Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) (6 page)

The
Comet
hurtled on toward Mars — and what Curt Newton hoped would be a mortal blow at the center of the octopuslike traffic.

“Mars below, I’m cutting the rockets,” Otho finally called back in his hissing voice. “How near to the Machine City do we land?”

“A mile is near enough,” Curt advised. “It’s on the night side now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and all lit up and gay as usual,” Otho answered. “You’d think people were really living there.”

Captain Future watched with the android from the control room. Their ship was spinning down into the shadow of Mars’ night side, toward the region of the red planet near the southern pole.

AVAST, dim desert stretched below them in the light of the two moons. Far ahead on that darkling plain rose a city whose brilliantly lighted towers flung a white glare against the sky.

The Cornet landed softly on the desert, its rocket-tubes flurrying the sand in a miniature storm and then failing silent.

Captain Future picked up a heavy, boxlike little instrument he had been working on during the last few hours.

“All right, Otho,” he said, and turned to the Brain. “You’re coming along, aren’t you, Simon?”

“Yes,” said the Brain. “Pick me up, Otho.”

The android did so, and they emerged from the little ship into the biting chill of the Martian night.

The gravitation-neutralizers they wore had automatically set to the lesser Martian gravity. Feeling no change in weight, Curt tramped with his strange comrades across the soft sand, toward the dazzling illuminated towers of the distant city.

Have to watch from here on,” he cautioned Otho. “There will be real danger if the syndicate’s headquarters is here.”

“There’s danger here, anyway,” retorted Otho ruefully. “Those cursed machine guards are still patrolling.”

The brilliantly lighted city, which the three comrades were approaching, was one of the strangest and most mysterious relics in the whole System.

Long ages ago, a human race with a highly advanced civilization and great scientific powers had flourished in this part of Mars. They were known even to have achieved space travel and to have explored other worlds. But with their passing, this achievement had been lost.

That ancient Martian people had had wonderful mechanical aptitude. They delighted in constructing ever more complex labor-saving machines to spare them the necessity of any drudgery. They had called themselves the Machine-masters because all labor in their metropolis was eventually performed by imperishable, self-powered machines that worked in fixed, unalterable routines.

But the Machine-masters, with no toil or struggle to stimulate their energies, soon fell into decadence. There was no need to worry about food. It was all raised and brought to them by machines. Their clothing was made by other machines. They had not even any enemies to fear. Around their city, mindless machine guards patrolled which would instantly slay any intruder.

So the Machine-masters, sinking further into decadence, had finally passed away. But their wondrous Machine City remained. In it, the imperishable machines continued the unalterable routine of labor and guarding that their masters had started. For age upon age, the machines of this place had been working on in the same old way. Everyone in the System had heard of the Machine City. But few had ever dared even to approach it, so formidable were the great mechanical guards that still protected the place.

“See, there’s the patrol making the rounds the same as ever,” Otho commented. “Those monsters could make me grow hair!”

Captain Future nodded, raising the box he carried.

“It’s going to be risky, slipping past them. This contrivance may help us.”

They were within a few hundred yards of the Machine City. Seen thus close, the metropolis was a vast city that covered square miles of the desert, its brilliant towers looming up for hundreds of feet. Every building flamed with white light that was automatically maintained by machine engineers.

INSIDE the illuminated city was ceaseless activity. Moving sidewalks whirred smoothly through the lighted streets. Elevators in the buildings ascended and descended. Big metal trucks lumbered through the streets, depositing their loads automatically at their destinations. Other vanlike vehicles scooped up only the rubbish of time and carried it away.

Around the outer edge of the city there ceaselessly rolled a patrol of four-wheeled, carlike vehicles. Upon each was mounted a device like a small searchlight. The cars moved purringly, a hundred feet behind each other. These were the machine guards who protected the lost city of a dead race as they had been doing for countless ages.

The Machine City of Mars, blazing brilliant in the lonely desert beneath the hurtling moons, was tenanted only by the mindless mechanical devices who labored still for their stead masters.

“There’s a moral in this place for the rest of the System,” muttered the Brain. “Any people who rely too much on mechanical devices cannot but perish.”

“Well, I wish the people who built this joint had turned off their machines before they perished,” Otho muttered. Then he exclaimed: “Look at that sand-owl!”

Captain Future saw what Otho pointed at. A small Martian sand-owl was winging down to investigate the lighted city. The batlike creature alighted on a street just inside the city.

Instantly, with superhuman swiftness, one of the patrolling guard cars dashed toward the owl. The creature rose startledly on flapping wings. But the guard car was too quick. From its searchlight appliance, a pale ray smote accurately and blasted the winged creature. Then the guard car rolled back to rejoin the patrol around the city.

“Ice fiends of Pluto!” swore Otho. Did you see that? Those mechanical guard cars must be intelligent.”

“No, they’re just machines,” Curt said. “The old Machine-masters were cold-blooded. They built into their guards some kind of delicate thermo-couple instrument that was sensitive to warm-blooded life. It automatically makes them detect and kill intruders.”

Curt Newton was turning a switch in the side of the box as he spoke.

“This little generator will emit a heat shield that will prevent the guard cars from sensing us. But we’ll have to stay close together. Come on.”

With Otho, who still carried the Brain, directly beside him, Captain Future strode forward. As they approached the patrolling guard cars, Curt hoped fervently that his theory was right.

They skipped between two of the rolling cars. The mechanical guards made no movement toward them!

“Looks like you figured it right, Chief,” the android declared with a sigh of relief.

They entered the lighted streets. A huge truck was rushing toward them. They dodged hastily, but the truck automatically detoured around them. It was loaded with bolts of newly woven cloth.

Theaters were in full swing, the three-dimensional illusion shows constantly being made and presented mechanically. They heard recorded music of the old Martian type, weird, rippling arpeggios. But all the seats were empty.

SELF-STEERING vehicles rolled up to the doors of warehouses. They unloaded containers of synthetic foods, and took away similar containers whose contents had been untouched. Other mechanical workers rolled about, servicing the machines, replenishing their atomic power charges, oiling them.

Curt Newton and his comrades inspected the sculptured reliefs and inscriptions on the walls of several mansions and towers they passed. Presently a great palace of crescent cross section loomed directly ahead of them.

As they entered its semi-circular court, Captain Future uttered an eager cry of discovery. On the palace wall, facing them, was a mosaic picture of jewels — depicting a leaping, shining fountain!

“That must represent the Fountain of Life,” Curt exclaimed. “The inscriptions under it should give us the clue we want.”

They hastened into the semi-circular court. Odd metal statues stood about the court. They recognized the life-size figures of men. Most of them were Martians but a few were natives of other planets.

Curt, Otho and the Brain were just a few yards inside the court when an amazing thing happened.

A round quartz disk set in the stave wall ahead suddenly blazed with saffron radiance. It deluged the whale court with a throbbing, yellowish force.

Curt felt his body freeze! He couldn’t take a step forward. Directly beside him Otho was similarly frozen, in the startled act of drawing his proton pistol.

Curt could still breathe, though. His reflex motor-nerves were unharmed. Though he could not articulate, he managed a humming speech.

“That — dish in — wall,” he muttered sibilantly, as he stood frozen. “Some device — to guard — clue to Fountain.”

“Paralyzing force?” hissed motionless Otho, unturning.

“Worse — than that. Force that — will transmute — elements of our bodies — into metal elements. That — what happened — to other men — who entered here. These statues — once men!”

The Brain, though unaffected in his insulated case by the force, could move only his eyes. Curt and Otho couldn’t wave at all. They were doomed to stand there until they were slowly turned to metal statues...

WHEN GRAG the robot went outside the mansion in Venusopolis, to watch for the coming of the Lifewater vendors, he took Eek with him. Grag seldom left his pet behind him unless it was absolutely necessary.

The big robot took up his station in the shadows outside the mansion. He stood still as a statue, watching and listening.

“Be quiet, Eek,” he whispered, as the moon-pup stirred uneasily on his shoulder. “We must not make any sound.”

Two hours passed. Abruptly, Grag’s sensitive amplifier detected the sound of rocket-tubes. He glimpsed a small, swift space cruiser spiraling out of the Venusian night, into the mansion grounds.

It landed near the house. A Martian and a spectacled Mercurian came from it. They paused outside the door to state their errand iota the televis-announcer, and then entered as Captain Future admitted them.

While the two syndicate criminals entered the mansion, Grag was already stealing toward the parked space-cruiser. He was remembering Captain Future’s order to prevent the escape of others who might leave come with them. The fact that this was a space ship with possibly many occupants, instead of the mere flier Curt had expected, didn’t change Grag’s orders. The robot would not have dreamed of disobeying just because an order meant peril.

He stepped into the cruiser and started down its main corridor. A Plutonian operator in the little televisor room looked up at the big robot in the door. He sprang up with a yell, tried to escape.

Grag’s mental hand knocked the operator back, stunned. But a motley interplanetary crew of criminals poured from the fore part of the cruiser. They had been aroused by the shout of alarm.

Things happened so swiftly that Grag could hardly follow them. The men charged him. Instantly the Martian who had just gone into the mansion came running wildly into the cruiser.

“Blast off!” the Martian yelled. “This is a trap of Captain Future’s —”

The pilot in the control room heard. The cruiser jerked skyward with a shattering roar of rockets.

The wild lurch of the ship flung Grag from his feet, into a small cabin opposite the televisor room. Before he could regain his feet, the men had slammed and locked the heavy metal door.

Grag heard the hatches of the cruiser slamming shut. The scream of air outside swiftly died away as the ship tore up through the cloud layers and into space. The robot, with Eek clinging frightenedly to him, stood erect and peered through the window in the door.

The motley criminals out in the corridor were clustered around the scared Martian, who had barely escaped Captain Future’s trap.

“One of the Futuremen came into the ship. We’ve got him locked in there. What happened in the house, Thorkul?”

Thorkul, the Martian, explained. “That devil, Future, is on our trail,” he finished. “And he nearly got us, too!”

Grag began to beat at the locked door with his huge metal fists. The clamor of the angry robot was deafening inside the ship.

“Quick, dismount one of our atom cannon and set it up in the corridor,” Thorkul ordered. “If the robot breaks out, destroy him.”

Grag saw them hastily bring and mount the heavy atom gun. He stopped thundering on the door. Grag was no fool. He realized that he couldn’t buck a super-powered cannon.

HE TOOK stock of the situation. He had lost his proton pistol and pocket televisor in the struggle. Eek was shivering with fright. They were both being carried off into space.

“I’m going to call the Life-lord and report this,” Thorkul said loudly. “He’ll want to know immediately about Captain Future coming in against our syndicate.”

Grag watched through the window as Thorkul went into the televisor room across the corridor and sent out a call wave. Presently there appeared in the televisor screen the figure of a man shrouded in a brilliant aura of blue light.