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

by Edmond Hamilton

  Curt Newton’s mind kindled to a possibility of ending the evil Lifewater traffic forever! If the Qualus would agree, he saw a way of removing this poison from the Solar System.

  “Yuru, listen to me,” Curt said earnestly. “I could prevent anyone from ever again drinking the waters of the Fountain, by irrevocably destroying the Fountain.”

  “You could not do that,” Yuru replied incredulously. “There is no way by which any man could destroy the Fountain.”

  A chorus of agreement went up from the other winged people. But Captain Future persisted. “Suppose I could do it. Would you help me?”

  Yuru did not hesitate. “Yes, we would help you. For the Fountain is evil, as we have always known. It would be better for it to be destroyed, so its waters would no longer tempt sinful men.” Then the winged king demanded: “But how could you hope to destroy the Fountain?”

  Curt had had a plan in mind from the first moment he had understood the nature of the Fountain.

  “It could be done,” he replied. “But there are certain instruments that I will need in order to build the mechanism. Most of all, I would need a small, powerful atomic generator. Have you one?”

  Yuru shook his head. “We Qualus do not use such machines as that.”

  Curt’s hopes sank. But the Qualu king continued talking.

  “There are such things in the City of Eternal Youth. Some of our young men could steal one for you, after darkness has fallen.”

  “Good!” Captain Future exclaimed. “I’ll go with them.”

  “No,” Yuru replied decisively. “They can move with more stealth and quiet without you. Tell them what you need, so that they will know what they are to get.”

  TO TWO young Qualus males, Captain Future carefully described just what he wanted. By this time, the strange diffused sunlight of the hidden land was already deepening into dusky twilight.

  When complete darkness fell, the two young Qualu men left on their mission. They swooped from the cliffs into the gathering darkness and were gone, winging down through the misty moonlight toward the distant lights of the City of Eternal Youth.

  Impatiently Curt Newton waited their return. The Qualu people, excited by the imminence of great events, had lighted the torches that gave the only illumination to their strange rookery-city. They prepared their evening meal of cooked herbs and the flesh of small animals and birds.

  Curt ate with them at one of the carved rock tables. He thought, fleetingly, that even he had seldom eaten with stranger company than these solemn, winged people in the cavern-city high in the dizzy cliffs. But that was less important than the danger of delay. What if the Qualu boys failed —

  With a rush of wings threshing the air, the two young Qualu men returned. They carried between them a small, compact, heavy atomic generator and wiring, and the other materials that Curt had asked for.

  “You got everything!” Captain Future cried in approval. “Now to get to work. I’m going to build a mechanism that will forever put an end to the Fountain.”

  The two young men were so excited that they could hardly speak.

  “The one called the Life-lord is in the City of Eternal Youth,” they reported to Yuru. “And he was followed by three beings in a strange ship — three strange creatures whom he discovered were trailing him. He and the men of the City have made the three strange beings prisoners. Also, the Life-lord’s allies are guarding their ship.”

  “What are those three prisoners like?” Curt asked sharply, with sudden premonition.

  The descriptions given by the two young Qualus fulfilled Curt’s premonition. They were descriptions of the Futuremen...

  “Grag, Otho and Simon — prisoners!” he cried.

  Chapter 16: City of Eternal Youth

  DISMAY struck sharply at Captain Future. He realized that the Futuremen must have located Rendezvous Two. Daringly they had tracked the Life-lord to this place, and had been discovered by him. Now they were captives of the arch-criminal and his allies, the people of the City.

  “What have they done to the three prisoners?” Curt cried. “Have they harmed them?”

  The two young Qualus shook their heads.

  “The three captives have not yet been harmed. They are held with another prisoner who was recently captured. But we heard the Life-lord speak to them. We heard the Life-lord say. “Unless you decide within an hour to tell me where that devil Future is, you’ll all three die by slow torture.””

  When Curt Newton heard that, cold flame sprang into his gray eyes.

  “The Life-lord said that? He’ll learn where Future is, damn him!”

  Curt looked down with anxiety at the materials and instruments the two Qualus had stolen for him.

  “An hour,” he muttered. “Not much time for me to build the flickering torches. The winged people watched wonder, is a chance to end both the Life-lord and the Fountain, tonight!”

  He started to work with fierce resolution, by the light of the flickering torches. The winged people watched wonderingly as the red-haired scientific wizard fitted together the instruments that had been stolen for him. He was swiftly wiring them to the heavy atomic generator to form a complex machine.

  Curt was working against time. An hour — less than an hour now — was all that remained if he was to come to the aid of the Futuremen. Could he put together the intricate mechanism in that short time?

  Less than a third of the hour remained when Curt Newton finished his frantic labors. He had constructed a large gun-like mechanism that was capable of ejecting a concentrated stream of free protons.

  “Hope this can do the work,” he panted, straightening. “We’ll have to risk it. There’s no time to test the thing now.”

  He chose the two young Qualus, who had stolen the materials, and four other strong, young, winged men, to accompany him.

  “All our fighting men are going with you,” Yuru declared. The Qualu king’s eyes flashed. “We intend to help you end the Fountain whose curse has long blighted our land.”

  “All right, but you’ll have to keep up out of sight until I need you,” Captain Future said rapidly. “You four take that machine.”

  The four strong young Qualus he had selected picked up the improvised mechanism. Carrying it effortlessly, they leaped out from the cliff-city into the night. Curt heard the beat of their wings as they flew, holding the machine between them.

  The two other young winged men grasped Curt’s arms. They leaped out into darkness, upheld by his two strange bearers, Curt was carried down through the misty moonlight toward the valley.

  He looked back. The four with the machine had dropped back close behind him. And behind them, in turn, came hundreds of Qualus. The winged men were gripping metal swords and flying silently after him in a grim, purposeful formation.

  Curt Newton thrilled to the weirdness of the experience. He led the winged men down through the misty moonlight toward the bright lights of the City of Eternal Youth.

  “Straight to the Fountain,” he ordered his own six men. Then he turned and called back softly to Yuru. “Remain with your men out of sight above the City till I call for you.”

  THE six Qualus carrying Captain Future and the proton machine glided down toward the City lights. Yuru and the other Qualus remained circling silently on their wings high above the City.

  Bright gleamed the lights of the City of Eternal Youth as Curt’s small party planed down toward it. Clear through the night rose throbbing music, the sound of laughter and gay shouting.

  “The wicked ones make merry at feasting as they do each night,” grated one of Curt’s winged bearers.

  “There is the Fountain of Life,” the other told Captain Future. “There are no sinful ones around it at this late hour.”

  Curt Newton’s heart leaped. At last he looked upon the legendary Fountain that he had won to by such toil and hazard!

  The City of Eternal Youth had been built around a circular plaza of large size. At the center of that plaza yawned a pit, a dee
p shaft in the rock, no more than thirty feet in diameter.

  Out of that pit ceaselessly spurted a glorious geyser of shining, self-luminous water. Bursting high above the surface of the ground, it kept falling back into the pit, with a dull roaring sound.

  This was the Fountain of Life, eternally jetting the Lifewater whose insidious poison had been spread by the Life-lord to every world of the System! It gushed from the darkness in hell-born, maleficent beauty, a luring, beckoning thing whose shining loveliness masked unutterable evil.

  “Land the machine at the edge of that pit,” Captain Future ordered his Qualus in a sharp whisper. “Quickly!”

  And quickly the winged men obeyed. Curt presently stood with them at the very brim of the shaft. The proton-machine had been set down beside him.

  He peered into the pit. It was perhaps a hundred feet in depth, a natural shaft dropping through solid rock. At the bottom blazed a great mass of solid radioactive mineral, shining like a softly glowing sun.

  Through a fissure in that radioactive mass, the shining waters of the Fountain were forced upward by interior pressure. Then the shining waters, falling back into the pit, drained away through underground channels. Around Curt Newton, on the edge of the pit, lay queer metal cups with long, polelike handles. With these the people of the City reached out and took the shining water from the Fountain.

  Captain Future felt his confidence soar. The glowing radioactive mass down there, if he could destroy that —

  He adjusted his improvised proton machine so its nozzle pointed straight down at the shining mass in the pit’s depths. Then he turned to the Qualus.

  “When I start this thing, it will arouse everyone in the City, There’ll be no chance then to rescue my three prisoned comrades. So I am going to try to find them before I operate this thing. Their hour is almost up.”

  One of the Qualus who had stolen the materials for him answered in a quick whisper.

  “We two can guide you to the place where the prisoners are!”

  Then you two take me up over the city,” Curt said. “Otherwise we couldn’t get through it undiscovered. You other four men wait here and guard the machine — I’ll be back quickly.”

  The four other Qualus nodded understandingly. The two winged men, who had spoken, picked up Captain Future by the arms. They rose rapidly into the night on whirring wings, started flying low across the roofs of the noisy City.

  CURT NEWTON looked down from the darkness upon the City of Eternal Youth, as he was borne across it.

  The City of Eternal Youth must be the strangest city in all the Solar System. Its people were all young. Some of them had lived many life-spans. All these men and women had come here, drawn by the lure of the Fountain. And they had found that once they drank its waters they could not depart. Now they must stay here and drink the waters forever.

  This was the City of loud, joyless revelry, feasting and drunkenness. Among the hundreds who peopled it, Curt could distinguish Earthmen and women, Martians, Saturnians, Jovians — men and women of almost every planet. Their dwellings blazed with lights as they made merry to forget their inevitable, ghastly fate.

  “They are bitter of heart, these sinful ones who drink the waters of youth,” whispered one of Curt’s Qualu bearers. “They have learned that eternal youth is a curse. Many of them become so satiated with it that in time they kill themselves.”

  “Aye,” muttered the other Qualu. “They have found out what our people always knew. It is evil to challenge nature’s laws.”

  Captain Future silently agreed. They were indeed tragic, these men and women who had become slaves to the waters of youth.

  “There is the prison,” a winged bearer whispered as they flew on. “See, one of the Life-lord’s men stands guard outside it.”

  Curt glimpsed the low white cement building. It had no windows. Outside its heavy door lounged Thorkul, the Martian criminal.

  “Drop me on that Martian!” Captain Future ordered.

  The Qualus zoomed downward. Thorkul looked up, startled, as his ears caught the whir of wings. Then Curt Newton dropped on him.

  Curt’s proton pistol hammered the Martian to unconsciousness. Swiftly he searched Thorkul’s pockets. He found an electro-key which he hastily applied to the lock of the prison door.

  The door swung open. Curt pushed into a cement room, lighted by a single uranite bulb. A relieved exclamation burst from him.

  “Simon! Grag! Otho! I was afraid I was too late.”

  “It’s the Chief!” Otho hissed excitedly to his comrades. “Didn’t I tell you he’d show up?”

  The Brain was resting on a table, unable to move, of course. Otho and Grag were secured to the cement wall by unbreakable chains. Another captive was chained beside them, an elderly, sour-faced Earthman.

  “Martin Graeme, eh?” Curt said, without amazement. “I had an idea you were the other prisoner the Qualus told me about.”

  Captain Future found that the chains were locked. The door’s electro-key would not open them. He snatched from his belt-kit a tiny, atomic-driven file.

  “Have to get out of here in a hurry,” he rapped out as he started working on Otho’s bonds. “I’ve made alliance with the Qualus, the winged men. Some are waiting now at the Fountain with a device I built to destroy that cursed thing.”

  “The Life-lord will return any minute,” warned the Brain calmly. “His ultimatum to us has almost expired, lad.”

  “Master, do you know if Eek is all right?” Grag asked anxiously. “I left him in the Comet.”

  “Listen to the big metal lummox!” Otho exploded. “That damned moon-pup is all he’s been worrying about!” While Curt worked on the chain, Otho told him that they had intercepted the Life-lord’s space ship as they hovered above Saturn to give Simon time to discover an antidote.

  “But it seems that the Life-lord noticed the guide beam blinker we’d put on his flier, when he landed here,” Otho said, “So he knew someone was trailing him. He got the people of this damned City to help him set an ambush for us. We walked right into the trap! We’d have fought our way out, Grag and I. But the Life-lord grabbed the Brain and threatened to destroy him unless we surrendered. When they penned us up here, we found Martin Graeme already here. So we knew then that Graeme couldn’t be the Life-lord.”

  Martin Graeme found his voice as Curt released Otho and started to work on Grag’s chains.

  “I told you from the first I wasn’t the Life-lord!” he babbled fearfully to Captain Future. “I was only hunting for the Fountain to find the winged people that were supposed to guard it.”

  “I know,” Curt stated as he worked. “When you read Sus Urgal’s manuscript, Legends of the Solar System,’ you saw a clue to the winged people in what Sus Urgal had found out up at Tobor.”

  “That’s it. How did you know?” Graeme cried wonderingly. “Sus Urgal himself put no faith in that story he’d heard at Tobor. But I thought it might be a real clue to the Fountain. I’d already decided to follow it up when you arrived on Saturn, Captain Future. After Zin Zibo was killed and I was suspected with the others, I feared I’d be detained indefinitely. So I slipped away and flew north to Tobor. I followed the old Saturnian’s clue in through the Mistlands here, and —”

  “And you were captured by the Life-lord’s allies in the city when you arrived here just before the Futuremen,” Curt finished for him. “I figured almost from the first that you were not the Life-lord, Graeme. I knew that when I found out at the Ops Museum that you had not consulted the archives until after Zin Zibo, Keene and the others.”

  “That devil Keene, he’s the Life-lord!” Grag boomed. “If I get my hands on him —”

  “Here’s your chance,” Otho hissed excitedly from his place at the door. “The Life-lord’s coming now!”

  Captain Future severed the last of Grag’s chains and leaped to the door. The Life-lord, with a score of armed, youthful men of the City, was approaching the prison. Curt recognized him as the aura-shrouded man in t
he lead.

  “We’ll close the door, let him enter and then grab him!” Curt declared.

  “Too late, Chief!” Otho yelled. “The game’s up!” Thorkul, the stunned Martian, had recovered. Now he voiced a thick cry of warning to the approaching Life-lord. The disguised criminal stopped and recoiled, shouting an alarm that spread quickly over the whole City...

  Chapter 17: Battle at the Fountain

  MEN of the City were pouring out into the streets in answer to the Life-lord’s alarm. The blue-shrouded arch-criminal had darted behind his allies and was retreating quickly. But his harsh voice was still urging the youthful people of the City to attack Curt and his comrades.

  “It’s Captain Future!” the Life-lord was yelling. “Get him!” Another cry of alarm came from near the center of the City at the same moment.

  “There are Qualus at the Fountain! They’ve got some kind of machine —”

  “It’s a plot of Future’s to destroy the Fountain!” the Life-lord shouted.

  A roar of fury went up from the youthful throng. Though they might regret that they had ever drunk the waters of the Fountain of Life, they knew that without those waters they would die.

  “Death to Captain Future!” they screamed, and surged forward, with atom guns blazing streaks of fiery death.

  Curt Newton had already snatched out his proton pistol. He had not the heart to kill these crazed addicts of an unholy poison. He merely set the proton beam at stunning strength as he triggered swiftly into the advancing horde.

  Men in the furious crowd dropped unconscious, hit by the pale beam. Atom-flashes from the guns of others were searing into the cement wall of the prison as Curt dashed out with his comrades.

  “We’ve got to get to the Fountain, or my whole plan’s ruined!” Curt shouted to the Futuremen. “Fight through them!”

  Otho was on one side of him. Grag, carrying the Brain in one hand, was on his other side as they dashed forward.