Captain Future 19 - Outlaw World (Winter 1946) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online

web and was crouched, glaring at them with evilly opalescent red eyes.
     
    TO THEIR ears came the crash of a large group of men through the brush, and the calling of brutal voices. Their pursuers were close behind them.
    “Devils of Deimos, we’re cornered!” raged the big Martian outlaw. “We can’t get across this glade, and before we can get around it through the brush, they’ll hear us and will be on us!”
    To Curt Newton’s mind came a sudden possibility. Instantly, he whipped off his jacket. He lightly scratched his arm with a sharp projection of his atom-pistol, and let it bleed on the jacket. Then he fired his gun into the air.
    “Now scream!” he whispered urgently to Bork King. “As though you were being tortured to death!”
    Uncomprehending, the Martian nevertheless obeyed. His and Curt’s voices rose in shrieks of raw, quivering agony.
    Yells of triumph came from the pursuers, as Ru Ghur’s men heard the atom-blast and screams, and started beating toward them.
    Captain Future flung his bloodied jacket toward the moon spider. The hairy monster pounced on it as it hit the web, and began to tear at it.
    “What the devil —” gasped Bork King, still uncomprehending.
    “Up this tree flower, quick!” cried Curt Newton in a low voice, dragging the Martian toward one of the giant lilies. “We can hide up there.”
    They scrambled up the thick trunk until they gained a high crotch from which heavy branches forked out to support the huge flowers. Each of these giant flowers was a thick, tough cup ten feet in diameter. Captain Future clambered into one of the lily cups and his companion followed his example just as Ru Ghur and his men poured into the glade below. They could look right down upon the raiders.
    “Look out — there’s a moon spider!” yelled the Uranian as he caught sight of the hairy monster in the web. “Kill the beast!”
    His own gun flashed a streak of fire. But the huge spider, moving with incredible swiftness as the gun blasted, streaked back along its shining web and disappeared into its pit before the rest could fire.
    “Here’s the jacket of one of them!” exclaimed Kra Kol, the Saturnian. Moving forward cautiously, he picked up the torn, bloody garment. “The moon spider must have got them when they blundered into its web.”
    “So that’s why they shot and screamed.” Ru Ghur nodded. “The beast devoured them before they had a chance to escape.”
    Captain Future, peering down from the big lily cup high above, saw the fat Uranian looking musingly at the ripped jacket.
    “Well,” he heard Ru Ghur murmur, “this is a strange end for a long and brilliant career.”
    “Let’s get out of here,” muttered Kra Kol. “I don’t like these cursed flower jungles.”
    Ru Ghur shrugged, and led the way back in the direction from which they had come. In a few moments Curt and Bork King slid down to the ground.
    “That was close, and it was cursed clever of you,” said Bork King to Curt. “What’s your name, Earthman?”
    Captain Future knew better than to let his real identity be known now. Bork King was an outlaw, one of the Companions of Space. And all that pirate brotherhood hated Captain Future as their bitterest enemy.
    Nor could he count on the Martian’s gratitude for having helped him escape from Ru Ghur. Hastily, he dissembled.
    “I’m Jan Dark,” he said. “I was one of Zarastra’s crew.”
    Zarastra had been a famous space pirate captain who had had been trapped and destroyed with most of his force by the Planet Patrol only a few weeks before.
    “When the Patrol caught Zarastra’s ships off Titan, I escaped the wreckage in a space-suit,” Curt went on. “That devil Ru Ghur picked me up and was holding me prisoner. He thought Zarastra had buried radium treasure and was going to make me tell about it.”
    Bork King extended a big hand. “You sure saved my neck, Jan Dark. And I’m not the man to forget a debt.”
    “You don’t owe me anything,”