Joan decided to lose no more time. She entered a thicket of giant, waving sea-grasses which she knew concealed her completely. At once, she turned off her belt-light. And then she moved as rapidly as possible through the dusky undersea forest in the direction of the ship.
She was now out of sight of Su Thuar’s light, and knew that she had given the Venusian the slip. Jim Willard’s voice called her anxiously, but she did not answer. Presently the calls faded away, indicating that she was now out of range of the short-radius telaudio.
Joan Randall hurried on through the dusky undersea forest. The Perseus was still at least a mile and a half away, and she had wasted nearly an hour in the pretended search and in getting away from the Venusian. She must hurry if she was to have any chance of joining Curt Newton and Simon Wright in the ship before they attempted their daring expedient. Shoals of brilliant solar-fish rushed away from her through the waving polyps. The groping tentacle-like arm of a hydra-polyp wrapped around her arm once, but she tore it loose without difficulty and stumbled on through the ooze.
She shrank back suddenly as a huge, black turtle-like creature rose in the shadowy waters ahead of her. Then she laughed shakily to herself. It was only one of the big, harmless “breathers,” rising from its burrow on one of its endless trips to the surface to refill its lung-sacs with air.
“I suppose Curt will be angry when I show up to help him,” she thought a little apprehensively. “But he might as well learn right now that I’m in on this case with him.” She wondered if Captain Future’s brain-scanner would work. She had unlimited faith in the wizard mastery of science of Newton and the Brain. Yet, to snatch a man’s secret thoughts from his mind —
Joan Randall suddenly stopped in alarm. The air inside her helmet was suddenly becoming thick and foul.
“The oxygen-tube must be clogged,” she thought quickly, and rapped sharply on the aluminoy tank of compressed oxygen at her belt. There was no resulting flow of purified air. But her rapping did have an effect that dismayed her.
The oxygen-gauge on the side of the tank had shown twenty hours’ supply of the gas remaining to her. But when she rapped the tank, the needle of the gauge suddenly swung jerkily to “Empty.”
“But it can’t be empty,” she thought bewilderedly. “I’ve only been out here in this suit a couple of hours.”
She hammered anxiously at the tank. There was no response. The needle remained at “Empty.” And every moment now, the air inside her helmet was becoming more hot and unbreathable.
Joan came to an appalling realization. The tank had been tampered with! It had been emptied of all but a couple of hours’ supply of oxygen, and the gauge had been set to show “Full.”
“Su Thuar,” she exclaimed. “He did that before we left the ship. That’s the way Valdane worked out to get rid of me.”
SHE understood with terrible clarity now, why the Venusian had made no attempt to harm her. Su Thuar hadn’t needed to. All he had had to do was to wait till her oxygen ran out and she died from asphyxiation. He had trailed her merely to make certain that happened.
Joan’s head was already reeling from the lack of pure air. Since the processes of oxygenation and purification had stopped, she was breathing the air in her suit over and over. In a very few minutes, she must lose consciousness and perish from asphyxiation.
She called desperately to Curt Newton. There was no answer. He was out of telaudio range of her, ahead.
“I can’t make it to the ship,” she thought wildly. “And that’s the only possible chance —”
The Perseus was still more than a mile away in the submarine forest. There alone, was hope of life. And she could never reach it. Death stared Joan Randall in the face. She would perish in the next few moments, unless she found air.
Find air here at the bottom of the sea? It seemed a bitter mockery to ask the question. Then into her reeling mind came sudden remembrance. There was a tiny bit of air at the bottom of the Neptunian sea, in certain places. She had passed one of those places only a few minutes before.
Joan Randall turned and staggered back through the polyp-forest the way she had come. Her brain was spinning from lack of oxygen, and her blood pounded in her temples. She flashed on her belt-light, desperately searching. Then she saw what she was seeking.
It was the “breather’s” burrow which she had passed shortly before, from which the creature had risen. It was no more than a wide, round tunnel down into the floor of the sea. That dark, gaping passage seemed a fearsome place to enter. But Joan Randall knew it was her only chance of living a little longer. She dropped down into the black opening.
The tunnel which the big, turtle-like “breather” had burrowed went down through ooze and then through soft coral. It sank into the coral for twenty feet, then turned and ran horizontally, then rose again.
Joan Randall, gasping and only half-conscious from the roaring in her ears, scrambled up the last section of the queer tunnel. She emerged into the big, hollow pocket in the coral that was the “breather’s” home. This pocket was filled, not with water, but with air! A bubble of air trapped here at the bottom of the sea.
The “breathers” were air-breathing sea-creatures, like the whales of Earth. Survivals of former Neptunian land-life, Curt Newton had told her, who had adapted themselves to the sea when it covered all eroded Neptune. A grotesque wonder of planetary biology.
The creatures, on each of their trips to the surface, could store their lungsacs with enough air for many hours of life underwater. And they could bring air down in their lung-sacs to the cunningly excavated burrows in which it remained trapped, to furnish oxygen to the young of the species who could not yet ascend to the surface.
Joan was nearly unconscious as she clambered up from the water into this dark, air-filled pocket. Her arms seemed leaden and useless as she tried to unfasten her helmet. Her lungs were on fire.
Then she got the helmet off. And air — hot, thick, fishy-smelling but still blessed air — rushed into her nostrils. Her head cleared a little as she gulped in the air. It was highly compressed by the pressure of the waters that trapped it here. It made her lungs labor to breathe it, but her gasping ceased.
Joan flashed her light around. The burrow was like a big wet cavern of dark coral. Half its floor was water, and the other half was a slightly raised ledge upon which she had pulled herself.
She discovered that she shared the ledge with a brood of five young “breathers.” Looking much like big black turtles with soft skin backs instead of shells, they blinked at her light solemnly.
“What a place,” she thought, with a little shudder. “I’ve got to get out of here somehow.”
She tried the telaudio in her helmet, calling again. But there was still no answer. The girl began to feel desperate. The air in this pocket would not last her for many hours. And there was no possible way of using it to replenish her oxygen tank so that she could escape from here.
Her senses swam from the thick, fishy odor. She had a chill realization of the hopelessness of her situation. Even if Curt Newton searched for her, how would he ever find her in this place?
She had faced numberless perils before this, but here alone, helpless, in a strange world — her senses began to reel.
Chapter 10: Scientific Miracle
FLIGHT could not save him, Captain Future instantly had realized an hour before, as the “swallower” rushed at him. These enormous, disk-shaped white monsters of the depths could flap through the water at a speed very much faster than any man could run.
Neither could he kill the creature. His only weapon was the futile stage-pistol at his belt, a mock-weapon which could fire nothing but low-powered energy flashes that would look like atomic bolts in a telepicture.
Curt Newton acted more by instinct rather than by design. The “swallower” was already poised above him like a dreadful white cloud. The creature would drop down, wrap its vast, flexible body around him, and then crush him into a pulp to be ingested at its leisure.<
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Newton flung himself backward, against the slimy trunk of one of the big polyp-trees. It would at least make it more difficult for the beast to seize him, he thought.
“If I just had a real atom-gun for one minute!” he thought desperately.
Next moment, the enormous flat mass of the “swallower” whipped around the whole polyp-tree. Captain Future was crushed against the slimy trunk of the semi-animal growth by the pressure. He fought to free himself from that dreadful grip. It had not yet compressed upon him with full power, for the “swallower” was impeded in its contraction by the stiff polypous branches.
Newton found it impossible to work his way downward out of the remorseless grasp. It was only a matter of minutes until the full pressure would crack his sea-suit and helmet like an egg-shell.
With a wild idea in mind; he squirmed upward. He got his head and one arm up out of the grip of the contracting white body, but could get no further. Next moment, Curt Newton was hurled head over heels through the water by a mad, convulsive spasm of action on the part of the “swallower.” The blinded monster was threshing the waters in crazy fury.
Hastily picking himself up from the ooze into which he had fallen, Newton scrambled away through the polyp forest. He breathed in shaky relief when he had left all sight of the raging monster behind.
“That would be one for Jeff Lewis’ picture,” he thought. “Fighting a ‘swallower’ with a stage-pistol. But he’d say it was too crazy.”
He plunged on through the shadowy submarine forest. Soon he had come within sight of the brightly shining lights of the Perseus.
Newton carefully detoured to approach the resting ship from the tail, so that he would not be seen from inside it. He clambered through the ooze beneath the projecting tail of the craft, until he reached the little aft emergency air-lock. It was open, and he slipped inside and then rapped softly on the inner door in an agreed signal. There was a low humming of power, and the outer door slid shut and pumps rapidly expelled the water.
The inner door opened. And beyond it, inside the deserted keel passageway of the ship, poised the waiting shape of the Brain. Curt Newton hastily shed his wet seasuit, and strode to the side of his waiting comrade.
Simon Wright was holding a small, cube-shaped apparatus from which extended two insulated cables that ended in flat coils.
“You prepared a gas-tube as we planned?” Curt Newton asked in a rapid whisper, without further greeting.
Simon Wright handed him a silver tube, with a trigger at one end.
“Yes, it wasn’t hard. I synthesized the sleep-gas from rocket-fuel elements. Valdane is in his suite now with Kin Kurd. But the man Rosson is on guard outside it.”
“You bring the brain-scanner,” Captain Future said quickly. “Remember, I mustn’t be seen or the whole game is up.”
TAKING infinite care to avoid being sighted by anyone in the ship, the gliding Brain and he made their way up through the little-used aft passages to the middle deck. He peered around the corner into the main mid-deck corridor. Rosson, Valdane’s tough-looking Earthman satellite, was again lounging alertly outside his employer’s door. Captain Future raised and aimed the gas-tube silently. He depressed its trigger briefly. A tiny cloud of almost colorless gas shot from it and hit Rosson’s face. The tough Earthman sank to the floor.
Curt Newton now raced down the corridor, the Brain close behind. He listened for a moment at the door. A vague murmur of voices came from inside. Curt Newton applied the end of his gas-tube to the keyhole of the door. He depressed the trigger, holding it down so that the full charge of compressed sleep-gas would enter the rooms beyond.
He heard the beginning of an alarmed exclamation — then the thump and thud of two falling bodies. Instantly Captain Future was deftly working with the lock of the door. The door clicked open. He dragged the senseless form of Rosson swiftly inside with them as he and the Brain entered.
Jon Valdane and Kin Kurd lay unconscious. The sleep-gas had already been carried away by the repaired ventilation system, but it had done its work.
“Close the door, Simon,” Captain Future directed as he bent over the prostrate figure of Jon Valdane with the brain-scanner.
Carefully, Curt Newton strapped the two flat little induction-coils of the apparatus to Valdane’s head, so that one of the coils lay flat against each of the financier’s temples. He checked the cables leading from the coils to the machine. Then he snapped a switch and carefully turned a rheostat on the front panel of the apparatus. “There won’t be anything selective about this,” Curt Newton muttered as he waited. “But if we’re lucky, we’ll pick up enough from Valdane’s mind to enlighten us about his plans.”
“We haven’t unlimited time,” warned Simon Wright. “If some of Valdane’s men come here —”
He left the idea unfinished. For now, out of the little loud-speaker attached to the apparatus, a monotonous voice was speaking.
It was an artificially articulated “voder” voice. And what it was speaking were thoughts! The thoughts and memories of the unconscious Jon Valdane were being detected by the delicate induction coils of this incredible instrument, and translated artificially into intelligible speech.
“— must be powerful,” the machine was saying monotonously. “To be powerful, I must be rich. It is my only way of excelling. I —”
“Just subconscious stuff,” muttered Captain Future. He turned the rheostat a trifle. “We’ve got to pick up his recent memories.”
Two wizards of dark, unfathomable science he and Simon Wright seemed, as they crouched tensely listening to their machine drag the inmost mental secrets from the senseless man. Yet this thing which he and Simon Wright had years ago invented was based upon simple scientific principles.
Their brain-scanner was simply an advanced development of experiments that were very old. Long ago, the Harvard scientists of Earth had developed the electro-encephalograph which picked up the almost imperceptible electric currents of the brain which are the concomitant of thought. Those old scientists had been able only to record the thought-currents by the bobbing of a needle. Captain Future and the Brain had succeeded in translating them into speech.
“— with the Stygians,” the flat voice was saying. “They wouldn’t grant us the diamond concession. Only one way to get it from them —”
“This is what we want, Simon,” Curt Newton exclaimed eagerly. “Valdane’s thought a lot recently about his Stygian plan. If we can piece together enough of his thoughts and memories —”
“Listen, lad,” admonished the Brain, who was tensely alert.
BUT the flat voice that was reporting Valdane’s mind was on a different subject now, relating figures connected with some financial deal in which they had not the slightest interest.
Captain Future felt frustration. Their brain-scanner could not possibly operate selectively. It could only “scan” the complex synaptic pattern of the brain a little bit at a time, impartially reporting what it found there.
The mechanical voice spoke on, calmly reporting Jon Valdane’s most secret thoughts, desires, aspirations. But not until some minutes had passed, did it come again to that which interested them.
“— will be risky on Styx,” it said. “But those diamond-deposits are worth taking risks for. And that’s the only way that I can ever get my hands on them. The way nobody else ever figured, the loophole in the Stygian treaty —”
Curt Newton listened with intense expectation. But again, the report of Jon Valdane’s mind shifted to other matters.
“Once I have control of the wealth of Styx, I’ll be by far the most powerful man in the System. Then —”
Captain Future uttered an exclamation of disappointment. “We almost had the secret of what he’s planning.”
“We’ll get the rest, with patience,” said the Brain calmly. The brain-scanner was talking again. “Must take care that Chan Carson gets safely to Styx. The whole scheme will be easier to put through if we can use him —”
&
nbsp; Newton was astounded. What did that mean? How was Valdane planning to use him, whom he thought a timid, commonplace actor?
But the rest of Valdane’s translated thought-memory on that subject, uttered by the scanner, swept that and all else from Newton’s mind.
“— but for that very reason, the Randall girl must not reach Styx. Should have taken care of her at Jupiter. Kin Kurri is a stupid blunderer. But Su Thuar will see to her at Neptune. His idea of fixing her oxygen-tank is good. When she smothers, it’ll look like an accident to her sea-suit. We don’t want any Patrol investigation —”
Captain Future sprang to his feet. His face was deathly white as terrible understanding burst upon him.
“Good gosh,” he exclaimed hoarsely. “Joan may be dying out there now. The devils have tampered with the oxygen tank of her suit.”
He lunged to the door. “Come on, Simon. I’ve got to get to her. You have to let me back out through the escape-hatch.”
The Brain hesitated a moment. “There’ll be no further chance to use the scanner on Valdane, for he’ll soon come to. And we haven’t anything more than a few dim clues.”
“To blazes with Valdane and everything else,” cried Curt Newton. “Joan may be dying.”
He plunged down the corridor with Simon Wright gliding close after him. Possessed by an overpowering fear, he was reckless of discovery but fortune was kind and they met no one in the aft corridors.
At the escape-hatch, Curt Newton delayed a moment to rip open the spacesuit locker beside it and snatch up one of the spare oxygen-tanks of the suits. He inspected its gauge swiftly, then clambered into his own sea-suit, tucked the spare tank under his arm, and entered the hatch.
The inner door of the little airlock slid shut as Simon Wright operated the emergency hatch from within. The outer door opened, and the sea smashed in on Captain Future. He flung himself out into the dusky waters. And with a cold dread clutching his heart and spurring his muscles, he started in a desperate, dragging run through the weird groves of the polyp forest.
Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) Page 8
