Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) (7 page)

LARSEN KING made a gesture of angry contempt.

“And you’ve let them slow down work because of that nonsense?”

Gil Strike, who had been peering down into the slanting tunnel, turned toward the other two.

“Here come the boring crews back up,” he reported. “Their shift doesn’t end for an hour yet. They’ve quit on the job.”

Moon miners began pouring up out of the tunnel on the rattling trucks, hastily disembarking in the shaft-house, as though glad to be out of the shaft. Last of the heterogeneous planetary group to emerge was a brawny green Jovian.

“It’s Hok Kel, mine boss on this shift,” Wissler told his employer as the Jovian approached. “What happened down there?” he cried.

The Jovian shook his head, looking disgustedly toward the miners, who were muttering excitedly together.

“They got in a panic,” he rumbled. “All because they happened to run into this thing while they were boring.”

He held out the object in his hand. It was a dry, shriveled fragment of bone — the arm of an ancient skeleton. But it was oddly curious in that instead of five fingers, the hand was a web of more than a dozen very slender bones.

Wissler’s blinking eyes widened.

“Why, it must be the skeletal arm of an ancient Lunarian!”

“That’s what the men said,” rumbled Hok Kel. “They’ve been nervous all day, because this morning we turned up a few fragments of worked stone and a little metal implement. This put them in a panic.”

“That little shred of bone?” cried Larsen King incredulously.

He turned and surveyed the muttering planetary miners, scathing scorn in his black eyes.

“I’m cursed if ever I heard of a tough bunch of interplanetary diggers going into a panic over a little thing like that!”

The motley group of Moon miners eyed him sullenly. Then a tall hollow-eyed red Martian among them answered the promoter.

“It is not the bone alone — it is what it means,” he said slowly. “Its presence in the debris of this ancient fissure proves that the ancient Lunarians went down through that fissure, ages ago when it was open.”

“What if they did?” King demanded contemptuously. “What difference does it make now what those creatures of the dim past may have done?”

A gaunt gray Neptunian miner growled his answer.

“It makes a difference to us. We don’t want to go where those Moon-devils went. Maybe there’s some of them still alive down there.”

“Maybe you’re a lot of fearful fools!” snorted Larsen King. “Afraid of men who’ve been dead for a thousand centuries!”

“They weren’t men, they were devils,” muttered a Saturnian miner. “We saw what they looked like, over in that dead city.”

King’s harsh voice rang domineeringly.

“I’ll have no more of this nonsense. You men signed on for this job and you’re going to finish it. Now get back down into that tunnel!”

His whiplash voice silenced the muttering, men. They looked uncertainly at one another. Then, driven by the powerful personality of their employer, they moved sullenly back into the metal trucks that rattled down into the shaft. But their reluctance was very apparent.

“Keep them boring,” rapped King to Hok Kel.”Don’t give them any time to brood over that superstitious nonsense.”

THE Jovian mine boss nodded a little doubtfully as he followed the men.

“Maybe they’ll be better when we hole through into that cavern.”

“Moon devils!” repeated Larsen King wrathfully. “The stupid fools!”

He turned toward Albert Wissler.

“What the devil, was it over in that ruined city that put such crazy, notions in their heads?”

Wissler answered nervously.

“There are stone figures over there that look like idols and are pretty ghastly. And other things —”

“I’m going over there and see for myself,” King said decisively. “It might be wise to have those ruins blown up, if they’re affecting the men so much. Come along, Wissler. Strike, you stay here and see that they don’t stop work again.”

Clad in space-suits and helmets, King and the thin scientist left the dome’s airlock entrance.

They tramped westward, Wissler leading the way with a hand krypton light. The darkness and cold outside the dome were intense. The thin starlight that sifted into the abyss only faintly illuminated the looming masses of rock amid which they picked their way. Far, far overhead, the mouth of the chasm was but a narrow crack of starry black sky.

Presently a mass of white ruins loomed vaguely in the blackness. The two men walked on, the blue beam of the krypton light slicing the dark. The Lunarian city was a tomb of cyclopean ruins. Its structures had been built of a hard white moon-rock, and had covered an area of a square mile. In plan, the city had been spiral. One narrow street that unfolded in ever-widening circles could still be traced.

The architecture was disturbingly alien. Spiral fluted columns formed porticoes to low, windowless stone buildings of mausolean appearance. From atop many of the fluted spires gaped monstrous stone creatures — giant centipedal worms with staring eyes, wolflike beasts and others.

“Those must represent lunar animals that once existed,” said Wissler. “It’s believed the Moon Dogs descended from one of those forms — a species that managed to adapt itself to the vanishing of the lunar air.”

“They tell a lot of tall stories about those Moon Dogs,” sneered Larsen King. He stared about. “What the devil smashed this place up so?”

The Lunarian city looked as though it had been shattered by giant hands. Broken columns and masses of stone debris blocked many streets. At the center of the spiral city loomed a larger roofless wreck.

“It’s supposed,” Wissler explained, “that the impact of cosmic fragments which formed the lunar craters was the shock that shattered this city. Also, it must have caused the rock slide that closed the fissure leading downward.”

Clambering over masses of broken debris, Wissler led the way with his lamp toward the towering wreck at the center of the city.

“This seems to have been a Lunarian temple of some kind,” he muttered. “Look and you’ll see what scared the men.”

They had entered a cyclopean, roofless temple whose floor was littered with fallen blocs. Its dimensions were so great that the blue beam of the krypton lamp barely reached its farther end. The beam, angling upward, illuminated four stone colossi.

These giant figures, sculptured in a stiffly sitting position, were oppressively alien despite their general resemblance to humanity. Their bodies were thick, short and neckless. The heads were round, the eyes saucerlike with queer shutter lids, the noses merely two gaping nostrils above the slitted mouth. They had flat webbed paws for hands and feet.

LARSEN KING’S voice came scornfully.

“So these stone statues are the Lunarians the men are scared of!”

“It’s not the stone figures alone,” protested Wissler. “It’s the fact that no one has ever found a single Lunarian’s remains here in the city. What became of them all? Where did they all go?”

“Bah, you’re as superstitious as the men,” jeered his employer contemptuously. “No wonder that — “.

Wissler’s terrified exclamation interrupted.

“What’s that?”

A dark figure was entering the wrecked building from behind them. The unsteadiness of Wissler’s light as it flashed toward the intruder was evidence of the scientist’s state of nerves.

He sighed with relief. It was a space-suited man who was approaching. They recognized Gil Strike’s hawk face inside the helmet.

“What’s wrong? More trouble with the men?” King asked sharply.

Strike’s voice was excited and exultant.

“No, not that. We just got a flash from the Planet Patrol. They spotted Captain Future landing on the Moon. They’ve got him and the Futuremen trapped in the mountains southeast of here!”

CURT NEWTON had taken extreme precautions to avoid observation as the
Comet
approached the Moon. He kept on the dark side of the satellite, running up its space-shadow to increase his chance of slipping past vigilant, patrolling cruisers.

Curt believed that the hunt for him would have somewhat slackened by now. But there were always Planet Patrol cruisers near the Moon. The so-called Lunar Squadron, while it had no base on the satellite, used it as center of the sector in which they watched earthbound shipping.

Luck seemed to favor the Futuremen. They followed the shadow right to the surface of the Moon without sighting a Patrol cruiser. Captain Future now steered around the satellite, toward the brilliant Sea of Glass that lay south of Great North Chasm. The
Comet
was soon out of the shadow, flying over white pumice desert glaring in the Sun.

“I’m heading for a certain gorge north of the Sea of Glass,” Curt told his three comrades gathered in the control room. “If you remember, we explored a little of it two years ago. There was a fissure there that seemed to lead deeply down into the Moon.”

The three nodded in recollection.

In no time at all, it seemed, the
Comet
had left the desert behind and was flying over tall, jagged mountains, the extreme northeastern spurs of the mighty Thompson Range. It was a wilderness of sharp white pinnacles that menaced the passing ship like bared fangs. Miles ahead glittered the blinding Sea of Glass, over which they must pass.

Suddenly out of the star-dusted black void, four grim cruisers screamed down like shooting stars toward the
Comet
.

“Patrol cruisers!” yelled Otho. “They kept a telescopic check on the Moon —”

“Captain Future, ahoy!” rang a stentorian voice from the televisor at the same instant, on an all-wave transmission. “Planet Patrol speaking! Land and surrender instantly or we’ll gun you down!”

“You’ll gun nobody down!” flared Otho, flame leaping into his eyes as he jumped for the proton-cannon breech. “By the Sun, I’ll —”

“No, get away from that gun!” Captain Future ordered sharply.

The stentorian command thundered from the televisor.

“Unless you land instantly, we’ll open fire! You can’t possibly break free!”

“They’re right!” yelled Grag in alarm. “They’ve got us ‘pinned’ by their altitude, Chief. We’ll have to fight our way out this time!”

Curt had already recognized the discouraging nature of their predicament. They had been flying very low over the towering lunar mountains. The four Patrol cruisers had swiftly spread out to “pin” them. They could not rise from the satellite now without meeting murderous fire.

Realizing this in a flash, and resolved not to turn his own guns against the Patrol, Captain Future took the only chance open of escape. He jammed the cyclotron pedal down, flung the space stick to the right and a little forward.

The
Comet
screamed down between the lunar pinnacles as though bent on suicide. Curt flung it right between towering peaks and precipices at high speed. It took the split second timing of a great pilot to brush so closely past the jagged stone scarps and ridges without fatal collision.

HE WAS seeking to give the Patrol cruisers the slip by dodging away through the dangerous peaks. They would hesitate, he felt, to follow closely. But a shower of atom-shells suddenly exploded brilliantly to his left. The Patrol cruisers above were firing down at him heavily.

“Patrol shooting!” jeered Otho, his green eyes blazing. “I’d like to show them gunnery.”

Captain Future swung the space stick sharply to the left, to hurl the
Comet
between two tall pinnacles of rock. At that moment, more atom-shells exploded right in front of the fleeing ship. The terrific glare blinded Curt for an instant. There was a heart-stopping shock and crash that flung them violently about.

“We grazed one of those peaks!” came Grag’s yell.

The
Comet
’s left lateral rocket tubes had been crushed in by the grazing contact. The ship, temporarily unmanageable, spun crazily and then dived headlong toward the rocky valley between the two peaks.

Curt Newton glimpsed the glaring rock waste rushing up at them with frightful speed. Instinctively, he kicked in both the cyclotron and brake-blast pedals. The rocket tubes in the prow of the ship spouted flame a moment before the
Comet
reached the ground.

The terrific brake-blast batted the ship dizzily back up for a few yards. It roiled crazily and then crashed down onto the rock, and lay still. The shock had snapped the fuel-feed line.

“Chief, are you hurt?” cried Grag.

The big robot had picked himself up with Otho, and he and Simon Wright were anxiously bending over Curt. Captain Future shook his head to clear it. Then, as he took in their situation, he jumped unsteadily to his feet.

“Left lateral tubes gone — but we could take off again if that fuel line hadn’t snapped!” he exclaimed.

“It’ll only take us twenty minutes to put in a new feed line!” Otho cried.

“That’s more time than we’ve got!” Curt rapped. “Those cruisers will be down after us like hawks —”