Captain Future 06 - Star Trail to Glory (Spring 1941) (13 page)

Captain Future suddenly remembered why space ships gave this region a wide berth, and the thought brought a dawning inspiration. It might just be possible by a desperate expedient to escape their fate.

"Walker, do you realize that we're not far from the Sargasso Sea of Space?" he explained.

"That's why I was going to turn back the ship," Jan Walker said. "I was afraid of getting too near the Sargasso."

Curt's keen eyes scanned the star-blazing vault in which they drifted. He was estimating their position, figuring from their last charted position in the ship and from their space drift since.

"I believe that if we kicked ourselves counter to the Sun with our impellers for an hour or so, we'd get into one of the great ether-currents that flow into the Sargasso."

"What in the Sun's name would we want to do that for?" Walker asked, puzzled. "Once in the Sargasso, we really would be beyond hope. No ship that ever goes in there comes out again."

In the young Rocketeer's voice was the awe inspired in all space pilots fay the dreaded Sea of Space. For the Sargasso was a port of dead ships, from which no craft ever returned. There were powerful ether-currents in the outer Solar spaces, swift-running tides in the ether itself. The Sargasso was a vortex of many such currents. Ships that were carried into that blind spot of space by the currents could not emerge.

"There are space ships in the Sargasso," Curt reminded his companion. "Some of them are new, big vessels."

"Yet they could never buck out through the currents," Walker argued. "They couldn't escape that graveyard of space."

"That's true," Curt admitted, "but we could use the televisor equipment of some of those ships to call for help. I know that some of those ships have powerful televisors still in working order."

"How could you know that?" Walker demanded skeptically. "You've never been in there. No man has ever penetrated the Sargasso and returned, they say, except Captain Future."

"That's right," Curt agreed.

WALKER'S jaw dropped. He stared in ludicrous amazement.

"You — you're Captain Future? Why, it's impossible!"

"Sorry I can't show you my ring and prove it," Curt chuckled. "You'll just have to take my word for it that I'm Future in disguise."

"If you are, why in the Sun's name are you impersonating a novice Rocketeer?"

Curt explained briefly that he and the Futuremen were seeking to crack the space ship robberies.

"That's right, Marshal Gurney said he was going to call in Captain Future on the case," Walker muttered. He stared in awe at the famous Planeteer. "Good Lord, all of us at Suicide Station, patronizing and instructing
Captain Future!"

"Grag and Otho, two of my men, are on their way in my ship to Kansu's
Comet
over there." Curt Newton explained. He pointed toward a misty green speck lying far off to their left in space. "If we can reach them with a televisor call from the Sargasso, they can come and get us."

"But if they go into the Sargasso, they'll be trapped, too," Walker objected. "Even your ship couldn't get out of those currents."

"You don't know my
Comet.
It has power enough to pull a moon away from a planet."

Walker still hesitated. "It's taking a big risk for us to enter that place deliberately. We may never escape from it."

"It's better than floating here till our air gives out. I've been in many a tight pinch from Mercury to Pluto, and I've found that a bold risk boldly taken always lessens the chances against you."

The two men started pushing themselves through space by steady blasts from their impellers, but they seemed to make no progress. The mighty void, spangled with thousands of burning stars, was limitless. Yet Captain Future persevered doggedly. His thoughts were not on their present predicament so much as on the disturbing set-back his plans had received. The mysterious weapon of the machine men wasn't any ray or beam. But what was it?

"I think I begin to see now!" Captain Future muttered excitedly. "It can't be anything else but that!"

They had pushed through space for two hours when Curt's impeller went dead. Its charge was exhausted. Walker's impeller went dead soon after.

"That finishes even the one crazy hope we had," Walker groaned.

"Maybe not," Captain Future encouraged. "I think we're already in a weak ether-current. Wait and see."

For some time they were silent as Curt sought to check their drift by rough visual triangulation against the nearer planets Sunward.

"We're in a current, all right!" he called jubilantly. "It's flowing toward the Sargasso, too. It'll get stronger, soon."

"I suppose I ought to be thankful for being carried into the Sargasso," Jan said miserably. "I'm not."

The gentle tide in the ether gradually became so strong that they were being pitched violently and rolled over and over. They gripped hands to keep from being separated.

"We'll suffer plenty at the vortex," Captain Future predicted, "There's a mad whirlpool of currents there around calm dead center."

"Hope — it doesn't get much worse — than this!" Walker gasped.

SPINNING, hurled onward at ever-increasing velocity, their progress had become a nightmare. They were entering the zone of conflicting currents that ran together and whirled around the central vortex of this mighty maelstrom of the ether. Buffeted and rocked by soundless and invisible but terrific currents, smashed first one way and then another, Curt and the young Rocketeer plunged onward. They would have been torn apart but for Captain Future's iron grip on his companion. The whole Universe seemed to be gyrating crazily as the currents flung them about.

Abruptly they were ejected by the racing ether-maelstrom into a dead calm. They floated in space, drifting gently.

"Name of all the space-gods, is it over?" Jan Walker panted.

"It's over. We've been shot into the calm dead area at the center of the ether-whirl."

Walker stared in awe. Ahead of them, at the center of this calm area inside the vortex, floated a vast, jumbled mass of space ships.

"Port of Missing Space Ships!" breathed the young Rocketeer. "It looks weird."

"There are plenty of strange things in here," Captain Future admitted. "But it's all dead, except —"

He did not finish the sentence, but his mouth tightened at the memory of his own unnerving experience on his previous visit here. They drifted slowly nearer the wreck-pack. Walker was able to see that this graveyard of space ships contained not only hundreds of ships but also meteors, buckled metal plates, dead men in space-suits who had floated in here. These and other interplanetary debris choked the spaces between the wrecks.

They reached the edge of the pack, bumping into a crumpled wreck that had been riven by a meteor somewhere in space. Captain Future clambered nimbly up to the top of the wreck. Walker followed, stood looking in awe across the floating mass of wrecks.

"The newer ships — those that floated in last — are all around the edges of the pack," Curt explained. "We've got to find one whose televisor equipment is still workable."

The next two craft they jumped onto were hopelessly battered and entangled, apparently by some kind of space-collision. But the fourth ship was a dumpy freighter that seemed fairly new and had suffered no apparent damage. They found its space-door and entered. Dead men, frozen to marble by the cold of space, lay about the decks. A motley crew of Neptunians, Venusians and Earthmen, they had been slain by atom guns. Curt Newton looked into the cargo-bunkers. They held only a little gray dust.

"Gravium," he declared. "Looks like they were on their way from Neptune to Earth when space-pirates jumped them." He found the little televisor room. The instruments were a wreck. "The pirates smashed the televisor when they first boarded, to keep an alarm from going out. An old space-corsair trick."

They went on to the next ship. It was a fairly new speed-liner, a Rissman Fifty whose whole stern had been rent by a tremendous explosion.

"They cut in too much power and the tubes back-blasted into the cyclotrons and exploded them," analyzed Curt. "Let's have a look."

Inside the wreck, the dead interplanetary passengers seemed to be sleeping, preserved by the utter coldness of space. Captain Future strode forward to the televisor room. The televisor was unharmed, and the two cyclotrons which were its independent source of power had not been damaged.

"Here's what we're looking for," Curt announced. "This ought to be able to force out a signal even through those ether-currents, for a range of a few million miles. That ought to catch Otho and Grag on their way to Kansu's Comet."

CURT rapidly started the cyclotrons throbbing, tuned the televisor to the special wave used by him and the Futuremen, and sent out a buzzing call-signal. Then he waited, but no answer came. Again and again he called, each time without response.

"Your signal isn't reaching them?" Jan Walker queried anxiously.

"No," Curt said, frowning. "Grag and Otho must already be inside Kansu's Comet. No signal would penetrate that electrical coma."

"Then what are we going to do?" blurted the young Rocketeer.

"We're up against it," Captain Future confessed ruefully. "I'd figured they wouldn't have reached the comet by now, but I must have underestimated the speed they made."

"Can't you signal them when they come out of Kansu's Comet?"

"That might not be for days yet," Curt pointed out. "We can't keep a continuous signal running all that time. The power of this set would soon run down. And if we used intermittent calls, the odds would be thousands to one against our just happening to catch them before they were out of range on the way back to Mercury. I'm afraid my idea of calling them to come for us here has turned out to be a dud."

"How did you get out of here before?" Walker pursued.

"We put a great number of cyclotrons in one little space boat and used all that terrific power to shove us out," Curt answered. "But we used every cyclotron in the wreck-pack that was in good condition. Most of the cycs in these wrecks are no good, you know, exploded or run down. There aren't enough good cycs in the pack to repeat that trick."

"Then we're trapped in here?"

Walker asked calmly.

Curt liked his coolness.

"Never say die, Rocketeer," he replied. "I've been thinking. There's one ship in here that we might use to escape in."

"What kind of ship?"

"A very strange craft," Curt said gravely. "The crew in it is strange, too, and they're not dead, either. If we could start that ship —"

Captain Future turned abruptly and led the way out of the wrecked liner. Wonderingly Jan Walker followed the wizard of science as Curt headed in toward the older ships at the center of the pack. Here floated clumsy-looking rocket-craft of a type long obsolete. Among these ancient wrecks floated an utterly different ship. It resembled a cylinder of blank gray metal, several hundred feet long.

"Why, it doesn't look like a space ship at all!" Walker blurted.

"I looked into it when I was here before," Curt muttered, "It's a ship from somewhere outside our System — a star ship from alien regions of the Universe, which must have drifted into the Sargasso long ago. Its crew isn't human. They're not dead, but lying in suspended animation."

His gray eyes narrowed purposefully.

"This craft must have tremendous power, Walker. If we could figure out how to operate it, it would get us out of here, I believe. But we mustn't let its unhuman crew awaken."

Curt Newton approached the cylinder. There was no sign of a door anywhere in its curved side. Curt hurled a thought at the ship.

"I want the door to open!" he thought.

Obedient to his mental command, a door began to open in the side of the star ship. It opened like the shutter of a camera. At first it was only a tiny hole, but it widened out until it was a large circular aperture.

"It's telepathically operated," Curt explained to the gaping young Rocketeer. "Follow me — and for your life, don't touch anything!"

THEY entered the giant cylinder. Inside was a bewildering maze of girders and bracing struts, through which a central cat-walk led toward one end of the cylinder. In the shadows at both ends of the strange craft towered complex, grotesque machines whose purpose and design were an utter mystery. The very substance of which they were constructed was totally unfamiliar.

Curt led the way forward along the catwalk. His extreme caution set Jan's nerves even more on edge than before. In the absolute silence the young Rocketeer's gasp of horror sounded shockingly loud.

The eerie occupants of the ship lay in bunklike metal shelves. Above each shelf was suspended a purple lamp, its weird glow falling downward to bathe the grotesque sleeper below. They were huge and scaly, with multiple tentacles — like intelligent and malignant octopi!

"Gods of space, what are they?" gasped Jan Walker.

"Creatures from some other solar system," explained Curt. "Evidently they do not need air." He pointed to the empty tanks along the wall that bore traces of a red liquid. "Their food was synthetic blood. When they ran out of it, they cast themselves into a state of suspended animation. The purple lamp over each sleeper casts a force that keeps them preserved in a sleep of suspended animation. When we ventured in here before, we nearly woke all the creatures up. As soon as those purple lamps are turned off, they awake."