Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) (5 page)

“Let’s get out of here!” yelled Otho, his eyes blazing with excitement. His proton-gun had leaped into his hand.

“No shooting!” Captain Future rapped as they ran. “We’re not going to endanger the lives of men who are only doing their duty.”

They heard Halk Anders’ yell behind them, the pound of running feet as a detail of dark-uniformed Planet Police started in pursuit. As they raced up the stairs, it seemed that the great building was a giant wasp’s nest that they had stirred into fierce activity. Brazen throats of bells were clamoring deafeningly, and hoarse voices yelling.

They burst out on the little landing-deck where the parked
Comet
glittered under the stars. Tumbling into it, Curt jumped for the control room. The cyclotrons started with a bursting roar, as Otho swung the door shut. Curt jammed down the cyclotron pedal and yanked back the space stick.

Pluming flame from its tail, the
Comet
slammed skyward. Curt sent the little ship screaming up over the mammoth pinnacles and lights of New York, recklessly arrowing up through the local traffic levels.

On the
Comet
climbed, straight into the stratosphere. Earth had dropped to a shadowed convexity beneath them. Overhead gleamed the silvery crescent of the Moon, a brilliant half disk. Grag had turned on their televisor to the wavelength used by the Planet Police. The big robot called out abruptly in his booming voice.

“Listen to this, Chief!”

A hard, rapid voice was hammering from the televisor.

“All cruisers and stations of the Planet Patrol! Emergency Flash! President Carthew has just been murdered. Captain Future, accused of murder, has escaped custody. He and the Futuremen are breaking for space. They are hereby declared outlawed, and are to be taken at all costs!”

“They’re calling up all the Patrol squadrons in this part of the System to net us,” Curt gritted.

“Holy sun-imps, we’re outlaws now!” Otho exclaimed. His slant green eyes flashed. “They’ll find us Futuremen the slipperiest ‘outlaws’ they ever handled!”

They were out in clear space by now, the
Comet
streaking outward through the void with every racket tube thundering. Looking back by means of the telescopic rear view plate, Captain Future glimpsed a little swarm of tiny metal specks that followed them.

“GHQ Squadron of the Patrol is on our tail,” he muttered. “But they can’t overtake the
Comet
— it’s the other squadrons that matter.”

“Where are we going to head for?” Simon Wright asked coolly. “They’ll surely have us cut off from the Moon already.”

CURT nodded tensely. “Yes, the Lunar Squadron will be strung out waiting for us,” he said. “We’ll have to break for outer space. There’s a spot in Mars’ southern desert where we can hole up till the chase dies down. Then we can return and work secretly to uncover Larsen King’s plot.”

He held the racing ship on a course toward that sector of black space whose brightest star was the red dot of Mars. As time flashed by, a barrage of code signals streamed constantly from the televisor. Then Curt glimpsed a thin swarm of metal specks in space ahead of them. They were fast cruisers, coming on in “space sweep” formation.

“That’s the Martian and Asteroidal Squadrons coming to meet us!” he exclaimed in dismay. “They’ve got us boxed — we’re cut off from Mars!”

“Can’t we get away by using the vibration drive?” cried Otho.

Curt shook his head grimly.

“It would be suicide to try to use the vibration drive’s speeds inside the System. We’re in a neat trap.”

THE Futuremen realized the full peril of their position. The Patrol had an efficient system for dealing with space pirates and other fugitives of the void. Its fast code signals could swiftly fling a net of heavily armed cruisers around any sector of space, by gathering together the cruising squadrons of that part of the System.

That was what had happened now. The Patrol squadrons had rapidly converged from a half-dozen different directions. It was now impossible for the ship of the Futuremen to slip through the tightening net, without discovery.

Grag uttered an angry bellow.

“They’ll find it easier to box us than to keep us boxed! We can blast our way through them with the proton-guns.”

“Calm down,” Captain Future advised curtly. “We’re going to try to get out of this — by skillful maneuvering, if possible. Don’t use those guns.”

“Even you can’t slip out of this net by clever piloting, Chief,” Grag protested anxiously. “They’re just waiting for us to try to break ahead through them!”

He pointed agitatedly with his metal arm toward the distant swarm of cruisers ahead. They were coming on in a hemispherical, cuplike formation — the famous “space-sweep” strategy. The GHQ Squadron close behind the
Comet
was seeking to drive it into that cup.

Curt Newton grinned tautly.

“We can’t get through that formation ahead, so we’re going back — right through this squadron behind us.”

Otho’s jaw dropped.

“Devils of space! Maybe we could run back through them before they could gun us — they wouldn’t be expecting that!”

“If we get back through them and give ‘em the slip, where will we head for?” Grag asked. “For Venus?”

“No, for that’s just what they would expect,” Curt replied. He pointed toward a tiny yellow speck that lay in space far back to the right.

“We’ll hide out there on Eros till the hunt dies down.”

“On Eros?” repeated Otho in dismay. “But nobody ever lands on that crazy little asteroid!”

“That’s just why they won’t think of looking for us there. Eros is our best chance,” declared Captain Future. “Get ready, all of you. I’m going to let those cruisers almost overtake us, and then do a hairpin loop right back through ‘em.”

The brilliant stars of the abyss looked down upon this racing drama between worlds. The Patrol cruisers, spouting flame from every rocket tube in their sterns, began rapidly to overhaul the
Comet
as Curt deliberately reduced speed.

He gripped the space stick tightly.

“Hold tight, all of you!” he gritted. “Here we go back over!”

Curt yanked the space stick back into his lap. At the same time his foot jammed the cyclotron pedal to the floor. The
Comet
stood on its tail in space as the full power of its raving cyclotrons was diverted into its keel rocket tubes. It roared back over in a hairpin loop no other pilot would attempt at such speed.

Curt Newton felt as though his brain were exploding from the pressure. His senses cleared enough to let him glimpse that they were rushing headlong back into the midst of the pursuing ships.

“Look out for a collision!” Otho yelled.

Patrol cruisers loomed up head-on in front of the
Comet
. Curt’s lightning maneuver had taken the pursuers utterly by surprise.

HE SLAMMED the space stick sideward and the
Comet
swerved to a blast of its lateral tubes, avoiding collision. They screamed straight back through the swarm of Patrol cruisers. Guns of a few cruisers let go with a startled scattered tire, but the atom-shells went wide of their mark.

“We’re through them!” shouted Otho. “Pour on that power, Chief!”

Curt kept the “cyc”-pedal to the floor. The
Comet
thundered Earthward at the highest speed of its rocket drive. Captain Future glanced back. The squadron of Patrol cruisers was curving around to follow them. But the ships of the formation could not double back in a hairpin loop as Curt had done, lest they run into each other. They had to swing around in a broad curve, losing much time.

“Hah, they’re finding out now they’re not chasing clumsy space pirates!” exulted Grag’s booming voice. “We’re slipping them!”

The
Comet
was taking full advantage of the pursuers’ loss of time. Streaking through space as though on wings of flame, it pulled out of even telescopic sight of the turning Patrol cruisers.

“Now we’ll zoom for Eros,” Captain Future declared, his gray eyes sparkling with excitement. “They’ll be sure we’re heading back across the System for Venus, and will comb space from here to that world.”

They lost the swarms of Patrol cruisers that had been about to trap them. But Curt well knew that the squadrons would quickly reshape their plan, that all the System between here and Venus would be crackling with code to draw the net around them again.

He kept the
Comet
streaking at highest speed toward the yellow speck of Eros. The little asteroid, whose extraordinarily eccentric orbit brought it nearer Earth at times than any other body except the Moon, was at present a third of the way between Earth and Mars.

The asteroid presented an outlandish appearance as the ship of the Futuremen drew near it. It was almost the only world in the System that was not spherical in shape. The little planet had the oblong shape of a brick, and turned over and over in space as it followed its path.

“Look at it — it even looks wacky!” said Otho, staring in intense dislike. “Chief, can’t we find some other hideout than that crazy little flying brick?”

The Brain spoke up satisfiedly.

“I’m glad we’re landing here. It’ll give me another chance to study the peculiar Erosian gravitational field which causes that curious time-phenomenon.”

Otho gave up.

“All right, take me there — what do I care? What have I got to live for, anyway? I might as well go crazy on Eros as die out in space.”

Captain Future paid no attention to the android’s grumbling. He was keenly surveying the little yellow, bricklike world as he approached.

Small as it was, Eros had a tiny satellite. It was a silvery object that circled the asteroid in a regular orbit. Curt only glanced at the object, which was now on the opposite side. Eros grew into a large, yellowish bulk as the
Comet
dropped in toward it. Thin air whistled outside, for one of the marvels of this tiny world was the fact that it was able to hold an atmosphere.

Curt flew above the sunlit side of the oblong asteroid, keeping well away from the low black hills at its western end. He knew from his previous visit that those so-called Magnet Mountains could tear every atom of iron out of a ship that approached too closely.

They flew over a rolling plain covered with tawny grass, crossed above a river that flowed in a deep canyon around the asteroid, and then found themselves above a great forest of giant yellow growths that looked for all the world like exaggerated mushrooms.

“That’s the eastern Fungus Forest,” noted the Brain, his lenslike eyes peering closely. “The biggest Erosian town is just north of it.”

Curt nodded.

“I remember. We’d better land by the town and we’d better do it before that queer gravitation field starts affecting us.”

He sent the
Comet
scudding down on throttled rockets over the crowded yellow fungi of the weird forest. At its northern edge lay a small town of pale stone structures, curiously minareted edifices in which dwelt the human Erosians native to this little world. Captain Future landed the ship in the concealment of the towering fungi nearest this town.

“We’d better go into town and explain to the Erosians why we landed,” he said quickly as he cut the cyclotrons. “They don’t much like visitors, if you remember.”

“Now it begins!” groaned Otho gloomily as they emerged from the ship. “In about ten minutes, that magnetic gravitation field will start affecting our bodies like it did on our last trip, and we’ll go screwy again.”

Captain Future led the way, his tall, red-haired figure striding through the thin, warm air, and dappled sunlight and shade of the strange fungus forest. He looked up anxiously, but saw no ships in the brassy sky.

The fact strengthened his confidence that their pursuers had been thrown off the trail. The Patrol would not give Eros a second glance, for the most intrepid spacemen avoided it like the plague. The squadrons would assume that they were making for Venus, to hide in the great swamps.

A few minutes later the Futuremen entered the little town of minareted buildings. There were scores of Erosians in its streets. These yellow-skinned men, women and children all wore dark, close-fitting garments not unlike the black zipper suits of Captain Future and Otho.

But all these yellow people looked like living statues. They seemed frozen. In all the throng, there seemed not a single movement. Here a man striding along with a burden stood with one foot raised for the next step. Here stood two wrinkled old men who appeared to be conversing, one with an arm frozenly raised to emphasize his soundless speech. Nearby, children who seemed to be chasing each other were frozen in vivid tableau. It looked for all the world as though a strange doom had stricken all these people, petrifying them instantaneously.

The spectacle was uncanny even to the Futuremen, who had seen it before.

“It gives me the creeps,” Otho murmured in strong distaste. “Like being in a city of the dead.”