Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) (10 page)

“Maybe some Moon Dogs got down here and made that trail,” Grag suggested.

Captain Future shook his head. “They’re non-breathing beasts, which wouldn’t venture into this air-filled cave, even if there was a way.”

During this colloquy, Otho had been standing a little apart from the others. The android had been staring intently back into the dark cavern, his slant green eyes troubled, his whole attitude one of concentrated attention.

Now he broke into the discussion.

“Chief, I do hear a throbbing sound somewhere here!” he exclaimed.

“Now Otho’s got jumpy again,” rumbled Grag disgustedly.

“Ever since he saw that footprint, he’s been hearing things.”

“You dumb hunk of iron, will you keep quiet and listen?” stormed Otho.

They were all silent. And their ears now detected a dim, almost inaudible reverberation.

“Why, he really did hear something,” said Grag in surprise.

“Of course I did,” snapped the android. “Chief, it sounds like it’s coming from the upper end of the cavern.”

Captain Future was astounded. He led the way hastily back along the gloomy cavern. They soon determined that the throbbing was most loud near the upper or northern end of the cavern. Curt pressed his ear against the black rock wall, heard the reverberation much more clearly. The regularity of its rhythm gave him instantly the key to its nature.

“That’s a machine we hear!” he exclaimed sharply. “An atomic boring mechanism, that’s tunneling a way down toward this cavern!”

“Larsen King’s miners!” ejaculated the Brain. “It can only be they!”

Captain Future nodded rapidly.

“I’m afraid so. I should have known it. We’ve been moving north and west all the time. This cavern can be only a mile or so under Great North Chasm. Albert Wissler would surely locate this space by sonic probing, and would drive his tunnel down toward it.”

“Holy sun-imps, that’s had!” exclaimed Otho in dismay.

“They’ll be holing through to this cave before long. Hang it, I wish we could keep them from following us the way we did the Moon Dogs.”

Captain Future’s eyes kindled. He swung around to survey the narrow fissure of the ancient path, and then uttered a hopeful exclamation.

“Otho, I believe we can do that! Look how narrow that fissure is. If we could set off a blast in one of its walls and start a rock slide, it would completely block the passage. King’s miners would need days to clear the way. That would give us a big advantage of time over them.”

They stared, trying to get the full picture.

“There’s only one, thing wrong with your idea, Chief and that’s that we can’t do it,” Otho declared. “We’ve got no atomic explosives to blast with.”

“Sure we have — in our proton-pistols!” Captain Future retorted.

They began to understand the expedient he proposed. The proton-pistols of the Futuremen had each in its hilt a magazine of “unstable” copper atoms. A grain of this unstable, highly explosive matter was detonated atomically each time the weapon was fired, to produce an intense stream of protons.

THE potential power of the combined atomic explosive in their pistol magazines was considerable. Its effect would be enhanced, by the lower gravitation of the Moon. But the expedient was a gamble, and it had one serious drawback to which the Brain drew attention.

“If we did that, the pistols would be henceforth useless. We’d be entirely weaponless.”

“What if we are?” Curt countered. “There’s nothing down in the Moon to worry about. Come on — let’s see if we can really do it.”

He led the way running back along the cavern to the narrow fissure of the ancient Lunarian path. The steady throb-throb-throb of the atomic borers, in the north wall, was growing louder by the minute.

The dark, descending passage was only a dozen feet wide at its base. Curt flashed his blue beam upward. The walls of black lunar basalt bulged toward each other, overhanging the chasm floor.

“We can start a slide that will block it tight!” Captain Future exclaimed, encouraged.

He examined the west wall of the narrow crack.

“A blast right here ought to bring it all down. The deeper we sink the charge, the more effect it will have. Grag, drill out a hole for the charge with your bar.”

Grag nodded understandingly. The big robot set down on the fissure floor the burden of transformers, condensers and other apparatus he had carried on his back. Then, unencumbered, he attacked the jagged black rock, using his pointed metal bar as a drill.

Curt and Otho bent over the delicate task of pouring out the unstable atomic explosive in their proton-pistols. They encased the powder in an improvised cloth cartridge. As Captain Future started hastily to construct a makeshift atomic fuse, the throbbing reverberation from the upper end of the cavern was coming very much louder.

The Brain hurried up to that end of the cavern to listen. When he came gliding rapidly back, his report was alarming.

“They’re within a few feet of holing through. They’ll burst into this cavern in less than ten minutes.”

In fact, the whole cavern now was vibrating to the powerful throb of the boring machines, with which Larsen King’s crews were tunneling on.

“We daren’t take any longer!” Curt exclaimed. “Got that cartridge ready, Otho? What about the drill hole, Grag?”

“I’m only two feet deep,” rumbled Grag, between strokes of his improvised drill. “This rock is hard.”

The big robot had been toiling furiously, driving the pointed metal bar deeper into the lunar basalt with all his tremendous strength.

“That will have to do,” Captain Future said urgently. “Quick, give me the cartridge, Otho.” He took the innocent-looking little cloth cartridge and gently thrust it into the deep, slender aperture that Grag had sunk into the rock. Curt set his makeshift atomic fuse for a rough five-minute interval and thrust it in after the cartridge. Then he hastily tamped the aperture shut.

“Now — down the path away from here!” he exclaimed.

“That fuse of mine was no precision job — it may let go any second.”

Hastily they started down the ancient path, deeper along the descending fissure, to escape the imminent blast. Glancing back as he ran, Curt saw that light was showing through cracks in the cavern’s north wail as Larsen King’s miners broke down the final barrier.

Grag suddenly stopped short.

“Your transformers and other apparatus!” he cried, appalled. “I left them back there!”

Captain Future immediately understood the robot’s ruinous oversight. Grag had put down the vital burden of scientific apparatus, while he worked with the drill. And he had forgotten this precious equipment and left it up there on the floor of the passage, right where the rock slide would take place.

Without that apparatus, Curt’s plan of protecting the radium deposit was useless. That crushing realization held him speechless for a moment. Then he realized that Grag was racing madly back up the fissure.

“I’ll get the stuff Chief!” the big robot yelled.

“Grag, come back!” Curt cried in sharp alarm, lunging forward to follow. “That blast is due to let go now —”

Things happened then so swiftly that he could hardly apprehend their sequence.

As he yelled and started after the robot, Curt Newton saw a big round section of the cavern’s northern wall fall inward.

Men and machines were revealed there in a blaze of light. King’s miners had holed through!

The miners wore space suits, for they had expected to burst into a completely airless cave. They surged excitedly forward as they glimpsed the dim spaces of the great cave, the solemn Lunarian statue, the robot running with great strides up the passage.

Grag reached the spot where he had dropped the equipment. He picked up the mass of scientific apparatus.

Boom! The buried charge of atomic explosive let go at that moment, wildly shaking the rock walls. With ominous, terrifying sounds, the fissure walls bulged out over the robot.

“Grag — jump!” yelled Captain Future frantically.

Instead of doing so, Grag threw the mass of apparatus down toward Curt with all his strength.

“Catch it, Chief — I can’t get clear!” he bellowed.

The miraculous strength of the robot was behind that toss. The mass of apparatus, tied together for easier carrying, hit Curt’s chest and bore him to the floor.

With a thunderous roar, a massive fall of shattered black rock poured down from the sides of the narrow passage. Curt glimpsed Grag’s great metal form knocked down and covered by the falling rock. Captain Future recoiled with the bundle of apparatus, as the area of the slide increased.

For a hundred seconds, dislodged masses of black basalt showered from above, along fifty feet of the fissure. Then the rock-slide ceased.

“Chief, where are you?” came Otho’s sharp cry from below. “Are you hurt?”

Captain Future picked himself up shakenly.

“I’m all right,” he called. “But the slide caught Grag!”

The other two Futuremen reached his side. Curt turned his blue krypton beam upward along the passage. The narrow chasm was completely blocked, as high as the beam could reach, by a mass of shattered rock. No light or sound from the cavern above came down through that barrier the Futuremen had effectually interposed.

“Is Grag under that?” cried Otho in dismay. “We’ve got to get him out.”

“We can’t now!” Curt replied worriedly. “He was at the far end of the slide. We’d have to dig through fifty feet of that rock to reach him, and we’d be putting ourselves right into the hands of that crooked Larsen King’s outfit.”

CURT continued more hopefully. “I don’t think Grag can have been hurt much. It would kill anybody else to be buried under falling rock, but Grag’s metal body can stand a lot. And he won’t smother, for he doesn’t breathe. He’d be all right, and King’s crews will soon dig him out.”

“But they’d hold him a prisoner — he’s an outlaw now like all of us!” Otho reminded Curt anxiously.

“We’ll come back and take him away from them when we’ve assured the safety of the radium deposit,” Captain Future promised.”He’ll be all right till then.”

“Of course he will,” agreed the Brain. “The only way you could really harm Crag much would be to cut him up with an atomic torch.”

Curt turned his beam down the fissure. The ancient path of the Lunarians wound into the narrow chasm, out of sight around a sharp bend.

He picked up the mass of apparatus.

“We’d better get started. We’ve a long, long way to go before we’ll be anywhere near that radium deposit. I only hope this Lunarian path leads somewhere near it.”

They started on down the passage in silence. They all missed Grag, and were all anxiously thinking of the Futureman they had been forced to leave behind. Yet Curt knew it was the only possible course of action.

He stopped suddenly, his krypton beam painting rigidly on down the fissure. He had vaguely glimpsed a movement, down there beyond his light.

“Something’s coming this way!” he said in a low voice. “I don’t know what —”

“Devils of space — what are they?” cried Otho, peering frozenly.

Dim shapes were coming slowly up out of the deeper darkness into the illumination of the krypton beam. They could still see those shapes only as vague figures, whose half glimpsed outlines somehow suggested the monstrous.

Curt Newton realized the Futuremen were caught in the passage without chance of evading whatever creatures might be ahead. And, he remembered with sharp dismay, their proton-pistols were useless now.

GRAG had realized, as the blast of atomic explosive let go, that he could not escape the rock slide which already was beginning to roar downward. But the big robot was determined to retrieve his ruinous mistake of leaving Curt’s apparatus behind. So Grag, with all his great strength, had hurled the mass of apparatus down toward Captain Future.

“Catch it, Chief — I can’t get clear!” he had bellowed.

Grag glimpsed Curt catching the burden of scientific equipment. Then a shower of shattered black rock poured down on the robot from above.

Grag flung his metal arm up to protect his photo-electric eyes, the most vulnerable part of his strange body. As the avalanche bore him from his feet, he threw himself in toward the fissure wall.

He felt masses of broken basalt raining down on him, burying him deeply. But by his last-minute lunge toward the wall, Grag avoided being hit by the huger chunks that would have crushed even his metal body.

The robot lay, pinned down by the tremendous weight of fallen debris, the roar reverberating deafeningly in his ears. Finally, the thunder and quake of the falling rock ceased. The slide had blocked the passage. Again and again Grag strained his great limbs in an effort to win free. Then he realized the utter uselessness of it. The weight of broken rock upon him held him in an immovable grip. So, with a simple philosophy that was part of his character, he gave up the vain attempt.

“I’ll simply have to wait here till somebody digs me out,” he thought.

Within a few minutes Grag heard faint sounds through the mass of rock over him. He guessed King’s miners were already working to clear away the rock slide.