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

  “Nothing here. But the identity-disc he wears gives his name — Ki Iri.”

  THE Brain looked at Ezra Gurney.

  “Can you check that name by televisor with the Police station in Amphitrite? Find out all you can about a certain Ki Iri, Venusian.”

  “Look — he’s starting to come out of it!” Otho said.

  The stunned Venusian was moving upon the table. He had not yet opened his eyes, but he was stirring his arms and legs. He stirred them in odd, graceful, sweeping movements, completely unlike the ordinary use of human limbs.

  “That’s queer,” muttered the Brain. “He doesn’t show the normal reflex responses. And listen —”

  The unconscious man was speaking in his trance. From his lips flowed a stream of words, seeming to roll thickly and distortedly from his tongue, and in an unfamiliar language.

  “That doesn’t sound like any Venusian language I ever heard,” the Brain muttered. He glanced up. “Get the philological record-file on Venus, Grag.”

  The robot hastily extracted a small speech-recording mechanism and record-tapes from a large cabinet.

  Grag ran the tapes through the recorder, at Simon’s order. Voices spoke from the mechanism, in one language after another. Here was contained a spoken record of every language and dialect known on Venus.

  “None of them is the remotest bit like this man’s language!” the Brain declared. “Nor is his language like any other I’ve ever heard.”

  “What difference does it make?” Otho demanded.

  “Don’t you understand?” retorted the Brain. “In his present condition of traumatic shock, this man is certain to speak only his native language. And his native language is one never heard of on Venus or any other world of the System.”

  “This man has the body of a Venusian,” the Brain added broodingly. “But in that body, if I’m right, there is a completely alien mind!”

  Chapter 10: Menace of the Depths

  CAPTAIN FUTURE, trapped in the submarine dome far down in the Neptunian sea, realized the deadliness of his peril. The water that was shooting down from the severed tube-way and in through the cracks in the wall already swirled to his knees.

  The walls, weakened by the flame that had played on them from outside, were slowly cracking further. Solid streams of water roared in under terrific pressure. It was only a matter of minutes before the whole dome collapsed!

  “There must be some way out of this hell-trap!” Curt Newton muttered, glancing swiftly around. “Curtis, my boy, unless you can think of something quickly, your number is up.”

  Curt knew that when the dome collapsed, the tens of thousands of tons of water that would smash in would reduce him to a pulp. If he only had an undersea-suit! But there was none here, nothing but the atomic tools abandoned by the workers —

  “The buckets!” Captain Future exclaimed suddenly. “I’m a space-struck idiot not to have thought of it before!”

  He leaped and grabbed up a heavy atomic chisel, designed to gouge through rock. Grasping the tool, Curt ran through the rising water toward the wrecked conveyor-chain of buckets.

  The solid stream of water pouring down the tubeway from above plunged down at Captain Future, knocking him from his feet, as he sought to cut away two of the big metal buckets with his tool. He finally succeeded in the attempt. Dragging the two buckets through the rising waters, he set one on its bottom, got into it, and reached out for the other bucket.

  There was an ominous cracking sound from the walls of the dome, audible even over the roar of inshooting waters. Curt glanced up and saw that the whole north wall of the — great caisson was now bulging inward, from the base to the top of the dome.

  The realization that the whole dome would collapse within a few minutes at most, spurred Captain Future to accelerated activity. He grasped the second big bucket and, turning it with its open top down, placed it on top of the bucket in which he stood.

  The two buckets thus formed a large metal barrel. In the darkness inside it, Curt Newton swiftly drew his proton-pistol, set the control of its beam, and then turned the pale ray upon the juncture of the rims of his buckets.

  The ray started to melt the metal almost at once. The two buckets fused together solidly at their rims. And Curt played the beam around the whole rim slowly, fusing every inch of the two rims solidly together.

  The smoke and smell of molten metal were almost overpowering inside the makeshift barrel. Curt could see only by the pale flash of the ray itself. Yet he kept grimly on, well aware that it was his one slender chance of escape.

  CAPTAIN FUTURE’S eyes streamed, his lungs gasping for pure air, when he finished welding the two buckets together a few moments later. He crouched now inside a strong, one-piece, air-tight metal barrel that he had made from the buckets.

  “Can’t breathe this air in here for many minutes before I suffocate!” he choked to himself. “If the barrel doesn’t escape when the dome let’s go —”

  Curt was staking all on the chance that the barrel would be swept out of the collapsing dome when its walls gave way.

  “Here she goes!” he muttered tensely an instant later, bracing himself with arms and legs.

  There was a loud crash! With a scream of rending metal, the walls of the dome were torn asunder by the weight of waters, and the sea rushed in. Curt felt his barrel flung like a bubble against a wall, a shock that nearly stunned him. The boiling sea inside the shattered dome carried his makeshift diving-bell dizzily around.

  He felt the queer barrel bump against the top of the dome — floating up as he had known it would, due to its air-content. Captain Future’s heart plummeted. His plan hadn’t succeeded. The barrel had not escaped from the dome, but was still trapped in it. And the air in the barrel was already almost unbreathable —

  “Can’t complain, I suppose,” Curt gasped. “I’ve played the game out to the end, and nobody can do more. But I hate to go out like this and leave the Wrecker at work —”

  His lungs seemed parched, bursting — his brain spinning as the foul air overcame him. He could feel the barrel, trapped down here in the sea-filled, shattered dome, bumping to and fro as the currents rubbed it against the roof.

  Curt Newton’s darkening mind flashed back over the brilliant career that now seemed about to be extinguished. Pictures flashed through his brain — of his boyhood on the moon, of his first trip to other worlds with the Futuremen, of peril and excitement and combat from one end of the System to the other.

  “Hope — Simon and Grag and Otho get the Wrecker,” he choked. “Looks like I —”

  At that moment, his dimming senses became aware of a new motion on the part of the barrel. Instead of rubbing along the roof of the broken dome, it was now shooting wildly upward.

  “By all the nine worlds’ gods!” Captain Future cried. “It’s got out!”

  His barrel, carried to and fro under the roof of the wrecked dome by the currents, had finally escaped through one of the great cracks and was shooting up to the surface like a bubble!

  Curt, half-unconscious, felt the metal around him grow hot from friction. He felt the barrel rush up out of the sea into the air, poise a moment, then fall back down with a smacking splash to the sea, and float on its surface. With his last, waning strength, Captain Future pulled trigger of his proton-pistol. The beam tore out through the metal side of his improvised barrel, after a few moments. Through the little opening splashed some water — and also blessed, pure fresh air.

  Curt had to wait until he could gulp many breaths of the new air into his starved lungs, before he set about getting out of his floating barrel. Using the proton-beam, he cut out the top of the barrel.

  Captain Future found himself floating on the nighted Neptunian sea, tossing up and down on the great tidal waves. It was completely dark except for the bright stars. Then Curt saw the lights and black bulk of the floating-depot of the destroyed submarine mine nearby.

  He dived into the chilly waters, and swam with powerful strokes towa
rd the floating-depot, on which men were running about, with shouts of excitement and dismay.

  Carson Brand saw Curt draw his dripping figure out of the waters. The superintendent seemed unable to believe his own eyes, and Vase Avam, the Jovian mine — boss, was similarly stunned.

  “Captain Future!” Brand cried. “Why, we thought you dead long ago down there! How in the name of all that’s holy did you get out?”

  Curt explained his stratagem. And admiration near to awe showed in the faces of Carson Brand and the Jovian.

  “No wonder they say you’re unbeatable, Captain Future!” exclaimed Brand impulsively. “Lord, man, but I’m glad to see you. This would have been an even blacker disaster if you had perished in it.”

  “The disaster’s black enough,” Curt said tersely. “One of the three gravium mines here on Neptune completely ruined!”

  VASC AVAM, the Jovian, made a sound of anger and stared fiercely at the scared gray Neptunian miners cowering nearby.

  “If I had the spies among us who are sabotaging our domes, I’d kill them by slow torture!” he exclaimed.

  “That dome was weakened and wrecked from outside,” Captain Future told him. “A cutting flame was used from outside to weaken the dome walls, and to sever the tubeway.”

  The Jovian stared.

  “It was done from outside? But who could there be out in the deep sea to do it? You surely don’t think it was the legendary sea-devils the Neptunians talk about?”

  “Men in sea-suits could have approached the dome secretly from outside, and have done it!” Carson Brand exclaimed.

  “Yes, they could have,” Captain Future agreed swiftly. “But such men would have to be brought out here to this region of the sea, and taken away again, by a boat. Where’s the boat? We ought to search the sea all around here.”

  “We will — we’ll use the trouble-boat!” Brand cried, his eyes flashing. “Come on, Vase Avam!”

  The three men jumped into the powerful craft that had brought them out from Amphitrite. Carson Brand started the motors, and yelled to the Jovian.

  “Sweep the sea with the searchlight while I circle!”

  Vase Avam snicked on the powerful fluoric searchlight outside the tubular hull. Its reddish beam sliced through the heavy darkness as Brand piloted the roaring craft outward.

  Captain Future peered keenly with the Jovian, as Brand steered their craft in great, widening circles. The reddish beam of light showed nothing but the great, heaving tidal combers of the shoreless ocean. Then Curt’s eyes saw a black mass sliding away swiftly in the distance.

  “A boat of some kind to starboard!” he cried to Brand.

  Brand saw it, and sent the trouble-boat leaping after it like a hound after prey. The black craft in the distance, caught in the fluoric searchlight, put on speed to dart away.

  “It must be the Wrecker’s bunch!” Brand cried excitedly. “They’re trying to escape —”

  Curt slid back an upper transparent panel, cupped his hands, and shouted aloud as they overhauled the fleeing craft.

  “Boat, ahoy! Stand by and wait for us or we’ll gun you out of the water!”

  “But we haven’t any atom-guns on this craft,” Vase Avam objected puzzledly.

  “They don’t know that,” Curt retorted coolly. “Ah, as I hoped — our little bluff worked.”

  The boat ahead had stopped. Brand drove their own craft up beside it. Captain Future, his proton-gun cradled in his fist, leaped aboard the other craft, with Brand and the Jovian following.

  The other boat was a much larger, heavier, broader-beamed one. The crew was a mixed lot of Neptunians, Venusians and representatives of other planets. Sullenly, half-scared, they faced Captain Future’s tall, commanding figure. Curt glimpsed a half-dozen heavy, jointed metal suits lying on the deck, still dripping.

  “Those are sea-suits!” Carson Brand yelled. “These are the men who wrecked our mine from outside — the Wrecker’s men!”

  “What’s this about the Wrecker?” demanded a man who had hastily emerged from below decks, and now faced them.

  It was Orr Libro, the red-skinned gravium magnate from Mars.

  Chapter 11: Storm Over Neptune

  CAPTAIN FUTURE stared suspiciously at the Martian magnate. Orr Libro met his gaze with a bewildered expression on his smooth red face.

  “Orr Libro!” Carson Brand hissed. The superintendent’s face flamed. “Now we know who the Wrecker is!”

  “I don’t understand,” said the Martian quickly, still looking puzzled. “You’re surely not implying that I am the Wrecker?”

  “What are you doing out in these waters by night?” Curt Newton demanded crisply. “What were you using those sea-suits for?”

  “It’s easy to see what he was using them for!” Brand accused violently. “He had his men down in the sea, wrecking our Mine One from outside!”

  “Mine One wrecked?” Orr Libro looked astonished. “But that is deplorable. Yet I assure you I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Answer my question — what’s your errand out here?” Captain Future snapped.

  The Martian replied hastily.

  “I have a concession to mine gravium on Neptune now, remember. I came out with this crew I hired in Amphitrite, to prospect for gravium deposits which I could develop. As you know, such prospecting must be done by divers in sea-suits. I had a half-dozen of these men down on the sea-bottom.”

  Orr Libro added contemptuously, “But they got scared of their own shadows and insisted on coming back up to the surface. Claimed they had seen some of the mythical sea-devils of this ocean!”

  One of the sullen Neptunian divers standing nearby broke into loud assertion.

  “We did see the sea-devils in the distance!” the gray-faced, peak-headed planetary native declared vehemently, “Down there in the waters, a whole party of them swimming along — half-men and half-fish, just as the old terrible legends tell!”

  “That’s why we wouldn’t stay down there,” another Neptunian added corroboration. “It’s dangerous enough to meet the ‘swallowers’ or ursals or other monsters of the deep. But we can face those dangers. The sea-devils are different!”

  “Bah!” said Orr Libro scornfully. “You people of this watery world are a credulous lot to believe such stories.”

  Captain Future, listening, had been struck by the two Neptunian divers’ stories. It was not the first time that Curt had heard these legends of the sea-devils. The Neptunians firmly believed the ancient tales which told of a fierce, powerful, super-civilized race of fish — men haunting the unexplored deeps of the mighty planetary ocean. Curt wondered momentarily if those legends had any truth behind them.

  But, Curt realized, all this talk of the Neptunian divers might be just an alibi planned by Orr Libro. The dandified Martian’s craftiness was not to be underestimated.

  “How does it come,” Captain Future sternly demanded of the Martian, “that you choose this particular region of the sea near Mine One to do your gravium prospecting?”

  Orr Libro looked doubtfully at Carson Brand, and then answered with apparent frankness.

  “To tell the truth, Captain Future, I picked this region because it is near the Neptunian Company’s Mine One. I hoped I could locate the vein of gravium ore they were working. That’s why I tried to get away without being discovered. I was afraid Brand and Julius Gunn would be angry if they learned what I was doing,”

  “You dirty red-faced sneak!” spat Carson Brand.

  THE Martian shrugged. “Sorry you don’t like me, my dear Brand,” he said silkily, “but I’m not breaking any law by trying to pick up the same gravium vein.”

  Captain Future had stepped away from them, and was bending over the heavy metal sea-suits that lay on deck, still wet from use. Curt bent over them, inspecting them carefully, especially the feet.

  “Have you any heavy atomic torches aboard?” Curt asked the Martian.

  “I think there’s two in the equipment,” Orr Libro answered wonder
ingly. Curt found them, inspected the tools whose purpose was to create a powerful atomic flame for cutting purposes.

  The two boats were tossing more violently on the pitch-black Neptunian sea, by now. Wind was rising, soughing through the night and sending stinging blasts of spray across their faces.

  “I’d like to get back to Amphitrite before that storm breaks,” Orr Libro said anxiously, “You can see one’s coming.”

  Thin sheets of violet lightning had begun to flare far in the southern night, and the wind was still rising. It was apparent that one of the terrific storms of Neptune was approaching. And Orr Libro, like all natives of desert Mars, was a poor sailor.

  “All right, you can go ahead to Amphitrite,” Curt Newton said shortly. “But we’re following you, and I want to go into this matter further there. There’s a lot that needs explaining!”

  He and Carson Brand and Vase Avam returned to their own craft. Presently they were running along the nighted, heaving sea after the Martian magnate’s craft.

  “Orr Libro’s the Wrecker!” Brand exclaimed emphatically to Captain Future. “His divers wrecked Mine One from outside.”

  “Their atomic torches hadn’t been used; they showed a full charge,” Curt replied, peering thoughtfully ahead into the night.

  “They could have been quickly recharged!” Carson Brand insisted. “I tell you, that Martian is behind all that’s happened.”

  Curt looked at him.

  “But you’ve had mysterious accidents and trouble here in your mines for weeks, Brand,” he reminded. “And Orr Libro has only been here on Neptune recently.”

  “He could have had an organization here working for him, even though he wasn’t here himself,” Brand declared. “Orr Libro was here on Neptune a few months ago-~all the gravium magnates were, to consult together about raising the price of gravium.”

  Captain Future frowned. It seemed that the deeper he probed into the mystery, the more enigmatic it became. Curt felt that the destruction of Mine One had given him one definite clue to the Wrecker’s identity. Yet that clue seemed nonsensical in the face of the other evidence at hand.