Free Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) by Edmond Hamilton

interlaced by lianas and vines. Thorny underbrush decked with brilliant scarlet and yellow flowers, and big pale-green mosses choked much of the space between the trunks of the mighty ferns.
    “There’s some kind of a natural clearing in there,” Kim Ivan reported to Curt. “Want to go in and look it over?”
    Captain Future nodded, and he and the big Martian pushed their way beneath the shadow of the towering ferns. The air was hot and steamy inside the jungle, and many transparent-winged insects flashed about them.
    “Makes you think of the Jovian forests, and yet everything is different,” Kim Ivan said soberly. “Ah, here we are.”
    They emerged into the natural clearing that lay a little within the jungle. It was actually a low knoll, a few yards high and several hundred yards in diameter.
     
    NOTHING grew within this clearing except a few dozen gigantic cacti. They were dark, barrel-shaped growths twelve feet high, spineless and with fluted sides.
    “Lucky, finding a natural clearing like this,” Kim Ivan remarked. “It’s just what we’re looking for, isn’t it?”
    Curt nodded. “We can build a stockade of fern-trunks around it for protection against possible beasts of prey. And it looks as though we could dig a spring at that moist patch of ground.”
    He turned to go back and bring the others, but Kim Ivan delayed him with a hand on his arm. The big Martian pirate had an oddly earnest expression on his massive, battered red face.
    “Future, wait a minute. I got something to tell you.”
    Curt looked at him keenly. “What is it?”
    Kim Ivan scratched his ear. “Well, it’s like this. I know you got it in for me because I led the mutiny. Not that I’m excusing that — I still say anything’s better than Interplanetary Prison. Though if the boys had obeyed my orders, there wouldn’t have been any killing.”
    Curt Newton wondered what this rambling introduction was leading toward. “So what?”
    “Well, I gave you my word we’d work with you all the way, trying to build this ship, and I’m a chap who keeps his word,” Kim Ivan went on. “But I can’t always control the boys. So — watch out for Moremos!”
    Captain Future stiffened. “Is that Venusian already planing to make trouble?”
    “He hates you like poison,” Kim Ivan said. “He was saying a little bit ago that he’d figured out how to get you and your pals, when the time came. And I’m afraid some of the boys would side with him. I’d keep an eye open for death-traps, if I was you.”
    Curt said thoughtfully, “I doubt if he’d try anything right away, for building this space ship is his only hope’s well as ours. But I’ll watch out for his clever little traps. And thanks for the warning, Kim.”
    “Don’t thank me,” disclaimed the big pirate bluffly. “I’m not worried about you for any reason except that you’re our only chance of getting off this cursed little world. I know that we can’t build a space ship out of nothing, but maybe you can.”
    They went back and brought the rest of the castaways to the clearing which they had selected for an encampment. Then Captain Future issued orders which were backed up by Kim Ivan’s authority over the mutineers.
    “The first essential is to build a stockade for protection and to find food,” he declared. “Then we can build huts for living-quarters, and start work assembling materials and tools for the ship.”
    He formed them into work and foraging parties. The former were to bring saplings and vines with which to build a rough wall around the clearing. The foraging groups were to look for fruits, nuts or other possible edibles, and bring them back to the Brain for inspection.
    “Ezra, you stay here with Joan,” Curt told the old marshal. “How are you, Rih Quili?”
    “The injured young Mercurian lieutenant gingerly touched his bandaged head. “It still aches a little, but I’m fit for work now.”
    “Better take it easy,” Curt advised. “And, Ezra,