Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) (11 page)

The Martian had drawn his gun. Its spitting blast would have been fatal to anyone less poised and sudden and lightning-swift than Captain Future. But the big red-haired figure moved aside, a fraction out of line of fire, and sparks flew up in a harmless little volcano among broad-leaved plants.

Coming in around and under the gun-muzzle, as a clever boxer avoids his opponent’s jab and gets inside it, Future struck once with his fist. The Martian, his head almost torn off by the blow, whirled backward clear off his feet for half a dozen paces and fell in a silent heap.

The lesser gravity of the asteroid had made that flight through air possible. In falling senseless, the Martian took his gun with him. Future leaped after him to secure it.

“No you don’t!” bawled the Earthman, his hand at his own holster.

He whipped out what he found there — and howled in abject terror.

The gun had turned once more into a little Otho figure, kicking and writhing in his grasp.

“It isn’t liquor — it’s
real!”
he wailed, and dropped to his knees.

Oog, still as Otho, twisted free and ran to where the fallen gun lay. With an effort he pulled it up and stood pointing it like a tiny cannoneer. But the Earthman needed, not that threat, nor the motion of Captain Future, who by now had the Martian’s weapon.

“I’ll talk, I’ll talk,” sobbed the hoarse voice. “I’ll do anything you say. But get me to a doctor who’ll fix me so I don’t see — and
feel —
things that aren’t there!”

Captain Future grinned briefly.

“Get on your feet,” he ordered. “Grab up this languid friend of yours and carry him to your ship.”

As the prisoner turned his back to obey, Future stooped and scooped Oog into his hand.

“Oog, I’m proud of you,” he whispered, “Otho and the others, when we get them free, will be proud of you, too. And the whole Solar System will be prouder still. Because I’ve started my counter-attack against Ul Quorn, and you’re helping me. But that’s nothing to how you’re going to help me from now on.”

THE two captives were not escorted to New York by Captain Future for — on the communication system of the space-craft he had seized — he managed to sort out a certain specific wave-length, and upon it he got into touch with Ezra Gurney.

In a latitude just within the Martian orbit, from which all inhabited planets were remote and where no ships wandered, Future was met by his own
Comet
and a larger police cruiser — the one commanded by Gurney, the other by a junior officer named Elnisor, a Venusian chosen for courage, loyalty and ability to keep secrets.

The three craft lay to in emptiness, and Gurney and Elnisor came aboard to interview Captain Future. The big, powerful redhead lounged by his idled controls, with Oog cuddled in the hollow of his arm. The meteor-mimic greeted the visitors by impersonating first Gurney, then Elnisor, then one of the two melancholy prisoners who sat bound in a corner.

“Glad to see you, Ezra,” greeted Captain Future. “I’ve been far away, but I never doubted that we’d meet again. You brought what I told you?”

“Everything,” said the old marshal, his bright eyes inquisitive in his hard-lined face. “Supplies and equipment aboard the
Comet,
and men, the best and closest-mouthed on call, aboard the auxiliary cruiser. But what’s it about? Who are these specimens you have all tied up?”

“Two items for our collection of jailbirds,” replied Curt. “They were planted for a reception committee to help Ul Quorn’s invasion strike home on Asteroid Six-Ninety-Seven. I gathered them in, with priceless help from little Oog here. They’ve talked some, and I’ll talk more in a moment. Meanwhile, we’re going to occupy that asteroid ourselves, and knock the invasion back down its own throat.”

“But how? And what? Who’s invading us? Where are they coming from?” Ezra Gurney had thought he was through being amazed at Captain Future, but now he fairly spluttered with mystified eagerness.

“Briefly, it’s like this,” began Captain Future.

“A whole system from many dimensions away — I call it Dimension X — wants to overrun us. Dimension X has a dying sun, and its race of struggling people lives on worlds that are dimmed and doomed. Their fight for life has taught them amazing things in the field of big-scale caloric engineering.

“They’ve activated the central substances of their planets to produce extra internal heat and power, and such sources give them the basis for dimension-shifting devices on a mighty scale. They managed to slide one world of theirs to a point in their space where it coincided with the position of Luna in ours — and, by partial shift to a between-dimensional point, gobbled Luna up. It’s a stepping stone between us and Dimension X, if you follow me.”

“I follow you, a long way off,” said Gurney, “They’ll tackle us from the Moon?”

“No. There’s only a small way to Dimension X there, and in any case they know that we’re at least partially on the defensive on Earth. The asteroid coup will give them a wider beach-head, and in a less suspected place.”

“Where does Ul Quorn come into this?” persisted Ezra.

“He came in by chance and cosmic bad luck. Remember when he seemed to burn into nothingness as his ship fell into the sun. But that ship was full of dimension-traveling mechanisms. The heat activated it beyond even his dreams, and he was flung into Dimension X.

“He got into trouble — trust Ul Quorn for that — and then he succeeded in lining up the greedy element to invade us — trust Ul Quorn for that, too. There’s an Overlord and a whole mob of would-be conquerors, who see their own salvation and that of their race in seizing our system and setting up a new life under a bright, warm sun.”

“But can they?” demanded Ezra Gurney. “If they can shift whole worlds across dimensions, they must be invincible.”

Curt shook his head.

“I don’t think they are. In the first place, we’re a tough race ourselves, on our home worlds. In the second, the very brightness of the sun will be agony to them. Even as undisputed masters, they’ll take much conditioning and modifying to stand the light and heat of Old Sol. To attack, they must come armored and shaded, attacking by night. In the third place, they’re not all conquest-mad.”

SUDDEN astonishment caused the mouth of the old marshal to drop open.

“Curt!” cried Ezra. “You’ve met, and made friends with some of them?”

“Indeed I have. As I say, there’s an Overlord. He dictates, successfully, ruthlessly, energetically. He’s just an upstart, of a type familiar in our dimension, too. The older, quieter class of politely reared X-people doesn’t like him, doesn’t want him, doesn’t approve of him. I’ve been across, Ezra, seen their worlds and their cities, their best men and their worst. I’ve met a very pallid but decent X-gentleman called Thai Thar. He and his group of friends are to be placed in the forefront of the invading forces. You see, the Overlord wants them killed and wiped out in the first fighting. But they plotted with me, sent me a jump ahead of the invasion to skip back home at Asteroid Six-Ninety-Seven. And, instead of killing them, we’ll ally with them.”

“Fill in the gaps of that story while we work,” said old Ezra. “What do we do first?”

“These prisoners and this ship go back to New York,” replied Captain Future. “Glad you brought Elnisor. He’ll know enough to take them home without talking to anyone. The rest of us head for Asteroid Six-Ninety-Seven and prepare to meet the initial waves of the invasion.”

“Exactly,” agreed Curt. “But it’s a poor sort of tunnel that doesn’t run both ways. As a matter of fact, we’ll invade them.”

* * * * *

It later became a commonplace, in philosophizing on space-and-time relativities, to say that Dimension X’s invaders established their cosmic bridgehead on Asteroid No. 697 within one terrestrial hour, and that they lost that bridgehead by surprise counter-attack within ten terrestrial seconds.

The mechanism and operation that accomplished so great a hole between dimensions were not so freely to be discussed, for their principles remain locked in the secret archives of the Cosmic Science Department, in the Government Library at New York.

Outside the trusted official experts of the Government, nobody knows of them except the Futuremen. But it can be said that they represented prodigies of planning, and labor and equipment such as only a dictatorial government with many worlds under its sway could command. The completion of the action involved the use of an entire planetoid that, moving through Dimension X to a position approximating that of Asteroid No. 697, was then bodily shifted over.

Six fighting spacecraft, no more than cruiser class but heavily armed with weapons designed under Ul Quorn’s supervision to fight and destroy Solar System forces, hovered in the dim-lighted ether of Dimension X. Before them yawned a seeming black emptiness, a true hole in emptiness.

“In,” came the order of the Commander, Thai Thar, over his speaker system.

“In,” echoed the senior officers of the other ships.

One after another, the craft whisked into the emptiness, negotiating the dizzy change from dimension to dimension, and dropped down upon the quiet surface that was no longer identifiable as the captured asteroid.

“All out!” Thai Thar was commanding, and the six crews poured into the open.

The followings drew up before Thai Thar.

“Have the men stack arms,” he ordered.

Three of the junior commanders stared. They were Ul Quorn’s lieutenants drawn from the Solar System, a little nervous because their chief was reported in confinement — Captain Future, rumor had it, had made a fool of him once again. They wanted to counterbalance Ul Quorn’s disgrace by a bold stroke into invasion territory.

“What does this mean?” asked an officer.

“Stack arms!” repeated Thai Thar. “Assemble the men before me in close order. I have important things to say.”

It was done. The invasion force, several hundred Pale People, drew up expectantly on smooth ground between fungoid thickets. The rank and file was of the lower order, gnomelike little men with long arms, bandy legs and apelike posture.

Junior officers were of the aristocrat class like Thai Thar, resembling handsome but blanched Earthmen. To one side, as directed, were gathered the weapons — rifles, tendril-spitting devices, and agonizing light-casters that could blind eyes not fitted to endure the glare.

“Junior officers fall out and guard the stacked arms,” said Thai Thar.

AT THIS, one of the subordinates objected.

“That’s not according to plan,” growled one of Ul Quorn’s henchmen. “This is no time for lectures. Already the observatories on Earth and Mars may have learned that an asteroid has slipped away between dimensions. Cruisers will be heading this way. We ought to set up shifts to get into their dimension, ready to grab them and carry out the next phase of our conquest.”

“You’re insubordinate,” snapped Thai Thar, and the fellow subsided. Thai Thar faced the close ranks of Pale People.

“You are all prisoners of war,” he announced.

Instantly the junior officers seized weapons from the stacks and came to the ready. On the opposite side, figures stole forth from the thickets — figures in space-suits with police insignia, Earthmen and Martians and others, armed and tense.

The quickest witted of Ul Quorn’s men sprang at Thai Thar. Somebody laughed in his ear. He knew that laugh — and then he knew nothing as the big fist of Captain Future knocked him spinning into senselessness.

“Anybody else want to argue?” inquired Captain Future. “No? Ezra, these specimens are Ul Quorn’s gutter-sweepings, who hoped to be heroes of his sneak invasion. Take them into custody.”

Thai Thar smiled at the leaderless, bewildered rank and file.

“This part of the war is over,” he said for all to hear. “I shall now tell what the Overlord planned for our group.” He paused. “Will you judge by what I say.”

“Talk, Thai Thar,” ventured someone. “You have always been fair.”

“Perhaps that was my downfall,” continued Thai Thar. “The Overlord hates me and the class for which I stand, the old leadership that hoped to make the best of our dimming, dying system. I was assigned here, and these officers with me, to die in the first battles and interfere with the Overlord’s power-dreams no more. For you rank and file, he cared not one way or the other. You were assigned at random to dead men’s duty. While we fought a surprise action, drawing the defending fleet toward one point, another force — led by his favorites — would burst through to reap the fruits of invasion of the defenseless principal bases. We would be sacrificed. That often happens to advance parties.”

“Is that true?” blubbered Ul Quorn’s quickest-minded man to Captain Future. “Were we to be killed off?”

“Why not?” smiled Captain Future.

“But he said — he promised — honors, riches!”

“Bah!” growled his neighbor. “Stop and think how often he’s used and deserted men he needed no more.”

The first speaker made a grimace.