Captain Future 12 - Planets in Peril (Fall 1942) (18 page)

Some minutes later, he advanced gently through the snow, until he was stopped by a solid rock wall. But this was not the rough natural rock side of the bed. This wall was of seamless synthetic black stone.

"The foundation wall of the citadel!" he muttered. "Unlimber those tools, Otho. Here's where we get to work."

Curt cleared out a small cavity in the snow to give them room for labor. In this little burrow in the deep snow, entirely unsuspected by the hordes of Cold Ones so close by, the five comrades began work.

Using the smothered flash, of a hand-torch for illumination, Curt Newton attacked the wall with the flame of a compact atomic blaster. The dazzling little white flame cut easily into the black synthestone. Curt's purpose was to cut out a four-foot circle.

"Once through this wall, and we should find ourselves in the lowest levels beneath the palace," he said as he worked. "There shouldn't be many Cold Ones about down there. We'll have to take the chance."

"Maybe their dungeons are down there," Grag grunted pessimistically. "For all we know, we're just breaking into jail."

Then —

"We're through!" Curt exclaimed a moment later. "The wall wasn't nearly as thick as I expected."

He had cut a round hole completely out of the synthestone wall, which appeared to be only moderate in thickness. With his hand-torch in one hand and his proton pistol in the other, Captain Future tautly scrambled through the opening.

He flashed the torch's little beam around, ready for instant action in case they had run into a nest of Cold Ones. But there was nothing to be seen except another stone wall that exactly paralleled the outer one. There was a space of three feet between the two walls, and Curt was standing in that dark space.

"I get it now!” he said. "This explains why the wall wasn't so thick — it was only the outer half of a
double
wall! They used this construction to combine structural strength with economy of materials."

"So now we have to cut through another wall," grunted Grag.

"No, we're not going to cut through the inner wall yet," Curt said excitedly. "We'll stay inside the wall and explore as much as possible of the citadel, without detection. Bring the tools, Otho."

They were soon all inside the double wall of the great building. Curt and his little band started exploringly along the narrow space.

Gerdek's whisper was heavy with dread.

"Is there really any chance that we can locate the secret records this way? I feel somehow that we are being drawn deeper into a horrible trap."

Captain Future himself could not help feeling that oppressive emotion, as he led the way in indomitable search through the secret ways of this massive fortress, unquestionably the most dreaded spot of a universe.

CURT turned presently and spoke to Otho. He had to press close to the android to be heard, for they had cautiously turned down the range of the interphones embodied in their space-suits.

"Hand me that drill, Otho. I'm going to see what's inside the wall here."

He took the slender atomic drill and applied it to the inner wall. It began biting into the black synthestone.

"Probably there's a Cold One sitting right on the other side of that wall," Grag predicted pessimistically.

The long, thin drill had soon penetrated completely through the inner wall, which was of less thickness than the outer. Captain Future withdrew the drill and peered through the small aperture.

He saw nothing but a black space. Venturing to flash a tiny beam from his torch through the hole, he descried a musty storeroom.

"What do you see, Kaffr?" asked Lacq tensely.

"Nothing worth investigating," Curt replied. "We're too deep down in the citadel. Everything important would be in the upper levels."

"We could climb by means of those trusses between the walls," Otho proposed.

The inner and outer walls, for greater structural strength, were joined at regular intervals by integral trusses of synthestone. Though several feet apart, they formed a possible ladder up inside the walls.

"Come on — we're going up," Curt declared.

He slung the drill over his back by a strap and proceeded to climb up onto the trusses.

Grag muttered his dislike of the whole proceeding as they clambered up after him. Captain Future's hand torch lit the way. They went upward between the walls, cramped by the narrow space, until Curt judged they were level with the main ground floor of the great palace.

He proceeded to bore another hole through the inner wall. When he withdrew the atomic drill, a ray of white light came through the aperture.

"Quiet, all — there's a lighted room on the other side of this section," Captain Future cautioned.

He applied his eye to the,opening. The others saw his space-suited figure stiffen as he looked.

Curt was peering through the little loophole into a startling scene whose meaning and importance he instantly recognized.

"The throne room or audience chamber of the Cold Ones is on the other side of this wall!" he whispered. "For God's sake, don't move —"

He was looking into an oblong hall of great size. It was lighted by flaring radioactive bulbs, but its somber black walls rose into the shadows. In this hall stood scores of the hideous Cold Ones. The osseous white semi-human creatures were ranged in formal rows, like a nightmare assemblage of ghastly skeletal apparitions.

These creatures were facing a dais at the far end of the hall. Upon that dais in a black stone throne sat a Cold One. The mutant-man's bony body was incongruously hung with jeweled ornaments. Around his fleshless neck he wore a wonderful collar of blazing white gems. His skull-like face and unwinking eyes seemed to be staring straight at Curt Newton. The creature on the throne, Curt knew, could only be the ruler Mwwr.

The Cold One ruler was actually staring at a space-suited man who stood before his throne. That man's pale hair and strong, firm face were recognizable through his glassite helmet. It was Vostol.

"Kaffr, what's going on?" Lacq was asking in an urgent whisper.

"Vostol is apparently conferring with the Cold One king about the treaty," muttered Curt.

No one in that dusky throne room was speaking, he saw. The conference in there was being conducted in an uncanny silence.

For the Cold Ones could not speak. They used telepathic conversation exclusively. Captain Future had not a doubt that it was telepathically that Vostol and the hideous Mwwr were now conferring.

AS CURT watched tensely, Mwwr rose to his feet. The Cold One ruler and Vostol advanced to a table near the throne.

Mwwr gestured with his fleshless arm toward a document of metal-foil sheets upon the table.

"Good heavens, Vostol is going to sign the treaty
now!"
Captain Future exclaimed.

"We've got to stop him from doing that!" Gerdek whispered agonizedly. "You know what it means!"

Curt did know with dreadful clarity what the signing of the treaty would mean. Vostol would return at once to distant Bebemos. By the terms of the treaty, the Tarast people would be obligated immediately to submit themselves to the sterilization which would seal the doom of their race.

He must stop this somehow, Captain Future knew. Desperate, he raised his proton pistol. If he killed Mwwr, it would at least delay the conclusion of the treaty. But it would mean that the five adventurers would soon be captured. Then all hope of securing the lost secret of Zuur would be gone.

Curt had a better idea. He turned up the power of his space-suit interphone, so that it would transmit to a greater distance than the few feet to which he had restricted it. And he spoke in a sharp whisper.

"Vostol!" he whispered urgently. "Vostol, can you hear me?"

He saw Vostol turn startledly in the great hall. His voice was now reaching the Tarast envoy, whose own space-suit had the universal interphone.

"You must not sign that treaty, Vostol!" Captain Future was saying tautly. "Help is at hand — there is a chance that we can save the future of the Tarast race. You must delay, stall for time —"

"Chief, won't the Cold Ones in there hear you?" Grag muttered in alarm.

"How can they, when none of them has helmets or interphones or even ears to hear with?" said Otho excitedly.

There came to them upon the interphone a hoarse, startled whisper from Vostol.

"Who is speaking to me?"

"We're friends — right here in the citadel wall," Captain Future answered tensely. "You must do as we say and make some excuse for not signing. We are after a secret that will make the treaty unnecessary."

Mwwr was glaring at the startled, irresolute Vostol as though made impatient by this delay. The Cold One ruler glanced toward two of his fleshless officers. The two left the hall.

Was Mwwr going to bring pressure on Vostol to make him sign? The Tarast envoy still seemed bewildered. Mwwr was now pointing toward the metal-foil document on the table, in an angry gesture.

"But who
is
it that's speaking?" Vostol's whisper demanded again.

Curt hesitated. If he answered that it was Kaffr, he would turn Vostol against him at once. The Tarast firmly considered him a fake.

The decision was abruptly taken from his hands. Bright lights flashed inside this cramped space in the wall. Otho yelled a warning.

"Chief, the Cold Ones are coming into the wall! There below us —"

Things happened with explosive rapidity. Dozens of armed Cold One soldiers had poured into the space between walls by some door. Now they were clambering up the trusses all around Curt's little band.

"We're trapped!" Gerdek's thin cry sounded. "They're all around us!"

The Cold Ones were closing in upon them. The osseous creatures carried metal chains and were obviously under orders to capture rather than kill, for they did not use their atom-shell weapons.

CAPTAIN FUTURE and his comrades were so jammed together in the narrow space that they could not use their own weapons without hitting each other. In an instant the Cold Ones were all around them, grasping them with fleshless hands and seeking to fling the chains around them.

A cramped, furious fight ensued. Struggling, wrestling, falling from truss to truss until they were at the bottom of the wall, Curt and his band resisted the horde of attackers. Grag did the most execution, even hampered as his great body was by the narrow space. His metal fists smashed open bony skulls, exposing queer cartilaginous brains.

Curt Newton's pistol butt hammered a devil's tattoo on other hideous skull-faces. But this battle of the trapped adventurers could have but one conclusion. The horde of osseous attackers bore them down, bound their arms to their bodies with the light, tough chains. Then they were hauled roughly along the narrow space to a door in the inner wall.

"Chief, are you all right?" Otho was asking anxiously. "How the devil did they know we were inside the wall, anyway?"

Lacq answered that.

"Mwwr was concentrating on reading Vostol's thoughts, as the two conferred telepathically. When Vostol whispered to us on his interphone, Mwwr would catch Vostol's
thought."

"Of course! What a fool I was not to realize that," Captain Future accused himself bitterly.

They were being hauled through the door into a gloomy corridor. Their captors immediately forced them along this toward the big throne room. As the five bound captives were dragged in front of Mwwr's throne, Vostol recognized them and uttered an incredulous exclamation.

"The false Kaffr and his friends!" he exclaimed. "But you were supposed by now to be among the Unbodied, back in Bebemos!”

Mwwr was glaring down at them with his unwinking, expressionless eyes. That the Cold One ruler read Vostol's thoughts was apparent from the gesture of rage he made. Mwwr "spoke" telepathically — projecting a powerful thought which Curt and all of them were able to receive also.

"So these strangers who dared enter our palace are your friends, are they?" the hideous ruler charged.

Vostol's urgent telepathic reply was also clear to the captives.

"No, they're not my friends!" Vostol was denying. "I know nothing of how they came here or why they came."

"You are lying!” came Mwwr's furious thought. "It is all clear to me now. The Tarasts sent you to negotiate the treaty, merely to play for time while their secret emissaries came here with a deadly purpose. You are all in this plot together."

Vostol frantically denied this, but the enemy monarch had turned his attention toward Captain Future.

"I was able to intercept your utterances from inside the wall by telepathic concentration," Mwwr informed him. "You spoke of a secret you were seeking. What secret are you looking for here?"

Curt Newton coolly returned the ruler's unwinking glare.

"That's something you'll never know," he retorted with a clear thought.

"I feel sure that I already know," Mwwr returned ominously. "But I intend to find out how
you
learned of the existence of that secret. You are going to tell me everything you have learned."