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

by Edmond Hamilton

  “We’ll implant the brain-control in his skull at once,” Ul Quorn was saying. “Tie him up, before he recovers and —”

  Captain Future acted! Moving speedily he ripped open the door behind him and plunged into the air-lock. He slammed the door shut and bolted it before the stupefied followers of Quorn realized it.

  “Get him! Break in the door!” he heard Ul Quorn yelling.

  Curt jumped toward the space-suit locker which in the Nova, as in most ships, was in the airlock. He snatched out a space-suit and donned it hastily, as Quorn’s followers battered madly at the door.

  Once he had the suit and helmet on, Curt opened the outer door of the airlock. The air in the lock at once puffed out into empty space.

  “Quorn!” yelled Curt loudly. “I’ve opened the outer door!”

  “Stop that battering!” he heard Quorn order his men instantly.

  Curt Newton grinned inside his helmet. For the moment, Ul Quorn and the others were checkmated. They dared not now break into the airlock, for if they did, all air would puff out of the Nova at once. And they had no space-suits, for the suits were all in the locker here beside Curt.

  “You can’t get away, Future!” came Ul Quorn’s voice, taut with venomous anger.

  “Neither can you get out here at me,” Curt called back.

  In fact, it seemed an impasse. But Captain Future knew that Quorn’s fertile brain would soon devise some way to reach him. Curt began considering his own chances for escape. He looked out the open door into space. One of the planets of the double star, the shadowed one, was not far away. He might be able to reach it by using several impellers, Curt decided.

  He was fishing the impellers — tubular little hand-rockets used for individual movement in space — out of the locker, when he became aware that the Nova had abruptly changed course. It had turned and was now racing straight toward the nearby shadowed planet.

  Captain Future instantly understood.

  “That devil Quorn! He’s going to land there, so they can wait for me! But I’m hanged if I’m going to be here when they do!” Curt told himself.

  THE Nova was already screaming down into the atmosphere of the planet. Curt looked down and saw that the shadowed, semi-dark surface of the world was mantled with forests of weird, towering green vegetation.

  “Here I come!” muttered Captain Future, and leaped with all his strength out of the open door of the rushing space ship. He fell at once toward the shadowy world below, hurtling down with accelerating velocity, while the Nova roared on in a descending slant.

  Curt Newton twisted in mid-air as he fell, so that his head and hands were downward. In that position, he pressed the triggers of the two impellers in his hands.

  The blast of force from the hand-rockets, jetting straight downward, slowed his fall like the brake-blasts of a space ship.

  But his body rolled over in mid-air, and again began to accelerate its speed of fall. By another convulsive effort, Curt twisted around in falling to bring himself head downward again. The dusky, weird forests were rushing up at him with frightful velocity. He fired both impellers in a blast that utilized all their stored power.

  It was as though a giant hand checked him for a moment in mid-air above the forest. Then he tumbled on downward again — for fifty feet. Falling between two towering, grotesque trees, he struck the ground. The shock was partly cushioned by the thick carpet of brownish-green moss upon the ground. But even so, it knocked Curt Newton senseless.

  He recovered quickly. He scrambled out of the space-suit, tested his limbs.

  He had made his body limp as he struck, and had apparently sustained nothing worse than bruises.

  “Otho would have made that fall without a scratch,” Curt thought ruefully. “But I feel lucky to have got by without a pair of broken legs.”

  He got up and looked around. The air was of high oxygen content and quite breathable, but so cold that it soon had him shivering.

  “Some world!” he muttered astonishedly. “Everything seems to be frozen!”

  Everything about him was wrapped in somber, frigid dusk. There was no sunlight, because the dead sun was between this world and the hot white sun. The only light was that of the stars of this alien universe.

  Around Curt Newton rose a gloomy forest of great green trees with stalk-like trunks and drooping branches that bore masses of fine green tendrils instead of leaves. He had touched some of these drooping tendrils in turning and they snapped off as though of glass. They and the moss and grasses underfoot were in fact frozen to brittle rigidity.

  Marveling, Captain Future stared around the uncanny frozen forest. Then he stiffened as he saw, through the trees, two large green creatures crouched motionless in a nearby glade. They did not stir, as he advanced cautiously. They were reptilian monsters, with crocodilian heads on massive, eight-legged scaled bodies. They were huddled close together on the moss. Touching them, Curt discovered that they also were apparently frozen hard like everything else on this strange world.

  “A world of frozen life!” he muttered wonderingly. “These things aren’t dead — it’s more like some kind of suspended animation.”

  Then Captain Future began to understand. He perceived that this world regularly went through a period of cold night when the dead star eclipsed the white sun. The eclipse was apparently of long duration, since the dark star circled its bright companion in the same direction as that of this planet’s orbit. Thus it tended to cause an eclipse of days or weeks.

  “And all the life on this world has evolved to fit these conditions — all plant and animal life here goes into a weird frozen hibernation during the frigid period of the eclipse,” Curt Newton thought.

  He was sharply recalled from his scientific speculations by a roar of rocket-tubes. The Nova was slanting down to a landing nearby.

  “Quorn, back after me!” Curt exclaimed. “I might have known that persistent devil would want to make sure of me!”

  The Nova was already landing in a nearby glade. He heard the voice of Ul Quorn as the Magician of Mars and some of his men emerged.

  “Spread out and beat through the forest in a line!” Quorn was ordering. “He’s somewhere around here, for this is where he fell!”

  Captain Future heard the criminals advancing, the frozen, brittle moss crackling under their feet. He looked around tautly. He had no weapon, and they were all armed. Concealment was his only chance. An attempt to take the Nova would be madness, for Quorn had left guards there.

  Curt saw no place of hiding. Then his eye fell on the two frozen reptilian monsters beside him. With a sudden inspiration, he stooped and strained to squeeze in under the motionless bodies of the two monsters. He got between the two, hidden beneath their upper bodies. He crouched there, and soon heard the criminals advancing through the glade.

  “Everything frozen, even the birds and beasts!” he heard Thikar muttering. “I don’t like this blasted planet.”

  “Look sharp!” rasped Quorn’s voice. “Future must be near here!”

  THEY passed on, and Curt breathed easily. But they returned, beating through the glades. If they kept up, he knew they would find him.

  He glimpsed a dun ray of brilliant white sunlight appear slowly nearby. The sunlight strengthened, and the air became less chill. Curt realized that the cold eclipse-night was now coming to an end.

  “Back to the Nova — we’ve got to get out of here!” Ul Quorn called sharply. “This world is going to be dangerous in a few more minutes.”

  “But Captain Future?” protested Gray Garson.

  “We’ll leave him — he won’t live long here!” Quorn exclaimed.

  Curt heard them hurrying back to the Nova, and heard the ship blasting off. Simultaneously, he was aware that the reptilian bodies between which he crouched were stirring slightly. The great monsters and all the other creatures of this frozen world were wakening again to life!

  Chapter 11: Otto’s Disgrace

  BACK in the city Lulanee, on Uran
us, the Brain and Otho had labored for a night and a day and into the night again, to build a dimension-shifter that would enable the Comet to enter the other universe. They were just completing the task, in the cabin laboratory of the little ship.

  Otho stood back, his green eyes keenly surveying the mechanism they had built. It was a tangle of vacuum tubes and condensers, shielded by a copper dome supported by four quartz rods.

  “That finishes it, doesn’t it?” Otho asked anxiously.

  “Yes, it finishes the dimension-shifter, but we must rig up a dual space sextant before we dare enter the other universe,” rasped the Brain.

  The Brain had worked with the thin blue tractor-beams that he could jet from his case to serve him as hands. Now he hovered on his magnetic motor beams, his glass lens-eyes closely examining their work.

  “Why can’t we use the dimension-shifter right now to go down to that radite cavern where we think Quorn’s base is?” Otho demanded. “Maybe the chief is down there in trouble.”

  “Curtis can take care of himself,” retorted Simon Wright.

  “We daren’t enter the co-existing universe without a dual space sextant. We can’t take a chance of appearing in either universe at a point where there is already solid matter. It would annihilate us.”

  “Say, that’s right — I never thought of that!” Otho exclaimed.

  “You wouldn’t,” commented the Brain witheringly. “Suppose you help out a little by going over to the space ship supply firms by the spaceport and getting a couple of space sextants and two gravitometers to hook up as a dual space sextant.”

  Otho jumped at the chance. The restless android was always eager to be out doing something.

  “Sure, I’ll get ‘em right away!” he answered. “But I’ll have to make up a little first, or everyone will know we Futuremen are here.”

  Otho was the supreme master of disguise in the whole System. His synthetic flesh could be partially softened by application of a chemical oil, then remolded into new features. He swiftly performed the miracle of make-up now. When he had finished with his stains and false hair, he was a typical yellow-skinned, black-haired Uranian space sailor.

  He opened the door of the Comet to start on the errand. At that moment there was a roar of rocket-tubes. Down out of the night came a long Rissman cruiser with the shooting-star emblem of the Planet Patrol on its bows. It landed in the Police court in which the Comet was parked.

  “Here come Ezra Gurney and Joan!” Otho called back to the Brain as he saw two figures hastily approaching from the newly-landed cruiser.

  Joan Randall looked around expectantly as she and the old white-haired veteran marshal entered the Comet.

  “Where’s Captain Future?” she asked.

  “I wish I knew,” the Brain admitted. He related what had happened since they left Earth, and how they had come to believe that Ul Quorn’s base was in the radite cavern deep under Uranus. “So Curtis and Grag have gone to try to reach that cavern through the great caves,” he ended.

  Joan’s dark eyes had anxiety in them. “That’s dangerous! That big red-headed idiot would try a risky stunt like that. Why didn’t he wait till you had your dimension-shifter built, and go by that means?”

  “Curtis was afraid that Quorn would already have gone into the other universe after the treasure, if he waited that long,” Simon explained.

  Ezra Gurney had listened with keen attention to the Brain’s narration of events. “So that’s what Ul Quorn’s after — the treasure of the other universe!” he muttered. “The treasure Harris Haines went after years ago!”

  “Did you and Joan find out anything about Harris Haines’ former expedition, back on Earth?” Otho demanded.

  EZRA shook his white head as he told the result of the time he and the girl agent had spent on Earth seeking information for Captain Future.

  “We learned mighty little,” he drawled. “All we could find out was some hearsay information from people who had talked to Haines after his first expedition into the other universe. Haines had said he was goin’ back into the other universe after a great treasure he’d spotted there. He was almighty mysterious ‘bout that treasure. He said he’d get it if he was able to pass ‘the unseen ones who guard it.’ He didn’t explain what he meant by that.”

  “Quorn would know all about the treasure and the dangers of it, since he took Haines’ papers from Skal Kar,” muttered the Brain.

  “I’ll get going after those space sextants,” Otho interrupted, turning to the door. “I won’t be long, Simon.”

  Otho left the ship-court and swung through the streets of the nighted Uranian city, toward the spaceport district. He whistled cheerfully as he strode along, unnoticed in his disguise.

  He had gone but a few paces when his keen ears detected a soft trotting sound behind him. He turned. Oog, bis meteor-mimic pet, was following him. The little fat white beast was trotting on his short, thick legs, and looked up confidently with his beady eyes as he came up to his master.

  “Oog, you should have stayed in the Comet,” Otho reproved. “But I guess you’re as tired of being cooped up as I am. You can come along.”

  Oog frisked clumsily around Otho as the android made his way through the streets. The little meteor-mimic was enjoying the outing too.

  The streets of the city were crowded with pleasure-seeking throngs of the yellow Uranians. Krypton-lights glowed cheerily along the avenues and arcades. The weird, fluting Uranian music pulsed and murmured.

  Ahead lay the spaceport, from which a trail of rocket-fire curved skyward as a bulky Jovian freighter took off. Otho entered the somewhat sordid district around it. Here were mixed supply houses, offices of interplanetary shipping companies, warehouses and rowdy, noisy pleasure places patronized by the space sailors.

  Otho found a supply firm and soon secured the two space sextants and gravitometers they needed. Then he discovered Oog was missing.

  “Oog!” he called anxiously down the crowded, noisy street. “Where the devil are you?”

  Otho went down along the street, looking everywhere for the missing pet, when he heard a loud burst of voices inside a space sailors’ bar. He looked inside.

  A dozen hard-bitten interplanetary sailors, Martians, Earthmen, Venusians and Mercurians, were gathered at the bar. One of them held Oog.

  “I tell you, I’m not drunk!” shouted the towering Earthman who held the little animal. “He did it, and I saw it!”

  With relief, Otho pushed into the place. Oog chattered with rejoicing when he saw his master.

  “Say, Uranian, is that critter yours?” the Earthman asked Otho.

  “Yes, he is,” snapped Otho. “Where did you get him?”

  “It was the queerest thing!” swore the Earthman. “I was coming along the street to this joint when I saw a big space-compass lying in the street outside that ship supply shop. I picked it up, but by the time I’d got in here with it, it had somehow changed into that critter!”

  Otho comprehended what had happened. Oog had seen a space-compass in the window of the supply shop and, with his usual desire to mimic everything he saw, had transformed his unique shape-shifting body into an exact duplicate of the instrument.

  But howls of derisive unbelief greeted the Earthman’s story from the other space sailors along the bar.

  “You were plenty drunk, to imagine a thing like that!” they jeered.

  The big Earthman mopped his brow.

  “I guess I must have been, at that. But look — the critter has disappeared!”

  The Earthman reached a shaking hand toward one of the wine jugs.

  “I do need a drink now!” he said hoarsely. “When a fellow sees a thing like —”

  He suddenly emitted a yell of surprise. The “jug,” as he touched it, had changed back into Oog. A babel of amazed cries went up in the room.

  Otho grinned.

  “It’s all right. This is a meteor-mimic.”

  That explained it. Nearly all these far-ranging space sai
lors had heard of the rare asteroidal creatures with the power of mimicking anything.

  “For a minute, I thought I was space-struck!” declared the big Earthman relievedly. “The drinks are on me for that one, boys!”

  THE Venusians called for the swamp-wine of their native world, and the Mercurians for rock-brandy.

  “Good old Earth whisky for me,” ordered the Earthman, and then turned to Otho. “What’s yours, Uranian?”

  “Jovian fire-liquor,” Otho ordered nonchalantly.

  They stared at him.

  “Say, that stuff’s bottled lightning,” protested the big Earthman. “One ounce of it, and you think a meteor’s hit you. Two ounces, and you think you’re a meteor yourself.”

  Otho nonchalantly took the glassite bottle of the colorless, most potent liquor in the System. He tilted it to his lips and drank until the bottle was empty.

  “It’s kind of weak, but has a nice flavor,” he said blandly.

  They gaped, waiting for him to collapse. Nobody had ever heard of a man drinking more than a few drops of the stuff without dropping. But the android’s synthetic body was designed to possess super-normally high metabolism. He could drink almost anything without harmful results. In fact, Otho preferred a diet of pure inorganic chemicals to ordinary food.

  “You think that’s weak?” gasped the Earthman. “Name o’ the Sun, what would yon call a real drink?”

  “Well,” Otho answered judicially, “a glass of wine with a strong shot of radium chloride in it makes a nice beverage.”

  “Radium chloride?” gulped the Earthman. “I’ll be blasted!”

  Otho was enjoying himself. The android loved to mix with human beings while in disguise, to be accepted as one of them.

  The Earthman was speaking to the waiter.

  “Give my Uranian friend what he wants. A shot of radium chloride in wine.”

  The waiter goggled, then obeyed. The whole crowd of hard-bitten space-men watched in awe as Otho raised the concoction to his lips.

  Otho had a few doubts, himself. He’d never tackled anything so strong in the chemical line, and maybe even his metabolism couldn’t handle it.