Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) (7 page)

Down and down sank the level of the square area. After a half hour, they had cut down through two thousand feet of the ice.

The ship continued to sink slowly downward into this great square well in the ice, keeping its fanned beams playing. At last, brown rock appeared as they melted the last of the ice.

Grag landed the ship on the rock, playing its searchlights about in the semi-gloom of this deep well they had cut.

“This rock doesn’t look like terbium-bearing mineral at all,” muttered the Brain. “But the resonator can’t have erred.”

They emerged in their space-suits. Curt made a quick examination of the rock beneath them. Puzzled, he and Simon extended their investigation. Finally, they stopped, baffled.

“There’s no terbium in this rock!” the Brain exclaimed, chagrined. “I must have misread the resonator.”

They went back into the ship and again consulted the element-resonator. And then their bewilderment increased.

“The resonator still shows terbium right here!”Simon cried. “Why, this is impossible.”

At that moment came a cry from Hol Jor, who with the other star rovers and Otho had been roaming the surface of the rock.

“Come here!” came Hol Jor’s call, heard over the audiphones that interconnected their space-suits.

Captain Future and Simon hastened to the others. They found them gathered in an excited group.

“Look at that, chief!” Otho cried.

In the brown rock at their feet was a massive circular door of corroded metal that fitted with hermetical tightness into an aperture in the rock.

“This was made by human hands,” Curt muttered. “Must have been long ago, though.”

Old Ber Del nodded.

“Probably it’s a relic of the people of this planet who fled to the dark star when this world froze up — the ancestors of those grotesque mineral-men.”

They brought tools from the ship and pried at the door. Finally they loosed the massive disk of metal, and heaved it aside.

They exposed a round shaft in the rock, in which a graceful spiral stair of metal dropped into dim obscurity. And
air
was rising slowly from the opening in a perceptible current.

“The terbium indicated by the resonator must be down here somewhere,” muttered the Brain.

“We’re going to see,” Curt declared. “You and Otho and Hol Jor come with me. The rest of you guard the ship.”

Flashing the ray of a hand torch to guide his path, keeping his other upon the butt of his proton-pistol, Captain Future started down the spiral stair. The others followed closely.

They descended for several hundred feet through the vertical shaft in the solid rock. Then the rock walls disappeared, and they perceived that beneath them lay a very large, dimly illuminated cavernous space to whose floor fell the spiral stairway. They reached the floor and stared about in awe. They had penetrated a vast cavern, obviously hollowed out by artificial forces and approximately a quarter-mile square. Dim blue ceiling lights of perpetual radioactive design shed a thin illumination over the air-filled cavern. And the floor of this whole vast underground space was covered by rows of thousands of oblong stone slabs. Upon each slab lay a motionless body.

WONDERINGLY, the adventurers approached the nearest slab to the stair. The man who lay upon it was young, smooth-skinned and of almost girlish prettiness. He was curiously gray in complexion, with dark hair upon which he wore a metal coronet. His garment was a long robe of white, and his eyes were closed. Similar men and women and children occupied all the other slabs.

“A place of the dead!” murmured Hol Jor awedly. “A great mausoleum of the people who once inhabited this world.”

“There’s something mysterious about this,” muttered Otho. “Where’s the terbium that the resonator indicated was down here?”

“Listen!” exclaimed the Brain suddenly, “Do you hear a sound of bells?”

They could hear nothing. But the supersensitive microphone ears of the Brain had not deceived him.

“It’s getting stronger,” he whispered. “A queer, rhythmic ringing —”

The others began to hear it then — fairy bells of unutterable sweetness-echoing from a great remoteness came the sound. There was a curious tone-pattern in the ringing. It was rousing, stimulating.

“I don’t like this!” Otho exclaimed uneasily. “A city of dead people, and bells beginning to ring —”

Captain Future’s eyes narrowed. He too felt a growing uneasiness. That tintinnabulation was growing louder and faster by the minute. Finally it reached a crescendo of ringing sound, halted for an instant of breathless hush, and then was followed by a single tremendous bell-note of almost deafening timbre.

“It must be some automatic mechanism actuated by our entrance here that made the sound,” Curt guessed rapidly. “But what could its purpose be?”

“For the love of the space-gods, look!” yelled Otho wildly, pointing. “The dead — they’re
awaking!”

WITH a shock of unbelieving amazement, Curt Newton saw that the people on the slabs were stirring. Those motionless figures were twitching and turning and beginning to sit upright, like ordinary sleepers roused to wakefulness.

“Those bells brought them back to life somehow!” yelped Otho. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Wait, I think I’m beginning to understand this!” Curt exclaimed. “Go back and close that door of the shaft to prevent too much of the air in this cavern from escaping.”

Otho raced up the stair upon the errand. Captain Future and the others stood watching the amazing transformation taking place around them. Every man, woman and child upon the slabs had awakened. At first they looked around bewilderedly at each other. And then they burst into a frantic chorus of joyful shouts, a babel of cries.

“Why, I can understand their language,” Hol Jor declared. “It’s much the same as our own star languages.”

“Hear what they’re shouting?” Curt asked. “My guess about this was right.”

The newly-awakened sleepers were exclaiming in mad joy, “The Thousand have succeeded! Our sun has been rekindled, and our world has awakened to new life!”

Suddenly, as their first frantic joy quieted a little, the awakened sleepers became aware of the presence of Curt and Hol Jor and the Brain, watching them from the foot of the spiral stair. The rejoicing multitude recoiled a little, in surprise and alarm. Though a handsome, graceful race, these gray-skinned folk appeared of no great courage by the way they shrank back. From their midst finally stepped the young man who wore the coronet of authority on his dark hair. Doubtfully, he approached Curt.

“You are not of our people,” he said wonderingly to Captain Future. “Whence do you come?”

“From another star,” Curt answered quietly. “We found the door down into your cavern here only a few minutes ago.”

“You found the door?” echoed the young ruler of the sleepers. His eyes flashed with joy. “Then it is certain that the ice is gone from above, and that our sun has been rekindled by the Thousand.”

“We do not understand your reference,” Curt told him. “Why have you slept here, and how? And who are the Thousand?”

The young ruler of the gray sleepers explained.

“We are an ancient race, native to this world. We were so civilized that we had no more need of scientific progress, but could live a life of aesthetic ease and pleasure, happily pursuing the arts and served in all our needs by the machines our scientists had created. Only a thousand scientists were required to be trained each generation to keep our mechanical system in good operation.

“But after ages of this happy life, death faced us. Our sun had long been dying, and it cooled so rapidly that this whole world became frozen.

The sun became a mere giant cinder, and only by dire means did we manage to keep alive.

“Then our thousand scientists said to us, ‘Means must be found of rekindling the sun. It is possible that we can do that in time by long experiment with atomic explosions. We shall go to the dead sun and set up laboratories there and begin the attempt. But it may take many generations, and long before then you would all be dead. So you must all sleep while we carry out the attempt to renew the sun.’

“So our thousand scientists,” continued the young ruler, “prepared for us this place beneath the crust of our planet. They installed in it an apparatus which could cast us into a perpetual hypnotic trance through auditory stimulation of bells. They told us that a similar apparatus would automatically awake us from the hypnotic trance, when our sun was rekindled.

“Melting of the ice on our world overhead would automatically start that awakening apparatus. For the thousand scientists themselves, if they succeeded in rekindling the sun, would surely perish in the very moment they succeeded, and so would not be able to return to awake us.”

The young ruler concluded eagerly.

“They must finally have succeeded in rekindling our dead star by atomic explosion, as they hoped! So when the new warmth of our sun melted all the ice over this place, the apparatus of bells automatically awoke us.”

CURT NEWTON felt his heart wrung by the unutterable pathos which lay hidden in the young ruler’s eager words — pathos of a thousand men and women who long ago had gone to their dead sun to try to awaken it to life, and who had known that they themselves would perish if they succeeded. The pathos of these frantically rejoicing people who thought that the attempt
had
succeeded — was almost as tragic.

“They don’t guess the truth!” whispered Hol Jor pityingly. “It was our proton-rays that melted the ice over this place and started the apparatus that woke them up — but they think their sun has been revived to new life.”

The young leader of the gray sleepers faced Curt anxiously.

“It is true that our sun is rekindled, that we can go back up to take up life again on the surface of our world?”

Captain Future evaded.

“The thing is not yet complete,” he said gently. “You must wait a little longer.”

The faces of the gray folk fell somewhat.

“But the Thousand are still working at the problem on our dead sun?” he pressed.

“The irony of it!” muttered the Brain in low tones. “The beastlike mineral-men on the dead sun — they must be the evolution-adapted descendants of the Thousand who went there long ago.”

“Gods of space!” murmured Hol Jor, aghast. “Great scientists, attempting that colossal, degenerating through the generations into those beasts! And these people don’t suspect —”

Curt Newton was speaking gently to the young ruler, “The descendants of the Thousand are still on the dead sun. And the problem of rekindling it will soon be solved, I feel sure.”

The gray sleepers seemed more cheerful at this.

“Then we will return into the hypnotic sleep until that happens,” their ruler declared. “I can operate the apparatus that will again cause us to enter the trance.”

“First, tell me this,” put in Curt urgently. “Have you any store of metals here? We badly need one called terbium. It is essential to the success of the great plan.”

The young ruler answered eagerly.

“We have a store of machines and metals in an adjoining cavern. The Thousand stored them there so that we would have them with which to begin life anew when we awakened.”

He led the way across the mausoleum-like cavern to a portal that gave entrance to a much smaller adjoining cavern. Here were stored with scientific precision a great mass of instruments, tools and machines, as well as bins and cases of almost every valuable or rare element and compound. Curt Newton was first to find a case of colorless metal bars.

“This is terbium — and there’s enough,” he said thankfully. “We can carry it between us, Hol Jor.”

They returned to the main cavern. The ruler was addressing his people.

“We must sleep again, but next time we awake, our world will surely be smiling again beneath the warm sun.”

Dutifully, the gray folk lay down upon the slabs. The young ruler was last, and before he lay down he touched a lever near the foot of the spiral stair.

“You will do all in your power to help the Thousand or their descendants rekindle our sun?” he asked Curt anxiously.

“I promise you that,” answered Captain Future gravely.

“Stop your ears, unless you wish to be cast into the sleep with us,” warned the young ruler as he lay down upon his slab. “The bells begin.”

ALREADY, a faint ringing pattern of bell-tones was becoming audible. They could hear it clearly, for Curt and Hol Jor had removed their space-helmets to converse with the young ruler.

Hastily, Captain Future and the Antarian and Simon closed their ears with waxite plugs from Curt’s bell-kit.

They were none too soon, for the growing strength of the bells was having an overpoweringly drowsy effect upon them before they cut it off in this manner. The long-dead scientists who had devised that cunning instrument of super-hypnosis had been masters of their art. Now, unable to hear the siren bells, the three adventurers watched as the gray folk again became motionless in sleeping trance. The powerful hypnosis that had operated on them by auditory stimulation appeared to slow down every vital function of their bodies almost to the halting point, and again they seemed lying in death. Curt signaled to Hol Jor, and they carried the heavy case of terbium up the spiral stair. When they emerged onto the rock surface, they replaced the heavy round metal lid in the opening of the stair.