Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) (7 page)

Grag looked exactly like a hulking, giant Earthman as he tramped along. He had donned a loose zipper-suit over his great frame. But the pink rubberoid artificial flesh that covered his metal head now made him look like a blank-faced, dark-spectacled giant.

He avoided the bright central region of the Venusian city and kept to the quieter, darker streets of beautiful white cement homes and dark, fragrant gardens. The scent of exquisite flowers mingled with the faint tang of the sea and the strong, rank breath from the great inland marshes. The marsh smell made Grag think of Captain Future, somewhere in the swamps on his dangerous mission.

Grag worried constantly about Curt Newton. To the robot, Curt was still the impish, redheaded little boy he had helped to educate on the Moon.

They passed the edge of the spaceport, a vast lighted tarmac rimmed by busy docks in which reared the high hulls of ships from all the nine worlds. Grag approached the adjoining field, where the Interplanetary Circus had pitched its pavilions. The circus traveled from world to world in its own space ships, which were docked at the edge of the field. Grag saw that most of the ships were ponderous Cruh-Cholo freighters, though there was one twenty-man Rissman cruiser that looked fast.

Flaring krypton lights illuminated the pavilions of the circus. These pavilions were conical, made of thin sections of light, strong metal that could readily be unbolted and stacked away inside the big Cruh-Cholo freighters for the trip to the next world. Grag trudged toward the little pavilion marked “Office of the Proprietor.” A thin, blue Saturnian looked up as Grag entered.

“What do
you
want?” the Saturnian demanded suspiciously, eying Grag’s seven-foot figure and stupid face.

“You the boss of this circus?” Grag demanded loudly.

“Yes, I’m Jur Nugat, proprietor and manager,” snapped the Saturnian. “And I’m a busy man, too.”

Grag struck his breast with his free hand.

“Me, I’m the Strong Man of Space! I’m the strongest man in the whole System, bar none. You think anybody’s stronger, you bring ‘em on. I’ll break ‘em in half!”

JUR NUGAT looked annoyed at Grag’s boasting.

“You may be strong as a Jovian stamper, but why bother me about it?”

“You want a good strong man for your circus, huh?” Grag demanded, his blank, pink face never changing expression. “You hire me, and you got the best strong man in the business. Steelite bars or logs of swampwood — I can break ‘em all in half!”

Jur Nugat shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t use you.”

“You mean you think I’m no good? Why, I’ll break you in half!” He started forward menacingly. Jur Nugat hastily skipped back.

“Wait a minute!” bleated the Saturnian. “I can’t use you, but maybe the side-show that travels with us can. Go over and see Ul Quorn.”

Grag appeared to hesitate.

“All right, I go. This fellow Quorn better hire me, or I’ll break him in half.”

As Grag stalked away, carrying the Brain’s machine, he heard Jur Nugat muttering behind him:

“Damned if he hasn’t got breaking things in half on his brain!”

Grag chuckled. “Didn’t I put it over, Simon? It would be swell if we could get right into Quorn’s show.”

“Quorn will be a harder customer to fool,” the Brain rasped in a low tone. “Don’t overdo it.”

Grag threaded his way between the smaller pavilions. Toiling roustabouts, a motley crew from all nine planets, were sweating to bolt on the last metal sections. A Jovian stamper, huge, round-headed, elephantine brown beast, had been brought to push a cage into place. Calls and cries in a half-dozen interplanetary languages split the night. The roars of caged beasts being unloaded from the big Cruh-Cholo menagerie-ship were deafening. Grag strode in stupid placidity through the uproar, toward the pavilion of the “Congress of Nine World Wonders.”

The freak-show of Ul Quorn was already prepared for the next night’s performance. Grag strode past it to the small private office of Ul Quorn, outside which a cadaverous gray Neptunian was lounging.

“That must be the freak Master said was called the Hearer,” Grag mused. “I must be careful what I say when he is around.”

“Where is the boss?” he asked the Hearer loudly.

“Inside,” answered the Neptunian. “But you can’t see him.”

“He’ll see me!” roared Grag. “I’m the Strong Man of Space, and I’m going to see him right now.”

The Hearer started to bar his way. Grag thrust him aside with a mere flick of his giant arm. The uproar brought a man and a girl from inside the tent. The girl was Martian, a dark-eyed, supple red girl of wildcat beauty. But Grag’s eyes swung at once to the man. Ul Quorn’s smooth, handsome, red features and intelligent black eyes produced a tangible shock inside Grag.

“Why, I know this man,” Grag thought bewilderedly. “Yet I’m sure I never saw him before.”

“What is all this commotion?” Ul Quorn was asking in a quiet yet somehow menacing voice.

GRAG put down the machine that hid the Brain, and snatched up a girder lying nearby. By a tremendous exertion of his mighty arms, he bent the girder double.

“See, I break ‘em all in half!” he pretended to pant. “You’ll hire me?”

“Why don’t you get rid of this stupid lout?” the Martian girl said impatiently.

“Not so fast, N’rala,” Quorn replied coolly. “A fellow with strength like that could be useful. He studied Grag’s stupid pink face, and spoke to him carefully, to reach his ignorant mind.

“If I hire you, you’ll not only do a turn in the side-show but obey my orders in everything else. Do you understand?”

“Sure, I do what you say, Boss,” Grag boomed cheerfully. “You don’t like anybody, you tell me. I’ll break ‘em in half.”

Quorn laughed quietly, apparently able to see the humor in Grag’s loud, stupid boasting.

“All right, you’re hired. But what’s this machine you’ve got?”

“It’s a Thinking Machine that can answer your questions,” Grag explained. “It belongs to me. You ask it a question, Boss.”

Ul Quorn, staring curiously at the cylindrical machine, addressed it mockingly.

“Will we have good luck when we go to Mars?”

Inside the cylinder, the Brain spoke in a slow, hesitating, mechanical voice that sounded quite artificial.

“You will — go to Mars soon — and meet new — sweetheart.”

“Not exactly an appropriate reply, but pretty good for a fake,” Ul Quorn said. He looked sharply at Grag. “Did you make it?”

“No, Boss, I couldn’t make a thing like that,” Grag answered hastily. “The last show I was with busted up on Pluto and the manager couldn’t pay us. I said, ‘You pay me or I’ll break you in half.’ He said he’d give me this Thinking Machine for my back wages. He told me how it works, but I forgot. I think he said there are thousands of phrases on tiny voice records inside the machine. He said the words of a question automatically trip fairly appropriate phrases to answer. Yeah, that sounds like what he said.”

“All right, you can use the thing as part of our show,” the mixed-breed scientist said disinterestedly. “The Hearer will show you a cubicle that you can use for a dressing room.”

In the tiny room, Grag waited till he saw the Hearer stroll off across the grounds before he dared speak.

“I think we’ve fooled Quorn, Simon,” he whispered to the disguised Brain. “But the man puzzles me. He looks familiar.”

“I also felt as though I’d seen him before, though I know I never did,” the Brain answered perplexedly. “And Otho felt the same thing. Well, watch him as closely as you can without rousing suspicion.”

Next morning, Grag devoted himself to learning as much as possible about Ul Quorn’s freak-show and its various performers. Besides the Hearer and the Chameleon Man, whom Captain Future had described, there were many other interplanetary oddities in the show. There was the “Intelligent Moon Wolf,” a six-legged beast from Io, who could read, write and calculate with amazing skill. Actually, as Grag soon learned, Ul Quorn had transferred part of a man’s brain into the Moon Wolf’s skull, giving it true human intelligence.

Quorn had been responsible also for the “Eel Man,” a Venusian whose skeleton structure had been cunningly dissolved, then replaced by a reticulation of elastic rods. As a result the Eel Man could compress his body to unbelievable slimness, and literally tie himself into knots. Grag liked the patient, quiet Moon Wolf, and he saw that the Eel Man was timid. But he disliked the so-called “Meteor Dwarfs,” Juho and Luho, two hideous Plutonian freaks who stared at him with red-rimmed, hostile eyes.

ALL the freaks seemed to fear Ul Quorn. The softest word of the mixed-breed was obeyed with frantic haste. It made Grag realize the perilousness of his own position, but he was careful to keep up a loud boastful front.

“When other performers treat me right, I treat them right,” he roared. “When they treat me wrong, I break ‘em in half.”

“You better not try threatening me,” muttered the Hearer.

“Let the Strong Man alone,” the Moon Wolf said hoarsely. “His loud talk means nothing. I think he is a good fellow.”

Lounging and watching everything, Grag later that morning saw a lean, cocky figure in a foppish zipper-suit swagger through the grounds. It was a vain-looking, lithe, white Ganymedean.

“That’s the new acrobat Jur Nugat hired for the circus,” said the Moon Wolf in his husky, slurred voice. “He calls himself the ‘Ultra-acrobat’. They say he did some marvelous feats.”

“I don’t like acrobats,” Grag declared. “They skip around like insects. If they get in my way, I —”

“You break ‘em in half?” asked the Moon Wolf, looking up at him with a flicker of strange humor in his green animal eyes.

In the early afternoon, a tremendous sensation rocked the circus. A rusty old Kalber rocket flier landed nearby. From it emerged a big Venusian swamp man, driving before him six shambling, black-scaled monstrosities.

“Marsh tigers — and they’re loose!” went up the terrified yell.

Performers and roustabouts fled in all directions, yet the horrific beasts lumbered docilely along toward the main pavilion. Grag knew the swamp man driving them was Captain Future. But Curt had disguised himself so well, he was totally unrecognizable. His curly red hair was now straight and black, his tanned skin the unhealthy white of a swamp-dweller. He wore a soiled old zipper-suit, and had one hand thrust idly into its pocket.

Grag guessed that Curt had his will-dampener in that pocket to keep the beasts in a submissive stupor by means of its radiations. He saw Captain Future approach the office of Jur Nugat, the circus proprietor, who had locked himself inside.

“Take those beasts away!” shrieked the Saturnian.

“I can control ‘em,” Curt answered confidently in a soft Venusian dialect. “I’m Kovo, and I thought maybe you’d buy these marsh tigers.”

Fearfully Jur Nugat emerged, trembling, but apparently reassured by the obvious docility of the ferocious beasts. Grag heard him ask:

“You really have tamed these monsters? But nobody has ever tamed marsh tigers!”

“I have,” the pseudo-Venusian replied casually. “Watch me.”

Grag saw Curt playfully cuff the monstrous beasts, wrestle with them, do everything possible to rouse them. They remained docile.

“Say, if you did that in an act, it would be the sensation of the circus!” Jur Nugat yapped excitedly. “Will you?”

“Well, I’d only figured to sell you the beasts,” Curt answered with assumed reluctance.

“I’ll pay any salary you ask — within reason,” Jur Nugat offered. “But I won’t buy the brutes unless you come with them.”

FOR the rest of that day, Grag heard of nothing but the Venusian who had actually tamed marsh tigers, and was going to work in an act with them in that evening’s show. When evening came, lights and music flared and blared all through the circus and the side-shows. Crowds of curious, chattering Venusians began streaming into the grounds.

“You’ll go on fourth, after the Moon Wolf,” Ul Quorn told Grag. “Your Thinking Machine will follow you.”

When the Moon Wolf had finished its turn, speaking patiently in its husky voice to exhibit its human intelligence, it was Grag’s cue to go on. He had already prepared an act with bars and weights.

“I’m the Strong Man of Space,” he roared at the audience. “See that bar? Watch me break it in half.”

A ripple of amazement came from the spectators as Grag seized a steelite bar and actually snapped it into two pieces. The applause mounted as Grag lifted colossal weights, bent girders, and concluded by lifting a light platform on which twenty men were standing.

“Now the Thinking Machine!” shouted the barker. “The automaton that actually answers your questions.”

The cylinder that contained the hidden Brain was brought out and the audience began firing questions at it. It replied hesitantly in a deliberately artificial voice.

“Why doesn’t my husband get back from Earth?” asked a woman.

“Husband — Earth — pretty girl,” answered Simon.

A roar of laughter went up. In replying to questions, the Brain was careful not to make the answers too appropriate. He didn’t want anybody there to think he was anything but a cleverly faked machine. Then he felt himself lifted off the stage to make way for the Chameleon Man’s turn. Resting unnoticed in the wings, Simon heard the Hearer and Ul Quorn speaking close beside him.

“I tell you, it’s Captain Future in disguise, right here in the circus!” Ul Quorn was saying in a low tense voice. “That devil is on our trail. I’m going to put him out of the way right now.”