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

keep an eye on Rollinger all the time.”
     
    JOHN ROLLINGER had exhibited an almost pitiful terror of the jungle, and had had to be dragged by Grag to this clearing. The crazed Earthman now crouched, looking about the place with wild, scared eyes.
    Curt, Grag, Otho and George McClinton formed one of the work parties. They plunged into the shadowy green jungle of giant tree-ferns and choking underbrush, in search of suitable material for the stockade.
    “If we had just a b-b-bush-knife, it would be a l-lot easier,” mumbled the lanky McClinton, who was munching dried prunes as he marched.
    “Why not wish for an atomic blaster, while you’re at it?” suggested Otho. “Besides, this is where Grag comes in handy. He can tear up trees by the roots. You never saw anybody so strong.”
    “Meaning that you’re trying to flatter me into doing all the work,” growled Grag. “Well, it won’t go, my slippery rubberoid friend.”
    They were already deep in the green jungle. Big tree-ferns reared their glossy trunks for fifty to sixty feet, bearing masses of flat fronds and spore-pods. Yet these were not true pteridophytes at all, but the result of a wholly different line of plant evolution, which appeared not to rely on photosynthesis as a source of life.
    There were other and even stranger trees. Huge ones like banyans reached out many leafless limbs from a massive central trunk. Others looked like big horse-tails. Club mosses flourished in the spaces between the crowding trunks, and creeping vines were everywhere. Many of the vines and the thorny smaller shrubs bore unfamiliar fruits.
    Insect life was abundant. But most of the winged arthropods possessed perfectly transparent wings and were hard to see. There were no true feathered birds, but white, bat-winged creatures were numerous and noisy in the tree-tops. And Curt Newton found tracks and other traces of animals that were apparently several species of small rodents.
    “There doesn’t seem to be any sign of large animals,” Captain Future declared. “Though all the life here is so alien it’s hard to tell.”
    George McClinton’s spectacled face was discouraged as he looked about the green gloom of the jungle.
    “It’s certainly w-w-wild enough.” Grag was already at work, uprooting saplings and ripping off big branches from the tree-ferns to be stripped into stockade-poles. The other three pitched in, but the huge robot had the advantage here. His steel arms could break tough limbs that the others could not tackle.
    Leaving a trail of trimmed poles behind him, Grag advanced toward one of the big banyan-like trees. He seized one of its leafless, drooping branches. Instantly, the branch retaliated by seizing him. It and others of the scores of branches coiled around him like tough plant-tentacles and dragged him toward the central trunk.
    “Hey, Chief, this tree’s fighting back!” yelled Grag alarmedly.
    “It’s some kind of carnivorous form of plant-life that can devour animals!” Captain Future cried. “Tear those branches away, Grag.”
    “I can’t!” shouted the robot. “The cursed things are strong as steel! It’s a regular tangle-tree.”
     

     
Chapter 8: The Cubics
     
    AT LEAST twenty of the tentacle-like limbs had now coiled around Grag. They were lifting his massive figure toward the central trunk. This as a cylindrical mass of fiber twelve feet in diameter. The tangle of branches grew from its sides, and its top was a huge, hollow calyx.
    Curt and the other two sprang forward to aid the robot. But they were themselves gripped by other branches. As they sought to free themselves, Grag’s struggling form was being hoisted up into the air and held above the hollow calyx of the tangle-tree.
    From inside the huge calyx spurted up streams of sticky green liquid that smeared the helpless robot from head to foot. Grag yelled with fury at this, but the sticky juices continued to spurt over him.
    “The thing is covering Grag with its digestive