Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942) (4 page)

CURT NEWTON’S returning consciousness made him aware, first of all, of a strange, tingling sensation through his whole body. He felt as though he were lying beneath a super-powerful generator that was flooding every fiber of his being with electric force. “He is coming around now, Grag,” a familiar, metallic voice was rasping. “So stop your worrying.”

Curt forced his eyes open. Grag and Otho and the Brain were hovering anxiously over him. The pets, Oog and Eek cowered close by.

He lay on the floor of a small, cell-like room of white synthestone. There was a single heavy metal door, and a high, tiny window through which flooded a brilliant white light.

“Simon, what happened in the ship after I passed out?” Curt cried.

“I know what happened to me!” Otho burst out furiously. “One of those cursed shining men grabbed me the same as you, and I felt a shock that knocked me silly. I woke up here just a few minutes ago.”

“And we couldn’t help you,” Grag boomed angrily. “Simon and I were pinned against the ship’s floor by that devilish magnetism from beneath.”

“That is the truth, lad,” the Brain told Curt. “After stunning you and Otho, the shining men secured Grag and me with chains. Then they turned off the magnetism outside, and dragged all four of us, even the two pets, to this prison.”

“Did you see anything of Joan Randall as we were brought here?” Captain Future demanded anxiously.

“No, lad,” murmured the Brain. “She may be imprisoned like us somewhere in this cursed city.”

Curt strode with nervous quickness! to the window. He drew himself up to it and stared out at the amazing city.

Graceful alabaster buildings of white synthestone, crowned by bubblelike domes and slender towers, rose in his field of vision. He was looking across the great central plaza of the magnet-disk He could make out his own ship and other captured ships parked out there. On the other side of the plaza bulked a large white palace with one huge, looming dome.

Curt saw that in the white streets and green gardens moved many of the natives of this comet world, afoot and in six-wheeled power vehicles. They were all fair-haired folk, beautiful women, stalwart men. And all of them glowed with that dazzling, uncanny radiance of electric force. They seemed like angels of light inhabiting some strange celestial metropolis.

Down upon the alabaster city poured a flood of white brilliance from the sky. For the sky of this comet world was the flaring aura of the comet’s nucleus. Completely enclosing this hidden world, this nebulous coma arched across the heavens like a firmament of scintillating white fire.

“Who’d have dreamed that all this existed inside Halley’s comet?” muttered Otho, peering out with awe from over Curt’s shoulder.

Curt’s gray eyes narrowed.

“These comet folk are enemies of our System. They must be, or they wouldn’t have devised that great electromagnet which sucks distant ships in here by means of its beam.”

“But what are these people?” Grag demanded puzzledly. “They shine just as though they were highly charged with electricity.”

“By all the imps of Uranus!” Otho swore. “If you’d have touched one of them, you’d know that they really are electrically charged!”

Curt Newton nodded quickly.

“There’s no doubt about it. All these people possess physically an electric charge that should destroy them — but doesn’t. Simon, what do you make of it?”

“It is strange,” muttered the Brain. “Yet life is electrical in nature. Even back in the twentieth century, Crile showed that the living cells of a body are tiny batteries which produce the electrical current we call life.”

“Theoretically, all life may be electrical. But nobody ever saw electric people like these before,” objected Otho. “And why did they drag our ship in here? What are they going to do with us?”

“More important what have they done with Joan and Ezra?” Curt interrupted. His eyes flashed. “If they’ve harmed her —”

“I hear a tapping in the wall,” Grag suddenly announced.

THEY listened. But they heard nothing for a moment. Then footsteps outside their cell door became audible.

“That must be what you heard,” muttered Otho. “Our keepers coming.”

A little panel in the bottom of the locked door was suddenly opened, and something was pushed through. Then the opening was closed.

Their captors had left them two things — a bowl of synthetic-looking mush obviously intended as their rations, and a book. The book was a queer one. Its leaves were of thin, silvery metal. Upon them were pictures of objects and actions, and under each picture an unfamiliar word.

“Why, it’s an elementary textbook of their language,” Curt said puzzledly. “Maybe they’re not really hostile to us at all.”

“Maybe that shock they gave me was all in fun,” Otho retorted bitterly.

“I hear that tapping in the wall again,” Crag interrupted.

“That tapping is inside your skull, bucket-head,” Otho told the robot impatiently. “Four mechanical brain has stripped a gear, probably.”

Crag, always sensitive to mention of his mechanical nature, flared up.

“Why, you miserable little mess of chemicals —”

“Shut up!” Captain Future ordered them sharply. “I hear that tapping, too. It’s an interplanetary code. Listen!”

The sound came faint from one wall of their cell.

“SQ?” it spelled out in the System’s universal code.

“SQ — who’s there?” Curt translated. His eyes lit. “There are other prisoners in here with us. Maybe it’s Joan!”

Hastily he rapped in answer, stating his identity and finishing with the same inquiring signal.

The answer came quickly.

“Are you new prisoners really the famous Futuremen? I am Tiko Thrin, a scientist of the Syrtis Laboratories of Mars. I’m sorry that you are also captives of the Cometae.

“The Cometae? Is that what you call these comet folk?” asked Curt.

“It is what they call themselves,” tapped Tiko Thrin. “I have learned their language and many facts about them, for I have been here ever since the space-liner on which I was traveling was dragged into the comet.”

“Have you any knowledge of other prisoners here?”

Curt rapped anxiously. “Especially Marshal Ezra Gurney and a girl, Joan Randall.”

“Both of them are here in this city of Mloon,” came the quick reply. “I heard them brought in, many days ago. Ezra Gurney is still a prisoner in this place. I have talked with him many times in code. Prisoners in the other cells relay our signals from cell to cell.”

“Ask him if he and Joan are all right,” Curt directed quickly.

He waited with fast-beating heart for the answer, feeling a new hope. But when Tiko Thrin’s report came, it brought dismaying information.

“Ezra is overjoyed that you Futuremen are here. He says he is all right but is worried about the girl. She is not here in prison, he says, but is somewhere in the city.”

“Ask him what happened to her,” Captain Future bade the Martian anxiously.

Again minutes dragged by before the relayed answer came.

“He says that he and Joan were taken before the rulers of the Cometae, King Thoryx and Queen Lulain. They were asked to join the Cometae. Ezra refused and was brought back here. But the girl was not brought back.”

CURT’S anxiety increased. Tiko Thrin tapped on. All prisoners brought here are first given a chance to learn the language and then are asked to join the Cometae. Those who refuse are brought back here, as I was. We are kept locked up until the solitary confinement makes us change our minds. Many prisoners have weakened and surrendered. Perhaps the girl was among them.”

“If they’re hostile to the System, Joan wouldn’t join them under any circumstances!” Curt tapped back. “She may be trying to deceive them. Tell me, what are these Cometae planning that they need recruits?”

“I do not know,” came Tiko Thrin’s answer. “It is obvious that the Cometae are preparing some important venture, but I have no idea what it is. They are only obeying the orders of the Alius in what they do.”

“The Alius? Who are they?”

“That, too, I don’t know,” the Martian replied. “I only know that the Alius are the real masters of this strange comet-world, and that these Cometae regard them with a respect and awe verging on dread.”

“Are the Alius men? What do they look like?” Curt demanded.

“None of us prisoners has ever seen any Alius,” Tiko Thrin tapped back. “The Alius never come to this city of the Cometae, but inhabit some mysterious place in the north. The Cometae speak always of the Alius as ‘the dark masters’ or as ‘they from beyond the veil.’ ”

“Devil take all these mysteries!” Otho exclaimed violently. “What I want to know is — how are we going to get out of here?”

When Curt tapped that question, Tiko Thrin’s reply was flatly discouraging.

“I fear that even you Futuremen cannot escape this place. You will be confined until you learn the language of the Cometae. Then you will be taken to the rulers.”

The Martian added a warning.

“Do not attempt any rash attack upon the Cometae. They have very powerful weapons, as well as the protective charge of electricity which keeps their bodies immortal.”

Immortal Curt repeated. “You mean that these electric folk are deathless?”

“Yes. The Cometae cannot die unless they should leave this comet. Then they would perish for lack of the electric radiation that is their food.”

“These Cometae live on electricity?” Curt tapped incredulously.

“They do,” replied the Martian. “As you no doubt know, life itself is essentially electrical. We get our vital electricity from the chemical batteries of our body cells. When the cells wear out and can no longer produce the vital electric current, we age and die.

“But the cells of the Cometae have somehow been so altered that they do not produce this all-important energy but
simply receive
it from the coma’s electric radiation — the same radiation you doubtless feel tingling through your bodies now.

“Thus the Cometae do not need to eat or drink, for their cells absorb their vital energy from the coma’s electric radiance. Because of that, they cannot age and cannot die — unless killed by accident.”

“This is very interesting,” the Brain declared absorbedly. He had Curt tap a further question to the Martian. “Were the Cometae always like this, or were they once ordinary human people?”

“I am sure, according to what is passed along the prison ‘grapevine,’ that until a few years ago they were ordinary humans,” replied the Martian scientist. “It is said that only a few years ago, the Alius changed them from normal people into undying electric men.”

“Whoever these mysterious Alius are, they must wield incredible scientific power if they can accomplish a feat like that!” said Otho startledly.

THE exchange of messages was interrupted by a deep vibration of sound that traveled through the window. It sounded like the note of a great bell.

“It means that ‘night’ has come,” tapped Tiko Thrin in answer to Curt’s question. “There is no real night upon this world, of course, but the Cometae have a period of sleep which they all observe.”

The activity in the city outside lessened. Soon but few of the shining electric folk were to be seen in the streets.

Next “morning” the small panel in the door of the Futuremen’s cell was again opened and another ration of synthetic food thrust in to them. One of the Cometae guards spoke to them through the door, asking what seemed to be a question in his unfamiliar language. Receiving no answer, the guard went on.

For three “days” the guard followed the same procedure. Curt spent nearly all of the time in intensive study of the Cometae language. He assumed from Tiko Thrin’s information that when they could speak the language, they would be taken before the rulers of these strange comet folk.

Curt Newton now realized that this was their sole chance of getting out of their prison. The door was never unlocked. The Futuremen had been stripped of every tool and weapon. Simple as their prison was, it seemed inescapable.

Otho and Grag and the Brain also picked up a working knowledge of Cometae language from the textbook, though Simon Wright spent much of his time discussing with his fellow-scientist in the next cell the mysteries of this comet world. Crag and Otho, chafing at confinement quarreled endlessly, while Oog slept peacefully and Eek gnawed contentedly on a metal bowl.

On the third “morning,” when their guard asked his usual question, Captain Future was able to understand it.

“Are you able to speak our language?” the guard was saying.

“Yes, I am,” Curt replied haltingly.

The guard exclaimed in surprise.

“You learned very swiftly! I will call Zarn, the prison captain.”

Presently the deep voice of that official came through the door.

“So you can speak our tongue already?”

“Yes, and we demand that your people give us an explanation for this enforced captivity,” Captain Future retorted.

“You will receive your answer from King Thoryx,” replied Zarn. “But I cannot take you to him, for I have not the authority. I will notify Khinkir, captain of the king’s guard.”

Later that day the door of the Futuremen’s cell was unexpectedly opened. Two officers of the Cometae and a half-dozen soldiers stood outside.

All of the shining electric men of this guard wore swords at their belts. And three of them carried alertly the gunlike weapons that had copper electrodes instead of barrels. Zarn, the prison captain, was a massive, stocky, rough-looking individual. Khinkir, captain of the king’s guard, looked younger and his silver-cloth garments were more ornate.

“Let me advise you,” Khinkir immediately warned Captain Future, “that these weapons project a concentrated electric blast that can destroy you in a split second, should you attempt any rash act. Now come with me.”

The other three Futuremen moved forward with Curt Newton, but Khinkir hastily warned them back.

“Not you! Only this man is to come.”

“Why can’t my comrades come with me?” Curt demanded.

“They are not human,” replied Khinkir, glancing somewhat nervously at the strange trio of robot and android and Brain. “We do not know what powers they may possess, and the king ordered them to be kept here.”