Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) (7 page)

“But how could he talk, and see, and hear us?” Otho wanted to know.

“That I can’t understand yet myself,” Captain Future admitted ruefully. “The whole thing embodies a science that is not human science. No Earthman scientist has ever yet achieved such a vibration set-up.”

“Then where did he get the secret, and the secret of the evolutionary horror?” the android demanded. “There’s supposed to have been a great civilization on Jupiter in the dim past. Now there’s nothing here now but these half-civilized Jovians who have no science. Do you think the Space Emperor could be a Jovian?”

Curt shook his head. He felt baffled, for the moment. The sinister mystery around the dark plotter had deepened.

And his pride in his scientific knowledge had received a bad blow. He had run up against someone who apparently possessed scientific secrets beyond even his own attainments.

“We’ve got to find out
who
the Space Emperor is before we can even hope to get him,” he declared. He looked at Otho. “You can make up as a Jovian, can’t you?”

Otho stiffened.

“You know there isn’t a planetary being in the System I can’t disguise myself as, when I want to,” he boasted.

“Then go ahead and assume Jovian disguise,” Curt said quickly, “and go back into the crowded quarter. Mingle with the Jovians there. Try to find out what they know about the Space Emperor, and above all, if he is a Jovian or an Earthman.”

Otho nodded understandingly.

“Shall I come back here if I learn anything?”

“No, report back to the
Comet,”
Curt ordered. “I’m going to the Governor. There’s a lead there somewhere to the Space Emperor. For the Governor, remember, would be the only person here notified that we were coming to Jupiter — and yet the Space Emperor knew of our coming and set an ambush for us!”

In surprisingly few minutes, Otho had shed the disguise of Orris and had assumed the likeness of a native Jovian.

The android had used the oily chemical spray to soften the synthetic flesh of his face, hands and feet. Then he had molded his head and features into the round head and flat, circular-eyed face of a Jovian, and his hands, and feet into the flipper-like extremities of the planetary natives.

He smeared green pigment from his make-up pouch smoothly over all his body. A skillful hunching of his rubbery figure gave him the squat appearance of a Jovian. And finally, he donned one of the black leather harnesses hanging beside the zipper-suits on the wall of the cabin. Earthmen often wore those scanty harnesses in the damp, hot jungles of Jupiter, for the sake of coolness and freedom.

When Otho spoke, it was in the soft, slurred bass voice of a Jovian.

“Will I pass?” he asked Curt.

Captain Future smiled.

“I wouldn’t recognize you myself,” he said.
“Get
going, and watch yourself.”

Otho slipped out of the cabin, and was gone. In a moment, Curt emerged also into the moonlit night.

The red-headed space-farer strode rapidly toward the silvered metal mass of buildings of the city, heading toward the central section where was located the seat of colonial government.

Somewhere there, he was certain, was a key to the mystery that had shrouded this planet in a spell of dark horror.

THE governor’s mansion stood in parklike grounds of big tree-ferns and banked shrubbery. It was a large rectangular structure, built of gleaming metalloy like all the rest of the Earthman city. Tonight, its many wide windows were glowing with light.

Curt approached it silently through the dark grove. Brilliant rays of the three big moons struck down between the fronds of the towering tree-ferns and glistened on his determined face. Perfume of beautiful but forbidding “shock flowers” was heavy in his nostrils. High above glided moon-bats, those weird, iridescent winged creatures of Jupiter that appear only when one or more moons are in the sky.

He reached a terrace on the west side of the big metal mansion. Soundlessly, Captain Future advanced to an open window that spilled forth the bright white glow of powerful uranite bulbs. He peered keenly into the office inside, and at once recognized the governor of the Earth colony, from the President’s description.

Sylvanus Quale, the colonial governor, sat behind a metal desk. Quale was a man of fifty, with a stocky, powerful figure, iron-gray hair, and a square face that had a stony impassivity. He looked as inscrutable as a statue, his colorless eyes expressionless.

Captain Future saw that Quale was talking to a girl in white nurse’s uniform.

“Why didn’t Doctor Britt bring the report from Emergency Hospital himself, Miss Randall?” Quale was asking.

“He’s worn out and on the verge of collapse,” she replied. Her eyes were shadowed as she added, “This terrible thing is getting too much for us.”

Curt saw that the girl was strikingly pretty, even in the severe white uniform. Her dark, wavy, uncovered hair framed a small face whose brown eyes and firm lips gave an impression of cool steadiness and efficiency. Yet deep horror lurked in her eyes.

“Mr. Quale, what are we going to do?” Curt heard her appeal to the governor. “There are over three hundred cases of the blight in Emergency Hospital now. And some of them are getting — ghastly.”

“You mean they’re still changing, Joan?” Quale asked, forgetting official formality in his deep thoughtfulness.

The girl nodded, her face pale.

“Yes. I can’t describe what hideous monsters some of them have become. And only days ago they were men! You must do something to stop it!”

Curt stepped into the office through the open window, silently as a shadow.

“I hope there is something that I can do to stop it,” he said quietly.

Joan Randall turned with a little startled cry, and Sylvanus Quale half rose to his feet as he saw the big, red-haired, gray-eyed young man who stood inside the room, gravely facing them.

“Who — what —” the governor stammered, reaching toward a button on his desk.

“You needn’t call guards,” Curt told him impatiently. “This ring will identify me.”

Curt Newton held out his left hand. On that hand he wore a ring with a curious, large bezel. At its center was a little glowing sphere of radioactive metal, representing the sun. This was surrounded by nine concentric circular grooves, in each of which was a small jewel.

The jewels represented the nine planets. There was a tiny brown one for Mercury, a larger pearly gem for Venus, and so on. And the jewels
moved
slowly, circling the little glowing sun. Motivated by a tiny atomic power plant, they moved exactly in accordance with the planets they represented. This unique ring was known from Mercury to Pluto as the identifying emblem of Captain Future.

“Why, you’re Captain Future!” Sylvanus Quale exclaimed startledly.

“Captain Future?” echoed Joan Randall, staring with sudden eagerness at this big, red-haired adventurer.

“President Carthew notified you that I was coming here?” Curt asked the governor.

QUALE nodded quickly. “He televised me when you started.”

“Did you tell anyone else I was coming?” Curt asked keenly.

He watched Quale narrowly as he awaited an answer. If the governor admitted having told no one, it meant —

But Quale was nodding.

“I told Eldred Kells, the vice-governor, and Doctor Britt, chief planetary physician, and some others here. I wanted to reassure them — they’re all so panicky.”

Curt felt momentarily thwarted. It looked as though his possible lead to the Space Emperor had faded out.

Disguising his disappointment, he told Quale briefly about the ambush and the two criminals now marooned on Callisto.

“I’ll send a Planet Police cruiser out to pick them up,” Quale promised quickly.

At that moment a door opened. A tall, blond man of thirty in a white zipper-suit entered the office. His strong face was worn and lined by too-great strain.

“What is it, Kells?” Sylvanus Quale demanded.

Eldred Kells, the vice-governor, was staring wonderingly at Curt. Then, as he glimpsed the red-haired man’s ring, Kells’ worn face lighted with hope.

“Captain Future — you’re here!” he cried. “Thank God! Maybe you can do something to end this horror.”

Kells turned quickly back to his superior.

“Lucas Brewer and young Mark Cannig are here, sir. They just flew down from Jungletown. I gather that things are getting pretty horrible up there.”

Quale turned to Captain Future.

“Brewer is president of Jovian Mines, a small company that owns a radium mine north of Jungletown,” he explained. “Mark Cannig is his mine-superintendent.”

“I remember hearing of this Brewer before,” Curt said, frowning. “On Saturn, three years ago.”

Kells returned in a moment with the two men he had named.

Lucas Brewer, the mine owner, was a grossly fat man of forty, with dark, shrewd little eyes and a puffy face that wore the pitiless look of those who live too well.

Mark Cannig, his mine-superintendent, was a dark, handsome young fellow with a rather nervous look. He glanced eagerly at Joan Randall but the pretty nurse avoided his gaze.

“Quale, you’ve got to do something!” Lucas Brewer said emphatically as he entered. “This thing is getting —”

He stopped suddenly, as his eyes rested on Captain Future. An expression of recognition came into his eyes.

“Why, is that —” he started to say.

“It’s Captain Future, yes,” Quale said. “I told you he was coming, remember.”

Curt saw something of apprehension creep into Brewer’s small eyes. And it seemed to him that there was a sudden uneasiness also in the face of young Mark Cannig.

Curt hated promoters of Brewer’s type. He had met them before on many planets. They were ruthless tricksters whose greed brought misery to colonizing Earthmen and planetary natives alike.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, of course, Captain Future,” Brewer was saying hesitantly.

“And I heard something about you and your business activities on Saturn a few years ago,” Curt said disgustedly.

HE ASKED suddenly, “Why did you come here from Jungletown tonight?”

“Because things are getting so bad up at Jungletown!” Brewer declared. “We’ve got over five hundred cases of the blight there. The hospital’s hopelessly overcrowded, and I wanted to urge Quale to do something to stop this horrible thing. Anyone up there may be the next stricken by that horror. Why, I might be next!”

Captain Future stared contemptuously at the fat promoter. But Eldred Kells immediately answered him indignantly.

“We can’t stop the plague until we know what’s causing it,” defended the haggard vice-governor.

“Where did the thing start?” Curt asked him.

Quale answered.

“Up at Jungletown, several hundred miles north of here. It’s a new boomtown. Sprang up after radium and uranium deposits were located nearby. The place is pretty close to the southern shore of the Fire Sea, and there are some thousands of Earthmen engineers, prospectors and the like who make it their base.

“The first cases were of a few radium prospectors,” Quale went on. “They stumbled out of the jungle, already horribly transformed into ape-like creatures. Since then, more people have been stricken every day. Most of the cases have been at Jungletown, but there have been a large number down here at Jovopolis, and others elsewhere.”

“We’re completely in the dark about the cause of this awful disease,” Eldred Kells added hopelessly.

“It’s not a disease,” Curt told them forcefully. “It’s being deliberately caused.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed Lucas Brewer. “What man would do such a fiendish thing?”

“I didn’t say it was a man doing it,” Captain Future retorted. “The one who is causing it calls himself — the Space Emperor.”

He watched their faces closely as he spoke the name. Brewer looked blank. Young Mark Cannig shifted uneasily. But Kells and the governor only started wonderingly.

“Have any of you ever heard that name?” Curt demanded.

All of them shook their heads negatively. Curt came quickly to a decision.

“I want to see the victims you have here in Jovopolis,” he declared. “I’d like to study them. You spoke of an Emergency Hospital you’re keeping them in?”

Sylvanus Quale nodded.

“We converted our Colony Prison into an emergency hospital. It alone could hold those — creatures. Miss Randall and I can take you there.”

Curt’s big figure strode with the governor and the nurse out of the office and through the halls of the mansion. They emerged into the soft, heavy night, which was now illuminated by only Europa and Io.

The two bright moons cast queer forked shadows down among the tall, solemn tree-ferns as they went through the grounds. The buildings housing the colonial government bordered the square around the governor’s mansion. The Emergency Hospital, formerly a prison, was a massive structure with heavy blank walls of synthetic metal.

As they entered the vestibule, in which nervous-looking orderlies were on guard, an aide rushed in after the governor.