Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) (11 page)

“Who is
that?”
she asked, frowning at the Martian girl Curt was setting down in a chair.

“Ain’t jealous, are yuh?” Ezra asked significantly.

“Of course not!” Joan denied, flushing. She looked up at Curt. “What about Doctor Quorn?”

Curt told them rapidly what he had done after joining the circus.

“When I reached here with the circus, I found out from Police records that a certain Mus Sigu was known to be a member of the Sons of the Two Moons. I wanted to penetrate the organization, to be there when Quorn expounded his plans to it. So I had Mus Sigu arrested, made myself up as his double, and took his place. I did learn something, too, before N’rala surprised me.

“Two of the three space stones Quorn hasn’t acquired are in the possession of Bubas Uum, proprietor of the Pleasure Planet. The other space stone is on Deimos, owned by a certain retired space pirate named Rok Olor.”

“Rok Olor!” The name burst explosively from Ezra Gurney’s lips. “Why, Rok Olor disappeared thirty years ago. He’s supposed to’ve died right after.”

“It seems he didn’t die, Ezra. He went into retirement as a supposedly honest ex-planter on Deimos.”

“That blasted old space fox!” Ezra Gurney swore. “He always was the most tricky devil in the System. Many’s the time he gave me the slip in the old Patrol days, after I’d trailed him for weeks.”

“I’m going to Deimos at once, to get the space stone he has before Quorn can get it,” Curt said.

“And I’m goin’ with you!” Ezra snapped. “Wait till that old buzzard sees me step in and arrest him, after all these years!”

“It’ll take us only a few hours to get to Deimos and back,” Captain Future added. “We’ll take this girl N’rala with us, for there’s something I want to find out from her. In the meantime, I want you to carry a message to Otho, Joan. Tell him to stage a big rumpus of some kind when he puts on his Ultra-acrobat act in the circus tonight.”

Joan nodded. “I’ll tell him. Then I’ll come back here and wait for you.”

She slipped out of the
Comet
and hastened across the moonlit dryland toward the lights of Korak.

With Captain Future’s hand on the throttles, the tear-drop ship zoomed up into the sky. Rushing out through the thin Martian atmosphere, it headed at terrific pace toward the hurtling, bright little sphere of Deimos.

AS THE little moon broadened out in the fore-port of the control room, old Ezra Gurney sat staring at it with fierce eagerness in his faded eyes.

“Just wait till I get my hands on that old devil Rok Olor!” he kept repeating. “To run him down, after all these years —”

“We’ve got to find him first,” Curt reminded. “He’ll be living under some false name. Call the Syrtis office of the Planet Police on Mars. Describe Rok Olor as you remember him, and ask them what planter of that description lives on Deimos.”

As Ezra obeyed, Curt rapidly removed the disguise which had enabled him to assume the identity of Mus Sigu. Removing waxite pads from his cheeks, he washed off the red skin-stain and discarded the cunningly devised aids which had given him a stiltlike Martian figure. Ezra Gurney reported as Curt finished the task.

“Retired planter livin’ near the south pole of Deimos. He calls himself Xex Iza, but he answers Rok Olor’s description. He’s our man!”

Soon the
Comet
was dropping toward the surface of Deimos. The night side showed as a tiny green world of parklike estates. Having been given atmosphere and hydrosphere by synthetic air and water creators, the little satellite was a favorite residence of wealthy Martians, whose gravitation equalizers enabled them to live comfortably there. Curt Newton landed not far from a gleaming chromalloy mansion. Small, but exquisitely beautiful, it was set amid formal Martian gardens.

“That’s the house,” Captain Future declared. “Come on, Ezra.”

“What about the girl?” Ezra asked.

N’rala still lay unconscious in the space chair.

“She won’t come to till I bring her out of it,” Curt replied.

He and the veteran emerged into the soft night of Deimos. Mars hung in the sky like an immense, dull-red moon. Flower scents made the warm breeze fragrant. It was easy to see why rich Martians preferred this blossoming little world to Mars. Captain Future and Ezra strode rapidly toward the chromalloy house. Their gravitation equalizers had automatically adjusted to the lighter gravitation.

“Just watch Rok Olor’s face when he sees me, and he realizes he’s goin’ to Cerberus Prison!” crowed Ezra.

As they entered the vestibule, a Martian servant came into the dimly lighted marble hall to greet them.

“Just two friends to see Xex Iza,” Curt said easily. “We’d rather not give names. We want to surprise him.”

They heard a limping step. A small, shriveled-looking Martian of advanced age, with a scarred, seamed face and proud, brilliant eyes, entered the vestibule. When he saw Ezra Gurney, he went rigid.

“Devils of Mars, Captain Gurney of the Patrol!”

“Marshal Gurney now, Rok,” drawled Ezra. “Surprised to see me, eh? Thought the Police never was goin’ to find you.”

Rok Olor’s shriveled figure seemed to sag for a moment. Then he raised his bald head defiantly.

“No, Gurney. I always felt that some day you would find me. I kept trying to tell myself it was nonsense, that I was safe here till I died. But underneath, I wasn’t sure. You always track a man till you get him.”

“Well, Rok,” said Ezra in a somewhat softer tone, “the fact is that I stumbled on you by accident. This is Cap’n Future here. He spotted you.”

ROK OLOR looked long and speculatively at Curt Newton.

“So you’re this Captain Future we all hear about,” he said at last. “You must be all they say you are, to have tracked me here. Guess maybe you’d have outmatched any of us pirates in the wild days.”

“Sorry to have to expose you after all this time, Rok Olor,” Curt said, uncomfortably. “But you realize the old charges against you still hold, and that Ezra must arrest you.”

“I know that. I ask no mercy.”

“You can help me out in a big case,” Curt went on earnestly. “If you do, I’ll see that you get the shortest possible sentence.”

Rok Olor shrugged. “I haven’t so long to live. Even the shortest sentence on Cerberus will finish me. But I’ll help you, if I can.”

“You’ve got a space stone, haven’t you?” Curt pursued.

Rok Olor drew back, surprised.

“Yes, I have a space stone. Took it in a raid on the Venus shipping lanes years ago, before I retired. It belonged to some Venusian collector who was on board.”

“That was the raid you carried out off Earth’s orbit, wasn’t it?” Ezra yelped. “I remember it. How the hell did you escape that time? You just seemed to melt into thin space.”

“That was an easy one,” Rok Olor retorted, a faint grin on his shriveled face. “We put out our ‘haloes’ for protection and ran beyond Mercury, right close to the Sun. Then we circled half around, and lined out for Mars and the asteroid zone.”

“I’ll be damned!” swore Ezra. “We never figured you had halo equipment, and that’s where we slipped. Say, you remember the time I was chasing you out past Saturn, and you —”

“First, what about the space stone?” Curt interrupted.

“I’ll get it,” Rok Olor said. “It’s in my safe.”

He came back in a few moments, holding out the jewel. Eagerly Future took it. Yellow in color, faceted as sharply as if it were new, it blinked and burned in the palm of his hand. Curt hastily took his little X-ray scanner from his belt. He applied its radiation to the space stone, holding the gem close to his face. Into his mind, as the hard radiation freed the mental record in the gem, came that thin, remote voice of the past.

“A small generator must be constructed which shall be capable of emitting vibrations within the thirteenth division of the eighth octave of the electro-magnetic spectrum. These are the carrier waves, which must be so projected by the generator as to enclose the subject and affect every atom of his body and clothing.”

Captain Future turned off his scanner and stared at the space stone with deeply thoughtful eyes. Remembering the other one-seventh of the secret he had learned from Yale’s space stone, his super-keen scientific mind was trying to find a connection. Faint, dawning intimations of what Thuro Thuun’s secret might be crept into Curt’s mind. It seemed fantastic, yet it might be. And if Thuro Thuun’s secret was that —

“No wonder Quorn’s so eager to get it,” Curt muttered. “Good Lord, imagine power like that in any one man’s hands!”

He stopped pondering. Rok Olor’s thin voice and the drawl of Ezra Gurney recalled him to his surroundings.

“Sure, you were far and away the best space fighter the Patrol ever had,” the old pirate was telling Ezra. “You whipped that Uranian bandit, Ju Jimos, in fair space fight, and the ‘Falcon,’ the greatest pirate of all. Nobody but you two saw that fight, but I sure wish I had.”

Ezra’s faded eyes went bleak and strange for a moment, as the veteran looked far back into the memory of crowded years.

“Yes, the Falcon was the greatest space fighter of all,” he whispered. “God rest his soul.”

Rok Olor looked puzzled. But Captain Future understood the sudden tenderness in the old crime hunter’s voice. Only to Curt did Ezra ever reveal the fact that the Falcon had been his young brother.

“We’ve got to be going, Rok Olor,” Curt said quietly.

The old pirate nodded calmly.

“Want to search me for atom guns before you take me in, Ezra?”

Ezra looked dismayed. All the eagerness with which he had looked forward to arresting Rok Olor seemed to have evaporated.

“Listen, Future,” Ezra said. “After all, Rok is a pretty old man now. He hasn’t been a pirate for years.”

Curt saw what was coming, but refrained from smiling. “I know,” he said solemnly. “What about it?”

Ezra squirmed. “Well, yuh said yuh was goin’ to see he got mercy from the court for giving you the space stone, didn’t you? They’ll just let him off anyway, so why bother takin’ him in?”

“What, leave him here?” Curt asked in mock horror. “But I thought you were keen on arresting your old enemy!”

“Cap’n Future, when yuh get old as me, and meet a feller yuh fought against in the old days when yuh was young, and talk it over with him, yuh don’t want to arrest him. You — you’re sort of glad to see him, in fact. Let’s leave Rok alone, huh?”

Curt grinned. “You sentimental old fraud! All right. That goes, Rok Olor. You’ve helped me considerably with this space stone. As far as we’re concerned, you’re still just Xex Iza, an ex-planter.”

Tears glistened in Rok Olor’s eyes, but his voice was steady.

“Thanks, both of you. Good-by, Ezra.”

“Good-by, Rok, you old devil,” grinned the Police veteran.

They gripped hands.

AGAIN in the
Comet,
clear of Deimos and rushing back toward the big red parent planet in the sky, Curt turned the controls over to Ezra Gurney.

“I have a few things to ask this girl of Quorn’s,” he explained.

Curt pressed and massaged the temples of the unconscious Martian girl, using his skillful Venusian therapy, till she awoke.

“N’rala, I won’t waste time,” he said crisply, “Quorn has four space stones. He has them hidden somewhere in that Rissman space cruiser of his. Where are they?”

“Do you really expect me to tell?” she retorted mockingly.

“You might as well,” Curt stated. “You’ll tell eventually, anyhow.”

N’rala’s mood seemed to change. She looked up at him with curious, speculative admiration in her dark eyes.

“You are not the kind of man to threaten a girl, Captain Future,” she murmured. “Especially a girl like me.” She moved closer to him. The subtle, alien perfume of her midnight hair reached him. Her eyes had a soft, almost eager glow. “You are a strong man, Future — perhaps even stronger than Ul Quorn. I like men who blaze a great trail across the worlds. I could like you.”

“And your friend Quorn?” Curt Newton reminded her.

She shrugged indolently, smiling up at him.

“Ul Quorn wearies me. But no woman would ever grow weary of you.”

Curt laughed. “It’s a swell act you’re putting on, N’rala, but you might as well save it. I’m not falling for it.” She recoiled furiously from him.

“You’re not human! You’re cold as the robots who reared you! Or else it’s that Earth girl agent —”

“Never mind her,” Curt snapped. “Where are Quorn’s space stones hidden in his cruiser?”

“You’ll never learn from me.”

“No?” he asked softly. “I think I will. Look at this —!”

Suddenly he grasped her head, and held up the ring he wore — Captain Future’s famous emblem-ring, the nine planet-jewels revolving around the glowing sun-jewel. The planet-jewels began spinning and reversing in a bewildering way as Curt held it in front of N’rala’s eyes. He was using the ring as a hypnosis-inducer, as he had used it many times before.

N’rala tried to turn her head aside, but Curt held her so firmly that she had to look at the flashing jewels. Presently her struggle ceased and a dull, hypnotized glaze came over her eyes.