Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) (18 page)

Curt ducked sharply, and felt the sword whizz over his head. He stabbed savagely with his own weapon in the direction of Quorn’s footsteps. He felt the point rip Quorn’s robe, but knew he had not wounded the other.

A low whisper of intense excitement came from the Phantom-folk around the amphitheater as they heard and understood the clash.

“I always knew you were quick. Future,” came Quorn’s voice from a little distance. “I’m going to prove to you that one man is quicker.”

Curt made no answer, but circled softly toward the other’s voice.

“I can hear you coming,” laughed Ul Quorn. “I wish they hadn’t taken my electrostatic finger ray battery when they captured me — I’d made short work of you.”

Curt Newton rushed him, striking with his unseen weapon. His sword clashed against Quorn’s. For a moment, one invisible blade rang loudly against the other. Then Quorn had darted away.

“What’s the matter, Quorn?” taunted Curt. “You’ve talked for years of how you’d settle me if we met face to face. Why don’t you do it?”

It was a weirdly incredible struggle, this duel between Captain Future and the Magician of Mars! A duel in which the two great antagonists of the System, invisible to each other, sought to bring their long feud to a climax upon this sightless world of an alien universe!

Again Curt rushed, again the invisible swords clashed. This time Quorn’s blade grazed Curt’s wrist. But he heard the Magician gasp and knew that his own point must have stabbed close past the mixed breed’s face.

Once more they circled each other, each listening to the other’s footsteps, in this fantastic death struggle. But now Ul Quorn hastily gave ground as Captain Future charged him.

“Not getting afraid, are you, Quorn?” Curt demanded mockingly.

HIS answer was the
swish
of Quorn’s striking blade. Curt’s own unseen — sword flew up to deflect the stroke, but the flat of Quorn’s weapon struck his shoulder a numbing blow.

Curt stabbed savagely, advancing straight forward. But once more the wily Magician of Mars drew away. Captain Future, resolved to finish the duel one way or another before Quorn could employ any tricks, followed him.

At that moment came an astounding interruption to the duel. It was the roar of a space ship’s rocket-tubes in the sky overhead. The ship was as invisible as everything else. But it could clearly be heard as it dived, with a crescendo roar of rockets, down into the amphitheater.

Captain Future recognized the staccato rockets of the
Nova,
Quorn’s ship. He heard the blast of the keel tubes as the craft landed nearby.

“This way, Garson!” Quorn was shouting. “Here’s the Crystal!”

The Phantom-folk were in wild uproar. Curt could hear men running from the
Nova
toward the nickering radiance of the Cosmic Crystal.

“So this is the trick you had in mind!” Captain Future exclaimed savagely. He plunged forward, his blade seeking Quorn in the nothingness.

His sword tore into a running man. With a scream, the man fell. But it was the voice of Athor Az, the Venusian criminal, that had screamed. Next moment, a flailing metal bar in the nothingness knocked Curt flat.

He dimly heard through gathering unconsciousness the brutal voice of Thikar, the Jovian.

“I got Future! If I can find him I’ll finish him —”

“No time for that!” Quorn yelled. “The Phantom-folk are pouring out on us! Carry the Crystal into the ship, quick!”

By iron will, Captain Future fought against the unconsciousness threatening him. He staggered to his feet, to glimpse the flickering, semi-visible radiance of the Cosmic Crystal moving toward the unseen
Nova.

He heard a new voice as he stumbled forward, the shrill, frantic voice of the old explorer, Harris Haines.

“No, you can’t take the Crystal!” Haines was crying. “You told me you wouldn’t touch it, and I —
ah-h-h!”

Haines’ cry ended in a scream of agony, and Curt heard the old explorer fall.

“I got the old fool — quick, now!” Ul Quorn was yelling.

Curt Newton lurched forward. The Phantom-folk were rushing toward the scene, with a howl of hundreds of furious voices.

But the door of the space ship slammed, just as Curt stumbled toward it. With a deafening roar of rockets, the invisible
Nova
took off. He could hear the receding drone of its tubes as it zoomed into the sky.

“Quorn’s got the Cosmic Crystal, blast him!” Curt exclaimed.

An astounding thing suddenly happened. Slowly, mistily, everything around Captain Future was now becoming
visible.
He could see more clearly each moment the great stone amphitheater in which he stood, the carved, empty altar, the horde of raging, white-skinned, sightless Phantom-folk pouring toward him.

Captain Future understood. The Cosmic Crystal had been carried away in Quorn’s ship, and the matter which its polarizing vibration had kept transparent and invisible was rapidly returning to normal visibility as its atoms came back to normal state.

Harris Haines, an old, wrinkle-faced, white-bearded Earthman, lay on the paving at his feet. Blood poured from a stab-wound in his breast.

Curt stooped beside the old man.

“My — fault!” Haines was choking. “I released Quorn’s men from their cell and led them out of the city to their ship, while all the Phantom-folk were here in the temple. And I guided their ship to land here, by the radiance of the Crystal, to pick up Ul Quorn.”

Haines’ voice was an agonized whisper.

“I did it because Quorn said they’d take me back to my own universe. But I made him promise not to take the Crystal. You see, in my years here I’ve come to like these Phantom-folk and didn’t want to take their only protection and leave them defenseless.”

The old explorer’s fading eyes blinked.

“Quorn tricked me — stabbed me. It’s all my fault. But I did — want to see Earth — before I died —”

Harris Haines, with the words, stiffened. The old explorer of strange universes had ended his rovings, at last.

PHANTOM-FOLK, warriors and priests, were pouring around the empty altar in a raging mob. Their eyes, atrophied and sightless, could not see the now visible scene. But they had learned by groping what had happened.

“The Cosmic Crystal gone!” they wailed. “Now our only defense is taken from us. Now we will be at the mercy of any attackers who can see!”

Captain Future understood their despair. While their world was invisible, they had been protected. But now that the planet was visible, they would be defenseless before any invader who could see.

“Listen!” Curt spoke swiftly to the Chief Priest. “You know now that I told the truth when I said the man Quorn planned to steal the Cosmic Crystal. But I and my friends, if you free us, may be able to get it back.”

The Phantom-folk caught at the straw with piteous eagerness.

“You are free now, then!” cried the Chief Priest. “You will regain the Crystal?”

“I’ll do everything possible,” Curt promised grimly. “As much for my own sake as for yours. Set my friends free at once, to help me.”

Guards hastened down with him into the dungeons of the temple. He found Otho and Grag and the others, now completely visible and mystified.

“Chief, what happened?” Otho cried. “We heard an uproar and then everything started to become visible again!”

Curt explained rapidly, as the Phantom-guards untied them and freed the Brain from the confining net. They listened, horrified.

“Then Ul Quorn is on his way back to our universe, our own System, with the Crystal!” cried Joan.

“Yes, and we’re following him at once in the
Comet,”
rasped Curt. “We’ve got to catch up to him before he has time to use that Crystal to set up an invisible crime-world in our System.”

THE Futuremen, and Ezra and Joan and young Johnny Kirk, hastily followed Curt out of the city. They hurried across the rolling, grassy plain until they glimpsed the welcome sight of the
Comet
glinting in the light of the white sun.

Then Ezra uttered a cry.

“Look at that!” he yelped. “Somethin’s wrecked the
Comet!”

The underside of the little ship’s stern had been blasted open by an explosion of terrific violence.

“Quorn’s men did this!” Curt gritted, his gray eyes flaming. “They made sure we couldn’t follow, by setting an atomic fuse that exploded the radite in the fuel-bin of the
Comet.”

They found that to be the case. The fuel compartment under the cyc-room was a wreck, the whole hull having been torn open by the explosion of atomic energy. Two of the cyclotrons themselves had been badly strained by the explosion, only the thickness and strength of the ship’s interior walls having prevented the complete destruction of them all.

“That devil!” raged Ezra Gurney. “Now we’re washed up for fair.”

Curt’s voice rang. “Not us! We can repair this damage.”

“But it’ll take days,” despaired the old marshal. “An’ even if you do get it fixed, we won’t have any radite for fuel.”

“Jumping meteor-demons!” exclaimed Otho. “Ezra’s right, Chief! Without radite, we can’t get back across the billions of miles to where we must go to enter our own System!”

“We’ll worry about the radite when we get the
Comet
fixed!” snapped Captain Future. “Grag, you go back with Ezra to the Phantom-folk city and bring back all the high-test alloy metal you can find there. Otho, get out every atomic tool in the locker. We’ve no time to waste!”

There began a period of grueling labor. Hours passed, stretching into days as Curt Newton and the Futuremen toiled against time to repair their ship. Laboring almost without rest, they forged new plates to repair the
Comet’s
hull, replaced torn-away fuel-feed lines, dissembled and rebuilt the two strained cyclotrons.

The Phantom-folk were eager to help, bringing metal and other materials as requested. The sightless folk showed in their pathetic eagerness that they felt Curt to be their last hope of regaining the Cosmic Crystal.

Red-eyed from lack of sleep, almost exhausted, Captain Future finally straightened from the last connection of the two rebuilt cyclotrons.

“That finishes it,” he said hoarsely. “She’s as good as new.”

“But the radite?” Otho pressed “Where are we going to get it? There’s none on this world — nor on any of the others around here.”

“We’ve one chance,” Captain Future muttered. “There might be radite deposits in the crust of the dark star.”

“Chief, are you crazy?” cried Grag. “That dark star is boiling inside with dying fires that constantly erupt. We couldn’t land there.”

“We’ve got to land there!” Curt said emphatically. “It’s the only possible source of the radite we must have to pursue Quorn. Head for the dark sun, Grag!”

BLACK, monstrous and heaven-filling bulked the dead sun as the
Comet
neared it. Long ago, the fiery gases of the aging star had cooled to liquidity. Then as the eons passed, a cindery black crust had formed over the dying star.

Now, this old sun had gone far forward on the road of death. But within its hardened crust there still pulsed dying fires. Here and there at many places in the gloomy black valleys and ashen plains of its surface there still burned the sullen red fires of erupting lava from its molten heart.

As Grag brought the
Comet
to a hovering position over the dark orb, all in the ship except Captain Future and Simon looked down with awe.

“Ghastly-lookin’ place,” muttered old Ezra. “There’s some-thin’ about the dyin’ of a great star that sort of chills you.”

Curt and the Brain were intently scrutinizing their supersensitive radite compass. The others turned, and waited tensely for the verdict that would mean release or imprisonment in this alien universe.

“There
is
radite in the crust of this dying sun!” Curt Newton exclaimed jubilantly. “Head northward, Grag — the needle points that way.”

Over the cindery black plains and valleys and the ominous red witch-fires of erupting lava, Greg steered the ship. Finally, they reached a point at which the needle of the radite compass pointed straight downward.

“Cursed if I see any radite down there!” Otho muttered. “Nothing but hardened lava and ashes and fire-geysers.”

“The radite’s there, but it must be buried beneath the surface of the crust,” Captain Future declared.

The needle of the radite compass pointed down at a shallow valley along which dozens of fountains of molten red lava spurted upward.

“We’ll have to use our heavy proton guns to blast open the surface and uncover the radite,” Curt stated.

“I don’t like it,” declared the Brain. “It might stimulate a terrific eruption.”

Curt shrugged. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take. Help me, Otho.”

Curt and Otho manipulated the two heavy proton guns of the
Comet.
Powerful blue beams of force slanted down from the hovering ship and blasted the cindery black rock of the valley, churning and destroying it.