Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep

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2024-12-23 0 0 293.86KB 137 页 5.9玖币
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THE FACE OF THE DEEP
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
By EDMOND HAMILTON
Carried Far Outside the Solar System, and wrecked on a Volcanic Planetoid in Company with a
Shipload of Condemned Criminals, Captain Future Faces the Surpreme Test of His Courage!
1
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
CHAPTER I
Prison Ship
HE had been a proud ship once, a splendid,
shining liner rocketing between the planets
with laughter and music and happiness aboard. But
that had been years ago. Tonight she lay grim and
black in her dock at New York spaceport, somberly
waiting to carry damned souls to their place of
punishment.
S
Her name was the Vulcan and she was the
famous prison-ship of the Planet Patrol. Once a
year, she went out through the worlds upon a
fateful voyage. At each world, criminals sentenced
to life imprisonment came aboard her. The end of
the voyage was at the grim, gray Interplanetary
Prison on Cerberus, moon of Pluto.
Men in purple-striped convict dress were
shuffling now under the krypton lights' blue glare
toward the looming black hull. They were a motley
crew of vicious, hardened criminals- mostly hard-
faced Earthmen, but a few green-skinned Venusians
and red Martians.
They were guarded by vigilant, armed officers in
the black uniform of the Planet Patrol.
A girl who also wore that black uniform stood
under the lights near the ship, shaking her dark
head at her tall, redhaired male companion.
"I have to go, Curt," she was protesting. "The
Patrol is short-handed because of that trouble on
Mercury. And these criminals must be well-
guarded, for they're the most dangerous lot in the
System."
"But to send a girl as a guard-officer on that hell-
ship!" exclaimed the tall, redhaired young man
angrily. "Your Commander must be crazy."
Joan Randall, slim and dark and youthful in her
black jacket and slacks, was distractingly pretty in
her resentful denial.
"You talk as though I were a simpering
debutante who had never been off Earth before,"
she said indignantly. "Haven't I been working for
the Patrol for four years?"
Curt Newton objected. "You've been in the
Secret Service section of the Patrol. That's different
from guarding a lot of hellions on a prison ship."
His lean, space-bronzed face was sober with
anxiety, and his clear gray eyes had a worried frown
in them as he expostulated with the girl.
He did not often worry about danger, this
brilliant adventurer and scientific wizard whom the
whole System knew as Captain Future. To him and
his three comrades, the famous Futuremen, danger
wore a familiar face. They had met it countless
times in their star-roving quests to far worlds, in
their ceaseless crusade against the master-criminals
of the System.
UT danger to himself was to Curt a very
different thing than a danger that
threatened this girl he loved. That was why the tall,
redheaded planeteer bent toward her in a final
earnest appeal.
B
"I've got a premonition about this voyage, Joan.
A hunch, you can call it. I don't want you to go."
Her brown eyes laughed up at him. "You're
getting jumpy as a Saturnian shadow-cat, Curt.
There's no danger. Our criminals will be tightly
locked up until we reach Cerberus."
There came a startling interruption. It was the
sudden shrieking of one of the convicts who were
being marched into the ship.
He was a middle-aged Earthman, with a mass of
iron-gray hair falling disorderedly about his
haggard white face and terror-dilated eyes.
"You're taking me to death!" he was screaming
wildly, struggling with the uniformed guards.
"There's death on that ship!"
There was something peculiarly disturbing about
the wild face and crazy screams. But the alert
Planet Patrol officers guarding the line of shuffling
convicts quickly hurried the struggling prisoner
aboard.
Joan Randall's fine eyes had pity in them. "That's
Rollinger -- you remember, Doctor John Rollinger
of American University."
Captain Future nodded thoughtfully. "The
biophysicist who killed his colleague last month? I
thought his attorneys pleaded insanity?"
"They did," the girl answered. "They claimed
Rollinger's mind was wrecked by an
encephalographic experiment he carried too far. But
the prosecution claimed he was shamming. He got
life on Cerberus."
"And you're going on a voyage of weeks with
scores of others like that homicidal maniac!" Curt
Newton said, with deepened dismay. "Some of
2
3
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
them worse! I've seen the prisoner-list. Kim Ivan,
the Martian space-pirate, Moremos, that poisonous
Venusian murder-ring leader, Boraboll the Uranian,
the wiliest trickster in the System -- and dozens
more. Joan, I won't let you do it!"
Joan shook her dark head stubbornly. "It's too
late to argue about it now. All the prisoners are
aboard. We take off in five minutes."
A voice came from the darkness behind them --
a sightly hissing voice that was oddly alien in
timbre.
"What's the matter. Chief? it asked Curt.
"Haven't you talked reason into her yet?"
It was Otho, one of the three Futurmen. He and
Grag and the Brain were advancing into the circle
of light.
The three Futuremen made a spectacle so
strange that many people would have recoiled from
them in terror. But Joan was too well acpointed
with these three loyal comrades of Curt, to see any
strangeness about them.
Otho, the android, was perhaps the most human-
looking of the three. He looked, indeed, much like
an ordinary man except that his lithe body had a
curiously rubbery, boneless appearance, and his
chalk-white face and slanted green eyes held a
superhuman deviltry and mocking humor. Otho
was a man -- but a synthetic man. He had been
created in a laboratory, long ago.
Grag, the robot, had been created in that same
laboratory, in the long-dead past. But Grag had
been made of metal. He was a gigantic, manlike
metal figure, seven feet high. His metal torso and
limbs hinted his colossal strength. But the strange
face of his bulbous metal head, with its gleaming
photoelectric eyes and mechanical loudspeaker
voice-orifice, gave no sign of the intelligence and
loyalty of his complex mechanical brain.
The Brain, third of the Futuremen, was by far
the strangest. Yet he had been an ordinary human,
once. He had been Simon Wright, brilliant, aging
Earth scientist. Dying of an incurable ailment,
Wright's living brain had been removed from his
human body and transferred into a special serum
case in which it still lived, thought and acted. The
Brain now resembled a square box of transparent
metal. Upon one face of it were his protruding lens-
like eyes and microphonic ears and speech
apparatus. From compact generators inside the case
jetted the magnetic tractorbeams that enabled the
Brain to glide swiftly through the air and to handle
objects and tools.
THOUGHT," Otho was saying to Captain
Future, "that we came on this rush trip to
Earth to stop Joan from going on this crazy
assignment."
I
"We did, but we might a well have stayed at
home on the Moon," Curt said disgustedly. "She's
as mule-headed as -- as -- "
"As a mule," Joan finished for him, with a laugh.
Grag stepped forward. The giant metal robot
suddenly picked up Joan in his mighty arms as
though she were a doll.
"Do you want me to keep her here, Chief?" he
asked Captain Future in his deep, booming voice.
"Grag, you put me down!" stormed the girl.
"Curt, if you try to keep me here by force --"
"Put her down, Grag," growled Captain Future.
"You can reason with a Jovian marsh-elephant or a
Uranian cave-bear -- but not with a woman."
An elderly officer in the black uniform of the
Patrol was hurrying toward them from the black
ship. His grizzled face and bleak old eyes lit with
pleasure as he recognized Curt and the Futuremen.
"Come to see us off, Cap'n Future?" he asked.
"Where's your Comet?"
Marshal Ezra Gurney, veteran officer of the
Planet Patrol, was referring to the famous little ship
of he Futuremen. Curt answered by waving his
hand toward the distant, lighted pinnacle of
Government Tower.
"The Comet's up there on the tower landing-
deck. And we didn't come to see you off. I came to
dissuade Joan from going." A bell rang sharply
from the big black ship that loomed into the
darkness nearby.
"Nearly take-off time!" warned Ezra Gurney.
"Better say your goodbyes, Joan."
Joan's brown eyes danced as she kissed Curt
quickly. "For once," she laughed, "it's I who am
going to space while you stay behind and worry,
instead of the other way around."
Curt Newton could not smile. He held her, loath
to let her go.
"Joan, won't you listen --"
"Of course I'll listen -- when I get back from
Cerberus!" the girl cried gaily, slipping out of his
detaining grasp and running after Ezra toward the
ship. "See you then, Curt!" She and the white-
haired old marshal reached the gangway. A final
wave of her hand, and she disappeared into the
black vessel. "Why didn't you let me hold her back,
4
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
Chief?" demanded Grag. "You've got to treat
women rough."
"Listen to Grag -- now he's setting up to give
advice to the lovelorn!" exclaimed Otho
witheringly.
Curt Newton paid no attention to the argument
that instantly developed. Grag and Otho were
always arguing, usually about which of them was
the most nearly human. He didn't even hear them,
now.
His eyes were upon the Vulcan. The last officers
were going aboard. The bridge-room up at the nose
of the long hull had sprung into light. Dock-hands
were hastily knocking out the holding-pins.
The vessel, with it freight of scores of dangerous
criminals, was about to take off on its long voyage.
It would zigzag out through the Solar System for
weeks, stopping at each planet to pick up more
sentenced men. It would be a long time before it
returned from the somber voyage.
There was nothing to worry about, Captain
Future told himself earnestly. The ship had made
this voyage to Cerberus many times before, and
nothing had ever gone wrong. Surely nothing
would go wrong now.
But Curt couldn't expel foreboding from his
mind. The Vulcan this time was carrying the largest
and most desperate cargo of convicts it had ever
taken. There were men aboard it who would kill
merely for pleasure, let alone to prevent their being
taken out to the grim living death of Interplanetary
Prison. And Joan Randall was one of the guards of
those human tigers!
URT NEWTON reached decision, swiftly
as he always did. He wouldn't let Joan take
such chances. If she insisted on going, then --
C
"I'm going, too!" Captain Future said suddenly.
He plunged toward the gangway of the ship. Over
his shoulder he called to his astonished comrades,
"Take the Comet back to the Moon and wait for
me!"
The gangway was already being drawn in. But
the Patrol officers inside halted it as they saw
Captain Future racing toward them.
The rangy, red-haired planeteer raced up the
metal gangway and stood pantingly inside the
airlock. The Patrol men looked at him amazedly.
"It's all right," Curt laughed. "I'm going with
5
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
you, this trip. There's no objection, is there?"
"Objection?" The swarthy young Mercurian
lieutenant flushed with pleasure. "Objection to you
coming along? I'll say there isn't!"
His eyes were sparkling with excitement. To this
young lieutenant, as to most space-men, Curt
Newton was an idolized hero.
"I'll inform Captain Theron that you and the
Futuremen are aboard, sir," he told Curt eagerly.
"That I and the Futuremen?" Curt repeated,
turning swiftly. In the airlock were Otho and big
Grag and the calmly poised Brain.
"What the devil!" exploded Captain Future. "I
told you to go back to the Moon with the Comet."
"The Comet," Otho answered coolly, "is safe
enough, locked up atop Government Tower. We're
going with you. You're not going to leave us sitting
on the Moon, twiddling our thumbs and waiting for
you."
"This is what women get you into," growled
Grag gloomily. "Now we're stuck on this craft for
weeks."
"It is certainly annoying that I shall have to
spend all that time in a ship that does not even have
a decent research laboratory," said the Brain sourly
in his rasping, metallic voice.
Captain Future was not deceived by their
grumbling. He knew that it was loyalty to himself
that had made the Futuremen instantly follow him.
The tie between himself and the three strange
comrades was old and deep. It went back to his
infancy. For when his own parents had met death in
their laboratory-dwelling on the lonely Moon, it
was these three strange beings who had become his
foster-parents.
The Brain, who had been his dead father's
colleague in research; the robot, who had been
created as an experiment by the two colleagues; and
the android, who had been similarly created -- these
three had first been Curt's tutors and guardians, and
then his comrades in the crusading adventures
which had won him the name of Captain Future.
They had followed him faithfully to far stars and
worlds. They were following him now.
"Oh, all right," Curt said, dissimulating his
feelings. "But you'll find this a pretty dull voyage."
"I wonder?" replied the Brain, his strange lens-
eyes fixed thoughtfully on Curt's face.
The Vulcan suddenly lurched upward with a roar
of bursting rocket-tubes. They clung to stanchions
as the ship took off. Swiftly, it screamed up through
Earth's atmosphere into the vast and shoreless sea
of space.
The young Mercurian lieutenant started with
them through the ship toward the bridge-room. As
they left the airlock, they met Joan Randall. Her
jaw dropped ludicrously at sight of them. Then her
eyes grew stormy.
"You came along! As though I were a baby who
needed watching over! Curt Newton, I won't stand
for it!"
" Afraid you'll have to, darling," grinned Curt.
"We're already at least ten thousand miles away
from Earth."
She was still protesting indignantly as they went
forward through the mid-deck of the ship. This was
the prison-cell deck. Along its main corridor were
the barred doors of scores of cells. From behind the
bars, convicts glared like caged wolves a they
passed.
SQUAT, evil-faced Jovian in one of the
cells set up a roar as he saw Curt and his
comrades pass.
A
"It's Captain Future, mates!" he shouted. "He's
aboard!" A raging tumult instantly arose. Threats,
maledictions, oaths, were hurled at the Futurermen
as they passed along the corridor.
Not a criminal in the System but had good
reason to hate the name of Captain Future. He had
sent many an evil-doer out to the gray inferno of
Interplanetary Prison to which these men were
destined.
The tumult rose. The senseless shrieks of the
madman Rollinger added weirdly to it. Captain
Future's bronzed face was coolly imperturbable as
he strode along. He seemed unaware of the raging
voices. Then as he glimpsed a sudden flash of
movement beside him, he yelled a warning.
"Look out -- your pistol!" he cried to the
Mercurian lieutenant.
A Venusian convict in one of the cells had
hurled out through his barred door a little noose
improvised from his belt. The loop had settled
around the hilt of the Mercurian lieutenant's belt-
weapon. The Venusian tugged hard, snatching the
atom-pistol toward himself as Future shouted.
Captain Future spun and charged that cell-door
with superhuman speed. The Venusian had got the
pistol into his hands. His blazing black eyes looked
over its sights at Curt, with deadly purpose.
Curt ducked and flung up his hand in an oddly
slicing gesture at the convict's arm. The crash of
6
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
blasting white fire from the atom-pistol grazed over
his head and fused a patch in the metal ceiling.
Next moment, Curt had got hold of the
Venusian's arm through the bars and had wrenched
hard. The gun clattered to the floor. He picked it up
and grimly returned it to the scared young
Mercurian lieutenant.
"Next time, keep your holster buttoned when
you walk through this for corridor," Curt advised
him meaningly.
"Next time I'll get you, Future!" hissed the
Venusian convict, nursing his wrenched arm and
glaring his hatred through the bars.
"It's that devil, Moremos," volunteered the
shaken young Patrol officer. "Only he would have
thought of a trick like that."
"Oh, Curt -- I wish you hadn't come," breathed
Joan. Her brown eyes were shadowed by dread.
"They all hate you so terribly."
Raging threats were following Curt Newton and
the others as they went on along the prison-deck.
But the bellowing order of a huge Martian in one of
the cells put a period to the tumult.
"Silence, you space-scum!" roared the big
scarred-face red convict. "You hear? Kim Ivan
orders it."
The uproar quieted almost magically. It was as
though all the convicts recognized authority in the
notorious Martian pirate's command.
But one voice remained unquieted. The uncanny
shriek of John Rollinger still reached their ears as
they left the prison-deck.
"There's death here!" the mad Earthman was still
screaming. "I tell you, there's death on this ship!"
CHAPTER II
Attacked
THE Vulcan was no
more than a billion miles
from Neptune when the
real trouble came.
For many days, the
black ship had droned out
through the System on a
zig-zag course. At Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus
it had stopped, to pick up
more sentenced criminals.
Now, with more than two
hundred convicts aboard,
it headed for Neptune, the
last stop before reaching Pluto and the prison
moon.
Nothing untoward had yet occurred to justify
Captain Future's premonition. The convicts
imprisoned down in the cell-deck had growled and
grumbled, but seemed reconciled to their grim fate.
Yet Curt Newton had not been entirely reassured.
Upon the first day of the voyage, he had voiced his
doubts.
"They're too quiet," he declared. "They shut up
like magic when that fellow Kim Ivan ordered them
to."
"Well, that there big Martian swings a lot of
weight with them," drawled Ezra Gurney. "He was
one of the biggest pirate leaders before the Patrol
caught him."
"Even so, that bunch of tough criminals wouldn't
obey him now without a reason," Curt insisted.
"You think they've hatched up some scheme of
escape?" asked Captain Theron anxiously.
Captain Jhel Theron, who had command of the
navigational operation of the Vulcan, was a veteran
of the Patrol. He was a tall, grave-eyed Uranian,
bald like most of the men of that planet, his saffron
skin darkened by years of exposure to the
unsoftened radiation of space.
He and his next of rank, Lieutenant K'kan of
Mars, commanded an operational crew that
comprised three pilots, a chief engineer and two
assistants, three space-mechanics and four deck-
hands.
Distinct from these fifteen members of the
operational crew were the guards of the convicts.
7
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
Marshal Ezra Gurney was guard-commander, with
Joan Randall and young Rih Quili of Mercury as
his sub-officers. They commanded eight non-coms
of the Patrol, who watched over the convicts.
Curt Newton and the Futuremen had gathered
with Ezra and Joan and the captain in the chart-
room just abaft the bridge.
"I don't say Kim Ivan is plotting anything," Curt
answered the captain's question. "But I do say that
if he had something in his mind, he'd prevent the
convicts from staging any premature outbreak -- as
he has."
Ezra Gurney snorted. "Cap'n Future. I got all the
respect in the world for your judgment, but this
time I think you're chasin' comets. How the devil
can Kim Ivan or anybody else pull off anything,
when they're locked up tight in cells that they won't
leave till we reach Cerberus?"
"Men can get out even a chromaloy cell, if they
have the right tools," Curt answered significantly.
"And men like Kim Ivan and that snake Moremos
had criminal friends who would have been glad to
smuggle things to them."
"Not a chance!" Ezra affirmed. "I'll stake my life
that not one of those space-scum has any kind of
tool or instrument."
"You searched them when they were brought
aboard?" Curt asked.
"What kind of amateur outfit do you think the
Patrol is?" Ezra demanded injuredly. "O' course we
searched them. We used the X-Ray 'scanner' on
each convict as he was brought into the ship."
"Did you 'scan' the cells, too, to make certain
that nothing had been planted in them?" Captain
Future asked keenly.
"No, we didn't do that, but there wasn't any need
to," the old marshal declared. "The Vulcan was
always under guard, and nothin' could have been
planted in her."
"Nevertheless, I'd like to use the 'scanner' on the
cells now," Curt said. "Any objection?"
"Oh, no, if it'll ease your mind any," growled
Ezra. He glanced winkingly at Joan as he added,
"You're sure takin' a lot of precautions, Cap'n
Future. Must be somebody aboard you're worried
about."
RAG and Otho, bored by the discussion,
had got into one of their interminable
arguments. Curt left them with Joan, and went
down with Captain Theron and Ezra and the Brain
G
to conduct his inspection.
The Vulcan, as a former small liner, was built
along standard lines. It had three main decks, one
above the other. Top-deck held the big bridge-
room, the operational and chart rooms, and officer
quarters. The little cabins occupied by the Patrol
摘要：

THEFACEOFTHEDEEPTHEFACEOFTHEDEEPByEDMONDHAMILTONCarriedFarOutsidetheSolarSystem,andwreckedonaVolcanicPlanetoidinCompanywithaShiploadofCondemnedCriminals,CaptainFutureFacestheSurpremeTestofHisCourage!1THEFACEOFTHEDEEPCHAPTERIPrisonShipHEhadbeenaproudshiponce,asplendid,shininglinerrocketingbetweenthep...

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