Captain Future 14 - Worlds to Come (Spring 1943) Read online

  #14 Spring 1943

  Introduction

  A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

  Worlds To Come

  by Joseph Samachson writing as Brett Sterling

  Captain Future and his valiant aides speed to the rescue of the Sagittarian system — ready to lock in mortal combat with deadly enemies from another dimension!

  Radio Archives • 2012

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 1943 by Better Publications, Inc. © 2012 RadioArchives.com. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form.

  These pulp stories are a product of their time. The text is reprinted intact, unabridged, and may include ethnic and cultural stereotyping that was typical of the era.

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  ISBN 978-1610818452

  Introduction

  The original introduction to Captain Future as it appeared in issue #1

  The Wizard of Science! Captain Future!

  The most colorful planeteer in the Solar System makes his debut in this, America's newest and most scintillating scientifiction magazine — CAPTAIN FUTURE.

  This is the magazine more than one hundred thousand scientifiction followers have been clamoring for! Here, for the first time in scientifiction history, is a publication devoted exclusively to the thrilling exploits of the greatest fantasy character of all time!

  Follow the flashing rocket-trail of the Comet as the most extraordinary scientist of nine worlds have ever known explores the outposts of the cosmos to the very shores of infinity. Read about the Man of Tomorrow today!

  Meet the companions of Captain Future, the most glamorous trio in the Universe!

  Grag, the giant, metal robot; Otho, the man-made, synthetic android; and aged Simon Wright, the living Brain.

  This all-star parade of the most unusual characters in the realm of fantasy is presented for your entertainment. Come along with this amazing band as they rove the enchanted space-ways — in each issue of CAPTAIN FUTURE!

  Worlds To Come

  A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

  by Joseph Samachson writing as Brett Sterling

  Captain Future and his valiant aides speed to the rescue of the Sagittarian system — ready to lock in mortal combat with deadly enemies from another dimension!

  Chapter 1: Menace in Sagittarius

  IN THE light of the blue sun that blazed fiercely down upon the twin planets, Davor and Lagon, the ordinarily stolid face of Ki Illok showed an expression of mingled rage, determination, and hopelessness. His second in command, Rad Magon, was running toward him anxiously.

  “The attack has begun!” the lieutenant gasped. “The Sverds are coming!”

  “I know.” Ki Illok was a brown man, compact, stocky, clipped of speech, brusque of manner. His dark eyes ran quickly over the atom-pistol at his belt. “We are ready for them, Rad Magon. As ready as we shall ever be.”

  His eyes, inspecting defenses, swept over the city which was soon to become a battlefield.

  The planet Davor, which was under attack, was a small one, circling along with its twin about a minor sun in the constellation known thousands of light-years away from the Solar System as Sagittarius. Its cities were constructed not of metal, but of plants trained with great skill to grow into place, and were therefore highly inflammable. But Ki Illok’s feeling of hopelessness was due not to this, but to the mystery that surrounded his enemies.

  The Sverds were strange, apparently invulnerable creatures, almost certainly non-human. Together with an army of human soldiers, they had already sown destruction far and wide. Under the leadership of a mysterious being known as Gorma Hass, they had conquered planetary system after planetary system.

  Was Gorma Hass himself human? Ki Illok did not think so. No man would set out to conquer systems of worlds out of a sheer lust for power. The project was too vast, and life was too short. No, the purpose that drove Gorma Hass was something more subtle than that, something Ki Illok had racked his brains again and again in a vain effort to guess.

  The streaks of light that were flashing silently across the heavens biased up in a dazzling criss-cross pattern that at any other time might have impressed Ki Illok with its beauty. But now he knew that the lights came from the space ships of the Sverds, and that the pattern meant death — death to the world of Davor, to its cities, to its inhabitants, to himself. Lagon, the second of the twin planets, had just risen above the horizon. Rad Magon pointed.

  “Ki Illok, you must escape. I have a ship ready. Lagon is as yet unattached. From there we can voyage to some far star where Gorma Hass will not follow.”

  Ki Illok shook his head. The blue sun shed a ghastly light upon his brown face.

  “I intend to fight, not run away,” he answered bitterly.

  ALREADY the plant buildings in the distance were bursting into flame. But now answering flashes of light came from the ground. And far overhead, some of the attacking ships, hit by the return volleys, were disintegrating.

  The ships opened and spewed out large metal spheres, which began to fill the skies, These globes drifted down slowly, unaffected by the fierce rays which the defenders turned against them. Only when they hit the ground did they burst open, scattering deadly fragments of metal, and men poured out from them.

  There was no need for Ki Illok to bark out last-minute orders, for his men already knew what to do. He himself had his atom-pistol out. He fired whenever he saw anything that might possibly be a target, shooting rapidly but accurately. It gave him a grim satisfaction to know that the attackers were paying a heavy toll.

  Then from Rad Magon there came a sudden despairing cry. “The Sverds! The Sverds!”

  Ki Illok turned quickly. A couple of hundred yards away from him two gray metal monsters were striding along remorselessly. They walked upright like men on two legs, but they were beyond the height of any giants of whom he had ever heard. Over ten feet from toe to crown, they had stolid animal faces apparently set upon the tops of their bodies without intervening necks. They walked through the flames, as unaffected by the heat as by the rays that were leveled upon them from every side.

  A metal sphere drifted down and exploded near one of the Sverds. Ki Illok stared in excitement as the fragments shot through the mysterious creature’s body without obstruction. Now, he thought, he knew the secret of their invulnerability.

  “They’re ghosts!” he cried. “Three-dimensional images! They can do no harm!”

  He saw one of his own soldiers rush past the Sverd, to shoot at a human enemy upon whom his atom-pistol might have some effect. Then, as Ki Illok stared in horror, the Sverd raised an arm, pointed a metal rod — and the soldier of Ki Illok disappeared in a burst of vapor.

  “So they’re not images!” murmured Ki Illok dazedly. “They can kill!”

  Then he saw a dark shadow forming on the ground. Its edges took shape and outlined a man. Ki Illok realized that facing him at a distance of a few hundred yards was a figure that might have been his own. Compact, stocky, brown of face, there was nothing frightening about it except the manner of its appearance.

  “Soldiers of Davor, I am Gorma Hass!” cried the figure.

  Ki Illok’s teeth clenched. So Gorma Hass was human after all! He leveled his at
om-pistol, pressed the trigger — and saw in despair that Gorma Hass, like the Sverd, was unaffected.

  “Surrender and you will be well treated!” cried Gorma Hass. “If you fight on, only death awaits you. My human soldiers are vulnerable, but the Sverds are not. It is useless to struggle against them. Surrender to save yourselves!”

  Already men were throwing down their arms.

  “The cowards!” muttered Ki Illok bitterly.

  “It is hopeless, Ki Illok,” said Rad Magon at his side.

  “Perhaps it is,” he replied fiercely, “but I will not desert my men. I will die with them.”

  But as he rushed forward, a shower of metal fragments spattered through the air from an exploding sphere, and Ki Illok fell.

  Rad Magon picked up the unconscious body, ran for the waiting space ship. It was the work of a few seconds to deposit Ki Illok inside, and blast off. He was afraid he would be seen by Gorma Hass, but by now the smoke was so thick that during the few moments of danger it shielded him well. He could hear Gorma Hass speaking again, “Soldiers of Davor, this is your last chance to surrender!” Then he was beyond Davor’s atmosphere, streaking for Lagon. He would pause there briefly, then drive on.

  He looked back fearfully. He was unpursued.

  KI ILLOK awakened to stare up at a sun that was red, not blue. He felt weak, but still he had sufficient strength to stand up. He stared around him.

  In addition to Rad Magon, there were three men watching him. One was a giant over seven feet in height, with a brilliant crimson skin and stiff black hair. He wore a garment of black leather secured by a scarlet belt. The second was small, withered, blue-skinned and completely hairless, with the bulging skull of a man of intellect, and colorless, faded eyes. The third, also blue-skinned, was slightly taller, also hairless, but obviously younger and more vigorous.

  “Hol Jor!” exclaimed Ki Illok. “And Ber Del! By the gods of space, where am I?”

  “This is Anfren, my home planet,” replied Hol Jor, the red giant. “The sun is Antares.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Rad Magon managed to bring you. He took you first to Lagon, where your life was despaired of. Then he had you put in a sound hypnotic sleep and brought here to our doctors. You owe him your life. Ber Del came here from Vega much as you have done, to escape Gorma Hass and his Sverds. The young man beside him is Mar Del, his son.”

  Ki Illok nodded, held up his hand in a curt gesture of greeting. Then his face darkened.

  “What now?” he demanded bitterly. “Where do we run next?”

  Hol Jor’s broad crimson features became thoughtful. “You are asking a difficult question, Ki Illok. When the time comes for Gorma Hass to attack us, we shall fight as bravely and as desperately as you have done, but we too have no hope of winning. And soon there will be no place to which we can escape. We shall have the choice of dying or submitting to Gorma Hass.”

  “I have made my choice. I will never submit.”

  “Nor I,” cried Mar Del. “You old men give up too easily. Gorma Hass is not unconquerable. After all, he is only a Vegan, like myself.”

  Hol Jor’s crimson eyebrows went up at the words, “old men.”

  “If I had trusted my eyes, I should have called him a Sagittarian,” commented Ki Illok impatiently. “But I believe now that this is only an appearance he assumes. I am convinced that he is not human at all.”

  “Aye, you are right,” agreed Ber Del. “And seeing that he is not human, he can have no human objective in mind. I feel that he will not stop at the conquest of a few star systems. He intends to continue on to every world where human-type beings live.”

  “Why?” challenged his son.

  “That I cannot tell,” admitted Ber Del, greatly troubled, “But the danger is great. He possesses a science which we cannot equal.”

  Burly Hol Jor nodded, “That is true. And there is only one way to conquer him — oppose him with a science greater than his own.”

  Mar Del laughed. “That is easy enough to say. But where shall we find such a science?”

  “No trouble at all,” interrupted Ber Del. “By the green devils of Antares, I think I know what Hol Jor has in mind!”

  Ki Illok, too, knew what Hol Jor meant. “Our knowledge is like that of children compared to his,” he said slowly. “But he and his companions are only four in number. Gorma Hass possesses countless armies.”

  “By the names of all the star-gods,” burst out the mystified Mar Del. “What are you talking about?”

  “We are talking of a man of a distant system called Captain Future, and of his companions,” explained Hol Jor. He turned to Ki Illok, “The strength of Gorma Hass lies not in his armies of conquered races, but in himself and his Sverds. If any one can learn how to conquer him, Future can.”

  “We understand too little about Gorma Hass,” pointed out Ber Del. “That has been our chief difficulty. It is not enough to realize that he is not human. To aid us in our fight, we need the resources of the vast science which Captain Future has at his disposal.”

  HOL JOR nodded. But Ki Illok hid one final objection.

  “He is too far away. Even with the aid of the powerful vibration drive he devised, it would take many quals before we could reach him. And by the time we returned, it would be too late.”

  “No, there is time,” said Ber Del. “We are not the greatest scientists in the universe, we Vegans, but we do make advances now and then. Ki Illok, have you seen the ship by which I arrived here?”

  Ki Illok shook his head. Ber Del led him to the side of the room. Here he pressed a button, and the wall became transparent. Ki Illok looked out and saw a cylindrical ship resting quietly on the ground.

  He shrugged, “It is an ordinary space vessel.”

  “Look more closely, Ki Illok.”

  “The outline of the hull seems vague.”

  “Ah, now you are more observant. The ship is equipped for dimensional travel. Imagine yourself in a two-dimensional world, Ki Illok, a world like a sheet of paper. You are at one corner of the world, Captain Future at the other. You are a universe apart. But now some one bends the paper, brings the two corners close together.

  “You are still far apart so long as you can travel only on the paper. But what if you could leap from one corner to the other, through another dimension?”

  “The distance would be trifling,” admitted Ki Illok.

  “The distance between us and Captain Future is trifling, provided we can travel outside of ordinary three-dimensional space. And the ship you see is equipped to make that very journey.”

  Hol Jor growled, “You are not telling him everything, Ber Del. The trip is dangerous. Space in the other dimensions is almost uncharted, practically unchartable. We can land in Captain Future’s solar system, but we cannot choose the spot at which we desire to land. And once there, we shall have to finish the journey in the ordinary way.”

  Mar Del interrupted impatiently, “Enough of talking. The trip can be made; let us make it. My father must remain behind, to care for his people. I volunteer to pilot the ship.”

  “I,” answered Hol Jor, “will be the pilot. But I accept you as a member of the crew.”

  They glanced at Ki Illok. “Let us start,” he growled.

  Chapter 2: Danger from the Sun

  A MAN’S hearty laugh rang out, audible only to his companions across the savage lunar landscape, as the massive metal body of a great robot flew through airless space to land on his bulbous metal head. The robot sat up, then scrambled to his feet, a furious expression in his bright photo-electric eyes.

  “By Jupiter, that animal can’t do that to me!” boomed his deep voice. “Let me at him again.”

  “It’s useless, Grag,” laughed the man, “The day will never come when you can ride a wild Plutonian slug-horse.”

  Curtis Newton, the tall young Earthman who was famous throughout the solar system as Captain Future, grinned in anticipation behind his glassite helmet as the robot once mor
e approached the slug-horse. In the wild forbidding landscape, lighted by the green radiance that came from Earth, he looked hardly less weird a figure than the robot.

  Tail, lithe, and broad-shouldered, his mop of tousled red hair, and his handsome space-tanned face with its clear, keen gray eyes were visible through the glassite. An audiophone of short radius enabled him to communicate with his comrades, enabled Grag to hear his laughter. But to a stranger there would have been no sound, for the surface of the moon was airless, and the walls of the crater Tycho never knew an echo.

  The Plutonian animal, about ten feet in length and four feet high at the shoulders, resembled a giant slug as it motionlessly awaited its angry would-be rider. Its legs were so short as to be practically invisible, but for all that it could cover ground like the flick of a whip once it was aroused. Grag approached it cautiously, leaped clumsily upon its back, and clamped his legs about the thick body. At once the slug-horse began to vibrate.

  The outlines of its body, lashing back and forth violently, began to blur as Captain Future stared at it. A low humming sound testified to the speed of the back-and-forth motion. Grag, at first firmly ensconced in his seat, began slowly to vibrate also. Greater and greater became the amplitude of his vibration, until suddenly the animal made a gigantic effort, its whole body heaving in one vast convulsion, and the robot flew over its head again.

  This time Grag’s discomfiture had another witness. A lithe and pale-skinned man had stepped up from the flight of steps that led to an air-lock entrance of the underground Moon-home. Human as Otho’s appearance was, he was actually only a synthetic man, an android. His body had been constructed of artificial tissues.

  This was a sore point with him, for he hated to be reminded that he had been born in a series of test tubes. His head was hairless, the skin pure white, with neither brows nor lashes. Slanted green eyes sparkled with reckless deviltry. Otho was the swiftest and most agile creature in the system, and often he needed all his speed and agility to escape from the trouble he loved to stir up.