Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) (4 page)

At a scant two thousand miles distance, the globe filled a large part of the sky, and it was fuzzed and wreathed with clouds, indicating a damp, thick atmosphere. There were great masses of dark and pale vegetation. A gleam here and there indicated lakes and rivers.

“Don’t touch that lever, lad,” the Brain cautioned him. “As I take it from our instruments, we’re really between dimensions just now. And that’s why the Moon looks different. Because she’s really two moons — our own, wrenched from our dimension, and another that’s mixed in.”

“That’s possible,” nodded Curt, still studying the strange world ahead. “That’s probable, too, for a dimension-shifting device big enough to involve a whole world such as this must have a base almost as large as the world itself, just as our dimension-shifter is the size of this little space-skiff.”

“You think, then, that a whole planet or moon of this invasion dimension — Dimension X, you call it — is fitted up as a shifter?”

“That’s only a guess, but it seems to me to be a good one. Let’s drop down and see.”

SIMON WRIGHT, too, was gazing out of the port.

“Drop where?” he asked.

“Where our laboratory should be. I don’t see mountains or craters or anything like Tycho to guide us, but our charts can help. Call out directions as I head in. I’m landing near the lunar Antarctic circle, where Tycho ought to be.”

The Brain watched the charts and called out warnings or other data as Curt settled the
Comet.
Finally they came opposite the jungle-swaddled area where Tycho should have been. Curt saw no clear space large enough for an improvised port, and so he hovered for a moment, directing his bow-proton gun blasts against the lush thickets. The jungle seemed to slough and cook away, like strange frost-figures under a burning glass.

“Your blast-fires looked greenish and strange,” observed the Brain. “This atmosphere plays strange tricks.”

“But the fact that combustion takes place shows there’s plenty of oxygen,” reminded Captain Future. “That space I cleared looks reasonably flat and solid. I’m setting us down.”

The little life-rocket dropped down with a slight thump, and Curt studied the atmosphere test-gauge a minute.

“Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, traces of other gases — all in breathable combination. I’m on my way out.”

He flung back a panel and emerged. The Brain floated after him, hovering at shoulder height.

All around them, at the edge of the clearing they had made, grew great thick clumps and mats of what appeared to be giant fungus or lichen. Captain Future slipped his proton gun from his holster and walked toward it.

“Vegetable — or is it? It might be a form allied to the plantlike sea animals of Earth’s oceans. I’d swear there was a little ripple of motion there that was from the growths themselves.”

“It might be animal,” agreed the Brain, still hovering beside him. “Or it might be a form of life neither animal nor vegetable, but peculiar to this universe. Which way are we heading?”

From his belt Captain Future took a compass and studied it.

“The needle shakes a little in this dimension, but it seems to work to some extent,” he said. “As I judge, we ought to head straight through here, and not many minutes’ walk will take us to where our laboratory should be, if any of it is left.”

“I’ll see,” volunteered the Brain, and wafted his crystal case aloft against the dim green sky on one of his traction beams. He disappeared above the top of the jungle, but was back in a few moments.

“There’s a clearing just ahead, and I thought I saw a metal lock, like ours,” he reported. “Head toward it.”

Together they entered the jungle. The growths, though thickly set, were not too hard to push aside or bend down. Captain Future’s mighty arms and the Brain’s deftly used traction beams forced a way through the thickets.

At last they came to the last belt of jungle, could see the dim green light of the clearing beyond. Bending his head as if to buck a line of football players, Captain Future wormed his way through.

“Here they are,” commanded a voice he half-remembered. “Quick!”

He spun around, lifting his proton gun. But upon and around him fell something like a thousand wiry snakes all working together — a net of flexible metal strands, that covered him in one second and in another second was drawn tight around him a dozen ways. He fired once, but already he was being tripped and flung from his feet. The gun was knocked from his fingers.

“Out of here, Simon!” he cried. “Back to the life-rocket!”

“I won’t leave you!” came Simon Wright’s grim rejoinder. His traction-beams tore and worried at the net.

But little pale-faced men were rushing, throwing another net. The crystal case that housed the Brain was caught and wound in intricate folds.

Outside the net, bonds were being tightened on Captain Future. Even so, he was difficult to subdue. Six men, then eight, fought and tugged and battled before he was rendered helpless.

“Let him get up,” commanded the first voice that had spoken.

Captain Future struggled erect. He faced the figure that was darker of complexion than the pallid sneakers who had ambushed them, and wore Martian turban and cloak.

“We observed your approach, and knew it must be you,” continued the commander. “That last blast to clear a little landing field showed where you came down. And we prepared this reception.”

Captain Future strove against his bonds.

“If I didn’t know that the sun’s heat had cooked him to nothingness,” he said, “I’d swear that you were —”

“I know what you’re thinking, Captain Future. And you’d be right! That sun-fire didn’t kill me; it only threw me into another dimension. I’m Ul Quorn, the Magician of Mars, and this third meeting is going to be the finish of you!”

OF THE many master qualities that made Captain Future the great defender of the commonwealth of worlds, perhaps the greatest, commentators have agreed, was the force and speed of his thought.

Born of the brilliant Roger and Ethel Newton to a heritage of science and intellectual might, reared and schooled by Simon Wright’s peerless brain-supervision, seasoned by travel and adventure and study on the strangest and most surprising of planets throughout the galaxies, Curt Newton was more than the foremost scientist of all civilizations; he was the foremost thinker, concrete, abstract, philosophical and strategical.

The rapid classification of facts that had led to his decision about the dimensional theft of the Moon, that had amazed even his companions, was not as effortless as it had seemed — it was only that Curt Newton could and did think and decide, as Otho had said, with the rapidity of light.

Now, faced by mortal peril and complete surprise, his mind did not go blank and helpless, as might so many others. It functioned all the swifter.

Ul Quorn, Magician of Mars, had fought him twice and failed twice. At their first conflict, the evil genius who was Roger Corvo’s son and self-appointed avenger had wound up on Cerberus, the drab prison moon that circles around Pluto. Escaping by a miracle of scientific scheming, he gathered new allies and powers for a second defiance of the Futuremen that led in and out of the fifth dimension, and concluded as Ul Quorn’s ship drove, or seemed to drive, to destruction in the heat of the sun. And now here he was, on the Moon that was somehow not the Moon, with Captain Future bound and helpless before him.

Brilliant, ruthless, brave, Ul Quorn had a few faults. One of them was vanity. Captain Future, estimating and facing the situation in headlong seconds of thought, knew that he must use that weakness against his captor.

“Only you, Ul Quorn, could have escaped as you did,” he said, in tones of sullen admiration. “And I still don’t see how.”

“Thanks!” Ul Quorn laughed spitefully, but his eyes shone with vain gratification. “Coming from Captain Future, that’s the greatest compliment I could hope for. But you’ve figured out so many mysteries, why isn’t this one understandable? I was diving into the sun. An ordinary ship — with an ordinary steersman — would have perished. But Ul Quorn was steering, and the ship was fitted — remember — with dimension-traveling machinery. The moment of explosion seemed to throw that machinery into activity that outdid itself. I went on, past even the fifth dimension —”

“Into Dimension X?” supplied the voice of Simon Wright, from the cocoon-like swaddling of bonds where he hung between two of the grotesque pallid followers of Ul Quorn.

“Call it that, if you like. X, the unknown quantity — the spot where dark deeds happen — yes, Dimension X!” Ul Quorn was enjoying himself hugely. “And I found what I could find anywhere! New powers, new allies, a new plan to make myself what I should always have been, master of worlds!”

“Too bad,” commented Curt gently, “that N’Rala didn’t live to share your triumph. She was a beautiful girl, and she wasn’t quite all evil. Your influence was bad for her.”

“Who said N’Rala was dead?” said Ul Quorn. “She’s very much alive and —”

He broke off suddenly, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded gruff. “Forget N’Rala. You’ll forget everything soon. I plan to destroy you both.”

Ul Quorn could do that, Curt reflected. He and the Brain were helpless for the moment, among armed enemies. It was time to use another of Ul Quorn’s own weaknesses against him — the trait of spiteful curiosity that stemmed from a twisted but brilliant pursuit of scientific knowledge.

“I’m ready to die,” said Curt. “So is Simon. When we’re gone, you can’t find out what preparations are being made against you.”

“Preparations?” repeated Ul Quorn. “You mean, defense against invasion? Impossible! We sent spies — the best spies —”

“Your best aren’t good enough,” taunted Simon Wright, taking his cue from Captain Future. “We’re here, aren’t we? Do you think we’d come smashing in without arranging — in secret — a big surprise for you back in our own dimension?”

“Don’t tell any more, Simon,” said Captain Future. “He’s going to kill us, anyway.”

ONE of the pallid monstrosities began to twitter.

“Perhaps, we should wring their secrets from them,” he suggested.

“Not so easily done,” Captain Future snubbed the creature. “Ask Ul Quorn if I ever told anybody anything I didn’t want to tell. Especially if I’m to die, anyway.”

“There are many ways of dying,” said the pallid tiling. “Easy ways, and hard ways.”

“Stop that,” ordered Ul Quorn. “I know Captain Future, and he’s my most deadly enemy. But he’s the wisest, bravest, most dangerous creature I’ve ever encountered. Threats won’t work, and not many tricks. March them away and put them in the safest place possible.”

The misshapen assistants of Ul Quorn moved forward obediently. With a pallid captor at each bound elbow, Captain Future marched across the clearing to an open panelway that he recognized as an entrance to his own laboratory.

Here, at least, the nature of things on the Moon did not appear changed. They descended to a corridor below, marched along it, and one of the pale men flung open an inner door. Captain Future was pushed into a dark, cubical chamber, and a quick spurt of flame from a gunlike instrument roughly welded the loose end of his tether to the metal bulkhead. Another fusing hung the Brain in his bonds as in a hammock, just out of possible reach of Captain Future...

The door clanged shut, a lock snicked into place. Captain Future strained his eyes in the dimness. In a far corner stood a massive, towering figure. Could it be —

“Grag?”

“Chief!” came the booming voice of the robot. “Did they get you, too?”

“Simon and me both,” replied Curt. “Are you tied? What happened?”

“I don’t quite know,” admitted Grag ruefully. “There was a big rough fellow I whipped — no, that was me, in a mirror. Then funny little pallid apes, and someone I remember from somewhere directed them.”

“It’s Ul Quorn,” Captain Future told him, and quickly went on to describe all that happened. He explained to the puzzled Grag the significance of the dimension-shift that had somehow swallowed and altered the Moon.

“And now, what happens to us?” asked the Brain when Curt had finished.

“Curtains, as they said in the Twentieth Century,” suggested Grag.

“Nothing of the sort,” replied Captain Future quickly. “I know Ul Quoin’s merciless, but he practically admitted that he needed to keep us alive. He wants to know what, if anything, is being done against this invasion by dimensions. That means he won’t kill us, or do weird surgery on our brains.”

“Of course not,” put in the Brain. “Such surgery would make us slaves of his own mind, but it would also wipe out our own knowledge, which he thinks he must have.”

“He’ll try to get it by torture,” suggested Grag. “Of course, I can’t feel pain, but I don’t know anything he wants to know, anyway.”

“I don’t see why we can’t get out of these metal ropes,” interposed the Brain, jiggling in his criss-cross of bonds. “If my traction-beams worked properly, I think I could set us free, but they’re just not as handy as usual.”