Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) (7 page)

“Now’s the time,” he reported softly. “Two guards, but they’re talking, not paying attention. If we could get at them before they were aware, we might manage it.”

Captain Future made one of his swifter-than-light decisions, and transferred it to action almost as swift. In the space between two of Simon Wright’s words he had flung open the door, hurled himself down the corridor in three gigantic leaps. As the amazed guards spun to stare, he was upon them, his arms shooting out to clutch.

One arm closed around the neck of each, throttling as Grag had throttled. Like pythons the muscles of Captain Future constricted, squeezed, choked. The two guards he had seized were armed, but instinct was too strong. Their hands went, not to their weapon-belts, but up in a futile tearing effort to relax that grip.

Simon Wright came into view on his traction-beams, then Grag lumbered forth.

SETTING his jaw, Captain Future rallied all of the strength of his peerless body and poured it into the double strangle hold. The body of one guard, then the other, went limp and flaccid. When he relaxed his arms, they fell across each other, unconscious.

“Are these the creatures that want to conquer the Solar System,” came the metallic growl of the contemptuous Grag. “Any fairly strong man can conquer one. You Chief, handled those two like babies — and I would fight an arena full.”

“Something tells me that they’re only the underlings,” said Simon Wright, resting his crystal case on Grag’s great cliff of a shoulder.

“That’s my reaction,” nodded Curt, kneeling to strip his victims of their weapons. “Ul Quorn has respect and fear for some sort of high command, that certainly must be of a higher order than these little walking fungi. Never underestimate the enemy, Grag. Though I wish it was a matter of a simple fight between you and a squadron of such specimens. I’d pick you to win.”

“Thanks,” muttered Grag, whose greatest pride was his strength, and whose one hero was Captain Future. “Now, shall we go to the laboratories?”

“No,” said Captain Future. He slung his two beltfuls of weapons over his shoulders. “We’ll try to get along on what arms we’ve taken from the enemy, because our workshops will naturally be thronged with observers and guards. What I want is to get into the open. Remember what our first captive said — Ul Quorn has visited our system, and is expected back. I’d like to be a sort of surprise welcoming committee.”

“The way out is down,” said Simon Wright, in the manner of one making a pleasant epigram.

Captain Future smiled, and Grag emitted a steely chuckle. They knew what Simon Wright meant. Long ago, in preparation for just a dire emergency, the Futuremen had prepared a secret exit to their stronghold, a sealed and hidden passage that led into an underground tunnel in the lava rock of the Moon. The entrance was but a single turn distant in the corridor.

With the Brain reconnoitering ahead, they came to the place — seemingly a smooth, solid expanse of bulkhead. But Captain Future had long ago treated this metal with a process that, though intricate and expensive, was relatively simple. A ray action would so modify the speed and action of the metal molecules as to make this bulkhead as penetrable as a wreath of mist. He felt along a juncture of plates for the concealed stud, found and pressed it.

“I’ll go first,” announced Grag, and walked forward. He bumped into solidity, reeled back and lost his balance, falling with a resounding crash, as of an unwieldy spaceship being landed on a rickety stage by a drunken space-pilot.

“Quiet!” cried Captain Future, just too late.

“The ray must be jammed,” said Simon Wright, hovering against the plating that should have gone penetrable as mist.

Grag struggled to his great boatlike feet.

“Say, we forgot to bring Eek,” he said, “though maybe he’d better stay here, hiding in the corners, till we can —”

From somewhere little pale gnomes were running, bunching for a charge, drawing weapons.

“Halt!” twittered one at them. “I say, halt!”

“Gas for the man,” said another gnome quickly. “For the robot — paralysis by magnetic beam!”

Captain Future charged the bunch. His only hope, he had decided on the instant, was to confuse and panic them.

“Come on, Grag!” he bellowed as he sprang among the enemy. “Use those big iron fists of yours!”

His own fist struck a gaping fungoid face. The flying body of the pale thing struck a companion, tripping him. Captain Future’s other hand drew a captured weapon from his belt — what weapon it was, he did not know, but it was in pistol-form. He pointed its muzzle where the enemies were thickest, pressed the trigger switch.

There was intense light, and a mighty howl of agony. The gnomelike figures writhed and fell as if overcome by pain. One, who was clear of the beam, grappled his arm and bit the wrist. More surprised than hurt, Captain Future dropped the weapon, and the light went out.

“Help me,” gurgled the gnome who had closed with him. “It’s dark again.”

EVEN as Captain Future tore his assailant away, like a leech, he guessed the answer. The weapon had been a bright light, no more. Light was painful, even injurious, to these creatures who must live in the dimness — their absence of color, their great dark eyes, showed that.

More light glowed. Simon Wright’s crystal case swam through the upper air of the corridor. It gave off radiance that dazzled Captain Future and sent the would-be captors into a groveling, wailing mass.

“I shorted my ray-mechanism,” explained Simon Wright’s resonator. “It’s not good for my motors, so hurry. Grag’s found a way through.”

“That was why Grag didn’t come to help me,” growled Future, turning and running toward a dark oblong that now showed in the bulkhead.

The Brain’s light went off, and the crystal case floated after Captain Future into the rocky tunnel beyond. Up ahead in the almost complete darkness moved the vast shadowy bulk of Grag. They negotiated the secret exit quickly. At one point, the deepest in the passage, Curt’s quick ear caught a rhythmic
hub-hub-hub
of a throbbing machine, a vast and complicated and busy machine. Since the Moon was vastly changed in a natural way, had artificial changes been made, too? If not, what made that strange rhythm?

Then he caught up with Grag.

“One of those trees or fungi seems rooted in our doorway,” said the robot. “But I can tear it up!”

He fell silent, pouring all his mighty metallic vigor into an effort. The growth collapsed and they were out into the dim twilight.

Captain Future led his companions among the fleshy pale growths, turning this way and that to confuse possible pursuers. At last he dropped down behind some boulders over which grew dense, fat-looking shrubbery.

“Rest here,” he commanded, “but keep your ears and eyes alert for any party that follows. Congratulations, Grag! Apparently the modification-power that affects this satellite played tricks with our ray. But how did you get it to working?”

“I didn’t,” said Grag, sagely nodding his huge ball of a head. “But where your buttons and other devices were set at the edge of the panel — remember? — was a little soft plastic to hold them. I ripped that out, it left a slot where I could get my fingers in, and” — a gesture of the great metal beam that was his arm — “I tore the whole section out by the roots.”

“You do have sense, Grag,” applauded the Brain, settling down beside him. “Sense to know how to use those metal muscles of yours.”

“Tell that to Otho,” said Grag. “Otho! I miss him. Where is he, do you suppose?”

“Waiting for us to rejoin him, and thinking kindly of you,” replied Curt. “With our dimension-shift machine gone, we’ll have trouble seeing him again.”

“At least we’re on the surface of the Moon,” observed Grag.

“Yes, on the surface of Luna,” agreed the Brain. “Luna gone crazy! Now which way do we go in this jungle?”

IT WOULD have been suicidal, of course, for N’Rala to fly back in the life-rocket. She realized that. Ezra Gurney’s men would be watching for that very craft, even if it were not so small — barely big enough for Ul Quorn and N’Rala to come to New York, and not sufficiently spacious for the two prisoners and the two seedy-looking Earthmen who had been Ul Quorn’s henchmen in previous shady adventures. These men Ul Quorn wanted as mechanics and lieutenants.

So a new craft was provided — fetched in sections from a dozen hiding places in the slums beneath the dock district, fitted together on another dingy landing-stage, and equipped with the dimension-shift.

“Step up the power,” N’Rala kept saying to the two mechanics. “Captain Future’s modifications are good — better than Ul Quorn’s, but don’t say that I said so. They can carry the load of this bigger rocket easily.”

“Please,” said a mechanic. “Where do we come in, N’Rala? I mean, in this new game? We’re both wanted badly by the police almost everywhere. It’s dangerous.”

“If and when we finish what we’re beginning,” said N’Rala cryptically, “there won’t be any Solar System police to want you any more. Will you trust me?”

They looked at her, and trusted her. N’Rala was beautiful, and most masculine creatures trusted her before they knew her.

“All set?” continued N’Rala. “Then march Joan Randall into that hold we’ve sealed off for her special benefit. And get Thikar, too — that big green Jovian fool who had Otho right in his paws and let him get away. He may ride in the control room with us, but watch him. If he was left alone with the girl, maybe she’d find some way to escape from him, too.”

The two captives were produced and stowed aboard, manacled and silent. N’Rala also ordered the loading of a various cargo — plans, assorted machine parts, and certain weapons which had been stolen from Government armories. Finally she took the controls and headed upward.

“What’s going to happen to me?” asked Otho, in the heavy tone he had heard used by the Jovian he impersonated.

“I’ll leave that to your imagination,” N’Rala started to say, and then thought of a better taunt. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t have any imagination do you, Thikar? Thick — Thikar — I might make a pun about your name, but you’d be too stupid to understand. Maybe we can use your big green carcass without your substitute for a brain.”

“You mean — that operation?” Otho prompted. “Remote brain control?”

“Exactly. We may embed an instrument in your brain’s nerve centers, so that you’ll be an automaton working at a distance by the operator’s voice and will. We might let Gurney get you, and put you in jail, so that you could organize criminals for an uprising.”

“Ul Quorn will do that?” suggested Otho shakily.

N’Rala shook her head and smiled a dazzling, cruel smile.

“No, Thikar. Not Ul Quorn. Me.”

Otho stored that away, without fully understanding.

They nosed close to where the moon should have been, and at N’Rala’s order one of the mechanics threw the switch of the dimension-shift. There was the moment of dizzy strain and blackness, then they were spiraling over the strange landscape in the green twilight that now overlay what had been Luna.

“There’s our landing field below,” pointed out N’Rala. “Captain Future blasted it for his life-rocket when he came down, and we’ve enlarged and improved it. Stand by to land.”

They did so. As the ship settled down and cut its blasts, fissures stirred and came into view from the circumference of strange jungle — the pale, gnomelike figures of the strange race which planned to invade the Solar System.

N’Rala was the first out, lifting a hand and speaking quickly, in the chirping language of the aliens.

They lowered their weapons and a leader spoke:

“In the tongue of your System, please. The Overlord commands that we grow familiar with it.”

“And I want to grow familiar with the tongue of
your
System,” said N’Rala with a smile. “The Overlord knows that, too. You keep good guard here. Help unload this craft, and meet two new helpers.”

SHE waved a hand to introduce the Earthmen mechanics.

“And this man?” asked the pallid leader, nodding at the disguised Otho who had come forth, still manacled.

“He’s a prisoner, and I have another in this hold. Go ahead, I’ll bring up the rear.”

She superintended the unloading of the vessel, and after the party had gone toward the Futuremen’s laboratory that was now an invasion base, she smiled at Otho again.

“Sit easy, Thikar,” she bade. “I’m not worried about you, but that dark-haired girl agent in the hold takes a bit of watching.”

She ushered Joan from her prison, covering her with an atom pistol.

“No foolishness,” she warned. “I feel toward you a little as Ul Quorn does toward Captain Future. In feminine powers of attraction and mystery you’re practically his equal. So much so that there’s really very little room in all the universes for both of us. So, if you give me an excuse, it won’t really distress me to obliterate you.”

She kept her eyes on Joan, backing out of the ship. As she did so, she was aware again that figures were coming from the jungle into the open — figures she knew too well. At one elbow towered Grag, at the other stood Captain Future.