Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942) (10 page)

Into his brain beat the sharp mental commands of other minds — a collective intelligence so vast and alien, Captain Future felt his mental defenses tottering and crashing before its assault.

He knew, in a wild flash of perception, what was happening to him. He knew that the electric mental pattern of his own brain was no longer commanding his body. The will of more powerful minds, broadcast as a wave of electromagnetic force, had invaded and taken possession of his brain and body.

“I must not oppose Thoryx and Querdel and their guards. I must submit to them.”

THAT was the command of an alien will, flowing out from the sphere in a wave of dark, electromagnetic force to dominate Captain Future and all his fellow-rebels!

Curt struggled wildly to resist that dominating, hypnotic wave of mental force. He could not. He was like a child in the grasp of a giant. He knew now that the Alius whose aid Querdel had called were mighty indeed.

Yet Curt Newton’s fighting soul rallied for an instant against even this overwhelming attack. By extraordinary mental effort, he opened his lips.

“Grag! Otho!” he gasped to the Futuremen, who were now bursting into the room. “Get away! Save Joan and — and —”

He could not finish. His brain was reeling under the crushing mental attack.

Curt staggered, still trying to resist as his last mental defenses crumbled. He glimpsed the triumph on Querdel’s evil old face. He saw the dark wave pulsing out through the corridors and courts of the entire palace.

Then his mind was crushed into complete senseless acquiescence.

OTHO had been fighting furiously in the court of the Lightning Feast, helping Zarn and Aggar and their followers to break the resistance of the demoralized palace guards. Then the android glimpsed Captain Future and Simon racing into the corridor in pursuit of Querdel.

At once, Otho broke off to follow them. Even in the fierce blood-madness that always swept him in battle, the android’s prime loyalty was always to his beloved, red-haired leader. As he plunged after Curt and Simon, he yelled to Grag.

“Come on, Grag — the chief needs us!”

Grag came hurrying clankingly with him, stolidly brushing aside unfortunate Cometae who got in his way. A moment later Otho and Grag burst into the vaulted laboratory of Querdel. They halted, appalled by the weird spectacle before them.

From the great black sphere at the center of the room, the wave of dark, hazy force had pulsed out to engulf Captain Future and the Brain. It was flowing around Querdel, too, but the old Cometae councillor showed nothing but triumph on his evil features.

But Curt’s face was ghastly as Otho had never before seen it. An agony of mental struggle was in Captain Future’s eyes as he gasped out a few words.

“Grag! Otho! Get away — save Joan — and —”

Curt did not finish the words. Grag and Otho saw Captain Future’s agonized face become suddenly masklike, expressionless. They saw Curt stand now as stiff as a statue, staring stonily into nothingness. And the Brain, too, was poised, speechless, motionless.

Otho realized instantly that it was that pulsing aura of black force which had somehow overcome his leader. But the android plunged recklessly right into the dark, outward-welling haze. He clutched wildly at Captain Future’s arm.

Chief, what’s the matter?” he cried. “Wake up!”

Then Otho, too, felt a dim, chill sensation of alien forces seeking to invade and master his mind, of the attack of a powerful intelligence.

But Otho resisted that mental assault to which Curt and Simon had fallen victims! The android resisted, and so did Grag. They stood their ground, unheeding the flowing dark haze from the sphere, trying frantically to awaken Curt and the Brain from their strange stupor.

“Otho!” yelled Grag suddenly. “That old devil who did this has got away!”

The android whirled fiercely. It was true. Querdel had taken advantage of their moment of desperate distraction to slip from the room.

Both Grag and Otho raced furiously down the passage by which they had come to overtake and kill the Cometae wizard who had called forth the power of the Alius.

That haze of unimaginable mental force, emanating from the laboratory Grag and Otho had just left had pulsed outward to invest the whole palace. It was all about them like a nightmare dusk as they sped down the corridor, yet still it seemed not to affect them.

They burst back out into the palace court, looking about fiercely for Querdel. Then they forgot the wizard in the horror of the sight they witnessed.

Fighting between Cometae rebels and palace guards had suddenly ended. It had been ended by the pulsing dusk of force that now pervaded everything. Under the influence of that terrible pall, the Cometae rebels had dropped their weapons and stood about like mindless automatons, where a moment before they had been shouting their victory.

BUT the Cometae palace guards and nobles remained unaffected by the weird force. They were disarming the stricken rebels, who could no longer resist them. Thoryx was shouting angry orders.

“Secure every rebel! Be sure to get the leaders!” he shrilled vindictively. “We’ll teach the people what it means to challenge us, chosen by the Alius!”

Querdel, who had reached the king, pointed at the stunned Grag and Otho.

“There are two of the strangers who were ringleaders!”

Cometae guards leaped toward the robot and android from all sides. With a bull-like roar of rage, Grag met and hurled them back in broken heaps.

An alarmed cry went up.

“The power of the Alius has not stricken them! They are devils!”

“They are only two and you are hundreds!” raged Thoryx. “Get the electric blasting weapons and finish them!”

Grag was momentarily at a loss.

“Otho, what in the name of all the sun-imps are we going to do?” he yelled. “We’d better get the chief and Simon and get out!”

Otho whirled, his flaming green eyes instantly taking in their precarious situation. They were almost hemmed in by masses of charging Cometae guards, who had completely cut them off from the passage leading to the laboratory where Curt and Simon remained stricken.

“We can’t get to Simon or the chief now!” Otho hissed. “And the chief told us to get Joan away. We’ve got to do that and come back later. Come on, Grag — this way out!”

Otho had spotted their only remaining chance of escape. An entrance in one side of the court remained still unblocked by guards. The android realized that unless they escaped instantly by that opening, the now-triumphant Cometae guards would bring up weapons capable of destroying them. Otho knew that the revolt was now a disastrous failure.

Ordinarily, Otho would not have dreamed of deserting his leader. But Curt’s frantic last order to assure Joan’s safety rang in the android’s ears. Also he knew that only by saving themselves from imminent destruction could they hope later to be of any help to their two stricken comrades.

Grag comprehended his reasoning. The great robot plunged ahead with him toward the side entrance.

“After them!” screamed Thoryx through the still reverberating crash of thunder. “They seek to escape!”

Grag and Otho were hurling themselves along a corridor, the flying figure of the android paces ahead of the clanking robot.

“Wait — I can stop them from pursuing!” Grag boomed, bringing up short in the corridor.

Grag had spotted one of the barred metal gates designed to close off the corridor. He swung it shut. Then, instead of trying to lock it, Grag tore out one of the metal bars by main strength. He literally tied the heavy metal bar around the two halves of the gate, as though it had been a length of rope.

“That’ll hold them for awhile!” he boomed triumphantly.

They could hear the whole palace in wild uproar around them. And through it all pulsed the dark haze of incredible mental force.

Otho and Grag burst into the open air, to find themselves at the rear of the looming palace.

“Come on!” the android urged. “If we can reach the prison, get Joan away in the
Comet
—”

Then as they came into sight of the great plaza before the palace, they halted, baffled. Companies of Cometae guards were running across it toward the palace, and other guards were pouring into the prison across the plaza.

“Now we can’t reach the prison or the
Comet
!” Grag exclaimed. “It’s head for the jungle — or else!”

INSTINCTIVELY he and Otho started on a dead run through the narrow streets, away from the palace and plaza. They encountered only a few Cometae as they plunged through the slumbering city, and these few hastily recoiled from the alarming spectacle presented by the fierce-eyed android and the monster metal robot. Within a few minutes, thanks to the city’s comparatively small area, they glimpsed ahead of them the green of the jungle.

There was no zone of cultivated land around the city. The Cometae, who did not rely on food to maintain their strange electric life, needed no agricultural acreage. Only a few hundred yards from the outskirts brooded the green jungle that blanketed most of this fantastic world in the comet’s heart.

Otho and his metal comrade flung themselves across the open space and into the jungle’s shelter. They found themselves in a forest of tall, queer trees whose trunks were green as well as their grotesquely geometrical foliage. Vines and brush choked much of the space between.

The jungle was a place of translucent green light. At first, Otho thought this was wholly the effect of coma-light filtering through the foliage. Then as they slowed down, he realized that part of the glow came from the vegetation itself. Tree trunks and branches, as well as their leaves, shone with a faint, intrinsic luminance.

“This is far enough,” Otho said finally, coming to a halt. “We mustn’t go too far from the city, for we’re going to have to get back in there somehow to help the chief and Simon and Joan.”

His voice grated with frustration.

“Gods of space, how did things fall to pieces so suddenly?” he exclaimed.

“It was that old devil Querdel, who called the Alius!” said Grag, clenching his metal fingers. “That black sphere was some means of mental communication with the Alius.”

“Yes, the sphere was both a transmitter and a receiver,” Otho muttered. “And those mysterious devils, the Alius, used it to project a wave of hypnotic mental force that seized every rebel in the palace.”

“But why didn’t that wave of force seize us!” Grag wondered. “We felt it, but it didn’t overcome us as it did the chief and Simon and Ezra, and all the rest.”

“Grag, I think I understand why we were able to resist it!” Otho exclaimed. “The others are all humans — even Simon’s brain is that of an ordinary
homo sapiens.
Apparently the Alius knew just what kind of mental force to utilize that would overpower a human brain.

“But you and I are not ordinary humans, Grag,” the android went on excitedly. “Our bodies, our brains, are of artificial origin and differ in pattern. The Alius’ weapon of hypnotic force missed fire against us for a very fundamental reason. We’re a couple of minds such as they never ran up against before!”

“Well, now what are we going to do?” Grag demanded practically.

Otho shook his head gloomily.

“I haven’t figured it out yet.”

He threw himself down upon the grass, leaning back against the faintly luminous green trunk of a big tree. But an instant after he did so, Otho bounded to his feet with an involuntary yell of pain.

“What are you trying to do — howl out to everyone where we are?” Grag reprimanded him.

“You touch that tree and you’d howl, too!” Otho exclaimed. “I got the devil of an electric shock from it.”

“A shock from a tree? You’re dreaming!” Grag scoffed.

THE robot advanced his metal hand toward the luminous green trunk. A spark immediately bridged the gap.

“Why, it’s true! All these trees and this vegetation are electrically charged!” Grag exclaimed, marveling.

“Now I understand,” Otho declared after inspection of the growths. “This vegetation relies on the electrical radiation of the coma, instead of on sunlight, for its agent of photosynthesis. It must contain either a variant of chlorophyll or a totally different substance, capable of absorbing the electric radiation as a photosynthetic force. The process builds up a small charge in every plant and tree —”

Grag suddenly interrupted with a tense gesture.

“Listen, someone’s coming!”

Otho froze instantly. They stood in the middle of the glade, listening. Then Otho, too, heard the stealthy rustling.

“Cometae coming after us!” he whispered hissingly. “Thoryx guards must have found our trail! And we have no weapons —”

The stealthy sounds filtered to them through the brush from the direction of the city. Both the lithe android and the towering metal robot braced themselves for a hopeless battle.

Then a small gray shape burst out of the brush and flew toward Crag, to caper in frantic, soundless joy around his metal feet.