Captain Future #7: The Magician of Mars E-Book

Edmond Hamilton

• Herausgeber: Thrilling
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Renegades from nine worlds crash out from interplanetary prison in a weird quest for phantom treasure. Follow the Futuremen as the greatest feud of all time catapults them into the fifth dimension. The Captain Future saga follows the super-science pulp hero Curt Newton, along with his companions, The Futuremen: Grag the giant robot, Otho the android, and Simon Wright the living brain in a box. Together, they travel the solar system in series of classic pulp adventures, many of which written by the author of The Legion of Super-Heroes, Edmond Hamilton.

Leseprobe

The Magician of Mars

Captain Future book #7

by

Edmond Hamilton

Renegades from nine worlds crash out from interplanetary prison in a weird quest for phantom treasure. Follow the Futuremen as the greatest feud of all time catapults them into the fifth dimension.

Thrilling

Copyright Information

“The Magician of Mars” was originally published in 1941. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Chapter I

Prison Moon

AS THE tiny, star-like disk of the Sun sank behind the bleak rock plain, a whistle shrilled harshly through the chill dusk.

“Attention!” barked a tall Saturnian guard.

The hundreds of convicts in gray uniforms who had been excavating beryllium ore from the rock pits, stopped work. They shuffled sluggishly into columns and then stood waiting in sullen silence.

These prisoners were a motley lot, representing every world in the Solar System. There were red-skinned Martians, brutal-faced Earthmen, sulky Neptunians with gray skins, and sly-looking white Venusians.

This dreary, forbidding little world was Cerberus, one of the three moons of the planet Pluto. Here was located the great, escape-proof Interplanetary Prison, the living tomb of the most dangerous criminals of all nine worlds.

“March!” snapped the guard. And the columns of convicts shuffled toward the distant, frowning mass of Interplanetary Prison.

A prisoner in the last column glanced furtively at the guards. Then he whispered to the convict marching beside him.

“Tonight,” he murmured meaningly. “All of you be ready.”

The other convict, a rugged, hard-eyed Earthman, gasped in astonishment.

“It’s crazy, Ul Quorn!” he muttered tensely. “I don’t know what your idea is, but you’ll just get us all killed if you try it.”

Quorn made no answer, but there was a smile of confidence in his hooded eyes.

Ul Quorn was different from the other convicts. He was a slender, small man who had the pallid red skin and high forehead of a Martian. But the fineness of his wrists and ankles, the handsomeness of his features, were Venusian. And his sleek black hair and black eyes were those of an Earthman. Ul Quorn was a mixed breed, the most dangerous convict that Interplanetary Prison had ever harbored.

Quorn’s hands were calloused from the months of harsh prison labor in the beryllium diggings. No one would have recognized in his silent, shuffling figure the criminal genius who had once terrorized the System by sheer scientific mastery and cunning—the half-legendary Magician of Mars!

Quorn and his comrades marched silently on through the chill twilight, between vigilant guards armed with heavy atom guns. The dusk was deepening into darkness. In the starry sky bulked the great white sphere of Pluto, the ice-sheathed outpost world of the System. Beyond it gleamed its two other moons, Charon and Styx.

The black, massive walls of Interplanetary Prison loomed in the planet-light ahead. The great doors of inert metal were now open. Bright krypton-lamps cast a white glare on the sullen convicts as they passed across the main court of the prison to the massive cell-houses. Overhead droned fishlike Planet Patrol cruisers, keeping watch upon the moon.

Ul Quorn’s column trudged into its own cellhouse, down a bleak cement corridor righted by krypton bulbs. The hard-eyed guards watched as each prisoner entered his own little cell.

“Lock up!” barked the captain of guards.

The guards came along the corridor, flashing the tiny ray of their vibration-keys on each door-lock, thus sealing it electrically.

“Aura on!” came the final order of the officer.

A soft glow filled the corridor, emanating from flat plates in the ceiling. This glow was a photo-electric aura which would instantly actuate alarms if a prisoner should somehow emerge from his cell into the corridor.

Quorn heard the guards depart. Two would remain on guard at the cellhouse entrance where the aura-alarms were located, he knew. The mixed breed sat down on his bunk and waited. The cellhouse grew quiet. There was soon no sound except the soft beat-beat of the ventilation system.

UL QUORN finally rose softly and went to the ventilator-shaft of his cell. It was a six-inch opening covered by a barred grating. Deftly, he removed the grating and drew up four objects suspended in the shaft by cords.

One of the hidden articles was an amazingly compact television set. The second was a stubby metal tube with a quartz lens in its end, the third a small glass globe mounted on a little cubical case, and the fourth a tiny, crude-looking atom-pistol. Quorn looked at the things with pride.

“And they believed they could keep the Magician of Mars locked up here forever!” he breathed to himself.

Ul Quorn had achieved the almost incredible feat of secretly constructing these four instruments. For more than two years he had worked, cunningly smuggling in bits of metal and mineral from the mine-workings, and shaping them to his needs by sheer scientific wizardry.

He touched the call-button of the tiny televisor and waited tensely. The instrument had no visi-screen. But soon a voice came from it.

“Ul Quorn?” whispered a silky feminine voice, taut and thrilling. “I’m ready with the ship.”

“Good, N’Rala!” murmured the mixed breed. “This is the night. Be here at the third hour, exactly.”

“I’ve memorized all your instructions,” reassured the tense feminine voice. “I won’t fail.”

Quorn turned off the televisor, thrust it into his jacket. He moved to the door of his cell. In his hand was the second of his instruments—the quartz-lensed metal tube.

The tube was a makeshift vibration-key, similar to those with which the guards locked and unlocked the cells. It had taken all Quorn’s scientific genius to make this thing, and to compute the exact frequency of vibration to which it must be set if it were to unlock the cell doors.

He peered out into the corridor, illuminated by the soft glow of the alarm-aura. There was no one there. Quorn thrust his improvised vibration-key out through the little barred opening in his cell door. Then he turned its tiny ray of tuned electric waves upon the lock.

Click! The door was unlocked. Silently, Ul Quorn slid it open. But he did not venture out yet into the corridor. The moment he entered the soft glow of the aura out there, alarm bells would ring.

Quorn took his third instrument, the cubical case crowned by a little glass globe. He touched a switch on its side. The glass globe emanated a spray of fine white radiance several yards around him. Quorn now stepped boldly out into the glow of the corridor.

There was no clanging of distant alarms. The glass-globed mechanism he carried was radiating a “counter-aura.” This refracted the beams of the alarm-aura around him and thus prevented a break in the photo-electric warning circuit.

Quorn moved down the corridor toward the cellhouse entrance, as softly and stealthily as a Martian sand-cat. He peered around the end of the hallway into the guard-room at the entrance. Two uniformed guards sat chatting, their atom guns across their knees, relying on the aura-alarms on the wall to warn them if any prisoner should escape his cell.

Quorn raised his crude little atom-pistol. One of the guards, a quick-eared young Venusian, suddenly looked up.

The tiny, needle-like ray of Quorn’s weapon drove instantly between his eyes. The other guard fell dead a second later.

“Easy killing,” muttered Ul Quorn coolly. He went to the wall and switched off the aura-alarms. Then he picked up the atom guns of the two slain guards, hastened back along the corridor.

The criminal used his makeshift vibration-key on the lock of a cell. The door slid open. The hard-faced, rugged Earthman in the cell gasped aloud.

“QuornI How the devil did you get a key?”

“No time now to talk of that, Garson,” rasped the mixed breed. “We’ve got to unlock the others, without rousing all the prisoners.”

THE two convicts went into silent action. Gray Garson, the Earthman, helped unlock ten other cells along the corridor. In them were the convicts with whom Quorn had previously discussed escape. They gathered silently in one of the cells.

Quorn studied their hard, tense faces. Besides Gray Garson there was one other Earthman, a grossly fat criminal promoter named Lucas Brewer. There was also Thikar, a giant, brutal, green Jovian space-pirate; Lu Sentu, a cunning-eyed, wizened Mercurian thief; Athor Az, a drowsy-looking Venusian murderer; Xexel, an old Saturnian criminal with a wrinkled blue face and filmy, evil eyes; two somber Martian killers; a sullen-looking Neptunian; and a hairy, towering Plutonian.

“What’s your plan, Quorn?” hoarsely whispered Lucas Brewer, his fat face quivering. “You’ve got us out of our cells but I don’t see how we’re to escape from the Prison.”

“Sure, the Planet Patrol keeps watch around Cerberus night and day,” muttered Gray Garson. “No ship can land to take us away.”

“We’ll get away despite the stupid Patrol,” rasped Ul Quorn. “But before we start, I want one matter clearly understood. Once out of here, I give the commands, and the rest of you obey.”

He read sulky dislike on their faces.

“You fools!” he hissed. “Without me to lead you, you’d be tracked down and recaptured quickly.”

Lu Sentu muttered a doubt….

“But what if they put Captain Future on our trail?”

At mention of that name, a lightning-flash of hate seemed to pass across the faces of the other convicts. There was a somber fire in Ul Quorn’s black eyes, and his voice was harsh as he answered.

“I hope they do—I’ve an old score to settle with Captain Future! And so do you all, for it was he who sent most of you here. Well settle with him, after we’ve won freedom and the treasure I’m after.”

“Treasure?” whispered Lucas Brewer, his small eyes sparkling. “What treasure?”

“The greatest treasure in history!” Ul Quorn told them. “And once we’re free, I can lead you to it. We’ll be rich, powerful, invincible!”

Avarice was plain on every face in the vicious, motley group.

“What is this treasure? Jewels, precious metals?” Gray Garson asked.

“Something far greater than that,” Quorn retorted. “Something so tremendous that it staggers the imagination. It won’t be easy to secure, for it’s in a well-nigh inaccessible place. But we can get it, if you obey me.”

Garson answered for them all.

“Well follow you, Quorn! But how are we going to get out of here and away from Cerberus?”

“It’s almost the third hour,” muttered the Magician. “If my plan works, well be out of here soon.”

He handed one of the atom guns to the big green Jovian.

“You’re a good shot, Thikar. Now follow me, all of you, and make no sound.”

They were starting down the corridor toward the entrance of the cellhouse when they heard a wild clangor of alarm cells suddenly vibrating through the night.

“They’ve discovered our break!” cried Gray Garson.

Quorn’s black eyes blazed. “They must have had a secret spy-plate in that guard-room, blast them! I was afraid of that. Quick, out of here!”

Quorn knew now that somewhere in the guard-room had been hidden a spy-plate, an electric eye by which the chief of guards in the administration building could glance into each cellhouse at periodic intervals. Such a glance had probably revealed the two slain guards.

The clangor of alarms was increasing and there was a sound of running feet out in the main court. As Ul Quorn and his band raced down the corridor toward the entrance, the convicts in all cell-houses awakened. They started to shout in bewildered excitement.

Quorn and his companions burst out of the cellhouse into the night. The gray planet light of Pluto fell on a group of guards running toward them.

“Get them!” snapped Quorn to the giant Jovian beside him. At the same moment he fired his own heavy atom gun from the hip.

The ripping blasts from the two weapons flashed across the court and scythed down the oncoming guards before they were aware of attack.

“We’re done for!” wailed old Xexel behind Quorn. “We’ve not got a chance in a billion of getting out of here now!”

ANYONE less iron-willed than Ul Quorn would have been unnerved. Alarm bells were still clamoring, more guards were running out of the administration building, and the roar of aroused convicts was growing in volume.

Blue beams of krypton searchlights swung down from the guard-towers on the wall, searching the main court. And there was a far-away, increasing droning sound as black cruisers dived on the Prison from high above.

“Patrol cruisers coming!” Gray Garson yelled.

A blue beam bathed their group in its radiance as a searchlight found them.

“Get that light, Thikar!” cried Quorn.

Thikar’s atom blast snuffed out the light. But other beams swept toward them, and now the guards across the court were coming toward them on the run and firing as they came. Lu Sentu staggered in his stride as a flashing atom-blast grazed his shoulder.

Ul Quorn paid no attention. His black eyes were intently sweeping the court. Then he saw what he was anticipating.

In a dark comer of the great court, a small, torpedo-like rocket-ship suddenly appeared magically out of nothingness. It poised there, its flaming keel-jets keeping it a few inches above the paving.

“Come on!” cried Ul Quorn, plunging toward the craft.

“Gods of Saturn, where did that ship come from?” gasped old Xexel, his filmy eyes bulging. “It just appeared out of nothing—”

Guards were sprinting to intercept the band before they reached the mysterious little craft. Quorn shot as he ran, with uncanny sureness of aim, and three of the foremost guards fell in scorched heaps.

The door of the little ship opened. A lithe Martian girl appeared in it, tense and beautiful, her dark eyes blazing excitedly.

“Good work, N’Rala!” Quorn cried to her. “Quick, you men!”

His criminal followers tumbled into the little ship after him. Searchlights and atom blasts directed themselves at the craft. But then, as magically as it had appeared, the little ship suddenly vanished!

The Planet Patrol cruisers that roared down over Interplanetary Prison began a frantic search. But though they searched all around the prison moon they found no trace of the mysterious little craft in which the fugitives had disappeared.

Chapter II

The Red Torpedo

TWO nights later, the bitter night wind was screaming monotonously across the vast ice-fields of northern Pluto. Beneath the three moons of the arctic planet, the glittering frozen masses stretched endlessly to the horizons. Only at one place did the cheery beacon of lights suggest human existence.

That place was a domed, glassite building situated on a hillock. The structure was really an isolated engineering laboratory at which a great achievement was soon to be attempted. Inside its equipment-crowded interior, the four men of its staff were admiringly contemplating six super-massive cyclotrons which had been but recently installed.

The staff of engineers consisted of a young Earthman, a Venusian, and two tall, hairy Plutonians.

“These eyes will produce a world of power!” the Earthman was exclaiming. “Power enough to melt hundreds of square miles of the ice-fields by our electro-thermal radiation.”

“I hope our plan works,” said one of the Plutonians soberly. “It would mean much to my people, to have all that melted away.”

As he pointed to the guttering, moonlit ice-fields that stretched outside the glassite wall, he suddenly stiffened in surprise.

“Why, look at that!” he gasped. “A ship—”

The four men stood petrified by an incredible sight. Outside the laboratory, a small rocket-ship had suddenly appeared out of nothingness.

As the four engineers gaped, men who carried atom guns came running from the little ship. They burst into the laboratory. Their leader was a slender, red-skinned man with a smooth, handsome face. He wore a striped Martian turban and a long, yellow-sleeved purple Martian robe.

Alarm flashed in the eyes of the young Earthman as he recognized the leader.

“You’re Doctor Ul Quorn, the criminal scientist that escaped from Cerberus prison!” he cried. “The one they call the Magician of Mars!”

Ul Quorn bowed mockingly.

“I see that my fame has reached you.”

“What do you and your band want here?” demanded the Earthman.

Quorn looked at the six massive cyclotrons.

“We learned about those cyclotrons. We need them.”

“You can’t have them!” flared the Earthman. “It’s taken us years to have them built. We’ll not give them up!”

Ul Quorn shot him, his suave face impassive. The atom-blast from the mixed breed’s weapon dropped the Earthman in a heap.

The other three engineers stared unbelievingly. Then one of the Plutonians lunged toward the televisor and flung open its switch.

“Calling the Planet Patrol!” he yelled. “Quorn’s band is here at North Pluto Labor—”

The atom blast of Thikar, the Jovian, cut the Plutonian down before he could say more. Two more crackling, lightning-like blasts stopped the other two engineers before they could make a move.

“Now, get those cyclotrons out of here and into our ship at once!” Quorn ordered his followers.

“That’ll be a job,” grunted Thikar, eying the massive machines.

“You fool, we’ve got to have them!” Quorn lashed. “Without them, we haven’t the slightest chance of reaching the treasure I promised you.”

The mention of the mysterious treasure inspired the criminals. They began the heavy work of transferring the eyes to their little ship. Ul Quorn watched them. Beside him waited the lithe Martian girl he had called N’Rala. Presently they had the last of the six cyclotrons aboard their craft.

“Quick, out of here now before the Patrol comes!” Quorn ordered.

Their little rocket-ship rose from the ice-field. Then magically, it vanished.

The heaving blue sea that swept almost all the planet Neptune, gleamed in the sunlight. It washed against the rock cliffs of a small group of barren islands five hundred miles south of the Black Isles.

Upon one of these desolate islets were the metalloy shops and docks of Neptunian Oceanic Research Station. The pompous, gray-skinned, peaked-skulled Neptunian who directed the activities of a half-score scientists here was shaking his head.

“There’s a lot of money in those metal bars,” he declared.

HE AND one of his subordinates were eying a mass of long bars of blue-gleaming metal which lay in one of the supply-houses.

“Well, that alloy is expensive,” admitted his assistant. “But it’s about the strongest known to science. With it we can build a diving ship that will go down into even the greatest deeps of our ocean. Just think, sir, what that will mean! We can explore the great oceanic abysses for the first time,” he ended enthusiastically.

“Yes, I know,” agreed the older Neptunian impatiently. “But this stuffs so valuable it might tempt thieves. It’s only been a few days since Ul Quorn’s band raided that North Pluto laboratory, remember.”

The younger man scoffed politely at his superior’s apprehensions.

“Oh, well, Quorn’s criminals probably just wanted those super-powered cyclotrons to give their ship more speed. They wouldn’t want this alloy.”

The younger Neptunian was wrong. That evening a small rocket-ship appeared magically behind the research station. The staff of the station did not hear it, nor did they hear Ul Quorn and his men emerge from the ship.

“Take no chances of them giving an alarm this time,” ordered Quorn, his black eyes merciless. “Cut them down at once.”

The Neptunians had no chance. They were absorbed planning their new diving ship when the criminal band charged in upon them.

The hideous crackle of atom-gun blasts was brief. Then the Neptunian scientists lay on the floor in scorched, unmoving heaps.

“Good work!” approved Ul Quorn. “Now get those bars of alloy into our ship.”

Thikar, the Jovian, muttered protestingly to Gray Garson.

“First we stole the super-cycs and now it’s these metal bars. Why don’t we loot something worthwhile, like gold or radium?”

“Quorn knows what he’s doing,” Garson retorted. “He’s preparing to secure a treasure worth all the gold and radium in the System.”

“That’s what he says. But he doesn’t tell us what it is,” grumbled the Jovian. “He just says it’s something great.”

The bars of alloy finally loaded in the ship, the craft rose from the rocky isle into the gathering twilight. It poised for a moment, then vanished.

The quiet dusk deepened. One of the scorched Neptunian bodies stirred slightly. This man was not dead, but was dying. He feebly tried to write with his own bloody finger on the floor. “Quorn did—” But he was dead before he could finish his message.

HIGH in Government Tower, in the city of New York on Earth, was the center of the great web of the Planet Police. Here functioned the vast organization that maintained the law throughout the system. Here were headquarters of its four divisions—the planetary police, the colonial police, the secret service, and the famous Planet Patrol.

Halk Anders, Commander of the entire organization, paced his office restlessly. He was a stocky rock of a man, with a massive head and grim, scarred face.

He turned to face two other people, a girl and an older man. The girl was Joan Randall, ace secret service agent. The older man was Marshal Ezra Gurney, famous police veteran.

“We don’t need to do that!” Halk Anders told the girl angrily. “Ever since Quorn’s bunch escaped you’ve been deviling me to have the President call in Captain Future. I’m tired of it. Just because you and Ezra are on assignment to work with Future, you want him on every case.”

Joan Randall faced her irate chief calmly. She was a slim girl in gray silk space-jacket and trousers, with dark hair and liquid brown eyes.

“But, Chief, the Patrol can’t cope with Quorn!” she protested. “That mixed breed is the greatest scientist in the System—except one. This weird vanishing ship he’s using shows what he can do.”

“I think maybe Joan is right, Halk,” drawled old Ezra. “Remember, it took Cap’n Future to get Quorn the first time.”

Ezra Gurney was a white-haired, wrinkled-faced old man with faded blue eyes, who chewed rial leaf deliberately as he spoke.