Free Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) by Manly Wade Wellman

Future. “I take it that there is more than one viewpoint about this conquest of the Solar System, then.”
    “Why worry?” she flung at him. “You’ll not survive the conquest, so it won’t make any difference to you.”
    “I wish that N’Rala would try to escape,” said Joan rather dreamily. The gun stirred in her hand, and N’Rala lost her smile.
    “Captain Future, Joan Randall has always hated and resented me,” N’Rala said to Captain Future in tones of appeal. “I remind you that I’m a prisoner of war, and deserve certain considerations. Don’t let her find an excuse to torture or kill me.”
    “I thought that she was so sure Ul Quorn would come and get her back,” put in Grag.
    “Not Ul Quorn,” snapped N’Rala, still nervous. “Someone bigger and more terrible than Ul Quorn ever dreamed of being. The Overlord.”
    She paused, aghast at what she had told. Now it was Captain Future’s time to chuckle.
    “I gather from that remark that this Overlord is a new friend and ally of yours, closer than Ul Quorn,” he said. “I get a hint of attraction — even romance. Maybe through you we’ll reach the heart of this riddle, and pierce that heart through.”
    “You wouldn’t dare,” N’Rala whispered, deadly and chill.
    A moment of silence; then, from overhead came a movement.
    “Look out!” shrilled Simon Wright’s resonator.
     

     
Chapter 9: The Devouring Lake
     
    QUICKLY Captain Future was on his feet and looking up. He had acted even before Otho, who is generally called nimble beyond all human creatures.
    Future looked up into a canopy. From somewhere in the surrounding thickets broad-trunked, blunt-boughed growths had sprouted from a hundred places. Long, lean, upshooting tendrils, interlaced at the top, were writhing at them. It was like a sudden assault of sky-climbing snakes.
    Within the conical pen thus whipped together, fifteen or twenty yards overhead bobbed the gleaming rectangle of Simon Wright’s brain-box. He stabbed upward and outward with his traction-beams, holding at bay the latticework of tendrils, that sought to close in upon those caught inside.
    “I’m an idiot,” groaned Captain Future. “While worrying about human enemies, I didn’t foresee sub-human enemies.”
    Joan blasted at the living, constricting lattice with the atom pistol that had belonged to N’Rala. The charge tore a momentary glowing hole. Then other tendrils whipped across, larger and thicker and closer twining.
    “Useless,” said N’Rala, the calmest of them all. “I’m a worse idiot than you, Captain Future. I’d heard of this, and I clean forgot, because I was captured. Now we’re all captured.”
    Grag had rushed at the network where it sprang from the ground. His mighty metal paws seized and tore away stem after stem. But other plants sprang into being, from the ground or from other stems, bigger and tougher, closing the hole he made. Otho caught his shoulder and hustled him back.
    “You’re only making it stronger,” he scolded. “It — or they — can sense prey where there’s resistance. Look how it closes in.”
    The Brain dropped down to hover at Curt’s shoulder. The other four humans also clustered close. The entire party seemed to be in a wickerwork tent or teepee, closing in from all sides.
    “You knew about this thing, N’Rala?” said Captain Future. “Tell me about it. Quickly!”
    “It’s a parasite growth, springing from spores,” replied N’Rala. “The natives know how to avoid or defeat it — I don’t. Ul Quorn made several laboratory tests. When proper prey — flesh, living flesh — is in the vicinity, the tendrils spring up on all sides and close in. Then,” and the thought evoked in N’Rala a shudder that neither capture nor threats had produced, “they feed and give off spores for a new attack.”
    Otho was frowning. His long forefinger tapped his high temple.
    “They eat flesh, crush and absorb it,” he summed up. “And a violent defense