Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) (14 page)

SOFTLY Otho spoke, out of the quiet and the dark.

“Are you all here?” he asked. “If so, where is here?”

“I don’t know about you,” came Simon Wright’s rasp. “I’m shut in a box — heavy, massive, sealed with a ray-lock. It’s dark inside.”

“And dark outside,” boomed Grag from another direction. “I’m helpless, too — hands and feet all magnetized together by a sort of electro-shackle.”

“They were unoriginal with me,” added Joan Randall. “Just yards and yards of those metal tendrils. What about you, Otho?”

“More of the same, with several strands run through a ring or staple in this corner. But how did we get here? The last I remember is the capture on Luna, and being shoved into a kind of coffin-like case.”

“Wait,” broke in Joan. “Curt didn’t speak. Curt, where are you?”

No answer.

“Curt! They got you, too! What have they done with you?” Joan’s voice trembled.

“Steady,” urged Simon Wright. “As Otho says, they pushed us into that cabinet, that must have been a dimension-shift. But before that, Ul Quorn took Curt away. If they saved us alive, they must have done the same for him. But, as Otho asks, where in Dimension X, or Dimension Y, or all the dimensions, are we?”

Otho stretched himself cautiously. He lay full length on a hard floor, swaddled in bonds which went loose as his hyperelastic android tissues elongated themselves. He felt sudden hope, but did not speak of it.

“If Captain Future was here, he’d set us free,” said Otho. “All but Grag. Maybe we can leave you behind when we go home.”

“If I wasn’t magnetized here,” grumbled Grag, “I’d do your legs in a braid, you sneering mockery of normal existence!”

“Save the fighting for Ul Quorn, who got us into this,” broke in Joan Randall.

Came a sound of bumping. Simon Wright was experimentally poking inside his box prison.

“Not a hairline of opening,” he said. “If I had to breathe, I’d smother in here.”

“They didn’t put Joan in a box,” reminded Grag. “That means we’re being saved alive. Otherwise they’d be killing us now.”

“Right, Grag!” applauded Simon. “Even Otho will admit that.”

Otho admitted nothing. Silently he strove to escape.

The metal bonds that held him were treated so as to adhere wherever they touched. In one place they stuck to his throat, in another to his naked left wrist.

Elsewhere they clung tightly to his flying suit. It fitted snugly — Otho was justly vain of his trim, supple figure. Yet he had hopes.

Silently he contracted his artificial lungs, relaxed his synthetic muscles and tendons. He went a trifle loose inside his garments. The light shoes twitched as his feet, elongating, wriggled clear. The shoes dropped off. Otho began to squirm out of his flying suit, like a snake shedding its skin.

It was hard, sustained work, even for the supple Otho. He strained and struggled in grim quiet, though Grag was booming more taunts. At last he crouched on the floor, clad only in trunks and socks, beside his wire-festooned outer garments. He was free from the wall staple except for the coils of wire that stuck to his wrist and neck.

“There, you have had a demonstration,” said a hated voice from somewhere. “Will you believe me now when I say that these Futuremen are perhaps more peculiarly dangerous than all the rest of their universe combined?”

“Take the elastic one to our laboratory for dissection,” one of the Pale People made high-pitched response. “Continue to observe the others.”

“Ul Quorn, you spy!” snarled Otho, trying to rise to his feet but prevented by the bonds still sticking to him. His eyes, adaptable like the rest of him, had grown used to the gloom.

He could make out the dim cubicle in which he and his friends were imprisoned. A panel had opened into a blacker side-chamber, and two fungus-wan figures moved toward him, armed and cautious. From behind them came the laugh of Ul Quorn.

“This, Otho, will go far toward clearing me of the disgrace of defeat,” he said. “My allies are only beginning to realize what a slippery hazard you and your comrades can be. Better not resist, Otho.”

ONE word had caught Otho’s ear.

“Defeat!” he cried exultantly. “You defeated — that means that Captain Future got away! Hear that, Joan and the rest of you? He’ll get us out of this!”

One of the Pale People made a deft play with his tendril-weapon, snaring both of Otho’s hands. Another loop tethered Otho’s ankles so that he could barely totter. His captors snipped away the wires that held him to the wall and led him to the doorway. Beyond was a second panel that took him into a narrow corridor. Ul Quorn waited there, a bruise on his delicately handsome chin, but nattily clad in Martian robe and turban, and plainly triumphant.

“Return and watch,” said Ul Quorn to the two Pale People. “You were told off to observe the captives and their strange abilities. At any moment, another escape method may be tried.”

He took the loose ends of Otho’s bonds in his right hand, which also held a proton gun.

“You — won’t really be dissected — yet,” he assured Otho mockingly. “That was said only to stir up your friends, to make them try to escape and so betray their methods and secrets. You’re all hostages just now.”

“Hostages!” echoed Otho, again seizing on a word that revealed Ul Quorn’s situation. “In other words, there’s a real fight on, and not going your way. Captain Future is knocking at your door this instant, and you’ll try to baffle him by threatening to hurt us.”

Ul Quorn’s smile grew wider and more bitter.

“Why deny that your deductions are fairly good? Future, as you say, is knocking at the door. Indeed, he has one foot inside it. But we’ll fight back. He finds us in our stronghold, a very trickbox of weapons, pitfalls, defenses.”

“What next?” demanded Otho.

“New York next, and another hole through the dimensions by which we can bring armies to use the weapons we’ll seize there. Only an hour and a surprise are needed. And the night hours are wonderful for battle — Dimension X men are at their best, and Solar System defenses at their worst.”

Otho stared past Ul Quorn.

On the wall of the corridor was a bracket that held some sort of a mirror. In it Otho saw an image of himself, reduced to only a few inches. But it couldn’t be an image in a mirror. He stood still in his bonds, this little figure moved and was free. It made something like a gesture of greeting, then pointed up corridor. Finally its outlines melted. It turned into Captain Future.

Oog. He was telling Otho that rescue was coming!

Otho tore his eyes from the little mimic. He must keep Ul Quorn’s attention riveted.

“Of course you don’t intend to keep us alive,” he sneered. “If you make a pact with Captain Future, you’ll break it later.”

“Why not? We’re enemies to the knife, and closer. That,” and he snapped the fingers of his free hand, “for any promise to Captain Future. When it pleases me I make, when it pleases me I break.”

“Poetry,” taunted Otho. “Bad poetry. I’ll try a second verse of your jingle. You’ll be smashed, rayed, or shot, and later forgotten.”

“That’s a lie!” blazed Ul Quorn, his vanity wounded. “No matter who wins, all the universes will remember me to the end of time!”

He lifted the hand with the gun and wire-ends and Oog sprang from the bracket behind. His little body, still in the semblance of Captain Future, stuck and clung to Ul Quorn’s wrist, forcing the muzzle away from Otho.

Shrieking a curse, Ul Quorn shook off the little body. But in that moment, Captain Future sprang from behind a corner of the corridor. His fist shot out like the head of a Venusian swamp-cobra. Ul Quorn dropped as limp and still as an empty garment from a hangar.

Quickly Captain Future pried the sticky coils from Otho’s limbs, and used them to tie Ul Quorn’s unconscious body. Otho caught up Oog and hugged him with fierce affection and gratitude.

“The others,” said Otho. “Just inside here.”

CAPTAIN FUTURE nodded.

“I know, I’ve listened,” he answered. “Oog and I slipped this far alone, while the battle goes on at our landing-breach. The corridors are like a labyrinth, but Oog seems to tune in on your mental wave-length.”

“Battle?” Otho was repeating. “Landing-breach?”

“I’ll explain fully when we have time. Suffice it to say that you’ve been held captive near the center of a spaceship almost the size of a satellite. Most of its garrison is giving our gang — a battle near the surface. Twice I almost ran into guards, but Oog warned me twice by turning into a little Dimension X warrior, and I was able to strike first.” Captain Future’s big hand tapped his holstered gun. “Now, let’s free the others.”

From the still silent Ul Quorn he took cloak and turban, offering them to Otho.

“How do you mean?” demanded Otho, staring. “Oh, disguise, and then what?”

“Disguise, and then surprise,” finished Future for him. “You and Ul Quorn were swapping rickety little rhymes, why shouldn’t I? Hurry.”

Otho had neither makeup nor the oil that could make his face plastic, but he grimly modeled his face into a likeness to Ul Quorn and drew the turban low above it. He walked back into the side-room, and peered through the door into the prison cubicle.

The two pale observers stood next to the sealed case that imprisoned the Brain. Their proton-guns were drawn. One chattered in his native tongue at Otho.

“In the language of the Solar System,” Otho commanded harshly, imitating Ul Quorn’s accents. “You know that we must practice constantly.”

“I said, the creature whose Brain lives in a transparent box seems to solve our raylock,” answered the Pale Man. “If he emerges, we will slay him.”

“No,” growled Otho. He walked close. The observer who had spoken drew back a little.

“You are pallid, Ul Quorn. And why do you leave the other captive unguarded? The Overlord does not trust you completely, and neither do we.”

Ul Quorn shot out his arm, inches longer than normal. He pinned the creature’s weapon wrist, whipped the pallid form close to him. His other hand, balling into a knuckly fist, drove for the scrawny jaw. The apelike figure collapsed.

“Captain Future could have done no better,” thought Otho.

“Ul Quorn!” squealed the other. “You are going mad — or traitor to us, as you have been traitor to your own! Stand where you are!”

Captain Future sprang on the speaker, subduing him like a child.

“No cheers,” warned Captain Future. “No celebrations, no congratulations. Just get everybody free — quickly.”

It was done. Two blows with the butt of a pistol smashed the magnet device that held Grag helpless. Joan caught her breath and suppressed a gasp of pain as Otho pried the adhesive coils from her. Simon Wright’s traction beams had already searched out and opened the lock of his cage. The Futuremen stood up at last, free and exultant.

“Now what?” asked Otho.

“Now for the Overlord. You’ll have to perfect your disguise, Otho.”

“Easily done.” Otho had repossessed his garments. “Here in my belt-bag is an adequate makeup kit — oils and pigments.”

“As Ul Quorn, you’ll take me prisoner to the Overlord,” went on Captain Future. “Drag the real Ul Quorn in here, Grag. He’s bound tightly, but gag him. Put him in that box that held Simon, and close it just loosely enough to give him air. Then loop it around with tendrils so he can’t get away.”

“Why not kill him?” demanded Grag bluntly.

“For the same reasons he didn’t kill you,” said Captain Future. “He may be a valuable hostage. Otho, come with me. The rest stay here, Simon in charge. Let nobody in or out.”

They regained the corridor. Otho, in the character of Ul Quorn, carried a pistol and led Captain Future in a deceptive fabric of bonds. “Which way to this Overlord?” asked Otho.

“Oog will show us,” said Captain Future.

“But how?” Otho stooped toward his pet. “How, Oog?”

THE meteor-mimic’s molecules stirred and changed. He stood up as the tiny figure of a supple woman.

“N’Rala!” exclaimed Otho.

“Exactly. She’s close to the Overlord. Oog has some way of leading us to her — thought impulse, scent, vibrations. Which means, to the Overlord. Follow him.”

Oog scampered off along the outer corridor, through a door. There was a guard in a niche beyond, and further along another, but both saluted the apparent Ul Quorn, and neither noticed the tiny guide that stole past. The third guard they met was at a dead end of a corridor. He saluted with a bright new proton-rifle.

“You were ordered to appear?” he asked Otho.

“No, but —”

“You know the procedure, Ul Quorn. One appears before the Overlord only by his order.”

“But,” argued Otho, “I’ve just taken Captain Future prisoner.”

The guard stared, but remained stubborn.

“Only by order. Otherwise —” He gazed down at Oog. “What’s that?”

Oog was mimicking the guard himself. The fellow scowled and brought his weapon to the ready.

“I don’t like this, whatever it is,” he muttered, and aimed.

“No, by the holy sun-imps!” growled Otho. His own proton-pistol leveled and exploded. The guard dropped and lay still.

“Sorry, Chief,” said Otho. “Couldn’t let him kill Oog. But who’ll show us the way now?”

“Oog will.”

Oog had turned again to a tiny N’Rala, and stood facing a seeming blank stretch of wall. Future stepped close, shedding his simulated bonds, and his knuckles tapped the surface.

“Hollow behind. Must be a secret panel. Look for a lever or button.”

But they could find none, not even a hairline crack. Captain Future stooped above the dead guard.

“He has a ray-thrower of some sort.” He detached it from the belt. “Look Otho. It has features of the atom-lock — can make solids penetrable. Let’s see.”

He directed the force against the hollow section of wall. Abruptly a tunnel seemed to come into being, almost clear transparency into a room beyond.

“In,” commanded Captain Future. Otho stepped boldly forward, and Captain Future, holding the ray above and behind him, followed.

“What is this intrusion?” demanded a high, harsh voice.