Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) (7 page)

“Yes, Thorkul?” demanded the Life-lord harshly.

The Martian made a hasty, anxious report. From the Life-lord’s concealed figure came a sharp exclamation.

“Captain Future mixing in? I might have known the System Government would call him when they found they couldn’t break up our syndicate themselves.”

“Dril Iffik, the Mercurian who went into the house with me, was killed,” Thorkul told his leader. “I had to leave his body, too.”

“He didn’t have Lifewater or any other clue to our headquarters on him, did he?” the Life-lord asked brusquely.

Thorkul hesitated. “He didn’t have any Lifewater on him. But he did have an inscribed jewel from the Machine City of Mars. I gave it to him a few days ago for doing me a favor.”

“You blockhead!” shouted the Life-lord furiously. “Didn’t I tell you to destroy all those jewels so no one else could learn the secret from them?”

Thorkul cringed. “I did destroy almost all of them. But they were so valuable that I saved a few.”

The Life-lord paused, seemed to be thinking.

“Captain Future will trace that jewel back to the Machine City,” he said slowly. “He and that Brain are smart enough to do that. But it won’t do them any good to go to the Machine City. They’ll just fall into the trap that nearly got us.” The voice of the mysterious leader cleared. “It may be a good thing this happened, after all. Future and his friends will surely perish there.”

Thorkul was visibly relieved.

“We caught one of the Futuremen — the robot,” he reported. “Shall we destroy him?”

“No, bring him here to me at headquarters,” the Life-lord ordered. “If by some miracle Future should escape from the Machine City, we can use the robot as a hostage.”

Thorkul snapped off the televisor. The Martian’s criminal followers, Grag saw, had been gathered around, listening.

One of them, a squat green Jovian, spoke doubtfully.

“I don’t like this business much if that dammed Captain Future is out to break it up. That red-headed devil is bad luck to have against you.”

“That’s what I say,” muttered a vicious looking Earthman. “I wish I’d kept on as a pirate out around Saturn’s moons. I shouldn’t have listened to this Life-lord when he came enlisting men for his outfit.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Thorkul snapped. “You’re all making more money than you would have made after years of harrying the Saturnian commerce. Future and his pals have been the doom of a lot of your pirate friends, haven’t they? The Life-lord is too smart for Future. You two keep a watch on the door there. Blast the robot down if he tries to break out.”

GRAG heard all that. When the criminals had left the corridor, leaving only the two on guard, the robot felt desperate anxiety.

His anxiety was entirely for Captain Future. It seemed that the criminals expected Curt to follow a trail of some kind to the Machine City. There they expected him to perish in some unsuspected trap.

Grag paced worriedly to and fro. Somehow he must get to Mars, to the Machine City, in time to warn Curt. But how could he?

The cruiser was rocketing at tremendous speed through the void. Grag looked out the tiny loophole window in the outer wall, and glimpsed the red spark of Mars far to the left. The cruiser was heading toward the distant, bright speck of Saturn.

“Saturn?” Grag thought. “That must be where the Life-lord’s base is, the center of the Lifewater traffic. These men are former pirates of the Saturnian moons. They joined the syndicate, too.”

But the cruiser was on its way to Saturn. How could he get to Mars in time to warn the other Futuremen?

To break out into the corridor was out of the question, for that big atom-cannon would blast him down in a twinkling. But Grag patiently kept pondering until he had evolved what he thought might be a practicable plan.

The ponderous robot unscrewed three of his metal fingers from each hand. He went for a hidden locker in his torso. From among similar tools, he chose a set of drills with which he replaced his fingers.

The brag started drilling holes in the outer wall, the atomic motor of his powerful robot body operating the drills. He made the holes contiguous. Slowly he cut out a section of the wall.

The guards in the corridor came now and then to the window and looked in at him.

Each time the robot stood impassively, hiding his work.

“Quiet, Eek,” he whispered as the little animal pawed his face in fright. “Grag is busy now.”

Eek was a scared moon-pup. The little beast had been absent when courage was given out. He could put up a bluff of ferocity, but anyone could tell it was ail bluff. Now even that bluff had evaporated.

Presently Grag had cut a large square through the outer wall. The air inside the little room puffed out. But that didn’t bother either Grag or Eek. Both of them were non-breathing.

Grag waited, then, standing in front of the hole so the guards couldn’t see it through the door-window. He waited for hours, till he judged the cruiser was crossing the Earth-Mars space ship lane.

Clutching Eek carefully, Grag squirmed through the hole. Suddenly he leaped far out into empty space with all his superhuman strength.

He shot floating into the void, out of the ship’s gravitation pull.

The cruiser throbbed on through space and vanished toward Saturn. The robot’s escape would not be discovered for another half hour. Grag and the moon-pup drifted in the vast vault of space.

Grag was not alarmed. He had been in this position more than once. Besides, he knew he was right on the Earth-Mars space lane. A ship would be along sooner or later. They had to sight him, because his metal body reflected sunlight so brightly. They would think him a space-suited human castaway and pick him up.

But he did hope that a ship would come soon.

HOURS passed before he finally saw the lights of a big space liner on its way to Mars. Grag watched anxiously, and felt great relief when the liner slowed down. A space boat put out toward him. It was as he had hoped. They thought him a castaway from some wrecked ship.

The boat came up to him, and he was dragged in through the air-lock. The space-sailors in the boat stared at him amazedly.

“Why, this isn’t a man!” one exclaimed. “Looks like an ancient automaton. And there’s a moon-pup hanging onto it.

Grag quickly decided to play dumb. If he showed life, they might be afraid to take him into the ship.

Of course he might tell them he was one of Captain Future’s aides. But would they believe him? People were usually afraid of him, Grag knew. He’d better be an automaton until he got to Mars.

So Grag did not move or speak as the space boat took him back to the liner.

Eek seemed bewildered by his immobility.

The sailors hauled Grag’s great form into the promenade deck of the space liner. Curious interplanetary passengers gathered around, and the captain of the vessel came over to him.

“Obviously an old-type robot,” the captain said dubiously. “It probably was designed merely to walk.”

At the word “walk,” Grag rose stiffly to his feet and took a few ponderous strides. He gave a good imitation of an antique automaton, staring straight ahead and moving jerkily.

“Say, it can walk!” a passenger exclaimed. “The word ‘walk starts him going by selective vibration.”

“Try the word ‘talk on him,” another suggested.

At that word, Grag opened his mouth jerkily.

“I talk,” he boomed, still staring straight ahead.

“Why, that antique dummy should be valuable,” a Venusian woman enthused. “It must have been lost from an old ship.”

Grag felt burned up at being called a dummy. It hurt the robot’s pride. But he determined to play the part till they reached Mars.

A stout Earthman clad in a flashy red zipper-suit stepped forward and spoke importantly to the commander of the liner.

“I’m Hurl Adams, showman extraordinary, taking a freakshow to Mars for exhibition. How about selling me this automaton for my show? As space flotsam, he’s yours.”

The captain shrugged. “If you want him, you can have him for nothing, Mr. Adams. The museum’s full of old junk like this.”

“Thanks!” the stout showman exclaimed. He inspected Grag appraisingly. “He’ll be the hit of my show. Walk, old boy!”

Grag again took a few stiff, clumsy steps. And when the showman ordered “Talk!” he again boomed.

“I talk.”

The stout showman called his assistants.

“Put him down in the hold with the other freaks till we reach Mars. Better put some strong chains around him, so a chance word won’t start him going at the wrong time. He looks strong enough to break right through the ship.”

The assistants brought heavy chains of unbreakable inertrite, and bound them around Grag. The big robot was angry at this, but he submitted without moving. He’d escape somehow when they reached Mars.

They loaded him on a wheeled truck and took him down into a section of the hold, in which Hurl Adams freaks were housed. They unloaded Grag and stood him up against the wall. He made no sound or movement. Eek, still clinging to his shoulder, was badly bewildered.

“What about the moon-pup, Mr. Adams?” a man asked.

“We’ll take him along for the show, too,” the showman replied. “They’re pretty rare little beasts, you know.”

THE huge robot was left standing there. Without moving, he looked at the freaks that were caged or quartered around him.

There was a three-leaded hydra from the Jupiter seas, crawling ominously in a transparent tank. In a strong cage nearby were several of the glistening, Creeping Crystals of the moon Callisto.

A simple looking Mercurian, who had happened to be born with four eyes instead of two, lay sleeping on a cot. A Venusian swamp rat and a Plutonian ice tiger in a refrigerated cage snarled at each other with mutual dislike. There were other oddities of planetary animal life, curious freaks that nature had experimented with on far worlds.

It galled Grag to be part of this third-rate freak circus. He imagined how Otho would laugh if he knew, and decided that the android must never learn. That made him think of Captain Future, who by now might already be nearing Mars and the trap in the Machine City.

Grag wished the liner would go faster. There was nothing he could do till it reached Mars. And even then he would have to escape from his unbreakable chains.

He remained patiently motionless, hour after hour. Eek went wandering off in search of metal to eat, was roared at by the Plutonian tiger, and came scurrying back in terror to Grag’s shoulder.

Finally the ship shuddered with braking rocket blasts. They were landing on Mars. Grag heard the bustle of disembarking passengers, and then the stout showman, Hurl Adams, came down with his assistants.

“Hurry up and unload ‘em!” Adams directed. “We’ll ‘take them right to the hall I hired and start our shows at once.”

Still chained, Grag was lifted and taken out with the other freaks, and piled into a big rocket truck.

It rumbled through streets closed in by red stone towers of the peculiar, top-heavy Martian architecture. Grag recognized the city as Rok. It was in the southern hemisphere, not far from the Machine City.

He was unloaded on the curtained stage of a theater and left alone. Presently he heard the distant tones of Adams barking about the show.

“Greatest collection of planetary freaks in the System, folks!” the stout Earthman was shouting in the street. “Rare Creeping Crystals of Callisto! Living stone snakes of Umbriel! The ancient machine that still walks and talks — the only antique robot still functioning!”

Grag’s indignation at this description of himself was terrific. He heard the theater being jammed with the eternal suckers.

Then Hurl Adams hurried in, drew the curtain and started exhibiting his freaks. Finally he came to Grag.

“The antique automaton is still so strong, it has to be chained up, folks!” Adams declared. “Watch its childish performance when I unchain it. The ancients of Earth used to marvel at its ingenuity.

The stout Earthman unfastened the chains around Grag. Then he pointed commandingly. “Walk! Talk!”

Grag stepped to the front of the stage. He spoke to the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a terrible show. If you paid to get into it, you have been swindled. As for me, I am so disgusted with it that my resignation is dated now.”

The audience and showman gaped, frozen with amazement. Grag stalked deliberately out to the street, with Eek on his shoulder.

He entered the nearest rocket-flier before anyone it the street could stop him. In five minutes he was flying over the red Martian desert, toward the distant Machine City.

CAPTAIN FUTURE felt savage anger with himself for blundering into this peril. He and Otho still stood frozen in the courtyard of metal statues at the center of the Machine City.

The quartz disk in the wall facing them still blazed with yellow radiance that paralyzed Curt and the android. In time it would slowly transmute every atom in their bodies into metal. Then they would become metal figures.