Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) (15 page)

Captain Future stared broodingly as he drove the little tear-drop ship into the thin, cold atmosphere of the big moon. He had been here before. And he had sent scores of other men here, for life — interplanetary criminals he had brought to justice, who had been sentenced to the dreaded System penitentiary here.

Now he sent the ship swooping downward in a long glide. He landed the
Comet
on the rock plain a half mile from the prison. Now he and Grag and Otho stepped out of it into the chill wind that sighed and screamed across the moon.

“Remain here, Grag, and guard the
Comet,”
Curt told the robot in a low voice.

“But Otho —” Grag began to object.

CURT cut him off. “I’ll be sending Otho back too. I think, with something to do. But I don’t want the ship unguarded for a minute.”

Curt and Otho set off then toward the massive black stronghold, all having set their gravitation equalizers before emerging.

As he walked, Curt’s eyes searched the rocky plain over which they moved. Presently, as they neared the great gates of the prison he saw what he was looking for an outcrop of soft white rock. He picked up a fragment — it was crumbly nitrate.

“The same kind of rare nitrate as that smear that Doctor Zarro left in Tartarus Observatory,” he muttered.

Then he looked around. The only living things in sight were some of the swift little moon-lizards native to small, hostile Cerberus.

“Otho, I want you catch one of those lizards and take it back to the
Comet
and wait for me,” Captain Future ordered.

“Devils of space; did I come here only for a lizard-hunt?” Otho cried astoundedly. “I don’t understand —”

“You will,” Curt chuckled. “And you won’t find those things easy to catch.”

He left the android to the task, and strode on toward the great gates of Interplanetary Prison.

As he approached the gates, he impinged on an invisible zone of force that set a bell ringing in the guard-tower beside the gate, and flashed brilliant searchlights onto him.

“Stand where you are!” ordered a guard’s voice. “Who are you and what are you doing here? Visitors are forbidden.”

Curt’s tall, lithe figure and tanned, forceful face were bathed in the glare as he calmly held up his left hand.

“Captain Future, to see Rundall Lane, the warden,” he clipped.

“Captain Future?” exclaimed the unseen guard, in a changed voice, staring at the ring on Curt’s band, whose nine “planet” jewels slowly revolved around the glowing “sun” jewel.

That ring, and that name, could open any door in the Solar System, by official command. Yet this guard hesitated.

“I’ll tell the warden you’re here,” he said.

“You’ll admit me at once!” snapped Curt. “Open these gates!”

The tremendous prestige and authority embodied in this tall, red-haired young man overcame the guard’s reluctance.

The great gates, moved by humming atomic motors, swung slowly open, and then closed again as Captain Future entered.

“Take me to the warden’s office,” he ordered crisply.

“Yes, Captain Future — this way,” faltered the man.

Rundall Lane, the thin, elderly warden of Interplanetary Prison, sprang nervously to his feet as Curt entered.

“Captain Future!” he exclaimed startledly. Dismay was plain on his face. “What are you doing here? We have a rule against visitors —”

“Forget your rules,” Curt said sharply. “I’m here on the trail of Doctor Zarro.”

“Doctor Zarro?” echoed Lane in apparent amazement. “But you don’t think that his base is on Cerberus?”

“I don’t know yet,” Curt declared. “But some things point that way.”

HE WAS watching Rundall Lane closely. The uneasiness of this man, an Earth politician who had schemed himself into appointment as warden here, seemed suspicious to Curt. Why did Lane seem so afraid of him?

“I’ve reason to believe,” Curt said, choosing his words, “that the white-furred creatures like the dead one I showed you in Tartarus, the Magicians, inhabit either this moon or Charon.”

“It must be Charon, then!” Rundall Lane exclaimed. “There’s nothing on Cerberus except this prison.”

“How can you know?” Curt demanded. “You told me before that you didn’t know what was on the rest of this moon.”

“I don’t, but my guards do know most of it,” Lane explained quickly. “Some of them have been here for years. They’ve never seen any such race as you showed me.”

“I want to talk to your guards,” Captain Future said coldly. “But first, there’s another matter — the two former prisoners here, Roj and Kallak, who are now leaders of Doctor Zarro’s Legion. How did they escape from here?”

“I told you we don’t know. We just found them gone one morning.”

Curt’s eyes narrowed. “Let me see the records on those two,” he demanded.

Reluctantly, Rundall Lane went to a big cabinet. Inside it were several thousand little flat metal filing-cases, on the edge of each of which glowed a lighted number.

Curt knew the system. Each number corresponded to the glowing badge-number worn by a prisoner, badge and file being in radio-rapport with each other while the prisoner was serving time in the prison.

Lane took out two files whose numbers were dark.

Here are the files on Roj and Kallak, but you’ll find that we’ve no real information about their escape,” he said.

Curt, riffling through the records in the two files, soon discovered that that was true. Then as he looked up, he saw that there were scores of files in the cabinet whose numbers were dark.

“Do all those dark numbers represent prisoners who have escaped?” he demanded.

“Yes,” answered Rundall Lane uneasily. “As soon as they get outside the force-zone of the prison, it breaks the radio-rapport between their badges and our telltales here, to warn us.”

“How did they all get away?” Curt asked. “It’s unheard of for even one man to escape here, let alone so many as that.”

“We haven’t any idea of how they’re getting away!” Lane affirmed. “It’s an unfathomable mystery.”

“Have all these escapes been reported to the System Government?”

Lane twisted uncomfortably. “No, we haven’t reported them,” he said desperately. “It would mean losing my job. So I’ve kept it quiet, hoping to recapture the escaped prisoners. You won’t report me, will you, Captain Future?” he begged.

“I certainly will!” blazed Curt Newton. “You have let scores of the most vicious criminals loose on the System, either by carelessness or deliberate design. You’re not the man for this place.”

SUSPICION was strong in Curt’s mind, now — suspicion of this political jobholder he had already proved derelict to his duty.

“Call in your guards,” he ordered harshly. “I’ve some things to ask them.”

“I’ll have to get them,” Lane replied unhappily. “I’ll only be a moment.”

The warden went out of the little office building and Captain Future bent to examine more of the records in the cabinet.

The more be examined, the more he became convinced of Lane’s wrong-doing. The scores of prisoners who had escaped had apparently done so through complicity. Nothing else was possible.

Curt was suddenly drawn from his investigation by a shrill cry from outside. He leaped to a window. A guard was running out of the great main cellhouse, shouting wildly.

“Mutiny!” he was yelling. “The prisoners are mutinying!”

On his heels, out of the cellhouse poured a mob of wild prisoners, shouting and brandishing atom-guns they had apparently snatched from guards they overpowered.

Guards up in the wall-towers opened fire but were shot down by the blazing atom-guns of the convicts, instantly.

“The office building!” yelled the leader of the convicts, a fat, gross-looking Earthman. “That’s where Captain Future is, men!”

“Get Captain Future!” went up the fierce cry from the outrushing prisoners. They rushed toward the office structure.

Curt heard, and understood. There were hundreds of interplanetary criminals in here whom he had sent here and who hated him more than any other man alive. Now they were surging around the office building, Martians, Saturnians, Earthmen and others — cutting off all possible escape. And from every throat went up the same raging cry.

“Death to Captain Future!”

JOAN RANDALL stood in the raging blizzard, watching the
Comet
roar up into the storm on its way to Cerberus. The girl secret agent would have given much to have been inside it with Captain Future and Grag and Otho.

“Come along, Joan,” shouted Ezra Gurney as the
Comet
vanished above. “This storm will blow us off our feet.”

“It’s pretty bad now,” agreed Cole Romer, a muffled figure in his furs, “but it’ll let up before long.”

The old police marshal and the planetographer hastened back with the girl toward the big domed city.

Once inside the transparent dome of Tartarus, they seemed in another world. Outside, the ferocious blizzard might scourge the night, but in here the air was balmy and warm in the lighted streets, the great atomic air-conditioners functioning perfectly.

“We’ll get to headquarters and get every man I’ve got out looking for Victor Krim.” Ezra Gurney was saying.

“While you’re doing that, I’ll look for Krim myself,” Cole Romer said, his scholarly face thoughtful. “I’ve an idea where he may be, if he’s not returned to Charon.”

“If you find him, call us,” asked the old marshal as the planetographer parted from them.

As Ezra and Joan went through the lighted streets and parks of exotic interplanetary vegetation, they saw little knots of Earthmen colonists talking anxiously on every corner. And one name came to their ears, over and over again.

“Doctor Zarro!”

Ezra’s weatherbeaten face tightened.

“People here are gettin’ more and more scared about that dark star, same as all over the System,” he muttered. “And Doctor Zarro’s broadcasts ain’t calmin’ their fears any.”

Joan Randall’s pretty face flashed with vivid indignation.

“They must be crazy! While Captain Future is fighting to smash Doctor Zarro’s plot, they’re helping the plotter!”

The old marshal glanced at her. “You think quite a bit of Captain Future, don’t you?” he asked shrewdly.

Joan flushed, “Yes, I do.”

“Well, so do I,” smiled the old interplanetary veteran.

They reached the two-story cement structure that was division headquarters of the Planet Police. Ezra Gurney snapped orders to the trim-uniformed officers.

“I want to know if Victor Krim’s gone back to Charon,” the old man crackled, “and if he hasn’t, I want him brought in here. Get goin’!”

When the officers had gone, the old marshal settled back into a chair with a sigh.

“Not as young as I used to be,” he complained. “Get tired a lot easier. Time was, forty years ago, when I was a young man and the interplanetary frontiers were new, that no thin’ tired me. Now I’m just a poor, weak old man ready for the retirement list.”

Joan Randall forgot her anxiety long enough to laugh at him.

“You’re just looking for sympathy,” she accused. “Twenty years from now, you’ll be laying down the law in some planetary boom-town, and enjoying it.”

“You’re a hard, unfeelin’ young woman,” grunted Ezra. “And you haven’t got the proper respect for your elders.”

IN A quarter-hour, the televisor on the desk buzzed suddenly.

“One of the boys may have located Krim,” Ezra said hopefully, quickly switching on the instrument.

But it was Cole Romer’s serious, scholarly face, highly excited now, that showed in the televisor-screen.

“Marshal, I’ve found out where Victor Krim is!” the planetographer cried. “You won’t believe it, but —”

A flash of fire crossed the screen, and then it went black. The connection had been broken.

Ezra leaped to his feet with a swiftness that belied his recent complaints of age. His faded blue eyes were wide.

“Something’s happened to Romer!” he exclaimed. “You saw that flash? It looked like the flash of an atom-gun!”

The old marshal sprang toward the door. “You stay here, Joan. I’m goin’ out and get the men organized into a dragnet. First we’ll post guards at the doors of the city-dome, so Krim can’t get out of Tartarus if he’s still here.”

Left alone in the office, a sudden memory came to Joan. Cole Romer had said, in answer to a question of Curt Newton’s that Victor Krim, if he were in the city, might be in the fur-hunters’ quarter.

That quarter must be where Romer had gone in search of Krim, then. She was sure of it. And that must be where Romer had met with disaster in his search.

Joan wasted no further time in speculation. Time might be all-important. She would search in that part of the city herself.

She hurried out of the Planet Police building and started through the streets and parks toward the western part of the city. There lay the noisy, brightly lighted streets that Curt Newton had told here was the hunters’ quarter.

She stopped an Earthman coming along the street.