Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942) Read online

  Otho groaned exasperatedly. “Every time we’re in a devil of a hurry, Simon has to delay to plan things out.”

  There was truth in the charge. The cold, almost emotionless mind of the Brain was always more careful in planning action than were the others. That was natural, for the Brain was the oldest of them all.

  The Brain could look back across the years to the time before Curt Newton had been born. He had been an ordinary man, at that time. He had been Doctor Simon Wright, brilliant, aging scientist of a great Earth university, dying of an incurable ailment.

  His body had died but his brain had lived on. His living brain had been surgically removed and implanted in the artificial metal serum-case which he still inhabited. That had been done by Roger Newton, his gifted young colleague in biological research.

  Soon after that, threats to their scientific secrets had caused the Brain, Roger Newton and Newton’s bride to leave Earth in search of a safe refuge. They had found such a haven on the lifeless Moon, where they built an underground laboratory-home beneath the floor of Tycho crater.

  In that strange home, Curt Newton had been born. And in it, the science of the two experimenters had created Otho, the android, and Grag, the robot.

  Death had come to Roger Newton and his young wife, soon after that. The orphaned infant they had left had been adopted by the three strange beings, the Brain, the robot and the android. These three had faithfully reared the boy to brilliant manhood, giving him the unparalleled education that in time had made him an unsurpassed master of science.

  Ever since Curt Newton had begun to use his great powers against the evil-doers of the System, his three former guardians had followed him as the Futuremen.

  “Before we go out there,” the Brain was saying deliberately in his metallic voice, “I want all available data about the spaceships that disappeared. I want to know the route each ship was on, its date of departure, its approximate cruising speed, and about when it vanished.”

  Captain Future’s gray eyes showed quick understanding.

  “I see what you mean, Simon. By calculating the courses and speeds of the ships, we may be able to fix the approximate point in space where they vanished.”

  Halk Anders gave rapid orders into an office interphone. The file of data requested by the Brain was soon brought to him.

  “We’ll call you the moment we learn anything out there,” Curt called back earnestly from the door to the two officials. “Come on, Grag.”

  THEY hurried up the little private stair to the landing deck atop Government Tower, Otho taking the steps three at a time, Grag’s metal limbs clanking, the Brain gliding silently at Curt Newton’s side.

  Up there in the windy darkness atop the tower, the small ship of the Futuremen crowded the deck. The four boarded the Comet in a minute, the airlock door was slammed shut, the cyclotrons started, and Captain Future grasped the space-stick in the crowded little control room.

  He sent the Comet climbing steeply up to the stars with a burst of white flame from its tail rocket tubes. It angled sharply above the glittering towers of New York to fling itself space-yard amid a roar of splitting atmosphere, as Curt’s foot pressed the cyc-pedal.

  Presently they were out in clear space, Earth receding rapidly behind them as Curt Newton built up the speed of the Comet to fantastic velocity. Like a man-made meteor gone mad, the ship of the Futuremen hurtled outward. The bright speck of Jupiter gleamed ahead, a little to the right.

  Far out to the left, well beyond the orbit of the monarch world, glowed the brilliant splendor of Halley’s Comet. The great comet was plunging Sunward again in its vast, seventy-five-year orbit. Its giant coma or head shone like a blazing world, the long tail streaming backward.

  “The ships all disappeared in the quadrant ahead, between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus,” Curt told Otho thoughtfully. “Since all space-lanes have been rerouted to give Halley’s comet a wide berth, it cuts down the area that we must search.”

  There came a sudden booming cry of alarm from Grag, back in the main cabin.

  “Someone has planted an atomic bomb on this ship!”

  Springing up in alarm, Curt Newton slammed the switch of the automatic pilot and bounded back with Otho into the cabin. This main cabin of the Comet was more laboratory than living quarters. It was crowded with telescopic, spectroscopic, electrical and other apparatus. There was a table at its center over which the Brain had been poised, studying a mass of calculations.

  Grag was standing, pointing his metal arm in alarm at a small, square black case in a corner. It exactly resembled a “live” atomic bomb.

  “Don’t touch it, Chief — it may let go any minute!” the big robot cried. “Somebody must have put it in the ship while we were out.”

  Captain Future moved swiftly toward the bomb, snatched it up and tore open the airlock door to throw the thing out. But the “bomb” suddenly writhed and changed form in his hands.

  It changed with swift protean flow of outline, into a small, living animal. It was a doughy-looking little white beast, with big, solemn eyes that looked up innocently at Curt.

  “It’s my pet, Oog!” cried Otho. He jumped forward in alarm. “Don’t throw him out!”

  Curt disgustedly tossed the little animal to its master.

  “It isn’t his fault,” Otho said protectively. “You know Oog loves to imitate anything he sees. That’s his nature.”

  Oog was cuddling contentedly in his master’s arms. The little beast was a meteor-mimic, a species of asteroidal creature which had developed the art of protective coloration to great lengths. This species had the power of shifting its bodily cells to shape itself after any model, and completely controlled its own pigmentation. It could imitate anything.

  “I don’t mind your keeping the little nuisance around in the Moon-laboratory, but I told you not to bring any pets in this ship,” Captain Future bawled out the android.

  “Well, Grag brought along his pet, Eek, and so I thought I had a right to bring Oog,” Otho answered defensively.

  CURT uttered an exasperated snort. “So we’ve got Eek along, too? Where is he, Grag?”

  Reluctantly the great robot opened a cabinet and released another small animal, but one of a different species. It was a little gray, bearlike creature with beady black eyes and powerful jaws, now contentedly gnawing upon a small scrap of copper.

  Eek, as Grag called this pet of his, was a moon-pup. He was a member of the strange species of moon-dogs that inhabited the airless satellite of Earth. These creatures did not breathe air or eat ordinary food, but nourished their strange tissues by devouring metal or metallic ores. They were strongly telepathic, that being one of their chief senses.

  “Look at the beast — he’s chewed up half the copper instruments in that cabinet,” Curt said bitterly. “Why the devil did you bring him along?”

  Grag shifted uncomfortably.

  “Well, Chief, I had to do it. Eek can sense what people are thinking, you know, and he knew we were going and was upset about being left behind. He’s a sensitive little fellow.”

  “Sensitive? That walking four-legged nuisance? All he knows is to eat up valuable metal and to sleep,” Curt said witheringly.

  Simon Wright had paid no attention to the altercation over the pets. The Brain was too accustomed to such arguments to notice them. “Curtis, I want you to look at these figures,” he said.

  Curt went over to the side of the Brain, who was poised uncannily upon his pale tractor-beams above the mass of calculations. The brain had been marking small crosses upon a space-chart that showed the quadrant between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, ahead of them.

  “Each cross represents where one of the spaceships vanished, as nearly as I can figure it,” the Brain explained. Captain Future felt dismayed as he looked. The pattern of crosses was not focused around any one point. It extended in a long, strung-out oval, reaching almost from Uranus’ orbit to that of Jupiter.

  “I can’t understand this,”
Curt muttered puzzledly. “I thought the ships would all have disappeared in the same part of space, and that by going there we could find the key to the mystery. But since that isn’t so, it means we’ll have to search the whole vast quadrant for a clue.”

  “I fear so, lad,” admitted the Brain. “And a search of such dimensions will take us weeks.”

  Curt went discouragedly back to the pilot chair. Gloomily he stared into the enormous, star-specked void ahead of the flying ship. It yawned empty to the eye, except for the bright spark of Jupiter to the right, and the flaring glory of Halley’s Comet far out on the left ahead.

  Curt’s eyes suddenly narrowed upon the comet. His unseeing stare had brought a subconscious idea into his mind. A possibility hitherto ignored abruptly burst upon him with stunning implications. He hastened back into the cabin.

  “Simon, let me see that chart of yours again!”

  The Brain watched wonderingly as Curt closely examined the plotted crosses, each of which marked the disappearance of a ship.

  “Look, Simon! The first ships that vanished did so near the orbit of Uranus. The next ones disappeared further Sunward. The location of disappearances has steadily moved in a Sunward direction.”

  “That’s true,” the Brain admitted. “Does it mean anything?”

  “I don’t know,” Curt muttered. “But Halley’s Comet has also been steadily moving in a Sunward direction, during these vanishings.”

  His eyes flashed.

  “Simon, I know it sounds insane, but I think that Halley’s Comet has something to do with this mystery!”

  Chapter 3: On the Comet World

  RUSHING headlong through the great deeps of space, Halley’s comet flamed in the blackness like a world afire. The gigantic spherical coma, over two hundred thousand miles in diameter, flared in a supernal glory of dazzling electrical radiance.

  Within that radiant shell of force, there pulsed the deeper glow of the mysterious nucleus. And back from the head streamed the millions of miles of the glowing growing tail.

  Strangest of all the Solar System’s children was this vast wanderer. Its long, elliptical orbit carried it out beyond the orbits of even the outer planets, out beyond the frontier of the System to the shores of infinity.

  There, as though obeying the call of its parent orb, the great comet always turned and rushed Sunward through the planetary orbits, gathering speed until it was racing in through the circling worlds at frightful velocity.

  Curt Newton and his Futuremen gazed with a tinge of awe at the gigantic, glowing body as their ship approached it. They were now but a million miles from the coma.

  “It’s like slapping a Venusian marsh tiger in the teeth to fool around with this thing,” muttered Otho. “That coma is pure electric energy. If we get too close to it, we’ll be blasted like a butterfly.”

  Otho spoke more truly than he knew.

  A giant, invisible hand seemed suddenly to seize their ship in an iron grasp. The racing craft, brought suddenly to a halt in space, stopped so sharply that only the cushioning anti-acceleration force-stasis to the control room saved them all from being crushed on the walls.

  As it was, Curt’s brain blurred from the shock. He heard a loud yell of alarm from Grag. He shook his head violently to clear it.

  Their ship, the Comet, was falling at nightmare speed toward the giant flaring comet that was its namesake!

  “What happened!” Otho was yelling. “Chief, did the eyes fail?”

  “No, they’re still going. We must have run into powerful ether current that’s sucking us toward the comet,” Curt said hastily.

  As he spoke, he was jamming down the cyc-pedal and swerving the space-stick to bring the slip back on its course. The massive cyclotrons roared with full power, rocket tubes spouting tremendous blasts of flame backward.

  But the ship continued to fall toward the flaring comet. All Curt’s efforts could not bring it out of that racing descent. And now he noticed with increased alarm that the instruments before him had gone crazy. Meteorometers, gravitometers and all the other instruments had either blown out or were showing erratic, impossible readings.

  “This isn’t any ether current that’s grabbed us!” Curt exclaimed. “This is a powerful magnetic beam of some kind, that’s somehow projected from the comet and is sucking us in to it!”

  A super-powerful magnetic force had seized the ship’s steelite hull and was dragging it at rapidly mounting speed toward Halley’s comet.

  “Chief, something’s the matter with me!” bellowed Grag in evident panic. “I’m stuck against the wall here — I can’t move!”

  Curt discovered the predicament of the robot. Grag was flattened against the wall of the control room nearest the comet. The great robot, with all his mighty strength, seemed unable to free himself. And Simon Wright, the Brain, was also pinned to the wall.

  “It’s got me too, lad,” rasped the Brain, with unperturbed calm, “This is an effect of the magnetic force that’s seized us.”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE understood. Both the great body of Grag and the case of the Brain were composed of metal alloys whose base was steelite. Thus they were pinned against the wall by the magnetic force.

  The scene was one of desperate confusion. The speed with which the unseen magnetic beam was drawing them toward the ominous glowing coma was increasing by the second. Grag and Simon were helpless. Eek was cowering in a corner as he telepathically sensed his master’s alarm. The little meteor-mimic, Oog, had promptly turned himself into an exact imitation of Eek, in his fright.

  “Take it easy, men!” Curt ordered sternly. “We’ll have to try the vibration drive. Go back and start the generators, Otho. Simon, you and Grag can’t help — just wait.”

  Curt’s presence of mind brought order out of the momentary chaos. Otho raced back into the cabin to start up the powerful generators, which were the source of power for the Comet’s auxiliary vibration drive. This drive, whose mechanism could fling the ship at incredible speeds through the reactive push of etheric vibrations, was intended only to be used in the vast spaces outside the System. But Curt knew it was their only hope of breaking free of the remorseless magnetic grip that was dragging them to doom.

  Captain Future discovered that he himself was being dragged by a persistent force toward the wall against which Grag and Simon were pinned. He found that the effect was due to the proton pistol at his belt whose steelite was tugged toward the wall by a powerful pull. Curt hastily took the weapon out of his belt and at once it flew toward the wall.

  “Hey, look out!” Grag exclaimed. “That thing hit me right in the stomach!”

  “You can hammer out the dent in your stomach later,” Curt retorted. “Otho, have you gone asleep back there?” He was answered by the thrumming roar of the vibration-drive generators, which soon were shaking the ship with their powerful drone.

  “All ready, Chief!” Otho reported, tumbling back into the control room. He, too, had been forced to jettison his weapons.

  “This will yank us out of the magnetic grip, if anything will,” Curt gritted. “Hold on, Otho!”

  He flung in the switches of the vibration drive. The slip, still falling dizzily toward the comet, shuddered violently as the powerful propulsion vibrations were projected suddenly from its stern.

  But it still continued to fall toward Halley’s Comet, still gripped by the relentless magnetic beam. Curt increased the power. The ship shuddered even more strongly, and an ominous creaking warned of tremendous stresses that were weakening its frame. Yet it still could not break free.

  “We’re caught for good!” Curt exclaimed dismayedly. “Even the vibration drive can’t tear us loose. Fiends of Pluto, there must be a world of power in this beam that’s seized us!

  “What are we going to do?” cried Otho. “We don’t have much time left. Holy sun-imps, look at that coma!”

  The spectacle outside the windows was now an appalling one, as the ship hurtled toward the comet at incredible speed. The immense
spherical coma of Halley’s comet filled almost all space ahead of them, a blinding sea of dazzling white light. It was not really light, at all, Curt well knew.

  THAT coma was a vast shell of ions, electrically charged atoms whose tremendous potential was such as to destroy by an unearthly lightning blast any matter that touched it.

  And their ship would strike that coma in a dreadfully short time. Captain Future felt, as he had never felt before, a sense of being trapped by forces that even the resourcefulness and scientific powers of the Futuremen could not contend against.

  Yet it was characteristic of Curt Newton that even in this moment of frightful danger, he was not thinking of himself. It was of Joan Randall and Ezra Gurney that he was thinking, and of the others who had been lost in vanished ships.

  “They were all drawn into the comet by a magnetic beam, the same as we,” he declared. “Simon, that beam was deliberately projected to seize us!”

  “Aye, lad,” came the answer of the helpless Brain. “There’s intelligence and menace inside Halley’s comet.”

  We’ve got about five minutes before we hit the coma!” Otho yelled. “This is the end of our space-trail. Good-bye, Grag, old pal — I’m sorry now I was always ribbing you about being a robot. You may be made of metal, but you’re a better man than I ever was.”

  “No, Otho,” Grag boomed earnestly. “You were a swell guy but I didn’t appreciate you. I guess I was just jealous.”

  Curt Newton, looking fearlessly ahead into that appalling sea of light, toward which they were being dragged, suddenly shouted.

  “Before you two grave-diggers make your last farewells, look at this!” he cried. “I think we’re going to get through the coma!”

  They stared unbelievingly. Their ship was now rushing straight toward the vast, flaring wall of electric force, the head of the comet. There was a round aperture in the glowing shell of the comet. And the ship was being sucked straight toward that hole!