Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) (16 page)

“Is this the way to the Street of the Hunters,” she asked.

He stared at her. “Yes, it is. But that’s a pretty rough neighborhood for a girl, miss.”

Joan hurried on unmindfully. An uproar came vaguely to her ears from ahead. She passed dark fur and mineral warehouses, and turned suddenly into the blazing Street of the Hunters.

It was an uproarious place. The rest of the city, the rest of the whole System, might be obsessed by growing dread of colossal catastrophe, but dark stars and warnings of doom meant little to the wild hunters who made this place their mecca, and squandered here the money earned by weeks of toil and hardship.

The street was lined thickly with blazingly illuminated drinking shops, taverns and gambling halls, typical of all planetary frontier towns. Two hunters, one a big, bearded Earthman and the other a red, solemn-faced Martian, stopped in front of Joan. A strong fragrance of some potent planetary liquor came from them.

“You’re the prettiest girl I ever saw in the Street of Hunters,” declared the big Earthman. “Want to go dancin’?”

“No, no,” Joan said hurriedly. “I’m looking for someone.”

THE half-drunk Earthman stared at her. Then he removed his fur cap with a hasty gesture.

“Sorry, ma’am — I didn’t know I was speakin’ to a lady,” he apologized. “Don’t see many of ‘em down here — and it’s not a very good place for one to be, if you’ll let me say so.”

“I’m looking for Victor Krim, the fur-magnate,” she said eagerly, “Are you one of his hunters?”

“Victor Krim’s hunter?” echoed the big Earthman, “No, ma’am! I may be a little crazy, but I’m not crazy enough to sign up to hunt on that devil’s moon of Krim’s!”

“Nor me either,” declared the Martian. “It’s bad enough on Pluto here, with the ice-bears and the ice-cats and the Biburs, but Charon — why, those hellish korlats on Charon — will kill a hunter before he can see them.”

“Are any of Krim’s hunters here now?” Joan asked them, looking anxiously along the crowded street.

The bearded Earthman shook his head. “Krim’s men never come to Pluto, except a few that come with him to bring his shiploads of furs. Matter of fact, the rest of us boys can’t figure what kind of men he’s got, that are crazy enough to stay out there on Charon.”

Joan felt a hand tugging her sleeve. She recoiled with a little cry as she saw that it was one of the hairy, phosphorescent-eyed Plutonians who stood at her side.

“Let the lady alone, you monkey, or I’ll boot you clear through the wall of Tartarus!” threatened the Earthman.

“This Earthgirl knows me!” claimed the Plutonian in broken Earth speech. He asked Joan anxiously, “You remember me — I Tharb, the guide — I take red-haired man out to my grandfather.”

“Of course, I remember you now!” Joan exclaimed. She told the two hunters: “It’s all right — I know this Plutonian.”

“Well, if you need any help, you just yell, lady,” drawled the big hunter.

And with a grandiloquent, drunken bow, the brawny hunter and his Martian companion passed on down the street.

Tharb the Plutonian was eyeing”Joan with an eager expression.

“Is red-haired Earthman here?” he asked. “He is great man — he save Tharb’s life when Marching Mountains nearly kill us.”

Joan perceived that Captain Future had inspired in this Plutonian the same hero-worship that the indomitable red-haired adventurer had aroused in many others.

“He is not here,” she told Tharb, “but he and I need help, Perhaps you can help us, Tharb.”

“I do anything to help red-haired man,” Tharb vowed.

“You know Victor Krim?” Joan asked quickly. “Have you seen him down here tonight?”

“No see Krim,” Tharb replied. “Maybe he go back to Charon. Bad place, Charon — many korlats and other terrible beasts.”

Joan began to feel utterly baffled. But a new line of search occurred to her.

“Have you seen Cole Romer, the planetographer?” she asked. “I know he found Krim down here tonight. Do you know him?”

Tharb bobbed his strange hairy head. “Tharb knows Romer — guide some exploring expeditions for him, long time ago. And I see Romer here, little time ago.”

“Where did you see him?” Joan asked eagerly.

Tharb pointed a black, hairy arm down the street.

“He going to door of old warehouse down in next street.”

“Take me there,” the girl begged immediately, and Tharb at once led the way.

Many in the rowdy throng looked curiously at the pretty Earthgirl and the hulking, hairy Plutonian as they passed.

Joan felt a little encouraged. Cole Romer had found Krim, she knew, from Romer’s interrupted televisor can. And if she could follow the planetographer’s trail —

“Will red-haired man need Tharb for guide again?” the big Plutonian was asking hopefully.

“Perhaps he will.” Joan answered.

“I go anywhere with him,” Tharb declared. “I like him much — all my people like him much.”

Tharb pointed at a tall, dark cement structure.

“I see Cole Romer going to door of that place,” he asserted.

Joan looked at the place doubtfully. There seemed no sign of life about, and there was no sign over the door.

But a few doors down the street was a warehouse that bore the sign: “Charon Fur Company — Victor Krim, President.”

“I’m going to have a look inside,” she said, starting toward the door of the dark, silent place opposite her.

Tharb followed her wonderingly. She tried the big door — to her surprise, it was unlocked. She and the Plutonian stepped inside, into a dark, musty-smelling interior.

Joan flashed a tiny beam from her ring-lamp. It showed a huge cement room, with nothing in it but some molded bales of old bibur-furs. There was no sign of recent occupancy.

“I’m afraid you were wrong, Tharb, when —” she started to say. The Plutonian abruptly interrupted.

“Listen! Something alive inhere!” he exclaimed.

Then Joan heard it, a queer, rustling, sliding, sound that was vaguely familiar, and that chilled her blood.

She recoiled a few steps, then uttered a cry of terror. A cold, snake-like thing had suddenly whipped around her ankles. At the same moment. Tharb uttered a yell.

Joan frantically flashed her light downward. A dozen pink snaky shapes were wriggling toward them from behind one of the moldering piles of furs. Two of them had already coiled quickly around her legs and others were leaping up at her upper body.

“Rope-snakes!” she cried. “Doctor Zarro’s men are here — get away. Tharb!”

The Plutonian, tearing away the living bonds that had partly whipped around him, started toward the door.

A blast of atomic fire crackled down the dark room from behind the piles of furs, and hit Tharb’s back. The Plutonian collapsed, a big hole burned between his hairy shoulders.

OUT from behind the piled furs men came running. Earthmen who wore the black disk of the Legion of Doom. The seamed-faced dwarf, Roj, and the giant Kallak were at their head. Joan recognized the two as she fell to the floor, hopelessly pinioned by the rope-snakes.

“Quick, take her below!” snapped Roj to the stupid giant. “The Plutonian is done for.”

“You killed him — he second you’ve killed!” accused one of the Legion men. “There was to be no killing, Roj!”

“I had to do it — he’d have got out and given the alarm!” retorted the dwarf viciously. “Come on — down below with her.”

Joan, half dazed by the suddenness and unexpectedness of her capture, felt herself carried behind the bales of furs toward a concealed trapdoor.

She glimpsed, in a corner, a human body charred to a horrible, unrecognizable mass by atom-guns. Remembering Cole Romer’s interrupted televisor can for help, she shuddered.

Beneath the trapdoor was a lighted room hollowed out of the rock. Joan’s eyes flew to a tall, gaunt black figure with bulging, hairless skull and burning bla. ck eyes — Doctor Zarro.

On a table beside the arch-plotter rested the transparent serum-case of the Brain. Joan was tossed to the floor nearby.

“It’s that girl Police agent!” Roj cried to the black prophet. “She and a Plutonian were snooping above.”

Joan, held by the repulsive living bonds, cried to the Brain nearby, while Roj was making report to his master.

“Simon, how long have you been here?” she cried.

“Since Doctor Zarro and his men kidnapped me from the observatory,” answered the Brain. “They brought me in here through a tunnel under the city wall. The Legionaries held me here, while Doctor Zarro left for a time — the Doctor only came back here a short time ago.”

“Cole Romer must have tracked down this place,” she cried. She told of the planetographer’s interrupted call, “And there’s a horrible dead body above —”

“It must be Romer’s, then,” the Brain rasped. “I heard the voices of Romer and Victor Krim shouting in the upper room, and then atom-guns firing, just before Doctor Zarro came back down here.”

“That must have been when Romer was killed!” cried Joan. “He said in his call that he’d found Victor Krim — then there was an atom-gun flash and his televisor went dead.”

Joan told the Brain of the attempt made to kill Captain Future by attacking and forcing down his rocket flier.

“I understand,” rasped Simon. “This is Doctor Zarro’s secret Tartarus hideout. He sent out Roj and Kallak alone in a cruiser to ambush Curt’s flier. And the Doctor himself and some of his Legionaries went out through the secret tunnel to raid the observatory.”

While Joan and the Brain talked, one of the Legionaries was complaining loudly to Doctor Zarro.

“Roj killed the Plutonian,” the Legionary was accusing. “You said there would be no killing, but two have been killed.”

“I had to do it,” the dwarf muttered venomously.

“There will be no more such deaths,” Doctor Zarro assured the Legionaries, almost placatingly. Then the dark leader continued quickly. “It is time for us to get out of here, before others discover us. There is no more reason for staying. Go out through the tunnel and see if the way to the ship is all clear.”

WHEN they had gone, Doctor Zarro turned toward Roj and Kallak with an air of suppressed fury in his bearing.

“Why did you kill that Plutonian?” he demanded harshly of the dwarf. “You know my orders.”

“He was going to get away — I had to blast him down,” retorted Roj sullenly.

“You are a clumsy bungler!” stormed the Doctor. “You bungled the abduction of Kansu Kane and Gatola, and let Captain Future save them both. When I sent you and Kallak in the ship to kill Future without the Legion knowing, you bungled that too.”

“I was sure we’d succeeded, when I saw Captain Future’s flier crash in front of the Marching Mountains,” defended the dwarf. “How was I to know that the redheaded devil would escape?”

“You should have made sure! Now we’re going to get out of here and get back to headquarters. It’s time for the last broadcast — the one that will finish the business.”

Roj’s seamed face lighted up with evil eagerness.

“You’re going to make the last broadcast? Then in less than two days, you’ll be master of the System! You’ve got the people of all nine worlds shouting for you now.”

“They’ll not only shout — they’ll force the System Government to yield authority to me, when they’ve heard me again!”

A Legionary came hurrying back out of the tunnel.

“Way’s clear to the ship,” he reported.

“Come on, then,” Doctor Zarro snapped. “Kallak, you carry the girl, and you take the Brain, Roj. We’ve got to get back to the moon, at once.”

“The moon?” whispered Joan to the Brain. “Then their base is on one of the moons. And it must be —”

She was picked up suddenly by the heavy-faced, vacant-eyed giant, Kallak. Roj had snatched the handle of the Brain’s serum-case. They followed Doctor Doom’s tall, gaunt figure into the rock tunnel, the Legionary lighting their way with a small atom-lamp.

The tunnel was so cramped and narrow that Kallak had to bend his head. It had been blasted out of the solid rock under the city by atomic blasts, apparently a long time ago.

“Fur-thieves opened this secret tunnel, years ago, in case you’re interested, my dear Brain,” Roj was saying gibingly. “The Doctor found it, and kept quiet about it. It serves us well.”

The tunnel ended in a flight of steps upward. They emerged into the freezing, bitter night, on the rock plain far out beyond the wall of domed Tartarus. The blizzard was over. The stars shone brilliantly.

A dark cruiser with the black disk of the Legion of Doom on its bows was waiting here. The brain and the pinioned girl were carried inside and flung into a corner of the main cabin. A moment after the door slammed, they felt the cruiser lift skyward with a roar of rocket-tubes.

CAPTAIN FUTURE, when he heard the cry of “Death to Captain Future” ring out, realized in a flash that it was not mere chance that had unleashed this mutiny at this time. Someone had released the convicts, someone had told them he was here in the offices.

“Rundall Lane!” he gritted.

He dashed to the door and locked it, slammed shut the heavy metal shutters inside the windows.