Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) (15 page)

The climbing snake was now edging out his own limb toward him. The bulldog jaws of the creature were gaping in anticipation.

Captain Future finished his hasty task. At the moment he “shorted” the tiny atomic battery, he flung it at the snake’s face. The battery exploded in a brilliant little flash of atomic energy.

The climbing snake recoiled, scorched and terrified. It slid down the tree with frantic haste, and then ran away through the forest on its short legs. The green-scaled monsters below, also terrorized by the little atomic explosion, had already taken to their heels.

CURT NEWTON dropped from the tree.

“What a world!” he thought disgustedly. “And no way of getting away from it. No wonder Quorn figured that leaving me marooned here was as good as killing me.”

He had seldom been in a more unpromising situation. He was a castaway on this wild, dangerous world of another universe. A fifth-dimensional gulf separated him implacably from his own universe. And Ul Quorn and his band had gone on to seek the treasure of this star.

Curt Newton considered. There was no possible means of his getting away from this planet by his own efforts. Therefore, his only hope was to get someone here to take him away. And the one possibility in that direction was the Futuremen.

“Before long,” Captain Future thought, “Simon and Otho will have equipped the
Comet
with a dimension-shifter. They’ll go first to the radite cavern. Grag and Johnny will tell them how I came into this universe with Ul Quorn’s band, and they’ll enter this universe after me.

“But how the devil will they trail Quorn here?” Curt realized. “There’s a million stars in this alien universe — they won’t know to which one Quorn has come.”

He frowned as he considered that problem. There was only one answer. He must somehow get a call to the Futuremen, tell them he was here.

“And all I’ve got is my little pocket-televisor!” he thought hopelessly. “It wouldn’t reach a fraction of the billions of miles from here to the point where the Futuremen will enter this universe!”

Curt looked up into the sky. Though the eclipse-night was passing, the brighter stars of the alien constellations still shone dimly. He knew just where in these alien heavens the
Comet
would enter this universe, when it came. He had, with his usual keenness of observation, mentally plotted the course followed in these skies by the
Nova
during its voyage.

But that point where the
Comet
would enter this universe was billions of miles away. How was he possibly to get a call across that vast distance, with only his little pocket-televisor of limited range?

His eye fell on the space-suit and two impellers which lay on the ground nearby. He had discarded them when he landed on this world. But now he saw possibilities in them, for they still contained some power.

“I should be able to build a crude amplifier to step up the power of my televisor,” he thought. “But even so, it wouldn’t have nearly enough range to get across that distance.”

Then Captain Future’s tanned face lighted up.

“But say, if I could rig up a direction-cone and
beam
my call in a concentrated ray toward that point in space, it might reach! It’s worth trying, anyway!”

The wizard of science at once began work on the task. He carried the space-suit and impellers into a little shadowy grove. Then he took from the flat pockets of his belt the array of tiny, compact tools and instruments that had helped him in more than one dilemma.

FIRST, he dissembled the flat, oblong case of his pocket televisor. The visi-screen he tossed aside — he couldn’t waste power on that. The tiny tubes and coils, he considered doubtfully.

“The power I’ll have to use may blow them instantly,” he thought. “Well, it’s worth trying.”

Curt Newton took the receiver part of the little televisor and used its little coils and tubes, by adroit rewiring, to add to the power of the transmitter. Then he labored to hook up the atomic batteries in the two impellers, to act as auxiliaries to the tiny battery of the televisor.

Finally, with his tools he made from the flexible metal of the space-suit a direction-cone such as was used for beam-casting. This he attached to his amplified transmitter. He carefully pointed the cone toward that section of the alien skies where the
Comet
would appear if it came.

“Captain Future calling the
Comet!”
Curt spoke loudly into the transmitter. “I’m on the outermost planet of the double star at approximate direction from you of 25 — 122 — 89 degrees. My location on that planet is near equator on sunlit side. Look for my smoke signal.”

Curt at once shut off his power. He had no means of knowing whether his beam had reached that distant spot in space. And even if it had, there was no certainty that the
Comet
was even in this universe.

“Still, if the time table I figured out is right, they may be entering this universe in the
Comet
any hour now,” he thought. “I’ll just have to keep beaming my call as long as I can.”

An hour later, he sent the call again. But as he was finishing his message, there was a sudden flash of light inside his televisor. The rubes and coils had fused into a smoking wreck.

“That does it!” Captain Future exclaimed. “Too much power, and it blew the apparatus — I should have known it would. Now if neither of my calls got them, I
am
sunk!”

THERE was no possibility of rebuilding the fused apparatus. So Curt busied himself in gathering dried branches and moss and building a large fire. Upon it he threw masses of green tendrils which sent a pillar of black smoke into the sunlight.

The fire seemed to throw the fierce creatures of the planet into a panic. They bolted in all directions as the unfamiliar scent of the smoke reached them.

“Well, even if nobody ever comes to see my smoke signal, it’ll give me a chance to get a little sleep,” Curt grinned.

Calmly, he stretched out on the ground beside his smoking fire. In an instant he was asleep.

He dreamed that the climbing snake had come back and had suddenly seized him. Then Curt awoke to sudden realization that he was no longer dreaming, that something
had
grabbed him.

He exploded like an uncoiling spring, in the moment he awakened. His lunging movement brought him to his feet and sent stumbling backward the figure he had glimpsed bending over him. Then as Curt’s eyes cleared, he saw that it was Joan Randall he had thrust away. Beyond her, Otho and Grag and the Brain were approaching.

“I like that!” pouted Joan injuredly from where she had fallen on the moss. “I come all the way into this other universe to follow you, and when I find you, what do you do? You push me on my face!”

Captain Future laughed with relief as he picked her up and put her on her feet. He kissed her lightly.

“Joan, I never was so glad to
see
you. Even though at first I thought you were a climbing snake.”

“Now he calls me names!” Joan declared. But in her dark eyes glimmered dancing happiness.

“Chief, we sure are glad to find you!” greeted Otho as the Futuremen came up. “We got your televisor call, though it was terribly weak. We came on and found this planet, and saw your smoke signal —”

“And found you calmly sleeping, after all the worrying we’d done about you,” Joan concluded. “But where’s Ul Quorn?”

“Gone on after the treasure,” Curt answered soberly. “We’ve got to get after him at once. Come on — I’ll tell you what happened once we start.”

The Futuremen had landed the
Comet
in a nearby glade. Ezra Gurney and Johnny Kirk met Curt in the door of the ship. The tough Earth youngster’s face wore a beaming grin.

“I knew there couldn’t ever anything happen to you, Captain Future!” Johnny declared. “I wasn’t worried about you like the others.”

“Blast off, Grag,” Curt ordered the big robot, smiling at Johnny. “Head for the nearest of the other two planets. Quorn must have headed for one of those worlds after he left this one.”

As the
Comet
tore up through the atmosphere of the World of Frozen Life, Captain Future told them rapidly of how Ul Quorn had detected his imposture.

“I was afraid something like that would happen,” rasped the Brain. “That Magician of Mars has lost none of his devilish cunning.”

“He’s more formidable than ever,” Curt declared. “He’s developed new weapons and powers.”

“You still don’t know what this here treasure is he’s after?” asked Ezra Gurney keenly.

“No, but it’s somewhere at this double star,” Captain Future stated. “It must be on one of these other two planets. I only hope that Quorn’s band hasn’t already seized it and returned to our own universe.”

The
Comet
was screaming through space now, away from the World of Frozen Life. The other two planets of the double star were on the other side of it. The little ship, driven by the unprecedented power of radite fuel, cut as close as possible to the two suns in crossing over.

SIMON WRIGHT hovered by a window, observing with intense scientific curiosity the giant dead star of the pair. It was like a colossal black cinder, this sun that had burned out long before its companion. But smoldering, sullen red flames here and there on the surface of the dead sun told of dying radioactive fires in its interior.

“It’s almost dead, but not quite,” the Brain muttered to himself. “There must be great volcanic eruptions occasionally on its surface.”

They flashed through the blinding glare of the blazing white sun, using the
Comet’s
“halo” to protect it from the heat. Then they approached the nearest of the other two planets.

It was a drab world with a fairly dense atmosphere which their tester showed to be breathable. The landscape of this planet was a desolate one of rolling, moss-covered highlands sloping down to the dried-out bottoms of what had once been great oceans.

“There’s some kind of ruins down in that ancient sea-bottom!” called Otho from the window.

“Land there and we’ll investigate,” Curt ordered Grag.

The
Comet
came to rest on the cracked, arid bed of an extinct ocean. They emerged and inspected the ruins that Otho had glimpsed.

These were crumbled stone remnants of what had once been a mighty city. Only fragmentary carvings on disintegrating stone walls, and debris-strewn streets, remained of a former grandeur.

“This city was down
in
the ancient sea, lad,” commented the Brain. “Its people must have been a water-dwelling race, who perished when the oceans of this world dried up.”

“Look at these carvings!” Joan exclaimed, “There were human beings here too — as slaves!”

The carvings were eroded by time. They showed queer, seal-like, flipper-limbed creatures who had apparently been the amphibian masters of the city. The amphibians were shown supervising the labor of bands of slaves, who were human in every respect.

“The amphibians lived most of their lives in the watery cities, and made the human slaves work for them on land,” guessed the Brain. “I’d like to know all the past history of this dead world.”

“We have no time for archaeological research, Simon,” interrupted Curt Newton impatiently. “The question is — is the treasure on this world and has Ul Quorn found it?”

“It’s going to be a tough job searching this whole planet for Quorn, Chief,” declared Otho ruefully.

Captain Future frowned.

“I have an idea for locating Quorn more — quickly than that. His ship, the
Nova,
carries a heavy fuel-load of radite. Suppose we rig up a super-sensitive radite compass that will detect the presence of radite at extreme distances? We might spot him that way.”

They returned to the
Comet.
It was short work for Curt and the Futuremen, working together, to build a super-sensitive instrument that would detect the emanations of radite anywhere on this planet. But when they tested the instrument, its needle remained stationary.

“Quorn’s ship isn’t here,” Curt declared. “We’ll have to go on to the other planet.”

When they approached the third of the three worlds of the double star, they found it a mere rock sphere without atmosphere, water or life. And the radite compass showed that Quorn’s ship was not here either.

Captain Future’s spirits sank to a new low.

“This double star only has three planets, and Quorn’s not at any of them. Do you suppose, he’s already been able to secure the treasure and has left?”

“I doubt that, Cap’n Future,” put in Ezra. “Harris Haines said that the treasure was dangerous to approach — said somethin’ about ‘the unseen ones who guard it.’ If that’s so, Quorn couldn’t get it this quickly.”

“Then where the devil is Quorn?” Otho swore. “I’m beginning to think this mysterious treasure is a ghost treasure!”

“We’ll cruise around this double star in a closing spiral,” Curt decided. “The treasure, and Quorn’s ship, might be on some little asteroid we haven’t glimpsed. You watch the radite compass, Otho.”

THE
Comet
began to fly in a tightening circle around the double star. While Otho watched the compass, Curt and the Brain swept all space with the electro-telescopes. But they were unable to glimpse even the smallest asteroid. The mystery was becoming more and more baffling.

Otho suddenly shouted.

“Chief, the compass shows radite a little outward from us!”

Curt jumped to his side. The needle of the super-sensitive instrument was twitching toward an outward sector of space.

“Head the
Comet
that way, Grag!” Curt ordered eagerly.

As the ship tore out through space, the radite compass needle showed ever more strongly the presence of radite not far ahead. Yet the telescopes failed to disclose anything but empty space in that direction.

“I can’t understand this,” Captain Future muttered. “Either the compass has gone crazy, or —”

“Look at the gravitometers!” Grag boomed startledly.