Captain Future 23 - The Harpers of Titan (September 1950) (7 page)

Unparalleled had been Curt’s education, indeed! For eighteen years, he had lived upon Earth’s Moon where he had been born.

There his three guardians — Simon Wright, the Brain, Otho, the android, and Grag, the robot — had reared him and given him a training in scientific wizardry and in physical and mental skill which no other tutors could have given.

The growing youth had chafed to leave the Moon, to see the rest of the great System that pioneering Earthmen had explored and colonized. But not until now had the Brain deemed him ready.

PLANET TO PLANET

Now, for months, they had been making their way from planet to planet in their small space-ship. Young Curt Newton had learned the secrets of Martian deserts, the depths of Jovian jungles, the great plains of Saturn and the sky-storming mountains of Uranus, all at first hand.

They had been for weeks here on Pluto. They had been dwelling with the Plutonian natives, in their strange ice-city of Qulun, north of the Avernus Sea. Curt had already evinced his unique knack of making friends with non-terrestrial planetary peoples.

He had become a comrade of the simple, primitive Plutonians — sailing the stormy ocean with them, hunting the
korlats
and other great fur-bearing beasts, and now he came with them to trade their furs with the Earthmen.

The little party reached the double-doored entrance of the small domed trading-town and entered. The interior was warm and light. Great atomic generators that throbbed in a guarded building poured forth a flood of power to heat and illuminate this domed enclosure.

Oraq, the Plutonian tribesman, grunted in discomfort. “It is too hot in here. Let us trade the furs and leave before we grow sick.”

But young Curt Newton had thrown back the felt helmet from his red head and was breathing in the warm air with relief.

“There is where we trade the furs,” Oraq said, pointing to the biggest of the metalloy buildings crowded inside the dome.

THE TRADING POST

The building had a cavernous interior, piled with great bundles of valuable Plutonian furs and with cases of cheap trade-goods. There were a few other Plutonians hanging about, and a crowd of rough Earthman hunters and trappers who stared at Curt as he entered with the Plutonians.

“First time I ever saw an Earth youngster trail with the Hairies,” remarked a burly Earthman. “Look, he can even talk their lingo.”

Curt Newton felt uncomfortable. He didn’t know much about Earthmen. He’d had small contact with them during his eighteen years.

The two proprietors of the trading post had come forward — a gross-faced, stocky man of middle age and a thin-lipped older man. They looked appraisingly at the bundles of furs Oraq’s men had hauled in.

“We trade,” Oraq mumbled, speaking his few words of the Earth language with difficulty. “We want knives, spearheads.”

The older man nodded and brought out six cheap steel knives and as many spearheads, which he laid down.

Oraq’s face fell. “Not enough,” the Plutonian articulated.

“It’s all you’ll get,” retorted the thin-lipped trader calmly.

Curt Newton burst forth. He had been watching indignantly. “Why, that’s robbery!” he declared. “Those furs are worth a thousand times what you’re offering. Take them someplace else, Oraq.”

LORDS OF POWER

The men in the room burst into a guffaw. And the thin-lipped older trader told Curt sourly, “You must be new to Pluto, boy. There are no other traders on this planet. Wilson and Kincaid — that’s me and my partner — have the only trading post here. For we have the only atomic power plant here, to keep a post going with heat and light.”

“That’s right, sonny,” smirked Kincaid, his gross-faced partner. “That’s why these Hairies call us the Lords of Power.”

Curt looked incredulous. “But the Planet Patrol of the System Government —”

Kincaid chuckled. “Sonny, the Patrol’s got enough to handle these days in the inner planets without coming away out here. The only law out here is the law of the Lords of Power, and don’t you forget it.”

Curt’s eyes flashed. “I’ll see that System law comes here!” he flamed. “I’ll see that the Government hears of your cheating, thieving monopoly!”

The thin lips of Wilson, the older partner, became thinner and he looked dangerously at the redhaired youth.

“Boy, you’ve got things to learn,” he said calmly. “You’ve got to learn who the Lords of Power are.” And Wilson spoke to the burly men behind Curt in sharp command. “Teach him who we are, men.”

Curt tried to spin around, but a stunning blow from a clenched fist caught him before he completed the movement. He reeled and felt another blow split his lips, and his head rang with the shock.

He was only dimly aware then of further smashing blows, of falling strengthlessly to the floor, of heavy boots kicking him. He slipped into a merciful unconsciousness.

THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE

When he awoke, sore and bruised and cold, he found himself being carried over the ice-fields by Oraq’s Plutonians. Oraq helped him as he unsteadily tried to stand erect.

“They beat you and threw you out of the dome!” raged Oraq. “They held us off with their atom-guns, and would have slain us where we stood if we tried to stop them.”

The Plutonian added fiercely, “We shall gather all the tribes and attack these evil Lords of Power, and destroy them.”

“No!” Curt said through puffed lips. “It’s for me to see that justice is done, Oraq. Take me back now to your city.”

When they reached the ice-city of Qulun, and Otho and Grag and the Brain learned what had occurred, the android and robot exploded with rage. Hands had been laid upon their beloved ward and pupil!

“We’ll go back there and blast them!” snarled Otho. “We’ll make these so-called Lords of Power sorry they ever saw you before they die.”

“No!” Curt Newton contradicted. His young eyes had a strange, cold new light. “We’ll mete out justice to them — not mere vengeance. We’ll force Wilson and Kincaid to go back to Earth and surrender themselves to the justice of the Government.”

“But how can we do that?” Grag objected. “They’ll never leave Pluto of their own accord.”

THE SONIC-SILENT BEAM

“I think they will,” Curt declared. “The atomic generators are all that make their domed trading-town habitable. And we can ‘kill’ those generators, by using the inhibiting damping-ray that you showed me how to produce. That, and the Brain’s ‘sonic-silent’ beam, will force them out.”

“The ‘sonic-silent’ beam?” cried Otho. “Say, I begin to understand your plan now! You’re figuring to use it to —”

“Yes,” Curt nodded. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

Curt’s youthful, bruised face suddenly changed from its coldly grim expression. A look of dismay appeared in his eyes as he met the oddly intent gaze of the Brain.

“I forgot myself for a moment,” Curt said uncertainly. “I was giving you orders. I didn’t mean to do that.”

The Brain broke a long silence. “Curtis, you need not apologize. We shall do as you suggest.”

THE DAWN OF MANHOOD

That moment, all four of them knew, marked a change forever in their relations. It meant that Curt Newton was no longer their pupil, their ward. It meant that he had suddenly become their leader — that new, grim purpose had suddenly brought manhood.

That night, the big atomic generators in the domed trading-town suddenly went dead. The puzzled engineers, after working for a time in vain, summoned Wilson and Kincaid.

“We can’t understand it,” they told the two self-styled Lords of Power. “The generators
should
work, but they just don’t.”

“You mean, you don’t know your business!” raged Kincaid. “You get them working, before we all freeze.”

But though the engineers labored frantically, the great cyclotrons remained dead. The toiling men never dreamed of the little ship that was hovering far up in the dusky sky, playing upon the dome the invisible inhibiting force that “killed” all atomic activity.

CHILL IN THE AIR

The air in the dome began to grow cold as the powerful atomic heaters ceased functioning. It had been dark for hours except for make-shift lights. More and more chill grew the air, frost gathering on the dome. The shivering Earthmen watched anxiously as the sweating engineers labored at their fruitless task under the lashing words of their employers.

Then Kincaid and Wilson and all their men suddenly started. A clear voice had suddenly spoken loudly from the air around them.

“Go to Earth and surrender yourselves to System law!” it commanded.

“Who said that?” snarled Kincaid, drawing his atom-pistol.

“It’s nobody — it just came out of the air!” gasped a man.

Again the voice spoke, from the empty air around them, repeating its command. It was loud, louder than any ordinary voice.

The men could not dream that it was the “sonic-silent” beam of the Brain that produced the effect — a beam of sound vibrations pitched
below
the limits of audibility but focused so as to become suddenly audible vibrations at a selected distance from the transmitter.

Over and over it repeated its eerie command. The darkness and increasing cold and the grim voice from empty air began to crack nerves.

“We can’t fix these cycs,” the engineers finally confessed.

“Let’s get out o’ here!” begged one of the men. “We’ll freeze if we don’t. An’ that voice means trouble.”

“It’s just a trick,” hissed Kincaid. “But we’ll go. We’ll head for Uranus and wait there a while, and come back with new generators.”

THE UNSEEN VOICE

They hastily loaded their great bales of valuable furs into their space-ship, and took off for Uranus. They established a camp among the Black Mountains of that planet’s equatorial region, near the Canyon of the Endless River. But on their second day there, the unseen voice spoke again.

“Go to Earth and surrender yourselves to System law!”

For two days, the voice spoke, hour after hour, repeating that relentless command. The raging Wilson and Kincaid searched furiously for its source without success. In desperation, they turned their atom-guns at random on the mist-hidden cliffs overhead. The only result was to start an avalanche from which they and their ship barely escaped.

The Lords of Power and their men flew to Saturn.

They made new camp near the Valley of the Silicae near the southern pole of that world. But again the voice remorselessly prodded them. There seemed no source of it. Curt and his comrades were projecting the “sonic-silent” beam from miles away.

The Silicae came crawling upon the camp of Wilson and Kincaid, attracted by their indiscriminate firing at nothing. The great gray inorganic monsters made them hastily remove camp northward. But in their new camp by the Wandering Lakes, deadly puff-balls from the Fungus Forest came upon the wind. And the grim, cold voice was still with them.

NO ESCAPE!

More than a little fearful, the Lords of Power essayed another attempt to escape their maddening tormentors. They fled to Jupiter and endeavored to hide in the vast fern-jungles south of the Fire Sea. But though they had pitched their camp in the ancient Jovian ruins which were shunned by all Jovians as the Place of the Dead, the cold voice reached them.

“Go to Earth and surrender yourselves to System law!”

In panic, the followers of Wilson and Kincaid deserted them, stumbling away through the fern-jungles in mad flight from the unknown. And at last utterly broken in nerve, Wilson and Kincaid steered toward Earth.

Curt Newton’s ship followed at a distance, still prodding the fugitives with the “sonic-silent” beam as they landed near Government Tower.

“Surrender yourselves to System law!” came the inexorable order.

At that a bewildered Planet Police chief and equally bewildered System President listened as two broken, haunted-looking men babbled a confession of having defrauded Plutonian natives by means of an illegal monopoly.

Later that night, the System President sat in his office high in Government Tower reflecting on the strange occurrence. His thin, aging face expressed sudden startled wonder as he heard a space-ship landing on the truncated top of the tower. No ship but his own ever landed there.

FOUR STRANGE FIGURES

He rose to his feet to call officers. Then he froze. In his office door had appeared four figures that seemed unreal. They were a tall Earth youngster, with red hair and clear, purposeful gray eyes; a lithe, green-eyed android; a giant metal robot; and a Brain brooding in a square transparent serum-case, watching with lens-like artificial eyes.

“It was we who drove Wilson and Kincaid to confess,” Curt Newton told the President quietly. “And I wanted to tell you this: the furs in their ship were stolen by fraud from the native Plutonians. The value of those furs, in needed goods, should be given to the Plutonians.”

The President stared, and then as the four strange visitants turned to leave, he asked a dazed question. “Who — who are you?”

The redheaded youngster turned, for a moment. “Just someone who didn’t want to see the whole future of Pluto’s people wrecked for profits.”

Then a quick, humorous smile lit his gray eyes and he added, “If you want a name to call me by, why, you can call me Captain Future!”

It was thus that Curt Newton became Captain Future!

THE END