Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) Read online

“I’ll bet you’re afraid of the police,” snarled Otho. “Afraid of the little boys of the junior space-scouts, too, even the babies in the orphanage! I came around here looking for life, tough specimens, real live bars, and I find sissies!”

  “You’ll find a lump on your head,” threatened the Jovian.

  Otho swung around to face him, still rocking on his feet as if unsteady.

  “Oh, oh, what a big brave hero!” he taunted. “Loud-mouthing it, with all his gang of gunmen around him! I could deflate you down to an asteroid-dwarf in about six seconds if I wanted.”

  The Jovian clenched a fist and darted it. Otho appeared to stumble just then, out of its way. He chuckled thickly.

  “Let’s grab him,” said the brute-faced Earthman, and three of them advanced toward Otho. But the Jovian lifted a huge muscular hand.

  “Wait! This space-tramp is saying things to me that I’ll take from nobody! He thinks I need a gang of helpers, does he?” Out darted a long arm, throwing open a door. “Come into the back room, you! I’ll hammer a little sense into that drink-drenched head of yours!”

  “Drink, did you say? Sure!” And Otho lurched into the room beyond. The Jovian followed, closed the door and turned a key. He faced Otho again.

  “Now —” he began, and scowled.

  The drunken stranger was suddenly sure of himself, standing lightly and springily on his feet, fists lifted and ready for action. But the Jovian was twice Otho’s size. He thrust out his own left arm, long and muscle-knobbed. He had several inches the reach of this boaster, and was almost twice as big.

  “All right, let’s start this battle!” he growled, and moved in, jabbing.

  But Otho’s head whipped back. Otho’s elastic neck momentarily lengthened and writhed. The fist darted past, and Otho’s arm, equally elastic, shot out and seemed to grow about six inches. The Jovian growled as Otho’s knuckles barked his chin.

  “Owww!” yelled Otho, as if he had felt the punch, and from outside came a laugh.

  “Give it to him,” called one of the men in the bar. “You’d better grind him to meal, because if you don’t, we will.”

  “Don’t worry!” bawled the Jovian, and advanced again.

  BUT again Otho hit him. The Jovian blinked and snarled. How did this strange customer manage to outreach him. And Otho emitted another cry, as of pain.

  More applause from outside, where the Jovian’s friends apparently foresaw the pulverization of Otho; and the huge green man, throwing all caution to the winds, rushed and grappled.

  It was like grappling a dragon-eel of the Venusian marshes. The mighty Jovian arms clamped around Otho’s middle, which readily yielded to them, shrinking and writhing. Otho’s legs grew long and snaky, twining in turn around his enemy’s middle.

  Otho’s sharp elbow drove under the spadelike chin, bruising the throat and driving the head back. Otho’s long, lightning fingers were everywhere at once, gouging, twisting, probing nerve centers.

  The giant let go — he had to — and Otho, rallying his android sinews, put all he had into a roundabout smashing swing, not greatly inferior in power to Captain Future’s own prize punch. It smacked the point of the great green jaw, and the Jovian went down, cold and senseless, to quiver on the floor.

  At once Otho whipped out his pocket transmitter.

  “Ezra Gurney!” he called softly into it. “Drop down carefully, now — outside the window where I’m sending you a beam.”

  He waited seconds, watching from the window. Gingerly the Comet lowered itself into view. A hatchway opened, and Ezra peered out.

  “Quiet!” warned Otho. “Reach out, help me drag this man into the ship!”

  They hustled the unconscious Jovian in.

  “Strip him,” commanded Otho. “I want his clothes. Quick! And leave me in my own quarters.”

  He pulled a variety of strange objects from lockers — make-up pigments, padding, a pair of boots with lifts that would give him height to approximate that of the giant he had felled. His hands, outdoing their own bewildering swiftness, rubbed chemical oil into his features, molding and altering.

  Otho’s clear-cut profile vanished under cunning self-sculpture, took on the aspect of the stunned Jovian. Then a quick, smooth coat of green pigment, padding of body, arms, legs. He hustled himself into the garments taken from the captive.

  “Take that specimen to your most secret cell,” he told Ezra Gurney. “Work on him with everything — arguments, truth-rays, everything. He’ll talk. He must talk. He’s one of the subordinate rats that threaten us.”

  “But you and Joan,” protested the marshal. “Are you going to be safe?”

  Otho shook his disguised head.

  “When are the Futuremen ever safe? When did they ever try to be safe? Holy sun-imps, man, we’re fighting to get our Moon back!”

  He turned his back on Ezra’s mystification and sprang through the window again. The men outside the door were pounding and yelling.

  Slumping and puffing as though in semiconscious agony, Otho opened the door. “He — that stranger-beat me almost to death!” he moaned.

  “So?” taunted a silky voice he remembered. N’Rala came into the room among the unsavory wastrels who held Joan a prisoner. “I’m glad I came back. It’s easy, from what the others tell me, to guess what happened. While your friends were taking every precaution to secure this aide of Captain Future — Joan Randall — you let Otho, in one of his disguises, make a sorry fool out of you!”

  “It couldn’t be,” mumbled Otho. “He had hair and looked entirely different.”

  “Otho is the greatest disguise artist of all the worlds,” snapped N’Rala, her beautiful eyes flashing. “He fooled you, beat you, and escaped. Thank the gods of space I returned. Ul Quorn is going on, but I return to advance headquarters with reports, and I’ll take this prisoner and you, too. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Otho congratulated himself on not staring, gasping, or asking what strange cosmic freak had brought back Ul Quorn as an adversary. There was much he could not understand, but one thing was clear — he would be taken to the very root of the mystery, as one of the conspirators in disgrace.

  “Go, one of you, to the life-rocket,” ordered N’Rala. “Bring the dimension-shifting apparatus. We’ll modify it to take a larger craft over.”

  Otho faced Joan. She was bound and guarded. He attempted to cheer her by a stealthy wink, but she drew herself up, glaring at him contemptuously.

  She mistook him for the Jovian who had gone into the room with Otho and locked the door. Again Otho fore-bore to show by his face the thoughts in his head. But he accepted Joan’s contempt as the greatest compliment his power of disguise had ever received.

  Chapter 7: Luna Gone Crazy

  EEK ate his way through the bonds of Grag first. Then he attacked the swaddling of Simon Wright’s brain-cage while Grag’s huge finger fumbled and pulled at the metal cordage that bound Captain Future.

  “No knots,” reported Grag dolefully. “It’s all stuck together, with some quick-setting solder or flux. Here, Eek, have you set the Brain free? Then eat a third helping!”

  He held his pet to the strands that crossed over Captain Future’s broad chest. Eating more slowly, for he was almost satisfied, Eek finally gnawed Captain Future to freedom.

  “Now what?” demanded Grag, as Captain Future stretched and flexed his freed muscles. “Eek’s too full to nibble a way out through the bulkheads, even if he hadn’t had it drummed into him that he must never make a meal off of our furniture, tools or habitations. And the door” — Grag caught the handle and shook it experimentally — “I might be able to smash it, but that would bring them all around us.”

  “We ought to get just one or two of them in here,” said Curt with a nod. “If we could conquer them separately, that’d help a lot.”

  “Hsst!” warned Simon Wright, hovering near the traplike window through which Eek had been dropped. “Already you’ve made a little too much commotion. I hear
steps coming along the corridor.”

  At Captain Future’s gesture, Grag drew himself up against the metal partition at one side of the door, while Future took the opposite side. They heard the lock-tumblers falling, the door opened, and one of the pallid guards peered in.

  Like a flash Grag’s hand caught him around the throat, stilling at once his attempt to cry out. Lifting the creature by the scruff, as he would have handled a kitten, Grag whirled the body around his great round head as if to dash it to the floor.

  “Don’t kill him, Grag,” said Curt quickly. He pushed the unlocked door shut while Grag lowered his captive. Curt eyed the captive.

  “If you speak above a whisper, or even then without our permission, this robot will squash you to pulp. Understand?”

  Gasping wretchedly for breath, the pale man made a gesture that he understood.

  “Give him air, Grag,” ordered Captain Future. His own hand seized the misshapen shoulder of the prisoner, drawing him close.

  “Now, answer truthfully — don’t stop to think of any lies. Who else guards out in the corridor?”

  “Two more,” chirruped the pale man shakily.

  “Armed?”

  “Like me.” A three-fingered paw lowered toward a belt of weapons.

  “Hold it.” Captain Future rapidly unbuckled the girdle and whipped it away around his own waist. “Now, what about the floor above? The way to the open?”

  “Several there,” was the reply. “No guards, though. They’re waiting for a report back from Ul Quorn and his party, that went into the Strange Dimension to prepare.”

  “Strange Dimension?” echoed Grag. “Where you came from?”

  The grotesque head shook.

  “No. Where you came from.”

  “Of course, it’s the Strange Dimension to them,” offered the Brain, hovering near. “What now, lad?”

  “Bind and gag this one.” Curt thrust a wad of the flexible metal cordage into the prisoner’s mouth. Grag helped bind the bony wrists and ankles with other lengths. Meanwhile, Simon Wright floated to the door, nudged it open a crack, and thrust forth an eye-stalk.

  “Now’s the time,” he reported softly. “Two guards, but they’re talking, not paying attention. If we could get at them before they were aware, we might manage it.”

  Captain Future made one of his swifter-than-light decisions, and transferred it to action almost as swift. In the space between two of Simon Wright’s words he had flung open the door, hurled himself down the corridor in three gigantic leaps. As the amazed guards spun to stare, he was upon them, his arms shooting out to clutch.

  One arm closed around the neck of each, throttling as Grag had throttled. Like pythons the muscles of Captain Future constricted, squeezed, choked. The two guards he had seized were armed, but instinct was too strong. Their hands went, not to their weapon-belts, but up in a futile tearing effort to relax that grip.

  Simon Wright came into view on his traction-beams, then Grag lumbered forth.

  SETTING his jaw, Captain Future rallied all of the strength of his peerless body and poured it into the double strangle hold. The body of one guard, then the other, went limp and flaccid. When he relaxed his arms, they fell across each other, unconscious.

  “Are these the creatures that want to conquer the Solar System,” came the metallic growl of the contemptuous Grag. “Any fairly strong man can conquer one. You Chief, handled those two like babies — and I would fight an arena full.”

  “Something tells me that they’re only the underlings,” said Simon Wright, resting his crystal case on Grag’s great cliff of a shoulder.

  “That’s my reaction,” nodded Curt, kneeling to strip his victims of their weapons. “Ul Quorn has respect and fear for some sort of high command, that certainly must be of a higher order than these little walking fungi. Never underestimate the enemy, Grag. Though I wish it was a matter of a simple fight between you and a squadron of such specimens. I’d pick you to win.”

  “Thanks,” muttered Grag, whose greatest pride was his strength, and whose one hero was Captain Future. “Now, shall we go to the laboratories?”

  “No,” said Captain Future. He slung his two beltfuls of weapons over his shoulders. “We’ll try to get along on what arms we’ve taken from the enemy, because our workshops will naturally be thronged with observers and guards. What I want is to get into the open. Remember what our first captive said — Ul Quorn has visited our system, and is expected back. I’d like to be a sort of surprise welcoming committee.”

  “The way out is down,” said Simon Wright, in the manner of one making a pleasant epigram.

  Captain Future smiled, and Grag emitted a steely chuckle. They knew what Simon Wright meant. Long ago, in preparation for just a dire emergency, the Futuremen had prepared a secret exit to their stronghold, a sealed and hidden passage that led into an underground tunnel in the lava rock of the Moon. The entrance was but a single turn distant in the corridor.

  With the Brain reconnoitering ahead, they came to the place — seemingly a smooth, solid expanse of bulkhead. But Captain Future had long ago treated this metal with a process that, though intricate and expensive, was relatively simple. A ray action would so modify the speed and action of the metal molecules as to make this bulkhead as penetrable as a wreath of mist. He felt along a juncture of plates for the concealed stud, found and pressed it.

  “I’ll go first,” announced Grag, and walked forward. He bumped into solidity, reeled back and lost his balance, falling with a resounding crash, as of an unwieldy spaceship being landed on a rickety stage by a drunken space-pilot.

  “Quiet!” cried Captain Future, just too late.

  “The ray must be jammed,” said Simon Wright, hovering against the plating that should have gone penetrable as mist.

  Grag struggled to his great boatlike feet.

  “Say, we forgot to bring Eek,” he said, “though maybe he’d better stay here, hiding in the corners, till we can —”

  From somewhere little pale gnomes were running, bunching for a charge, drawing weapons.

  “Halt!” twittered one at them. “I say, halt!”

  “Gas for the man,” said another gnome quickly. “For the robot — paralysis by magnetic beam!”

  Captain Future charged the bunch. His only hope, he had decided on the instant, was to confuse and panic them.

  “Come on, Grag!” he bellowed as he sprang among the enemy. “Use those big iron fists of yours!”

  His own fist struck a gaping fungoid face. The flying body of the pale thing struck a companion, tripping him. Captain Future’s other hand drew a captured weapon from his belt — what weapon it was, he did not know, but it was in pistol-form. He pointed its muzzle where the enemies were thickest, pressed the trigger switch.

  There was intense light, and a mighty howl of agony. The gnomelike figures writhed and fell as if overcome by pain. One, who was clear of the beam, grappled his arm and bit the wrist. More surprised than hurt, Captain Future dropped the weapon, and the light went out.

  “Help me,” gurgled the gnome who had closed with him. “It’s dark again.”

  EVEN as Captain Future tore his assailant away, like a leech, he guessed the answer. The weapon had been a bright light, no more. Light was painful, even injurious, to these creatures who must live in the dimness — their absence of color, their great dark eyes, showed that.

  More light glowed. Simon Wright’s crystal case swam through the upper air of the corridor. It gave off radiance that dazzled Captain Future and sent the would-be captors into a groveling, wailing mass.

  “I shorted my ray-mechanism,” explained Simon Wright’s resonator. “It’s not good for my motors, so hurry. Grag’s found a way through.”

  “That was why Grag didn’t come to help me,” growled Future, turning and running toward a dark oblong that now showed in the bulkhead.

  The Brain’s light went off, and the crystal case floated after Captain Future into the rocky tunnel beyond. Up ahead in th
e almost complete darkness moved the vast shadowy bulk of Grag. They negotiated the secret exit quickly. At one point, the deepest in the passage, Curt’s quick ear caught a rhythmic hub-hub-hub of a throbbing machine, a vast and complicated and busy machine. Since the Moon was vastly changed in a natural way, had artificial changes been made, too? If not, what made that strange rhythm?

  Then he caught up with Grag.

  “One of those trees or fungi seems rooted in our doorway,” said the robot. “But I can tear it up!”

  He fell silent, pouring all his mighty metallic vigor into an effort. The growth collapsed and they were out into the dim twilight.

  Captain Future led his companions among the fleshy pale growths, turning this way and that to confuse possible pursuers. At last he dropped down behind some boulders over which grew dense, fat-looking shrubbery.

  “Rest here,” he commanded, “but keep your ears and eyes alert for any party that follows. Congratulations, Grag! Apparently the modification-power that affects this satellite played tricks with our ray. But how did you get it to working?”

  “I didn’t,” said Grag, sagely nodding his huge ball of a head. “But where your buttons and other devices were set at the edge of the panel — remember? — was a little soft plastic to hold them. I ripped that out, it left a slot where I could get my fingers in, and” — a gesture of the great metal beam that was his arm — “I tore the whole section out by the roots.”

  “You do have sense, Grag,” applauded the Brain, settling down beside him. “Sense to know how to use those metal muscles of yours.”

  “Tell that to Otho,” said Grag. “Otho! I miss him. Where is he, do you suppose?”

  “Waiting for us to rejoin him, and thinking kindly of you,” replied Curt. “With our dimension-shift machine gone, we’ll have trouble seeing him again.”

  “At least we’re on the surface of the Moon,” observed Grag.

  “Yes, on the surface of Luna,” agreed the Brain. “Luna gone crazy! Now which way do we go in this jungle?”