Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941) (8 page)

They reached the crest of the low hills in which was the ancient quarry. Otho turned for a moment to look back. He could see far across the waving jungle, to the western marshes in which the domesticated brontosaurs of the tribesmen were splashing and browsing. Beyond the marshes was the distant glint of blue sea. To the south, big volcanoes smoked lazily.

He and the girl descended into the quarry and Otho deftly began disassembling the parts of the atomic smelter for easier carrying. He meant to take only the heart of the mechanism back to the
Comet
for possible future use.

"A ship comes!" Ahla gasped suddenly, pointing upward.

Otho heard the startling sound of a space ships' rocket-tubes. A black, pencil-shaped craft was dropping toward them from the blue heavens.

"We must hide!" Ahla cried, grasping his wrist frightenedly. "No one knows who comes in the strange ships, or what their errand is."

"We can't get out of the quarry in time," Otho said calmly. "And, anyway, I think it must be Katainians in that ship. I want to talk to them."

AHLA was pale with dread, but she made no move to leave him. As he had said, they could not in any case have got out of the deep quarry in time, for the pencil-shaped black craft was already thundering down into the quarry with all brake tubes blasting. It came to rest a hundred yards from them.

A dozen queer-looking men emerged hastily. They were white-skinned, dark haired, much like Ahla's people, but they were taller, thinner and bonier. They wore silken white jackets and trousers and carried implements that looked like power-tools for excavation. Each man, Otho saw, wore on his back a cumbersome apparatus of coils and batteries. The android's scientifically trained eyes fathomed instantly that the apparatus was a crude form of gravitation equalizer.

"So they're from a planet of different size and gravitation than this," Otho mused. "Katain's a much smaller world. That must be where they're from."

As the newcomers glimpsed Otho and Ahla, a cry of wonder went up from them. Then they slowly advanced on the android and the girl. Cautiously the tall leader of the strangers surveyed Otho. He appeared to find the android far more puzzling than Ahla.

"Who are you?" he demanded, speaking in a tongue strongly similar to that of Ahla's people. "You are not one of the savage natives of this world."

Otho had learned Ahla's language well. Though this newcomer spoke in slightly different phrases and some words were different, the android could get the drift without too much trouble.

"I come from the far future," he announced. "Are you from Katain?"

"From Katain?" repeated the leader. His brows drew together in a frown of suspicion. "Why do you ask? Are you friends or enemies of Katain?"

"We're friends of Katain, of course," Otho replied emphatically.

He was totally unprepared for what followed. Hardly had the words left his lips when there was a harsh cry from the leader of the strangers.

"Seize them!"

The tall white men leaped forward. Before the astounded Otho could get his proton pistol out, he was borne down by a rush of charging men. His fists flailed with unhuman speed, sending his attackers tumbling. But others had got behind and were holding him. Despite his most furious writhings, he was pinned by a score of hands until tough thongs of leather were brought from the space ship and tied around his ankles and wrists.

Then the spluttering android was jerked to his feet. He saw that Ahla had been similarly seized and bound.

"By the flat-faced devils of Saturn, this is a swell way to treat a fellow who's come from the future to help you cursed Katainians!" he raged.

"Be silent, spy!" growled the towering captain of Otho's captors. "You Katainians are our deadly enemies, as well you know."

"Colliding comets!" swore Otho. "What kind of mess have I got into?" Another of the tall strangers had come out of the ship. An older man, he looked at the two prisoners and then turned to the towering captain. "Who are these people, Grako?"

"Spies of Katain, Lord Thoh," the hulking captain answered deferentially. "They seem to be disguised, but they admitted they were friends of Katain, though the man tried to tell us he came from the future."

Grako burst into laughter at the preposterousness of the idea, but Thoh, the elderly man, did not laugh. He glared at Otho.

"How many of you Katainians are on this planet?" he demanded. "What did that devil Zikal send you here for?"

"Zikal?" repeated Otho, mystified. "I never heard of him."

THOH smiled thinly. "I suppose Zikal didn't send you out to spy on us of the fourth world, did he?"

"The fourth world? Why, that's Mars! You mean that you men are Martians? You can't be. Martians are a red-skinned people." Then Otho had a new thought. "Blazing meteors, I see now! Back in this past age, you Martians haven't yet developed protective pigmentation."

"So you persist in this crazy assertion that you came from future time," stated old Thoh contemptuously.

"Of course I do!" the android fumed. "Can't you see I'm not a man like you? As for the girl, it should be obvious that she's just a primitive."

"Disguises. The spies of Zikal are clever."

One of the white Martians who had been looking around the ancient quarry excitedly interrupted the questioning.

"Lord Thoh, there are signs that many men have been digging out metal ores here recently."

Thoh's sharp eyes showed alarm.

"There must be many other Katainians here, then! The primitive natives of this world wouldn't dig the ores. Back into the ship! We're getting out of here at once. This may be a Katainian ambush."

"But what about the tungsten and chromium ores we stopped here to secure?" objected Grako.

"We can go past the second planet on the way home and pick up the ore there. Hurry! Out of here at once!"

Swearing and struggling against his bonds, Otho was unceremoniously hauled into the ship and dumped with Ahla in a small cabin. Two Martians placed on guard over them, armed with a form of gas gun.

Grako shouted orders through the ship. Doors slammed, machinery droned. With a deafening roar of rockets, the craft jerked skyward.

"Why in the name of my paternal test-tube didn't I keep my mouth shut?" Otho muttered angrily. "I had to go bragging that I was a friend of Katain, never dreaming that these fiends could be anything but Katainians. This is a devil of a reception for a fellow who's come back a hundred million years."

Ahla, sitting bound and helpless beside him, smiled bravely, though her face was pale with dread.

"You'll find a way to save us," she whispered confidently.

The ship roared on at full blast. Looking through the small window of the cabin, Otho perceived that they were already out in space. The Sun lay on the left, somewhat behind them. Ahead gleamed the bright, White blob of Venus. Far beyond it, to the right, shone the brilliant green spark that was the Mars of this far age of the past.

Otho saw there were net sacks of metal-bearing ores loaded in this cabin. It was clear that the Martians had been on a prospecting cruise to bring back metals that must be scarce on their own planet.

Grako came back to see that the guards were on the alert.

"Why are you and the Katainians enemies?" Otho asked politely.

"As though you didn't know," spy!" Grako's eyes glittered hatred. "We know all about your plans to destroy our people."

"Then you know more than I do," Otho retorted. "Why would the Katainians want to destroy you Martians when they face doom themselves? Are you all crazy back in this time?"

Grako slammed the door without deigning to reply. Otho and Ahla were left to the care of the guards as the ship throbbed on.

"Where will they take us, Otho?" asked Ahla.

"To their world," he grumbled gloomily. Then her pale, terrified face stirred his sympathy. "Don't be frightened, Ahla. I know this seems terrible to you, being carried off into the sky, but space ships are old stuff to me. I hardly expected to find them here in the past, though."

MANY hours later, the Martian ship swung down through the vast, cloudy atmosphere of Venus. They dropped mile after mile through dense gray water vapor and finally flew low over the surface of the second world. Otho whistled in amazement as he looked through the cabin window at the Venus of a hundred million years ago.

The vast swamps that were the most characteristic feature of Venus in his own time were not to be seen. There was a broad fringe of marsh around the shoreline of the continent below, but inland the ground was high and firm, consisting of parklike plains dotted by glades of tall trees.

The Martian ship landed in an inland ravine. The rock sides showed evidence of having been excavated in the past. Through the window, Otho saw the Martians using power-tools to dig masses of rock from the ledges. He guessed that the Martians knew this place well and that they had often secured needed metals from here and from Earth.

Soon the ores had been loaded and the ship started up again. As they soared above the marshy coastline, Otho glimpsed stone ruins that projected here and there from the tidal swamps. He could also make out other dimly visible structures, completely covered by the sea.

"So there's a ruined civilization here, as well as on Earth," he thought. "And on Mars and Katain appear to be flourishing civilizations. Imps of Pluto, who'd have thought all these worlds had civilized people in the past? And how come the language of Mars is the same as that of Earth?"

He worried these puzzling questions as the ship swung out of the immense cloudy atmosphere of Venus and headed through starry space toward the distant green spark of Mars. Finally he had to give it up. Ahla was sleeping with her dark head pillowed on his shoulder. He racked his brain for some means of escape, but there was no chance of that, with two alert Martian guards watching them every minute. He finally drifted off into sleep himself.

When he awoke, he guessed it was considerably later. The hours dragged on and still the ship throbbed along through the void. When at last the blast of braking rockets indicated that they were nearing their destination, Otho's curiosity was thoroughly aroused. He had seen Earth and Venus of this remote day. Now he was to look at ancient Mars.

He was disappointed. The ship swung down toward the night side of the planet and he could make out little, except many beds of lights that he knew must be populous cities, and great oceans tossing in the starlight. Oceans on Mars!

As the ship slanted down into the atmosphere of the planet, it brought into view in the cabin window a field of stars that included the star Deneb. Ahla made her usual reverent gesture toward it. To Otho's amazement, the Martian guards did, too.

"Do you Martians also worship Deneb — I mean Koom?" he exclaimed.

"Of course, spy," rasped a guard. "All men worship the Sacred Star."

"Why do you think that star's sacred?"

The guard scowled. "Because it
is
sacred, of course."

"They don't know why they worship Deneb any more than Ahla's people do," Otho thought. "There's a real cosmic mystery behind this."

His speculation was forcibly diverted. The ship sank on its flaming keel tubes. Looming stone walls rose around them — the walls of a landing court inside some massive building.

THE two prisoners were hauled roughly out of the ship.

"Put them with the other hostages," old Thoh ordered Grako.

Otho and Ahla were dragged through a door, down dark passages and stairs to a row of underground dungeons. A heavy door was unlocked and they were unceremoniously thrust into a dark, musty stone room.

"Your friends in there can untie you, spies," growled the captain. He relocked the door and departed, leaving guards on duty outside. Otho squirmed around. His keen ears had caught the movement of several figures in the dark room. His eyes dimly made out several men.

Ahla pressed terrifiedly against him. But Otho, remembering what Grako had just said, spoke out boldly.

"You other prisoners, are you Katainians?"

"We are," came a young man's voice. "I am Jhulun of Katain. But who are you? Aren't you and that girl Katainians?"

"No, but we're friends of Katain," Otho replied quickly. "Untie us and I'll tell you the whole story."

Jhulun did not comply at once. His voice was suspicious.

"You may be Katains and yet be our enemies. Are you Zikal's men?"

"I don't know who Zikal is," Otho snapped exasperated.

"Do you belong to the Emigration or Invasion parties on Katain?"

"Never heard of either of 'em. I'm from the far future, though I'm getting used to the fact that no one will believe me. The only Katainian I ever heard of is a scientist named Darmur."

"Darmur?" cried Jhulun, "He is my father!"

CAPTAIN FUTURE felt sharp dismay as he, Grag and the Brain looked at the mute evidence of struggle in the ancient quarry on Earth. The broken spear of Ahla and the scuffed ground told a clear story. "Otho was trapped with Ahla in the quarry when that space ship suddenly landed in it," Curt guessed. "Maybe he thought at first they were Katainians, as we did."