Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941)

#7 Summer 1941

Introduction

A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

Magician of Mars

by Edmond Hamilton

Renegades from nine worlds crash out from interplanetary prison in a weird quest for phantom treasure. Follow the Futuremen as the greatest feud of all time catapults them into the fifth dimension.

Radio Archives • 2012

Copyright © 1941 by Better Publications, Inc. © 2012 RadioArchives.com. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form.

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ISBN 978-1610818360

The original introduction to Captain Future as it appeared in issue #1

The Wizard of Science! Captain Future!

The most colorful planeteer in the Solar System makes his debut in this, America’s newest and most scintillating scientifiction magazine — CAPTAIN FUTURE.

This is the magazine more than one hundred thousand scientifiction followers have been clamoring for! Here, for the first time in scientifiction history, is a publication devoted exclusively to the thrilling exploits of the greatest fantasy character of all time!

Follow the flashing rocket-trail of the
Comet
as the most extraordinary scientist of nine worlds have ever known explores the outposts of the cosmos to the very shores of infinity. Read about the Man of Tomorrow today!

Meet the companions of Captain Future, the most glamorous trio in the Universe!

Grag, the giant, metal robot; Otho, the man-made, synthetic android; and aged Simon Wright, the living Brain.

This all-star parade of the most unusual characters in the realm of fantasy is presented for your entertainment. Come along with this amazing band as they rove the enchanted space-ways — in each issue of CAPTAIN FUTURE!

A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

by Edmond Hamilton

Renegades from nine worlds crash out from interplanetary prison in a weird quest for phantom treasure. Follow the Futuremen as the greatest feud of all time catapults them into the fifth dimension.

AS THE tiny, star-like disk of the Sun sank behind the bleak rock plain, a whistle shrilled harshly through the chill dusk.

“Attention!” barked a tall Saturnian guard.

The hundreds of convicts in gray uniforms who had been excavating beryllium ore from the rock pits, stopped work. They shuffled sluggishly into columns and then stood waiting in sullen silence.

These prisoners were a motley lot, representing every world in the Solar System. There were red-skinned Martians, brutal-faced Earthmen, sulky Neptunians with gray skins, and sly-looking white Venusians.

This dreary, forbidding little world was Cerberus, one of the three moons of the planet Pluto. Here was located the great, escape-proof Interplanetary Prison, the living tomb of the most dangerous criminals of all nine worlds.

“March!” snapped the guard. And the columns of convicts shuffled toward the distant, frowning mass of Interplanetary Prison.

A prisoner in the last column glanced furtively at the guards. Then he whispered to the convict marching beside him.

“Tonight,” he murmured meaningly. “All of you be ready.”

The other convict, a rugged, hard-eyed Earthman, gasped in astonishment.

“It’s crazy, Ul Quorn!” he muttered tensely. “I don’t know what your idea is, but you’ll just get us all killed if you try it.”

Quorn made no answer, but there was a smile of confidence in his hooded eyes.

Ul Quorn was different from the other convicts. He was a slender, small man who had the pallid red skin and high forehead of a Martian. But the fineness of his wrists and ankles, the handsomeness of his features, were Venusian. And his sleek black hair and black eyes were those of an Earthman. Ul Quorn was a mixed breed, the most dangerous convict that Interplanetary Prison had ever harbored.

Quorn’s hands were calloused from the months of harsh prison labor in the beryllium diggings. No one would have recognized in his silent, shuffling figure the criminal genius who had once terrorized the System by sheer scientific mastery and cunning — the half-legendary Magician of Mars!

Quorn and his comrades marched silently on through the chill twilight, between vigilant guards armed with heavy atom guns. The dusk was deepening into darkness. In the starry sky bulked the great white sphere of Pluto, the ice-sheathed outpost world of the System. Beyond it gleamed its two other moons, Charon and Styx.

The black, massive walls of Interplanetary Prison loomed in the planet-light ahead. The great doors of inert metal were now open. Bright krypton-lamps cast a white glare on the sullen convicts as they passed across the main court of the prison to the massive cell-houses. Overhead droned fishlike Planet Patrol cruisers, keeping watch upon the moon.

Ul Quorn’s column trudged into its own cellhouse, down a bleak cement corridor righted by krypton bulbs. The hard-eyed guards watched as each prisoner entered his own little cell.

“Lock up!” barked the captain of guards.

The guards came along the corridor, flashing the tiny ray of their vibration-keys on each door-lock, thus sealing it electrically.

“Aura on!” came the final order of the officer.

A soft glow filled the corridor, emanating from flat plates in the ceiling. This glow was a photo-electric aura which would instantly actuate alarms if a prisoner should somehow emerge from his cell into the corridor.

Quorn heard the guards depart. Two would remain on guard at the cellhouse entrance where the aura-alarms were located, he knew. The mixed breed sat down on his bunk and waited. The cellhouse grew quiet. There was soon no sound except the soft beat-beat of the ventilation system.

UL QUORN finally rose softly and went to the ventilator-shaft of his cell. It was a six-inch opening covered by a barred grating. Deftly, he removed the grating and drew up four objects suspended in the shaft by cords.

One of the hidden articles was an amazingly compact television set. The second was a stubby metal tube with a quartz lens in its end, the third a small glass globe mounted on a little cubical case, and the fourth a tiny, crude-looking atom-pistol. Quorn looked at the things with pride.

“And they believed they could keep the Magician of Mars locked up here forever!” he breathed to himself.

Ul Quorn had achieved the almost incredible feat of secretly constructing these four instruments. For more than two years he had worked, cunningly smuggling in bits of metal and mineral from the mine-workings, and shaping them to his needs by sheer scientific wizardry.

He touched the call-button of the tiny televisor and waited tensely. The instrument had no visi-screen. But soon a voice came from it.

“Ul Quorn?” whispered a silky feminine voice, taut and thrilling. “I’m ready with the ship.”

“Good, N’Rala!” murmured the mixed breed. “This is the night. Be here at the third hour, exactly.”

“I’ve memorized all your instructions,” reassured the tense feminine voice. “I won’t fail.”

Quorn turned off the televisor, thrust it into his jacket. He moved to the door of his cell. In his hand was the second of his instruments — the quartz-lensed metal tube.

The tube was a makeshift vibration-key, similar to those with which the guards locked and unlocked the cells. It had taken all Quorn’s scientific genius to make this thing, and to compute the exact frequency of vibration to which it must be set if it were to unlock the cell doors.

He peered out into the corridor, illuminated by the soft glow of the alarm-aura. There was no one there. Quorn thrust his improvised vibration-key out through the little barred opening in his cell door. Then he turned its tiny ray of tuned electric waves upon the lock.

Click!
The door was unlocked. Silently, Ul Quorn slid it open. But he did not venture out yet into the corridor. The moment he entered the soft glow of the aura out there, alarm bells would ring.

Quorn took his third instrument, the cubical case crowned by a little glass globe. He touched a switch on its side. The glass globe emanated a spray of fine white radiance several yards around him. Quorn now stepped boldly out into the glow of the corridor.

There was no clanging of distant alarms. The glass-globed mechanism he carried was radiating a “counter-aura.” This refracted the beams of the alarm-aura around him and thus prevented a break in the photo-electric warning circuit.

Quorn moved down the corridor toward the cellhouse entrance, as softly and stealthily as a Martian sand-cat. He peered around the end of the hallway into the guard-room at the entrance. Two uniformed guards sat chatting, their atom guns across their knees, relying on the aura-alarms on the wall to warn them if any prisoner should escape his cell.

Quorn raised his crude little atom-pistol. One of the guards, a quick-eared young Venusian, suddenly looked up.

The tiny, needle-like ray of Quorn’s weapon drove instantly between his eyes. The other guard fell dead a second later.

“Easy killing,” muttered Ul Quorn coolly. He went to the wall and switched off the aura-alarms. Then he picked up the atom guns of the two slain guards, hastened back along the corridor.

The criminal used his makeshift vibration-key on the lock of a cell. The door slid open. The hard-faced, rugged Earthman in the cell gasped aloud.

“QuornI How the devil did you get a key?”

“No time now to talk of that, Garson,” rasped the mixed breed. “We’ve got to unlock the others, without rousing all the prisoners.”

THE two convicts went into silent action. Gray Garson, the Earthman, helped unlock ten other cells along the corridor. In them were the convicts with whom Quorn had previously discussed escape. They gathered silently in one of the cells.

Quorn studied their hard, tense faces. Besides Gray Garson there was one other Earthman, a grossly fat criminal promoter named Lucas Brewer. There was also Thikar, a giant, brutal, green Jovian space-pirate; Lu Sentu, a cunning-eyed, wizened Mercurian thief; Athor Az, a drowsy-looking Venusian murderer; Xexel, an old Saturnian criminal with a wrinkled blue face and filmy, evil eyes; two somber Martian killers; a sullen-looking Neptunian; and a hairy, towering Plutonian.

“What’s your plan, Quorn?” hoarsely whispered Lucas Brewer, his fat face quivering. “You’ve got us out of our cells but I don’t see how we’re to escape from the Prison.”

“Sure, the Planet Patrol keeps watch around Cerberus night and day,” muttered Gray Garson. “No ship can land to take us away.”

“We’ll get away despite the stupid Patrol,” rasped Ul Quorn. “But before we start, I want one matter clearly understood. Once out of here, I give the commands, and the rest of you obey.”

He read sulky dislike on their faces.

“You fools!” he hissed. “Without me to lead you, you’d be tracked down and recaptured quickly.”

Lu Sentu muttered a doubt...

“But what if they put Captain Future on our trail?”

At mention of that name, a lightning-flash of hate seemed to pass across the faces of the other convicts. There was a somber fire in Ul Quorn’s black eyes, and his voice was harsh as he answered.

“I hope they do — I’ve an old score to settle with Captain Future! And so do you all, for it was he who sent most of you here. Well settle with him, after we’ve won freedom and the treasure I’m after.”

“Treasure?” whispered Lucas Brewer, his small eyes sparkling. “What treasure?”

“The greatest treasure in history!” Ul Quorn told them. “And once we’re free, I can lead you to it. We’ll be rich, powerful, invincible!”

Avarice was plain on every face in the vicious, motley group.

“What is this treasure? Jewels, precious metals?” Gray Garson asked.

“Something far greater than that,” Quorn retorted. “Something so tremendous that it staggers the imagination. It won’t be easy to secure, for it’s in a well-nigh inaccessible place. But we can get it, if you obey me.”

Garson answered for them all.

“Well follow you, Quorn! But how are we going to get out of here and away from Cerberus?”

“It’s almost the third hour,” muttered the Magician. “If my plan works, well be out of here soon.”

He handed one of the atom guns to the big green Jovian.

“You’re a good shot, Thikar. Now follow me, all of you, and make no sound.”

They were starting down the corridor toward the entrance of the cellhouse when they heard a wild clangor of alarm cells suddenly vibrating through the night.

“They’ve discovered our break!” cried Gray Garson.

Quorn’s black
eyes
blazed. “They must have had a secret spy-plate in that guard-room, blast them! I was afraid of that. Quick, out of here!”

Quorn knew now that somewhere in the guard-room had been hidden a spy-plate, an electric eye by which the chief of guards in the administration building could glance into each cellhouse at periodic intervals. Such a glance had probably revealed the two slain guards.

The clangor of alarms was increasing and there was a sound of running feet out in the main court. As Ul Quorn and his band raced down the corridor toward the entrance, the convicts in all cell-houses awakened. They started to shout in bewildered excitement.

Quorn and his companions burst out of the cellhouse into the night. The gray planet light of Pluto fell on a group of guards running toward them.

“Get them!” snapped Quorn to the giant Jovian beside him. At the same moment he fired his own heavy atom gun from the hip.

The ripping blasts from the two weapons flashed across the court and scythed down the oncoming guards before they were aware of attack.

“We’re done for!” wailed old Xexel behind Quorn. “We’ve not got a chance in a billion of getting out of here now!”

ANYONE less iron-willed than Ul Quorn would have been unnerved. Alarm bells were still clamoring, more guards were running out of the administration building, and the roar of aroused convicts was growing in volume.

Blue beams of krypton searchlights swung down from the guard-towers on the wall, searching the main court. And there was a far-away, increasing droning sound as black cruisers dived on the Prison from high above.

“Patrol cruisers coming!” Gray Garson yelled.

A blue beam bathed their group in its radiance as a searchlight found them.

“Get that light, Thikar!” cried Quorn.

Thikar’s atom blast snuffed out the light. But other beams swept toward them, and now the guards across the court were coming toward them on the run and firing as they came. Lu Sentu staggered in his stride as a flashing atom-blast grazed his shoulder.

Ul Quorn paid no attention. His black eyes were intently sweeping the court. Then he saw what he was anticipating.

In a dark comer of the great court, a small, torpedo-like rocket-ship suddenly appeared magically out of nothingness. It poised there, its flaming keel-jets keeping it a few inches above the paving.