Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

the center of which glowed the evil red volcanoes and lava-beds.
    Air whistled outside the plunging ship, in a rising roar. It was still turning over, as it fell. Captain Future waited for one more turn.
    “Do something, you fool!” yelled Boraboll in terror.
    “We’re falling toward those volcanoes!” shouted another of the mutineers. The iron-nerved Kim Ivan silenced them. “Shut up and let him alone!”
    The volcanic region of the mystery planetoid stretched only a few miles beneath the plummeting ship. The center of the infernal activity was a double row of huge black craters separated by a stupendous chasm. From the craters flowed lurid crimson cataracts of molten rock that crept sluggishly down toward vast black beds of solid-crusted lava.
    Curt Newton was estimating their speed of fall by split-seconds. He knew that the tail-tubes upon which all depended would stand but a few moments of firing before their strained walls exploded. It required all the superb spaceman’s nerve to wait for the Vulcan to turn once more. Yet he waited, till the instruments showed its tail pointed straight down.
    Curt’s foot instantly jammed the cyc-pedal to the floor. The roar of raving power that lanced downward from the tubes flung him deep in the pilot-chair and jammed the others against the wall. The hull of the crippled ship grated and screamed from the shock of deceleration.
    “We’re going to land in that lava!” cried Grabo.
     
    CAPTAIN FUTURE saw the glowing red river that flowed from two volcanoes rushing up toward them. It was straight beneath the slowing ship.
    His hands flashed desperately to the bank of individual rocket-tube throttles. He cut the tubes on the starboard side of the tail.
    The off-balance thrust of the remaining tubes sent the falling Vulcan lurching to port. It sagged down toward the black lava beds beyond the fiery river. Instantly, Curt cut in all the tail-tubes again.
    Crash! Crash! The flaming tail of the ship came to rest upon the solid crust of lava. In a flash, he cut all tubes. The ship toppled over on its side and lay still.
    “Good God, what a landing!” choked old Tuhlus Thuun, hoarsely.
    Curt Newton, his face haggard and dripping with perspiration from superhuman strain, suddenly raised his hand. “Listen!”
    The momentary silence that had followed the landing of the Vulcan was broken by ominous cracking sounds beneath the ship. The prostrate vessel shuddered violently as the cracking sounds became louder.
    “We’re sinking into the lava!” yelled a mutineer’s wild voice. “The ship’s weight is cracking the solid crust — its going to sink into the molten rock beneath!”
    With the cry came a louder cracking, and a sharp lurching of the ship. There was a screech of rending metal plates. Scorching, superheated air laden with choking sulphurous fumes flooded up through the ship.
    “She’s going through the crust now!” bellowed Kim Ivan. “Out of the ship, everybody!”
    The mutineers scrambled madly down toward the space-door of the cyc-deck. All else was forgotten in the wild instinct to escape.
    Curt Newton fought his way down the companionway with the scrambling convicts. But it was toward the mid-deck he was struggling.
    He paused briefly outside its door to fling the switch of the master electro-control. Then he plunged into the cell-deck corridor. The guard in it had already fled.
    “Joan! Ezra!” Curt cried chokingly through the swirling smoke. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
    Figures were stumbling out of the unlocked cells, slipping upon the tilted floor, gasping as they breathed the scorching sulphurous air.
    Curt found the staggering figure of Joan and steadied her with his arm. Ezra Gurney’s grizzled face appeared through the smoke, a big bruise upon his cheek and his faded eyes wild.
    “Name o’ the Sun, what happened?” he was crying.
    The Brain’s weird form flashed like a flying cube through the swirling fumes to Curt’s side, hastily