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

by Edmond Hamilton

  Captain Future waited in a fever of impatience for the return of his flying scouts. The twilight had deepened to darkness, and the looming crystal peaks were like vague, shimmering ghosts in the obscurity.

  Zur turned and faced the east. The man-dog raised his head in a low, soft howling cry.

  “The moons are rising.”

  Up from the horizon drifted the two brilliant satellites. The silver light of the two moons poured across the inky waves of the heaving ocean behind them and struck the Crystal Mountains. The shimmering peaks were instantly transformed to glory.

  “Skeen is returning,” warned Shih.

  Both Skeen and the Brain were gliding back down through the moonlight.

  “We couldn’t spot the Comet anywhere in these mountains,” reported Simon. “Norton isn’t here.”

  A chill invaded Captain Future’s heart. The information was catastrophic, but he rallied his stubborn will against the hopelessness that threatened to conquer him.

  “Norton must still be here,” he cried. “He couldn’t have found the Chamber of Life so quickly.”

  “No, lad, the Comet is not here,” concurred the Brain. Simon added, “I did spot an octahedral peak that must be Prism Peak.”

  “Where is it?” Captain Future asked quickly.

  “A mile or more west of here, near the shore of the sea.”

  “We’re going there,” Curt Newton said. “If that is where the Chamber of Life lies, we can soon find out whether or not Norton has been there and gone with the secret.”

  SKEEN and Simon led the way westward through the moonlit diamond peaks. It was a journey that in other circumstances would have entranced them with rapt wonder.

  But Captain Future was too weighted by foreboding to note the weird beauty of the scene.

  “There’s the peak I saw,” rasped the Brain, from beside him.

  Ahead of them loomed one of the crystalline peaks that was octahedral in shape, its one apex soaring into the sky and its other buried in the ground. Like a colossal diamond it glittered, towering above the surrounding crystalline formations.

  “It must be Prism Peak,” Curt Newton declared, as they hurried onward with accelerated pace. “It’s the only octahedral one we’ve found. An octahedral prism would of all shapes best serve to focus cosmic radiation, and focused cosmic radiation was the agent employed to alter the gene-patterns of living creatures and thus mutate them into new species.”

  They reached the base of the towering crystal, whose glittering sides shelved out and upward over their heads.

  Golo looked up in awe and wonder. “Then this was the place where long ago our ancestors were made into our semi-human races?”

  “I think so,” Curt Newton said. “The inscription said that the Chamber of Life lies beneath Prism Peak. There must be some way under it.”

  “Chief, look at this,” called out Otho.

  They hurried to the android. He had been inspecting the shelving base of the gigantic crystal. He pointed at the slanting, gleaming cliff that leaned out over them.

  There was the outline of a door in the glittering rock, a ten-foot high portal. It was no more than a thin, almost imperceptible crack in the solid mountain. There was nothing else, except a curious raised pattern of sixty-four tiny studs in the cliff beside that portal.

  Here was the entrance to the fabulous Chamber of Life!

  Chapter 18: Hope for Man-Beasts

  EAGERLY Captain Future pressed the studs, first one by one, then in different combinations, hoping to open the portal. Nothing happened.

  “We do not know the combination,” rasped the Brain. “And the possible combinations are almost unlimited in number.”

  Curt Newton stepped back. He looked up at the towering planes of the eight-faceted peak, his grey eyes brilliant with excitement.

  “Whoever devised this door and lock, did so for one purpose — to keep chance meddlers out of the Chamber of Life,” he said. “There can be no doubt from what we read of the ancient records, that those who found the secret of artificial evolution wished to preserve it here until the civil strife of this world was over and the secret could be used again in an intelligent way.”

  “What are you gettin’ at? What’s that got to do with this lock?” asked Ezra Gurney.

  “Just this — whoever locked up the Chamber of Life would want to make sure that only intelligent seekers could open it,” Captain Future pointed out. “So they would devise a lock which could only be opened by someone well acquainted with scientific principles.”

  “You mean that the lock’s combination is built upon a scientific formula of some kind?” Joan Randall exclaimed.

  “A mathematical formula, if I’m right,” he replied. “There are sixty-four studs. I think the combination to be used on them hinges upon the geometrical relation between the eight facets of the peak itself.”

  He went further back, staring up at the moonlit peak and keenly estimating measurements and ratios to evolve the mathematical formula that would express the relationship of the eight sides.

  But it was the Brain who calculated the formula first. Simon was unmatchable in abstruse scientific calculation.

  He repeated the formula to Curt Newton and Captain Future nodded.

  “I think that will do it,” he said. “We’ll soon find out.”

  He pressed the studs in the sequence determined by that formula. As he pressed the last of them, there was a sighing sound. A tall, wide section of the smooth cliff sank inward. The portal had opened.

  They looked into a high, gleaming corridor that ran straight into the heart of the base of Prism Peak.

  “The Chamber of Life, open to us at last,” breathed Joan Randall.

  “We’ll soon find out if Norton has been ahead of us,” exclaimed Captain Future, racing into the corridor.

  They all followed him excitedly. This high passageway was shimmeringly illuminated by the brilliant moonlight refracted into it through the semi-transparent crystalline rock. It ran straight inward.

  It suddenly debouched into a big domed hall that had been carved from the heart of the crystalline mountain. The domed chamber was six hundred feet in diameter and seemed almost as high.

  It was a place of moon-magic. The glittering walls curved gently up toward the lofty ceiling of the dome. In that ceiling was set a cluster of hundreds of small lenses, through which curdled moonlight seemed to flow. It was as though they stood in the brilliant heart of a gigantic diamond.

  “The Chamber of Life!” whispered Ezra Gurney, awe upon his wrinkled face.

  “The place where our human ancestors were made into semi-human races,” cried Shih.

  For around this glittering, incredible hall there stood towering machines and instruments of utterly unfamiliar design and purpose. Instruments of the super-science of the ancient Denebians these were, they knew.

  And there was a stairway at one side, leading down into an even vaster hollow space beneath the Chamber of Life. They could glimpse, down there, a small, spindle-shaped space-ship, hangared here inside Prism Peak.

  Curt Newton pointed upward, his face flaming with excitement.

  “Look at those lenses in the ceiling, Simon,” he cried. “They must have been used to concentrate the cosmic radiation collected by Prism Peak. Our guess was right. That is how the Ancients achieved artificial evolution.”

  HIS voice rang with thankful triumph through the moon-vague diamond chamber. “And Cole Norton has not been here, for nothing here has been disturbed. He couldn’t find it!”

  “Chief,” called Otho from the side of the chamber. “Look at this.”

  They hastened toward him across the smooth floor. And all of them were stunned by the thing at which the android pointed.

  It was a high, square block of silvery metal. Upon it rested two crystal caskets. In each casket lay a human body.

  They were a man and a woman. But no such man or woman as Captain Future had ever encountered in any of the worlds of the vast u
niverse of stars.

  Their skins were of warm golden color, and their hair a metallic yellow. They wore simple, knee-length garments that appeared woven of iridescent metal and that flashed back the vague light brilliantly.

  The man’s face was aquiline, handsome, but with the stamp of an intelligence and authority that indicated middle age. Though he lay with eyes closed, the power and intellect in that golden face were overwhelming. The woman, whose long yellow hair lay curled about her shoulders, had the same intellectual power in the chiseled beauty of her face.

  “The Ancients!” came the hoarse, deep exclamation of Golo. “The true Ancients, of long ago, who built this place.”

  Joan Randall clutched Curt Newton’s sleeve. “Curt, remember the inscription-clue! ‘— seek not the Chamber of Life, for it is guarded by the undying.’ ”

  “The, undying?” cried Ezra. “But these two are dead and have been dead for ages?”

  Captain Future did not answer. He had glimpsed, upon the side of the silver block some four feet from the floor, an inconspicuous lever.

  His brain rocked to stupefying revelation as he guessed at last the whole answer to the age-old mystery of the Ancients. Their origin in the so-called Darkness, their traditional ability to remain undying, the caskets before him — they all added up to only one possible solution.

  “The truth of this is beyond our dreams,” cried Curt Newton. “There’s a wonder here that our science has never envisioned. Thank the stars that Cole Norton didn’t find this!”

  A cool voice rang across the glittering domed Chamber from behind them.

  “You’re a little premature in your thankfulness, Future. Don’t move, any of you!”

  Unperceived by any of them in their fascinated inspection of the caskets, Cole Norton and the hulking Voories, and Osorkon and his savage Manlings had entered the Chamber from the corridor.

  Norton and his hulking followers held the heaviest proton-guns of the Comet’s equipment in their hands, covering Curt Newton and all his party. Those rifle-like weapons could blast them all with one discharge of energy. And Norton’s hard, deadly face showed that he was ready to fire.

  Curt Newton knew that they were looking death in the face. There was no mercy in Norton’s eyes. He wondered momentarily that the traitor had not slain them without a word of warning — until he realized that Norton wished to take no chance of destroying the scientific secrets in this place by the blast of those terrible weapons.

  The transition from triumph to despair was so abrupt Captain Future almost obeyed the instinct to snatch his proton-pistol from its holster. Yet his first movement would depress Norton’s finger on the trigger and destroy them all.

  A low, terrible growl was issuing from the throat of Shih, beside him. Curt Newton knew that the fierce man-tiger was gathering to spring. And that spring would signal a blast of energy that would annihilate them all.

  “That girl very cleverly withheld the vital part of the clue to this Chamber’s location,” Cole Norton was saying. “When I had searched these mountains without success, I decided to wait and let you lead me to the Chamber of Life, Future.

  “I knew you’d soon be here. So we hid your ship in a cleft in which it could not be spotted, and waited and watched the sea. When we saw you coming, we concealed ourselves and then trailed you here.”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE’S desperate mind had hit upon the one possibility left him. He took a gambler’s chance that was based upon nothing but his own fantastic theory about the events of ages ago.

  He dared not move his hands an inch, without inviting the destroying blast. But his back was against the silver block on which the twin caskets rested. The little lever in that block was nudging his spine.

  Curt Newton shifted his body imperceptibly, pressing it against that lever. He felt his movement drag the lever sidewise in its slot. And nothing happened.

  “Now,” Cole Norton said coolly, “Osorkon will take your weapons and you will march outside. I beg of you not to be foolish enough to resist.”

  Outside was death! Curt Newton knew it beyond doubt — knew that as soon as they had left the Chamber of Life, they would be blasted down.

  Osorkon took a step forward, doubtfully eyeing the blazing-eyed man-beasts. Curt Newton was aware of Shih bunching to spring at the hated Manling chieftain.

  He felt in that moment a curious humming vibration inside the block behind his back. Wild hope soared in him.

  Then it happened. There was a low sighing sound from above and behind him, from the two caskets upon the silver block.

  Cole Norton’s watchful gaze shifted for a moment above Curt Newton’s head, to the caskets. The physicist’s eyes bulged with incredulous emotion, his face froze.

  “The Ancients,” screamed Osorkon, his yellow face a mask of horror.

  Only for that one instant did Norton lose his iron control and take his gaze from Captain Future. But Curt Newton had waited for that moment. His hand dipped to his proton-pistol with the speed of light.

  Norton glimpsed the movement. His eyes came back to Curt, and the heavy weapon that had sagged a little in his frozen hands jerked up again.

  But too late. Curt Newton pressed the trigger as his proton-pistol came clear of its holster. The bright, thin beam drove through Norton’s heart, and then leaped like a flash of lightning to strike the hulking Voories in his tracks.

  “The Ancients,” Osorkon and the other Manlings were screaming, as they turned and ran in mad terror out through the corridor.

  A terrible, snarling roar and a high, yelping cry — and the tawny length of Shih and the shaggy figure of Zur hurtled after the fleeing men.

  Joan Randall was clinging wildly to Captain Future, was shaking violently, her face deathly as she looked back upward.

  “Curt,” she choked, pointing to the top of the block.

  Curt Newton knew what he would see as he swung around, knew what it was that had distracted Norton and his party for that fatal instant, that had frozen the Futuremen and Ezra in petrified awe.

  The covers of the crystal caskets had slid aside. And the golden-skinned man and woman who had lain in them were rising to their feet!

  “They’re comin’ to life!” stammered Ezra Gurney. “Gods of space, it can’t be happenin’.”

  “Steady,” Captain Future called, though he himself was quivering with excitement. “They were only in suspended animation. I had figured that, and had guessed that the lever was to start the mechanism that would wake them from the trance. That’s why I took a chance on waking them. It was the only way to distract Norton.”

  The golden man and woman had glimpsed Curt Newton’s group. Instantly, the hand of the man made a swift gesture. A ringlike instrument upon his hand flashed.

  And Captain Future and all his companions froze motionless, as though gripped by an unseen force. They could move no muscle.

  The golden man came down from the block, with the woman behind him. He approached Curt Newton, and looked steadily into his face.

  The deep, dark eyes of the awakened sleeper seemed to probe into Captain Future’s inmost thoughts. He felt the impact of a hypnotic power that could read his mind like an open book.

  Then the stern golden face relaxed. He made another curious gesture with the hand that wore that curious little instrument. And the numbing force that had gripped Curt Newton’s group was dissolved.

  QUIETLY the man spoke, in the pure form of the ancient language of Deneb.

  “Have no fear, I have read in your mind that you came not to this Chamber of Life for evil, but to prevent evil.”

  Curt Newton tried to speak steadily.

  “You two are the undying — the two Ancients who long ago created these semi-human races?” he inquired.

  The golden man looked at him. And there was a deep, strange sorrow and pity in his eyes as he gazed at the man-horse and at Shih and Zur, who had returned with blazing eyes into the great hall.

  “We are not undying, though we can halt
our life-processes for long intervals of sleep,” he said. “But we are those who created the new races of humans, yes. That was our sin, and long we have waited to undo it.”

  He spoke quietly, sorrowfully.

  “I am Khor,” he said. “I and my mate, Ata, were great scientists in the days of Deneb’s greatest glory — the days when the pioneering ships of our mighty civilization were colonizing all the galaxy. We dreamed of using artificial evolution to create new human species who could adapt themselves more easily to the colonizing of alien worlds.

  “We planned to use the powers of cosmic radiation to alter the pattern of the human genes, and thus produce controlled new mutations. This gigantic prism-mountain is a natural collector of the cosmic radiation. Beneath it, we hollowed out this Chamber in which we used the focused radiation upon human subjects to alter the gene-patterns and produce new and different humans.

  “But our plans were twisted to purposes of evil. There were those among our rulers who wished to have wholly new semi-human peoples who would be fitted for specialized tasks and who could be used as slaves. They induced us to create such semi-human man-beasts, hiding their real purpose from us and assuring us that these half-human races were intended for the colonizing of distant and difficult worlds.

  “Too late, Ata and I learned that the man-beasts we had created were being bred for use as slaves. We recoiled with horror from what our science had wrought. And half the people in our Denebian civilization shrank with equal horror from it. War broke out between our people over the issue. And that dire civil war not only wrecked Denebian civilization but was also the wreck of the great cosmic empire which had been established throughout the galaxy.

  “Ata and I wished to undo our work, but the war raged on unheeding to us. Finally, we retired into this Chamber of Life, and entered the sleep of suspended animation whose secret has been known to my people since they first came here from the Darkness. We hoped that when our people finally came to their senses and the war had ended, they would come and awake us and ask us to undo the evil and make the man-beast races human again.