Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) Page 4

  “If I wanted to kill you, I could do it right now by opening the cyc-room exhaust valves,” retorted Kim Ivan. “I want to keep you for hostages. If the Patrol catches up to us, you’ll be valuable to us. I give you my word that if you surrender, none of you will be harmed.”

  Curt looked at the others in his silent group. “You all heard. What’s your decision?”

  “Looks like there ain’t any choice,” muttered Ezra somberly. “We can either die right now, or accept Kim Ivan’s proposition. It’s to his interest to keep us alive as hostages, all right. An’, blackhearted pirate though he is, he’s got the reputation of keepin’ his word.”

  Captain Future and the Futuremen might have taken their chance and refused surrender, by themselves. But to sentence Joan to death?

  Curt’s mind was decided by the threat to the girl. He turned and spoke slowly into the interphone. “All right, Kim Ivan. We agree.”

  THE words were bitter in his mouth. It was almost the first time the Futuremen had acknowledged defeat and made quiet surrender.

  Otho’s eyes were blazing, and Grag’s huge metal figure was still rigidly ready for action.

  But the Brain’s chill, logical mind approved.

  “It is all we can do,” rasped Simon. “While we live, we have a chance of reversing the situation.”

  Curt unlocked the fore-door, which had now been unbolted outside also. Silently, he cast their atom-guns out onto the landing.

  Instantly, convicts appeared out there and snatched up the weapons. Then the fierce, exultant crowd swarmed into the cyc-room with Kim Ivan’s towering figure leading them.

  The big Martian’s battered red face was jovial with high good humor at his success. But Moremos, the Venusian, glared at the Futuremen with a hatred reflected on the fierce faces of most of the other mutineers.

  Curt ignored the threat in their tigerish stare. “What have you done with Captain Theron and the others?” he demanded.

  Kim Ivan looked uncomfortable. “They’re dead, all except four crewmen. I told the boys there didn’t need to be any killing, but they didn’t follow my orders. That’s your fault, Moremos.”

  Moremos had a sneer on his emerald-hued face as he answered the Martian. “You’re too chicken-hearted, Kim. If I had my way, we’d blast down all the rest of them right now. Why should we let Future and his pals live, when we’ve got a chance to wipe them out?”

  The Venusian’s venomous words kindled explosive agreement among the majority of the mutineers.

  “Moremos is right!” roared Grabo, the squat Jovian. “Future and his bunch have sent lots of good lads to Cerberus. Now we can pay ‘em off.”

  Kim Ivan’s bull bellow rose above the fierce tumult. “I’m giving the orders here and I say we don’t kill these prisoners.”

  His voice rang with contempt. “Are you all so thick-headed you can’t see our danger? When the Vulcan fails to arrive at Neptune a few days from now, the whole Patrol will start out looking for it. If they overtake us, we’ll have these prisoners as hostages.”

  His grim reminder of the Planet Patrol seemed to sober the mutineers somewhat. Every one of them had good reason to know the remorseless efficiency of that great organization.

  “The Patrol will hunt us till they find us, all right,” muttered fat Boraboll nervously. “They’ll comb the whole Solar System.”

  “They will,” Kim Ivan agreed. “But they won’t find us if you agree to my proposal. I propose that we leave the System altogether.”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE and his fellow-captives were as startled by that proposal as were the mutineers.

  “Leave the system?” gasped Grabo, the Jovian. “What do you mean?”

  Kim Ivan’s eyes flashed. “I’ve thought it all out. If we stay in the System, no matter what wild moon or asteroid we hide on, the Patrol will finally find us. Our only chance is to leave this Solar System forever.”

  He swept his hand in a grandiloquent gesture. “Out there beyond Pluto’s orbit is a whole universe for our refuge! Out there across the interstellar void are stars and worlds beyond number. You know that exploring expeditions have already visited the worlds of Alpha Centauri, and returned. They found those worlds wild and strange, but habitable.”

  The Martian’s voice deepened. “I propose that we steer for Alpha Centauri. It’s billions of miles away, I know. But we can use the auxiliary vibration-drive to pump this ship gradually up to a speed that will take it to that other star in several months. We have enough supplies for that long a voyage. Once there, we’ll have whole worlds for our own! We can easily dominate the primitive peoples that were found on those worlds.”

  The sheer audacity of the proposition held the mutineers in stunned silence.

  Then Curt Newton saw their faces kindle with excitement.

  “Kim’s right!” exclaimed Grabo. “If we stay here in the System we’ll be caught and sent to Cerberus sooner or later.”

  “I say, let’s go,” shrilled old Tuhlus Thuun. “The voyage may be long, but at the end of it there’ll be whole new worlds to loot.”

  Boraboll, the fat Uranian, looked scared. “We don’t know what we’ll run into out in uncharted outer space. It’s a terrible risk.”

  “The risk is no greater than the one we’ll run if we stay here in the System,” Grabo retorted. “We’re with you, Kim. It’s starward ho!”

  Stunned by dismay at what the daring decision meant to them, the Futuremen and their fellow-captives heard the mutineers’ fierce, excited chorus of agreement.

  “Starward ho!”

  Chapter 5: Wrecked

  SHUDDERING and creaking, the Vulcan hurtled out into the great deeps of interstellar space at the highest speed of its rocket-tubes. Days ago it had crossed the Line, as the orbit of Pluto was called.

  It was already more than four billion miles out into the vast abyss that stretches between the stars.

  As yet the mutineers had not dared make use of the auxiliary vibration-drive. For the powerful propulsion vibrations of that mechanism set up a peculiar excitation of the ether which could be spotted at great distances by the instruments of the Planet Patrol. Not until they were still farther from the System could the high speed drive be safely used.

  Down in the cell-deck, in one of whose cells he was confined, old Ezra Gurney gloomily considered their situation.

  “We’re a couple o’ billion miles from the System now. Soon as we get a little farther, there won’t be any chance o’ the Patrol overtakin’ us. Then we won’t be any more use to these space-scum as hostages.”

  “You think they’ll murder us then?” asked Joan Randall incredulously from her own cell. “But Kim Ivan gave his word they wouldn’t.”

  “I know, an’ Kim Ivan would proba’ly keep his word, but the others won’t,” Ezra predicted pessimistically. “That snake Moremos an’ the rest like him are just achin’ to put the blast on all of us.”

  Curt Newton, confined in his own separate cell, looked anxiously across the corridor at the barred door of Joan’s cell.

  “It’s my fault, letting you in for this,” he said ruefully. “I was overconfident, and they tricked me neatly.”

  “You know that isn’t so, Curt,” Joan denied staunchly. “The Patrol was in charge of this ship, and we fell down in spite of all your warnings.”

  The shrill, insane laugh of the crazed Earthman scientist came from farther down the corridor.

  “I said that there was death on this ship!”

  They had been imprisoned here for days, ever since the mutineers’ seizure of the ship. The electrolock cables had been repaired by Kim Ivan, and the Futureman and others had been confined in separate cells. Two mutineers armed with atom-guns constantly watched in the corridor.

  There were fifteen of them imprisoned here. Beside the Futuremen and Ezra and Joan, there were George McClinton, the stuttering chief engineer, and his two assistants; Rih Quili, the young Mercurian lieutenant; three space-hands and one Patrol guardsman; and John Rollin
ger, whose insane babbling had so exasperated the mutineers that they had reconfined him.

  “If ever I get my hands on that Kim Ivan,” Grag’s rumbling voice threatened, “I’ll tear him into little bits — slowly.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind!” promptly, asserted Otho’s hissing voice. “You’ll simply watch while I give him the Venusian water-torture.”

  George McClinton, the lanky chief engineer, was arguing through his bars with their two guards. “I t-t-tell you, you’ve got to give me some p-p-prunes with my rations! I’m s-starving for l-lack of them.”

  “Cut your blasts, all of you!” ordered the guards harshly. “You people are lucky just to be living yet — you don’t know how lucky.”

  Silence fall upon the dim-lit deck of cells. Captain Future squatted down against the front wall of his own cell, and seemed to doze.

  Actually, Curt had never been more awake. His position concealed from the vigilant guards the fact that his left hand was twirling a rude little metal drill which was biting ever deeper into the metal floor.

  Curt had not been idle during these days. From the moment of their capture, he had racked his brain for an expedient by means of which he might turn the tables on their captors. He had found one slim chance.

  The control-cables of the master electro-locks ran beneath the corridor floor just outside his cell. If he could drill through the floor of his cell, out beneath its wall, he could short-circuit the cables as Kim Ivan had done, and thus unlock all their cell doors.

  He had nothing to drill with. They had all been thoroughly searched with the scanner when they were locked in. His cell contained nothing but the fiber and clay dishes for food and water, and a flat metal bunk. But Captain Future had managed to unbolt one of the metal rods that supported his bunk. It was of harder metal than the floor.

  PATIENTLY, Curt had shaped the end of this rod into a drill by grinding it against his bunk-edge. For days now, he had been using it to drill surreptitiously through his cell-floor toward the lock cables. He could work only in moments when the guards were not directly watching him. But his hopes were fast rising as he felt himself nearing the vital cables.

  Suddenly the rough voice of Grabo, the Jovian, interrupted Curt’s tensely hopeful work.

  “Fetch Captain Future out of his cell,” the Jovian pirate was ordering the two guards in the corridor. “Kim Ivan’s orders.”

  Curt Newton’s heart sank. Had they discovered his secret labors?

  His cell door was unlocked separately. He had already hastily secreted his drill by restoring it to position as a support of the bunk. Curt stepped obediently into the corridor, the two guards covering him with the guns.

  The red-haired planeteer looked at Grabo with cool inquiry. “What does Kim Ivan want with me?”

  “You’ll find out on the bridge,” the Jovian answered harshly. “Get moving. One of you guards come along to cover him.”

  Grabo himself was not armed. Brawls among the mutineers during the first days had resulted in so many killings that Kim Ivan had decreed that only the guards of the prisoners should henceforth carry atom-guns.

  Curt walked calmly ahead of the Jovian and the watchful guard, up to the bridge-room. Old Tuhlus Thuun was in the pilot-chair. The hoary Saturnian criminal looked nervous, and there was a worried expression on big Kim Ivan’s massive red face. Moremos was arguing angrily with them.

  The broad sheet of the pilot-window, above the complex instrument panel, framed a glittering vista of interstellar space. The firmament was a great drift of stars, amid which the white spark of Alpha Centauri shone like a beacon in a direction dead ahead.

  Curt Newton’s practiced eyes, noticed at once the tiny red lights winking and flashing on the instrument-panel, and the buzzers whirring.

  “Future, we need some help,” Kim Ivan told Curt bluntly. “We’re running into something out here, I don’t know what. Tuhlus Thuun can’t figure it out, either.”

  “I never did any piloting outside the System before,” angrily defended the old Saturnian pirate. “Everything is cockeyed out here beyond the Line.”

  “You’ve been out here in deep space before, Future,” Kim Ivan said to Curt. “Can you figure out what’s got our instruments acting crazy?”

  “Suppose I do, will you turn around and go back to land us on Pluto?” Captain Future demanded.

  IT WAS Joan’s safety he was thinking of. There was a chance that he could bargain them into at least releasing the girl.

  Before Kim Ivan could reply, Moremos answered for him. The venomous Venusian murderer thrust his head toward Curt like a striking swamp adder of his native world, as he hissed:

  “No! You’re not dictating to anybody now, Future! You’ll either help us out or we’ll blast you down here and now.”

  “Go ahead and blast.” Curt retorted. “It won’t get you out of your troubles. And you’ll have plenty of trouble, piloting deep space.”

  He was bluffing, trying to high-pressure them into agreeing to the bargain he had proposed. And Kim Ivan called his bluff.

  “You’re not fooling anybody, Captain Future,” said the big Martian. “You won’t let this ship be wrecked for lack of your help. Because if it’s wrecked, the Randall girl dies — and you think plenty of her.”

  Curt winced. It was true. They held a trump card in the fact that Joan’s safety was tied up with that of the ship.

  “Let me see those instruments,” Curt said shortly, admitting defeat. He still had his secret plan of escape, he was thinking.

  Old Tuhlus Thuun began a voluble explanation. “I never saw instruments act so crazy! They indicate a meteor-swarm or some other celestial body near us, but the readings of its position they give are impossible!”

  “That’s because you’re not allowing for ether-drift and relativity space-warp,” Captain Future told him. “Out here in deep space, you have to correct for those factors.”

  His keen gray eyes swung along the deep bank of complicated dials. The red tell-tale lights under four of the meteorometers were blinking.

  The readings of those meteorometers showed the presence of a body of planetoidal dimensions, several hundred thousand miles away. That was a far greater distance than the instruments could actually function. The reading was being distorted by ether-drift and space-warp and must be corrected.

  Curt Newton hastily made nimble mental calculations. Trained in the routine of correction by his own former interstellar voyages, he rapidly reached a mental approximation of the true readings of the instruments.

  “The body indicated by those readings is really dead ahead of us!” he exclaimed. “Shift your course three arcs to port!”

  “God!” screeched Tuhlus Thuun, stiffening in the pilot-chair and staring through the broad window with dilated, bulging eyes.

  For a heartbeat, they were all frozen by what they saw as they followed the old Saturnian’s gaze.

  They were looking into the awful face of death.

  In the starry darkness full ahead of the hurtling ship, there had suddenly loomed up a spinning world. It was no more than a hundred miles in diameter. But it bulked gigantic as they raced headlong toward it.

  “Don’t try to brake!” yelled Curt frantically to the old Saturnian. “At this speed you’ll pile us up.”

  His warning went unheeded. Terror-stricken by the awful apparition ahead, Tuhlus Thunn madly jammed the brake-blast pedal to the floor.

  Next moment, the Vulcan seemed to explode around them. The roaring shock sent the men in the crowded bridge caroming into the walls.

  Captain Future clutched a stanchion. He heard the scream of tortured metal coincident with the reverberations of the explosion.

  He dragged himself erect. A dead silence reigned, then was broken by oaths and cries of pain from the other parts of the ship.

  Kim Ivan, bleeding from a gash on his forehead, dragged himself indomitably to his feet. “What’s happened?” he husked dazedly.

  “The bow rocket-t
ubes have back-blasted!” Curt cried. “You can’t use full brake-blasts at the speed we had — inertia forces the blast back up the tubes. I think the laterals let go, too.”

  “Look at that!” shouted Boraboll. The Uranian’s fat moon-face was a muddy yellow as he pointed shakily ahead. “We’re going to crash!”

  A cold hand seemed to close around Curt Newton’s heart as he caught a glimpse through the broad window. The tremendous force of the disastrous brake-blast had sharply checked the Vulcan’s headlong rush toward the planetoid ahead. But the crippled ship was still falling onward.

  The uncharted little world already filled half the starry heavens before them. The thin, feeble light from the distant Sun vaguely illumined it. Dark, dense forests were visible upon it. And at one point on its surface, a great bed of smoldering volcanoes flung a lurid red glow.

  “This is your fault!” roared Kim Ivan to the terrified old Saturnian.

  “I lost my head!” shrilled Tuhlus Thuun. “I jammed the brake-blast pedal before I realized.”

  Captain Future jumped to the interphone. He called the cyc-room: “What happened down there? Did the tail-tubes go, too?”

  The scared, hoarse voice of the mutineer in charge of the cyc-room answered him. “We got a dozen dead men down here — half the cycs blew up when the bow and lateral tubes back-blasted! The tail-tubes didn’t give way, though they seem to be badly strained.”

  “Switch the power of the remaining cycs into the tail rocket-tubes!” ordered Curt. “Then get out of the cyc-room!”

  He turned and hauled the stunned old Saturnian out of the pilot-chair. “Give me those controls.”

  MOREMOS leaped forward, deadly suspicion on his face. “Wait a minute, Future! You’re not pulling any of your tricks!”

  “Tricks, the devil!” flamed Curt. “We’re falling toward that planetoid, and in ten minutes we’ll crash. We can’t get away, for the bow and lateral tubes are blown, and the tail-tubes are strained and can’t be used for more than a few minutes of firing.”