Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) (11 page)

Grag chuckled grimly to himself.

“They’ll get a surprise when they uncover me! I hope Larsen King, and Albert Wissler are both around. I’d enjoy knocking their heads together.”

He lay, expectantly waiting with this plan in mind, as the sounds of digging grew louder. Soon, he faintly heard Wissler’s voice.

“Careful, now, men!” the superintendent was ordering. “We’re getting near that robot. He was buried near this end of the slide.”

“I’ve uncovered one of his feet!” a man shouted, a little later.

“Take it easy!” Wissler barked. “Uncover his legs first.”

“Just wait till you get my arms free and see what happens to you, Mr. Wissler,” Grag muttered to himself.

But the robot’s grim plan suffered a sudden setback. He had felt the broken rock being removed from over his legs, though his upper body was still pinned down by a great mass of it. But now Grag heard a rattle of chains. He swore as he realized they were chaining him tightly as they uncovered him. They were taking no chance of letting him get free.

By the time they had all the rock off Grag, he was bound hand and foot by heavy steelite chains. The robot was dragged away from the mass of rock that blocked the passage.

He made furious attempts to break his bonds, but not even his strength could snap those massive chains.

The whole cavern was now brightly illuminated by powerful krypton lights that had been brought down here. Some forty of Larsen King’s planetary miners were present, wearing space-suits and helmets. Most of this motley collection of Martians, Saturnians, Earthmen and others were looking in uneasy awe around the gloomy cavern, and at the solemn Lunarian statue.

ALBERT WISSLER, his thin face anxious inside his glassite helmet, stood superintending Grag’s removal. The scientist turned as Larsen King hastily entered the cavern from above. King’s hard face showed excitement, and his voice came sharply on the space-suit phone.

“So you holed through into this cave at last?” Larsen King exclaimed to Wissler.

Then his eye fell on the blocked fissure.

“What did that?” he demanded.

“Captain Future!” exclaimed Wissler. “He and his Futuremen were in this cave when we entered it. They escaped down that passage, setting off a blast to block it. One of them, this robot, was caught in the explosion.”

King uttered an angry curse.

“But the Planet Patrol said the Futuremen were trapped over in the Thompson Range, miles away!”

He swung angrily on Grag.

“How did you reach this cavern?”

“Why, we just wished we were here, and here we were,” Grag grunted sarcastically. “Isn’t it remarkable?”

King turned furiously from the jeering robot.

“They must have come through some other crack or fissure, he muttered. “And they’ve gone on down that fissure they blocked. Captain Future must figure it will lead him down to the radium. Well, we can follow that way, too!”

“I don’t know that I want to follow that way,” Wissler said agitatedly. “There’s a lot of wrong about all this. There’s air in this cavern. And look at that statue! It seems to indicate that the ancient Lunarians migrated into these depths long ago, to follow their dwindling atmosphere.”

“To the devil with the Lunarians!” snapped Larsen King.

His voice rang in sharp orders to the workmen.

“Get the boring machines down here and open that blocked fissure, then we’ll have a clear way on down.”

The motley planetary miners hesitated uneasily. Then the lanky Saturnian who was their spokesman answered King sullenly.

“We don’t want to go any deeper in the Moon! That statue and the air here make us sure that some of those Moon-devils still exist.”

“Yes, there’s a footprint of one of the things here!” cried another.

“That’s right, men!” Grag shouted loudly. “These caves are full of Moon-devils. We saw a couple of them ourselves.”

“Silence that robot!” roared Larsen King furiously. “You men pay no attention to his lies. There’s nothing down there to hurt you.”

The miners still remained sulkily unmoving. King cursed in a low voice. Then he tried another tack.

“All right, men. If you’re afraid of shadows, I’ll see that you are protected,” he told the planetary workmen. “I’ll arrange for a full company of Planet Patrol officers to come here and accompany us as a guard in the deeper caves. That’s a guarantee of your safety, isn’t it?”

“We wouldn’t mind going deeper with a Patrol company to guard us,” the Saturnian miner conceded. “But we don’t go on till if gets here.”

King nodded impatiently.

“The Patrol guard will be here as soon as I can get it here. In the meantime, you use the boring machines to open up this passage.”

Reluctantly the miners obeyed. Grag saw them bringing down the big, snouted atomic boring machines. The great revolving jaws were soon biting into the fallen mass of rock.

LARSEN KING’S voice was scornful. “They’re a pack of frightened children!” he told Wissler. “Now I’ve got to go back to Earth and prevail on the Government to send a company of the Patrol here to guard these scared sheep.”

“Will the Government detail a company for that?” Wissler asked.

King nodded brusquely.

“They will when I tell them Captain Future is down in those caves. They want Future badly!”

He gestured toward Grag.

“Keep that robot tied up — you can turn him over to the Patrol when they get here. And keep the men working until they’ve got that fissure open. I’ll have Gil Strike pilot me back to Earth.”

Shortly afterward King left for Earth. Grag called after him.

“Hope you and Strike have a nice crash landing!”

In the following hours, Albert Wissler kept the planetary miners hard at work clearing the fissure. More krypton lights had been set up, and flat metal trucks had been brought down to remove the masses of fallen rock as the boring machines ate their way through.

Grag lay in his chains, morosely watching all this activity. But the robot was not as helpless as he seemed. His mind was busily searching for a way of escape. His arms were tightly bound against his metal body by the chains, his metal wrists being pressed together.

A plan came into Grag’s mind. He began a series of furtive attempts to move his wrists inside the chains. He could make only imperceptible movements at first, so tightly was he trussed up. But gradually, as time passed, he had so moved his forearms inside the binding chains that his left hand touched his right wrist.

The steely fingers of Grag’s left hand began work upon his other wrist. They began to unlock the cunning hidden bolts that held his metal hand. For Grag’s hands, like all his limbs, were detachable, so that they could be repaired easily when necessary.

Gradually, Grag completely unfastened his right hand from the wrist. He made certain he was not observed. Wissler was earnestly directing the mining crews, who had now bored nearly through the mass of obstructing rock. No one was watching Grag. Quietly the robot drew his handless right arm from under the binding chains.

It took Grag some minutes to get his dismembered right hand free also. Then, using the fingers of his still-bound left hand, he refastened his right hand to the wrist. He now had one arm and hand completely free of the chains.

“They’ll learn that it’s not so simple to tie me up!” Grag told himself grimly.

With the free hand, he soon untied his chains. Quickly he rearranged the chains around his body so that although he was now really free of them, they looked as though they still bound him.

“Now I’ll wait till they get the passage open,” Grag decided coolly. “I might as well let them do all that hard work for me.”

He lay, apparently tightly chained, watching the planetary miners bore on into the fallen mass of rock. Before long, the powerful machines had penetrated completely through. The fissure was now open again.

At once, the miners drew back into the cavern. Grag saw their Saturnian spokesman anxiously report to Albert Wissler.

Wissler nodded his head emphatically.

“All right. You men can go back up to the dome till the Patrol company gets here.”

“Better haul that robot up with you. We’ll keep him up there till we can turn him over to the Patrol men.”

Grag, in the last few minutes, had evolved an improvement of his original scheme. He saw now a way, not only to escape, but to help Captain Future.

“Wissler, I’ve something to propose to you before you turn me over to the Patrol,” Grag said in a low, urgent voice to the scientist.

Wissler looked down at him doubtfully.

“What is it?”

“You’ve been trying to find the Moon laboratory,” Grag said earnestly. “I’d tell you where it is, if you gave me a chance to escape.”

Wissler rose immediately to the bait.

“Wait a minute,” he said in a low voice.

The planetary miners were approaching to haul Grag to the surface. Albert Wissler gestured impatiently.

“I’ve changed my mind. We can leave the robot safely down here, since he’s chained,” Wissler told the men. “You can go on up.”

The motley crew needed no urging. They were eager to leave the gloomy lunar cavern that had so strongly aroused their superstitious fears. They poured into the tunnel leading to the surface.

Wissler came back to Grag. The scientist’s blinking eyes were lit with avid excitement as he approached the prostrate robot.

“Now we’re alone. You can tell me where the Moon laboratory is,” he said eagerly. “If I find you’ve told the truth, I’ll see you getaway.”

For answer, Grag suddenly flung away the heavy chains draped around him, and rose to his feet. The great robot’s steely hands gripped the neck of the thin scientist.

Wissler’s eyes bulged in unbelieving horror at the massive metal giant standing over him. His knees buckled, his bony face was a pasty gray.

“Don’t — don’t kill me!” he choked, in terrified accents.

“I’m not going to kill you unless you make me,” Grag boomed grimly.

He had possessed himself of the atom-pistol which the man had been too terrified to use.

“You’re going with me, Wissler.”

“Going with you? Where?” gasped the panicky scientist.

“Down after the chief,” Grag retorted. “You’re going to be a hostage for us. And you’ll be a dead hostage, if you try any tricks.”

They started down the narrow fissure, Grag stalking grimly behind the stumbling scientist. The robot had picked up one of the hand krypton lamps left by the planetary miners. He kept its beam flashing ahead. The blue ray illuminated a few hundred feet of the way ahead.

The fissure was a mere narrow crack in the black Moon rock, angling this way and that as it dropped ever deeper into the lunar depths.

A few minutes later, the two suddenly halted. There were signs of a recent struggle at this point. Grag flashed his beam on a little patch of red, glistening fluid on the jagged black rock wall.

“That’s human blood!” the robot exclaimed anxiously. “The chief must have been in some kind of a fight here!”

CAPTAIN FUTURE, Otho and the Brain had remained frozen in suspense there in the narrow fissure, as they peered down at the dim shapes approaching them from below. Those vaguely monstrous figures were still just beyond the limits of the blue beam of Curt’s lamp. Then, as though cautious of the light, the two creatures came closer. They were now clearly outlined. And at the sight of these twin horrors of the lunar depths, gasps of amazement came from both Otho and Captain Future.

“Those things aren’t real! They’re a bad dream!” yelled Otho incredulously.

“Quick — get back!” shouted Curt Newton. “They’re coming up at us, and we haven’t a single weapon.”

The two advancing horrors were centipedal monsters. They looked like giant white worms, with thick bodies twenty feet long, borne upon a network of very short legs. The head of each was a blunt monstrosity split by a mouth of gaping fangs. The eyes were huge round and phosphorescent.

Even as he realized their extreme danger, Curt’s scientifically trained mind apprehended the nature of these creatures. He had seen sculptures of just such monsters in the dead Lunarian cities above. These many-legged things were living relics of the Moon’s dead youth.

The centipedal horrors advanced more rapidly as the Futuremen backed up the passage. The creatures seemed to be making ready for a fierce rush. The glare of their phosphorescent eyes was hypnotic.”

“And our proton-pistols are dead, and we’re trapped in this cursed fissure!” Otho groaned. “I knew we’d meet grief in these ancient holes inside the Moon.”

“Looks like it,” Captain Future admitted tersely. “Better save yourself, Simon,” he told the Brain. “You can get away, but we can’t.”

The centipedal monsters had now reared up their hideous bodies a little in the blue light. They seemed to tense themselves for the spring.

“Lad, there’s a niche up in the wall of the fissure here!” came Simon Wright’s sharp, metallic voice. “If you can get up to it, we could perhaps hold the creatures off.”