Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

Alius. The Alius gave these people immortality, and they freely offered me the same priceless boon.
    “Think of it, Curt — I’m practically immortal! I’ll never grow old and ugly; I can live on and on and on! Is it any wonder that I accepted this wonderful thing they offered? And if you are allowed to join them, Curt, we two could live here forever!”
    Khinkir’s snarl came sharply then to Curt’s shocked ears.
    “Unless you move on, prisoner, you will be blasted where you stand,” said Khinkir sharply.
    “Please go, Curt. The king is waiting,” Joan said in distress. “And try to conquer this hostility of yours toward the Cometae. I want you to see their greatness, and to join them as I have done.”
    She drew back into the group of Cometae nobles in the background, and Curt lost sight of her. Khinkir and his subordinate guards had raised their electrode-weapons toward him, with grim purpose.
    Curt Newton stumbled along with them, on across the great, open throne room.
    The scene before him, the brilliant throne room and the shining figures of the Cometae nobles, was a somber blur to his eyes. It was difficult for him to breathe, as though iron bands had been clamped around his chest.
    Dimly he heard a voice through the confused throbbing of his thoughts. Then came the hissing, furious whisper of Khinkir who was standing beside him.
    “The king is speaking to you, prisoner.”
     
    CURT’S vision cleared. He was standing with his guards in front of the sunburst throne. He looked up at the man and woman who sat on the benchlike silver chair.
    Thoryx, hereditary king of the Cometae, was handsome as all his fair-haired race, his youthful figure invested by that alien halo of electric force that gave them all such an incongruously angelic appearance. But Curt read weakness in the smooth and effeminate features of the king, and in has suspiciously narrowed eyes.
    There was no weakness in the girl beside him, the queen Lulain. Her blond beauty, flaming with the electric glow, was brazenly revealed by her brief, richly jeweled silver garments. She sat with languorous, feline grace, looking down with insolently appraising eyes at Captain Future’s tall, red-haired figure.
    “You do not answer me, stranger!” Thoryx was saying. The king glanced petulantly at Khinkir. “I thought you said he had learned to speak our language.”
    Curt answered for himself, in the Cometae tongue.
    “I have learned it,” he said, a harsh edge in his voice.
    “Do not take that tone with me, stranger!” flared the Cometae king.” You are a prisoner here. If I but say the word, you will be dead before your heart beats twice.”
    The Cometae noble who hovered at Thoryx’ side hastily bent toward the angry king. Curt now noticed this councillor for the first time. The shinning halo of his electric vitality could not disguise the man’s advanced age. His elderly figure was slightly stooped, his hair thin and gray, his face a wrinkled mask of cunning with crafty, watchful eves.
    “The stranger does not know our ways, sire,” he was telling the king soothingly. “It would not be wise to order his destruction before we have learned more about him and his strange companions.”
    “Very well, Querdel,” Thoryx told the old noble fretfully. “But let him not look at me again so threateningly. I am master on this world — under the Great Ones, of course.”
    He added the last words hastily, with a nervous, involuntary glance around the throne, room. Curt surmised the reference was to the Alius.
    Lulain bolted half scornfully at her consort.
    “Are we to spend all day in examination of this prisoner?” she inquired.
    Thoryx addressed himself to Captain Future.
    “Why did you and your companions approach the orbit of this comet?”
    Captain Future had got a grip upon his raging emotions by now. Shaken as he was by the terrible surprise of his encounter with Joan, he still retained enough presence of mind to realize the wisdom of