Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) (11 page)

“It’s Jovian ground-drums,” Simon Wright rasped.

Curt nodded tightly.

“There’s no doubt about it. They’re out there somewhere northwest of the town.”

Captain Future had heard the “ground-drums” before — unknown instruments by which Jovian aborigines caused a percussive vibration in the ground which could be heard for far.

“That means trouble, lad,” the Brain said harshly. “The Jovians ordinarily never do any ground-drumming where Earthmen can hear them.”

“I’m going into the town and hunt up Ezra Gurney, the Planet Police marshal here,” he told the Brain. “You can stay here and work on the atavism cure, Simon.”

“Yes, of course,” rasped the Brain.

“I go with you this time, master?” Grag asked anxiously.

“No, Grag, you’d attract too much attention in the town,” Captain Future told the big robot. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

Then Curt strode across the dark fields toward the town. The two moons looked down on his big figure, and the shaking glare of crimson in the sky tinged his keen face redly.

CURT entered the chief street of Jungletown, a narrow, un-paved one bordered on both sides by metalloy structures of hasty construction. Gambling places, drinking shops, lodging houses of ill appearance, all stood out under a blaze of uranite bulbs. Music blared from many places, and a babel of voices dazed the ears.

He shouldered through a motley, noisy crowd that jammed the street. Here were husky prospectors in stained zipper-suits, furtive, unshaven space-bums begging, cool-eyed interplanetary gamblers, gaunt engineers in high boots with flare-pistols at their belts, bronzed space-sailors up from Jovopolis for a carousal in the wildest new frontier-town in the System.

Curt noticed that only a few of the green Jovians were in the streets. The flipper-men made no remonstrance when drunken Earthmen cuffed them out of the way, but their silence was queerly ominous.

“Anybody want to buy a Saturnian ‘talker’?” a big space-sailor with an owl-like bird on his shoulder was shouting.

“Anybody want to buy a Saturnian ‘talker’?” the bird repeated, exactly mimicking its master’s voice.

“Biggest bar on Jupiter!” a telespeaker outside the roaring drinking place was calling. “Martian gold-wine, Mercurian dream-water — any drink from any planet!”

As Curt passed a big gambling-hall noisy with the click of “quantum wheels,” a hand grasped his hand. It was a thin-bodied, red-skinned native Martian, whose breath was strong with Jovian brandy as he appealed to Curt in his shrill, high voice.

“Help me out, Earthman!” he begged. “I’ve been stranded here a year and I’ve got to get back to Mars to my family.”

Curt chuckled.

“You’ve not been on Jupiter more than a month or your skin would have bleached out. You’ve no family for you belong to the Syrtis people of Mars, where the children are raised communally. But here’s something for a drink.”

The Martian, startled, took the coin and stumbled hastily away from the big redhead.

Then as Curt passed a tavern from which came wild, whirling music with the pulsing Venusian double-rhythm in it, he heard a sudden uproar break loose inside.

“Marshal or no marshal, you can’t tell Jon Daumer what to do!” roared an Earthman’s bellowing voice.

“I’m telling you, and I’m not telling you again,” answered a steely voice. “You and your friends get out of town and get out now.”

Captain Future recognized that hard second voice. He pushed quickly into the tavern.

It was a big, bright-lit metal hall, hazy with the acrid smoke of Venusian swamp-leaf tobacco. A mixed throng jammed the place. There were prospectors, gamblers and engineers, some of whom had been drinking at the long glassite bar, others of whom had been dancing with hard-faced, painted girls.

All eyes were now watching the tense drama taking place. A big, heavy-faced Earthman in white zipper-suit, with three other mean-eyed men behind him, confronted a grizzled, iron-haired man who wore the black uniform of the Planet Police and a marshal’s badge.

Ezra Gurney, the gray-haired marshal, was looking grimly at the quartet who faced him.

“I’m giving you and your three fellow-crooks just one hour to leave Jungletown, Daumer,” he warned.

Curt saw Daumer crimson with rage.

“You’ve not proved that we have broken any laws! the man bellowed at Gurney.

“I don’t need any more proof than what I’ve got,” said Ezra Gurney. “I know you four have been getting prospectors drunk and robbing them of their radium. You’re leaving!”

DAUMER’S face stiffened. He and his companions dropped their hands toward the hilts of their flare-guns.

“We’re not going, Gurney,” he said ominously.

Curt Newton stepped suddenly from behind Gurney. His tall, red-headed figure confronted Daumer and his companions.

“Take your hands off those guns and get out of town as Marshal Gurney says,” Curt ordered the four men coldly.

Daumer was first amazed at the stranger’s audacity. Then he uttered a guffaw of laughter that was echoed by the motley crowd.

“Listen to this Mr. Nobody that’s telling me what to do!” he exclaimed. The crowd roared in appreciative mirth.

“Captain Future!” cried Ezra Gurney suddenly as he glimpsed Curt’s face.

“Captain Future?” echoed Daumer blankly. His eyes dropped frozenly to the big ring on Curt’s finger.

“It’s him!” he whispered through stiff lips.

The laughter of the crowd was struck to silence as by a blow. In frozen, unbelieving stillness, they stared at Curt.

The greatest adventurer in the Solar System’s history, the mysterious, awesome figure whose legend dominated the nine worlds, stood in their midst. As they realized it, they could only stare rigidly at this big, red-haired, gray-eyed man whose name and fame had rung around the System.

“We’re — going, Captain Future,” Daumer said hoarsely, his brutal face pallid.

“See that you take the first ship off Jupiter,” Curt lashed, his bleak gray eyes boring into the faces of the four men.

Daumer and his companions were out of the place in a moment. Curt and Ezra Gurney followed them.

No man or woman in the crowded hall moved, as Captain Future and the grizzled marshal walked out to the street. But as they reached the noisy, thronged thoroughfare, they heard a great babel of excited voices from behind them blast forth in the tavern.

“Thanks for steppin’ in to help me out, Captain Future, but you spoiled a swell fight,” said Ezra Gurney testily.

Curt grinned.

“I see you’re as bloodthirsty as ever, Marshal. I thought maybe that fracas in the Swampmen’s Quarter on Venus two years ago would have quieted you down.”

Gurney looked at him with shrewd old eyes.

“What brings you to Jupiter is this atavism business, isn’t it?”

Curt nodded grimly.

“That’s it. What do you know about it, Ezra?”

“I know it s hell’s blackest masterpiece,” said Ezra Gurney somberly. “Captain Future, I’ve been out on the planetary frontiers for forty years. I’ve seen some evil things on the nine worlds in that time. But I never seen anything like this before.”

His weatherbeaten face tightened.

“This town is sitting on top of hell, and no one knows when it’ll bust loose. The atavism cases are increasing daily, and the Jovians are acting queer.”

“You called Quale tonight about the Jovian unrest increasing?” Curt said, and Ezra Gurney nodded emphatically.

“Yes, I told Quale the truth, that the Jovians are working up to something big. You can hear their ground-drums out in the jungle all the time now.”

They had turned off the crowded street into the small metalloy structure that housed Planet Police Headquarters.

“Ezra, what do you know about Lucas Brewer’s radium mine?” Captain Future asked.

Gurney looked at him keenly.

“There’s something queer about it. Brewer is able to get the Jovians to work for him as laborers, something nobody else can do. That gives him a big advantage, with labor as scarce as it is here. He’s getting rich producing radium, up there.”

“How does he explain the fact that the Jovians work for him and no one else?” Curt demanded.

“He says he treats ‘em right,” Gurney answered skeptically. “I know he pays ‘em a lot of trade-goods — shipments go up to his mine all the time. But the green critters won’t work for nobody else, no matter what pay is offered them.”

THE big red-haired man considered that, his tanned face thoughtful. He asked another question.

“Do you know anything about the disappearance of Kenneth Lester, a young planetary archaeologist, up here?”

“Not a thing,” Ezra confessed. “He went up into the jungles weeks ago. Then he flew back down here to send a letter off, and went back north. No more word ever came back from him and he’s never been found.”

“I’m going out and make a secret investigation of Lucas Brewers mine,” Captain Future declared, getting up. “Lend me a rocket-flier?”

Gurney’s face grew anxious.

“That’s a dangerous place to monkey around. Brewer’s got guards all around the mine. Says he’s afraid of radium-bandits.”

Curt grinned, and there was no trace of alarm in the big young adventurer’s cheerful face.

“I’ll take my chances, Ezra. What about that rocket-flier?”

Ten minutes later, in a small, torpedolike Planet Police flier, Curt flew up above the blazing, turbulent streets of Jungletown and headed northward.

Black, brooding jungle unreeled beneath an endless blanket of dark obscurity. Ahead, the whole northern sky flamed shaking scarlet from the glare of the Fire Sea.

Dark, low ranges of hills showed far ahead, standing out blackly against the quivering red aurora.

Curt hummed a haunting Venusian tune as he flew on, keenly eyeing the blank blackness of jungle. He sensed himself closer on the trail of the Space Emperor, and the thought of coming to grips with his unknown adversary brought a cheerful gleam to his eyes.

At last he saw what he was looking for — a little cluster of lights far ahead and below. At once, he swooped downward in the flier, hovered hummingly above the dense dark tangle of jungle, and then landed expertly in a small clearing.

In a few minutes, Curt was slogging steadily through the moon-drenched jungle of tree-ferns toward the lights.

Tree-octopi flitted overhead. Bulbous balloon-beasts sailed slowly by high above the ceiling of foliage. Once Captain Future’s foot crashed down into the mouth of an underground tunnel made by “diggers.” They were big, bloodthirsty burrowers who seldom appeared above ground.

Sucker-flies swarmed around him, cunningly injecting a tiny drop of anaesthetic to deaden their sting. And once Curt fancied he heard the distant, flowing passage of a “crawler,” one of the most weird and dreaded of Jovian beasts.

He came finally to the edge of a mile-wide blasted clearing in which lay the mine. Out there in rock quarries scores of Jovians clad in protective lead suits were digging radium ores, working by the brilliant light of uranite bulbs, and superintended by Earthmen overseers.

Further away lay the field-office of the mine, and the warehouses, smelters and other buildings. Their windows glowed with light.

“Looks innocent enough,” Captain Future muttered, “but there’s something damned queer about it. Who ever heard of Jovians doing dangerous labor like that, for any Earthman?”

He loosed his proton pistol in its holster.

“I think we’ll see whether the corpulent Mr. Brewer is here or not. And first, a look inside those warehouses —”

Curt started along the edge of the clearing, keeping inside the shadow of the jungle. He had gone but a few rods when a faint sound behind him made him whirl quickly.

A dark Earthman guard stepped out of the shrubbery, his flare-pistol leveled menacingly at Curt’s head.

“Spy, eh?” rasped the guard. “You get it now!”

And he loosed a blazing flare from his gun that shot straight toward Curt’s face.

GRAG was worried. The big robot paced restlessly, back and forth inside the
Comet,
in ponderous stride. Every few minutes he went to the door and peered out.

He had run the ship into the jungle outside Jungletown. The boom-town lay out there, beneath the thin wash of red light from the setting sun. The lights were coming on in its streets, the uproar commencing as night came once more.

“Something has happened to our master,” the robot boomed as he came back from the door to the midship laboratory. “He said he would be back soon. That was last night. A whole day has passed, and he has not come back.”

Simon Wright’s eye-stalks turned irritatedly toward the robot.

“Will you quit worrying?” the Brain demanded. “Curtis isn’t a boy any more. He can take care of himself, better than any man in the System. You seem to think you’re still his guardian and nursemaid.”

Grag answered.

“I think you worry about him as much as I do.”

From the Brain’s vocal opening came something that might have been a rasping chuckle.