Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) (9 page)

“It — it’s alive!” snapped the Brain’s resonator. He, in midair, had also escaped. “Look at its edge! The whole thing’s contained in some sort of skin. It’s a trap, a living sensitive trap!”

N’Rala had swum to the edge. She clutched at it, to draw herself up and out. But then the containing material came into view. It writhed and humped an edge above the sticky surface of the lid. There seemed to be a thick integument, like the rind of a mighty fruit, and here it was thickly lined with lean, sharp spikes, like hundreds of dagger points. These moved to confront N’Rala’s clutching hand. She cried with the pain, and dropped back into the bath.

“I’m wounded!” she cried. “And the wound — it burns, it burns!”

Curt Newton, swimming near Joan, called back to N’Rala.

“Swim for the center. There’s something solid there.”

He scrambled upon the lump of solidity he had found. It bobbed and quivered under him, but did not sink. A moment later N’Rala had come there, whimpering with pain, and Joan and Otho hoisted her upon the lump. Last of all Joan crawled up, helped by Curt’s hand.

“What is this raft?” asked Joan.

Captain Future was examining the object. “A creature of some sort — dead and floating. It’s the size of an elephant, dome-shaped, several stumpy legs — like a big beetle. Coming out, Otho?”

Otho floated on his back.

“Why should I? It’s comfortable here.” He paddled toward the brink, splashing liquid up at the hopelessly staring Grag. Joan, who so lately had been wrestling N’Rala into submission, now gave first aid. The Martian girl’s hand had been cruelly ripped in two places by the dagger-thorns, and the touch of the liquid was agony to the exposed flesh. Joan took a first-aid kit from N’Rala’s own captured belt-pouch, cleansing and taping the wounds.

“How can a pond be alive?” said Otho.

“It’s not a pond,” replied Captain Future. “It’s a creature with a big liquid trap-organ of some sort. Like a —”

“A pitcher-plant,” finished Simon Wright for him. “When you compared this big dead thing to a beetle, I saw what other comparison could be made. A terrestrial pitcher-plant, you know, those big water-filled pods —”

“But they grow well above ground,” objected N’Rala.

“The size and weight of this makes it find a depression to grow in and shape itself accordingly.” Captain Future told her. “The liquid is digestive, of course; that’s why it hurt your hand, N’Rala. And see where it’s eaten away part of our raft. Otho, being synthetic, isn’t uncomfortable.”

“Now you’ve gotten us into this, how are you going to get us out?” said N’Rala tartly.

“There speaks the eternal woman,” chuckled Simon Wright. “Nobody got us into this but you, N’Rala. However, I can get you out.”

His traction-beam pushed the floating carcass with its three passengers toward the edge of the pool. Otho, swimming beside, helped push. The dead flesh stuck into the thorns, mooring it, and Grag helped the Futuremen ashore, one at a time.

“The manacles,” he said, holding them out to Captain Future. “You were interrupted.”

“And you’re interrupted again,” added the mocking voice of Ul Quorn.

Figures moved into view — the pale gnomes that the Futuremen were beginning to know so well. There were thirty or forty of them, with weapons ready. Ul Quorn had spoken, but he did not show himself.

Overhead, Simon Wright turned in midair as if to soar away. Two of the creatures pointed strange pistol-form devices. From these leaped, like lean, lightning-swift snakes, long tendril cords. They fell across Simon Wright’s crystal case, a quick turn of the wrists of the operators snapped half-hitches on him.

Even then he might have pulled away, but the impeding coils swathed him and slowed him for the moment that others needed to add their quickly-projected cords. He was hauled down and once more bundled into a hammocklike mesh of the metal strands.

Captain Future thought furiously. Only Eek, the metal-eating moon-pup, had won him freedom from such bonds. He dared not risk being bound in that fashion again. He turned to N’Rala.

“You’re slightly more attractive to me than Ul Quorn,” he said with a smile. “If anybody’s to capture me, would you like to have the pleasure?”

“That’s the nicest thing a Futureman ever said to me!” N’Rala almost purred with pleasure.

She put her hand toward Grag, who stood again like a statue. A magnetic ray had been flashed upon him, as before in the laboratory, and his metal limbs were frozen. From his helpless fingers she twitched the manacles, and snapped them on Future’s big wrists.

“Score one for me,” she said, loud enough for Ul Quorn to hear.

“Chief!” gasped Otho. “I never knew you to quit before.”

He made a sudden gesture, and metal loops fell around him and over him, trussing him up. Joan, likewise caught in a dozen, made no sound, but her dark eyes glowed as she looked from Captain Future to the smiling N’Rala. Jealousy, hurt pride, wonder and fury were mirrored in her expression.

Now Ul Quorn swaggered into view.

“I knew what you were doing, from the moment that my own craft, with certain supplies and lieutenants, crossed over from the Solar System,” he said. “N’Rala carries a little radio-transmitter in that locket you didn’t feel it was worth your while to take.”

“So that’s it!” N’Rala’s slim hand flew to the jewel at her throat. “You — you tricked me again.”

“I gave it to you as a gift and ornament,” said the Magician of Mars, with a mocking bow. “I made it splendid enough for you to wear. But I didn’t say that I put a little spy in it, which now does double duty — exposes your full attitude toward me, N’Rala, and at the same time delivers my enemies into my hands. You and I are building up a heavy score to settle between us, N’Rala.”

“Would you care to argue it before the Overlord?” snapped N’Rala.

Ul Quorn did not answer. In the dim light, Future saw his enemy’s handsome lips tighten and twitch.

“Put bonds on Grag and take the magnetic ray off him,” he commanded his men. “We’ll march these prisoners back to headquarters.”

The pallid men closed in, pushing the Futuremen together in a knot. In silence the group moved back toward the captured laboratory. Only when they reached the door, did Ul Quorn voice another order.

“Put each in a separate cell. When they’re together, they got away. Leave Captain Future to me.”

He laid his lean, strong hand on Future’s elbow, and with his other hand lifted a proton pistol. Quietly Future let himself be led to the level below, and to Ul Quorn’s quarters. N’Rala came after them.

“I want to cross back to Dimension X,” she said.

Ul Quorn shook his head. “Not now, N’Rala.”

“You can’t hold me up,” she persisted. “The Overlord will be angry.”

“Let him rule on that later. These are my personal quarters, and my business with Captain Future will be conducted alone.”

He pushed his prisoner inside, and closed the door upon a last angry protest from N’Rala.

Future gazed at the luxurious fittings Ul Quorn had strung around the place, at the telaudio on the table, and fleetingly at the strange coffinlike case in a far corner.

“You like to pamper yourself,” Future said. “This room used to be a storage space for rock specimens. I never thought to see so much softness in it.”

“I’m changing many things, Captain Future,” mocked Ul Quorn. “Sit down — yes, beyond the desk. Let me say that I admire your dealings with menaces like the tendril-creatures — a troublesome bit of life, that taught my associates the principle of those wire-shooting guns. And the digesting lake was neatly eluded, too, though I gather that Simon Wright was more responsible there. However, I’m no bizarre, sub-intelligent monster. I’m Ul Quorn. And you’re my prisoner, beyond rescue this time.”

Captain Future had relaxed in the chair to which Ul Quorn had waved him. His shackled hands dropped between his knees. Their fingers interlaced. One finger overlay the ring he wore.

That ring bore the strange Futureman device, a stone to represent the sun and others moving around it to denote the planets. Within its jewel was a tiny atomic motor. Stealthily Future worked it loose, sliding the jewel inward.

“You have a weakness, a fatal one,” he said quietly to Ul Quorn. “You count your triumphs before they hatch.”

“Call it savoring sweets in advance,” grinned the other. “It’s not as great a weakness as your naive passion for fighting wrongs and destroying evil. You’re sorry for people, Captain Future, and I’m not. Being ruthless, I can’t be hurt through others.”

Curt Newton had the ring off and between his clasped hands. Its jewel now faced toward his wrists, pointing toward the link that held them together. The atomic ray, pointed and activated by a touch of his hand on a little stud, might break that bond. He wondered if it had strength and sustaining power enough.

“I suggest,” he replied, to keep Ul Quorn’s attention away from what he was doing, “that being ruthless to N’Rala has made her your enemy.”

“She won’t be dangerous.”

“This Overlord will.”

“What do you know about the Overlord?” snapped Ul Quorn, his hand tightening on the pistol.

Future knew almost nothing, but did not say so. He replied with another question. “She wants to come in here and use your facilities to travel into the Overlord’s dimension, doesn’t she?”

“She told you that, eh? Before I tuned in — that I kept my one way of dimension-spanning shut up here?”

That was all that Captain Future needed to know. His quick eye, roving around the room, fixed for a fleeting instant on the case in the corner. It was the only possible device for dimension-spanning that he could see.

He pressed the stud, and felt the manacles come apart. Stealthily he slid back on his finger the ring that had done him such good service.

“You convince me that N’Rala’s a traitor,” Ul Quorn was saying. “I promise that you’ll be destroyed. I promise you that N’Rala will be destroyed with you. Is there any satisfaction in that idea?”

“That idea, in the slang of an old century, is a fair knockout,” said Captain Future.

With a sudden outlash of both feet he upset the desk upon Ul Quorn.

Ul Quorn’s pistol slammed a charge into the ceiling, where a great hole opened amid a shower of sparks. Cursing by all the gods of peace, the Magician of Mars scrambled out, his weapon ready to aim again.

But Captain Future had sprung across the room, and into the strange upended coffin.

He felt a shuddering assailment of all his fibers, felt himself ready to dissolve, and came to himself in absolute blackness.

POSSIBLY Captain Future was making the greatest gamble of his life.

He had but the sketchiest notion of what lay in Dimension X, both in regard to its universe in general and the reception he would receive beyond the dimension-shift into which he had thrown himself. But, he had taken an instant to reflect.

Ul Quorn had entered that dimension and had withstood its dangers and mysteries so that he was again a power and a menace against all decent worlds. He, Captain Future, must not hesitate to risk the same peril and hope for the same success, that success to be used for the advantage of his universe.

In a word, he was unhesitatingly pitting himself — peerless brawn, brain, courage — against an unknown cosmos. If he failed, oblivion. If he won, safety for all he had lived for from the beginning.

In the dark chamber he now sensed, was a stir of motion.

“You are not Ul Quorn,” a voice said, in a language he understood. “Did he send you?”

“And if he did?” temporized Future.

“The Overlord forbade him to send any subordinates except when sent for. Only he, or the lady N’Rala.”

“Take me to your superior,” said Captain Future, walking toward the voice.

He heard breathing within arm’s length — and made a clutching sweep. One hand caught a throat, the other a wrist that strove to come to where weapons might hang. Captain Future whirled the struggling body up, across his knee, and down on a hard floor. Closing his strangle hold, he throttled the unseen speaker into submission.

A thud and struggle came from behind him, and the voice of Ul Quorn:

“Guards! Lots of them! Captain Future came over just ahead of me!”

The great red-headed Futureman smote his captive’s head against the floor, hard enough to induce momentary senselessness. He spun abruptly, and grappled Ul Quorn.

The gun, still in Ul Quorn’s hand, again tried to drive death to Captain Future’s heart, but its muzzle had been forced up. It kindled a brief shower of sparks in the ceiling, and Captain Future saw momentarily the cubicle, the rectangular opening of the dimension-shift, a door in a far wall, and the guard he had overpowered.

It seemed that this was not a gnomelike travesty on human form, like the pale men on the Moon, but a really fine figure of a human being, of extraordinarily white skin. Then the sparks died, and he fought Ul Quorn in the dark.

He got a hand over the mouth of the Magician of Mars, stifling another yell. Ul Quorn bit him, but Captain Future’s strength asserted itself. A mighty twist that caused bones to grind together, and he made Ul Quorn drop the gun. Another moment, and he turned the smaller man under, though Ul Quorn was wiry and desperate. His thumb sought for a nerve center and pressed as on a mechanical lever. Ul Quorn subsided.