult that raged around him as he fought. He had given up the vain search for his proton-pistol and his clenched fists smashed at his Manling attackers.

  He was fighting without a chance of victory. He knew it as more of the yelling tribesmen piled upon him. Crushed by their weight, he felt his wrists savagely bound by strips of hide. Then, staggering and panting, he was hauled furiously to his feet.

  “It’s Captain Future!” yelled Cole Norton, thunderstruck as he glimpsed Curt Newton’s face in the moonlight. “So I was right when I thought that looked like the Brain who got away through the window with the other.”

  “Captain Future?” echoed the Martian, Kul Kan, fearfully. “Gods of Mars, those Futuremen are devils. How could they follow us across the whole galaxy so swiftly? We’ve only been on this world a day, ourselves.”

  “I don’t understand myself how they could do it, when there’s no other ship as fast as the Comet,” muttered Norton. “We wasted a lot of time decelerating speed as we approached Deneb. That helped them overtake us.”

  Curt Newton knew that that was indeed the explanation. His own disastrously delayed deceleration, which had wrecked his cruiser, had at least permitted him to reach this world only a few hours after Norton’s party.

  MANLING warriors with flaring torches had raced up into the corridor, as the alarm increased. At their head was the chieftain, Osorkon.

  “That was one of the Clan of the winged Ones who escaped,” Osorkon cried to Norton. He stared at Curt Newton. “Who is this?”

  “He is my worst enemy,” Norton said rapidly. “He came here to prevent us from reaching the Chamber of Life.”

  Captain Future felt surprised. Then — Norton had told the Manling chieftain the purpose of his quest here, and was in alliance with him?

  Curt Newton looked at the traitorous physicist with a flame in his gray eyes.

  “Norton, you left us in a dea
th-trap on Uranus’ moon, and you stole our ship,” he said. “I might forgive you those things. But you brought Joan into this hell’s-nest of peril. I intend to kill you for that.”

  Norton met his fiery gaze without fright. “You’re hardly in a position to talk about what you’ll do to me, Future,” he reminded Curt Newton coolly.

  Joan Randall cried to Captain Future through the tribesmen who held them apart. “Curt, I knew you’d follow. I did everything I could to prevent them from reaching Deneb, but I failed.”

  The love and confidence in her eyes made Captain Future groan inwardly. It was he who had failed, he thought bitterly.

  Philip Winters had pushed through the tense throng. The little biologist stared with ludicrous amazement at Curt Newton.

  “The Futuremen here at Deneb!” he gasped.

  Osorkon, his cunning eyes flashing alarm, was exclaiming to Norton, “These enemies of yours must have made alliance with the wild Clans — the man-beasts of the forest. One of the Winged Ones was here with them. You ought to kill this man at once.”

  Chah Har, Norton’s fat Uranian henchman, nodded vigorous agreement. “That native’s right, Norton. There’s no safety for us while Captain Future lives.”

  Cole Norton’s hard voice rose to dominate the bloodthirsty crew. “I’m not killing Captain Future — at least not just yet. I’ve good reasons. Before we do anything else, we’re going to get the secret of the Chamber of Life without any more delay.”

  He pointed harshly at Joan. “Bring the girl downstairs. She’s going to talk, without any further stalling. Keep Future up here and you and Kul Kan stand guard over him, Chah Har.”

  They had tied Curt’s ankles as well as his wrists. He made a furious effort to plunge forward as the Manlings dragged Joan with them. But the effort was hopeless, with the Uranian and Martian holding him.