Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) (6 page)

CURT NEWTON’S proton pistol flashed into his hand.

“Stand ready!” he murmured tautly. “I’m going to open that locker.”

He advanced soundlessly. Then, with a sudden swift movement, he flung open the big locker. A figure pitched out of it.

“Why, it’s an Earth boy!” exclaimed Otho incredulously.

Curt burst into laughter. “A young stowaway!”

It was a boy about fourteen years old, clad in soiled, shapeless black zipper suit. He was a wiry, scrawny youngster with a tough, belligerent face and black eyes wise and cynical beyond his years.

He stood facing them in resolute bravado, his fists clenched. Yet under his hard-boiled pose, nervousness was visible. He gulped as his eyes swept over the awesome group facing him.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in the
Comet?”
Curt Newton demanded.

The youngster answered nonchalantly.

“I’m Johnny Kirk, see? And I hid out in this boat because I wanted to join up with you and your gang. I want to be a Futureman.”

Grag uttered a booming sound of mirth.

“Look what wants to be a Futureman!”

Johnny Kirk scowled at the great robot.

“Don’t you laugh at me, you big hunk of iron. I’m liable to put the blast on you.”

Captain Future chuckled.

“Now don’t go bullying Grag,” he admonished. “How in the world did you get into the
Comet?”

“Aw, that was easy,” the tough youngster answered nonchalantly. “I ain’t got no folks and I pick up a living running errands around Government Tower, see? And I always keep my eyes peeled so I’ll spot your ship if it ever comes. For I decided to join up with you. I’ve heard all about the swell jobs you and these guys have pulled.”

Curt kept his face straight.

“Nice of you to say that, Johnny. But why didn’t you try to get into the Planet Patrol Academy, instead?”

“The Planet Patrol? Them sissies?” echoed Johnny Kirk scornfully. “Say, they’re a bunch of dressed-up cream puffs. It’s you and the Futuremen that really have the adventures. And you’re the only guy I’d ever take orders from, Captain Future.”

Curt Newton saw the hero worship in the tough youngster’s eyes, and was a little touched.

“You still haven’t told us how you got into the
Comet,”
he said.

“It was a cinch,” retorted Johnny. “This morning I spotted this ship of yours landing on the top of Government Tower. It was the chance I was waiting for, so I went right up to it.”

“You couldn’t get through the Planet Police and President’s offices on the top floors,” declared Otho incredulously.

“Don’t I know that?” retorted Johnny Kirk. “So I go up to the floor just under them, pretending I’m bringing a message, and then I slip out the window and shinny up the outside wall with these ‘climbers.’ ”

The boy took from his pocket a set of four flat rubberoid vacuum-cups, designed to be strapped to wrists and knees and often utilized by burglars for climbing sheer outside walls.

“Where’d you get these things?” Curt Newton demanded.

Johnny grinned.

“I won a kit of burglar tools, gambling by the spaceport docks with a Martian burglar. Figured I might need it some time. These folding vacuum-cup ‘climbers’ are part of that burglar-kit. They got me up the wall to the Tower top, and it was easy then to slip into the ship and hide out in that locker.”

“Blast me down!” swore Otho incredulously. “Can you figure this kid climbing up that wall like that? I’d hate to do it myself!”

“What are we going to do with him?” boomed Grag. “We don’t want to go all the way back to Earth with him.”

“No,” rasped the Brain impatiently. “We’ve no time to lose in this fight against Quorn.”

CURT NEWTON shrugged, with assumed rueful expression.

“Guess there’s nothing to do but toss him out into space, boys,” he declared.

Johnny Kirk wasn’t scared. The tough youngster gave Curt a wise, knowing grin.

“Aw, you can’t kid me, Captain Future. You wouldn’t do that. I know all about you, see? Since I was a kid down by the space-docks, I’ve been reading and hearing everything they tell about you.”

Curt laughed. “Okay, Johnny — you stay aboard. When we get to Uranus, we’ll have to turn you over to the Police for return to Earth.”

“Aw, you don’t have to do that, do you?” pleaded the youngster. “I’d make a swell Futureman. Give me one of them atom guns to use and I’ll show you I can blast ‘em down.”

“Bloodthirsty little devil, isn’t he?” commented Otho. “Come on, my embryo-Futureman, you can help me in my experiment. I need someone to hand me tools.”

Grag grunted in disgust.

“So you’re going on with your wacky scientific work, eh? I bet it’ll be good.”

“You’ll soon have your curiosity gratified, Grag,” grinned the android as he started to take his metal pieces from a cabinet.

The
Comet
throbbed on out through the solar spaces for hour after hour, toward the distant green spot that was Uranus. Finally Otho completed the work that had engrossed his spare time for many days.

“All done, Johnny,” he told the tough youngster. “You can put those tools back in the locker.”

“Say, what is this thing you’ve made?” Johnny Kirk demanded.

“Yes, what is this great scientific achievement you’ve been talking about?” asked Curt Newton, who had come over to them now.

The thing Otho had made was a crazy-looking little tin mannikin three feet high, with grotesque, round arms and legs and a bucket-like tin head in which were two staring artificial eyes.

“Goofy-looking, isn’t it?” Otho chuckled. “It’s got a little atomic power-plant in it, and a voice that speaks from records.”

“But what’s the idea of this wacky automaton?” Curt demanded.

“You remember that time Grag gave me a ribbing by pretending to make an android like me out of mud and old oil?”

Captain Future grinned.

“Sure, I remember. The old boy sort of put it over you, that time.”

“Well, here’s where I pay him back,” Otho declared. “Watch!”

Otho touched certain switches on the back of his goofy little tin-headed automaton. A humming of power came from within the little tin figure. It started to move, walking stiffly on its grotesque legs. It walked straight forward to the control-room where Grag sat in the pilot chair. The tin mannikin stopped beside Grag, looked up at the robot with staring artificial eyes, and then spoke in its mechanical record-voice.

“Papa!” it cried, in a loud, rusty voice.

Grag, thunderstruck with amazement, stared down at the little bucket-headed tin figure that was claiming him as its parent.

“Papa, don’t you know me?” cried the small tin figure in its rusty voice, “i’m Grag, Junior — your little sonny boy!”

Grag nearly fell out of the pilot chair with astonishment. The big robot could hardly find his voice.

“What in the name of space —”

“Papa, I’ll never leave you now that I’ve found you!” the tin mannikin was declaiming shrilly. “You may be just a mess of rusty old iron, but you’re all the family I’ve got!”

Grag looked wildly around. Then, as he saw Curt shaking with silent laughter and Otho doubled up with glee, he began to understand. He snatched up the declaiming tin mannikin and inspected it. A brief glance was enough to show Grag the record inside that was speaking.

He hurled “Grag, Junior” at Otho, with a roar of rage. Otho, helpless with mirth, just managed to duck the flying mass of tin.

“You cursed rubber imitation of humanity!” yelled Grag at the android. “I’ll get you for that joke! You just wait!”

Otho was choking with laughter. “I’ll — never forget as long as I lived how Grag looked when that thing cried Papa!” he gasped.

The
Comet
flew on and on. Uranus showed a small green disk ahead, and they could clearly see the four bright specks of its satellites. Young Johnny Kirk gazed dismally at the planet from beside Curt’s pilot-chair.

“YOU’RE not really going to turn me over to the sky-cops at Uranus, are you?” he begged Curt hopefully. “Aw, have a heart, Captain Future! I’d make a swell Futureman once I’ve learned some science from you.”

Curt Newton grinned.

“I believe you, Johnny. But we’ve got to drop you. We’re going into a struggle that’s too dangerous for any youngster. Besides,” he added consolingly, “before we leave you at Uranus we’re visiting its moon, Ariel. You’ll get a look at that wild little world.”

“Wild is right,” grunted Grag, over Curt’s shoulder. “That Skal Kar who built a laboratory there must have been crazy to pick that monster-ridden moon.”

“Skal Kar had his reasons, I’m certain,” Curt said thoughtfully.

Uranus soon bulked as a great, cloudy green sphere in the starry heavens. Captain Future expertly swung the
Comet
in around the darker, little globe of Ariel, the innermost moon. Soon they heard a whistling shriek outside the ship as it penetrated the atmosphere of the satellite.

“Skal Kar’s laboratory is around on the night side now,” Curt Newton muttered, peering down at the moon.

The nighted landscape of Ariel, illuminated by the soft green planet-glow of the great sphere overhead, was forbidding. As the
Comet
flew low over the green-lit jungle, they could make out strange, swarming creatures. They were nearly all of one species — shapeless white masses of flesh that flowed through the vegetation with a gliding jelly-like movement that required no limbs.

“There they are — the devilish things that give this place the name of Monster Moon,” Otho told young Johnny Kirk.

“Aw, they don’t look so tough,” declared Johnny skeptically. “They’re so slow I could put the blast on ‘em before they got near me.”

“You think so, do you?” Otho retorted. “You’d find out different. Those gas-beasts, as they’re called, have a very effective weapon. It’s a stupefying gas they generate inside their bodies and jet out for a hundred feet or more to overcome their prey.”

Captain Future uttered a relieved exclamation.

“Ah, there’s what we’re looking for — Skal Kar’s stockade.”

Ahead yawned a thousand-foot clearing that had been hacked from the jungle. It was surrounded by a wire stockade, to which were connected cables from a squat atomic electric-generator. The generator kept the wire stockade charged, and the gliding white gas-beasts that swarmed outside dared not approach it.

At the center of the clearing loomed the mysterious laboratory of the murdered scientist. It was a black cement tower, windowless, cylindrical in shape. Curt brought the
Comet
down to an expert landing inside the stockade. He cut the eyes, then rose to his feet.

“Looks like the place is deserted,” he told the Futuremen, “but we’ll take no chances. Be ready for a scrap in there.”

Otho had the airlock door open. Johnny Kirk started out with them, but Captain Future held him back.

“Not you, Johnny. You stay here — we may meet trouble in there. If you want to help, remain here and watch the
Comet.”

“Okay, Chief,” replied Johnny a little reluctantly. “If anybody comes fooling around our ship, I’ll let ‘em have it.”

Otho chuckled as he and Grag and the Brain started with Captain Future across the clearing toward the looming black tower.

“Our
ship, eh?” laughed the android. “He’s a Futureman already, to hear him talk.”

Curt grinned. “I like that youngster, in spite of his tough talk. There’s good stuff in him.”

They approached the black tower. The only opening in it was a square chromium door. It was locked, but Captain Future fished an “all-wave” master vibration-key from his belt-kit that soon opened it. They entered a Stygian darkness, their hands ready upon their weapons. Groping about, Curt soon found the switch of the tower’s krypton-lights.

The blue radiance disclosed a bewildering interior. The whole lower two-thirds of the tower was a single enormous room. It had been the laboratory of Skal Kar. An array of scientific instruments, generators and reference books crowded the walls of the circular chamber.

BUT the central part of the big room was empty, except for a curious low framework of very heavy metal stanchions. It was only a few feet high, but was more than eighty feet long.

Curt Newton’s eyes fastened on it instantly.

“See that framework, Simon?” he muttered. “Our guess was right.”

“What the devil was your guess?” Otho demanded puzzledly. “What was this Skal Kar doing here?”

“Building a small space ship,” Captain Future retorted. “That low framework was the cradle upon which his little ship rested in building.”

“You’re joking!” Otho protested incredulously. “Who in the Sun’s name would be crazy enough to build a space ship inside this cement tower? How would he ever get it out? I just can’t understand it.”

“How did the ship that rescued Ul Quorn get in and out of Cerberus prison?” Captain Future countered meaningly. “It was this same little ship, built here by Skal Kar and stolen by N’Rala. A ship capable of shifting across the fifth-dimensional gulf into the co-existing universe!”

“Jumping jungle-cats of Jupiter!” gasped Otho. “Then that
is
the secret of Ul Quorn’s power to vanish and reappear at will?”

“I still don’t understand how it’s possible, Chief,” said Crag.

“It’s simple enough, Grag,” the red-haired planeteer told him. “That other universe of space and stars is co-existent with our own universe of space and stars, but doesn’t impinge on ours because they’re separated by the fifth-dimensional abyss. But Skal Kar’s ship could cross that abyss into the other universe. N’Rala, after she killed Skal Kar, simply shifted the little ship into the other universe, traveled a short distance in the space of that other universe, and then shifted back and reappeared at a different location which was in our
own
universe.”

“Aye, lad, there’s no doubt in my mind now that that’s it,” rasped the hovering Brain. “The Martian girl must have cajoled Skal Kar into showing her how his apparatus worked before she killed him.”