Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) Page 6

  “Bah, what are you trying to do, scare us?” scoffed Kim Ivan, incredulously.

  Moremos, eyeing Curt Newton hatefully, hissed: “We ought to settle these cursed Futuremen right here and now. I say, let’s rid ourselves of them for good. All except the girl.”

  Captain Future rarely lost his temper. But at the evil implication in the Venusian’s last words, and at the sudden pallor that came into Joan Randall’s face, Curt’s bronzed face went a dull red.

  His voice was low and steady, but his gray eyes were fiery as he promised the Venusian murderer:

  “Moremos, when the time comes you are going to pay for that suggestion with your life.”

  The mutineers started threateningly forward, and Grag and Otho sprang instantly to Curt’s side. But Kim Ivan intervened roughly.

  “Cut your blasts!” he bellowed to his glaring followers. Then, with eyes narrowed suspiciously, he snapped to Curt: “What’s this story of yours about this planetoid exploding in two months?”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE slowly withdrew his flaming gaze from the Venusian. He explained in short, grim sentences.

  “This planetoid is becoming internally unstable. That is because it is drifting toward our Solar System. The gravitational influence of our System is setting up seismic strains inside its mass. The quakes and volcanic activity here are due to those interior strains. They’ll become worse as it draws nearer the System.

  “Two months from now, this planetoid will be so near the System that its tidal strains will burst it asunder. Roche’s Limit, which determines the critical distance at which a celestial body nearing a larger body will burst into fragments, operates in the case of this worldlet as though the whole System were one great body it was approaching.”

  Kim Ivan seemed baffled by Captain Future’s scientific reference, and there was still strong skepticism on his battered red face.

  He turned toward Boraboll, the Uranian. “What about that, Boraboll? You had a scientific education. Does Future’s claim make sense?”

  The fat Uranian’s moonlike yellow face twitched with fear, and his voice was husky. “It’s true that Roche’s Limit will operate for the whole System as though for one body, in affecting an unstable planetoid like this. If this planetoid gets much nearer than four billion miles, it will burst.”

  Old Tuhlus Thuun added a shrill word. “This planetoid isn’t a lot more than that from the System now, according to what our instruments read before we crashed. And it’s heading toward the System, all right.”

  “Then Future’s right,” gasped Boraboll, terrified. “My God, this little world is going to burst under us in two months!”

  The panic of the fat Uranian convinced the other mutineers as nothing else would have done. They looked at each other in fear.

  “Name o’ the Sun!” exclaimed Ezra Gurney “I didn’t think last night that we could be in a worse jam, but this makes it plenty worse.”

  Even big Kim Ivan looked a little appalled. He muttered, “That’s luck for you — cast away on a planetoid that’ll explode beneath us in a few weeks.”

  Curt Newton spoke incisively. “We’ve got just one chance. That is to get away from here before the catastrophe occurs.”

  “Get away?” echoed the big Martian blankly. “How the devil can we get away? We’ve got no ship now.”

  “Which means,” retorted Captain Future, “that our only chance of life is to build a ship.”

  Kim Ivan stared. “Build a ship, when we don’t have a single tool or piece of equipment? Build a spaceship, with our bare hands?”

  “He’s raving,” growled Grabo. “A spaceship takes tons of metal plates and girders, glassite for instruments and ports, copper for cables and coils, refractory alloy for rocket-tubes, and about forty other elements for the cyclotrons, fuel and other parts. And we’ve just got our fingers!”

  “We’ve got our fingers, and our brains.” Curt corrected. “We’ve got the accumulated knowledge of centuries of experimenters, from the first caveman who made a stone hammer on up to yesterday.”

  His eyes flashed. “Why shouldn’t we be able to start from scratch? The primitive peoples of the remote past did. All the raw elements we need should be present on this world. And if we have courage and skill enough to wrench them free and build with them, we can save ourselves.”

  His intensity seemed to make an impression upon the others. The mutineers listened as though clutching at a precarious straw of hope.

  But old Tuhlus Thuun shook his head. He muttered, “Nobody has ever built anything as complicated as a spaceship from scratch, in the whole history of the System.”

  “It’s never been done,” Curt admitted, “but that doesn’t say it can’t be done.”

  Chapter 7: The Tangle-Tree

  SOMETHING of Curt Newton’s driving purpose seemed to communicate itself to the doubting mutineers. They might hate this red-haired planeteer, but they were nevertheless impressed by him.

  It was at such moments that Captain Future’s genius for leadership asserted itself. The Brain was more deeply versed in scientific lore than he. Grag was stronger than he was, and Otho swifter. But he was leader of the Futuremen because of his indomitable will and courage.

  “If anybody could build a ship out of nothing, which I still doubt, you Futuremen maybe could,” muttered Kim Ivan.

  “It’s worth trying!” Boraboll exclaimed nervously. “Anything’s better than just sitting here waiting to die.”

  A general murmur of agreement came from the mutineers. Appalled as they were by the vista of approaching doom, they grasped at any straw.

  “There’s just one thing,” Curt said incisively. “If we Futuremen are to try building a ship, we must have absolute freedom of action and must have authority to command the assistance of all of you.”

  Moremos flared at that. “Me take orders from you, Future? Not in a million years!”

  “By God, you’ll take orders from me!” roared Kim Ivan to the green-faced Venusian. “And I’m agreeing to Future’s conditions. We can’t reasonably expect him to achieve this feat without the help of us all.”

  “It’s all a lot of nonsense,” shrilled old Tuhlus Thuun skeptically. “Nobody can build a spaceship out o’ nothing. It just can’t be done.”

  “Suppose we do manage to build a ship and get away? What then?” Grabo demanded suspiciously.

  Curt was ready for that. “Then you’ll agree to set myself and my friends down on some inhabited world of the System.”

  He knew better than to demand more. If he could once assure Joan’s safety, the pursuit of the mutineers could be taken up later.

  “I agree to that, Future,” said Kim Ivan promptly. “Now how do we start?”

  For a moment, even Captain Future was daunted by that question. It made him realize to the full the appalling magnitude of the thing they were about to attempt.

  How did you start building a big, complicated space ship when you had literally nothing but your bare hands? He groaned mentally as he envisioned the complexity of thousands of massive and delicate parts which must be correctly fabricated and assembled to form a navigable vessel.

  It wouldn’t do to show doubt. He quickly looked around the hostile, alien vista of the mystery planetoid.

  “Our first step necessarily must be to establish safe living-quarters for ourselves and investigate for food,” he declared. “Then we’ll make a preliminary survey for sources of the raw materials we’ll need.”

  Kim Ivan assented to that with a nod. “I’m hungry already, and getting more so by the minute.”

  George McClinton had opened his fiber case of prunes. The lanky, spectacled engineer stopped munching the dried fruit to inquire:

  “Anybody w-w-want some prunes? They’re very n-n-nourishing.”

  “Not until I’m hungrier than I am now, will I eat those danged things,” growled Ezra Gurney. “When you was snatchin’ up somethin’, why didn’t you snatch up a case of beef or somethin’ like that?”

&n
bsp; Captain Future and Kim Ivan, after a brief colloquy, had decided that they must find a suitable spot for a base nearer to the jungle. From the jungle must come whatever food they could glean. And the sulphurous air that clung over these lava-beds made proximity to them unpleasant.

  THE whole party started toward the jungle. Its green wall was less than a half-mile away. They could see birds or winged creatures flitting above the roof of the forest, and deduced the presence of a varied animal life from the calls and noises they had heard during the night.

  Joan asked Curt an earnest question as they tramped forward. “Curt, is it really possible to build a ship? I know you could do it if anybody could, but can anybody do that?”

  “Joan, I don’t know,” he admitted. “But our lives hang on the answer, and it’s up to us to find out.”

  “If we had unlimited time and materials, it might be done,” remarked the Brain pessimistically. “But to do it in two months, with no tools to begin with and criminals for workers —”

  Grag’s deep voice shouted from behind them, interrupting. “Hey, Chief, this crazy Rollinger won’t come along.”

  The crazed scientist, whom Curt had deputed Grag to keep an eye on, was refusing to accompany the party toward the jungle. Rollinger’s haggard face was distorted by overpowering fear, and his eyes were wild as he babbled objection.

  “I won’t go there!” he cried, peering terrifiedly toward the distant jungle. “They are there — the mighty ones. I heard Them speaking last night, in my mind. They know we are here, and They don’t like it.”

  “Who’s he talking about?” Grag asked puzzledly, as Curt and Otho and Joan came back.

  “He’s just raving again.” Otho commented.

  Rollinger’s voice rose to a shrill pitch. “They warned last night that we must not stay here, that They will kill us if we do!”

  “Pick him up and bring him along, Grag,” ordered Curt. “We can’t delay now to soothe him.”

  Rollinger struggled frantically, but was like a child in the grip of the great robot.

  “Do you suppose there really could be intelligent, malign life on this world?” Joan asked Curt.

  “I doubt it. We’ve seen no signs of intelligent life here so far,” Captain Future replied. “Of course, we’re likely to find some very queer plant and animal life here. For this planetoid doesn’t belong to our own System. It’s a wanderer of the interstellar void, a tiny planet that must long ago have been torn away somehow from its parent sun.”

  He continued thoughtfully. “Perhaps it has drifted through space for ages. Undoubtedly it has a radioactive core that has furnished sufficient warmth to support life on its surface. Evolution might take some weird paths upon a little, isolated worldlet like this.”

  The green wall of the jungle loomed before them in the feeble daylight.

  The castaways halted and stood silently looking at the alien, grotesque forest.

  It was composed chiefly of towering tree-ferns, whose colossal fronds were interlaced by lianas and vines. Thorny underbrush decked with brilliant scarlet and yellow flowers, and big pale-green mosses choked much of the space between the trunks of the mighty ferns.

  “There’s some kind of a natural clearing in there,” Kim Ivan reported to Curt. “Want to go in and look it over?”

  Captain Future nodded, and he and the big Martian pushed their way beneath the shadow of the towering ferns. The air was hot and steamy inside the jungle, and many transparent-winged insects flashed about them.

  “Makes you think of the Jovian forests, and yet everything is different,” Kim Ivan said soberly. “Ah, here we are.”

  They emerged into the natural clearing that lay a little within the jungle. It was actually a low knoll, a few yards high and several hundred yards in diameter.

  NOTHING grew within this clearing except a few dozen gigantic cacti. They were dark, barrel-shaped growths twelve feet high, spineless and with fluted sides.

  “Lucky, finding a natural clearing like this,” Kim Ivan remarked. “It’s just what we’re looking for, isn’t it?”

  Curt nodded. “We can build a stockade of fern-trunks around it for protection against possible beasts of prey. And it looks as though we could dig a spring at that moist patch of ground.”

  He turned to go back and bring the others, but Kim Ivan delayed him with a hand on his arm. The big Martian pirate had an oddly earnest expression on his massive, battered red face.

  “Future, wait a minute. I got something to tell you.”

  Curt looked at him keenly. “What is it?”

  Kim Ivan scratched his ear. “Well, it’s like this. I know you got it in for me because I led the mutiny. Not that I’m excusing that — I still say anything’s better than Interplanetary Prison. Though if the boys had obeyed my orders, there wouldn’t have been any killing.”

  Curt Newton wondered what this rambling introduction was leading toward. “So what?”

  “Well, I gave you my word we’d work with you all the way, trying to build this ship, and I’m a chap who keeps his word,” Kim Ivan went on. “But I can’t always control the boys. So — watch out for Moremos!”

  Captain Future stiffened. “Is that Venusian already planing to make trouble?”

  “He hates you like poison,” Kim Ivan said. “He was saying a little bit ago that he’d figured out how to get you and your pals, when the time came. And I’m afraid some of the boys would side with him. I’d keep an eye open for death-traps, if I was you.”

  Curt said thoughtfully, “I doubt if he’d try anything right away, for building this space ship is his only hope’s well as ours. But I’ll watch out for his clever little traps. And thanks for the warning, Kim.”

  “Don’t thank me,” disclaimed the big pirate bluffly. “I’m not worried about you for any reason except that you’re our only chance of getting off this cursed little world. I know that we can’t build a space ship out of nothing, but maybe you can.”

  They went back and brought the rest of the castaways to the clearing which they had selected for an encampment. Then Captain Future issued orders which were backed up by Kim Ivan’s authority over the mutineers.

  “The first essential is to build a stockade for protection and to find food,” he declared. “Then we can build huts for living-quarters, and start work assembling materials and tools for the ship.”

  He formed them into work and foraging parties. The former were to bring saplings and vines with which to build a rough wall around the clearing. The foraging groups were to look for fruits, nuts or other possible edibles, and bring them back to the Brain for inspection.

  “Ezra, you stay here with Joan,” Curt told the old marshal. “How are you, Rih Quili?”

  “The injured young Mercurian lieutenant gingerly touched his bandaged head. “It still aches a little, but I’m fit for work now.”

  “Better take it easy,” Curt advised. “And, Ezra, keep an eye on Rollinger all the time.”

  JOHN ROLLINGER had exhibited an almost pitiful terror of the jungle, and had had to be dragged by Grag to this clearing. The crazed Earthman now crouched, looking about the place with wild, scared eyes.

  Curt, Grag, Otho and George McClinton formed one of the work parties. They plunged into the shadowy green jungle of giant tree-ferns and choking underbrush, in search of suitable material for the stockade.

  “If we had just a b-b-bush-knife, it would be a l-lot easier,” mumbled the lanky McClinton, who was munching dried prunes as he marched.

  “Why not wish for an atomic blaster, while you’re at it?” suggested Otho. “Besides, this is where Grag comes in handy. He can tear up trees by the roots. You never saw anybody so strong.”

  “Meaning that you’re trying to flatter me into doing all the work,” growled Grag. “Well, it won’t go, my slippery rubberoid friend.”

  They were already deep in the green jungle. Big tree-ferns reared their glossy trunks for fifty to sixty feet, bearing masses of flat fronds and spore-pods. Y
et these were not true pteridophytes at all, but the result of a wholly different line of plant evolution, which appeared not to rely on photosynthesis as a source of life.

  There were other and even stranger trees. Huge ones like banyans reached out many leafless limbs from a massive central trunk. Others looked like big horse-tails. Club mosses flourished in the spaces between the crowding trunks, and creeping vines were everywhere. Many of the vines and the thorny smaller shrubs bore unfamiliar fruits.

  Insect life was abundant. But most of the winged arthropods possessed perfectly transparent wings and were hard to see. There were no true feathered birds, but white, bat-winged creatures were numerous and noisy in the tree-tops. And Curt Newton found tracks and other traces of animals that were apparently several species of small rodents.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any sign of large animals,” Captain Future declared. “Though all the life here is so alien it’s hard to tell.”

  George McClinton’s spectacled face was discouraged as he looked about the green gloom of the jungle.

  “It’s certainly w-w-wild enough.” Grag was already at work, uprooting saplings and ripping off big branches from the tree-ferns to be stripped into stockade-poles. The other three pitched in, but the huge robot had the advantage here. His steel arms could break tough limbs that the others could not tackle.

  Leaving a trail of trimmed poles behind him, Grag advanced toward one of the big banyan-like trees. He seized one of its leafless, drooping branches. Instantly, the branch retaliated by seizing him. It and others of the scores of branches coiled around him like tough plant-tentacles and dragged him toward the central trunk.

  “Hey, Chief, this tree’s fighting back!” yelled Grag alarmedly.

  “It’s some kind of carnivorous form of plant-life that can devour animals!” Captain Future cried. “Tear those branches away, Grag.”

  “I can’t!” shouted the robot. “The cursed things are strong as steel! It’s a regular tangle-tree.”

  Chapter 8: The Cubics