Captain Future 03 - Captain Future's Challenge (Summer 1940) Read online

  Carson Brand singled out their leader. “Where’s Vase Avam, the mine-boss?” he cried to the Neptunian foreman.

  The foreman chattered in broken Earthspeech.

  “Down in the dome — he’s trying to keep the laborers from stampeding. The dome walls have bulged a little in one place. Vase Avam says there’s no real danger, but the men —”

  Carson Brand waited to hear no more.

  “Come on, Captain Future!” he cried. “Maybe you can influence the men down there — keep them from deserting work!”

  Curt ran with the superintendent toward the center of the platform. Here was the mouth of the tubeway that ran down to the air-tight submarine mine on the sea bottom far below. The tube-way was a huge, annulated metal tube of twenty feet diameter, that dropped straight down into the sea from the floating depot. The great air-pumps whose throbbing filled the night pumped air under pressure down this tube.

  And in the tubeway was a moving, endless chain of big buckets, one side ascending from below and the other descending. They were used to bring up gravium from below, and take down men and supplies — a mechanical conveyor.

  Curt leaped with Carson Brand into one of the big buckets, as the Neptunian at the conveyor-control stopped it momentarily. Then, in the bucket, they were dropping down the dark tubeway.

  “Could some of your own laborers here be sabotaging the dome?” Captain Future demanded of Carson Brand as they dropped through the darkness.

  “It seems the only possible answer to what’s been happening!” Brand cried distractedly. “Yet they’ve never given trouble before. The whole thing is so unexpected —?”

  Curt saw light far below. They had descended in the tube through thousands of feet of sea, and the lights below were those of the big mine on the ocean floor.

  The conveyor-bucket they rode in dropped suddenly out of the dark tube-way into a great, brilliantly-lighted space. This was the submarine mine itself. It was an enormous, dome-shaped metal caisson, a thousand feet in diameter, resting firmly on the rock sea-bottom.

  Such caissons, Curt knew, were lowered over a spot where submarine prospectors had located rich ores, and then the water was pumped out and a constant pressure of air maintained.

  SEVERAL scores of Neptunian laborers were in this brightly-lighted chamber at the bottom of the deep sea. Open veins of gravium ore in the rock bottom showed where they had been working. But they were not working now — they were clustering excitedly around the conveyor, while a big Jovian boss held them back with his atom-gun.

  Carson Brand sprang toward this Jovian, followed by Captain Future. The green face of the Jovian showed relief.

  “These scared devils have nearly mobbed me, they’re so crazy to get out of here!” Vase Avam, the mine-boss, told Brand.

  “Let us go!” yelled the Neptunian laborers wildly. “This dome faces destruction — the sea-devils take vengeance on us for invading their watery realm!”

  Vase Avam flourished his gun.

  “Back, you gray-faced scum! I’ll blast down the first who gets in the conveyor!”

  “What terrified them like this?” Captain Future demanded swiftly of the Jovian boss.

  Vase Avam pointed a flipperlike hand toward the north wall of the dome. There, near the rock floor, the super-heavy metal wall had bulged slightly inward at one point.

  “That bulge there — the gray devils saw it and began yammering about the sea-devils,” the mine-boss told Curt. “Damn their superstitious souls.”

  Carson Brand’s brown face paled as he saw the slight bulge in the dome Wall. Then he shouted to the Jovian.

  “Let the men out of here — get them up to the surface at once, before the whole dome gives way!”

  Vase Avam protested. “But that bulge isn’t dangerous, Brand. I looked at it, and I’m sure the wall won’t give.”

  “Let the men out, I say!” Carson Brand cried. “That wall’s going to let go!

  Unbelievingly, the Jovian boss stood aside. And without lingering, the Neptunian laborers piled frantically into the slowly moving buckets of the conveyor to be raised out of sight into the tubeway.

  Carson Brand pushed the Jovian toward a bucket, and was following him, when he stopped and shouted to Curt Newton. “Captain Future, aren’t you coming?”

  Curt Newton had started away across the floor of the dome, toward the north wall.

  “You go ahead, Brand!” Curt called back. “I want to look at this bulge,”

  “But if the wall gives way and catches you down here —” Brand called urgently in warning.

  But Captain Future paid no attention. The red-headed young scientific wizard was hastening on across the deserted rock workings. He reached the north wall and began keenly examining the long, straight bulge in it. Curt knew there was danger in lingering here, but he was gambling that he’d have time enough to make an examination.

  For here, he was sure, was some of the handiwork of the Wrecker’s organization! Alone now, Curt bent down and began inspecting the ominous bulge in the wall.

  CURT’S gray eyes widened with the surprise he soon experienced. He had believed that the wall had been somehow weakened secretly by some of the laborers — an inside job. But his trained eye perceived that this wall had been weakened somehow from outside. Yet, as Vase Avam had said, it did not seem very dangerous.

  Swiftly, Captain Future pawed in the capacious pockets of the gray tungstite belt in which he wore his proton-pistol. That belt contained the super-compact emergency outfit of scientific instruments and weapons that more than once Curt had found invaluable. In it were his device for inducing brief invisibility, his infra-light spectacles, his pocket-televisor, and many compact tools and instruments.

  He drew out a little tube with curious quartz lenses at each end. It was a fluoroscopic X-ray scope, a smaller model of the powerful outfit in the laboratory of the Comet. Curt applied it to his eye, snicked on its switch, and peered through the heavy metal of the wall by means of its projected radiations.

  He saw the inmost crystalline structure of the metal as though cloudily semi-opaque. And he saw that the outer side of the wall bore marks of a powerful flame that had produced the inward bulge by playing upon that part of the wall.

  That mysterious flame was still playing upon the outside of the dome-wall! It showed in the instrument Captain Future was using, as a bright radiance playing all along the wall. Someone or something out in the deep sea outside was using that flame to break down the crystalline structure of the wall’s metal!

  “Jumping jungle-cats of Jupiter!” Curt exclaimed. “Someone out there in the sea, sabotaging the dome! But how —”

  There was an ominous screeking sound and the dome-wall bulged still farther inward in front of his eyes.

  “I’d better get out!” Captain Future muttered.

  He raced back toward the conveyor whose empty buckets were still endlessly ascending and descending in the tubeway. But, as Curt neared it, the conveyor stopped suddenly with a harsh, rending sound of metal being torn far above.

  Suddenly, down out of the tubeway entrance in the roof of the dome, there poured a terrific stream of sea-water, like a solid cylinder of down-shooting sea.

  “Whoever’s outside has wrecked the tubeway — torn it in half somehow!” Curt exclaimed, for the moment appalled.

  Crack — crash! The bulging north wall of the dome had split! A horizontal jet of water drove in with terrific speed and pressure through the crack. And the crack was widening.

  Already the water in the dome was boiling up around Captain Future’s legs. The dome was giving way, and he was trapped in it!

  Chapter 9: Alien Minds

  BACK in the Comet, Grag and Otho prepared to dismount and clean the ship’s fouled rocket-tube as Captain Future had ordered before he went with the Brain to Amphitrite city.

  Otho hated routine work. Now the rubbery android made a cunning attempt to get out of the irksome task.

  “It’s a good thing you’re h
ere, Grag,” said Otho. “I could never get that rocket-tube out by myself.”

  Grag, getting out the necessary tools” grunted.

  “That is because you are not strong like me.”

  “You certainly have lots of strength,” Otho declared admiringly. “Though I’ll bet you couldn’t do this whole job alone.”

  “Of course I could!” boomed Grag disdainfully. “I don't need any help to —”

  The robot stopped suddenly, and stared at Otho with fixedly gazing photoelectric eyes.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Grag exclaimed. “You think you can fool Grag into doing all the work. No, you’re going to help.”

  “But I’ve got other things I want to do,” pleaded the android. “Didn’t I save your neck out on Pluto? Aren’t we pals?”

  “We are only pals when you want me to do something for you,” Grag boomed. “You come along and help.”

  “That’s what I get for trying to appeal to the sympathy of a robot!” Otho complained bitterly as he followed Grag out of the ship.

  The brilliant moonlight of speeding Triton illuminated the rolling ocean and rocky shore, and gleamed off the curved sides of the Comet as the two Futuremen dismounted one of the cluster of rocket-tubes from its tail.

  Grag, with his enormous strength, did the lion’s share of the work in getting out the big tube. Then the robot straightened his massive metal body and turned to Otho.

  “Now you clean out the inside of the tube, while I check the power-connections in the ship,” he directed.

  Otho picked up an atomic-hand torch, and looked discouragedly into the big tube. Its interior was crusted with a choking deposit of metallic residue that had to be burned out.

  As he gloomily prepared to start the messy job, Otho’s attention was attracted to Eek. The little moon-pup, which had followed Grag out of the ship, was idly pawing at a piece of rock to discover if it had any metals in it.

  A labor-saving idea was born at once in the android’s brain. He spoke quickly to the alert little moon-pup.

  “Come here, Eek.”

  Eek got the thought-request, but the moon-pup only looked belligerently at Otho, who he well knew disliked him.

  “See, here’s some nice copper for you to eat,” Otho coaxed, holding out the atomic hand-torch.

  “Come and get it, Eek.”

  Eek still looked suspicious. His bright little eyes seemed to say, “Since when have you been so friendly to me?”

  But the moon-pup couldn’t resist the lure of the luscious copper torch. He scuttled toward it — and Otho grabbed him.

  Instantly, Otho shoved the little gray animal into the end of the encrusted rocket-tube. “Now if you want out of there, eat your way out, Eek,” he hissed. “If you chew away all the deposit in there, you can get out the other end of the tube.”

  And, congratulating himself on a labor-saving discovery, Otho put a rock at the tube’s end to keep Eek from escaping, and then sat coolly down to rest.

  Eek squirmed frantically in the tube, but Otho paid no attention. The android was staring out over the vague ocean and wishing Captain Future had taken him with him, when he heard Grag come hastily out of the ship.

  “Eek is in trouble of some kind,” Grag boomed worriedly. “I can get his telepathic talk, and just now I sensed —”

  THEN the robot heard the squirming in the tube. He kicked aside the rock. And a thoroughly angry and frightened moon-pup bolted from the tube and climbed hastily to the robot’s shelter.

  “You did that to Eek!” Grag accused Otho furiously.

  “Aw, he isn’t hurt,” said the android disgustedly. “He might as well earn the metal he eats by doing a little work.”

  “Eek is a pet, and pets don’t work,” Grag declared angrily. “When master returns, I shall tell him what you did.”

  “That’s it — squeal to the chief,” hissed Otho. “You big metal baby!”

  Outraged, Grag advanced menacingly. “Why, you little rubber-man, I’ll —”

  Grag suddenly stopped short. He turned his head.

  “I hear a rocket boat!” he muttered. “Landing up the shore —”

  Otho had heard nothing but he had faith in the super-keen hearing of the robot’s microphone-ears.

  “Men are coming from it this way!” Grag announced a minute later. “Several men — approaching stealthily —”

  The robot and android peered eastward along the shore. But Triton had set, and they could see nothing in the darkness.

  “They’re sneaking up on us — and that means they’re enemies trying to surprise us!” Grag whispered. His photo-electric eyes gleamed. “Instead, we’ll surprise them. You keep making a noise, Otho, and I’ll cut along the shore and get behind them.”

  “Right — get going!” snapped Otho, his slitlike green eyes sparkling with excitement. As usual, the two had forgotten their quarrels the instant an emergency appeared.

  Grag tossed Eek into the ship, and then the robot hastily moved through the darkness toward the edge of the sea. Quickly, Grag climbed down into the water until he was completely under the surface. The robot, who did not breathe and could exist perfectly well under water, meant to steal along the shore, under water, and get behind the furtively approaching men.

  Otho, left alone, began burning out the rocket-tube with his hand-torch. And the android sang a space song loudly, to reassure the stealthy coming ones that their presence was unsuspected. As he sang, Otho loosened his proton-pistol in its holster. Every faculty of the android was on the alert.

  Now he heard the soft footsteps. There were five men, he guessed. They were coming as silently as Jovian “crawlers.”

  “Now! Rush them!” suddenly ordered a harsh voice.

  Otho spun around with an inconceivably rapid movement, at the moment that the five men charged forward, guns raised.

  He glimpsed the five as a motley group — two hairy Plutonians, a Jovian, a Uranian and a Venusian. They fired their atom-pistols as they saw Otho move.

  But the android’s blurring speed was too much for them. Their deadly flares missed Otho, and his own proton-beam drilled through one of the Plutonians and sent the man tumbling.

  “Get him!” yelled the other hollow-eyed Plutonian, apparently the leader of the party.

  But before the men could charge Otho, Grag took a hand. In the darkness behind the four men appeared the great robot, dripping wet, his metal arm raised in terrible menace. Down came Grag’s arm, and his metal fist flattened the Jovian and the Venusian. With yells of terror, the remaining two men retreated in the darkness.

  “After them!” Otho hissed fiercely, triggering his proton-pistol and sending its pale beam lacing through the dark. But though he and Grag sprang forward in hot pursuit, the two remaining attackers had the advantage of the utter dark.

  IN A moment, as the robot and android searched along the shore, they heard the rocket-motor of a nearby boat putting off hurriedly. The droning throb of rockets rapidly died away.

  The robot and android returned to the scene of battle and examined the men they had felled. The Plutonian Otho had shot was dead, his head burned through. Dead too was the Jovian, his bulbous green skull shattered to a mess by Grag’s fist.

  But the Venusian Grag had flattened was only unconscious. He had dodged, and the robot’s metal fist had grazed him.

  “I’ll soon correct that,” muttered Grag, taking the Venusian by the throat, with deadly intent. But there was an interruption in the form of other footsteps now approaching, from the distant city.

  “More of the Wrecker’s men!” Otho cried, snatching out his pistol again. “Imps of the sun, are they —”

  “Wait — listen!” Grag exclaimed.

  A familiar, rasping voice came through the darkness.

  “What’s going on here? What was that scuffling I heard?”

  “It’s Simon!” cried Otho. And a moment later, as the newcomers appeared: “And Joan Randall and Ezra!”

  Old Ezra Gurney’s faded
blue eyes had a dour grin in them as they, looked at the bodies on the ground.

  “Up to your old tricks, you two, eh?” said the veteran marshal.

  “What’s happened, Grag?” Joan asked the robot urgently, her brown eyes wide with wonder.

  The Brain was surveying the other two Futuremen with severe disapproval.

  “You’ve got into trouble?” he rasped. “I might have known we didn’t dare leave you two alone.”

  “We didn’t go hunting trouble — it came hunting us!” Otho defended. He explained the surprise attack of the Wrecker’s men.

  “Looks to me,” drawled Ezra Gurney, “as though the Wrecker had given orders to some of his henchmen to attack the Comet secretly while Captain Future wasn’t here, destroy the ship.”

  “That must be it,” the Brain agreed. “The attackers underestimated Grag and Otho, though.”

  “One of them isn’t dead yet,” Otho said nonchalantly, “but that’s all right — Grag is going to kill him now.”

  “Oh, no!” Joan exclaimed, horror in, her eyes.

  Even Ezra Gurney had shivered a little at Otho’s casual tone. For though Grag and Otho were strong friends of theirs, there were times like this when he himself was a little awed by the un-human Futuremen.

  “Don’t kill that man,” the Brain ordered raspingly. “Take him into the Comet. Here’s a chance to find out who the Wrecker is.”

  Grag carried the unconscious Venusian into the ship, deposited him upon a metal table that he unfolded from the wall. Ezra put the Brain on his pedestal so he could examine the man.

  A moment later the Brain was examining the unconscious Venusian prisoner with his glassy lens-eyes, inspecting every detail of the man. The Venusian was a typical specimen of his race — white-skinned, with unusually handsome features and dark hair and a body of medium height.

  “Seems average enough,” rasped the Brain. “Yet Curtis believed there was something queer about all the Wrecker’s men —”

  Otho had gone through the stunned man’s pockets.