Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) (6 page)

Simon Wright watched and listened. It soon became evident that there was no one in the suite, though he could hear the guard shuffling outside its door.

Silently, he removed the grating. Then at last, he was able to glide down into the rooms he had expended so much toil to reach.

“Hmph, it’s getting dark,” he muttered to himself. “I shall not have much time.” Night was falling, outside the ship. Through the windows, the Brain could see four brilliant moons climbing into the sky to throw a flood of silvery brilliance upon the fern-forests around Jungletown. And the whole northern sky was a quaking, lurid red from the Fire Sea.

The dim radiance from the windows gave him sufficient illumination to conduct his search of the rooms. He looked around for a desk but there was nothing of the sort in this lounge-cabin, nor anything else of importance. Then he glimpsed a desk in the next cabin. He glided into that room and began a rapid search of the desk. It contained many papers connected with Jon Valdane’s multifarious financial affairs. But none of them seemed to bear on the Styx project.

Then the Brain found one paper which he keenly inspected. It was a map of Magic Moon. Upon it, the newly discovered diamond deposits were marked, as lying north of the interplanetary colony of Planet Town.

“This doesn’t tell much,” Simon thought. “Yet I hardly expected more.” Valdane was too clever to have left any details of his plot written down, he thought. Yet there was always a chance.

So the Brain was searching through the other papers, when he heard the corridor door of the adjoining lounge-cabin suddenly open.

Su Thuar’s soft, slurred voice reached his ears. “Hurry,” the Venusian criminal was surging. “Get those two cases in here before the others get back to the ship.”

The Brain soundlessly closed the desk and darted up to a place of concealment behind the door that connected the two rooms.

He heard something being set down in the lounge-cabin. Through the crack of the door he perceived that it was two small, oblong cases of light metal which Su Thuar and two others of Valdane’s bodyguard had brought.

“What in space is the boss planning to do with this stuff?” asked one of the men curiously of the Venusian.

“That’s none of our business,” Su Thuar retorted. "You’re paid to obey orders, and not to ask questions.”

The man shrugged. “All right, all right — I just wondered why all the secrecy about the things.”

“Valdane’s orders were to buy them secretly from Jovians here, and bring them aboard the
Perseus
without being seen,” said the Venusian.

Suddenly Su Thuar gave a loud gasp. “Has anyone been in this suite since I left?” he asked in sharp tones.

“Not a soul,” replied the Earthman guard, Rosson. “I’ve been outside the door all the time.”

“Someone has been here,” snapped the Venusian. “The door into the next room was almost closed when I left. Now it’s wide open.”

The Brain, hovering in his precarious concealment behind that door, heard Su Thuar striding forward to investigate.

Simon Wright tensed himself mentally for desperate action. He could not escape discovery if Su Thuar searched the room. Nor could he regain the ventilation-tube without being seen.

Suddenly a wild yell rose in the night, outside the ship. It was echoed by a dozen excited voices.

“What’s that?” demanded Su Thuar, stopping and turning around.

“I don’t know — something must have happened,” exclaimed the man Rosson. “Look, the whole north sky is blazing.”

Su Thuar plunged out of the suite, into the corridors with the others following. “Lock and guard the door, Rosson,” he called behind him. “The rest of you come on.”

Simon Wright came out of his concealment like a flying shadow at the door was closed.

He was startled to notice that the whole heavens northward were now flaming with an increased lurid red light. Voices were still shouting outside the ship, and men could be heard running.

The Brain delayed to examine the oblong metal cases Su Thuar had brought. He opened one, and was amazed. It contained nothing but a number of long, hollow wooden tubes.

They were four-foot sections of thick, hard Jovian reeds, carefully polished.

“How in the world is Valdane planning to use these?” he muttered.

The excitement outside was increasing. The Brain hastily re-entered the ventilator tube.

He refastened its grating, whose absence had fortunately escaped notice. To it, he attached a tiny instrument.

Then he made his way rapidly through the dark tubes to the property-room. As he reached that room, Simon Wright felt a shuddering vibration that shook the whole ship.

He heard a low, thunderous roar from the north, and saw that the flaming brilliance of the heavens had deepened in bloody hue. The Brain was appalled, for he had been on Jupiter enough to know what it meant.

“Tidal eruption!” a wild voice was yelling outside. “The Fire Sea has erupted right where the telepicture troupe was making scenes!”

BACK in the location-camp by the Fire Sea, Captain Future had felt a sharp anxiety as he saw Otho hurry away on the jungle trail after Kin Kurd and Joan.

The only thing that moderated his worry about the girl was his confidence in the resourcefulness of Otho.

Curt had not a doubt that Jon Valdane had sent the Saturnian politician after Joan Randall with a sinister purpose. Why hadn’t he sent Su Thuar? Where was the Venusian criminal? He had disappeared when they first landed. “Chan Carson!” came the angry voice of Jeff Lewis. “Will you stop dreaming and listen to me?”

Curt Newton had to turn and give his attention to the producer, as Lewis outlined the scenes they were to make in this dangerous location.

The stocky director appeared insensible to the hazardous nature of this place. The terrific spectacle of the bubbling, infernal Fire Sea that washed the base of this promontory affected him no more than if it had been a painted backdrop, in his intensity of purpose. The others, though, were not so oblivious. Gasping and choking from the sulphurous fumes, they cast anxious glances at the molten ocean whose scorching heat partly penetrated even this zone protected by the anti-heaters. And Curt Newton, playing his part of Chan Carson, was careful to seem openly fearful.

“Now here’s the plot of this episode of ‘The Ace of Space’,” Jeff Lewis was saying crisply. “Lura and Ron, the two young sweethearts who are trying to give the Futuremen information about the Legion of Doom, are trapped here at the Fire Sea by some of the Legion. They’re going to be killed, when Captain Future and Grag appear.” He turned to bark at the little Martian technical director. “Lo Quior, have you got that automaton ready?”

“All ready,” affirmed the spectacled little Martian. “Just what will you want it to do?”

“It’ll come on the scene with Captain Future — Carson, that is,” Lewis explained. “It’s Grag, helping Future to save Ron and Lura. It should run forward, pick up Legion men, and toss them aside.”

“I can set its controls so it’ll run forward and make the tossing motions,” Lo Quior nodded. “The men can fake the rest.”

Big Grag was standing, as immobile as the lifeless automaton he impersonated. Curt Newton grinned secretly. He knew how Grag must detest this sham. Lo Quior began setting the control-buttons on the little switchboard on Grag’s back. The Martian never dreamed that this was any other than the dummy automaton the property department had prepared.

“All right — get those cameras ready to roll,” barked Jeff Lewis. “Ron, you and Lura take your places. You’re breathless, exhausted by your flight from the Legion. You can’t go any farther, for you’re at the very shore of the Fire Sea. They’ve got you trapped —” Lura Lind and Ron King began the scene. They crouched in the sunlight, silhouetted against the angry red immensity of the Fire Sea, gazing behind them in terror and despair. Into the scene rushed the half-dozen actors who represented members of the malign Legion of Doom. They wore gray uniforms with a black disk on the shoulder. They rushed the man and girl, overpowered them and dragged them toward the edge of the cliff above the Fire Sea.

The producer made a sharp signal. In obedience, Curt Newton plunged forward, an atom-pistol clutched in his hand.

At the same moment, Lo Quior pressed the “starting button” on Grag’s switchboard. Grag came to life. The big robot stalked forward in a clanking rush, at Curt’s side. Grag moved stiffly and jerkily, as though he were really the mechanical automaton which the others thought him.

“Captain Future!” yelled one of the Legion of Doom actors in simulated amazement and dismay.

“Get them, Grag!” shouted Curt Newton, repeating his line. His atom-pistol was spitting harmless low-powered charges as he charged. Grag went into action when he reached the gray-uniformed actors. He swung his mighty metal limbs and knocked the Legion of Doom about like tenpins. The actors yelled in real dismay, as Grag snatched Lura Lind out of their grasp so roughly it looked as if he were about to throw her into the Fire Sea.

In fact, Grag was thoroughly enjoying a taste of action. He had been forced to stand so long in stiff immobility and silence that he now took pleasure in showing what he could do. “Turn this automaton off before he throws me over the cliff,” shrieked Lura Lind.

“Cut!” shouted Jeff Lewis. “Lo Quior, switch off that thing.”

The little Martian ran forward and touched the dummy switches upon Grag’s broad metal back.

Grag stiffened as though he really were an automaton whose power had just been cut off, thus allowing the thoroughly scared blonde actress to slip from his arms to the ground.

“That automaton is too dangerous to work with,” Ron King declared indignantly. “It might have thrown Lura right over the cliff.”

“It’ll be all right next time — cut its power down, Lo Quior,” Jeff Lewis ordered. “We’ll have to do the scene over again.”

Curt Newton had taken the opportunity to edge close to the immobile figure of Grag, and whisper angrily to him.

“Quit clowning, you big mutt. I want to get this over with and get out of here after Joan and Otho.”

Jeff Lewis seemed indefatigable as he prepared to re-make the scene. Curt Newton was beginning to understand why this stocky Earthman was tops in the telepicture profession.

Was Lewis in on Jon Valdane’s plot? They had been undecided about that. But Newton began to doubt that any man so earnestly wrapped up in his job as the producer, could have an ulterior purpose.

They made the scene over again, and then made it over again, as the Sun rapidly westered.

The brief Jovian day was approaching its end, yet still Lewis was not satisfied.

“You’re too stiff, too unconvincing, Carson,” he lectured Newton. “Why in blazes can’t you act like Captain Future would?”

“It’s because this place scares me,” Newton said nervously. “Can’t we get out of here?”

He pretended that increased fearfulness because he really did badly want to return to the ship, and find out what had happened to Joan and Otho. Otho had not returned, and Newton was increasingly worried.

“Why can’t you show a little courage?” stormed Jeff Lewis. “How can I make a picture with a Captain Future who’s afraid of his own shadow?”

The Jovian guide who had brought them here, plucked at Lewis’ sleeve. “It would be wise to leave here,” he declared nervously. “Night is at hand, and soon comes the Meeting of the Moons. That means danger.”

“Will you go back to Jungletown and let me make a picture?” Lewis barked at him. “We’ve got night scenes to make here, too.”

Captain Future understood the cause of the Jovian’s nervousness. For Curt Newton knew Jupiter, as the producer and others did not.

“When the four biggest moons of this planet clustered together in conjunction in the heavens, their combined gravitational pull always caused tidal disturbances of the Fire Sea. Sometimes, those disturbances were so powerful as to bring about the so-called tidal eruptions.

“Now we’ll repeat that scene once more, and then we’ll do the night-shots that show Future fighting off the rest of the Legion,” Lewis ordered. “Snap into it, for there isn’t much daylight left.”

They barely completed the re-make before the Sun dropped behind the horizon. Darkness came down upon the face of the giant planet. In that darkness, the Fire Sea below them cast a baleful, lurid glow.

Up into the crimson glow climbed two of Jupiter’s great moons, Ganymede and Calypso. They were quickly followed by Io and then by Europa, the two latter moons racing to overtake their slower sisters.

The sluggish little waves of the Fire Sea increased in magnitude as the four moons drew toward conjunction. Big maelstroms bubbled in the flaming ocean. But Jeff Lewis ignored the uneasiness of the molten flood as he directed the filming of the night scenes. “You’re down on the ground, firing your atom-pistol at the other Legion men who have attacked,” he outlined forcefully. “Ron is wounded, and he and Lura are crouching behind you. Camera!”

CAPTAIN FUTURE stretched prone, firing his atom-gun, his head silhouetted against the blazing glow of the Fire Sea.