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

  The trees themselves had been chopped down with sharp stone axes that he had shown one of the Vardri how to prepare. He had covered over the top of the hole with a smooth clayey soil to be found in the neighborhood.

  “Ready, Varra?” he called. “Yes, Curtis.”

  The girl smiled proudly at the thought of having a part in the accomplishment of such strange and wonderful feats. She clumsily moved back and forth a primitive bow that Curt had fashioned. The bowstring of animal sinew was coiled around a wooden spindle that whirled in a groove cut in a piece of hard wood. As she continued to move the bow, several pieces of tinder placed in the groove began to smoke from the friction. Then a small clear flame sprang up.

  One of the Vardri sprang back with a sudden cry. “More magic!” he yelled. “Evil magic!”

  It was Lherr, Curt grimaced in slight disgust. In the short period he had been with the tribe, he had already found Lherr to be a troublemaker. But now he had no time for arguments. He inserted a small dry branch into the flame, transferred the flame to the pit. The wood in the pit caught fire, began to smolder. A thick black smoke began to pour from a vent Curt had made.

  He straightened up with satisfaction. If he remembered his history of science properly, it would take a full day for the experiment to reach completion, but when it had done so, he would have an ample supply of charcoal to begin the smelting of iron and copper.

  It was the copper that he wanted most. He had thought it would be easy to find lumps of the native metal in this copper-rich world, but all his searching had been without success. He had been forced to resort to the usual metallic ores. He had searched for and discovered deposits of different copper sulfides and iron oxides.

  “Varra wishes to help,” offered the girl. “What next?”

  “Let me see.” Curt frowned. “I think the skins of some of those animals I killed will make a useful pair of bellows.”

  He began to describe how he wanted the skins sewn together. Varra listened with an expression of intelligence, but with complete lack of comprehension.

  “Why do you wish them sewn together? Will you wear them as a head dress?”

  Curt sighed. “No, Varra. I wish to be able to create a strong current of air.”

  “Air? What is that?”

  “It’s the stuff we breathe,” explained Curt. “It’s all around us.”

  “But that is nothing,” objected the girl. “All around us is empty!”

  This time Curt groaned. Imagine trying to carry on his work with the aid of a savage assistant, a girl so ignorant she didn’t even know there was such a thing as air! And yet, thought Curt, she was intelligent. It was simply that her mind had never been exposed to any of the knowledge which went to make up modern science. Soon Curt would be needing a real assistant. Some one like Otho, with his quick mind and inimitable skill, or Grag, with his enormous strength, or Joan Randall —

  HE STRAIGHTENED with a sudden gasp. Joan Randall! Of course. He felt a flush of shame as he stared at the transparent metal crystal that Simon had made. Bound to his wrist, it was the one possession he had left of all his scientific equipment. But he had hitherto been so preoccupied with the tasks and the difficulties that faced him that he had neglected it. And he had inexcusably neglected Joan, too.

  His eyes gleamed suddenly. “Joan!” he thought intensely. “Joan Randall! Can you hear me?”

  The blue-skinned girl studied his silent face in astonishment. To her it appeared that Curt had taken leave of his senses. A few moments passed.

  “Joan!” his mind repeated. “Can you hear me?”

  A startled voice seemed to speak in his brain. “Curt! Are you all right?”

  “All right, Joan. But I’m cast away on a planet in one of the systems of Sagittarius.”

  “Curt!” came Joan’s horrified voice. “You’re alone!”

  “No, I’ve come across a savage race. I’m working to build apparatus, and I’ve got an assistant — a very attractive blue-skinned girl of the Vegan type.”

  “Don’t joke, Curt,” replied Joan, with a touch of coldness. “I’ll speak to the System President. We’ll fit out a relief expedition right away.”

  “No, Joan, you have no quick way to reach me. You’d have to build a special ship with either the vibration drive or the dimension-traveling device. And long before you could do that, it would be too late.”

  “Then what —” began Joan helplessly.

  “Joan, can Ezra spare you from that thief-catching case?”

  “We finished the other day.”

  “Good. Are you still sorry,” demanded Curt, “that you couldn’t come along with us to Antares?”

  “Of course, Curt, but I don’t understand what you mean!” replied Joan in astonishment.

  “Simon and I long ago considered the possibility of mind transference. With the aid of a device like our metal crystal, it’s almost certain that your mind could take possession of a body in this planet.”

  There was a short pause. “I’m willing to try the experiment,” said Joan finally. “But I don’t understand why it’s necessary.”

  “Joan, I’m engaged in a race against time. I’m having to build equipment here from primitive materials. And if I had an intelligent assistant, I could go twice as fast.”

  “Is time so very important, Curt?” she asked.

  “It may mean the success or failure of our fight against Gorma Hass.”

  “Then I’m willing to try it at once,” she answered promptly.

  “You’ll have to make preparations.” warned Curt. “Explain to Ezra what we intend to do. Go to the Moon. Have him secure electrostatic vibration machines of a type I’ll describe for you. They’re in the Moon-laboratory, and Ezra knows how to get there. And tell him that later on he’ll have to watch over you carefully, almost as if you had lost your mind.”

  “Yes, Curt.”

  “I don’t know whether Varra will be willing to try the experiment,” confessed Curt. “But I believe I can persuade her. Will you be ready twenty-four hours from now?”

  “Everything will be ready.”

  “Here’s the description of those machines.” He went into detail, ending finally, “Good-bye, Joan, until tomorrow.”

  Varra was still regarding him with amazement as the look of intense concentration faded from his eyes. Now Curt’s eyes found hers, held them commandingly. “Varra, have you ever dreamed of having your spirit visit the stars?”

  “Yes, Curtis, but I do not see how —”

  “I can cause your spirit to travel far away, to see strange and wonderful things,” Curt told her.

  “But later it will return?” she asked.

  “Yes, after a time it will return.”

  “Then I should like my spirit to leave me.”

  Curt nodded in satisfaction. “Tomorrow, Varra, your spirit will be in a strange new world.”

  AS THE hour approached for the decisive experiment, Curt was conscious of a growing feeling of apprehension. He busied himself, and he kept Varra busy, with the work he had laid out, but he labored with only half a heart. And meantime, Lherr regarded him balefully and continued to whisper stories of Curt’s evil magic.

  At the time he had arranged with Joan, Captain Future settled down once more to think intensely.

  “Joan! Is everything ready?”

  “All ready, Curt,” came the response.

  “You’re sure the apparatus is exactly as I’ve described? It’s important that there be no mistake. Repeat to me,” he commanded, “everything that Ezra has done.”

  Joan described the apparatus, while Curt’s mind listened, “Everything is right,” he decided finally. “Now, Joan, I’m going to break contact. I’m giving my metal crystal to Varra. You know what to do?”

  “Yes, Curt,” she replied with quiet confidence.

  Curt wrenched his mind away from her and turned to the blue-skinned girl beside him. “Here, Varra, put on this jewel.”

  “It is mine?” she asked
delightedly.

  “While your spirit travels. And now, Varra, look into my eyes. First your spirit must sleep.”

  Curt’s magnetic gaze held her, prevented her from looking away. What he saw in her eyes pleased him. The girl seemed responsive to his will.

  “You must sleep, Varra,” he repeated, slowly and soothingly. “Sleep.”

  Her eyes gradually became glazed, then closed entirely. Her breathing slowed down. In the grip of Curt’s powerful will, she was sinking into an intense coma. In a quarter of an hour she was in a state of profound hypnosis.

  Curt could feel the perspiration start out on his forehead. “Now, Varra, your spirit must travel. You will hear a girl’s voice.”

  Varra’s body was rigid in sleep. Once she moved her right arm, and a moan seemed to come from her.

  Far off, at some remote spot in the Solar System, a modulated electromagnetic current was pulsing through the metal crystal on Joan’s wrist. Dimly, Curt was conscious that some of the Vardri had approached them, were staring in fear and disbelief.

  But he knew that he must not think of them. He kept his mind on Varra.

  “Your spirit no longer belongs to you, Varra,” he said softly. “It wishes to leave. Do not hold it.”

  The moments passed, and the girl remained deep in slumber. For the first time, Curt’s mind began to consider the possibility of failure, and the thought made his heart falter with dismay. Then he secured a grip on himself. He couldn’t fail! Simon and he had been too confident in their calculations.

  Curt was dimly conscious of the chief, Kurul, whispering to Lherr, and of the latter whispering back. He caught a few words.

  “It is more of his evil magic. He has imprisoned Varra’s spirit.”

  Then he shut the natives out of his mind again, and centered his attention completely on the girl.

  Suddenly she seemed to sigh. Her eyes opened, looked around wonderingly, fastened on Curt’s face.

  The lips moved with difficulty, as if unaccustomed to making the strange sounds. “Curt — is it you?” The words were English.

  “Joan! You’re here safe!”

  The Vardri, hearing the unfamiliar sounds that came from Varra’s lips, broke into terror-stricken flight. Curt grinned, started to put his arms around the girl, started to kiss her — and then drew back. She stared at him, her face puzzled.

  Chapter 10: The Sverds Bring Menace

  “CURT! What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he returned sheepishly, “Only I don’t feel this is entirely you.”

  “I don’t feel it’s myself, either,” confessed Joan.

  “I foresee trouble,” said Curt. “These savages realize that something peculiar has happened, although they’re not at all sure what it is.”

  “Then don’t you think we’d better get started at the work for which you brought me here?”

  Curt nodded, and began to explain to her in detail what the situation was. Joan found that the hands and fingers of her new body had a strange facility in carrying out certain mechanical actions, such as the sewing together of skins by means of animal sinews. She set to work at several of the tasks Varra had left undone, and Curt was pleased to see how rapidly she completed them.

  He went ahead with his smelting of copper in earnest now. A deposit of radium or uranium would have solved many of his difficulties, but lacking these, copper was the one metal he needed most.

  He had constructed a small rough furnace of rocks, and now he filled it with a charge of the copper ore and began burning off the sulfur. The acid smoke began to roll out of the space he had left for the exhaust.

  “But, Curt,” asked Joan, “why are you so insistent on getting copper first?” Wouldn’t iron be more useful to you?”

  Curt shook his head. “What I’m after now, Joan, is a source of atomic energy.” He called her by name as if he had been accustomed all his life to seeing Joan Randall in the shape of this blue-skinned savage girl. “You remember how Grag gets his power?”

  “He eats copper.”

  “Of course. He has an atomic disintegrator inside him that breaks copper atoms down into hydrogen and helium, and releases plenty of energy in the process.”

  “But,” she objected, “you haven’t got any device for setting off the disintegration.”

  “For that,” said Curt, “two things are necessary. First of all I’ll need certain catalysts, made up of salts of rubidium and some of the rare earth elements. I’ve already located a source of these metals, and although it will be difficult to obtain the salts pure, a small amount of impurity will do no harm. The second necessity is a source of high voltage.”

  “You can’t get that.”

  “I think I can,” asserted Curt. “Only a few million volts are necessary. There’s an easy way to attain it.”

  “Lightning!” exclaimed Joan.

  Curt nodded. “From what old Kuru, the chief, has told me, lightning storms are one of the most greatly feared manifestations of the gods on this planet. When the next one comes, I hope to be ready for it.”

  NOW that Curt had a skilled assistant, the work progressed more rapidly than before. There were a great many details to which he had formerly been forced to attend himself. Joan took these off his hands, leaving him free to devote himself to the more difficult scientific problems he was forced to tackle.

  Curt selected an old dead tree, which had already been hit several times by lightning, as a likely object to be struck again. It stood stark and isolated on a small hilltop, an ideal target. He fashioned some of his copper into rough and uneven wires, and stretched them around several limbs of the tree, so that whenever the lightning struck, the current would be sure to reach his reaction mixture.

  This he placed in a hollow spot in the center of the tree. “From now on,” he told Joan, “it’s up to the lightning gods. And as Kuru asserts that they’ve been quiet for a long time, there’s a good chance that they’ll start up again soon.”

  He noticed that Lherr, still muttering about evil magic, had watched his strange doings in the tree. Curt frowned. “That man will cause us real trouble yet. Keep an eye on him, Joan.”

  But beyond his muttering, Lherr made no apparent attempt to do harm. Curt went on with his preparations while waiting for the lightning storm.

  It came one night, with a crash of thunder that awakened him from a sound sleep. He started up to find the tribe staring at the heavens, expressions of awe and terror on their faces. Kuru and several other of the elders were repeating magic formulas intended to keep the fearful bolts away from them.

  After that first crash of thunder, there followed a period of silence. But the whole sky seemed alight with darting, zigzagging streaks of lightning. An aura of light played around the old dead tree, although it had not yet been struck.

  “Something in the nature of St. Elmo’s fire,” muttered Curt.

  The air seemed alive with electricity. Then it began to rain gently. The aura of light disappeared, and for a brief moment the heavens were dark. Suddenly, with terrifying abruptness, the thunder roared again. A vivid light streaked down from the heavens, tore into the top of the hill. Kuru broke off his magic chant, and howled in dismay.

  “No wonder,” chattered Joan, “that they’re afraid! I don’t feel any too safe myself!”

  “That’s because you’re inhabiting Yarra’s body, and you’ve taken over an entire system of fear reflexes.”

  The lightning began to strike more and more rapidly. Once it hit between old Kuru and Lherr, and both men leaped away in terror. Then the streaks of light began to move away.

  “It’s going to miss the tree after all!” groaned Curt, “and we’ll have to wait for the next —”

  A deafening crash drowned out his words. The copper wire on the dead tree glowed with sudden incandescence, and the next moment the tree itself had leaped into flame. In the midst of the crackling wood, the copper mixture blazed like a miniature sun.

  “That’s done it!”
cried Curt excitedly. “We’ve got our atomic power! From now on everything is smooth sailing. I’ll be able to smelt plenty of iron and any other metal we need!”

  “But will you be able to build a space ship?”

  “Not a ship like the Comet, of course. But there’ll be no trouble in constructing a small simple one. Once you have atomic power, Joan, you have the secret of handling metals.”

  THE thunder was finally rumbling away. Old Kuru, followed closely by Lherr and the rest of the tribe, was approaching with a troubled expression on his face.

  “Captain Future,” he said, “your magic is not good!”

  “My magic?”

  “The gods have struck too close to the tribe. It is a warning. They demand a victim.”

  “That has nothing to do with my magic.”

  “But it has —” interrupted Lherr angrily. “It is your magic that has changed Varra’s spirit, and called the thunder of the gods to the old tree. It is evil, and must end.”

  “My magic,” returned Curt in exasperation, “is just beginning. Go, Lherr, and leave us in peace, and let us have no more talk of a victim to be sacrificed to the gods. Else your spirit will soon be traveling like Varra’s among the stars.”

  Lherr’s eyes gleamed wildly, “Let us kill this magician before he bewitches us all!” he cried, and rushed at Curt, his heavy club swinging.

  Curt stepped in quickly and caught the handle of the club before it could begin its descent. For a fraction of a second, Lherr struggled frantically to release it from his grip. Then Curt pulled the primitive weapon away from him, and Lherr, howling with fear, fled. Kuru and the others of the tribune had made no move to interfere. Now they moved away slowly.

  “I’m afraid of him,” said Joan uneasily. “Curt, he has to be watched!”

  “He won’t be able to hurt us,” promised Curt. “The first thing I’m going to do is make myself a real weapon. And I start now, without waiting for the morning.”

  With Joan close behind him, Curt approached the still burning tree. Using a small metal ladle he had prepared in advance, he removed some of the disintegrating copper from the ground where it had fallen.