Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) (10 page)

“That’s right,” confirmed Eldred Kells, the blond vice-governor. “I tried to get them to stay, but couldn’t.”

Curt was thinking. Either Brewer or Cannig could have slipped into the Emergency Hospital to spring that death-trap, before leaving.

“Kells is going up to Jungletown at once, to see how bad conditions are there,” Quale told Curt.

“I’ll go too,” Joan Randall said quickly. “If the number of victims is increasing so, I’ll be needed at the hospital there.”

The girl secret agent flashed Captain Future a glance as she spoke. Curt realized she intended to continue her observation of Brewer and Cannig, if possible.

Kells hesitated at her going along.

“Jungletown is rather a tough, wild town for a girl to go into,” he declared. “But it’s true you’ll be needed up there. Come along, and we’ll start at once.”

Captain Future made no comment as the man and girl left the office. A few moments later, the roar of their rocket-flier was heard as they took off from the nearby hangar.

Curt turned toward the governor.

“Quale, as governor here you know something about these legends of a mighty Jovian civilization that is supposed to have existed on this planet in the remote past?”

The governor looked surprised.

“Why, yes, I’ve heard the superstitious stories the Jovians tell,” he admitted. “And the few archaeologists who have looked at those queer ruins in the jungle say that they really were once the cities of a highly civilized race. But why do you ask, Captain Future?”

“Has anyone ever unearthed any of the scientific secrets of that vanished Jovian race?” Curt demanded.

Quale was a little startled. “Why, no. It’s true that some have hoped to find the hidden secrets of that mysterious race. One young archaeologist who was through here some weeks ago was sure he could. But no one has ever done so.”

“What was the name of that young archaeologist?” Curt asked quickly.

“His name was Kenneth Lester,” Quale replied. “He told me he’d been studying the Jovian legends and believed he was on the trail of solving the whole mystery of the vanished race. He went from here up to Jungletown, and then on northward into the jungles toward the Fire Sea.”

Captain Future’s eyes narrowed.

“Where’s Lester now? What did he say he’d found when he came back?”

The governor shook his head.

“Lester never came back. Nothing more was ever heard from him, though he’d promised to notify me of any discoveries he made. He had no experience with those jungles, and undoubtedly he perished up there in them.”

Captain Future remained silent for a moment, wrapped in thought. The governor looked attentively at the big, red-haired young man.

“That’s all I wanted to know,” Curt said finally. “One more thing, though — I would like to have one of the most recent atavism cases from your hospital, for study by Simon Wright and myself, in order that we can try to find a cure for this thing.”

A QUARTER hour later, in a borrowed police rocket-car, Captain Future reached the edge of the dark Jovopolis spaceport where the
Comet
waited. He carried out of the car an unconscious Earthman with a brutalized, flushed face — the atavism victim the governor had allowed him to bring from the hospital.

Inside the little ship, Grag the robot greeted him with noisy, booming relief. Simon Wright’s lens-eyes focused at once on the big young adventurer’s taut face.

“Did you succeed in trapping the Space Emperor, lad?” the Brain asked quickly.

“He nearly trapped me, damn him!” Curt exclaimed ruefully. “Isn’t Otho back yet?”

“No, he hasn’t been here,” Wright declared.

Curt uttered an impatient exclamation.

“I wanted to get on up to Jungletown at once. Now well have to wait for that crazy android who’s probably busy getting himself into trouble.”

Concisely, he told Simon Wright all that had happened, while Grag listened also.

“So I believe,” Curt finished, “that the Space Emperor has actually discovered the secret of making matter temporarily immaterial, by a step-up in frequency of its atomic vibration. The thing’s possible, isn’t it, Simon?”

“It’s possible theoretically, though no known scientist has ever done it,” rasped the Brain. “Furthermore, not one of your four suspects is a scientist.”

“I know!” Curt exclaimed. “And that’s what makes me think the Space Emperor has discovered the scientific secrets of the vanished race of this world. The secret of vibration-step-up is probably one of them, and the atavism weapon another.

“And what’s more,” Curt declared, “I believe this Kenneth Lester, the missing archaeologist, ties into it somewhere. This Lester was highly certain, according to Quale, that he could find the secrets of the vanished race. Then he disappeared.”

Grag had listened with attention, trying to follow Curt’s explanation. Now the big robot asked a question.

“If the Space Emperor can make himself immaterial whenever he wants to, how can we catch him, master?”

“We can’t catch him if he’s immaterial, that’s the devil of it,” Captain Future told the robot. “Our only chance is to grab him while he’s in his normal state.”

He turned to the Brain.

“I want to investigate this Lucas Brewer first. As soon as Otho comes, we’ll go up to Jungletown and I’ll see what I can find out about that fat swindler. While we’re waiting for Otho,” he went on, “we can start study of this atavism victim I brought with me. It’s urgent that some cure for the blight be found as soon as possible, or this whole colony will be wiped out.”

Grag unfolded the metal table from the wall of the little compact laboratory that occupied the whole midship of the
Comet.
The robot laid the stricken, drugged man upon it.

Captain Future hung a curious lamp over the unconscious man. It was a long cylindrical glass tube that could project “tuned” X-rays which made either bone, blood or solid flesh tissue or nerve-tissue almost invisible, at will.

Curt set the rays to block out the whole skin, skull, and outer tissues of the victim’s head. Then he donned the fluoroscopic spectacles that were part of the equipment, and slipped similar spectacles over the eye-lenses of Simon Wright.

They could now look deep into the head of the victim as though he were semi-transparent.

“I believe,” Curt said tersely, “that this evolutionary blight is caused by a deep change in the ductless glands. We know that slight malfunctioning of the pituitary gland will produce acromegaly, in which the victim becomes brutish of body and mind. Suppose that the pituitary is really the secret control of physical evolution?”

“I understand,” said Simon, his lenses glittering. “You think that acromegaly, which has always been considered a mere disease, is really a case of mild atavism?”

CURT nodded his red head keenly.

“That’s it, Simon. And if a man found a way to paralyze the pituitary gland completely, then the resulting atavism would not be just mild but would become worse each day, the victim reverting farther each day to the brute!”

“Let’s look at the pituitary gland and see,” said Simon Wright.

Intently, they scrutinized the big gland that was attached to the base of the victim’s brain by a thin stalk.

“See the dark color of the gland!” Captain Future exclaimed. “That’s abnormal — the pituitary of this man has been subjected to some freezing or paralyzing radiation!”

He straightened his big figure, and there was a gleam in his gray eyes as he took off the fluoroscopic glasses.

“What we’ve got to do is to devise some way of starting the paralyzed pituitaries of the stricken man,” he said. “Do you think we could find a counter-radiation that would do it?”

“I doubt it, lad,” muttered Simon Wright. “It seems to me that our best chance would be to devise a chemical formula that could be injected directly into the victims’ bloodstream and which would reach their glands in that way.”

“Then we’ll try out different formulae on this victim —” Curt started to say. He suddenly stopped.

His keen ears had just caught the faint whir of the buzzer in his pocket-televisor. He snatched out the little instrument and touched the call-button to signal that he had heard.

“This is Otho speaking!” came a rapid whisper from it. “I am going with Jovians northward. The Space Emperor is to be —”

Suddenly the android’s whisper broke off. Curt waited, his tanned face a little alarmed in expression.

He dared not call the android back, without knowing what had happened. Minutes passed in silence. After a quarter-hour, Otho’s whisper came again, a little louder.

“One of these Jovians nearly caught me calling you, but I convinced him I was just talking to myself,” Otho chuckled.

“You crazy fool, be careful!” Captain Future spoke angrily into the instrument. “Do you want to get yourself killed? What the devil are you up to, anyway?”

“I’m going to stay with these Jovians until I find out where the Space Emperor is to appear before them,” Otho’s answer came back. “It’s to be tomorrow night, at some spot called the Place of the Dead, in the north jungles. As soon as I find out where the place is, I’ll come back and tell you.”

“We’ll have the
Comet
at Jungletown,” Curt told the android quickly through the instrument. “We’re going there now.”

“Give my regards to Grag and tell him that I am sorry he is sitting in the ship and doing nothing,” Otho’s voice teased, before he was silent.

Grag moved his metal head furiously.

“Is it my fault that I have been sitting here?” boomed the robot. “I wanted to go with you, and you took him instead!”

Curt gave the massive robot a powerful shove toward the control-room.

“Get
in there and start the ship without more grumbling or I’ll disconnect your speech-apparatus!” he warned Grag. “We’re flying north to Jungletown, in a hurry.”

“What about our patient — do we take him too?” asked the robot.

Curt nodded.

“Simon can keep hunting for a cure and test his formulae on that poor fellow. I’ve got to attend to more urgent business.”

As Captain Future turned back to the Brain, his gray eyes had an expectant gleam.

“So the Space Emperor is to appear up in those northern jungles tomorrow night? And Lucas Brewer had to fly north tonight. The trail leads to Brewer, Simon!”

JUNGLETOWN throbbed with roaring life tonight, under the two bright moons. Even the dreadful shadow of the horror that had stricken down hundreds, even the knowledge that the Jovian aborigine hordes were ominously restless could not slacken the gusty, lusty tempo of life in this wild new town.

This was a typical planetary boom town, such as sprang up wherever a great new strike was made, be it on desert Mars or mountainous Uranus or Arctic Pluto. To these boom towns thronged adventurous Earthmen from all over the System, prospectors and gamblers, merchants and criminals, engineers and drug-peddlers, dreamers and knaves and fools.

The great strike of uranium and radium northward had been responsible for the birth of Jungletown. It had grown with mushroom speed, till now it was a straggling mass of some thousands of metalloy houses, huddled together in the big clearing that had been blasted out of the mighty fern-jungles.

Captain Future peered keenly toward the town from where he stood with his comrades beside the
Comet.
They had landed the ship near the dark edge of the jungle, unobserved.

“The atavism cases haven’t slowed this place down much,”

Curt muttered as he stared.

“These boom towns aren’t afraid of man or God or devil!” rasped Simon Wright dourly. “Murder and robbery walk in them hand and hand. Remember the one on Neptune’s moon?”

“That town where those criminals laid the atomic trap for us?” said Curt. He chuckled softly. “I remember!”

“Hear that queer throbbing, master?” Grag boomed suddenly to Curt.

Captain Future and his companions stood with the solemn, murmurous black jungle towering at their backs. Out of it came heavy exhalations of rotting vegetation and the spicy scent of flowers.

The heavy tread of “stampers” was audible from its depths, and the rustle of a tree-octopus. Balloon-beasts floated overhead in the moonlight, the membranous gas-sac that held them aloft glimmering. And little sucker-flies hummed viciously around, while big death-moths fluttered in their strange dying flight that lasts for days.

In front of them, beyond the black, raw fields, lay the moonlit metal roofs and blazing, noisy streets of the town. Even from here the vibration of brassy music could be heard. And above the town, the whole northern sky flamed brilliant, quaking crimson from the great glare of the mighty Fire Sea beyond.

Curt was listening tensely. Then he heard the sound the robot’s artificial hearing had detected. It was a dim, deep throbbing that came from the dark jungles northwest of the town, and that he felt rather than heard. It seemed to roll up from the ground on which they stood, in a steady, heavy rhythm.