Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) (10 page)

No answer came back on the short-range telaudio, although Jeff Lewis repeated the order. The producer swore. “He’s wandered out of range of our telaudios. That Carson would lose his head and give way to panic the moment he found himself alone.” Jim Willard and Lo Quior were beating through the polyp forest, into which Curt Newton had disappeared. They tramped back out of the submarine groves a few minutes later, trudging through the ooze.

“Can’t find him, Jeff,” Willard reported. “He’s probably wandering around in circles.”

“And these sea-people seem so scared of that part of the forest that they won’t search him out for us,” muttered Lewis. “Well, he’s in no immediate danger, for his suit has enough oxygen for many hours. You and your men can keep hunting for him, Jim. The rest of us will go on with the other scenes until you bring him back here.” And the producer gave directions for the filming of scenes inside the grotesque black submarine city of the swarming sea-folk.

“Take the cameras right inside the city, Lo. I want a scene showing Ron and Lura arriving. They’ve picked up a signal Captain Future sent out from the sunken space-ship he found, and have come to help.”

The krypton spotlights and big cameras were moved into the edge of the city. The friendly sea-folk, highly intrigued and mystified by all that was going on, darted in swarms around and through the brilliant beams of the spotlights.

Grag was placed in the center of the scene, and Lo Quior touched his “control-buttons.” Grag immediately responded in automaton-like fashion by waving his arms stiffly in greeting as Ron King and Lura Lind came tramping into the scene.

While this was going on, Joan Randall had followed Jim Willard and his two men back to the edge of the submarine forest.

“I’ll help you hunt for Carson,” she offered. “I know a little about these submarine forests.”

“And I’ll help too,” said a smooth voice on the telaudio.

Joan Randall turned, sharply. It was Su Thuar’s voice. The Venusian had unobtrusively stayed near her all during their undersea march and during the scenes at the sea-folk city. And he was still sticking to her.

She remembered Curt Newton’s warning against the Venusian. Valdane wanted to get rid of her before they went on to Styx. Su Thuar had probably accompanied them with that purpose in mind.

The girl felt more vexation than apprehension. She was not afraid of the Venusian. But if he stuck too closely to her it would make it difficult for her to steal away secretly from this search, and follow Newton back to the ship. And that was what Joan intended to do.

“All right, we’ll separate and beat through this whole sector of the forest,” Jim Willard said. “Keep within telaudio range of each other and keep calling Carson. Sooner or later, we’ll get an answer.”

The young assistant director added an anxious warning.

“Don’t go too far in, Joan. It could be dangerous. And Carson isn’t worth it.”

JOAN RANDALL smiled to herself as she started into the polyp forest. How astounded all these people would be if they knew the real identity of the timid, fearful Chan Carson for whom they showed such open contempt.

She kept up a pretense of searching as she tramped through the dusky glades of grotesque polyp-growths. The small krypton-light she wore at the belt of her sea-suit like the others furnished a limited illumination, and she could see the lights of the others close by. She heard, on her suit-receiver, the telaudio calls of Jim Willard and the others to the missing “Chan Carson.” She called herself, to keep up the pretense. But actually, she was looking for a chance to get away from them and start back to the ship after Curt Newton. Joan Randall was soon out of sight of Willard, in the dense submarine forest. But on her other side, Su Thuar persistently kept within sight of her lamp’s beams. Undoubtedly, the Venusian was trailing her.

He had made no attempt to attack her. She did not fear such an attack, for she was on the alert and had her own efficient atom-pistol at her belt. But she was becoming angry at her inability to slip away while the Venusian was watching her.

Joan decided to lose no more time. She entered a thicket of giant, waving sea-grasses which she knew concealed her completely. At once, she turned off her belt-light. And then she moved as rapidly as possible through the dusky undersea forest in the direction of the ship.

She was now out of sight of Su Thuar’s light, and knew that she had given the Venusian the slip. Jim Willard’s voice called her anxiously, but she did not answer. Presently the calls faded away, indicating that she was now out of range of the short-radius telaudio.

Joan Randall hurried on through the dusky undersea forest. The
Perseus
was still at least a mile and a half away, and she had wasted nearly an hour in the pretended search and in getting away from the Venusian. She must hurry if she was to have any chance of joining Curt Newton and Simon Wright in the ship before they attempted their daring expedient. Shoals of brilliant solar-fish rushed away from her through the waving polyps. The groping tentacle-like arm of a hydra-polyp wrapped around her arm once, but she tore it loose without difficulty and stumbled on through the ooze.

She shrank back suddenly as a huge, black turtle-like creature rose in the shadowy waters ahead of her. Then she laughed shakily to herself. It was only one of the big, harmless “breathers,” rising from its burrow on one of its endless trips to the surface to refill its lung-sacs with air.

“I suppose Curt will be angry when I show up to help him,” she thought a little apprehensively. “But he might as well learn right now that I’m in on this case with him.” She wondered if Captain Future’s brain-scanner would work. She had unlimited faith in the wizard mastery of science of Newton and the Brain. Yet, to snatch a man’s secret thoughts from his mind —

Joan Randall suddenly stopped in alarm. The air inside her helmet was suddenly becoming thick and foul.

“The oxygen-tube must be clogged,” she thought quickly, and rapped sharply on the aluminoy tank of compressed oxygen at her belt. There was no resulting flow of purified air. But her rapping did have an effect that dismayed her.

The oxygen-gauge on the side of the tank had shown twenty hours’ supply of the gas remaining to her. But when she rapped the tank, the needle of the gauge suddenly swung jerkily to “Empty.”

“But it can’t be empty,” she thought bewilderedly. “I’ve only been out here in this suit a couple of hours.”

She hammered anxiously at the tank. There was no response. The needle remained at “Empty.” And every moment now, the air inside her helmet was becoming more hot and unbreathable.

Joan came to an appalling realization. The tank had been tampered with! It had been emptied of all but a couple of hours’ supply of oxygen, and the gauge had been set to show “Full.”

“Su Thuar,” she exclaimed. “He did that before we left the ship. That’s the way Valdane worked out to get rid of me.”

SHE understood with terrible clarity now, why the Venusian had made no attempt to harm her. Su Thuar hadn’t needed to. All he had had to do was to wait till her oxygen ran out and she died from asphyxiation. He had trailed her merely to make certain that happened.

Joan’s head was already reeling from the lack of pure air. Since the processes of oxygenation and purification had stopped, she was breathing the air in her suit over and over. In a very few minutes, she must lose consciousness and perish from asphyxiation.

She called desperately to Curt Newton. There was no answer. He was out of telaudio range of her, ahead.

“I can’t make it to the ship,” she thought wildly. “And that’s the only possible chance —”

The
Perseus
was still more than a mile away in the submarine forest. There alone, was hope of life. And she could never reach it. Death stared Joan Randall in the face. She would perish in the next few moments, unless she found air.

Find air here at the bottom of the sea? It seemed a bitter mockery to ask the question. Then into her reeling mind came sudden remembrance. There was a tiny bit of air at the bottom of the Neptunian sea, in certain places. She had passed one of those places only a few minutes before.

Joan Randall turned and staggered back through the polyp-forest the way she had come. Her brain was spinning from lack of oxygen, and her blood pounded in her temples. She flashed on her belt-light, desperately searching. Then she saw what she was seeking.

It was the “breather’s” burrow which she had passed shortly before, from which the creature had risen. It was no more than a wide, round tunnel down into the floor of the sea. That dark, gaping passage seemed a fearsome place to enter. But Joan Randall knew it was her only chance of living a little longer. She dropped down into the black opening.

The tunnel which the big, turtle-like “breather” had burrowed went down through ooze and then through soft coral. It sank into the coral for twenty feet, then turned and ran horizontally, then rose again.

Joan Randall, gasping and only half-conscious from the roaring in her ears, scrambled up the last section of the queer tunnel. She emerged into the big, hollow pocket in the coral that was the “breather’s” home. This pocket was filled, not with water, but with air! A bubble of air trapped here at the bottom of the sea.

The “breathers” were air-breathing sea-creatures, like the whales of Earth. Survivals of former Neptunian land-life, Curt Newton had told her, who had adapted themselves to the sea when it covered all eroded Neptune. A grotesque wonder of planetary biology.

The creatures, on each of their trips to the surface, could store their lungsacs with enough air for many hours of life underwater. And they could bring air down in their lung-sacs to the cunningly excavated burrows in which it remained trapped, to furnish oxygen to the young of the species who could not yet ascend to the surface.

Joan was nearly unconscious as she clambered up from the water into this dark, air-filled pocket. Her arms seemed leaden and useless as she tried to unfasten her helmet. Her lungs were on fire.

Then she got the helmet off. And air — hot, thick, fishy-smelling but still blessed air — rushed into her nostrils. Her head cleared a little as she gulped in the air. It was highly compressed by the pressure of the waters that trapped it here. It made her lungs labor to breathe it, but her gasping ceased.

Joan flashed her light around. The burrow was like a big wet cavern of dark coral. Half its floor was water, and the other half was a slightly raised ledge upon which she had pulled herself.

She discovered that she shared the ledge with a brood of five young “breathers.” Looking much like big black turtles with soft skin backs instead of shells, they blinked at her light solemnly.

“What a place,” she thought, with a little shudder. “I’ve got to get out of here somehow.”

She tried the telaudio in her helmet, calling again. But there was still no answer. The girl began to feel desperate. The air in this pocket would not last her for many hours. And there was no possible way of using it to replenish her oxygen tank so that she could escape from here.

Her senses swam from the thick, fishy odor. She had a chill realization of the hopelessness of her situation. Even if Curt Newton searched for her, how would he ever find her in this place?

She had faced numberless perils before this, but here alone, helpless, in a strange world — her senses began to reel.

FLIGHT could not save him, Captain Future instantly had realized an hour before, as the “swallower” rushed at him. These enormous, disk-shaped white monsters of the depths could flap through the water at a speed very much faster than any man could run.

Neither could he kill the creature. His only weapon was the futile stage-pistol at his belt, a mock-weapon which could fire nothing but low-powered energy flashes that would look like atomic bolts in a telepicture.

Curt Newton acted more by instinct rather than by design. The “swallower” was already poised above him like a dreadful white cloud. The creature would drop down, wrap its vast, flexible body around him, and then crush him into a pulp to be ingested at its leisure.

Newton flung himself backward, against the slimy trunk of one of the big polyp-trees. It would at least make it more difficult for the beast to seize him, he thought.

“If I just had a real atom-gun for one minute!” he thought desperately.

Next moment, the enormous flat mass of the “swallower” whipped around the whole polyp-tree. Captain Future was crushed against the slimy trunk of the semi-animal growth by the pressure. He fought to free himself from that dreadful grip. It had not yet compressed upon him with full power, for the “swallower” was impeded in its contraction by the stiff polypous branches.

Newton found it impossible to work his way downward out of the remorseless grasp. It was only a matter of minutes until the full pressure would crack his sea-suit and helmet like an egg-shell.

With a wild idea in mind; he squirmed upward. He got his head and one arm up out of the grip of the contracting white body, but could get no further. Next moment, Curt Newton was hurled head over heels through the water by a mad, convulsive spasm of action on the part of the “swallower.” The blinded monster was threshing the waters in crazy fury.