Free Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) by Edmond Hamilton Page B

vast, semi-dark rocky cavern. It was an awesome natural chamber whose black rock walls towered sheer to a jagged roof two hundred feet overhead. The cavern was a half mile long, and almost that wide. Through it foamed a river that emerged from one end of the cavern and vanished into the other.
    A big mass of blue-shining mineral that cropped from the cavern wall shed a vague light that relieved the darkness. By the shore of the river, near the middle of the cavern, Johnny Kirk perceived a group of small metalloy buildings clustered around a long, looming framework of metal girders. Krypton-lights illuminated this queer little community.
     
    JOHNNY KIRK was thunderstruck. “How did they get the space ship into this cave? I must be dreamin’!”
    His captors led him toward the little group of portable metalloy shacks. His astonishment increased as he saw that the big, long framework of metal girders cradled a new space ship under construction. It was several times larger than the little ship in which he had been brought here. A half dozen men under direction of a rugged, hard-featured Earthman were manipulating the marvelous atomic machine tools which automatically squeezed alloy bars into the exact shapes required by the construction of the ship.
    “Building a big space ship here in a cave!” Johnny muttered. “They sure are wacky. How’ll they ever get it out?”
    The portable metalloy shacks were supply shacks and barracks huts. As they approached, a man and girl came to meet them. Under the glow of krypton bulbs, the man seemed a slender, unimpressive figure. But when Johnny Kirk was hauled before him, the youngster quickly revised that opinion.
    This man, he saw, was a mixed breed. He wore a striped Martian turban and yellow-sleeved purple robe. There was something tigerish about his drowsy black eyes that chilled the tough Earth youngster.
    “Who is that you’ve brought, Thikar?” the Magician of Mars asked the giant Jovian, eying Johnny Kirk.
    Thikar shifted uneasily.
    “This brat was with the Futuremen on Ariel, Quorn. I wanted to blast him for spoiling our attempt to trap Future, but Lucas Brewer insisted on bringing him along to you.”
    A dangerous yellow spark glimmered back in the depths of Ul Quorn’s unfathomable eyes, but he spoke without change of expression.
    “Am I to understand,” Quorn purred, “that you failed to spring the trap on Future?”
    “It wasn’t our fault, Chief!” protested the big Jovian. “We hid in the jungle on Ariel near the stockade, just as you told us to do. And Captain Future came to investigate Skal Kar’s laboratory just as you figured he would. We’d have got his Comet and left him for the gas-beasts to finish, as you planned, if it hadn’t been for this brat.”
    Thikar told how Johnny Kirk had foiled their attempt to hijack the Comet.
    “We had to rocket out of there quick, Chief. The Earth-brat tried to stop us but I knocked him out and we brought him along.”
     
    LUCAS BREWER spoke hastily to Quorn.
    “I thought maybe the boy could tell us how much Future has learned.”
    Quorn’s black eyes suddenly had raging lightnings in them.
    “You stupid fools! I give you a perfect plan for getting rid of Future and you let the unexpected presence of a boy ruin it! You idiots can’t carry out the simplest orders to help me!”
    Thikar’s green face darkened with passion and his hand strayed toward the atom pistol at his belt.
    “Nobody can talk to me like that,” the big Jovian said thickly.
    Quorn’s black eyes narrowed to pinpoints and his own arm tensed clawlike above the pistol in his belt-holster.
    “Do you feel rebellious, Thikar?” he purred tigerishly. “Would you like to argue the matter with me? If so — go right ahead!”
    Johnny Kirk saw Thikar’s sullen eyes waver and drop before the deadly menace in the mixed breed’s face. The Jovian was outfaced.
    The girl beside Ul Quorn intervened. She was pure Martian in beauty, with midnight hair