Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) (5 page)

“Why, you pile of spare parts, you’ve got the nerve to tell me —”

Curt hastily intervened. “Cut your rockets, you two! It’s night, If our bait has reached the lifewater syndicate, some of them will be here soon.” He gave his orders. “Grag, you hide and watch outside in the shadows. They’ll probably come in a rocket-flier, if they come at all. If they do, get into their craft and make sure of anyone they leave in it. We don’t want any of them to get away.

Grag departed, with Eek still clinging affectionately to his shoulder. Captain Future turned to the android.

“Okay, Otho. Remember at all times that you’re Ros Ovor, a senile Venusian millionaire. We can’t tell who’ll be watching.”

Otho nodded understandingly, and he and Curt returned to one of the spacious front rooms of the mansion. There the android, the very picture of a wasping old Venusian, kept up his part.

He kept Curt on the run, with shrill orders that he shouted in cracked, quavering tones. He gave a perfect impression of an aged tyrant bullying his servant.

An hour passed, then another. Still no one came, Captain Future began to experience discouragement. The Lifewater syndicate was not going to take the bait he had cast out for them.

Yet it was not Curt’s way to give up easily. He and Otho maintained their pretense. As the time passed, Curt’s mind pondered the discovery he and the Brain had made about the Lifewater.

THE ELIXIR definitely was radioactive. If it actually came from the legended Fountain of Life, that fountain must also be of a radioactive nature. But was the fabulous Fountain really the source? It would be ironical if all the dreamers who had sought it on far worlds had not been quite so crazy as the most respected scientists thought.

A low sound of muffed rocket-tubes came from outside the mansion. Curt and Otho tensed, exchanged little grins.

“Sounds like a small space cruiser instead of a rocket-flier,” Curt whispered. “That would be what interplanetary criminals would use.”

The televis-announcer on the wall buzzed a few moments later. On its screen, by one-way transmission, appeared the faces of two men — a bald, red-skinned Martian and a little, spectacled Mercurian.

“We wish to see Ros Ovor on important business,” the Martian said. “It’s about his call on Doctor Zin Zibo today.”

Curt’s pulse pumped. These two were members of the Lifewater syndicate, all right! They’d seized his bait as he had hoped.

“My master will see you,” he said politely and touched the door-release stud.

The Martian and the Mercurian entered. The spectacled Mercurian, staring at Otho and Curt, uttered a cry.

“It’s a trap! These men are disguised. That’s Captain Future!”

At the same moment, he hurled a little sphere, to the floor. Impenetrable blackness instantly shrouded everything.

“A darkness bomb!” Curt yelled, his proton gun leaping into his hand. “Cut them off, Otho!”

An atom gun coughed in the dark and Otho yelled in sudden pain. Curt shot at the muffled explosion. The Mercurian screamed. Curt heard the sound of running footsteps as the other criminal retreated.

Frantically Curt searched for the darkness bomb, whose light-neutralizing vibrations had caused the pall of blackness. He found it and crushed it under his foot. Light returned abruptly, just as rocket-tubes blasted outside.

The spectacled Mercurian lay dead, his atom gun still clenched in his hand. Curt’s proton beam had found him in the dark. But Otho was nursing a scorched shoulder, his eyes blazing with pain and anger.

“I’m only grazed. “Let’s get after them, Chief!”

Curt sprang into the darkness of the night, with Otho swiftly following. There was no sign of the space cruiser they had heard blasting away. The darkness bomb had given it plenty of time to get out of sight.

“That Martian and whoever else was with him got clear away,” Otho snapped in disgust. “But how did the Mercurian know we were disguised? And why didn’t Grag stop them?”

“Grag!” called Captain Future.

There was no answer, nor could they find the robot anywhere around the mansion. Curt felt a sharp, new anxiety.

“Grag must have gone into their craft, as I ordered. They’ve taken him along with them!”

REALIZING in dismay that Grag had been captured by the Lifewater syndicate, Captain Future stood motionless for a moment. His tanned face turned grim.

“If they harm Grag,” he said between his teeth, “the System won’t be big enough for them to hide in.”

“I’ll make the dirty space-scum wish they had died before we catch them!” Otho stated furiously.

It had always been so. Let a man raise his hand against one of the Futuremen, and he had all that formidable band against him in a war to the death.

“Why aren’t we following them in the
Cornet!”
Otho exclaimed impatiently. “Let’s turn this world upside down.”

“I believe those criminals have already left Venus, Otho.

They’re probably seeding to report to the Life-lord, the head of the syndicate, that we Futuremen have entered this game. If we only knew on what world to find the Lifewater traffic headquarters.”

Curt knew there was no chance now to trail the criminals’ space cruiser. It had too much start on them. Eager as he was to pursue them and rescue Grag, there was no use in starting off blindly.

He hastened back into the mansion.

“Maybe that Mercurian I killed in the fight will yield a clue to where they’re going. Then perhaps we can find out which world is the center of the syndicate.”

He and Otho bent over the Mercurian who had died in his shrewd attempt to kill them. Something about the little man’s thick spectacles attracted Curt’s attention. He examined them more closely.

“This is how he spotted us as impostors at first glance. He saw right through our makeup with these spectacles.”

The spectacles, in fact, combined tiny X-ray projectors with fluoroscopic lenses that would enable the wearer to see right through any artificial disguise or makeup.

“Damned cunning!” Otho said in unwilling admiration.

Captain Future nodded. “Probably the Lifewater vendors always wear such spectacles when approaching prospective customers they don’t know. Then they can detect disguised spies at once.” He searched the Mercurian’s zipper-suit. “I hope this fellow had the Lifewater on him.”

But there was none of the shining elixir on the dead man. Evidently the Martian had had the Lifewater.

In the dead man’s pockets, though, he found a considerable sum in System bank-notes, another darkness bomb, and a valuable jewel. The last he examined carefully. It was a green Uranian sea-emerald, carved with tiny, grotesque letters.

“That’s queer,” Otho remarked, frowning. “It’s certainly a Uranian jewel. But the letters on it look like ancient Martian writing.”

Curt’s gray eyes took on a sudden gleam. The wizard of science thought he recognized a definite lead in this inscribed jewel.

“It is some ancient Martian writing,” he said. “Otho, jump down to the
Comet.
Rocket back to the house, and bring Simon in.”

WHEN the android returned a few moments later, carrying the Brain’s case, Captain Future held the jewel before Simon’s lens eyes.

What do you make of the letters on it, Simon?”

The Brain’s glass eyes considered.

“They spell the word Fountain’,” he said quickly. “That is old Martian writing.”

“I know. But do you recognize the peculiar period of the writing?”

The Brain looked more closely.

“Why, they’re in the oldest Martian writing, that of the Machine-masters of Mars who perished ages ago.”

“Exactly,” Curt agreed. “Which means that this jewel came from the Machine City of Mars.”

“And it says ‘Fountain’ on it?” Otho cried. “Then maybe the Fountain of Life, the source of the Lifewater, is in the Machine City?” Thoughtfully the android shook his head. “No, it couldn’t be. There isn’t anything living there. It’s just a city of cursed machines.”

“Still, the Fountain might be in that city,” Captain Future declared. “And if it is, that’s where the Life-lord’s headquarters are. That’s where Grag’s captors will be heading.” He spoke tensely to the android. “Get the vacuumizer from the
Comet.
We’ll check the dust in this Mercurian’s hair and clothes, and see if there’s any Martian desert sand among it.”

Otho rapidly brought the instrument, drew out every particle of fine dust from the hair and clothing of the dead roan. Cart and the Brain, in the
Comet’s
laboratory, quickly ran the dust through an analyzer.

“Saturnian flower pollen, traces of Martian sand, silicate dust from Earth, some plan spores from here on Venus — “ Curt read.

“That Mercurian sure got around!” commented Otho.

“But no Martian desert-sand,” Curt finished. He looked at the Brain, a little baffled. “Damned queer! This shows he wasn’t on Mars for a long time. Yet that jewel came from the Machine City. Of course, he may have got the jewel from some fellow-criminal of the syndicate.”

“Aye, lad,” the Brain rasped in agreement. His lens eyes stared questioningly at Curt. “What’s our plan of action?”

The red-haired scientific wizard spoke rapidly.

“We know now we can’t penetrate the Lifewater syndicate disguised as prospective customers. The X-ray spectacles the vendors probably use as routine precaution make that impossible. We’ll have to stake everything on an attempt to find the source of the Lifewater. Is that source the legendary Fountain of Life? I think so. This jewel inscribed with ‘Fountain’ is an arrow pointing that way, So, if we can find the Fountain, we’ll find the Life-lord, somewhere near it. And where he is, Grag will be also — if he’s still alive.”

“Clear as outer space,” Otho approved. “So we’ve got to find the Fountain, to smash this traffic. And it may be on Mars.”

“One objection,” rasped the. Brain. “The Lifewater we know now to be radioactive lad. And there’s little radioactive matter of any kind on Mars, That world is too old.”

“I know,” Curt nodded, his tanned face worried. “But this lead to the Machine City is unmistakable. We must follow it.”

“We’ve been at the Machine City before and saw no Fountain,” Simon Wright reminded him.

“We didn’t do more than reconnoiter the city from outside,” Curt replied. “It was too dangerous for idle exploring.”

“The cursed place will still be dangerous to enter,” Otho said. “Those brainless machine-guards gave me the creeps when I watched them.

“I think I can devise a way of getting past them,” Captain Future declared. “But there’s no time to be lost. We’ll rocket for Mars at once. But first, let’s discard these Venusian disguises.”

THAT done, they put Wilson Webber’s cadaver in the house with the corpse of the Mercurian. Then Captain Future called the Venus headquarters of the Planet Police to apprise the authorities of the two bodies’ location.

Finally the Cornet rose through the night. It screamed up over the blinking lights of Venusopolis in a steep slant. With rocket-tubes blasting white fire-trails, the teardrop ship tore out through the cloud layers. Abruptly it burst into the clear, star-jeweled vault of space.

Otho laid a course for the far red spark of Mars.

“Good to be out of the clouds and able to see stars again,” called the android from the controls. “Though it seems kind of lonesome without Grag to argue with. Hope the old boys all right,”

Captain Future smiled to himself a little. Otho was always the same, bickering furiously with Grag whenever they were together, but the first on the trail when the huge robot was in distress.

Simon Wright turned his gaze toward Curt, from the automatically unreeling micro-film book the Brain was consulting.

“I’m trying to track down all references to the Fountain of Life legend,” he rasped.

“Find anything?” Curt asked.

“Nothing of value. There seem to have been scores of wild stories about the Fountain. Most of them claim that a race of winged people guard it, on whatever world it’s located.”

“Winged people?” Curt repeated. “Sounds like a superstitious myth. The legends don’t mention which world the Fountain’s on?”

“No. One story puts it on one world, and the next tale puts it on another world. Nobody was scientifically sure about it.”

As the Cornet rocketed for Mars, Curt Newton wondered if the Fountain were really mere baseless fable. No, it couldn’t be. The evil Lifewater certainly was no fable, and it surely must come from the legendary Fountain.

Curt sat brooding, touching the twenty complex strings of his favorite Venusian guitar. But he did not hear the haunting, quivering music as he stared thoughtfully out the window into starry space.

Concern for Grag confused his thoughts of a grim realization. This struggle against the Lifewater syndicate had developed into the most perilous adventure he had ever entered.

The syndicate was strong, he had found out. But it was strong not only on one world, but on all of them. That disciplined, coldly efficient organization enmeshed the whole System. And at the center of that web of evil, he knew, was a powerful, remorseless, directing mind.