Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) (19 page)

Toward one of these openings, the Qualus who had captured him were flying. The winged men flew right through the opening and alighted inside, setting down Captain Future but still holding him firmly.

The rock cavern in the cliffs, in which Curt now stood, held scores of the Qualus. Others were running up in answer to a call by the captors of the wizard of science. They were all of the same race. Men and women alike were white-skinned, hairless, not unhandsome. But they were made bizarre in appearance by the great featherless white wings, which they kept folded close against their backs when not actually in flight.

Curt Newton noticed the rough furniture of metal and carved rock in the chambers. All the Qualus wore tunics of woven grass-fibers and carried metal tools and weapons.

They were chattering to each other excitedly about this new capture. Curt found that he could understand them. Their language was merely an archaic variant of the familiar Saturnian tongue.

A Qualu male, taller by a head than the others, appeared and surveyed Curt with gloomy, hostile eyes.

“Are you the ruler of these folk?” Captain Future asked him calmly in the basic Saturnian language.

The Qualu nodded his hairless head.

“I am Yuru, king of the Qualus. And you, wingless man, are another deluded one who has come here in a wicked attempt to find the sacred Fountain.”

A chorus of fierce, muttered exclamations went up from the winged people. They eyed Curt Newton in visible hatred.

“Aye, another devil come to join the sinful ones in the City!” they spat. “But this one will never join them.”

Captain Future began to understand. He was remembering the legend he had read in Sus Urgal’s manuscript. The Fountain of Life was supposed to be guarded by winged men who did not drink its waters themselves and who let no one else drink them.

“I did not come here searching for the Fountain,” Curt said levelly. “I have no desire to drink its waters.”

“You are lying!” charged the Qualu king. “But it will do you no good. We Qualus abide by our sacred duty of guarding the Fountain.”

“Listen to me, Yuru,” Curt said earnestly. “The waters of that Fountain have gone forth all over the Solar System and have spread like a subtle poison. My friends and I have been trying to stop the flow of those deadly waters of youth. I came here searching for the Life-lord, the man who has been selling the waters of the Fountain for profit.”

YURU’S fierce expression changed, became less savagely hostile.

“It is true that the arch-sinner who calls himself the Life-lord has been doing that,” the winged king muttered. “We Qualus have known it, though we have been unable to stop him from doing it. If you tell the truth —”

“I am telling the truth!” Curt declared. “I’ve no desire than to bring vengeance to the Life-lord for his misdeeds.”

For a long minute, Yuru studied the mobile, tanned face of Captain Future. Easily he read the sincerity in Curt’s flashing gray eyes.

“I believe you, stranger,” Yuru said suddenly. He called an order to the other winged men. “Free him. He is no sinful seeker as we deemed.”

Curt was released. His proton gun was restored to him. Breathing more freely now, he felt he could ask Yuru a quick question.

“Yuru, where is the Fountain of Life?”

The Qualu king pointed through the round opening in the cliff, to the white town lying far down in the darkening valley.

“It is in a pit at the center of that sinful town, whose inhabitants call it the City of Eternal Youth,” the winged king answered. “There bubbles forth the glowing, wonderful Fountain whose waters restore youth. But those waters are forbidden to be drunk by men.”

The Qualu went on, his voice solemn, as Curt listened intently.

“Stranger, we Qualus have always inhabited this land inside the Mists. Of old, we dwelled down in that flowering valley, and there were no others here but ourselves. We knew of the Fountain of Life which gushed there. But never did we drink its water, for our wise men had told us that drinking it was forbidden by the gods. We learned that while the waters might restore youth, they would eventually kill the soul. Thus we knew they were evil.

“We Qualus heeded the ancient commandments of our wise men, and never touched the waters. But long ago a wingless stranger from outside the Mists came blundering into our land. We treated him kindly. He saw the Fountain of Life, and wished to drink of it and become young again. We forbade that, and thrust him out of our land. He must have first carried to the outer worlds the tale of the Fountain of Life. As the years passed, more and more wingless men from many worlds came searching through the Mists for the Fountain.

“They became so numerous that we could no longer prevent them. They had powerful weapons with which they slew us and drove us away from the Fountain. And those sinful strangers settled down around the Fountain, and drank its waters and became young again. When they found by experience that they must continue to drink the waters or die, they knew they could never leave this land. So they built the town which they call the City of Eternal Youth. In it they live, eternally youthful.

“We Qualus were driven away from the Fountain by their weapons. We settled in new homes here in the great cliffs, where no one could reach us. With sore hearts, we saw the ancient commandments broken by the sinful strangers reveling in eternal youth in their wicked City. And ever more strangers have come in through the Mists as the years passed, seeking the Fountain. Some of them we seized and imprisoned, as we seized you. But more of them escaped us and entered the sinful City.

“Then, not many months ago, a man came into this land and found the Fountain. But he did not drink its waters. He was too cunning to become addicted to its poison. Instead, he wanted to sell the waters, the Life-water as you call it, to others on far worlds. He said they would pay great prices. That man, whom you name the Life-lord, went out of the land. He came back with a few other men in a flying-craft, which he loaded with the Lifewater. That cargo he took back to the outer world.

“Since then, that Life-lord has flown here many times in his craft for new loads of the Lifewater. The sinful dwellers in the City of Eternal Youth let him take the water. He gives them in exchange certain weapons and supplies which he brings them from the outer world. And we Qualus cannot successfully attack his flying-craft. We are unable to stop this wicked traffic which he is carrying on!”

CAPTAIN FUTURE had listened with keenest attention to this saga of the winged race. He realized by now that these Qualus were an evolutionary offshoot of the Saturnian human race. Developing in this isolated land in the dim past, they had met the rigors of nature by developing wings.

He turned over in his mind their superstitious belief that the Fountain’s waters were evil to drink. Instinct or bitter experience, he thought, must have warned the winged men long ago to avoid the Lifewater.

“You say the Fountain lies in a pit at the center of the City?” he asked the winged ruler. “Tell me, does the glowing water of the Fountain spring from a shining mass of mineral at the bottom of the pit?”

“How did you know that?” Yuru asked wonderingly. “Yes, it is so. At the bottom of that pit is a mineral mass that blazes always with a great self-contained light. The shining waters of the Fountain gush up through that mass.”

“Radioactive matter,” Curt muttered to himself. “A geyser of ordinary water, forced up through that radioactive mass.”

He had quickly fathomed the nature of the Fountain. In that pit must lie a mass of intensely radioactive matter that had been heaved up from the radioactive core of Saturn. Ordinary water, gushing up through that mass under pressure, carried with it in suspension enough of the radioactive minerals to give the Lifewater its potent qualities.

Curt Newton’s mind kindled to a possibility of ending the evil Lifewater traffic
forever!
If the Qualus would agree, he saw a way of removing this poison from the Solar System.

“Yuru, listen to me,” Curt said earnestly. “I could prevent anyone from ever again drinking the waters of the Fountain, by irrevocably destroying the Fountain.”

“You could not do that,” Yuru replied incredulously. “There is no way by which any man could destroy the Fountain.”

A chorus of agreement went up from the other winged people. But Captain Future persisted. “Suppose I could do it. Would you help me?”

Yuru did not hesitate. “Yes, we would help you. For the Fountain is evil, as we have always known. It would be better for it to be destroyed, so its waters would no longer tempt sinful men.” Then the winged king demanded: “But how could you hope to destroy the Fountain?”

Curt had had a plan in mind from the first moment he had understood the nature of the Fountain.

“It could be done,” he replied. “But there are certain instruments that I will need in order to build the mechanism. Most of all, I would need a small, powerful atomic generator. Have you one?”

Yuru shook his head. “We Qualus do not use such machines as that.”

Curt’s hopes sank. But the Qualu king continued talking.

“There are such things in the City of Eternal Youth. Some of our young men could steal one for you, after darkness has fallen.”

“Good!” Captain Future exclaimed. “I’ll go with them.”

“No,” Yuru replied decisively. “They can move with more stealth and quiet without you. Tell them what you need, so that they will know what they are to get.”

TO TWO young Qualus males, Captain Future carefully described just what he wanted. By this time, the strange diffused sunlight of the hidden land was already deepening into dusky twilight.

When complete darkness fell, the two young Qualu men left on their mission. They swooped from the cliffs into the gathering darkness and were gone, winging down through the misty moonlight toward the distant lights of the City of Eternal Youth.

Impatiently Curt Newton waited their return. The Qualu people, excited by the imminence of great events, had lighted the torches that gave the only illumination to their strange rookery-city. They prepared their evening meal of cooked herbs and the flesh of small animals and birds.

Curt ate with them at one of the carved rock tables. He thought, fleetingly, that even he had seldom eaten with stranger company than these solemn, winged people in the cavern-city high in the dizzy cliffs. But that was less important than the danger of delay. What if the Qualu boys failed —

With a rush of wings threshing the air, the two young Qualu men returned. They carried between them a small, compact, heavy atomic generator and wiring, and the other materials that Curt had asked for.

“You got everything!” Captain Future cried in approval. “Now to get to work. I’m going to build a mechanism that will forever put an end to the Fountain.”

The two young men were so excited that they could hardly speak.

“The one called the Life-lord is in the City of Eternal Youth,” they reported to Yuru. “And he was followed by three beings in a strange ship — three strange creatures whom he discovered were trailing him. He and the men of the City have made the three strange beings prisoners. Also, the Life-lord’s allies are guarding their ship.”

“What are those three prisoners like?” Curt asked sharply, with sudden premonition.

The descriptions given by the two young Qualus fulfilled Curt’s premonition. They were descriptions of the Futuremen...

“Grag, Otho and Simon — prisoners!” he cried.

DISMAY struck sharply at Captain Future. He realized that the Futuremen must have located Rendezvous Two. Daringly they had tracked the Life-lord to this place, and had been discovered by him. Now they were captives of the arch-criminal and his allies, the people of the City.

“What have they done to the three prisoners?” Curt cried. “Have they harmed them?”

The two young Qualus shook their heads.

“The three captives have not yet been harmed. They are held with another prisoner who was recently captured. But we heard the Life-lord speak to them. We heard the Life-lord say. “Unless you decide within an hour to tell me where that devil Future is, you’ll all three die by slow torture.””

When Curt Newton heard that, cold flame sprang into his gray eyes.

“The Life-lord said that? He’ll learn where Future is, damn him!”

Curt looked down with anxiety at the materials and instruments the two Qualus had stolen for him.

“An hour,” he muttered. “Not much time for me to build the flickering torches. The winged people watched wonder, is a chance to end both the Life-lord and the Fountain, tonight!”

He started to work with fierce resolution, by the light of the flickering torches. The winged people watched wonderingly as the red-haired scientific wizard fitted together the instruments that had been stolen for him. He was swiftly wiring them to the heavy atomic generator to form a complex machine.

Curt was working against time. An hour — less than an hour now — was all that remained if he was to come to the aid of the Futuremen. Could he put together the intricate mechanism in that short time?