Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942) (6 page)

Zarn concluded his story somberly.

“But we know now that the Alius are alien and evil, that they are planning something dark and wicked,” he summarized. “It was they who directed Thoryx and Querdel and our other rulers to construct the great electromagnet that sucks spaceships into the comet. That electromagnet is operated by some of Querdel’s men, through a special detector apparatus that can spot any ship within millions of miles.”

“Why do the Alius want ships and men from the outside brought in here as captives?” the Brain asked keenly.

The Cometae prison captain shook his head.

“I don’t know. None of us knows just what their unfathomable purposes are. But we are certain some involved and sinister scheme is afoot.”

THE Futuremen glanced at each other. It was the Brain who spoke the thought that was in all their minds.

“This is no mere menace within this comet, but a dark, threatening force from outside our cosmos that we’ve run into,” muttered Simon Wright. “I’d give a lot to know what these Alius are like — and what they plan.”

The Brain thought hard.

“I feel certain, Zarn, that Curtis Newton and I can devise a way of retransforming you people when we have thoroughly studied the problem,” he told the Cometae captain. “But until then, I cannot promise. We must have a chance to investigate your bodies with certain instruments.”

“I will bring secretly everything you need, next sleep-period,” Zarn promised excitedly. “And I will contact my friends, also.”

The Brain quickly named a list of things he would require from the Futuremen’s confiscated spaceship.

Suddenly the prison captain started as they heard a sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor.

“Someone is coming!” Zarn exclaimed fearfully. “If I am caught in here with you, our whole plan is ruined!”

PETRIFIED by a freezing horror, Curt Newton stood amid his guards in the throne room of the Cometae, staring with wild eyes at Joan Randall. He was stunned to his very soul, unable for the moment to believe what he saw. He had found the girl he loved, the girl whose danger had brought him on this perilous quest into the comet world. He had found her — and she was one of the Cometae!

Joan had never looked so beautiful. Her soft, dark hair and lovely face, her lithe, utterly feminine figure so completely revealed by the scanty silver-cloth garment were brilliantly enhanced by the glow of inherent electric force, scintillating from every inch of her body and investing her with its shining halo.

But to Captain Future, that dazzling aura of living light was a horror beyond description. He forgot his guards and stepped blindly and numbly forward, all the agony of his love and despair showing in his bloodless face.

“Joan!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “My God, what have these devils done to you!”

“Curt, stay back!” the girl cried in sharp alarm.

It was too late. In the tumult of emotions that shook him, Curt Newton had reached hungry arms toward her. His hand barely grazed her shining shoulder — and he recoiled, his whole arm paralyzed by electric shock.

“Don’t try to touch me, Curt! You can’t. “Joan Randall was telling him, her eyes full of apprehension.

The voice of Khinkir captain of the Cometae guards, snarled from behind.

“King Thoryx awaits you, prisoner. Move on!”

Captain Future barely heard him.

“Joan, I’ll kill these fiends for doing a thing like this to you!” he raged. “I’ll tear this devil’s city of theirs to fragments!”

“But Curt, I
wanted to be
changed like this!” Joan exclaimed. “I wanted to become one of the Cometae.”

He had thought he could receive no greater shock, but her words left him mentally gasping, eying her in incredulous disbelief.

“Curt, the Cometae are not fiends,” Joan was continuing earnestly. “They are a fine and friendly folk, who are allied to a wonderful race of superhuman beings called the Alius. The Alius gave these people immortality, and they freely offered me the same priceless boon.

“Think of it, Curt — I’m practically immortal! I’ll never grow old and ugly; I can live on and on and on! Is it any wonder that I accepted this wonderful thing they offered? And if you are allowed to join them, Curt, we two could live here forever!”

Khinkir’s snarl came sharply then to Curt’s shocked ears.

“Unless you move on, prisoner, you will be blasted where you stand,” said Khinkir sharply.

“Please go, Curt. The king is waiting,” Joan said in distress. “And try to conquer this hostility of yours toward the Cometae. I want you to see their greatness, and to join them as I have done.”

She drew back into the group of Cometae nobles in the background, and Curt lost sight of her. Khinkir and his subordinate guards had raised their electrode-weapons toward him, with grim purpose.

Curt Newton stumbled along with them, on across the great, open throne room.

The scene before him, the brilliant throne room and the shining figures of the Cometae nobles, was a somber blur to his eyes. It was difficult for him to breathe, as though iron bands had been clamped around his chest.

Dimly he heard a voice through the confused throbbing of his thoughts. Then came the hissing, furious whisper of Khinkir who was standing beside him.

“The king is speaking to you, prisoner.”

CURT’S vision cleared. He was standing with his guards in front of the sunburst throne. He looked up at the man and woman who sat on the benchlike silver chair.

Thoryx, hereditary king of the Cometae, was handsome as all his fair-haired race, his youthful figure invested by that alien halo of electric force that gave them all such an incongruously angelic appearance. But Curt read weakness in the smooth and effeminate features of the king, and in has suspiciously narrowed eyes.

There was no weakness in the girl beside him, the queen Lulain. Her blond beauty, flaming with the electric glow, was brazenly revealed by her brief, richly jeweled silver garments. She sat with languorous, feline grace, looking down with insolently appraising eyes at Captain Future’s tall, red-haired figure.

“You do not answer me, stranger!” Thoryx was saying. The king glanced petulantly at Khinkir. “I thought you said he had learned to speak our language.”

Curt answered for himself, in the Cometae tongue.

“I have learned it,” he said, a harsh edge in his voice.

“Do not take that tone with me, stranger!” flared the Cometae king.” You are a prisoner here. If I but say the word, you will be dead before your heart beats twice.”

The Cometae noble who hovered at Thoryx’ side hastily bent toward the angry king. Curt now noticed this councillor for the first time. The shinning halo of his electric vitality could not disguise the man’s advanced age. His elderly figure was slightly stooped, his hair thin and gray, his face a wrinkled mask of cunning with crafty, watchful eves.

“The stranger does not know our ways, sire,” he was telling the king soothingly. “It would not be wise to order his destruction before we have learned more about him and his strange companions.”

“Very well, Querdel,” Thoryx told the old noble fretfully. “But let him not look at me again so threateningly. I am master on this world — under the Great Ones, of course.”

He added the last words hastily, with a nervous, involuntary glance around the throne, room. Curt surmised the reference was to the Alius.

Lulain bolted half scornfully at her consort.

“Are we to spend all day in examination of this prisoner?” she inquired.

Thoryx addressed himself to Captain Future.

“Why did you and your companions approach the orbit of this comet?”

Captain Future had got a grip upon his raging emotions by now. Shaken as he was by the terrible surprise of his encounter with Joan, he still retained enough presence of mind to realize the wisdom of temporizing. So he answered the question.

“We did not approach the comet of our own free will. You dragged our ship in here with your magnet-beam, as you have kidnapped many other ships of our worlds.”

“Yes,” old Querdel agreed craftily. “But those other ships were all seeking to avoid the comet, while you were boldly approaching it. Why were you approaching it?”

Captain Future saw no reason for concealing the truth.

“We were searching for those other ships,” he retorted. “Now we find that it is you Cometae who have dragged them in here. What could be your reason? The people of the planetary worlds have never harmed your race.”

“You
are not questioning
us,
prisoner,” flared Thoryx angrily. “It is an order of the Great Ones that we seize as many ships as possible. Who are you to dispute the command of the dark masters?”

So, Curt thought swiftly, it was the mysterious Alius themselves who were behind the capture of the ships.

QUERDEL was asking him another question. “Who are the three strange beings who are your comrades? They are not human.”

“No, they are not human,” Curt answered carefully. “But they are more than human in many respects.”

“I thought as much,” muttered the old councillor. His cunning eyes narrowed. “I think that you are dangerous, stranger.”

Curt perceived that the outlandish appearance of the Futuremen was what had made the Cometae take a deeper interest in him than in ordinary prisoners. He sensed doubt and apprehension in the attitude of Thoryx.

“We had better destroy all four of them, Querdel,” declared the king uneasily.

The crafty old councillor, who was obviously the brain behind the Cometae throne, demurred.

“We should report to the Great Ones first, Your Highness. They told us to enlist into the Cometae all captives willing to join us. But these captives are different.”

Thoryx nodded nervously.

“Communicate with the Great Ones in the usual way, Querdel. Khinkir, return this insolent prisoner to his cell.”

Captain Future turned without reluctance to leave the throne room, even though he felt he had learned nothing concrete about the Alius and their purposes. He was hoping desperately to get another word with Joan on the way out.

But his hopes were dashed. For Joan Randall was no longer to be seen in the brilliant throng of Cometae. She had apparently withdrawn. Crushed by a heavy burden of fear and anxiety for her sake, Curt unseeingly accompanied his alert guards back across the plaza to the prison building.

As they, approached the cell in which the Futuremen were confined, prison Captain Zarn hastily made his exit. He showed confusion.

“What were you doing in the cell with the prisoners?” Khinkir demanded.

“The three strange ones were fighting among themselves. I went in to stop them,” Zarn explained nervously.

“It might have been a trick to gain their escape,” snapped Khinkir. “Do not enter their cell again, for these four prisoners are dangerous. And where are the guards I ordered you to post at this door?”

“I was just going to get them,” Zarn answered quickly. When Curt entered the cell, the Futuremen came toward him at once. Otho asked the question they all had foremost in their minds.

“Did you find out anything about Joan?”

Curt Newton nodded heavily.

“I saw her. She is one of the Cometae now.”

They stared incredulously. Then Otho began to rave.

“The devils! They forced her to become an electric monstrosity like themselves!”

“She said she became one of them by her own free will,” Curt told them miserably.

But the Brain asked a shrewd question.

“When you and she talked there — did you converse in English?”

“Of course,” Curt nodded.

“Then,” pointed out the Brain, “why did she have to pretend to you at all? Your Cometae guards couldn’t understand your conversation.”

Fingers of doubt clutched sickeningly at Curt’s brain, poisoning his thoughts. With a violent effort he broke their grasp.

“This isn’t a time to be doubting Joan, but to be helping her!” he exclaimed. “We’ve got to find a way to bring her out of that horrible electric existence!”

“Yes, lad, everything depends on our finding such a way,” the Brain told him soothingly. Simon went on to relate what Zarn had said.

“The Cometae people will revolt against their rulers,” he concluded, “if they can only be sure that we can retransform them afterward to normal men and women.

CAPTAIN FUTURE paced agitatedly to and fro. “But how can we find the answer to that scientific secret in sufficient time?” he asked desperately.

“We shall not be wholly without instruments, if Zarn does not fail us,” the Brain interposed. “He promised to try to bring certain apparatus from our ship, if it was possible ‘tonight’.”

“Then we may have a chance, though it’s still a gamble,” Curt muttered. “When will he be here?”

“Soon after the sleep-period begins, if he is successful,” answered Simon. “I described for him the electrochemical apparatus I thought we’d need.”

Grag snorted gloomily.

“Maybe these guards that Khinkir made him post outside our cell now will spoil the whole thing.”