Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) (8 page)

“There’s an urgent televisor call for you from Jungletown, sir,” he told Sylvanus Quale breathlessly.

“I’ll have to go back and answer it,” Quale said to Captain Future. “Miss Randall will show you the atavism cases.”

THE girl led the way from the vestibule into a long, lighted main hall of the prison. She went to the heavy, solid metal door of the first cell-block. There she touched a switch outside the door, and they heard its bolt shoot back.

They stepped into the cell-block. It was a windowless barracks with solid metal walls, lighted by a half-dozen glowing uranite bulbs in the ceiling. Cell doors were ranged along either side of the corridor which they had entered.

“These are cases of varying dates,” the pale girl told Curt. “Some of them are recent and are only apelike, but others are — you can see for yourself.”

Curt went down the row of doors, peering through the gratings into the cells.

The cells contained a nightmare assortment of ghastly horrors. In some were huge ape-like creatures standing erect and beating with hairy fists at their doors, roars of rage coming from their throats.

In others were creatures that were even more bestial, quadrupedal hairy brutes with pouched bodies and blazing feral eyes and wide jaws bristling with fangs. Still other cells held scaled green reptilian monsters shuffling forward on four limbs and crawling with their talons to reach Curt and Joan Randall.

Captain Future was shaken by a storm of fierce wrath such as he had never felt before. Never before, on any of the nine worlds, had he encountered a horror like this. He felt in the presence of something utterly unclean and monstrous.

“God help the devil who did this if I get my hands on him,” he gritted.

Joan Randall, who had followed him down the corridor, looked up into his face.

“If it was an Earthman who caused this, I have a suspicion as to his identity, Captain Future,” she said.

She had taken from a pocket a little badge which she showed him. It bore the initials “P.P.”

“I’m a Planet Police secret agent,” the girl explained. “There have been several of us here since this horror began.”

“Whom do you suspect?” Curt demanded quickly.

Before the girl could answer, there came a startling interruption. It was the click of the cell-block door bolt.

“Someone has locked us in!” Joan cried.

Curt sprang toward the door. It was immovable, the bolt having been shot home by the electric control outside.

“It’s a trap!” he declared.

He drew his proton-pistol, aimed it at the door, and released a lightninglike lance of force. But the heavy slab of artificial metal resisted the flash of force. It was scorched but unharmed.

“Is there any other way out of here?” Captain Future demanded.

“No. This was a prison, remember,” Joan answered. “Ventilation is indirect, and the whole place is soundproofed and rayproofed.”

“What the devil is that?” Curt exclaimed.

A loud, simultaneous clicking had sounded, and every cell-door along the corridor had suddenly slid open.

Joan went deathly white.

“The cells have been unlocked!” she cried. “They are controlled from a switch out there, and someone has opened that switch!”

She uttered a little scream.

“Look, they’re coming out —”

With the opening of the cell-doors, the hideous creatures inside the cells were beginning to emerge.

Out into the corridor shuffled a great, hairy ape-thing, then another, then a shambling, blazing-eyed quadrupedal beast, and then one of the shuffling, taloned reptilian monstrosities.

Captain Future felt Joan Randall shrink against him, terrified. The monsters emerging into the corridor, monsters that had once been men, had sensed the presence of the man and girl and were starting down the hall toward them.

BACK at the Street of Space Sailors, Otho the android moved slowly through the crowded, noisy quarter. Perfectly disguised as one of the green, squat Jovians, the synthetic man walked with the shuffling movement characteristic of the planetary natives. He concentrated upon maintaining an appearance of sulky silence.

Inwardly, Otho was intensely alert to everyone about him. The android was absolutely loyal to Captain Future. His devotion to the laughing, red-headed adventurer was the strongest trait of his fierce, unhuman nature, stronger even than his love of action and combat. He was determined to find out what he could for Curt, no matter what the cost.

He kept an eye out for other Jovians. His task was to mix with the planetary natives and find out what they knew about the Space Emperor. Otho had no doubt of success. His supreme, cocky self-confidence was bolstered by his knowledge of the Jovian language and customs, gained on former trips to this planet with Captain Future.

So intently was the android looking out for other Jovians with whom he might strike up acquaintance, that he bumped into a big, hulking Earthman prospector in the crowd.

“Git outa my way, greenie!” roared the angry Earthman, and gave Otho a cuff that sent him spinning aside.

The fierce-natured android’s body tensed for a spring at the other. Then he realized that for a Jovian to attack an Earthman would cause a riot and give him away.

“I did not mean to bump you, Earthman,” Otho said humbly, in the Jovian language.

“Why don’t you greenies stay out in your jungles and keep out of this colony?” the prospector demanded roughly, and then moved on.

Otho had noticed that three Jovians stood at the side of the street, and that they had been watching the incident. In a flash, the android saw how he could make capital of it.

He moved over to the three squat planetary natives, and spoke to them in a voice whose slurred bass tones he kept throbbing with resentment.

“I am only trying to find the way out of here,” Otho told them, “yet these Earthmen will not even allow me to walk freely through the city.”

The Jovians looked at him. One of them was a very large individual, with strong intelligence in the stamp of his unhuman green face and his dark, round eyes.

“Are you a stranger in this country?” he asked Otho. “I have never seen you in our northern villages.”

“I am not from the north,” Otho answered quickly. “I come from a village which lies far east of here in the jungle. My name is Zhil.”

“And I am Guro, chief of my people,” the big Jovian told Otho, pride in his deep, bass tones.

At that moment there was an interruption to their talk. Out of a doorway farther down the street burst another Earthman who had suddenly fallen victim to the dreaded blight.

“Atavism!” went up the familiar, dreaded cry from scores of voices. “Call the police!”

“Keep away from him or you’ll catch it!” yelled others in horror.

IN VERY few moments, a rocket-car had come and the growling, frothing Earthman had been overcome and taken away. And, as Otho had noticed before, the throng in the street hastened fearfully away from the place as though hoping to escape possible contagion.

“The curse of the Ancients spread fast,” said Guro solemnly to his two Jovian companions and Otho.

“Yes, the time grows near,” one of the other two green natives declared.

Otho felt a dawning surprise. What did they mean by the curse of the Ancients?

He knew that the Jovians believed the mighty, mysterious ruins in the jungle had once been the cities of a race of demigods they called the Ancients. But what had that legend to do with this avatism terror?

Otho decided upon a bold attempt. He had to find out what these Jovians knew about the Space Emperor, and for that reason he risked exposure by his next words.

“Our dark leader told us the truth,” Otho said solemnly, looking at the others.

Guro’s round eyes expressed surprise.

“Then you of the eastern villages have seen and heard the Living Ancient also? He has appeared to you as he has to us?”

The Living Ancient? So that was what the Jovians called the Space Emperor? Otho wondered what the name could mean.

“Yes, he has appeared to us,” he told Guro. “He brought his message to us also.”

That could cover almost anything, Otho thought. Yet he was puzzled over the calling of the Space Emperor the
living
Ancient. Was it possible their enemy was a Jovian?

“Then you will also be ready to rise and sweep away the Earthmen when the Living Ancient gives the word?” Guro asked.

So his guess had been right! Otho almost gave himself away by a slight start of surprise which he could not wholly suppress.

A rising of the Jovians against the Earthmen? Was that the mainspring of the mysterious Space Emperor’s gigantic plot? But how could such an attack of the natives hope to succeed? Their weapons were very primitive. And how was the spread of the atavism terror connected with it?

The thoughts flashed swiftly through the android’s mind in a moment. But he did not hesitate in answering Guro.

“Yes, we too are ready when the word comes,” he told Guro fervently.

“Good!” muttered the big Jovian. “And the word will come soon. The wrath of the mighty Ancients grows ever greater against the Earthmen, making more and more of them into brute beasts. Soon the Living Ancient will give us the word.”

Otho thought quickly, and then spoke in the same fervent tones.

“I was to bring word to the Living Ancient of our preparations,” he told Guro. “He commanded us to send such word when we were ready. But I do not know where to find our mighty leader.”

“The Living Ancient is to appear to us tomorrow night in a spot near my own village,” Guro told him in a bass whisper. “That spot is the Place of the Dead.”

“I know that,” lied Otho. “But how shall I hope to find it, when I do not know the land here in the north?” Otho asked doubtfully. “I have never been this far toward the Fire Sea before.”

Guro reassured him.

“You will have no trouble finding it, for we shall take you there ourselves. We are returning northward now, and you can come with us. Two nights hence you can go with us to the Place of the Dead, and deliver your message to our leader when he appears.”

OTHO thanked him quickly. It was apparent that Guro and the other two Jovians had completely accepted him.

“We leave now,” Guro told him. “The mission that brought us here is finished. Our lopers wait in the jungle beyond this city.”

Otho shuffled with the three Jovians, following Otho’s lead through the rowdy, noisy streets of the interplanetary colonial city. They were not molested, and presently they were out of the metalloy streets of Jovopolis, and moving along the road that led between the great grain fields of the Earthmen.

The android’s mind was racing. He must notify Curt Newton of what he had learned and where he was going. But though he had his pocket televisor concealed inside his leather harness, he dared not try to use it while Guro and the others were so close to him.

The three Jovians and the disguised android shuffled on along the road between the mingled brilliance of the two moons now in the sky. Soon they reached the end of the grain fields, and entered the moon-drenched jungle whose wilderness stretched unbroken toward the Fire Sea.

Just inside the jungle waited another Jovian, with four “lopers,” as the Jovians called their queer steeds. The lopers were large, lizardlike creatures, with scaled, barreled bodies supported by four bowed legs that gave them incredible speed. Their necks were long and snaky, ending in reptilian heads from whose fangless mouths ran the leather reins by which the rider controlled his mount.

“We need your loper for this stranger. You will stay here until we send back another,” Guro told the Jovian who had waited with the animals. Then he told Otho, “Mount, Zhil.”

Otho had never ridden one of the lizardlike creatures before, but the android, afraid neither of man nor devil, swung up unhesitatingly into the rude leather saddle.

The creature turned and hissed angrily at him, its small eyes flaring red. Otho saw the other Jovians kick their mounts to quiet them, and he did the same. The creature calmed down.

“Now, northward!” Guro called in his deep bass voice, and uttered a loud cry to their mounts.

Next moment, Otho was clinging for his life. It was as though the creature had exploded forward.

All four of the lopers were rushing at a nightmare pace along a dim trail through the moonlit jungle. Their speed was incredible, yet the motion was so gliding that Otho soon adjusted himself to it.

Guro and the other Jovians were riding around him. There was still no chance to call Captain Future on the pocket televisor, so the android gave up the idea for the time.

“It is a long ride,” Guro called to him over the rush of wind, “but we shall be with my people by tomorrow night, and you will go with us to the Place of the Dead.”

“I am eager to see the Living Ancient again,” Otho called back, and reflected that he was not lying about that.

The moonlit jungle through which they rode along narrow, dim trails was dense and wild. Huge tree-ferns reared their glossy pillared trunks nearly a hundred feet. Big stiff brush-trees towered almost as high. Slender “copper trees” whose fibers contained a high copper content gleamed metallically in the light of the moons.