Free Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) by Edmond Hamilton Page B

android.
    A dozen conical copper ships had suddenly appeared from the west, were diving down over the copper cliffs straight toward the Comet.
     

     
Chapter 8: World of the Green Sun
     
    THE FUTUREMEN and their star rover allies had no time to formulate a plan of action with which to meet this unforeseen situation. Before they could even retreat inside their ship, the dozen copper craft had landed in a circle around the Comet.
    From the ships, slim black tubes that appeared to be some kind of formidable weapons swung to cover the ship of the Futuremen. And at the same moment, men poured out of the strange vessels and approached Curt Newton and his band. “Don’t start anything — Otho, take your hand off your proton-pistol,” Captain Future ordered sharply. “We’re in a bad spot.”
    Inwardly, Curt felt chagrined at having thus been taken by surprise. They should have known that the first ship would report their presence, that others would come. But there was no time now for self-reproaches. He braced himself to meet these inhabitants of the green star’s world, hoping that they might prove friendly.
    “They’re green!” Grag was muttering amazedly. “Melt me down if I ever saw men like these before.”
    “It’s a natural result of the green sunlight — this pigmentation,” rasped the Brain.
    Curt was keenly surveying the advancing men. His hand was ready to flash to his own belted proton-pistol, but he hoped it would not come to that, as he and his comrades were badly outnumbered.
    The advancing men were tall and vigorous — their pale green skins looked quite natural in the streaming green sunshine. They were all dark-haired, except for one who seemed their leader, whose hair was gray with age.
    They wore short, kilted garments of black silken fabric, and black leather sandals. Over the upper part of their garments, each man wore a silvery breastplate that Curt guessed to be a ray-shield of some kind. These alien warriors carried black metal tubes mounted on gunlike stocks, which they kept trained on the Futuremen.
    “Energy-projectors of some kind,” Curt Newton said under his breath to his comrades. “They look like dangerous weapons.”
    The gray-haired man stopped a few paces away and eyed Curt with open curiosity.
    The pale green face of this oldster bore the stamp of cunning intelligence, and there were shrewd, sly lines around his hooded black eyes. Captain Future distrusted him at once.
    “Who are you, strangers, and why do you come “to Kor?” the green oldster demanded.
    Curt felt a shock of amazement. He understood the language of the other.
    It was similar in most words and phrasings to the tongue of Antares which he had recently learned from Hol Jor.
    “Gods of Antares, he speaks my language!” ejaculated Hol Jor dumfoundedly. “I wasn’t surprised to find that Ber Del and Ki Illok and the rest spoke it, for there’s long been commerce between the stars in our part of the galaxy. But for these men inside the cloud to speak it —”
    “They must have come from outside the cloud originally, to colonize this star’s world,” Curt muttered. “That doesn’t matter now.”
    Captain Future spoke out clearly to the green leader.
    “We have come from outside the great dust-cloud to this world of Kor. Damage to our ship forced us to land here, but we come as friends.”
     
    THE sly-eyed old leader appeared to consider this, his shrewd gaze running over Curt Newton’s tall figure, the floating Brain and alert white android, the towering robot and the five star rovers.
    One of the green Korian captains, eyeing Curt suspiciously, spoke to the gray-haired commander.
    “They may be lying, Uzhur,” he suggested. “They may be spies from Thruun.”
    The hooded eyes of Uzhur, the old Korian commander, flashed. But his manner was as smooth as his voice as he asked Curt a question.
    “Do you come here from Thruun?”
    Captain Future expressed an honest puzzlement.
    “We don’t know who