Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “Space-sailor?” one of the herdsmen asked.

  Curt nodded “Have been. I’m just wandering around now. Came up from Ops to look at these Mistlands that people all talk about.”

  “Look at them is all you’d better do,” warned one of the Saturnians. “Lots of strangers think maybe they’ll go inside’ the Mistlands. A few of them do it but none of them ever come out again.”

  “What do you suppose is in there?” Curt asked.

  The blue herdsman shrugged.

  “Nobody really knows. They tell plenty of queer stories, though, do the old-timers.”

  “I’m interested.” Curt admitted. “Anybody around here who could tell me some of these stories about the Mistlands?”

  The herdsman pointed to an aged, withered Saturnian. Sitting alone at a corner table, the old man was watching the crowd with bright, wrinkle webbed eyes.

  “Old Nik Iro there knows every yarn ever told on Saturn. And if there’s anything he likes to do, it’s spin ‘em to strangers.”

  Captain Future thanked the herdsman and strode over to the corner table. Nik Iro, the aged Saturnian, looked up at him shrewdly.

  “They tell me you know just about every queer tale and legend ever told about the Mistlands,” Curt said to the old man.

  Nik Iro uttered a wheezy chuckle.

  “That’s right, Earthman. Nobody on Saturn knows more about this country than I do.”

  “Did you, spin some of your yarns to a Martian writer who was here recently — a man named Sus Urgal?”

  Nik Iro stared at him.

  “That’s queer,” the old man said. “You’re the second Earthman who’s asked me that same question.”

  Curt stiffened. “Who was the other Earthman?”

  “Fellow who called himself Graeme, Doctor Graeme,” the aged Saturnian replied. “He also wanted to know what I’d told Sus Urgal.”

  FUTURE’S mind considered that fact quickly. So Martin Graeme had been here, trying to trace Sus Urgal’s discovery!

  “What did you tell the Martian?” Curt asked.

  “Why, I told him lots of things,” wheezed the old Saturnian. “He was most interested in my stories about the Mistlands especially about the man who came out of the Mistlands once, a long time ago.”

  “You say a man returned from the Mistlands?” Curt repeated sharply. “I thought no one who entered had ever returned.”

  “That’s what people say, but it ain’t so,” Nik Iro asserted in his cracked voice. “I saw this fellow come out myself. It was near fifty years ago, when I was a young herdsman. I was riding up along the edge of the Mist-land thirty miles east of here, looking for some lost animals. There’s a kind of ravine comes out of the Mist-land at that point.

  “I was riding past there when I saw this man stagger out of the Mistland along that ravine. He was a native Saturnian, like me. And he looked like a young fellow about my age. He’d had a pretty hard time and was near played out. I rode up to him, and gave him some water. He was kind of delirious and he babbled out a queer story.

  “He said he’d gone into the Mistland hunting for the Fountain of Life that people talk about. And he said he’d found it! He said he’d been an aging man, but that drinking the Fountain’s waters had made him young again. He lived in there for awhile near the Fountain; in some place he called ‘The City of Eternal Youth.’ Then he said he got sick of it and wanted to get out into his own world again. He made his way out, in spite of the winged Qualus.”

  “The winged Qualus?” Curt almost shouted.

  Old Nik Iro nodded.

  “That’s what he said. It seems like these Qualus had been after him for some reason. Anyway, he got out. But he said he was going to die pretty quick, now that he couldn’t drink the Fountain water. I told him he was crazy. But sure enough, he died soon after, queerest way you ever saw a man die. He just withered up and got terrible old and died in a minute. That’s the story I told that there Martian, Sus Urgal. He seemed mighty interested in it and said he was going to put it into a book. He bought me a drink for telling it.”

  Curt Newton, with a grin, took the hint. He called for Saturnian brandy, which the old man quaffed eagerly.

  Curt was sure now that he had discovered the legendary clue to the Fountain, which Sus Urgal had embodied in his manuscript, and which had caused his murder.

  “And you say the ravine that man followed out of the Mistlands lies thirty miles east of here?” he asked.

  “That’s where it is. According to this fellow who came out of the Mistlands, he followed the ravine straight to the outside. He said that was the only thing that made him able to get out.” Nik Iro added gloomily: “People have never believed me when I told ‘em all this, though. That Martian, and this Graeme fellow, are about the only ones who didn’t seem to think old Nik Iro was a liar.”

  “I believe you, Nik Iro,” Curt assured him.

  He thanked the old man. Rising, he hastily left the crowded drinking-place.

  Captain Future was throbbing with excitement. He had tracked down the clue that had caused Sus Urgal to be murdered. Now if he could only follow it farther, into the Mistlands themselves —

  HE WENT down the street of Tobor to an outfitting shop. Quickly he bought one of the stads, or Saturnian horses. A gaunt, black, eight-legged brute, its vicious red eyes in its elongated skull made Curt wonder at his choice.

  “Don’t know whether you can ride him or not, Earthman,” said the seller dubiously. “Takes a Saturnian to control the damned beasts.”

  Curt smiled. “I’ve ridden stads before. Give me a couple of thermos canteens and a saddle-bag of food.”

  He vaulted lightly into the queer saddle. The stad reared up, squealing viciously at the unfamiliar smell of an Earthman.

  Curt jerked back firmly on the reins, which were fastened to the animal’s sensitive ears. For some minutes there was a hot struggle between man and beast.

  Then the stad, recognizing the Earthman’s mastery, suddenly became docile. Curt spurred out of town and rode north. The stad’s eight legs drummed the blue plain toward the distant, foggy wall of the Mistlands.

  Curt munched dried Saturnian beef from the saddlebag as he rode, reveling in the freedom of the vast, sunlit plain. But after a few hours’ riding, the misty wall of the unknown loomed close ahead.

  A barrier of solid looking white fog towered skyward for miles, hiding all within it. East and west marched the misty rampart reaching far out of sight. The Mistlands, Curt knew, covered much of northern Saturn.

  The accepted theory was that the eternal fog of the Mistlands was caused by steaming water vapor. Exhaled from orifices in the ground, it was condensed into mist upon meeting the colder air above the surface. As, long as history recorded, the Mistlands of Saturn had existed and always they had been a mystery.

  Curt Newton rode up to the very edge of the mist, then turned his stad eastward. He did not check the easy, tireless lope of the creature until he came to a ravine. Issuing from the Mistland, it ran from north to south.

  “Must be the ravine old Nik Iro mentioned,” Curt muttered. “Hope it doesn’t peter out in there and leave me lost.”

  “He urged the stad northward up the ravine toward the mist. The Saturnian mount began to buck and hang back as they neared the fog.

  He forced the unwilling stad along the ravine and into the mists. At once they were lost in solid white fog. He could hardly see the head of the stad in front of him.

  A man lost in this mist was doomed. Compasses would not work because of radioactive magnetic currents. But Curt pushed onward, following the ravine that ran almost straight north like a giant crevasse.

  IT WAS deathly silent in the mists. No familiar life seemed to exist here. Day or night were little different. It was as though he had stepped out of the familiar Universe and into a strange new one. Did the Fountain of Life really exist in this foggy mystery?

  Curt Newton estimated that he had followed the ravine ever deeper into the Mist
land for two hours. Suddenly he heard the first sound since entering — a sound as of threshing wings swooping down toward him.

  “What the devil, birds couldn’t live in here!” he exclaimed wonderingly. “They couldn’t see to —”

  He broke off with a cry of amazement. Out of the mists above him, winged creatures were swooping down on him, winged men!

  Curt glimpsed them as pale-skinned, hairless men with great, featherless white wings extending from their shoulders. Their eyes were strangely luminous, and seemed able to penetrate the mists. They wore tunics of woven fiber, and carried metal knives in their belts.

  They were swooping straight down on him, with hand out-stretched, clawing. Captain Future drew and shot his proton pistol with the speed of light. But the stad, bucking in panic, made his aim go wide.

  Next moment, he felt himself grasped by a pair of hands and torn from the saddle! One of the winged white men was carrying him up into the mists with the others.

  Curt Newton struggled in the grasp of the winged man. He started to turn his proton gun on his captor. He realized that if he shot the winged man, he, too, would fall to death.

  “They’ve got me, all right,” he thought grimly. “Nothing I can do but to stick it out till they put me down. Then maybe I can do something.” Abruptly another thought came to him. “The Qualus, the winged men who were supposed to guard the Fountain! These must be they!”

  The winged men flew through the mists, rising constantly, for more than an hour. Finally they broke from the fog into a vast, clear area that was completely surrounded by the mists.

  Curt glimpsed a round valley, ringed by precipitous, craggy cliffs. His winged captors were carrying him toward those jagged towers of rock.

  Chapter 15: With the Winged Men

  WINGED human captors were carrying Curt up to the precipitous cliffs surrounding the hidden valley in the Mistlands. He glimpsed the small white town that lay at the center of the blossoming valley.

  “A town, in here?” Curt marveled. He remembered something the old Saturnian, Nik Iro, had mentioned in his tale. “What was it he spoke of a City of Eternal Youth? It is possible —”

  Curt’s speculations were interrupted. His strange winged captors were now approaching their destination.

  The towering, perpendicular rock cliffs were honeycombed with round openings, he saw.

  Toward one of these openings, the Qualus who had captured him were flying. The winged men flew right through the opening and alighted inside, setting down Captain Future but still holding him firmly.

  The rock cavern in the cliffs, in which Curt now stood, held scores of the Qualus. Others were running up in answer to a call by the captors of the wizard of science. They were all of the same race. Men and women alike were white-skinned, hairless, not unhandsome. But they were made bizarre in appearance by the great featherless white wings, which they kept folded close against their backs when not actually in flight.

  Curt Newton noticed the rough furniture of metal and carved rock in the chambers. All the Qualus wore tunics of woven grass-fibers and carried metal tools and weapons.

  They were chattering to each other excitedly about this new capture. Curt found that he could understand them. Their language was merely an archaic variant of the familiar Saturnian tongue.

  A Qualu male, taller by a head than the others, appeared and surveyed Curt with gloomy, hostile eyes.

  “Are you the ruler of these folk?” Captain Future asked him calmly in the basic Saturnian language.

  The Qualu nodded his hairless head.

  “I am Yuru, king of the Qualus. And you, wingless man, are another deluded one who has come here in a wicked attempt to find the sacred Fountain.”

  A chorus of fierce, muttered exclamations went up from the winged people. They eyed Curt Newton in visible hatred.

  “Aye, another devil come to join the sinful ones in the City!” they spat. “But this one will never join them.”

  Captain Future began to understand. He was remembering the legend he had read in Sus Urgal’s manuscript. The Fountain of Life was supposed to be guarded by winged men who did not drink its waters themselves and who let no one else drink them.

  “I did not come here searching for the Fountain,” Curt said levelly. “I have no desire to drink its waters.”

  “You are lying!” charged the Qualu king. “But it will do you no good. We Qualus abide by our sacred duty of guarding the Fountain.”

  “Listen to me, Yuru,” Curt said earnestly. “The waters of that Fountain have gone forth all over the Solar System and have spread like a subtle poison. My friends and I have been trying to stop the flow of those deadly waters of youth. I came here searching for the Life-lord, the man who has been selling the waters of the Fountain for profit.”

  YURU’S fierce expression changed, became less savagely hostile.

  “It is true that the arch-sinner who calls himself the Life-lord has been doing that,” the winged king muttered. “We Qualus have known it, though we have been unable to stop him from doing it. If you tell the truth —”

  “I am telling the truth!” Curt declared. “I’ve no desire than to bring vengeance to the Life-lord for his misdeeds.”

  For a long minute, Yuru studied the mobile, tanned face of Captain Future. Easily he read the sincerity in Curt’s flashing gray eyes.

  “I believe you, stranger,” Yuru said suddenly. He called an order to the other winged men. “Free him. He is no sinful seeker as we deemed.”

  Curt was released. His proton gun was restored to him. Breathing more freely now, he felt he could ask Yuru a quick question.

  “Yuru, where is the Fountain of Life?”

  The Qualu king pointed through the round opening in the cliff, to the white town lying far down in the darkening valley.

  “It is in a pit at the center of that sinful town, whose inhabitants call it the City of Eternal Youth,” the winged king answered. “There bubbles forth the glowing, wonderful Fountain whose waters restore youth. But those waters are forbidden to be drunk by men.”

  The Qualu went on, his voice solemn, as Curt listened intently.

  “Stranger, we Qualus have always inhabited this land inside the Mists. Of old, we dwelled down in that flowering valley, and there were no others here but ourselves. We knew of the Fountain of Life which gushed there. But never did we drink its water, for our wise men had told us that drinking it was forbidden by the gods. We learned that while the waters might restore youth, they would eventually kill the soul. Thus we knew they were evil.

  “We Qualus heeded the ancient commandments of our wise men, and never touched the waters. But long ago a wingless stranger from outside the Mists came blundering into our land. We treated him kindly. He saw the Fountain of Life, and wished to drink of it and become young again. We forbade that, and thrust him out of our land. He must have first carried to the outer worlds the tale of the Fountain of Life. As the years passed, more and more wingless men from many worlds came searching through the Mists for the Fountain.

  “They became so numerous that we could no longer prevent them. They had powerful weapons with which they slew us and drove us away from the Fountain. And those sinful strangers settled down around the Fountain, and drank its waters and became young again. When they found by experience that they must continue to drink the waters or die, they knew they could never leave this land. So they built the town which they call the City of Eternal Youth. In it they live, eternally youthful.

  “We Qualus were driven away from the Fountain by their weapons. We settled in new homes here in the great cliffs, where no one could reach us. With sore hearts, we saw the ancient commandments broken by the sinful strangers reveling in eternal youth in their wicked City. And ever more strangers have come in through the Mists as the years passed, seeking the Fountain. Some of them we seized and imprisoned, as we seized you. But more of them escaped us and entered the sinful City.

  “Then, not many months ago, a man came into this
land and found the Fountain. But he did not drink its waters. He was too cunning to become addicted to its poison. Instead, he wanted to sell the waters, the Life-water as you call it, to others on far worlds. He said they would pay great prices. That man, whom you name the Life-lord, went out of the land. He came back with a few other men in a flying-craft, which he loaded with the Lifewater. That cargo he took back to the outer world.

  “Since then, that Life-lord has flown here many times in his craft for new loads of the Lifewater. The sinful dwellers in the City of Eternal Youth let him take the water. He gives them in exchange certain weapons and supplies which he brings them from the outer world. And we Qualus cannot successfully attack his flying-craft. We are unable to stop this wicked traffic which he is carrying on!”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE had listened with keenest attention to this saga of the winged race. He realized by now that these Qualus were an evolutionary offshoot of the Saturnian human race. Developing in this isolated land in the dim past, they had met the rigors of nature by developing wings.

  He turned over in his mind their superstitious belief that the Fountain’s waters were evil to drink. Instinct or bitter experience, he thought, must have warned the winged men long ago to avoid the Lifewater.

  “You say the Fountain lies in a pit at the center of the City?” he asked the winged ruler. “Tell me, does the glowing water of the Fountain spring from a shining mass of mineral at the bottom of the pit?”

  “How did you know that?” Yuru asked wonderingly. “Yes, it is so. At the bottom of that pit is a mineral mass that blazes always with a great self-contained light. The shining waters of the Fountain gush up through that mass.”

  “Radioactive matter,” Curt muttered to himself. “A geyser of ordinary water, forced up through that radioactive mass.”

  He had quickly fathomed the nature of the Fountain. In that pit must lie a mass of intensely radioactive matter that had been heaved up from the radioactive core of Saturn. Ordinary water, gushing up through that mass under pressure, carried with it in suspension enough of the radioactive minerals to give the Lifewater its potent qualities.