Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “That Martian hell-cat innocent? She ought to have been given a life sentence.”

  Ezra Gurney grinned at the indignant girl agent.

  “You’re still jealous of N’Rala because she tried to use her wiles on Cap’n Future, eh?”

  “Jealous of that red devil?” exploded Joan. “Why, you —”

  Curt was asking the Commander another question.

  “What scientific work was this Skal Kar engaged in?”

  Halk Anders shrugged. “We don’t know. He was so secret about it he didn’t let even his own guards into his laboratory.”

  “He must have been plenty secret about it, to carry it on upon that wild little jungle moon,” Curt muttered. “The way N’Rala vanished after she murdered him seems to indicate that she stole from Skal Kar the power of vanishing that Ul Quorn is now using. If we could learn what Skal Kar was working on, we’d know what Quorn’s new power is!”

  Halk Anders handed Newton some folded papers.

  “Here’s the report of our Uranus branch on the murder, but I’m afraid it won’t help any in our search.”

  Curt studied the report closely. There was a brief biography of Skal Kar, the murdered man. He was a native Saturnian, had been educated in science at a college in Ops on Saturn, had taken graduate courses in Solar System University on Earth, and then had established a laboratory on wild, lonely little Ariel.

  Skal Kar had hired guards to maintain the electrified stockade which protected his laboratory from the ferocious monsters of the moon. But these guards had never known the nature of their employer’s work.

  “There’s no clue in this to Skal Kar’s research,” rasped Simon.

  “No, but there’s a possible lead,” Captain Future declared. “Skal Kar took a graduate course at Solar System University, here in New York, before going out there to Ariel for secret research. If we knew what he studied at the University here, it might give us a pointer.”

  “Say, that’s a thought!” Joan Randall exclaimed. “Do you want me to go over and check up Skal Kar’s record at the University?”

  “I’ll go myself,” Curt answered. “While I’m gone, I want you to make out a complete list of the things taken by Quorn’s band in his raids on Pluto and Neptune and that space-freighter.”

  He tossed his belt and proton pistol to Otho.

  “Keep these till I get back. I can’t very well walk into the University wearing them.”

  IT WAS late morning when Curt Newton emerged from the base of Government Tower and started across the metropolis toward the University. None of the crowds that jammed the moving sidewalks recognized the most famous adventurer in the System in this tall, red-headed young man in the green zipper-suit. Captain Future was known to few people by sight. And he had taken care to turn inside his palm the emblem-ring he wore on his left hand. That ring, whose nine “planet-jewels” slowly revolved around a central glowing “Sun-jewel,” was his identifying badge through the system.

  The lofty skyscrapers of Solar System University towered out of a small green park. Into the buildings was pouring a cheerful, chattering horde of students of every planetary nationality, for this University was the great center of learning to which came the youth of all planets for graduate courses.

  Curt Newton entered the registrar’s office and asked for the record of Skal Kar. He studied it for a moment. The young Saturnian scientist had specialized in courses in dimensional physics and relativity mechanics. Most of his courses had been under Professor Felix Warrenden, a well known authority on the higher branches of physics.

  “Warrenden may be able to tell me what Skal Kar was up to,” Curt muttered thoughtfully. “Let’s see — where’s his lecture-room?”

  He located it in the towering Physics Building. A glowing sign outside the chamber announced that sharply on the hour would begin Professor Warrenden’s lecture on “Entropy and the Cosmic Constants.” Newton was jostled by a crowd of blithe young students as he entered the big lecture-room. He grinned as he heard their chatter.

  “Here we go for another two hours of torture,” one Venusian student was saying ruefully. “He’ll pour the super-equations on us today.”

  Captain Future quietly pushed through the crowd of students who were hastily taking their seats and approached the man standing on the platform.

  Professor Felix Warrenden was a withered-faced, waspish little Earthman who stood scowling at his students through thick-lensed spectacles.

  Curt Newton approached him.

  “I’d like to see you for a moment, Professor.”

  “Later, young man, later,” barked the little savant. “Can’t you see it’s time for my lecture to begin?”

  “But this is very important,” Curt persisted.

  Professor Warrenden replied angrily.

  “Will you take your seat and stop bothering me, young man?”

  Curt saw that the scientist mistook him for one of the students. He hesitated. He didn’t want to declare publicly that he was Captain Future. He liked to keep his activities as secret as possible.

  “Didn’t you hear me? Take your seat!” snapped the scientist.

  Curt resigned himself to waiting. He descended from the rostrum and took an empty chair among the other students.

  Professor Warrenden swept the crowded room with his formidable stare. The buzzing students hastily became quiet. Their awe of their waspish teacher was obvious.

  “Today,” began the little scientist, “I shall continue my discussion of the relation of the cosmic constants to entropy. The value of the first cosmical constant, being in inverse proportion to the cube root of the second constant —”

  Curt Newton saw worried frowns of concentration on the faces of all the students about him as they sought to follow the complicated discussion. To Curt himself, the equations Warrenden was reeling off were child’s play, elementary stuff.

  SUDDENLY Captain Future chuckled under his breath. An idea which appealed to his sense of humor had just come to him.

  “Brings us to the fundamental Second Law of Thermodynamics,” Professor Warrenden was saying. “This law is a basic and unshakable tenet of science.”

  Curt Newton promptly interrupted by putting up his hand.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but you are mistaken on that,” he said calmly.

  There was a dead hush. The crowd of students all looked at Curt in astonishment. They thought him a fellow-student. No one ever dreamed of a mere pupil daring to dispute Warrenden’s assertions.

  Professor Warrenden himself seemed unable to believe his ears. He peered down at Curt, blinking incredulously.

  “What was that you said, young man?” he demanded.

  Curt smiled. “I just said that you were quite wrong in your last statement. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a fallacy.”

  Warrenden’s withered countenance seemed to freeze. His eyes glared down at Curt through his thick spectacles, as though to blast the rash red-headed young man with a look. Then the professor exploded.

  “This,” he explained, “is too much! I thought that after all these years I could not see more stupid, brainless students than I have been teaching. But I was wrong. This brash young man, who blandly challenges one of the most basic laws of science, tops everything yet!”

  Curt kept his face straight.

  “I only wanted to put you right on the matter, Professor.”

  “You wanted to put me right?” gasped Warrenden. “That is very handsome of you, young man. I appreciate it. Suppose you elucidate to my slow brain exactly why the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a fallacy?”

  “Why, sure, Professor — I’ll do that, to help you out,” Captain Future replied, rising to his feet with an assumed, cocksure smile on his face.

  “Matter melts always into the lower form of radiation, according to the Second Law,” Curt stated. “But the process is reversible. The proof of this lies in the following equations —”

  Captain Future ran through the super-complex
mathematical formulae briefly. And Professor Warrenden, who had been waiting to blast him for his presumption when he finished, looked more and more astonished.

  Curt soon finished his exposition. The other students waited expectantly for their instructor to unloose his thunders. Instead, Professor Warrenden was gazing at Curt, eyes popping in bewilderment.

  “Why, your formulae are mathematically sound!” Warrenden gasped. “But I can’t understand this! Surely a young student can’t have succeeded in shattering the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You must repeat those equations again for me.”

  Warrenden turned for a moment to the gaping students.

  “Class dismissed!” he barked. “There will be no lecture today.”

  The wondering students filed out, looking back astonishedly at Curt Newton. When they had gone, Warrenden turned eagerly to Curt.

  “Now go through those equations again, young man!”

  “Some other time, Professor,” smiled Curt Newton. “Right now, I’ve some things to ask you. They’re important.”

  As he spoke, Curt held out his hand with palm up, to show the “planet-ring” emblem he kept concealed inside his fingers.

  “Captain Future!” gasped Warrenden, his eyes bulging. “Good Heavens, I’ve been lecturing the greatest scientist in the System! No wonder you were able to challenge the Second Law!”

  “It was just a joke, and I hope you don’t mind it,” Curt grinned. “But I really do need your help badly, Professor.”

  “What can I do?” the little scientist asked earnestly.

  “A few years ago you had a graduate student named Skal Kar, a young Saturnian,” Curt stated. “He’s been murdered, and I’m trying to get information about him.”

  WARRENDEN started. “Skal Kar murdered? That’s too bad. He was one of the most promising pupils I ever had.”

  “Just what branch of higher science did Skal Kar specialize in here?” Captain Future asked.

  “In fifth-dimensional physics,” was the answer. “He was intensely interested in the supposed co-existing universe.”

  “The co-existing universe?” Curt Newton repeated. His eyes narrowed. A flash of enlightenment had seared across his mind.

  “Why, yes,” Warrenden replied. “Certainly you know that modern physical science shows there is another four-dimensional universe that co-exists with our own universe, coinciding with ours along the four dimensions of length, breadth, thickness and time, but separated from ours along the fifth dimension?”

  “Yes, I know the theory and the evidence that supports it,” Curt answered. “So Skal Kar was interested in the co-existing universe?”

  “He was utterly engrossed by it,” was the reply. “He studied everything ever learned about it, especially the experiments of Harris Haines.”

  “Harris Haines?” Curt repeated keenly. “I seem to remember that name. Wasn’t he an Earthman physicist of a generation ago?”

  “That’s right,” nodded Warrenden. “Harris Haines was either a very great scientist or a cheap faker — many people think the latter.”

  “I remember now,” Curt muttered thoughtfully. “Haines was the man who claimed he had actually entered the coexisting universe.”

  “That’s the man,” Warrenden said. “Haines claimed he had thrust a small ship across the fifth-dimensional gulf and thus had entered the co-existing universe. He said it was a universe of space and stars just like our own. And he claimed he was going back into it. He disappeared a little later and no one ever knew what became of him.”

  “I see,” Curt muttered. His mind was racing. “You’ve helped me a lot, Professor. Please keep my visit and questions secret, will you?”

  “Don’t worry,” answered Warrenden ruefully. “I’ve no desire to let my students know it was Captain Future I was lecturing!”

  Curt hurried back to Government Tower. He found the Futuremen and Joan and Ezra and Halk Anders anxiously awaiting him.

  “We couldn’t get any line on N’Rala’s movements at all,” Joan reported. “But we did get this list of the things Ul Quorn has stolen.”

  “What did you find out, lad?” the Brain asked Captain Future.

  “Plenty, I think,” Curt answered. “This fellow Skal Kar whom N’Rala may have murdered was studying the coexisting universe.”

  The Brain uttered a metallic exclamation. And the other two Futuremen also seemed to grasp instantly the significance of the news. But Ezra Gurney and Joan and the Commander looked puzzled.

  “A co-existin’ universe?” Ezra repeated. “I don’t get it. How can two universes occupy the same space at the same time?”

  Curt explained. “Two three-dimensional objects can occupy the same space — at different times. They’re separated along time, the fourth dimension. In the same way, two objects can occupy the same space at the same time when separated from each other along the fifth dimension. That’s how that other universe can co-exist with ours in time and space.”

  EZRA scratched his head.

  “Sounds simple, the way you tell it. But what’s it got to do with our catchin’ that devil Ul Quorn?”

  “It may have a lot to do with it,” Curt promised grimly. He had come to a rapid decision. “We’re going out to that moon of Uranus where Skal Kar was murdered, and investigate it. I think the trail that will lead us to Ul Quorn begins there.”

  He turned to Joan and Ezra.

  “I want you two to stay here on Earth long enough to gather all the information you can about Harris Haines, the physicist. Then come after us in a fast Patrol cruiser — I’ll meet you in the city Lulanee, on Uranus.”

  Though they did not understand the motives for his request, the girl agent and the old veteran nodded quickly. “Well be there!”

  Ten minutes later the Comet rose from the little deck atop Government Tower and shot into the sky like a projectile launched from a giant catapult.

  Grag held the controls. Eek, his moon-pup pet, clawed with strange excitement at the robot’s arm. Eek could make no sounds, since his species communicated by telepathy.

  “Miss me while I was gone, Eek?” Grag fondly asked the moon-pup.

  As the Comet roared out from Earth into the black vault of space toward the far green spark of Uranus, Curt was talking to Simon and Otho.

  “Simon, suppose Skal Kar was trying to duplicate Harris Haines’ feat of entering the co-existing universe? Suppose Skal Kar found the secret of doing so — and that his secret was taken from him by N’Rala?”

  “Holy sun-imps!” swore Otho. “You mean that that may be Quorn’s new power — a power to shift in and out of the coexisting universe?”

  “It’s possible,” Captain Future answered soberly. “We won’t know for sure until we’ve investigated Skal Kar’s laboratory on Ariel.”

  They were interrupted by a low, excited whisper from Grag.

  “Chief, Eek has been trying to tell me something telepathically,” Grag breathed. “Somebody is hiding in that tool-locker.”

  The Futuremen looked instantly at the tall locker in the side of the main cabin, in which were stored their larger atomic tools.

  “Someone hiding in there?” snapped Otho. “It’s one of Ul Quorn’s men, then! That devil is striking at us again!”

  Chapter 5: Moon of Mystery

  CURT NEWTON’S proton pistol flashed into his hand.

  “Stand ready!” he murmured tautly. “I’m going to open that locker.”

  He advanced soundlessly. Then, with a sudden swift movement, he flung open the big locker. A figure pitched out of it.

  “Why, it’s an Earth boy!” exclaimed Otho incredulously.

  Curt burst into laughter. “A young stowaway!”

  It was a boy about fourteen years old, clad in soiled, shapeless black zipper suit. He was a wiry, scrawny youngster with a tough, belligerent face and black eyes wise and cynical beyond his years.

  He stood facing them in resolute bravado, his fists clenched. Yet under his hard-boiled pose, nervousness w
as visible. He gulped as his eyes swept over the awesome group facing him.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing in the Comet?” Curt Newton demanded.

  The youngster answered nonchalantly.

  “I’m Johnny Kirk, see? And I hid out in this boat because I wanted to join up with you and your gang. I want to be a Futureman.”

  Grag uttered a booming sound of mirth.

  “Look what wants to be a Futureman!”

  Johnny Kirk scowled at the great robot.

  “Don’t you laugh at me, you big hunk of iron. I’m liable to put the blast on you.”

  Captain Future chuckled.

  “Now don’t go bullying Grag,” he admonished. “How in the world did you get into the Comet?”

  “Aw, that was easy,” the tough youngster answered nonchalantly. “I ain’t got no folks and I pick up a living running errands around Government Tower, see? And I always keep my eyes peeled so I’ll spot your ship if it ever comes. For I decided to join up with you. I’ve heard all about the swell jobs you and these guys have pulled.”

  Curt kept his face straight.

  “Nice of you to say that, Johnny. But why didn’t you try to get into the Planet Patrol Academy, instead?”

  “The Planet Patrol? Them sissies?” echoed Johnny Kirk scornfully. “Say, they’re a bunch of dressed-up cream puffs. It’s you and the Futuremen that really have the adventures. And you’re the only guy I’d ever take orders from, Captain Future.”

  Curt Newton saw the hero worship in the tough youngster’s eyes, and was a little touched.

  “You still haven’t told us how you got into the Comet,” he said.

  “It was a cinch,” retorted Johnny. “This morning I spotted this ship of yours landing on the top of Government Tower. It was the chance I was waiting for, so I went right up to it.”

  “You couldn’t get through the Planet Police and President’s offices on the top floors,” declared Otho incredulously.

  “Don’t I know that?” retorted Johnny Kirk. “So I go up to the floor just under them, pretending I’m bringing a message, and then I slip out the window and shinny up the outside wall with these ‘climbers.’ ”