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

had swum to the edge. She clutched at it, to draw herself up and out. But then the containing material came into view. It writhed and humped an edge above the sticky surface of the lid. There seemed to be a thick integument, like the rind of a mighty fruit, and here it was thickly lined with lean, sharp spikes, like hundreds of dagger points. These moved to confront N’Rala’s clutching hand. She cried with the pain, and dropped back into the bath.
    “I’m wounded!” she cried. “And the wound — it burns, it burns!”
    Curt Newton, swimming near Joan, called back to N’Rala.
    “Swim for the center. There’s something solid there.”
    He scrambled upon the lump of solidity he had found. It bobbed and quivered under him, but did not sink. A moment later N’Rala had come there, whimpering with pain, and Joan and Otho hoisted her upon the lump. Last of all Joan crawled up, helped by Curt’s hand.
    “What is this raft?” asked Joan.
    Captain Future was examining the object. “A creature of some sort — dead and floating. It’s the size of an elephant, dome-shaped, several stumpy legs — like a big beetle. Coming out, Otho?”
    Otho floated on his back.
    “Why should I? It’s comfortable here.” He paddled toward the brink, splashing liquid up at the hopelessly staring Grag. Joan, who so lately had been wrestling N’Rala into submission, now gave first aid. The Martian girl’s hand had been cruelly ripped in two places by the dagger-thorns, and the touch of the liquid was agony to the exposed flesh. Joan took a first-aid kit from N’Rala’s own captured belt-pouch, cleansing and taping the wounds.
    “How can a pond be alive?” said Otho.
    “It’s not a pond,” replied Captain Future. “It’s a creature with a big liquid trap-organ of some sort. Like a —”
    “A pitcher-plant,” finished Simon Wright for him. “When you compared this big dead thing to a beetle, I saw what other comparison could be made. A terrestrial pitcher-plant, you know, those big water-filled pods —”
    “But they grow well above ground,” objected N’Rala.
    “The size and weight of this makes it find a depression to grow in and shape itself accordingly.” Captain Future told her. “The liquid is digestive, of course; that’s why it hurt your hand, N’Rala. And see where it’s eaten away part of our raft. Otho, being synthetic, isn’t uncomfortable.”
    “Now you’ve gotten us into this, how are you going to get us out?” said N’Rala tartly.
    “There speaks the eternal woman,” chuckled Simon Wright. “Nobody got us into this but you, N’Rala. However, I can get you out.”
    His traction-beam pushed the floating carcass with its three passengers toward the edge of the pool. Otho, swimming beside, helped push. The dead flesh stuck into the thorns, mooring it, and Grag helped the Futuremen ashore, one at a time.
    “The manacles,” he said, holding them out to Captain Future. “You were interrupted.”
    “And you’re interrupted again,” added the mocking voice of Ul Quorn.
    Figures moved into view — the pale gnomes that the Futuremen were beginning to know so well. There were thirty or forty of them, with weapons ready. Ul Quorn had spoken, but he did not show himself.
    Overhead, Simon Wright turned in midair as if to soar away. Two of the creatures pointed strange pistol-form devices. From these leaped, like lean, lightning-swift snakes, long tendril cords. They fell across Simon Wright’s crystal case, a quick turn of the wrists of the operators snapped half-hitches on him.
    Even then he might have pulled away, but the impeding coils swathed him and slowed him for the moment that others needed to add their quickly-projected cords. He was hauled down and once more bundled into a hammocklike mesh of the metal strands.
    Captain Future thought furiously. Only Eek, the metal-eating moon-pup, had won him freedom from such bonds. He dared not risk being bound in that fashion again. He turned to