Captain Future 06 - Star Trail to Glory (Spring 1941) (6 page)

"Are you going to leave me all tied up like this?" he demanded furiously.

Six stooped stiffly and unfastened the end of Otho's flexible metal bonds. Then the two machine men stalked out. The door was locked.

"Remain outside this door on guard, Twenty-two," ordered Six.

Otho rolled over and over until he slipped out of his loosened bonds. Then he leaped to his feet.

"So far, so good," he muttered. "At least I talked them into untying me. Now let's see if there's any way out of this cursed hole."

TEN minutes of inspection showed him there was none. The only exit was the locked door, outside which towered the mechanical guard.

"What a mess!" Otho grumbled. "Locked up in this hole and the
Comet
taken. The chief will skin me alive for this. Who the devil are these freaks, anyway? Where'd they get all those ships?"

He gave up wondering, sat down and ate the food, for Otho's synthetic tissues required nourishment. Though he preferred straight chemical solutions of the needed elements, he could eat ordinary food. He was gloomily gnawing the tough Martian bread when a sliding, rustling sound froze him. He looked up and felt cold at what he saw. A thick white snake with a blunt head was crawling through the barred opening in the door and into his prison cell.

"A Venusian swamp adder!" Otho whispered.

It was one of the most poisonous serpents in the System. Otho looked around for a weapon. There was none. He stood taut as a bowstring, watching the snake slide into the room. The serpent reached the floor and coiled up there. The thick mass of its coils seemed suddenly to run together, to form one solid mass. Then that mass spun in shape. In place of the pseudo-snake was a fat little animal with big, solemn eyes.

"Oog!" Otho gasped — "You little devil! You came sniffing after me, eh, and imitated a swamp adder so you wouldn't be noticed?"

He patted the little meteor-mimic, chuckling. Oog made a purring sound. He seemed content, now that he had found his master. Otho suddenly had an idea.

"Oog, I believe you can help me get out of here!" he breathed.

Otho waited until darkness came. The machine men outside did not seem to require sleep, but darkness would make his break easier. Otho picked up his little pet. He spoke in an emphatic whisper.

"Oog, I want you to be an atom bomb. Remember the atom bombs we used to blast ores out with, on the Moon? Big, black cones, with a switch-fuse on the end of each one? Be one now!"

Oog looked up worriedly. He seemed to understand that a new metamorphosis — was required of him. He made a visible effort. The tissues of his strange body flowed and spun and formed a new shape. He made himself a perfect imitation of Eek.

"No, not that now," Otho whispered hastily. Oog bewilderedly came back to normal. "A bomb, Oog, an imitation of an atom bomb!"

Oog imitated one thing after another, everything he had seen Otho handle in the past. He became a small telescope, a space-sextant, a big flagon of Jovian brandy, a televisor receiver. Then, when Otho was despairing, Oog flowed into an imitation of a conical atom bomb.

"That's it, Oog!" the android said excitedly. "Now hold it!"

Otho went to the door and called through the opening to the machine man on guard outside. The mechanical creature stalked forward. Otho held up his pseudo-bomb menacingly.

"See this?" he hissed. "If you make a sound of alarm, I'll turn its switch. It will blow this whole base off Venus."

The machine man stared. He might not have been influenced by a threat to himself, but this was a threat to ruin the base and plans of his master.

"What do you want me to do?" he hummed after a moment.

"Open this door!" Otho snapped. "Then walk with me to the
Comet.
Pretend I'm still your prisoner, if we meet any others."

The machine man slowly unbarred the door. Otho exultantly stepped out, still threatening with the pseudo-bomb.

"Now head for the
Comet!"
he hissed. "March, you metal skeleton!"

Oog heard Otho say "skeleton." He changed at once from an imitation atom bomb to an imitation skeleton.

INSTANTLY the machine man understood that he had been deceived. With a humming shout he leaped forward at Otho. Otho nimbly eluded the groping girder-arms and with a vicious shove sent the creature clattering to the metal floor.

"You would have to do that, Oog!" he snarled.

He grabbed up the scared pet and burst out of the building into the dusk. He saw the
Comet,
but it was a hundred yards away. Between him and the ship were other machine men, coming to answer the alarm.

"Devils of space, we can't reach the ship now!" Otho groaned. "And we'll be captured again unless we get out of here fast."

He turned and raced to the nearby edge of the floating metal base, the machine men pursuing with humming shouts. Otho dived off the edge of the metal platform. He writhed rapidly into the deepening darkness through the tangled vines and muck of the morass. Not Until he was so far that he could not hear the humming cries did he halt in a clump of fungi.

"I ought to flay you, Oog!" he scolded angrily. Then his spirits rose. "Anyway, we got out of that hole. Now we'll wait till things quiet down and slip back and steal the
Comet.
They can't find us in this marsh."

Hands grabbed Otho in the darkness, cold, webbed hands that held him despite his furious struggles. Manlike shapes had risen around him in the night. They were strange men with greenish-white, seal-like bodies, short, powerful arms and legs ending in webbed hands and feet, and hairless, bulbous heads.

"Marsh men!" Otho gasped. "I'm worse off than before, but I'll give 'em a fight."

It was not necessary to struggle, he found. The marsh men who had so fiercely seized him had suddenly fallen back with low cries of fear. They were staring at Oog. The little meteor-mimic, scared by the attackers, had instantly changed himself into an imitation fungus.

"This is no man!" gabbled one of the marsh men. "It is a demon, a master of magic. He will destroy us all!"

Otho understood, for all indigenous races of Venus spoke the same language. Otho at once saw an opportunity. He figured these marsh men must have been spying on the base, and guessed that they must hate the machine men as they hated all intruders.

"I am a demon, but a good demon," Otho declared loftily. "I have come to help you against the evil metal ones yonder. You wish to be rid of them, do you not?"

"Yes, lord!" exclaimed a marsh man eagerly. "They came scores of days ago and built their floating place. We tried to drive them away, but they had weapons that blasted us and forced us to flee. Can you with your magic disperse them?"

"I can," Otho assured them, "but I will need the help of all your fighting men. Lead me to your village."

The marsh men excitedly started forward through the morass. They did not walk as ordinary men would do, but in a queer stooped fashion on all fours, half-running and half-swimming in the swamp. By thus avoiding the upper tangle of vines and brush, they could make extraordinarily rapid progress. Otho, lithe as he was, had to work hard to keep up with them as they traveled through the nighted morass.

Oog clung to his neck, shivering when he heard distant roars of marsh tigers.

The marsh men led Otho to the shore of a black lake. Domes of plastered mud rose from its surface. The marsh men dived down into the water and vanished. They had entered the domed huts of their amphibious people. Presently hundreds of heads popped up from the water.

The whole population of the village had been summoned and was coming ashore.

OTHO eagerly explained his plan to the primitive, fierce marsh men, after he had reduced them to awe by another of Oog's transformations.

"If all of you will follow me to attack the evil metal ones, we can destroy them all," he promised.

The marsh men hesitated. "Lord, we know you are a very powerful demon, but the metal ones are powerful also," the chief said. "They have weapons that blast fire and destroy us before we can get near them."

"They won't this time," Otho declared. "You will all follow me to their base. Most of you will approach one side of the base and make a fake attack The metal ones will rush to that side to meet you. You'll retreat at once. Meanwhile I and the rest of you will be entering the base from the other side. They'll not be expecting that. I will be able to seize my ship there. It has weapons with which I can blast all the metal ones before they realize what is happening."

The marsh men clustered their seallike heads together for a few minutes, whispering.

Then their leader spoke.

"The plan is good. We will do what you ask."

"Come on, then!" Otho said eagerly. And as the whole party started through the marsh, he muttered: "Oog, you redeemed yourself."

There were two hundred marsh men, the whole fighting strength of their village. Yet they made little sound in traversing the vast, choked swamp. They knew every path and dim trail, and advanced on a wide front in the steamy darkness, each marsh man carrying a spear and stabbing-knife. Otho was enjoying this. The reckless android loved such adventures, and the fact that there was desperate battle ahead added zest.

"Lord, there is a small party of beings close ahead!" a marsh scout came back to report. "They are not men like us."

"Then they must be machine men searching for me," Otho decided swiftly. "Surround them and then jump them!"

Even more silently than before the amphibious fighting men spread out in a big circle.

Then they closed upon the small party they could clearly hear floundering through the black swamp.

"Now!" Otho cried when the machine men were surrounded. "Close in and kill them all!"

CAPTAIN FUTURE'S proton pistol had leaped into his hand as he heard the ominous, swishing sounds in the dark marsh all around them. Grag, Ezra and Joan had halted with him, and the Brain was floating beside him. "Marsh men are surrounding us!" Curt said in a sharp whisper. "Stand ready, all of you. They mean to attack."

"Good," grunted Grag, clenching his great metal fists. "I'd rather fight than wallow on in this muck."

"Maybe I can talk them out of it," Captain Future cautioned. "If I can convince them we're friendly —"

His words were interrupted by a hissing cry from the darkness.

"Now, close in and kill them all!" it ordered.

"Otho!" Curt exclaimed.

"Here they come!" Ezra Gurney yelled.

With fierce, throaty yells, grotesque figures were charging them from every side.

Greenish-white, seal-like figures whose webbed hands held wooden spears and daggers aloft rushed in on Captain Future's little group. Grag seized one of the fierce marsh men in his giant arms. The spear the native stabbed at Grag's breast slid harmlessly off the metal. The giant robot tossed the astounded marsh man bodily into the faces of his charging comrades.

Ezra and Joan had their atom pistols out, leveled to fire.

"Wait, don't shoot!" Captain Future shouted urgently to them. "Otho, call off these maniacs!"

"Imps of the Sun, it's the chief!" rang Otho's cry of amazement. "These are my friends. They are good demons, too. Do not attack them!"

The marsh men recoiled, but Curt Newton could see them still surrounding his party, their spears and daggers raised for action. The amphibious natives were like dark, menacing shadows in the weird jungle-swamp. Otho came splashing through the muck, little Oog clinging to his shoulder.

"Devils of space, I'm glad to see you!" swore Otho. "Chief, I didn't know it was you. I thought it was some of the machine men."

"Machine men?" Curt repeated. "What are you talking about?"

A marsh man was glaring at Grag.

"Look, lord, it is one of the evil metal ones. Shall we kill him?"

"Kill me?" exploded Grag. "Why, you miserable fishy imitations of humanity, I'll —"

"No, these are all friends," Otho interrupted. "The metal one there is not evil. He's just dumb."

"Come on, Otho, what do you have to tell?" Curt demanded.

There was a pause in the dark as Otho hastily narrated his experiences to the others. They listened incredulously.

"Then it's those machine men who've been stealin' the space ships?" Ezra gasped. "Whoever heard of such critters as that?"

"It seems to me," the Brain interjected coolly, "that I remember something about a scientist in the past who constructed such semi-intelligent machines as you describe. I wish I could remember."

"They don't seem to have much individuality," Otho declared. "They seem to be just intelligent enough to carry out orders."

"Whose orders?" Curt Newton muttered. "Who is using these metal things to steal space ships, and why? And what's this mysterious weapon they use, that can penetrate even the ray-proof walls of the
Comet?"
Captain Future straightened sharply. "But we're wasting time here. We've got to attack this base of the machine men without delay, to get the
Comet
back."