Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) (17 page)

“You have a plan?” the Brain asked him keenly.

“The only plan possible, and its possibility depends on something I glimpsed in these ruins,” Curt answered. “Come with me.”

He led the way back out into the moonlight, and hastened toward the great black stone globe that towered between the two ground-drum pits.

Upon its surface, as he had noticed before, were carved outlines of the continents and seas of Jupiter. Set in it were the silver stars that he had guessed marked the location of the long-perished cities of the Ancients. He had formed that guess because one star marked this exact location he stood in now.

Captain Future located the thing about the globe which had aroused his attention when he had glimpsed it from his hiding-place previously. From the star that marked this dead city he stood in, a line had been drawn due northward on the globe in white
pencil.

“An Earthman drew that line while plotting directions,” Curt told the others rapidly. “And the only one who was likely to have done that was Kenneth Lester, the young archaeologist who disappeared up here weeks ago.”

The penciled line ran straight northward toward another silver star, enclosed in a circle, which was set on the southern edge of the big red oval that marked the precise location of the Fire Sea.

“Lester was plotting the direction from this ruined city to some other city or ruin of the Ancients that lies up there on the shore of the Fire Sea,” Curt declared. “So that is where Lester must have gone.”

“But there couldn’t have ever been any city up there by the Fire Sea!” objected Joan. “Why, no one or no thing can live that close to that terrible flaming ocean!”

“The Ancients had a city of some kind there,” Captain Future insisted, “but it was different somehow from their other cities, for it is distinguished by a silver circle around the star that marks its location.”

“You think then that up there is the storehouse of knowledge from which the Space Emperor got the scientific secrets of the Ancients?” Simon Wright asked thoughtfully.

CURT nodded his red head quickly.

“Yes, I do think so. And I think that there I could secure that power of immaterialization for myself, and be able at last to come to grips with that black devil before he can loose an uprising.”

“It’s a long chance, lad,” muttered the Brain. “It’s hard, as Joan says, to believe that any city could ever have been located on the shore of that awful sea of flame.”

“It’s the only real chance we’ve got of stopping the Space Emperor,” Curt warned. “I’ve got to take it. I’m going up there now, and I’ll take Grag with me. We can go in the rocket-flier I left over at the radium mine.

“Otho will fly you and Joan back to Jungletown, Simon,” he went on. “It’s important that you get that atavism cure working on the victims that crowd the hospital there.”

“But I should go with you instead of Grag!” Otho objected loudly.

Curt silenced him peremptorily.

“Someone has to fly Simon and Joan back. And Grag’s strength may be more useful to me up there than anything else. Do as you’re told, Otho!”

Grumbling, the android gave in. They entered the
Comet.

“You can drop Grag and me at the mine, and we’ll pick up our flier,” Curt ordered.

As they flew eastward over the moonlit ferns again, Curt’s mind was worked up to a fever pitch of excitement. He felt that at last there was a chance of getting to grips with the sinister criminal who had thus far slipped through his hands like a shadow.

The little teardrop ship landed in the mine-clearing within minutes. The prisoners and Ezra Gurney were gone. Evidently, a police flier had already taken them back to Jungletown.

“Be careful up there, lad,” begged Simon Wright as they parted. “You know that it’s death to meddle with that hellish ocean.”

“I will take care of master,” Grag announced, joyful with pride at being chosen to accompany Captain Future.

The
Comet
shot away, hurtling southward toward Jungle-town. Curt and the robot hastened toward the rocket-flier he had left inside the jungle.

In a few moments the little torpedo-like craft rose sharply out of the jungle, and headed northward at its highest possible speed.

Ahead of them the whole night sky was a vivid glare of scarlet, a shaking splendor of wild red rays. Black against the glare stood out the dark, jagged hills that rimmed the southern shore of the Fire Sea.

As they neared the hills, the glare became so intense that their eyes could hardly look into it. Grag turned a little uneasily from the controls toward Captain Future.

“Shall I keep straight on over the hills and above the Fire Sea, master?” he asked.

“Keep on over the hills — we’re going to reconnoiter the coast of the sea,” Curt told him. He added with a quick grin, “You’re not afraid of a little molten lava, Grag?”

“I would not be afraid of a little,” Grag answered seriously, “but there is a great deal of it in that ocean, master.”

Curt chuckled. “A great deal is right. But it won’t hurt us — I hope!”

The flier was now pitching and tossing slightly despite its powerful drive, as it encountered great winds and blasts of superheated air rushing up from the vast, flaming ocean that lay ahead. The whole sky was an unthinkable flare of scarlet from the molten sea.

Curt felt his muscles tightening. They were, he knew, rushing toward one of the most stupendous and perilous natural wonders in the Solar System — one that had claimed the lives of almost all the Earthmen who had ever dared attempt the exploration of its shores.

Whirling blasts of smoke and fumes engulfed the speeding flier, as it raced on over the rocky hills toward the dreaded ocean of fire. Would they be able to survive the fiery sea’s perils? Captain Future wondered.

FIRE SEA OF JUPITER! Most dangerous and stupendous feature of the mightiest planet, which was spoken of with awe by men from Mercury to Pluto!

It stretched before them now, a vast ocean of crimson, molten lava that extended to the dim horizons and beyond for eight thousand unthinkable miles, and that extended east and west for three times that distance. A flaming sea that was constantly kept liquid by the interior radioactive heat.

The surface of that evilly glowing red-hot ocean was rippled by little, heavy waves and boiling maelstroms. Upon it like genii danced lurid flames, and whirls of sulfurous smoke. Its radiated heat was overpowering, even through the filter-windows of the rocket-flier.

Captain Future felt awe as he looked, not for the first time, on this incredibly fiery gulf into which all Earth could have been plunged.

“Don’t go out over it, Grag,” he told the robot. “The air-currents above it would capsize the flier. Follow along the shore-line.”

“Yes, master,” boomed the robot, turning the ship to move eastward. He added naively, “I do not like this place.”

“I prefer even the ice-fields of Pluto to this myself,” Curt admitted ruefully.

“I see nothing along the shore, master,” Grag said.

“Neither do I,” Curt admitted. “But there must be something here.”

Below them lay the southern shore of the Fire Sea. The flaming ocean’s molten waves lapped directly against the great range of black rock hills which acted as a dike to dam them back.

The rock slopes of the hills were heavily encrusted with solidified lava, that showed the tide-marks to which the molten flood reached. But there was nothing else to be seen upon that incredible shore, and indeed, it seemed impossible that ever any living beings could have set foot there.

Captain Future watched with close attention as the flier throbbed eastward along the shore-line. He believed that there must be some ruin or other vestige that would mark the spot which had once been frequented by the ancients.

Doubt grew in Curl’s mind, as the miles unreeled beneath without yielding any sign. After all, he told himself, he had only the evidence of that ancient world-globe in the Place of the Dead to guide him.

An hour passed, in which they had flown steadily east along the flaming coast. Curt made a sudden decision.

“Turn back and fly westward down the coast, Grag,” he ordered. “It may be in that direction.”

The robot obeyed, and the flier raced back at top speed over the ground they had covered, then moved on westward along the shore.

Again they watched with closest attention. Yet still there was nothing
to
see but the lava-crusted rock slopes, and the evilly glowing red ocean of molten lava that stretched away on their right.

Blasts of sulfurous air, and howling currents of superheated gases shrieked like fiends around them. The small rocket-flier pitched uneasily, yet Grag held it steadily above the fiery coast.

“Slow down!” Captain Future cried suddenly to the robot, his big figure tensing.

He had glimpsed something ahead — a queer opening in the rock shore at the edge of the lava sea.

THEY glided closer, hovered above the spot. From Curt Newton came an exclamation.

“This may be the place we’re looking for, Grag!” he declared.

“But I see nothing, master — nothing but a big round hole in the shore, into which the lava is pouring,” boomed the robot puzzledly.

Below them, there was a large, jagged circular opening in the rock slope of the hills, just where the fire ocean lapped against it.

As a result, a stream of the molten lava was pouring ceaselessly down over the lip of that opening, with a dull, reverberating thunder.

“There’s a big cavernous space of some kind down there in the rock,” Captain Future declared. “And that round opening leading down into it is too round to be natural. It looks as though it had been artificially enlarged at some time in the past.”

“Do you think then that the place of the Ancients we are hunting is down in that hole?” Grag asked incredulously, “It’s a chance,” Curt said. “We’ve seen no place else that could be what we’re looking for. We’ll investigate this.”

“But how do we get down in there?” Grag boomed puzzledly. “There does not seem to be any opening except this one through which the lava falls, master.”

Curt grinned at the big robot.

“When there’s only one door to go through, you can’t take the wrong one, Grag. That’s our way in.”

Grag stared.

“Down through that opening alongside the falling lava? There is barely enough room for the flier to make it without being caught in the fire-fall.”

“Enough room is as good as a light-year,” Curt shrugged. “Take her on down, Grag.”

Curt gave the order coolly, yet he knew the perilous nature of the descent they were about to attempt.

He would have taken the controls himself, but knew that the robot would take that as a lack of confidence on his part. And he had perfect faith in Grag’s abilities.

Grag moved the controls slightly, the robot’s photoelectric eyes peering downward. The little rocket-flier sank gently toward the dark, jagged opening through which the fire-fall plunged into unguessable depths.

Down sank the little craft, on an even keel, supported by its keel-tubes. The cataract of falling lava was only a yard away on their one side, and its thunder was deafening.

Wild air-currents screaming upward shook the flier as it sank lower. Its stern rasped ominously against the rock side of the opening, threatening to send the ship lurching into the falling lava.

But Grag steadied the craft, kept it sinking directly downward. In a moment they had descended through the opening into a vast, dim subterranean space weirdly illuminated by the red glow of the falling lava.

“Run into the cavern a little and then land, Grag,” Captain Future ordered excitedly.

They were hovering near the northern end of the enormous underground space. It extended shadowly southward, a cavern a thousand feet wide and of unguessable length.

The molten red lava of the fire-fall thundered down into a flaming pool, and then ran down the center of the cavern in a sunken channel or canal, a flaming, sluggish river.

Grag landed the flier on the rock floor of the dim cavern, near that fiery river. In a moment, Curt and his companion were emerging.

“This place is incredible,” declared Curt, raising his voice above the deafening thunder of the cataract.

“Even the caverns of Uranus are not as uncanny as
this!”
Grag agreed, staring in awe.

Captain Future felt a throb of leaping excitement that kindled higher each moment.

“It’s the place of the Ancients we were hunting!” he cried. “See!”

A little farther along the cavern from them, upon either side of the flaming lava river, rose two strange statues of silvery metal.

They represented creatures almost exactly like the Jovians, erect bipeds with round heads, unhuman but strangely noble features, and limbs that ended in flipperlike hands and feet.

The metal figures stood, each with a slender arm upraised, as though to warn Captain Future and the robot back. And upon the pedestal of each statue was a lengthy inscription in queer, wedge-shaped characters.