Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) (17 page)

“Melt me down!” boomed Grag disgustedly. “I’ve been locked up more than once, but never before in the invisible jail of an unseen city on a phantom world!”

SUDDENLY they heard tottering steps approaching along the corridor. Then the cracked voice of an old man spoke to them through the barred door of their cell. To their amazement, it spoke in the language of Earth.

“You’re the new prisoners the Phantom-folk just captured?” asked that shrill voice. “Are any of you from Earth?”

“We’re all from Earth!” Curt cried to the invisible speaker. “Who are you?”

“I’m from Earth too, long ago,” was the answer. “I’m Harris Haines!”

“Harris Haines!” Captain Future cried. “The man who first entered this universe?”

“Yes,” replied the shrill voice of the aged, unseen man. “I’ve been on this world for forty years, ever since my ship crashed in landing on it in my second expedition here.”

“I’ll be blasted!” muttered Otho’s astonished voice. “Imagine living on this invisible world for that long!”

“I’ve got used to it,” Harris Haines replied. “But I’ve long hoped that somebody would come. And today, at last, men from my own universe have come here — first the band of the man Ul Quorn, and now your group.”

“Do you mean to say Ul Quorn and his crowd are here now?” Curt demanded swiftly.

“Why, yes,” replied the voice of the old Earthman explorer. “They landed near the city yesterday. Some of the Phantom-folk seized them and brought them here. They’re imprisoned in this same building.”

“Now I see it, Chief!” Grag muttered. “These invisible devils had left a guard around Quorn’s ship, and that’s who captured us!”

“Who’s that talking?” exclaimed Harris Haines startledly. “It didn’t sound like a man’s voice?”

“It’s not a man, but it’s one of my friends,” Curt reassured him. “Tell me, Haines, what are these people going to do to Quorn’s band and us?”

“If they think you came to steal the Cosmic Crystal, they’ll kill you all,” was the old explorer’s answer. “If
they
don’t think that, they’ll let you live as they have me, but will never let you go away from here.”

“One sweet prospect ‘twould be to spend the rest of our lives on this crazy planet,” muttered Ezra Gurney.

“Phantom-folk? Cosmic Crystal?” blurted Otho puzzledly. Haines’ cracked voice explained.

“These invisible people call themselves the Phantom-folk. Ages ago, as I’ve learned from them, they were an ordinary visible race and this world too was quite visible. They had a scientific civilization, and had built cities like this one. But they were attacked by raiders from one of the other three planets — raiders who were of an amphibian race dwelling in the cities in the oceans of their own world.” The Brain’s voice interrupted.

“Those ruins we saw on the dried-up sea-bottoms of the third planet — that was their origin, then?”

“Yes, that was the world of the Amphibians,” the old explorer confirmed. “They too had developed scientific knowledge, and they were a warlike race. They built space ships, which had water-filled chambers in them, and in those ships they raided this world. They took back human captives from this world to act as their slaves, since the Amphibians could not labor on land for very long, and needed slaves for that purpose.

“The humans of this world tried various scientific defenses against the Amphibians, but none succeeded. Then the greatest scientists of this people achieved a real defense. They hit upon the idea of making this whole world and everything upon it invisible. That would make life somewhat difficult at first, but it would effectually check the Amphibians.

“The human scientists here knew much about light and matter. From their knowledge, they built the Cosmic Crystal. It was a crystal — shaped like a huge diamond, towering as high as a man. It was a perpetual transformer of cosmic energy that would make this whole world invisible.

“The Cosmic Crystal was really not matter at all, but a rigid pattern of fixed photons, as solid-seeming as matter. The convolutions of its photon-pattern were such as to form a natural transformer of energy. It sucked in the energy of the cosmic rays which penetrate all space, and transformed that energy into a polarizing vibration which radiated forth to affect all matter within its range. The polarizing vibration made all matter on this world absolutely transparent, and hence invisible.”

THE voice of old Harris Haines concluded.

“The Cosmic Crystal was placed on an altar, and a temple was built around it. You are now, in fact, in the dungeons of the Temple of the Crystal. For ages, the Crystal has radiated transformed cosmic energy to keep this world and all on it invisible. Long ago, the Amphibians died away as their world dried up, but the Phantom-folk here still keep their world invisible, to protect them. For these Phantom-folk are a
sightless
people now — their useless eyes atrophied during the ages. They live and move entirely by super-developed hearing. They are a primitive people now, for their scientific greatness faded and died. If their world were made visible, they would be helpless before any invaders.”

“That’s understandable,” declared the Brain.

“Harris Haines, tell me,” Captain Future asked quickly, “it was to get the Cosmic Crystal that you came here years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered the sad voice of the old explorer. “That was the lure that brought me to be marooned for a lifetime here. The Cosmic Crystal that can make a whole world invisible is the great treasure I was seeking. I had learned about it on my first trip here, and came back to secure it.”

“And Ul Quorn learned about it from your old notes,” Curt muttered, “and he and his band came here also after the Cosmic Crystal.”

Otho gasped. “Then the mysterious treasure Quorn’s after is that crystal that makes this world invisible? Why would Quorn want that?”

Curt Newton replied somberly.

“With that Cosmic Crystal, Quorn could make a whole asteroid or moon of our own System invisible. He could set up an impregnable citadel of crime in the heart of our System!”

CAPTAIN FUTURE could not see his companions, but he knew from their silence that they were stunned by the menacing possibility he had suggested. A treasure, not of riches, but of power! Power to make of some world in the System a fortress of crime which would be utterly invisible and hence invulnerable! Power that would enable the Magician of Mars to defy the Planet Police, to prey unhindered upon the life of the nine worlds!

Harris Haines’ shrill voice interrupted their dark thoughts.

“I hear some of the guards coming,” Haines declared. “They’ll be taking you up for judgment now.”

Curt stiffened. He heard invisible warriors open the cell, and then Curt and his companions, bound and helpless, were thrust outside.

“The captain says that you and the other strangers will now be judged by the Priests of the Crystal,” informed Harris Haines, after a brief colloquy. “The Priests are the rulers of the Phantom-folk.”

“If I could get my arms loose, I’d leave a few dead Phantom-folk around here,” Grag was growling.

“Take it easy,” ordered Curt Newton. “They’ve got us cold, and talk may do more here than attempted resistance.”

Curt and his comrades were conducted through unseen corridors and up stairs into a room which he judged from the echoes to be a high, domed hall. Yet, to his eyes, there was nothing — nothing but empty space and stars and sunlight, in which he himself seemed a bodiless ghost.

A well-remembered, cool, mocking voice spoke from somewhere nearby.

“I heard that you and your precious Futuremen had been captured, Future,” echoed Ul Quorn’s voice. “Too bad that you walked into the same trap we did, but it makes a nice, friendly little party, doesn’t it?”

Curt made grim answer to the mocking voice of the Magician of Mars.

“It’s still no quarter between us, Quorn.”

“Of course,” drawled Quorn. “But I fancy that our invisible friends here are going to say something about our little argument.”

An unseen man whom Curt guessed to be the chief of the Priests of the Crystal was now speaking in a slow, heavy voice.

Harris Haines translated.

“He wishes to question you first, Quorn. The Chief Priest demands to know why you came to this world.”

“Tell him,” Ul Quorn replied, “that I came with my friends to avert a great danger that threatens the Phantom-folk.”

“What danger is that?” the Chief Priest demanded through Haines.

“I came,” Quorn stated coolly, “to warn the Phantom-folk that these men who call themselves the Futuremen were on their way here to steal the Cosmic Crystal!”

“Why, you lying space-rat!” exploded Otho. “Don’t tell the priest that, Haines — it’s a cursed lie!”

“I’ve got to translate, when they order me,” Harris Haines quavered nervously. They heard him interpreting Quorn’s assertion to the Phantom-folk. And they heard a fierce exclamation from priests and warriors.

“Haines, tell them this,” Captain Future spoke sharply. “Tell them that the man Quorn lies — that he is a criminal who came here to steal the Cosmic Crystal and that I pursued him here to bring him to justice.”

“It’s your word against mine, Future,” mocked the Magician of Mars. “We’ll see who’s the most convincing.”

They heard a buzz of excited argument from the unseen priests as Harris Haines gave them Curt’s statement. It continued for minutes.

“Haines, can’t you assure the priests that Captain Future spoke the truth?” appealed Joan Randall. “They know you and might believe you.”

“But I don’t know which of you is telling the truth!” shrilled Harris Haines bewilderedly. “I’ve never heard of either of you.”

The argument of the Priests of the Crystal came to an end. The Chief Priest spoke solemnly, and Harris Haines rapidly translated.

“The Chief Priest says that there is only one way to determine which of you two men is telling the truth. That is by trial-by-combat before the altar of the Crystal, as is the custom of these people, upon tomorrow.”

“Trial-by-combat?” ejaculated Ul Quorn’s voice startledly. “You mean that Future and I —”

“You two will fight it out with swords, in the great amphitheater of the temple in which is the altar of the Crystal,” Harris Haines explained. “Whichever of you kills the other will be adjudged to have been declared the true man, by the Crystal.”

Captain Future’s voice rang eagerly.

“That suits me! I ask nothing better than a chance to settle with Quorn, man to man!”

“It suits me too,” Ul Quorn answered coolly. “I always knew that some day I’d kill you, Future. This place is a fitting one for the regrettable ending of your glamorous career.”

“You’ll find it queer fighting,” warned the shrill voice of old Harris Haines as they were taken back down to their prison. “You won’t be able to see each other or anything else, remember. You’ll have to fight by sense of hearing alone!”

THEY knew when “night” came by the dwindling away of sounds of activity from the temple and city. But though it was the sleep-period of the Phantom-folk, nothing had changed. The light of the white sun, penetrating through the invisible planet, made a real night impossible.

It was toward the middle of the next “day” that food was brought them, cooked herbs and roots and thin, acrid wine. A little later, they heard a file of guards approach, who conducted Captain Future out of the cell.

“Don’t worry,” Curt called back to his friends. “Here’s where I settle Quorn’s plots for good, if I’m lucky.”

“Beware of tricks, lad!” rang the Brain’s warning after him. “You know as well as I what a cunning devil he is at stratagems.”

Captain Future was led out into what was apparently a great open space, since he could feel the wind on his face. From a great circle around him, he heard a buzz of thousands of low, excited voices. Curt gathered that he was in the big open amphitheater of the temple in which the duel was to be staged.

Not far from him he glimpsed a peculiar flickering radiance in the air. It outlined a large, diamond-shaped form which was thus, by virtue of its flickering radiance, the only semi-visible thing he had yet seen here.

“The Cosmic Crystal!” Curt thought. “So that’s the thing these superstitious people think is going to decide between Quorn and me.”

His hands were untied. He flexed his stiffened muscles to restore circulation. One of the guards gave him an invisible sword.

The heavy voice of the Chief Priest rolled out. His guards left him. The thousands of the Phantom-folk in the amphitheater became absolutely silent. They could only “watch” this battle by their super-keen hearing.

The cool, confident voice of Ul Quorn came through the dead silence across the invisible amphitheater.

“Are you there, Future?” demanded the Magician of Mars. “I’m coming to meet you.”

Curt gripped his sword.

“I’ll meet you halfway, Quorn,” he called.

He strode forward. The floor of the amphitheater was of crumbled paving, he felt. Curt moved softly and warily, his ears tuned for every sound. He could hear Quorn’s cat-like steps as the mixed breed approached. Both of them moved more softly and cautiously as they approached each other. Suddenly, Curt heard Ul Quorn rushing forward, his sword whistling.