Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

THE COMET KINGS

by Edmond Hamilton

Trapped in the Depths of Halley's Comet, the

Futuremen Battle Fourth-Dimensional Monsters in a Titanic

Struggle to Save the System's Solar Energy!

Captain Future parried the blow by a swift jab of his own dielectric blade. (Chap. IX)

CHAPTER I

Vanishing Spaceships

ILLIONS of miles out beyond Jupiter, the bat-

tered old space-freighter Arcturion plodded

through the void.

"I'd just as soon walk to Uranus!" disgustedly ex-

claimed Norton, the young second mate. "I wish I'd got

a berth on a passenger liner. They don't spend weeks

crawling along between planets."

Brower, the veteran first mate, smiled tolerantly at

the impatient young officer.

"You'll get used to it," he predicted. "Me, I kind of

like it. It's restful, plugging along day after day through

these big empty spaces."

"But nothing ever happens!" the younger man com-

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

plained, "There's never even a close brush with a mete-

or swarm. I can't stand this deadly monotony."

Ironically, it was at that moment that the catastrophe

broke upon them.

The plodding, droning Arcturion suddenly seemed

to go crazy in space. Its steelite hull plates screamed

beneath the grasp of unearthly forces. The ship hurtled

suddenly sideward in space, as though it had,, been

gripped by a giant, invisible hand.

The sharp shock of that invisible grasp was so pow-

erful that it nullified the Arcturicy's artificial gravita-

tion. Young Norton felt himself hurled against the cab-

in wall, and his brain saw stars.

His last sensation was of mysterious and mighty

forces sweeping the old freighter at undreamable speed

through the void. Then he knew nothing at all.

That was only the first disappearance.

"But there aren't any uncharted meteor swarms out

in that sector of space, sir!"

The man who spoke was a Martian who wore the

dark uniform of the Planet Patrol. He wore a captain's

insignia, too, for Tzan Thar was head of this Jovopolis

Maintenance Division.

His red, solemn face was wrinkled with dismay and

there was anxiety in his large-pupilled black eyes, as he

protested to the Venusian superior officer who looked

at him out of the square televisor screen.

"Don't try to evade responsibility, Captain Thar!"

snapped the higher officer. "You're in charge of the

Maintenance Division for that sector of space. You've

been lax in your meteor-sweeping, and a score of ships

have come to grief as a result.

"Twenty-three ships gone, since that old freighter

Arcturion first disappeared! And every one of them

vanished in that sector beyond Jupiter, and hasn't re-

ported since."

"I can't understand it any more than you can sir,"

said the Martian captain. "We swept all lanes in that

sector only a few weeks ago."

"Then you missed plenty of meteors!" rapped his su-

perior. "You get out there with every sweep you've got

and be fast about it! I want that sector cleaned up at

once. And see if you can't find the wreckage of those

ships."

The connection was broken. Tzan Thar turned and

looked helplessly at his junior officers-lanky Earthmen,

squat Jovians, bronzed Mercurians.

"You all heard him," the Martian captain said wor-

riedly. "You know we swept that sector thoroughly,

that every space-lane was clear. But something's drifted

in that haft been wrecking ships. We've got to get

busy!"

Six broad-beamed, dumpy meteor-sweeps soon rose

up through the thin sunlight of Jupiter, blasted their tor-

tuous path out through the maze of moons, and then

laid a course outward in space.

The six ships, built with steelite walls of massive

strength, droned steadily out through the starry void.

Their far-ranging spotter beams fanned space ahead.

Wherever those beams encountered meteors or other

debris, they would be reflected back to indicate the lo-

cation. Then the sweeps would advance and destroy the

meteors by concentrated atom-blasts.

UT their spotter apparatus found no trace of mete-

ors as they droned out along the space-lane. Cap-

tain Tzan Thar became deeply puzzled.

"I can't figure it," he admitted anxiously. "There are

no meteors in this sector. There isn't even any wreckage

from all those vanished ships."

His immediate superior, a young Mercurian, looked

uneasy.

"It's queer, all right "

Cataclysm suddenly interrupted their discussion. A

colossal, invisible hand seemed suddenly to seize their

heavy ship. They were flung to the floor as that giant,

unseen hand scooped up all six great meteor-sweeps.

Nor did the tragic disappearances cease.

"Fifty-two ships Do you hear that-fifty-two ships!

Freighters, liners tankers, even meteor-sweeps. This

can't go on!"

North Bonnet's face was agitated as he paced to and

fro in his office, on a high level of Earth's Government

Tower at New York. It was a comparatively small of-

fice, yet it was the very brain and nerve center of the

far-flung Planet Patrol.

Halk Anders, commander of the Patrol, sat at his

desk and said nothing. His bulldog face was stolidly

grim as he hunched there, staring out through the win-

dow at the soaring towers and gleaming lights of this

night-shrouded metropolis of the Solar System.

"Commander, something's got to be done," North

Bonnet continued vehemently. "Those ships held thou-

sands of people, millions of dollars' worth of cargoes.

Shipping companies, planetary officials, anxious rela-

tives are all besieging the Government. You've got to

send cruisers out there to stop these disasters!"

Halk Anders did not turn from his grim contempla-

tion at the lights of New York, as he answered.

"We sent two Patrol cruisers into that sector to in-

vestigate weeks ago after our meteor-sweeps vanished."

"You did" Bonnet said hopefully. "What did they re-

port?"

They didn't report anything," the commander

replied. "They never came back just disappeared like

the others."

The Government official was appalled.

"Patrol cruisers disappeared, too?"

Anders nodded.

"Yes. We kept it quiet because we didn't want to add

to the general alarm."

"But what are we going to do about it?" Bonnel

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

asked dismayedly.

"I've already done something," the commander told

him. "I sent out another cruiser to investigate. Two of

my crack agents are aboard. You know them old Mar-

shal Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall.

"It may look queer, sending a girl," he added quick-

ly. "But Joan's not only the smartest agent of our secret

investigation division she knows the space-ways bet-

ter than most men. And as for Ezra Gurney well, he

knows the whole System like the back of his hand."

"Have they found out anything yet?" Bonnel de-

manded eagerly.

Halk Antlers shrugged stolidly.

"I don't know. They were to report by televisor to-

day. I've been expecting their call any minute."

But though the two men waited expectantly, it was

not until four hours later that the televisor on the desk

buzzed sharply. From it came the urgent voice of a

headquarters switchboard man.

"Cruiser Ferronia calling, Commander. Agent Ran-

dall to speak to you."

"Switch her on at once!" snapped Halk Anders.

N the square glass screen of the televisor appeared

the vivid face of a dark, pretty girl. Joan Randall's

eyes were shadowed with anxiety as she spoke to them

across the millions of miles of space.

"Ferronia reporting, Commander," she said rapidly.

"We've been cruising back and forth over the whole

sector in which those ships vanished. And we've found

nothing."

"Nothing?" echoed Anders incredulously. "You

mean "

"I mean just that. There's nothing here but empty

space!" Joan Randall declared. "There's not a meteor in

this whole region big enough to wreck a ship. Further-

more, there's no sign whatever of any wreckage of all

those ships. It's just as though space itself swallowed

them up!"

The white head of an old man appeared over the

girl's shoulder. Marshal Ezra Gurney's wrinkled face

and faded blue eyes were bleak as he corroborated the

girl's report.

"It sounds cursed queer, but it's so," he told the com-

mander. "This is the dangdest, most puzzlin' mystery I

ever "

At that moment, something happened. It happened

so swiftly that neither Commander Anders nor North

Bonnel get more than a glimpse of it.

They saw something like a blaze of white across the

televisor screen, instantly blotting out the suddenly

alarmed faces of Joan and Ezra. And then the televisor

had gone dark.

Anders jabbed its call-button.

"Joan! Ezra! What's happened?"

There was no answer. Anders flung a switch and

shot an order to the headquarters operator.

"Contact the Ferronia again at once!"

Ten minutes later, the switchboard division called

back.

No success at all, sir. The Ferronia simply doesn't

answer."

Anders slowly turned and looked at the Government

official, and his bulldog face was heavier than ever.

"It happened to Joan and Ezra, right in front of our

eyes," he muttered. "Whatever struck at the other ships

Captain Future smashed desperately to close the fateful door as

the Allus advanced viciously toward him and Joan. (Chap. XV)

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

struck at theirs, too."

Bonnel was appalled.

"But what was it? There was nothing but a blaze of

force in the screen!"

Anders shook his leonine head helplessly.

"I can't figure it. I thought I'd seen everything in

space but this is something new, and dangerous."

He rose to his feet.

"There is nothing to do but to send a full squadron

of Patrol cruisers out there. And if they disappear, too

"'There'll be a panic that will cripple space travel in

the whole System," breathed Bonnel, his face pale.

Then his eyes flashed.

"Commander, this mystery can't be met by force. It's

a job for someone who can scientifically ferret out what

is really happening. Someone who can use every re-

source of science to solve the riddle."

Halk Anders understood this at once.

"You're thinking of Captain Future?"

The official nodded emphatically.

"If anybody could crack this mystery, that scientific

wizard and his Futuremen could."

"Maybe so," muttered the commander. "Future has

plenty of tricks the rest of us don't know. But if you call

him in, will he come?"

"Will he come?" echoed North Bonnel. He strode

toward the televisor. "Why, Ezra Gurney is one of his

oldest friends, and as for Joan you ought to know

what Future thinks of her!"

"Will he come? He'll split space itself getting here

when he learns that Joan and Ezra are in danger!"

CHAPTER II

Riddle of the World

SMALL, streamlined ship climbed froze the bar-

ren, airless surface of the Moon, with rockets

blazing white fire, it shot toward Earth.

Had there been any observer, he would have known

at once that it was the ship of Captain Future and the

Futuremen. For only those four famous adventurers

lived upon the lifeless, forbidding satellite. Their un-

derground laboratory-home beneath Tycho crater was

the only habitation.

The little ship flew toward Earth at a speed no other

craft could match, and which no ordinary pilot would

have attempted. It screamed down through the darkness

of the shadowed planet, toward the blazing pinnacles of

New York. Like a swooping falcon, it came down to

rest on the truncated tip of the looming Government

Tower.

Down in Planet Patrol headquarters, North Bonnel

was still restlessly pacing his office as Halk Anders sat

grimly silent.

"If Future can't solve this thing, nobody can!" Bon-

nel was saying jerkily. "And if ships keep on vanishing

like that "

A clear voice interrupted him:

"What's this about vanishing ships? And what's hap-

pened to Joan and Ezra?"

Bonnel and Halk Anders both spun around. A door

had opened silently behind them. And in it were four

figures.

"Captain Future!" exclaimed Bonnel. He breathed in

gusty relief. "By heaven, I'm glad you and the Future-

men got here so quickly!"

Curt Newton ignored the warm greeting of these two

old acquaintances as he strode into the office. His

brows were knitted in a frown.

"You said in your call that Joan and Ezra were in

trouble. What is it, Bonnel? And why didn't you call me

before?"

Captain Future as the whole System called Curtis

Newton towered a full head above Bonnel. His tall,

ranged figure, clad now in a gray zipper-suit, hinted of

strength and speed. And the heavy proton pistol belted

to his waist recalled that he was not only the famous

Wizard Science, but also the most renowned fighting

planeteer in the System.

Beneath Curt's torchlike mop of red hair, his spac-

etanned handsome face and clear gray eyes now mir-

rored an urgent anxiety. He had few friends, but those

few were very close to him. Marshal Ezra Gurney was

one of the oldest. And even closer to his heart was the

gay, gallant girl agent whose safety now was threat-

ened.

"Where are Joan and Ezra?" he repeated.

"We don't know," Bonnel answered helplessly.

"What do you mean you don't know?" cried one of

the Futuremen. "Devils of space, is this a joke?"

The three Futuremen who were Curt Newton's faith-

ful, lifelong comrades made a striking contrast to their

tall, red-haired young leader. Otho, the one who had

just spoken, was a lithe, white, rubbery-looking figure

of a man, with a devil of fierce recklessness in his slant

green eyes. He seemed almost an ordinary man, but was

not. Otho had been created in a laboratory, long ago.

He was a synthetic man, an android.

Grag, second of the Futuremen, was even more ex-

traordinary. He was an intelligent robot a giant metal

figure towering seven feet high, with photoelectric eyes

gleaming from the bulbous metal head that shielded his

mechanical brain. Strongest of all beings vas Grag!

The third and strangest was Simon Wright, the

Brain. He was just that a living human brain, dwelling

in a transparent metal case whose constantly repurified

serums kept him alive. His glass lens-eyes were watch-

ing, his microphone ears listening, as he hung poised

upon the pale beams of force by which he could move

through the air at will.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"You must have some idea where Joan and Ezra are!

Otho was exclaiming impatiently to Bonnet. "Or did

you bring us all the way from the Moon just for a silly

hoax?"

"Shut up, Otho," Curt Newton ordered. His gray

eyes bored into Bonnel's face. "Tell us what happened."

ONNEL told them, as briefly as he could. He told

of the scores of slips that for weeks has mysteri-

ously vanished in that sector beyond Jupiter, of the as-

signing of Joan Randall and old Marshal Gurney to in-

vestigate, and of the inexplicable interruption of their

televisor call.

"The thing has me baffled, Captain Future," con-

fessed Halk Anders when Bonnel finished.

Curt's eyes were hard. "We're going out there at

once and find out what did happen to them," he said

sharply. He turned toward the door. Otho's slant green

eyes flamed with excitement as he followed. And Grag,

too, followed Captain Future silently. But the Brain's

metallic voice held them back. "Wait a moment, Curtis.

I know you're worried about Joan, but getting into too

big a hurry won't help us. We need to know more about

this."

Otho groaned exasperatedly. "Every time we're in a

devil of a hurry, Simon has to delay to plan things out."

There was truth in the charge. The cold, almost

emotionless mind of the Brain was always more careful

in planning action than were the others. That was natu-

ral, for the Brain was the oldest of them all.

The Brain could look back across the years to the

time before Curt Newton had been born. He had been

an ordinary man, at that time. He had been Doctor Si-

mon Wright, brilliant, aging scientist of a great Earth

university, dying of an incurable ailment.

His body had died but his brain had lived on. His

living brain had been surgically removed and implanted

in the artificial metal serum-case which he still inhabit-

ed. That had been done by Roger Newton, his gifted

young colleague in biological research.

Soon after that, threats to their scientific secrets had

caused the Brain, Roger Newton and Newton's bride to

leave Earth in search of a safe refuge. They had found

such a haven on the lifeless Moon, where they built an

underground laboratory-home beneath the floor of Ty-

cho crater.

In that strange home, Curt Newton had been born.

And in it, the science of the two experimenters had cre-

ated Otho, the android, and Grag, the robot.

Death had come to Roger Newton and his young

wife, soon after that. The orphaned infant they had left

had been adopted by the three strange beings, the Brain,

the robot and the android. These three had faithfully

reared the boy to brilliant manhood, giving him the un-

paralleled education that in time had made him an un-

surpassed master of science.

Ever since Curt Newton had begun to use his great

powers against the evil-doers of the System, his three

former guardians had followed him as the Futuremen.

"Before we go out there," the Brain was saying de-

liberately in his metallic voice, "I want all available

data about the spaceships that disappeared. I want to

know the route each ship was on, its date of departure,

its approximate cruising speed, and about when it van-

ished."

Captain Future's gray eyes showed quick under-

standing.

"I see what you mean, Simon. By calculating the

courses and speeds of the ships, we may be able to fix

the approximate point in space where they vanished."

Halk Anders gave rapid orders into an office inter-

phone. The file of data requested by the Brain was soon

brought to him.

"We'll call you the moment we learn anything out

there," Curt called back earnestly from the door to the

two officials. "Come on, Grag."

HEY hurried up the little private stair to the land-

ing deck atop Government Tower, Otho taking the

steps three at a time, Grag's metal limbs clanking, the

Brain gliding silently at Curt Newton's side.

Up there in the windy darkness atop the tower, the

small ship of the Futuremen crowded the deck. The

four boarded the Comet in a minute, the airlock door

was slammed shut, the cyclotrons started, and Captain

Future grasped the space-stick in the crowded little con-

trol room.

He sent the Comet climbing steeply up to the stars

with a burst of white flame from its tail rocket tubes. It

angled sharply above the glittering towers of New York

to fling itself space-yard amid a roar of splitting atmo-

sphere, as Curt's foot pressed the cyc-pedal.

Presently they were out in clear space, Earth reced-

ing rapidly behind them as Curt Newton built up the

speed of the Comet to fantastic velocity. Like a man-

made meteor gone mad, the ship of the Futuremen hur-

tled outward. The bright speck of Jupiter gleamed

ahead, a little to the right.

Far out to the left, well beyond the orbit of the

monarch world, glowed the brilliant splendor of Hal-

ley's Comet. The great comet was plunging Sunward

again in its vast, seventy-five-year orbit. Its giant coma

or head shone like a blazing world, the long tail stream-

ing backward.

"The ships all disappeared in the quadrant ahead,

between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus," Curt told

Otho thoughtfully. "Since all space-lanes have been re-

routed to give Halley's comet a wide berth, it cuts down

the area that we must search."

There came a sudden booming cry of alarm from

Grag, back in the main cabin.

"Someone has planted an atomic bomb on this

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

ship!"

Springing up in alarm, Curt Newton slammed the

switch of the automatic pilot and bounded back with

Otho into the cabin. This main cabin of the Comet was

more laboratory than living quarters. It was crowded

with telescopic, spectroscopic, electrical and other ap-

paratus. There was a table at its center over which the

Brain had been poised, studying a mass of calculations.

Grag was standing, pointing his metal arm in alarm

at a small, square black case in a corner. It exactly re-

sembled a "live" atomic bomb.

"Don't touch it, Chief it may let go any minute!"

the big robot cried. "Somebody must have put it in the

ship while we were out."

Captain Future moved swiftly toward the bomb,

snatched it up and tore open the airlock door to throw

the thing out. But the "bomb" suddenly writhed and

changed form in his hands.

It changed with swift protean flow of outline, into a

small, living animal. It was a doughy-looking little

white beast, with big, solemn eyes that looked up inno-

cently at Curt.

"It's my pet, Oog!" cried Otho. He jumped forward

in alarm. "Don't throw him out!"

Curt disgustedly tossed the little animal to its mas-

ter.

"It isn't his fault," Otho said protectively. "You

know Oog laves to imitate anything he sees. That's his

nature."

Oog was cuddling contentedly in his master's arms.

The little beast was a meteor-mimic, a species of aster-

oidal creature which had developed the art of protective

coloration to great lengths. This species had the power

of shifting its bodily cells to shape itself after any mod-

el, and completely controlled its own pigmentation. It

could imitate anything.

"I don't mind your keeping the little nuisance around

in the Moon-laboratory, but I told you not to bring any

pets in this ship" Captain Future bawled out the an-

droid.

"Well, Grag brought along his pet, Eek, and so I

thought I had a right to bring Oog," Otho answered de-

fensively.

URT uttered an exasperated snort. "So we've got

Eek along, too? Where is he, Grag?"CRelunctantly the great robot opened a cabinet and

released another small animal, but one of a different

species. It was a little gray, bearlike creature with

beady black eyes and powerful jaws, now contentedly

gnawing upon a. small scrap of copper.

Eek, as Grag called this pet of his, was a moon-pup.

He was a member of the strange species of moon-dogs

that inhabited the airless satellite of Earth. These crea-

tures did not breathe air or eat ordinary food, but nour-

ished their strange tissues by devouring metal or metal-

The Futuremen were drawn inexorably into

the center of Halley's comet. (Chap. III)

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

lic ores. They were strongly telepathic, that being one

of their chief senses.

"Look at the beast he's chewed up half the copper

instruments in that cabinet," Curt said bitterly. "Why

the devil did you bring him along?"

Grag shifted uncomfortably.

"Well, Chief, I had to do it. Eek can sense what peo-

ple are thinking, you know, and he knew we were going

and was upset about being left behind. He's a sensitive

little fellow."

"Sensitive? That walking four-legged nuisance? All

he knows is to eat up valuable metal and to sleep," Curt

said witheringly.

Simon Wright had paid no attention to the alterca-

tion over the pets. The Brain was too accustomed to

such arguments to notice them. "Curtis, I want you to

look at these figures," he said.

Curt went over to the side of the Brain, who was

poised uncannily upon his pale tractor-beams above the

mass of calculations. The brain had been marking small

crosses upon a space-chart that showed the quadrant be-

tween the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, ahead of them.

"Each cross represents where one of the spaceships

vanished, as nearly as I can figure it," the Brain ex-

plained. Captain Future felt dismayed as he looked. The

pattern of crosses was not focused around any one

point. It extended in a long, strung-out oval, reaching

almost from Uranus' orbit to that of Jupiter.

"I can't understand this," Curt muttered puzzledly. "I

thought the ships would all have disappeared in the

same part of space, and that by going there we could

find the key to the mystery. But since that isn't so, it

means we'll have to search the whole vast quadrant for

a clue."

"I fear so, lad," admitted the Brain. "And a search of

such dimensions will take us weeks."

Curt went discouragedly back to the pilot chair.

Gloomily he stared into the enormous, star-specked

void ahead of the flying ship. It yawned empty to the

eye, except for the bright spark of Jupiter to the right,

and the flaring glory of Halley's Comet far out on the

left ahead.

Curt's eyes suddenly narrowed upon the comet. His

unseeing stare had brought a subconscious idea into his

mind. A possibility hitherto ignored abruptly burst

upon him with stunning implications. He hastened back

into the cabin.

"Simon, let me see that chart of yours again!"

The Brain watched wonderingly as Curt closely ex-

amined the plotted crosses, each of which marked the

disappearance of a ship.

"Look, Simon! The first slops that vanished did so

near the orbit of Uranus. The next ones disappeared

further Sunward. The location of disappearances has

steadily moved in a Sunward direction."

"That's true," the Brain admitted. "Does it mean any-

thing?"

"I don't know," Curt muttered. "But Halley's Comet

has also been steadily moving in a Sunward direction,

during these vanishings."

His eyes flashed.

"Simon, I know it sounds insane, but I think that

Halley's Comet has something to do with this mystery!"

CHAPTER III

On the Comet World

USHING headlong through the great deeps of

space, Valley's comet flamed in the blackness like

a world afire. The gigantic spherical coma, over two

hundred thousand miles in diameter, flared in a super-

nal glory of dazzling electrical radiance.

Within that radiant shell of force, there pulsed the

deeper glow of the mysterious nucleus. And back from

the head streamed the millions of miles of the glowing

growing tail.

Strangest of all the Solar System's children was this

vast wanderer. Its long, elliptical orbit carried it out be-

yond the orbits of even the outer planets, out beyond

the frontier of the System to the shores of infinity.

There, as though obeying the call of its parent orb,

the great comet always turned and rushed Sunward

through the planetary orbits, gathering speed until it

was racing in through the circling worlds at frightful

velocity.

Curt Newton and his Futuremen gazed with a tinge

of awe at the gigantic, glowing body as their ship ap-

proached it. They were now but a million miles from

the coma.

"It's like slapping a Venusian marsh tiger in the teeth

to fool around with this thing," muttered Otho. "That

coma is pure electric energy. If we get too close to it,

we'll be blasted like a butterfly."

Otho spoke more truly than he knew.

A giant, invisible hand seemed suddenly to seize

their ship in an iron grasp. The racing craft, brought

suddenly to a halt in space, stopped so sharply that only

the cushioning anti-acceleration force-stasis to the con-

trol room saved them all from being crushed on the

walls.

As it was, Curt's brain blurred from the shock. He

heard a loud yell of alarm from Grag. He shook his

head violently to clear it.

Their ship, the Comet, was falling at nightmare

speed toward the giant flaring comet that was its name-

sake!

"What happened" Otho was yelling. "Chief, did the

cycs fail?"

"No, they're still going. We must have run into pow-

erful ether current that's sucking us toward the comet,"

Curt said hastily.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

As he spoke, he was jamming down the cyc-pedal

and swerving the space-stick to bring the slip back on

its course. The massive cyclotrons roared with full

power, rocket tubes spouting tremendous blasts of

flame backward.

But the ship continued to fall toward the flaring

comet. All Curt's efforts could not bring it out of that

racing descent. And now he noticed with increased

alarm that the instruments before him had gone crazy.

Meteorometers, gravitometers and all the other instru-

ments had either blown out or were showing erratic,

impossible readings.

"This isn't any ether current that's grabbed us!" Curt

exclaimed. "This is a powerful magnetic beam of some

kind, that's somehow projected from the comet and is

sucking us in to it!"

A super-powerful magnetic force had seized the

ship's steelite hull and was dragging it at rapidly mount-

ing speed toward Halley's comet.

"Chief, something's the matter with me!" bellowed

Grag in evident panic. "I'm stuck against the wall here

I can't move!"

Curt discovered the predicament of the robot. Grag

was flattened against the wall of the control room near-

est the comet. The great robot, with all his mighty

strength, seemed unable to free himself. And Simon

Wright, the Brain, was also pinned to the wall.

"It's got me too, lad," rasped the Brain, with unper-

turbed calm, "This is an effect of the magnetic force

that's seized us."

APTAIN FUTURE understood. Both the great

body of Grag and the case of the Brain were com-

posed of metal alloys whose base was steelite. Thus

they were pinned against the wall by the magnetic

force.

The scene was one of desperate confusion. The

speed with which the unseen magnetic beam was draw-

ing them toward the ominous glowing coma was in-

creasing by the second. Grag and Simon were helpless.

Eek was cowering in a corner as he telepathically

sensed his master's alarm. The little meteor-mimic,

Oog, had promptly turned himself into an exact imita-

tion of Eek, in his fright.

"'Take it easy, men!" Curt ordered sternly. "We'll

have to try the vibration drive. Go back and start the

generators, Otho. Simon, you and Grag can't help just

wait."

Curt's presence of mind brought order out of the mo-

mentary chaos. Otho raced back into the cabin to start

up the powerful generators, which were the source of

power for the Comet's auxiliary vibration drive. This

drive, whose mechanism could fling the ship at incredi-

ble speeds through the reactive push of etheric vibra-

tions, was intended only to be used in the vast spaces

outside the System. But Curt knew it was their only

hope of breaking free of the remorseless magnetic grip

that was dragging them to doom.

Captain Future discovered that he himself was being

dragged by a persistent force toward the wall against

which Grag and Simon were pinned. He found that the

effect was due to the proton pistol at his belt whose

steelite was tugged toward the wall by a powerful pull.

Curt hastily took the weapon out of his belt and at once

it flew toward the wall.

"Hey, look out!" Grag exclaimed. "That thing hit me

right in the stomach!"

"You can hammer out the dent in your stomach lat-

er," Curt retorted. "Otho, have you gone asleep back

there?" He was answered by the thrumming roar of the

vibration-drive generators, which soon were shaking

the ship with their powerful drone.

"All ready, Chief!" Otho reported, tumbling back

into the control room. He, too, had been forced to jetti-

son his weapons.

"This will yank us out of the magnetic grip, if any-

thing will" Curt gritted. "Hold on, Otho!"

He flung in the switches of the vibration drive. The

slip, still falling dizzily toward the comet, shuddered vi-

olently as the powerful propulsion vibrations were pro-

jected suddenly from its stern.

But it still continued to fall toward Halley's Comet,

still gripped by the relentless magnetic beam. Curt in-

creased the power. The ship shuddered even more

strongly, and an ominous creaking warned of tremen-

dous stresses that were weakening its frame. Yet it still

could not break free.

"We're caught for good!" Curt exclaimed dismayed-

ly. "Even the vibration drive can't tear us loose. Fiends

of Pluto, there must be a world of power in this beam

that's seized us!

"What are we going to do?" cried Otho. "We don't

have much time left. Holy sun-imps, look at that

coma!"

The spectacle outside the windows was now an ap-

palling one, as the ship hurtled toward the comet at in-

credible speed. The immense spherical coma of Hal-

ley's comet filled almost all space ahead of them, a

blinding sea of dazzling white light. It was not really

light, at all, Curt well knew.

HAT coma was a vast shell of ions, electrically

charged atoms whose tremendous potential was

such as to destroy by an unearthly lightning blast any

matter that touched it.

And their ship would strike that coma in a dreadful-

ly short time. Captain Future felt, as he had never felt

before, a sense of being trapped by forces that even the

resourcefulness and scientific powers of the Futuremen

could not contend against.

Yet it was characteristic of Curt Newton that even in

this moment of frightful danger, he was not thinking of

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

himself. It was of Joan Randall and Ezra Gurney that he

was thinking, and of the others who had been lost in

vanished ships.

"They were all drawn into the comet by a magnetic

beam, the same as we," he declared. "Simon, that beam

was deliberately projected to seize us!"

"Aye, lad," came the answer of the helpless Brain.

"There's intelligence and menace inside Halley's

comet."

We've got about five minutes before we hit the

coma!" Otho yelled. "This is the end of our space-trail.

Good-bye, Grag, old pal I'm sorry now I was always

ribbing you about being a robot. You may be made of

metal, but you're a better man than I ever was."

"No, Otho," Grag boomed earnestly. "You were a

swell guy but I didn't appreciate you. I guess I was just

jealous."

Curt Newton, looking fearlessly ahead into that ap-

palling sea of light, toward which they were being

dragged, suddenly shouted.

"Before you two grave-diggers make your last

farewells, look at this!" he cried. "I think we're going to

get through the coma!"

They stared unbelievingly. ''Their ship was now

rushing straight toward the vast, flaring wall of electric

force, the head of the comet. 'There was a round aper-

ture in the gloving shell of the coma. And the ship was

being sucked straight toward that hole!

"I get it now!" captain Future exclaimed. "The mag-

netic beam that holds us is projected out through the

coma to make that aperture. We'll be dragged through

that hole, perhaps without touching the coma!"

The moment was at hand as he spoke. The Comet

seemed rushing headlong toward destruction in the flar-

ing sea of electric force. One touch would destroy them

as lightning might shatter a toy.

Straight as an arrow, the Futuremen hurtled toward

that aperture in the coma: They entered it and Curt and

Otho cried out and shielded their eyes. The blaze of

force all around the ship was blinding in intensity.

When he uncovered his eyes, hurt perceived with a

thrill of hope that they were through the coma! Their

ship was inside the spherical shell of the comet's head,

was being dragged at unabated speed toward a little

planet that hung at the center of this vast enclosed

space.

A world here at the heart of Halley's Comet! A little

world that was the solid nucleus of this vast, mysterious

wanderer of the void!

"We're through we're in the comet!" Otho yelled

hopefully. Then, remembering something he added

hastily to Crag: "I hope you don't think I meant it when

I said you were a better man than I. I was just handing

you another rib, you poor metal imitation of a man!"

"The same goes for me!" Grag bellowed angrily at

the android. "I was just hoping to make death easier for

you, when I told you what a swell guy you were you

offspring of a smelly retortful of chemicals!"

URT ignored the verbal combatants.

Simon the magnetic beam comes from that little

world! That means Joan and Ezra must have beer:

dragged here in the same way!" lie said excitedly. "If

they're on that world "

"We'll never know if they are!" Otho groaned sud-

denly. "We're going to be smashed to Hinders when we

hit that planet at this speed!"

Curt, too, had realized their peril. It seemed they had

miraculously escaped the coma, only to meet an equally

frightful end. Their velocity was suicidal as they

plunged toward the mysterious planet.

The planet that poised here at the heart of the great

comet was a small green world, blanketed by thick

forests. It was drenched in the brilliant, unearthly glare

of the glowing coma that completely surrounded it.

At one point upon this small green world, there was

a star-shaped white city. And they were being dragged

straight down toward that city, whose alabaster domes

and towers and streets rushed up toward them with

fearful speed.

Captain Future, nerving himself for the inevitable

crash that meant annihilation, felt a sudden deceleration

of their flashing fall. So sharp and swift was that slow-

down that even through the cushioning stasis of force

which protected them, they felt again a blurring of their

senses.

"They don't want us to crash!" choked Curt. "Who-

ever's operating that magnetic beam wants us to land in

one piece "

"Chief, look at that!" Otho yelled, pointing unsteadi-

ly down.

In the fiercely flaring light of the coma, the strange

white comet-city lay close beneath their falling ship.

Curt glimpsed a round court of spaceport size near

the center of the ivory metropolis.

It was toward that court that the ship was failing.

The court was several thousand feet in diameter, ringed

by white towers crowned with massive copper elec-

trodes. At the center of the round court was a circular,

silvery disk five hundred feet across. Around the disk

rested scores of spaceships of familiar appearance.

"That disk is the magnet that's pulling us down!"

Curt deduced. "I see people down there."

"Here comes the crash!" drag shouted.

It was not really a crash, their impact against the sil-

very magnet-disk. It was a jarring contest that shook

them violently. But so greatly had their speed been de-

celerated in the last moments that the ship was not shat-

tered.

An instant after they came to rest, Curt and Otho

were picking themselves up. Grag and the gain were

pinned helplessly now on the floor.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"Help me get loose, chief!" the robot bellowed.

"That cursed magnetic force is holding me "

He was suddenly interrupted by a sound of hammer-

ing and prying outside the Caret's airlock door.

"They're forcing into the ship, whoever they are!"

Otho cried His slant green eyes flared. "We've got a

fight on our hands. These cursed comet pirates can't

kidnap yes like this!"

Curt and Otho jumped to pick up their proton pis-

tols. But the weapons were pinned against the floor by

the powerful magnetism beneath.

The airlock of the ship burst open with a crash and a

half dozen men charged into the cabin.

"Holy sun-imps!" screeched Otho. "They're devils of

the comet!"

VEN Captain Future was for a moment petrified

by stupefaction. These comet men who had entered

did indeed seem utterly unearthly.

They were tall, fair-haired fellows who wore sleeve-

less shirts and shorts of silvery cloth. They also wore

long swords at their belts, and two of them carried gun-

like weapons with electrodes instead of barrels.

But these men glowed with dazzling light! From ev-

ery inch of their bodies, from their hair, their faces,

their arms and legs streamed a halo of brilliance that

was like the corona of the awful coma itself.

"They're men, even though they do shine with

light!" Curt cried. "Clear them out of the ship! If we

can wreck that magnet "

He was plunging forward as he spoke, his fists fly-

ing toward the weird, shining invaders. Then as his fist

hit one of the glowing comet men, Curt Newton felt a

paralyzing electric shock along his arm.

His body stiffened in agony. He realized it was not

merely light that glowed from these shining men, but

electric force. These were electrically charged human

beings! The body of each was invested with an electric

potential that should have been enough to kill them.

"Get back don't touch them!" Curt yelled a warn-

ing to Otho

As he shouted, one of the shining electric men ex-

tended a hand and touched Curt's head. The full electric

shock stabbed to Captain Future's brain, and he was

plunged into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER IV

The Cometae

URT NEWTON'S returning consciousness made

him aware, first of all, of a strange, tingling sensa-

tion through his whole body. He felt as though he were

lying beneath a super-powerful generator that was

flooding every fiber of his being with electric force.

"He is coming around now, Grag," a familiar, metal-

lic voice was rasping. "So stop your worrying."

Curt forced his eyes open. Grag and Otho and the

Brain were hovering anxiously over him. The pets, Oog

and Eek cowered close by.

He lay on the floor of a small, cell-like room of

white synthestone. There was a single heavy metal

door, and a high, tiny window through which flooded a

brilliant white light.

"Simon, what happened in the ship after I passed

out?" Curt cried.

"I know what happened to me!" Otho burst out furi-

ously. "One of those cursed shining men grabbed me

the same as you, and I felt a shock that knocked me sil-

ly. I woke up here just a few minutes ago."

"And we couldn't help you," Grag boomed angrily.

"Simon and I were pinned against the ship's floor by

that devilish magnetism from beneath."

"That is the truth, lad," the Brain told Curt. "After

stunning you and Otho, the shining men secured Grag

and me with chains. Then they turned o$ the magnetism

outside, and dragged all four of us, even the two pets,

to this prison."

"Did you see anything of Joan Randall as we were

brought here?" Captain Future demanded anxiously.

"No, lad," murmured the Brain. "She may be impris-

oned like us somewhere in this cursed city."

Curt strode with nervous quickness! to the window.

He drew himself up to it and stared out at the amazing

city.

Graceful alabaster buildings of white synthestone,

crowned by bubblelike domes and slender towers, rose

in his field of vision. He teas looking across the great

central plaza of the magnet-disk. He could make out his

own ship and other captured ships parked out there. On

the other side of the plaza bulked a large white palace

with one huge, looming dome.

Curt saw that in the white streets and green gardens

moved many of the natives of thus comet world, afoot

and in six-wheeled power vehicles. They were all

fairhaired folk, beautiful women, stalwart men. And all

of them glowed with that dazzling, uncanny radiance of

electric force. They seemed like angels of light inhabit-

ing some strange celestial metropolis.

Down upon the alabaster city poured a flood of

white brilliance from the sky. For the sky of this comet

world was the flaring aura of the comet's nucleus, Com-

pletely enclosing this hidden world, thus nebulous

coma arched across the heavens like a firmament of

scintillating white fire.

"Who'd have dreamed that all this existed inside

Halley's comet?" muttered Otho, peering out with awe

from over Curt's shoulder.

Curt's gray eyes narrowed.

"These comet folk are enemies of our System. They

must be, or they wouldn't have devised that great elec-

tromagnet which sucks distant ships in here by means

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

of its beam."

"But what are these people?" Grag demanded puz-

zledly. "They shine just as though they were highly

charged with electricity."

"By all the imps of Uranus!" Otho swore. "If you'd

have touched one of them, you'd know that they really

are electrically charged!"

Curt Newton nodded quickly.

"There's no doubt about it. All these people possess

physically an electric charge that should destroy them

but doesn't. Simon, what do you make of it?"

"It is strange," muttered the Brain. "Yet life is elec-

trical in nature. Even back in the twentieth century,

Crile showed that the living cells of a body are tiny bat-

teries which produce the electrical current we call life."

"Theoretically, all life may be electrical. But nobody

ever saw electric people like these before," objected

Otho. "And wily did they drag our ship in here? What

are they going to do with us?"

"More important what have they done with Joan and

Ezra?" Curt interrupted. His eyes flashed. "If they've

harmed her "

"I hear a tapping in the wall," Grag suddenly an-

nounced.

HEY listened. But they heard nothing for a mo-

ment. Then footsteps outside their cell door be-

came audible.

"That must be what you heard," muttered Otho.

"Our keepers coming."

A little panel in the bottom of the locked door was

suddenly opened, and something was pushed through.

Then the opening was closed.

Their captors had left them two things a bowl of

synthetic-looking mush obviously intended as their ra-

tions, and a book. The book was a queer one. Its leaves

were of thin, silvery metal. Upon them were pictures of

objects and actions, and under each picture an unfamil-

iar word.

"Why, it's an elementary textbook of their

language," Curt said puzzledly. "Maybe they're not re-

ally hostile to us at all."

"Maybe that shock they gave me was all in fun,"

Otho retorted bitterly.

"I hear that tapping in the wall again," Crag inter-

rupted.

"That tapping is inside your skull, bucket-head,"

Otho told the robot impatiently. "Four mechanical brain

has stripped a gear, probably."

Crag, always sensitive to mention of his mechanical

nature, flared up.

"Why, you miserable little mess of chemicals "

"Shut up!" Captain Future ordered them sharply. "I

hear that tapping, too. It's an interplanetary code. Lis-

ten!"

The sound came faint from one wall of their cell.

"SQ?" it spelled out in the System's universal code.

"SQ who's there?" Curt translated. His eyes lit.

"There are other prisoners in here with us. Maybe it's

Joan!"

Hastily he rapped in answer, stating his identity and

finishing with the same inquiring signal.

The answer came quickly.

"Are you new prisoners really the famous Future-

men? I am Tiko Thrin, a scientist of the Syrtis Labora-

tories of Mars. I'm sorry that you are also captives of

the Cometae.

"The Cometae? Is that what you call these comet

folk?" asked Curt.

"It is what they call themselves," tapped Tiko Thrin.

"I have learned their language and many facts about

them, for I have been here ever since the space-liner on

which I was traveling was dragged into the comet."

"Have you any knowledge of other prisoners here?"

Curt rapped anxiously. "Especially Marshal Ezra

Gurney and a girl, Joan Randall."

"Both of them are here in this city of Mloon," came

the quick reply. "I heard them brought in, many days

ago. Ezra Gurney is still a prisoner in this place. I have

talked with him many times in code. Prisoners in the

other cells relay our signals from cell to cell."

"Ask him if he and Joan are all right," Curt directed

quickly.

Ire waited with fast-beating heart for the answer,

feeling a new hope. But when Tiko Thrin's report came,

it brought dismaying information.

"Ezra is overjoyed that you Futuremen are here. He

says he is all right but is worried about the girl. She is

not here in prison, he says, but is somewhere in the

city."

"Ask him what happened to her," Captain Future

bade the Martian anxiously.

Again minutes dragged by before the relayed answer

came.

"He says that he and Joan were taken before the

rulers of the Cometae, King Thoryx and Queen Lulain.

They were asked to join the Cometae. Ezra refused and

was brought back here. But the girl was not brought

back."

URT'S anxiety increased. Tiko Thrin tapped on.

All prisoners brought here are first given a chance

to learn the language and then are asked to join the

Cometae. Those who refuse are brought back here, as I

was. We are kept locked up until the solitary confine-

ment makes us change our minds. Many prisoners have

weakened and surrendered. Perhaps the girl was among

them."

"If they're hostile to the System, Joan wouldn't join

them under any circumstances!" Curt tapped back. "She

may be trying to deceive them. Tell me, what are these

Cometae planning that they need recruits?"

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"I do not know," came Tiko Thrin's answer. "It is

obvious that the Cometae are preparing some important

venture, but I have no idea what it is. They are only

obeying the orders of the Allus in what they do."

"The Allus? Who are they?"

"That, too, I don't know," the Martian replied. "I

only know that the Allus are the real masters of this

strange comet-world, and that these Cometae regard

them with a respect and awe verging on dread."

"Are the Allus men? What do they look like?" Curt

demanded.

"None of us prisoners has ever seen any Allus,"

Tiko Thrin tapped back. "The Allus never come to this

city of the Cometae, but inhabit some mysterious place

in the north. The Cometae speak always of the Allus as

`the dark masters' or as `they from beyond the veil.' ''

"Devil take all these mysteries!" Otho exclaimed vi-

olently. "What I want to know is how are we going to

get out of here?"

When Curt tapped that question, Tiko Thrin's reply

was flatly discouraging.

"I fear that even you Futuremen cannot escape this

place. You will be confined until you learn the lan-

guage of the Cometae. Then you will be taken to the

rulers."

The Martian added a warning.

"Do not attempt any rash attack upon the Cometae.

They have very powerful weapons, as well as the pro-

tective charge of electricity which keeps their bodies

immortal."'

Immortal Curt repeated. "You mean that these elec-

tric folk are deathless?"

"Yes. The Cometae cannot die unless they should

leave this comet. Then they would perish for lack of the

Captain Future and the Brain bent over the electron microscope. (Chap. VII)

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

electric radiation that is their food."

"These Cometae live on electricity?" Curt tapped in-

credulously.

"'They do," replied the Martian. "As you no doubt

know, life itself is essentially electrical. We get our vi-

tal electricity from the chemical batteries of our body

cells. When the cells wear out and can no longer pro-

duce the vital electric current, we age and die.

"But the cells of the Cometae have somehow been

so altered that they do not produce this all-important

energy but simply receive it from the coma's electric ra-

diation the same radiation you doubtless feel tingling

through your bodies now.

"Thus the Cometae do not need to eat or drink, for

their cells absorb their vital energy from the coma's

electric radiance. Because of that, they cannot age and

cannot die unless killed by accident."

"This is very interesting," the Brain declared ab-

sorbedly. He had Curt tap a further question to the Mar-

tian. "Were the Cometae always like this, or were they

once ordinary human people?"

"I am sure, according to what is passed along the

prison `grapevine,' that until a few years ago they were

ordinary humans," replied the Martian scientist. "It is

said that only a few years ago, the Allus changed them

from normal people into undying electric men."

"Whoever these mysterious Allus are, they must

wield incredible scientific power if they can accom-

plish a feat like that!" said Otho startledly.

HE exchange of messages was interrupted by a

deep vibration of sound that traveled through the

window. It sounded like the note of a great bell.

"It means that `night' has come," tapped Tiko Thrin

in answer to Curt's question. "There is no real night

upon this world, of course, but the Cometae have a pe-

riod of sleep which they all observe."

The activity in the city outside lessened. Soon but

few of the shining electric folk were to be seen in the

streets.

Next "morning" the small panel in the door of the

Futuremen's cell was again opened and another ration

of synthetic food thrust in to them. One of the Cometae

guards spoke to them through the door, asking what

seemed to be a question in his unfamiliar language. Re-

ceiving no answer, the guard went on.

For three "days" the guard followed the same proce-

dure. Curt spent nearly all of the time in intensive study

of the Cometae language. He assumed from Tiko

Thrin's information that when they could speak the lan-

guage, they would be taken before the rulers of these

strange comet folk.

Curt Newton now realized that this was their sole

chance of getting out of their prison. The door was nev-

er unlocked. The Futuremen had been stripped of every

tool and weapon. Simple as their prison was, it seemed

inescapable.

Otho and Grag and the Brain also picked up a work-

ing knowledge of Cometae language from the textbook,

though Simon Wright spent much of his rime dis-

cussing with his fellow-scientist in the next cell the

mysteries of this comet world. Crag and Otho, chafing

at confinement quarreled endlessly, while Oog slept

peacefully and Eek gnawed contentedly on a metal

bowl.

On the third "morning," when their guard asked his

usual question, Captain Future was able to understand

it.

"Are you able to speak our language?" the guard

was saying.

"Yes, I am," Curt replied haltingly.

The guard exclaimed in surprise.

"You learned very swiftly! I will call Zarn, the

prison captain."

Presently the deep voice of that official came

through the door.

"So you can speak our tongue already?"

"Yes, and we demand that your people give us an

explanation for this enforced captivity," Captain Future

retorted.

"You will receive your answer from King Thoryx,"

replied Zarn. "But I cannot take you to him, for I have

not the authority. I will notify Khinkir, captain of the

king's guard."

Later that day the door of the Futuremen's cell was

unexpectedly opened. Two officers of the Cometae and

a half-dozen soldiers stood outside.

All of the shining electric men of this guard wore

swords at their belts. And three of them carried alertly

the gunlike weapons that had copper electrodes instead

of barrels. Zarn, the prison captain, was a massive,

stocky, rough-looking individual. Khinkir, captain of

the king's guard, looked younger and his silver-cloth

garments were more ornate.

"Let me advise you," Khinkir immediately warned

Captain Future, "that these weapons project a concen-

trated electric blast that can destroy you in a split sec-

ond, should you attempt any rash act. Now come with

me."

The other three Futuremen moved forward with Curt

Newton, but Khinkir hastily warned them back.

"Not you! Only this man is to come."

"Why can't my comrades come with me?" Curt de-

manded.

"They are not human," replied Khinkir, glancing

somewhat nervously at the strange trio of robot and an-

droid and Brain. "We do not know what powers they

may possess, and the king ordered them to be kept

here."

THO showed the rage he felt at this contretemps.

Otho had secretly been nursing a hare-brainedO

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

plan of attacking the Cometae ruler and holding him as

a hostage, though the android had been careful not to

tell Curt. Now the plan vas ruined, and Otho boiled

with anger.

"You do well to dread our powers!" he told the cap-

tain of the guards menacingly. "If you keep us impris-

oned here, you will feel the weight of those powers!

Why, my metal comrade here could tear down this

place if he so desired!"

Grag, somewhat amazed at this assertion, neverthe-

less backed it up with an imposing show of ferocity. He

beat clangingly on his metal breast.

"That's rights" he growled in his deep, booming

voice. "I could tear this place up like it was made of pa-

per."

"And the Brain yonder," Otho went on with his

threats, "has scientific powers beyond your dreams

powers greater even than those of the Allus."

"Shut up, you idiot!" hissed Curt to Otho. "Let me

handle thus,"

Zarn, the prison captain, had shrunk back a little

from the Futuremen and so had the Cometae soldiers.

But Khinkir now answered angrily.

"No individual has powers comparable to those of

the mighty ones from beyond the veil! You utter a blas-

phemy against the Allus!"

He turned to the prison captain.

"Set guards outside this door from now on, Zarn.

These creatures are dangerous!"

Curt Newton inwardly cursed the android's foolish

threats as he was conducted down the corridor. The

passage ended in a guard room full of Cometae sol-

diery. Curt was led out of it into the open air. He

blinked, half-blinded by the coma's brilliant sky. Its

electric force tingled through him strongly. Khinkir and

the guards kept their weapons trained upon him alertly

as they conducted him around the plaza to the looming

white palace.

The high-arched white halls of the palace were mag-

nificent, their alabaster walls decorated by frescoes of

silver. They passed into a large, circular throne room

whose ceiling was the curving white dome far over-

head. Facing Captain Future was a sunburst throne, a

wide benchlike chair of solid silver backed by a golden

disk.

Upon it sat a man and a woman of the Cometae, two

richly dressed, radiant figures who were listening now

to an older man.

"So that's King Thoryx and Queen Lulain," Curt

thought, as he was led toward the rulers. He glanced

swiftly around. "I don't see any of the mysterious Al-

lus."

Around the big throne room were knots of the

Cometae nobility, handsome men and beautiful women,

whose glowing electrical radiance of body deepened

their strangely angelic look. But their faces were not

those of angels! Curt read in many of those faces a

shadowy oppression, a dim, haunting dread.

Then Captain Future stiffened as he noticed one of

the Cometae women. In her scanty silver-cloth garment,

she was a figure of shining, unearthly beauty, her slim

white body brilliant with glowing electric energy. But

she was not fair-haired, as all the other Cometae. Her

hair was dark.

Curt Newton felt a staggering shock. He could not

believe the terrible thing his eyes told him.

"It's impossible!" he muttered hoarsely.

Then as he came closer to the girl, he saw that it was

true. This girl of the Cometae, this weirdly shining

electric figure, was none other than Joan Randall!

CHAPTER V

Shadow of the Allus

N the prison cell, after Captain Future had been tak-

en away and the door had been relocked, the Brain

faced Otho condemningly.

Simon Wright never gave way to anger. The cold,

intellectual mind of the Brain abhorred useless emo-

tion. But for that very reason, his rebuke was the more

stinging.

"You have committed a rash piece of folly," he told

Otho severely. "Your empty boasts have convinced the

Cometae captains that we are dangerous. Now we shall

be guarded even more closely."

"I lost my temper," Otho admitted sulkily. "Anyway,

what difference does it make? We couldn't get out, any-

way."

Presently they heard footsteps reapproaching their

cell. But to the amazement of all three Futuremen, the

door of the cell was unlocked. Zarn, the prison captain,

stepped inside.

Zarn held one of the electrode-barreled weapons

ready for use. But the Cometae captain stood eying his

charges for a moment in silence. His stocky, shining

figure had an attitude of indecision, and there was an

expression of mingled doubt and hope upon his massive

face. Finally he spoke to the Brain.

"Is it true, what your comrade said, that you are

master of a science greater than that of the Allus?"

Simon answered cautiously.

"My, comrades and I possess certain scientific pow-

ers, yes. I do not know whether they are greater than

those of the Allus, for I do not know anything about the

Allus or their methods."

Zarn came a little closer and thrust out his hand.

That hand, glowing, as all his body with electric ener-

gy, was trembling a little.

"You see that I am now an electric creature, as are

all my people," Zarn said hoarsely. "It was the science

of the AIlus that made me like this. Could you undo

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

what they have done?"

"You mean, could I change you back into a normal,

non-electric man?" the Brain asked surprisedly.

Zarn nodded anxiously, his eyes clinging to the

weird face of the Brain.

"Could you?" he repeated.

Simon sensed that much might depend upon his an-

swer. He could not yet fathom all that as in the

Cometae captain's mind, but it was evident that his re-

ply was of supreme importance to Zarn.

The Brain thought rapidly before he spoke.

"It should be possible," he said carefully, "to bring

you back to normal by reversing whatever deep alter-

ation has been made in your bodily cells. Our red-

haired leader and I would need to study your body first,

before we could say definitely."

A wild, haggard hope showed in Zarn's eyes. The

electric man trembled with visible emotion. His free fist

clenched.

"If you could do that!" he whispered hoarsely. "If

you could free my people and me from this horrible

death-in-life and make us real men and women again!"

"You mean that you Cometae don't like being elec-

tric men?" Otho demanded incredulously.

"Like it?" repeated Zarn. He laughed bitterly.

"Stranger, would you willingly suffer such a joyless

mockery of existence? Once we were real men and

women. Once we grew up through happy childhood to

maturity, loved and had children of our own, grew

peacefully old and passed to the quiet rest of death.

"But now!" His voice was thick with passion. "For

us there is no escape, unless we so sicken of this life

that we put violent end to ourselves!"

The somber picture Zarn painted communicated it-

self to his listeners.

"I remember now that I noticed no children at all in

this city," the Brain recalled. "I should have known that

this electrification of your bodies would make your

whole race sterile."

THO asked Zarn a blunt question. "If your people

don't like this electric existence, why did you let

yourselves be changed so?"

"My people had no voice in the matter!" Zarn an-

swered violently. "It was done to us without our con-

sent. The only ones who wanted this change were the

tyrants who rule us Thoryx and Lulain, and that dev-

il's wizard, old Querdel. It was they who plotted this

thing with the Allus."

"Who are the Allus, really?" the Brain asked him.

Dread crept like a chilling shadow into Zarn's eyes.

"None of us Cometae except our rulers know much

of the Allus. But we do know that they are in no way

human, having unguessably alien forms and powers.

And we know that they do not belong to this cosmos at

all, but came from outside it,"

"From outside our cosmos?" gasped Otho.

"I tell only what I have heard," Zarn answered. "I

have never seen the Allus myself though it was in

their black citadel in the north, that I and all the rest of

my people were changed into this terrible electric

state."

"You're talking in riddles!" Otho exclaimed. "If you

were in the Allus' citadel, if it was they who changed

you, you must have seen them!"

"No, none of our people saw them or knew how it

teas that they changed us," Zarn repeated. "I know it

sounds incredible, but it is so."

"Let him tell it in his own way, Otho," ordered the

Brain.

Zarn continued earnestly.

"We Cometae have lived long upon this comet

world, which our pioneering ancestors reached long ago

by coming in their ships through a chance rift in the co-

ma. We were then a quite ordinary human race, and

lived here as such for many ages.

"Our government slipped into the hands of a small

class of nobles which centered around the hereditary

king. Yet in spite of the exploitation by this ruling

class, our life was bearable.

"Then, as though in a bad dream, the shadow of the

Allus fell upon us. It came about through Querdel, an

elderly noble who is one of King Thoryx's councillors.

Querdel is somewhat of a scientist, though our science

may be crude and primitive compared to yours.

"Somehow, in his devilish researches, old Querdel

first got into communication with beings inhabiting a

weird, alien universe that lies in the extra-dimensional

gulf outside out ordinary cosmos.

"These beings called themselves the Allus. They

had, it seems, been trying for a long time to communi-

cate with someone in our universe. For the Allus de-

sired to enter our cosmos. They wanted to open a door

into our world from the black extra-cosmic abysses in

which they dwelt. And the door could not be opened

from their side alone, but must be unlocked from both

sides. Hence their need for someone to cooperate with

them on this side."

Anger blazed in Zarn's eyes.

"They found the one they needed in old Querdel," he

said. "They made alluring promises to that old devil

and to Thoryx and Lulain. They told them, We Allus

have powers of which you do not dream, and will richly

reward you if you will help us open a way into your

cosmos. We will reward you by making you and all

your people ageless and undying. You will be like gods.

"Thoryx and Lulain, and Querdel and our other

rulers, seized the bribe the Allus offered. They coveted

that promised immortality. And so, obeying the explicit

mental commands of the Allus that came through the

veil, they prepared to help open the door through which

the dark masters could invade our universe.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"They had us people of the Cometae build a great,

ring-shaped citadel at the northern pole of our world.

They had us build also certain strange mechanisms and

apparatus, the purpose of which was totally unknown to

any one of us. Only the Allus, who transmitted their in-

structions by mental messages through the veil, under-

stood the nature of the instruments we constructed."

ARN'S eyes blazed in reminiscence.

"Then, eyes in that northern citadel, Thoryx and

old Querdel operated the strange machines at the bid-

ding of the dark masters. They unlocked the door into

the extra-dimensional abysses that lie outside our cos-

mos. And through that door, the Allus somehow came

into our universe, and made that citadel their home.

And they kept their promise of making Thoryx and old

Querdel immortal.

"For when Thoryx and the old wizard returned to us

from the citadel, they had been made into shining elec-

tric men, such as you note see. They told us then that

the Allus had done that to them, that the Allus would

give us all this wonderful gift of electric immortality.

Every one of our people of the Cometae was to achieve

deathlessness.

"Some of my people, especially the nobles of the

ruling class, were won over by this prospect. But the

great majority of us were not. Even though it meant de-

ferring death and age indefinitely, we shrank from be-

coming inhuman electric men such as Thoryx and

Querdel. We did not wish to lose our humanity. And we

were afraid of these dark, mysterious Allus from the

unguessable outside, and suspicious of their purposes.

"But we ordinary folks had no choice! Thoryx and

the nobles were resolved upon making us deathless. For

the Allus had promised our rulers that then they would

reap great powers and eventually sway over many peo-

ples. They of the nobles went first, one group after an-

other, to the citadel of the Allus in the north to return

to us as electric men and women.

"Then we of the soldiery and the people were or-

dered to go, group by group. We went north to that

mysterious citadel which we ourselves had built for the

dark masters. But before ever we entered it, a pall came

upon our minds. The Allus employed that mental dark-

ness so that none of us might learn their secrets. When

the cloud lifted from our minds, we were again outside

the citadel and had been made into electric men and

women, such as you now see!"

Otho uttered a low exclamation.

"They had you all in some kind of anesthesia as they

altered you!" he declared.

"It is more probable," the Brain said thoughtfully,

"that the Allus used an artificially induced amnesia on

their subjects. These so-called dark masters must be

great wielders of mental force, indeed."

Zarn shook his massive head.

"I do not know how it was done. Perhaps Thoryx

and Querdel know. They are the only Cometae who are

permitted to go freely to and from the citadel of the Al-

lus."

Zarn concluded his story somberly.

"But we know now that the Allus are alien and evil,

that they are planning something dark and wicked," he

summarized. "It was they who directed Thoryx and

Querdel and our other rulers to construct the great elec-

tromagnet that sucks spaceships into the comet. That

electromagnet is operated by some of Querdel's men,

through a special detector apparatus that can spat any

ship within millions of miles."

"Why do the Allus want ships and men from the out-

side brought in here as captives?" the Brain asked keen-

ly.

The Cometae prison captain shook his head.

"I don't know. None of us knows just what their un-

fathomable purposes are. But we are certain some in-

volved and sinister scheme is afoot."

HE Futuremen glanced at each other. It was the

Brain who spoke the thought that was in all their

minds.

"This is no mere menace within this comet, but a

dark, threatening force from outside our cosmos that

we've run into," muttered Simon Wright. "I'd give a lot

to know what these Allus are like and what they

plan."

The Brain thought hard.

"I feel certain, Zarn, that Curtis Newton and I can

devise a way of retransforming you people when we

have thoroughly studied the problem," he told the

Cometae captain. "But until then, I cannot promise. We

must have a chance to investigate your bodies with cer-

tain instruments."

"I will bring secretly everything you need, next

sleep-period," Zarn promised excitedly. "And I will

contact my friends, also."

The Brain quickly named a list of things he would

require from the Futuremen's confiscated spaceship.

Suddenly the prison captain started as. They heard a

sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor.

"Someone is coming!" Zarn exclaimed fearfully. "If

I am caught in here with you, our whole plan is ruined!"

CHAPTER VI

The Throne Room

ETRIFIED by a freezing horror, Curt Newton stood

amid his guards in the throne room of the Cometae,

staring with wild eyes at Joan Randall. He was stunned

to his very soul, unable for the moment to believe what

he saw. He had found the girl he loved, the girl whose

danger had brought him on this perilous quest into the

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

comet world. He had found her and she was one of

the Cometae!

Joan had never looked so beautiful. Her soft, dark

hair and lovely face, her lithe, utterly feminine figure so

completely revealed by the scanty silvercloth garment

were brilliantly enhanced by the glow of inherent elec-

tric force, scintillating from every inch of her body and

investing her with its shining halo.

But to Captain Future, that dazzling aura of living

light was a horror beyond description. He forgot his

guards and stepped blindly and numbly forward, all the

agony of his love and despair showing in his bloodless

face.

"Joan!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "My God, what have

these devils done to you!"

"Curt, stay back!" the girl cried in sharp alarm.

It was too late. In the tumult of emotions that shook

him, Curt Newton had reached hungry arms toward her.

His hand barely grazed her shining shoulder and he

recoiled, his whole arm paralyzed by electric shock.

"Don't try to touch me, Curt! You can't. "Joan Ran-

dall was telling him, her eyes full of apprehension.

The voice of Khinkir captain of the Cometae guards,

snarled from behind.

"King Thoryx awaits you, prisoner. Move on!"

Captain Future barely heard him.

"Joan, I'll kill these fiends for doing a thing like this

to you!" he raged. "I'll tear this devil's city of theirs to

fragments!"

"But Curt, I wanted to be changed like this!" Joan

exclaimed. "I wanted to become one of the Cometae."

He had thought he could receive no greater shock,

but her words left him mentally gasping, eying her in

incredulous disbelief.

"Curt, the Cometae are not fiends," Joan was contin-

uing earnestly. "They are a fine and friendly folk, who

are allied to a wonderful race of superhuman beings

called the Allus. The Allus gave these people immortal-

ity, 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 to-

ward 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 throb-

bing of his thoughts. Then came the hissing, furious

whisper of Khinkir who was standing beside him.

"The king is speaking to you, prisoner"

URT'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 sil-

ver chair.

Thoryx, hereditary king of the Cometae, was hand-

some as all his fair-haired race, his youthful figure in-

vested 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 fea-

tures 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 elec-

tric glow, was brazenly revealed by her brief, richly

jewelled silver garments. She sat with languorous, fe-

line grace, looking down with insolently appraising

eyes at Captain Future's tall, red-haired figure.

"You do not answer me, stranger!" Thoryx was say-

ing. 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 swill 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 ad-

vanced 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 or-

der 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 threaten-

ingly. I am master on this world under the Great

Ones, of course."

He added the last words hastily, with a nervous, in-

voluntary glance around the throne, room. Curt sur-

mised the reference was to the Allus.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

Lulain bolted half scornfully at her consort.

"Are we to spend all day in examination of this pris-

oner?" 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 emo-

tions 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 temporizing.

So he answered the question.

"We did not approach the comet of our own free

will. You dragged our ship in here with your magnet-

beam, as you have kidnapped many other ships of our

worlds."

"Yes," old Querdel agreed craftily. "But those other

ships were all seeking to avoid the comet, while you

were boldly approaching it. Why were you approaching

it?"

Captain Future saw no reason for concealing the

truth.

"We were searching for those other ships," he retort-

ed. "Note we find that it is you Cometae who have

dragged them in here. What could be your reason? The

people of the planetary worlds have never harmed your

race."

"You are not questioning us, prisoner" flared Thoryx

angrily. "It is an order of the Great Canes that we seize

as many ships as possible. Who are you to dispute the

command of the dark masters?"

So, Curt thought swiftly, it was the mysterious Allus

themselves who were behind the capture of the ships.

UERDEL was asking him another question.

"Who are the three strange beings who are your

comrades? They are not human."

"No, they are not human," Curt answered carefully.

"But they are more than human in many respects."

"I thought as much," muttered the old councillor.

His cunning eyes narrowed. "I think that you are dan-

gerous, stranger."

Curt perceived that the outlandish appearance of the

Futuremen was what had made the Cometae take a

deeper interest in him than in ordinary prisoners. He

sensed doubt and apprehension in the attitude of Tho-

ryx.

"We had better destroy all four of them, Querdel,"

declared the king uneasily.

The crafty old councillor, who was obviously the

brain behind the Cometae throne, demurred.

"We should report to the Great Ones first, Your

Highness. They told us to enlist into the Cometae all

captives willing to join us. But these captives are differ-

ent."

Thoryx nodded nervously.

"Communicate with the Great Ones in the usual

way, Querdel. Khinkir, return this insolent prisoner to

his cell."

Captain Future turned without reluctance to leave

the throne room, even though he felt he had learned

nothing concrete about the Allus and their purposes. He

was hoping desperately to get another word with Joan

on the way out.

But his hopes were dashed. For Joan Randall was no

longer to be seen in the brilliant throng of Cometae.

She had apparently withdrawn. Crushed by a heavy

burden of fear and anxiety for her sake, Curt unseeingly

accompanied his alert guards back across the plaza to

the prison building.

As they, approached the cell in which the Futuremen

were confined, prison Captain Zarn hastily made his

exit. He showed confusion.

"What were you doing in the cell with the

prisoners?" Khinkir demanded.

"The three strange ones were fighting among them-

selves. I went in to stop them," Zarn explained nervous-

ly.

"It might have been a trick to gain their escape,"

snapped Khinkir. "Do not enter their cell again, for

these four prisoners are dangerous. And where are the

guards I ordered you to post at this door?"

"I was just going to get them," Zarn answered quick-

ly. When Curt entered the cell, the Futuremen came to-

ward him at once. Otho asked the question they all had

foremost in their minds.

"Did you find out anything about Joan?"

Curt Newton nodded heavily.

"I saw her. She is one of the Cometae now."

They stared incredulously. Then Otho began to rave.

"The devils! They forced her to become an electric

monstrosity like themselves!"

"She said she became one of them by her own

freewill,'' Curt told them miserably.

But the Brain asked a shrewd question.

"When you and she talked there did you converse

in English?"

"Of course," Curt nodded.

"Then," pointed out the Brain, "why did she have to

pretend to you at all? Your Cometae guards couldn't un-

derstand your conversation."

Fingers of doubt clutched sickeningly at Curt's

brain, poisoning his thoughts. With a violent effort he

broke their grasp.

"This isn't a time to be doubting Joan, but to be

helping her!" he exclaimed. "We've got to find a way to

bring her out of that horrible electric existence!"

"Yes, lad, everything depends on our finding such a

way," the Brain told him soothingly. Simon went on to

relate what Zarn had said.

"The Cometae people will revolt against their

rulers," he concluded, "if they can only be sure that we

can retransform them afterward to normal men and

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

women."

APTAIN FUTURE paced agitatedly to and fro.

"But how can we find the answer to that scientific

secret in sufficient time?" he asked desperately.

"We shall not be wholly without instruments, if

Zarn does not fail us," the Brain interposed. "He

promised to try to bring certain apparatus from our

ship, if it was possible `tonight'."

"Then we may have a chance, though it's still a gam-

ble," Curt muttered. "When will he be here?"

"Soon after the sleep-period begins, if he is success-

ful," answered Simon. "I described for him the electro-

chemical apparatus I thought we'd need."

Grag snorted gloomily.

"Maybe these guards that Khinkir made him post

outside our cell now will spoil the whole thing."

"Always cheerful and optimistic, that's Grag," Otho

chimed in sarcastically. "Why don't you get a job haunt-

ing some dead planet?"

As they waited for "night," Curt's turmoil of spirit

did not lessen. His feverish impatience was finally bro-

ken by the sound of steps down the corridor. The Fu-

turemen listened tensely as the steps approached. Then

they heard a low challenge from the guards posted out-

side their door, and the voice of Zarn replying.

CHAPTER VII

Desperate Research

HE door opened and Zarn came in. The prison cap-

tain clutched a bundle of scientific apparatus in his

arms, and his shining face showed an extreme nervous

excitement. With him was another man of the Cometae

a big, hulking, craggy-featured soldier who stared at

the Futuremen.

"This is Aggar, a captain and one of my friends."

Zarn introduced him quickly. "He is one of us Cometae

who have long desired to revolt against our heartless

rulers."

Zarn put down the bundle of apparatus.

"I think I got everything you described from your

ship," he told the Brain. "It was not easy to do so unob-

served. But I got in here safely with it, for I had taken

care to post guards `tonight' who are of our secret par-

ty."

"You have already spoken to your friends among the

Cometae about a possible revolt?" Captain Future asked

Zarn quickly.

The prison captain bobbed his head.

"We potential rebels have an undercover organiza-

tion. I made contact with its heads, of whom Agar is

one. They long to rise against the tyrants, against Tho-

ryx and that old devil Querdel. But they will not do so

unless certain that success will make it possible for us

to be normal men once more."

The hard-fisted Aggar spoke bluntly to Curt.

"Can you do that, stranger? Can you use those in-

struments to match the science of the Allus and undo

what the Allus did to us?"

"I can't tell without some study," Captain Future an-

swered honestly. "And my comrades and I would like

the help of the man in the next cell the Martian scien-

tist Tiko Thrin. Can you get him in here, Zarn, and also

the man named Ezra Gurney?"

"Yes, I can do that," said Zarn, and hurriedly left the

cell.

He was back in a fete moments and with him cane

two men. One was an elderly little Martian, a small,

withered creature with an incongruously big and bald

red head, and weak eyes which peered through thick

spectacles.

But it was the other man toward whom the Future-

men jumped with an exclamation of delight. This one

was elderly, too, a wrinkled-faced Earthman with iron-

gray hair and faded blue eyes, whose bleak depths now

were sparkling with pleasure.

"Ezra Gurney!" Captain Future wrung the old Planet

Patrol veteran's hand. "You old buzzard of space. If

there's trouble anywhere in the System, you'll find it."

"Yes, an' I found plenty of it in this cursed comet,

Cap'n Future," said Ezra earnestly in his drawling

voice. "Did you find Joan?"

Curt's face darkened.

"Yes. She's become one of the Cometae."

Ezra uttered an incredulous oath.

"It's impossible! She'd never accept that Thoryx' of-

fer to join them!"

"She did it only for some purpose we don't know,"

Curt declared stoutly. "I'm convinced of that."

Yet, even as he spoke, he had to force down that

haunting doubt that had poisoned his thoughts ever

since Joan had spoken to him so strangely.

Meantime Grag and Otho were slapping the old vet-

eran on the back in high glee at the reunion. Even Oog

and Eek, recognizing an old friend, had come trotting

up eagerly from their corner.

Zarn intruded then. The face of the Cometae captain

was anxious.

"We may be interrupted at any moment!" he warned.

"Khinkir and other officers loyal to Thoryx often come

snooping about this prison."

Curt rapidly explained to Tiko Thrin what they had

in mind.

"You have been here, observing the Cometae, for

some time," he told the old Martian scientist. "What do

you think of the possibility of re-transforming them?"

Tiko Thrin wagged his head doubtfully.

"We can only try. It will not be easy. The science of

the Allus may be far beyond our own."

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

APTAIN FUTURE addressed Zarn and Aggar,

who were waiting tensely, while the Brain and

Otho set up the compact electron microscope, ray

probers and other delicate electric apparatus.

"We'll need a sample of your tissues," Curt said

slowly to the two Cometae men. "It's the only way we

can make a thorough study of the altered cells of your

bodies."

The big Aggar calmly drew his dagger and poised it

over the skin of his glowing forearm.

"Just tell me how much," he grunted.

Captain Future directed him. The big Cometae cap-

tain coolly cut a thin strip of skin from his forearm and

placed it in the chamber of the electron microscope.

Curt and the Brain bent over the instrument. The ap-

paratus was a compact adaptation of the old-fashioned

electronic microscope, magnifying almost indefinitely

by using magnetic action to focus rays of free electrons,

instead of a lens to focus rays of fight.

The strip of tissue still glowed with scintillating

light under the microscope, although its luminescence

seemed to be fading. Curt focused down until he was

examining a single cell of that changing tissue. Ire and

the Brain, and then Otho and Tiko Thrin, studied the

enormously magnified cell.

As he straightened, Tiko Thrin shook his head.

"I'm afraid it's beyond me," he confessed. "The

whole molecular pattern of the cell has been altered be-

yond recognition. I can't see how the Allus did it or

how it can be undone."

"Curse it, the Allus must be gods or devils to accom-

plish a thing like this!" Otho swore.

The Brain was looking at Captain Future.

"Not only molecular change, but also atomic, lad,"

said Simon.

Curt nodded his red head, frowning deeply.

"Yes. Some force has been utilized to break down

each cell's molecules, not only into atoms but into sub-

atomic particles and then recast them in a wholly new

pattern."

Captain Future was feeling a sensation he had never

experienced before. This unthinkable tampering with

the finest units of life was evidence of a science vast

and alien beyond conception.

"Can you undo what was done to us, Captain

Future?" Captain Yarn asked anxiously.

Curt knew that the hopes of a race hung upon his re-

ply. That the fate of Joan Randall hung upon it, too. Yet

he couldn't answer in an unqualified affirmative, much

as he would have liked to do so.

"I feel certain," he said slowly, "that this process can

be undone, that the molecular and atomic pattern of

your cells can be recast to normal by the right force.

But it will not be an easy thing to do!

"You see," he explained, "the living cell is normally

a tiny electric `battery,' that by chemical action pro-

duces the electric energy which we call life. But the Al-

lus have worked deep and subtle changes in your cells.

They have recast their molecules and atoms so that now

each cell forms a tiny transformer,' which simply re-

ceives its energy from the coma radiation which perme-

ates everything here."

Zarn and Aggar seemed impressed by Curt's knowl-

edge,

"Then you'll promise to change us all back to normal

if our revolt succeeds?" they cried.

Captain Future took the plunge.

"I promise to restore you to normality or to die try-

ing!

GGAR'S massive face glowed with hope and res-

olution.A"Then we of the Cometae will rise!"

Curt seized the opportunity.

"How many of your people will revolt against Tho-

ryx?" he asked quickly. "How soon can you organize

and strike?"

"Nine-tenths of the Cometae hate our rulers," Aggar

replied. "But not all of them will risk rebellion, at first.

Our secret organization is what we must chiefly rely on.

We number fully five thousand men."

"How many fighting men can Thoryx count on?"

Otho demanded.

"About as many," Aggar admitted. "The regiments

of the palace guard are loyal to him, because they are a

favored class. The nobles, of course, will support Tho-

ryx. So will some of the people, because of their super-

stitious regard for the Allus."

"What about weapons?" Curt asked him. "Can you

secure enough of those electrode-weapons?"

Aggar laughed.

"They would be of no avail against Cometae. They

simply project a powerful electric blast, and that would-

n't hurt one of us in the least. The things are used only

to keep you captives under control."

"Then what the devil do you use for weapons

against each other?" Otho exclaimed.

"Swords and daggers are all that can be used effec-

tively on a Cometae," Zarn answered. "Only the sol-

diers are allowed to possess them."

"All us captives here can fight with you, if you can

get swords of dielectric material for us," Curt told Zarn

quickly. "You know we can't touch you Cometae, even

with an ordinary metal sword, without receiving a para-

lyzing electric shock."

"I can touch them!" said Grag loudly. To prove it, he

laid his heavy metal hand capon Zarn's shoulder. "It's

only inside me that I have steelite parts. The whole out-

side of my body is of dielectric metal, a non-

conductor!"

"Good of Grag!" chuckled Ezra Gurney. "You won't

need any sword."

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"Yeah, for once your dumb metal carcass will come

in handy," said Otho gibingly.

"How soon can you strike?" Curt was asking Aggar

intently. "What is your plan?"

"The only possible plan," replied Aggar, "is to at-

tack the palace, overcome Thoryx' guards in the first

rush, and round up the tyrant and his spitfire queen and

the nobles in short order."

"Especially," put in Zarn anxiously, "it is necessary

to grab that old wizard Querdel at once. It's said that he

has a way of communicating with the Allus."

Captain Future saw again that chill shadow of dread

creep into the eyes of the two Cometae captains at men-

tion of the Allus. But Aggar forced the fear away.

"The Allus have never come out of their citadel in

the north, and they won't now," the husky fighter said

emphatically. He turned to Captain Future. "We can be

ready to strike by tomorrow `night'. It's the `night' of the

Lightning Feast, and Thoryx and all the nobility will be

gathered in the palace, ours for the taking."

The plan was quickly arranged. Aggar and Zarn

were to mobilize the Cometae rebels around the plaza

when the next `night' carne. Zarn would release the Fu-

turemen and the other captives. At a given signal, they

would join forces and attack the palace.

"One more thing!" said Curt urgently. "The Earthgirl

who is now one of the Cometae she must not be

harmed under any circumstances."

"Agreed. Now let's get out of here," Zarn warned.

"Everything would be ruined if we were discovered

plotting together."

Tiko Thrin, the Martian, and Ezra Gurney were tak-

en back to their own cells and the door of the Future-

men's cell was relocked.

THO paced to and fro excitedly.

"Action at last: Anything's better than rotting

away in this cell."

The Brain looked at Curt.

"The plan is a precarious one, lad. Suppose the Al-

lus should intervene with their mastery of mental

force."

"That's exactly what I don't understand," Grag inter-

posed puzzledly. "All this talk about mental force.

What in the world is it?"

Captain Future explained.

"Thought is basically electrical, like life itself. Grag.

When a man thinks or wills something, the synaptic

pattern of his brain cells conducts to his nerves a defi-

nite electrical current, which energizes his physical

body to obey that thought or will.

"Theoretically," Curt added, "it should be possible

for a man to `broadcast' his electric thought or will-im-

pulses, as electromagnetic vibrations that would im-

pinge upon and seize control of another man's brain and

body.

"That's what is meant by mental force. No man has

ever possessed more than a fraction of this power. But

it seems the Allus have mastered it."

The hours of the following day-period passed with

dragging slowness. Tension built up with each passing

hour. Captain Future labored under a growing nervous

strain as "night" approached. He had never felt so tense

at any time in the past, on the threshold of struggle.

"Night" came at last. There was no lessening of the

coma's brilliant light from the window, but in the al-

abaster city outside the passing throngs of Cometae

dwindled away. The sleep-period had come.

Curt, watching tautly from the window, saw more

and more of the six-wheeled Cometae vehicles arriving

at the great palace across the plaza. The nobility of the

Cometae were streaming into the big building.

"They're coming for the Lightning Feast that Aggar

mentioned," Curt muttered. "I wonder what kind of

function it is, anyway."

"Sounds crazy, like everything else in this cursed

comet," Grag snorted.

"Zarn should be here with the others, by now, to re-

lease us," Captain Future said, biting his lip. "If he's too

late "

"I hear him coming now?" Otho exclaimed joyfully.

The tramp of feet was clearly audible.

In a moment their prison door was hung open.

To their surprise and consternation, it was Captain

of the Guards Khinkir and a half-dozen of the palace

sentries who stood there.

'They carried electrode weapons and trained them

uncompromisingly upon the Futuremen.

"You four strangers are to come with us," Khinkir

snapped. "Sentence has been passed upon you. You are

too dangerous, and are to die 'tonight."

CHAPTER VIII

The Lightning Feast

O Captain Future, the announcement was a thun-

derbolt that wrecked all their plans. He could not

keep the sharp momentary dismay out of his face. And

Khinkir saw it, and smiled thinly in triumph.

"You learn now what it means to defy the King and

blaspheme the Great Ones, stranger," he rasped. "For

the Great Ones, through the wise Querdel, have decreed

that you four might be a danger and that it is safer to

destroy you at once."

His smile widened.

"'But you will not die ingloriously, strangers. You

are to die at the Lightning Feast. Your destruction will

afford an enjoyable spectacle for our king and court."

Curt Newton desperately decided that since all was

lost, he would perish righting here and now. And

Khinkir read that, too, in his face. The Cometae captain

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

recoiled and shouted a sharp order to his men, who

brought their electrode weapons to bear on Captain Fu-

ture's heart.

"Curt!" cried a clear silvery voice in anxious alarm.

Joan Randall had appeared in the corridor outside!

A dazzling electric-gloving figure of beauty, her radiant

face was taut with apprehension.

Khinkir had turned startledly at her cry. The guards,

too, had glanced sideward. That moment was enough

for Grag. The great robot's mighty metal arms reached

out and seized the Cometae captain!

"Kill them!" shrieked Khinkir. But his scream was

choked off as Grag's arms crushed him.

With yells of alarm, the Cometae soldiers triggered

their strange weapons to loose crackling blasts of elec-

tric force at the Futuremen. But Joan had bravely flung

herself against the guards, distracting them and spoiling

their aim. The blasts missed Curt Newton and Otho and

Simon.

One of the electric blasts struck Joan's shining body.

Mad with apprehension for her, Captain Future plunged

in at the soldiers with whom she was struggling.

He touched one of those Cometae guards and was

flung back half senseless by the paralyzing electric

shock of contact. He fought to get to his feet, and was

dimly aware of a tumult of shouting and running about

him.

Curt's eyes began to clear, as the first effects of the

shock passed. Staggering drunkenly, he found himself

witnessing an amazing scene of conflict.

Zarn and Aggar had arrived! With them were a score

of other Cometae. All carried swords, and were hacking

down the Cometae guards who had come with Khinkir.

Even as Curt stumbled forward, the last guard fell a

mangled, radiant corpse.

Khinkir himself lay on the corridor floor, a crushed

and broken thing. And big Grag was straightening grim-

ly.

"I told you that I could touch them!" the robot

boomed.

The Futuremen were all unhurt. But Curt stumbled

toward Joan Randall.

"Joan, are you all right? That electric blast that hit

you "

"It couldn't hurt me," she breathed. "No electric

force can harm a Cometae, Curt."

Zarn was close beside Captain Future, speaking

wildly. "We've little time! The alarm will be given

when Khinkir doesn't return to the palace!"

"Release Tiko Thrin and Ezra Gurney and all the

other captives," Curt ordered. "You brought swords for

us?"

"Yes, here they are," said Aggar, pointing to a bun-

dle of long, gray, saberlike weapons. "We had them

hastily forged of dielectric metal. You can use them,

even against the Cometae."

OAN spoke now in a sobbing rush. "Curt, I was

afraid I'd be too late! I came here as soon as I heard

that your executions had been ordered, though I didn't

know what I could do "

"Joan, tell me quickly," he interrupted. "You didn't

join the Cometae because you really wanted to, did

you?"

"Oh, no, Curt! It broke my heart to have to keep up

that pretense when I met you yesterday in the throne

room."

"But why did you keep it up with me?" he asked be-

wilderedly. "We were talking in our own English,

which the Cometae couldn't understand."

"There were captives who had become Cometae,

like myself, in the throne room," she said earnestly. "If

they'd heard and betrayed me "

"Of course. What a fool I was not to think of that!"

Captain Future exclaimed. "But even so, I knew it was-

n't the real you talking."

"Curt, I only pretended to join the Cometae," Joan

cried. "I pretended to be allured by the prospect of im-

mortality but only because I thought it the only way

in which I could learn the secret of this comet's mys-

tery."

She came closer, her eyes wide and haunted as she

looked up at him.

"Curt, there's a threat in this mysterious setup. A

strange, unguessable threat to our Solar System from

those Allus who came from outside our cosmos. It's not

a physical menace, I feel certain of that.

"I'm convinced the Allus have in mind nothing so

crude as a physical attack upon our System. But they

are planning something! They direct everything the

Cometae do, as incomprehensible details of some dark,

baffling plan."

Her shining face was earnest

"I wanted to find out, to carry a warning out to the

System, if warning was needed. So I pretended that I

wanted to become a Cometae and live a deathless elec-

tric life. But I've found out so little!

"I was in an induced mental amnesia when I was

taken to the citadel of the Allus and made a Cometae,

so I remember nothing about them. And I've never seen

any Allus since. I'm certain that only Querdel, Thoryx

and a few others have really seen the Allus. And they

themselves are in deadly fear of the dark masters!"

"But Joan, even if you'd found out anything, you

couldn't have escaped from here to give warning!" Curt

exclaimed. "You couldn't have lived outside the comet,

now that your body feeds on the coma's electric radi-

ance."

"I knew that, Curt. But I thought that if I could get

away in a ship, my ship would be found and my written

warning read even if I died," she answered simply.

Curt Newton felt a lump in his throat as he contem-

plated the girl's matter-of-fact heroism. He took a step

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

closer toward her.

"Joan "

"Stay back, Curt!" Her warning was a sob. "You

can't touch me now, or ever again. I'm a Cometae!"

Captain Future felt a tumult of emotions such as he

had never experienced before.

"Joan, I'm going to get you out of this terrible elec-

tric existence, no matter what else I do!" he vowed

fiercely. "You and all these Cometae, after our revolt

succeeds!"

By now the other prisoners in the rows of cells had

been released. Tiko Thrin, the little Martian scientist,

and Ezra Gurney were hastening toward Captain Fu-

ture. After them came the other captives of the vanished

spaceships Plutonians, Earthmen, Venusians a be-

wildered, heterogeneous crew.

ARN spoke a warning to Curt Newton.

"We mustn't delay here any longer. The Lightning

Feast will lave begun by now. Our people are waiting!"

"Tiko Thrin, you keep Eek and Oog safe for us here!"

cried Grag.

"Joan, you stay here with Tiko also," Curt told the

girl authoritatively. "No, I won't have you with us!

We'll be back, never fear."

"Oh, Curt be careful!" she cried.

"It's not Thoryx or the guards I'm afraid of, but

Querdel and his evil link with the Allus."

Curt had grabbed up one of the dielectric swords,

and Otho and Ezra and the other released captives were

similarly arming themselves.

"This way!" rumbled the deep voice of Aggar.

The hulking Cometae captain led them through the

corridors of the prison building, toward another en-

trance than that which opened onto the plaza.

"Fiends of Pluto!" gasped old Ezra Gurney, hasten-

ing beside Captain Future. "This, is the queerest bunch

I ever went into a fight with!"

Curt realized the strange spectacle he and his com-

panions must present; the two radiant, electric forms of

Zarn and Aggar leading, he and Ezra just behind them,

the Brain gliding at their side, with lithe Otho and pon-

derous Grag following closely.

Behind them in turn came the fierce-eyed, newly re-

leased Venusians, Earthmen and other captives, fol-

lowed by the score of Cometae, vanguard of the rebels

who had joined forces with Zarn and Aggar.

All had swords for weapons. All were grimly tense

as they emerged from the building into a narrow street

at the rear of the towering prison. Aggar led the way

along it, in a rapid trot.

They met no one. The city Mloon seemed deserted

beneath the flaring coma-sky. It was well into the sleep-

period, and most of the city of the Cometae was

wrapped in slumber.

"We're circling around the plaza to approach the

palace from the rear," Zarn told Captain Future as they

hurried along. "Our comrades were to meet us there at

this hour."

From a branching street of the alabaster city, a solid

mass of armed Cometae poured out to join them a few

moments later. As they hastened on, other bands of the

Cometae were coming in from side streets.

Aggar's secret organization of rebels was function-

ing well. By the time they approached the network of

narrow streets behind the looming palace dome, the

conspirators numbered into the hundreds.

"The others will be on their way here by now," Ag-

gar declared as he signaled to halt. "But there are two

thousand guards inside the palace, and as many more

within easy call."

"What's your plan to rush the entrances?" Captain

Future asked tensely.

"No. The guards would slam the gates on us before

we could get through," grunted the big Cometae rebel.

He turned to his fellow officer.

"Zarn, I'm going inside with a 'small band, by a lit-

tle-used entrance I learned of when I was captain of the

palace guards myself. We'll try to dispose quietly of the

gate guards. You can bring the main force in when you

hear our signal."

"I'm going with you, Aggar," Curt said quietly. And

the other Futuremen and Ezra Gurney hastily chimed

in.

Aggar laughed.

"'All right. The one you call Grag may be useful."

Aggar quickly designated a score of Cometae to ac-

company them. Then he and the Futuremen led the

small band toward the palace.

HE vast, white synthestone structure loomed above

them like a man-made mountain when they

reached its massive rear wall. Aggar led them to a nar-

row entrance in one of the indented angles in the wall.

"A servants' entrance," he muttered. "There should

be only two guards on duty. Stay back out of sight."

They remained as he bade them, while Aggar him-

self sheathed his sword and strode boldly toward the in-

conspicuous entrance.

Two Cometae palace guards sprang suddenly from

the entrance and barred his way with drawn swords.

Why are you here, Captain Aggar?" one demanded

suspiciously. "You are not on palace duty any longer."

"You fools? Haven't you heard that Khinkir is dead

and that I've replaced him?" snarled Aggar.

Half convinced, yet still doubtful, the two guards

lowered their swords a little. Then Curt and his com-

panions saw a wonderful feat of swordsmanship.

They saw Aggar suddenly hurl himself forward,

drawing his blade as he plunged its and wielding it like

a brand of light. It ripped into the breast of a Cometae

guard and out again, struck down the other man at the

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

very moment his mouth was opened to yell an alarm.

"Hot work," panted Aggar as Curt and the others

came running up. His massive face hardened. "And

don't waste any pity on these palace guards, strangers.

They've long been the instruments of Thoryx's tyranny

over the people. I myself was one of them, until I could

stand such injustice no longer."

They had crowded into the entrance now and stood

inside the palace of the Cometae kings. A narrow corri-

dor, which could be closed by a huge gate of metal, led

to a flight of ascending steps.

"Up this way," said Aggar, hastening up the stairs.

"We're working on scant margin of time now!"

Curt Newton heard then, from somewhere deep

within the great palace, a burst of thrilling, rippling mu-

sic. Long, falling chords quivered in his ears with alien

tonal beauty of muted strings.

"That's from the Lightning Feast," Aggar grunted.

"But it hasn't begun yet or we'd hear it."

They came up into a long gallery, one of a maze of

cross-halls and passages that intersected the palace's

vast bulk. Luxury was evident everywhere here, the al-

abaster walls hung with beautiful tapestries of red and

gold, the floors soft with silken rugs.

Aggar shot rapid orders at the score of Cometae he

had brought along, directing them to work their way

back through the palace and overcome the gate guars at

the main rear entrances.

"Then give the signal. Zarn and the others will pour

in, and all will be on the knees of the gods!" finished

the husky Cometae officer.

He turned to Curt.

"The main force of the palace guards is always close

to Thoryx. They'll be in the great court for the festival.

This way! "

They raced along deserted, splendid halls whose oc-

cupants had apparently all been drawn by the mysteri-

ous festivity. Soon they reached an upper gallery, from

which they could peer down into a large court that seas

situated in a wing of the palace.

The court was circular, open to the flaring coma-

sky. It was two hundred feet in diameter, paved with al-

ternating blocks of red and white that made a beautiful

contrast to the alabaster walls.

T the very center of the court bulked a thing like a

squat, upright copper pillar. Not far from this

stood a wide double throne, upon which King Thoryx

and Queen Lulain were sitting. The old noble, Querdel,

hovered close beside the king, as usual. Scores of

Cometae nobles were standing expectantly around the

court, facing their rulers.

Captain Future perceived that a solid ring of palace

guars encircled the rim of the court. In an alcove, musi-

cians played instruments from which rippled the haunt-

ing, alien music that now was loud in all ears. It was

music that pulsed with a fierce, feverish undertone of

expectation and avidity, music that set Curt's pulses

lumping as he listened.

The Futuremen gazed upon this strange scene with

wonder. Upon no far world had they seen a more bril-

liant and unearthly spectacle than was presented by

these radiant Cometae rulers, gathered here for festival

beneath the glow of the comet sky.

Thoryx raised his hand and the music died to an un-

dertone. The king's voice came clearly to the watchers

in the gallery.

"Let the Lightning Feast begin!"

The squat copper pillar at the center of the court be-

gan silently to extend itself upward, like an unfolding

telescope. Higher and higher it extended, until it was a

slim rod reaching hundreds of feet into the sky.

"They're raising the radiance rod." Aggar muttered

tautly. "If we're lucky, the feast will drown out the

noise our men make at the gates."

The Brain hovered over Curt's ear

"That rod is designed to attract increased electric ra-

diation from the coma!" Simon whispered. "Is it possi-

ble that "

The sentence was never finished. The copper rod

had now been raised to an unbelievable height above

the palace. As it attracted electric energy from the vast

coma overhead, its whole height was wrapped in a pur-

ple, brushlike flame that grew in intensity with each

minute.

A slender lightning bolt smote from above into the

court! Its jagged white brilliance blinded Curt's eyes for

a second, and its reverberating concussion of thunder

almost deafened him.

But he had seen that thin bolt strike Thoryx, the

king. He had glimpsed the white brilliance of unthink-

able electric energy splashing over the ruler's body.

Then as Captain Future's dazzled eyes cleared, he

heard Thoryx laughing in exhilaration! The king was

unharmed by that jolting stroke.

Now bolt after bolt of dazzling flame was striking in

the court, with continuous shock of thunder. The bolts

were hitting the Cometae nobles, who threw their hands

up as though to welcome and attract the crackling flash-

es, and who laughed in wild intoxication as the light-

ning struck at them.

A mad, unbelievable phantasmagoria, it seemed, as

the almost continuous lightning plated like dancing

witch upon the luminescent, revelry-mad figures of the

Cometae.

"The Lightning Feast!" Aggar was shouting to the

Futuremen. "Electric energy is food, is life itself to us

Cometae. Even the concentrated energy of lightning

cannot harm us, but serves only to stimulate and intoxi-

cate."

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

CHAPTER IX

Dark Triumph

HEY turned suddenly from the unearthly specta-

cle, as a mass of armed Cometae came pouring

down the gallery in which they stood. Then they recog-

nized Zarn at the head of these hundreds of men.

"Our forces are inside the palace!" cried Zarn above

the shattering reverberations of thunder. "I've ordered

them to spread out through the building, to encircle the

court."

"Good! When they're all in place, I'll give the signal

for attack!" exclaimed Aggar.

"Too late for that look down! There!" yelled Otho.

A Cometae one of the palace guards had flung

himself into the mad festival of lightning in the court.

The man was swordless, wounded, shouting something

in chocking tones.

"One of the gate guards who got away!" roared Ag-

gar. "No time to wait now! Down at them, men! Let

none of the nobles escape!"

A read roar of long-repressed hate answered him

from the throats of the Cometae rebels. Swords gleam-

ing, they charged behind Aggar and the Futuremen to-

ward a stair leading from the gallery down into the

court.

Zarn was shouting alarmedly to Captain Future.

"You strangers can't go into that court! You're not

like us the lightning will destroy you!"

"A little thing like lightning isn't going to keep us

out of this!" Curt Newton exclaimed recklessly.

The court was a scene of mad confusion. From a

dozen entrances, Cometae rebels were pouring in and

fiercely engaging the palace guards. Swords were

gleaming, men going down in death, and the chaos of

lightning and thunder still raged.

Curt glimpsed Thoryx standing in appalled irresolu-

tion, his weak face distorted by alarm. But crafty old

Querdel was fiercely shrilling orders to the guards.

Then Captain Future and his companions clashed

with the guards around the edge of the court. Curt

glimpsed a roaring Cometae soldier lunging toward

him, a shining figure whose sword was stabbing fierce-

ly.

Captain Future parried the blow by a swift stab of

his own dielectric blade, then ran the point through the

man's throat. The guard crumpled to the floor. The

Cometae, deathless as far as age or sickness were con-

cerned, died as swiftly as ordinary men when a vital or-

gan was stricken.

"Cut through them get to the king and the nobles!"

Aggar was yelling fiercely, through the crash of thun-

der.

"Demons of Mars, what a crazy fight!" gasped Otho.

His blade flashed to one side, parrying a blow aimed at

Curt's back. "Did for him!"

The Brain hovered above the battle, coolly calling

Warning to Curt and the others as the guards desperate-

ly shifted their tactics.

All around the court, the defenders were being

pushed inward as the maddened rebels sought to reach

the royal tyrant. Curt as he fought was half blinded ev-

ery few moments by the appalling hiss and crash of

striking threads of lightning.

As Captain Future had banked on, the dancing light-

ning bolts always struck Cometae, attracted by their in-

trinsic electric charge. The bolts could not harm the

Cometae. But their blinding flare and the deafening ex-

plosions of thunder made infernal, unnerving back-

ground for this desperate assault.

Somehow the ring of palace guards held firm around

Thoryx and Lulain, spurred by the undaunted orders of

the clever Querdel.

"We've got to smash through them now before the

other soldiers arrive here from their barracks!" Aggar

was shouting to his Cometae rebels. "Think what you're

fighting for, men! Freedom, the end of tyranny, the

chance to be normal men again!"

And it was at this moment, when desperate resis-

tance held the battle's fate in the balance, that Grag

tipped the scales.

IKE a monstrous metal genie, Grag strode forward

from where he had fought beside Curt Newton.

The great robot's massive metal body could not be

harmed by the swords of the Cometae.

He advanced, flailing mighty arms, his huge balled

fists knocking guards aside like tenpins. Swords

stabbed in vain at his metal body. Cometae opponents

leaped on him to pull him down, and were brushed

away. Grag walked through them like a stolid, avenging

giant.

"Come on, Otho what's holding you back?" his

voice boomed back through the thunder.

"Grag's broken the ring! Push through and cut them

up!" Curt yelled.

The attackers plunged forward through the breach.

The circle of palace guards was disintegrating.

A sword touched Curt's right arm. The electric

shock that flew along it from his opponent staggered

him. He struggled fiercely to keep from falling. By su-

perhuman resolve, he transferred his own weapon from

the paralyzed arm to his left hand, and stabbed fiercely

back.

He downed his assailant and pressed on, fighting

like a red-headed fury. Beside him, Otho uttered his

hissing, heart-chilling battle-cry as he slashed and

struck with uncanny swiftness. Ezra Gurney's shrill, ex-

ultant yell came from behind them. Aggar was roaring

orders through the inferno of crashing thunder and dy-

ing screams.

Sheeted lightning flares illumined Grag's figure as

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

the dauntless robot strode forward in an orgy of de-

struction, his flail-like arms sweeping all before them.

It was small wonder that the Cometae guards broke be-

fore this awful personification of inhuman vengeance,

upon whom their swords could make no impression.

"They're breaking up! Cut through to Thoryx!"

bawled Aggar's stentorian voice. "Get the tyrant!"

"We've won!" Zarn yelled to Curt, as they swayed

together in the fight. The rebel captain's face was flam-

ing with triumph. "Look, they're trying to flee we've

broken the tyranny forever!"

"Curtis!" came the thin, urgent cry of the Brain from

nearby. "Curtis, listen "

There was no time to listen. Captain Future was ex-

changing deadly thrusts with a raging Cometae guard,

who seemed suicidally bent upon slaying Curt Newton

at any risk, to himself.

Curt got through the man's guard, poised for the stab

that would finish the fight. A blinding thread of light-

ning wreathed the Cometae for a second, the blaze and

concussion staggering Captain Future backward.

His opponent, as though drawing new strength from

the lightning stroke, leaped forward as Curt stumbled

over a fallen man. Captain Future desperately swung up

his dielectric sword as he fell and his antagonist liter-

ally spitted himself on it.

"Nice swordwork, Cap'n Future!" cried Ezra Gur-

ney. The old veteran's wrinkled face was flaring with

bloodmad excitement. "We've beat 'em we've got 'em

runnin'!"

Curt saw that it was true. The remnants of the palace

guard were being hacked to pieces. And the nobles

whom they had protected were now being fiercely as-

sailed by Aggar's rebels.

Aggar was bawling continuous orders to his follow-

ers, to cut through to the Cometae king who cowered at

the center of his nobles.

"Kill the tyrant!" echoed Zarn's maddened cry. "Re-

member what we fight for, men!"

"Curtis, listen!"

This time, there was such taut urgency in the rasping

cry of the Brain that Captain Future turned toward him.

Simon right, hovering close by his shoulder, was the

strangest figure in all that weird scene of infernal com-

bat. Dancing flares of lightning glanced off the Brain's

glass lens-eyes as he spoke.

"Curtis, the man Querdel whom you described to me

is escaping! I saw him slip back from the fight a mo-

ment ago yes, there he goes now!"

APTAIN FUTURE, glancing a little wildly around

the crazy, crowded scene, spotted the fleeing noble

for himself. He barely glimpsed the sinister Cometae

councillor as Querdel darted out of the court into a

palace passageway.

Instant alarm drummed in Curt's mind. He remem-

bered what Zarn had told them. "It's said that Querdel

has a way of communicating directly with the Allus."

Was that why Querdel was fleeing the fight? There

was no tune to weigh the possibility. Captain Future

plunged across the court toward the passage in which

the old wizard had disappeared.

He had to fight his way half across the court,

through still-resisting Cometae nobles and guards. He

finally won past them and raced into the corridor.

He was aware of the Brain gliding beside him, and

of Grag and Otho racing loyally down the passageway

after him. Then Curt burst into a small, vaulted cham-

ber that had the look of a primitive laboratory. Unfamil-

iar electrical instruments stood around its walls.

But Captain Future's eyes flew to the center of the

room. There stood the radiant figure of the old council-

lor, Querdel. The Cometae noble was facing an enig-

matic object.

The thing was a towering, dull-black globe that was

ten feet in diameter. It rested upon a tripodal metal

pedestal. The most arresting feature teas the fact that its

deadblack spherical surface was covered with a crawl-

ing, metallic film, whose gleaming substance constantly

changed pattern.

Querdel was standing utterly motionless and silent

in front of this strange, looming object. But the terrible

intensity in the old noble's face and eyes as he confront-

ed the globe was significant.

"He's thinking into that thing!" Curt exclaimed

sharply. "It's some kind of transmitter of mental force,

connecting with the Allus "

Captain Future plunged forward with his sword

poised. He meant to kill Querdel, without parley. For

Curt sensed terrible danger in the superhuman efforts of

the man to contact the mysterious Allus.

But before he ever reached Querdel, something hap-

pened. The crawling metallic film upon the black

sphere suddenly spun and seethed with inconceivable

rapidity.

Out from the sphere pulsed a wave of what looked

like black light. An emanation of unguessable force, at

sight of which Querdel's strained eyes flamed in wild

triumph.

Curtis, 'look out!" came the thin cry of the Brain.

"He's reached the Allus that's a wave of force "

The warning came too late. As it reached Curt's ears,

the pulsing wave of blackness took hold of him.

He stood petrified, rooted to the floor. For he was

experiencing a sensation of mental assault such as he

had never felt before.

Into his brain beat the sharp mental commands of

other minds a collective intelligence so vast and alien,

Captain Future felt his mental defenses tottering and

crashing before its assault.

He knew, in a wild flash of perception, what was

happening to him. He knew that the electric mental pat-

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

tern of his own brain was no longer commanding his

body. The will of more powerful minds, broadcast as a

wave of electromagnetic force, had invaded and taken

possession of his brain and body.

"I must not oppose Thoryx and Querdel and their

guards. I must submit to them."

HAT was the command of an alien will, flowing

out from the sphere in a wave of dark, electromag-

netic force to dominate Captain Future and all his fel-

low-rebels!

Curt struggled wildly to resist that dominating, hyp-

notic wave of mental force. He could not. He was like a

child in the grasp of a giant. He knew now that the Al-

lus whose aid Querdel had called were mighty indeed.

Yet Curt Newton's fighting soul rallied for an instant

against even this overwhelming attack. By extraordi-

nary mental effort, he opened his lips.

"Grag! Otho!" he gasped to the Futuremen, who

were now bursting into the room. "Get away! Save Joan

and and "

He could not finish. His brain was reeling under the

crushing mental attack.

Curt staggered, still trying to resist as his last mental

defenses crumbled. He glimpsed the triumph on

Querdel's evil old face. He saw the dark wave pulsing

out through the corridors and courts of the entire

palace.

Then his mind was crushed into complete senseless

acquiescence.

CHAPTER X

Road to Mystery

THO had been fighting furiously in the court of

the Lightning Feast, helping Zarn and Aggar and

their followers to break the resistance of the demoral-

ized palace guards. Then the android glimpsed Captain

Future and Simon racing into the corridor in pursuit of

Querdel.

At once, Otho broke off to follow them. Even in the

fierce blood-madness that always swept him in battle,

the android's prime loyalty yeas always to his beloved,

red-haired leader. As he plunged after Curt and Simon,

he yelled to Grag.

"Come on, Grag the chief needs us!"

Grag came hurrying clankingly with him, stolidly

brushing aside unfortunate Cometae who got in his

way. A moment later Otho and Grag burst into the

vaulted laboratory of Querdel. They halted, appalled by

the weird spectacle before them.

From the great black sphere at the center of the

room, the wave of dark, hazy force had pulsed out to

engulf Captain Future and the Brain. It was flowing

around Querdel, too, but the old Cometae councillor

showed nothing but triumph on his evil features.

But Curt's face was ghastly as Otho had never be-

fore seen it. An agony of mental struggle was in Cap-

tain Future's eyes as he gasped out a few words.

"Grag! Otho! Get away save Joan and "

Curt did not finish the words. Grag and Otho saw

Captain Future's agonized face become suddenly mask-

like, expressionless. They saw Curt stand now as stiff

as a statue, staring stonily into nothingness. And the

Brain, too, was poised, speechless, motionless.

Otho realized instantly that it was that pulsing aura

of black force which had somehow overcome his lead-

er. But the android plunged recklessly right into the

dark, outward-welling haze. He clutched wildly at Cap-

tain Future's arm.

Chief, what's the matter?" he cried. "Wake up!"

Then Otho, too, felt a dim, chill sensation of alien

forces seeking to invade and master his mind, of the at-

tack of a powerful intelligence.

But Otho resisted that mental assault to which Curt

and Simon had fallen victims! The android resisted, and

so did Grag. They stood their ground, unheeding the

flowing dark haze from the sphere, trying frantically to

awaken Curt and the Brain from their strange stupor.

"Otho!" yelled Grag suddenly. "That old devil who

did this has got away!"

The android whirled fiercely. It was true. Querdel

had taken advantage of their moment of desperate dis-

traction to slip from the room.

Both Grag and Otho raced furiously down the pas-

sage by which they had comet to overtake and kill the

Cometae wizard who had called forth the power of the

Allus.

That haze of unimaginable mental force, emanating

from the laboratory Grag and Otho had just left had

pulsed outward to invest the whole palace. It was all

about them like a nightmare dusk as they sped down the

corridor, yet still it seemed not to affect them.

They burst back out into the palace court, looking

about fiercely for Querdel. Then they forgot the wizard

in the horror of the sight they witnessed.

Fighting between Cometae rebels and palace guards

had suddenly ended. It had been ended by the pulsing

dusk of force that now pervaded everything. Under the

influence of that terrible pall, the Cometae rebels had

dropped their weapons and stood about like mindless

automatons, where a moment before they had been

shouting their victory.

UT the Cometae palace guards and nobles re-

mained unaffected by the weird force. They were

disarming the stricken rebels, who could no longer re-

sist them. Thoryx was shouting angry orders.

"Secure every rebel! Be sure to get the leaders!" he

shrilled vindictively. "We'll teach the people what it

means to challenge us, chosen by the Allus!"

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

Querdel, who had reached the king, pointed at the

stunned Grag and Otho.

"There are two of the strangers who were ringlead-

ers!"

Cometae guards leaped toward the robot and an-

droid from all sides. With a bull-like roar of rage, Grag

met and hurled them back in broken heaps.

An alarmed cry went up.

"The power of the Allus has not stricken them! They

are devils!"

"They are only two and you are hundreds!" raged

Thoryx. "Get the electric blasting weapons and finish

them!"

Grag was momentarily at a loss.

"Otho, what in the name of all the sun-imps are we

going to do?" he yelled. "We'd better get the chief and

Simon and get out!"

Otho whirled, his flaming green eyes instantly tak-

ing in their precarious situation. They were almost

hemmed in by masses of charging Cometae guards,

who had completely cut them off from the passage

leading to the laboratory where Curt and Simon re-

mained stricken.

"We can't get to Simon or the chief now!" Otho

hissed. "And the chief told us to get Joan away. We've

got to do that and come back later. Come on, Grag

this way out!"

Otho had spotted their only remaining chance of es-

cape. An entrance in one side of the court remained still

unblocked by guards. The android realized that sinless

they escaped instantly by that opening, the, now-tri-

umphant Cometae guards would bring up weapons ca-

pable of destroying them. Otho knew that the revolt

was now a disastrous failure.

Ordinarily, Otho would not have dreamed of desert-

ing his leader. But Curt's frantic last order to assure

Joan's safety rang in the android's ears. Also he knew

that only by saving themselves from imminent destruc-

tion could they hope later to be of any help to their two

stricken comrades.

Grag comprehended his reasoning. The great robot

plunged ahead with him toward the side entrance.

"After them!" screamed Thoryx through the stillre-

verberating crash of thunder. "They seek to escape!"

Grag and Otho were hurling themselves along a cor-

ridor, the flying figure of the android paces ahead of the

clanking robot.

"Wait I can stop them from pursuing!" Grag

boomed, bringing up short in the corridor.

Grag had spotted one of the barred metal gates de-

signed to close off the corridor. He swung it shut. Then,

instead of trying to lock it, Grag tore out one of the

metal bars by main strength. He literally tied the heavy

metal bar around the two halves of the gate, as though it

had been a length of rope.

"That'll hold them for awhile!" he boomed tri-

umphantly.

They could hear the whole palace in wild uproar

around them. And through it all pulsed the dark haze of

incredible mental force.

Otho and Grag burst into the open air, to find them-

selves at the rear of the looming palace.

"Come on!" the android urged. "If we can reach the

prison, get Joan away in the Comet "

Then as they came into sight of the great plaza be-

fore the palace, they halted, baffled. Companies of

Cometae guards were running across it toward the

palace, and other guards were pouring into the prison

across the plaza.

"Now we can't reach the prison or the Comet!" Grag

exclaimed. "It's head for the jungle or else!"

NSTINCTIVELY he and Otho started on a dead run

through the narrow streets, away from the palace and

plaza. They encountered only a few Cometae as they

plunged through the slumbering city, and these few

hastily recoiled from the alarming spectacle presented

by the fierce-eyed android and the monster metal robot.

Within a few minutes, thanks to the city's comparative-

ly small area, they glimpsed ahead of them the green of

the jungle.

There was no zone of cultivated land around the

city. The Cometae, who did not rely on food to main-

tain their strange electric life, needed no agricultural

acreage. Only a few hundred yards from the outskirts

brooded the green jungle that blanketed most of this

fantastic world in the comet's heart.

Otho and his metal comrade flung themselves across

the open space and into the jungle's shelter. They found

themselves in a forest of tall, queer trees whose trunks

were green as well as their grotesquely geometrical fo-

liage. Vines and brush choked much of the space be-

tween.

The jungle was a place of translucent green light. At

first, Otho thought this was wholly the effect of coma-

light filtering through the foliage. Then as they slowed

down, he realized that part of the glow came from the

vegetation itself. Tree trunks and branches, as well as

their leaves, shone with a faint, intrinsic luminance.

"This is far enough," Otho said finally, coming to a

halt. "We mustn't go too far from the city, for we're go-

ing to have to get back in there somehow to help the

chief and Simon and Joan."

His voice grated with frustration.

"Gods of space, how did things fall to pieces so sud-

denly?" he exclaimed.

"It was that old devil Querdel, who called the

Allus!" said Grag, clenching his metal fingers. "That

black sphere was some means of mental communica-

tion with the Allus."

"Yes, the sphere was both a transmitter and a receiv-

er," Otho muttered. "And those mysterious devils, the

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

Allus, used it to project a wave of hypnotic mental

force that seized every rebel in the palace."

"But why didn't that wave of force seize us!" Grag

wondered. "We felt it, but it didn't overcome us as at

did the chief and Simon and Ezra, and all the rest."

"Grag, I think I understand why we were able to re-

sist it!" Otho exclaimed. "The others are all humans

even Simon's brain is that of an ordinary homo sapiens.

Apparently the Allus knew just what kind of mental

force to utilize that would overpower a human brain.

"But you and I are not ordinary humans, Grag," the

android went on excitedly. "Our bodies, our brains, are

of artificial origin and differ in pattern. The Allus'

weapon of hypnotic force missed fire against us for a

very fundamental reason. We're a couple of minds such

as they never ran up against before!"

"Well, now what are we going to do?" Grag de-

manded practically.

Otho shook his head gloomily.

"I haven't figured it out yet."

He threw himself down upon the grass, leaning back

against the faintly luminous green trunk of a big tree.

But an instant after he did so, Otho bounded to his feet

with an involuntary yell of pain.

"What are you trying to do howl out to everyone

where we are?" Grag reprimanded him.

"You touch that tree and you'd howl, too!" Otho ex-

claimed. "I got the devil of an electric shock from it."

"A shock from a tree? You're dreaming!" Grag

scoffed.

HE robot advanced his metal hand toward the lu-

minous green trunk. A spark immediately briged

the gap.

"Why, it's true! All these trees and thus vegetation

are electrically charged!" Grag exclaimed, marveling.

"Now I understand," Otho declared after inspection

of the growths. "This vegetation relies on the electrical

radiation of the coma, instead of on sunlight, for its

agent of photosynthesis. It must contain either a variant

of chlorophyll or a totally different substance, capable

of absorbing the electric radiation as a photosynthetic

force. The process builds up 'a small charge in every

plant and tree "

Grag suddenly interrupted with a tense gesture.

"Listen, someone's coming!"

Otho froze instantly. They stood in the middle of the

glade, listening. Then Otho, too, heard the stealthy

rustling.

"Cometae coming after us!" he whispered hissingly.

"Thoryx' guards must have found our trail! And we

have no weapons "

The stealthy sounds filtered to them through the

brush from the direction of the city. Both the lithe an-

droid and the towering metal robot braced themselves

for a hopeless battle.

Then a small gray shape burst out of the brush and

derv toward Crag, to caper in 'frantic, soundless joy

around his metal feet.

"Why, it's Eek!" the robot said happily.

It was indeed the little gray moon-pup. His beady

eyes were glistening with joy and his whole body was

wriggling wildly as Crag picked him up. An instant lat-

er, Oog's fat, white little figure appeared also. The me-

teormimic waddled over to Otho and went through a

bewildering series of protean changes expressive of his

excitement.

"Now how in the name of the sun did they get

here?" Otho marveled. "We left them with Tiko Thrin

and Joan, back there in the prison."

"Tiko and Joan must have been seized by Thoryx'

guards, same as the other rebels," Crag asserted. "That

would scare Eek and he'd try to find me. He could do it,

with his telepathic sense. Oog just followed him."

The two Futuremen now held a council of war. They

decided to circle around through the jungle to the other

side of the city, to find a place of concealment until the

next "night." Then they would make the precarious at-

tempt to get back into Mloon to free Curt and the rest.

So robot and android started through the luminous

green forest. They made a strange pair as they swung

along the giant metal robot with his moon-pup cling-

ing to his shoulder, and the lithe, fierce-eyed android,

whose fat little pet cuddled affectionately under his

arm.

Grag, who was leading, suddenly stopped. He made

a gesture of warning. Otho hastily came to his side.

There was a break in the jungle ahead. It was a narrow

ribbon of smooth white synthestone road a highway

that began at Mloon and ran straight north through the

forest.

"I never noticed this road before," Crag declared.

"Since the Cometae didn't mention any other cities,

where do you suppose it leads?"

"It leads north, and that means it leads to the citadel

of the cursed Allus," Otho guessed immediately. "Come

on, let's get across it and out of sight."

At that moment they heard a humming sound, rapid-

ly growing louder. It came from the south. Grag and

Ocho hastily dived back into the brush.

They glimpsed one of the torpedo-shaped, six-

wheeled power vehicles of the Cometae approaching

from the south with great speed. The vehicle whizzed

past them. But its occupants remained photographed on

their minds.

COMETAE soldier was driving the strange car.

Beside him sat old Querdel. And in the rear of the

machine lay a prone figure with red hair.

"That was the chief!" yelled Otho as the car streaked

out of sight. "That figure in the back that was Curt

himself!"

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

Both he and Grag rushed back out onto the highway

in a vain effort to overtake the car. But it had already

vanished. After their first frenzied sprint along the

highway, they realized the futility.

"That devil Querdel is taking the chief to the citadel

of the Allus!" raged the android. "Why didn't we kill

that wizard when we had the chance?"

Grag balled his mighty fists.

"They're not going to do anything to him. We're go-

ing to his rescue!"

As indomitably as though they had but a few miles

to go, the two Futuremen started forward along the

white highway in a swinging trot.

The endurance of Grag was practically limitless.

And that of Otho's artificial body was almost as great.

These two could stand indefinite exertion that would

kill an ordinary man. For hour after hour, they followed

the highway north through the jungle.

They met no one on that road. Hours passed, as they

trotted grimly northward. It was hard to measure time,

for the coma-sky that flamed overhead never changed.

Oog whimpered with hunger. Eek cowered in fright on

Grag's mighty shoulder, as flame-winged birds or flying

reptiles flashed across the highway from the jungle.

They knew they had covered many scores of miles,

and yet the road went endlessly on. Then, through the

scintillating haze, they glimpsed the outlines of a small

black mountain ahead of them.

They came closer. Both Futuremen cried out in

amazement. It was not a small mountain that loomed

ahead. It was a black structure of mountainous bulk, ris-

ing stupendously from the luminous green forest.

"The citadel of the Allus!" whispered Otho, his slant

eyes aflame. "Gods of space, what kind of beings are

they?"

The Futuremen had come to the jungle's edge. A few

hundred feet away rose the sky-storming black, eyeless

walls of the sinister enigmatic castle.

The citadel had the shape of a squat, truncated cone.

Its massive walls of black synthestone were blank and

windowless, and sloped slightly inward. The only break

in those walls was an arched entrance, without any kind

of gate or door. The white highway led into this pas-

sage.

"Say, that's a break for us!" Grag exclaimed.

"There's no gate or guards we can walk right in."

"Don't be an idiot!" hissed Otho. "If the Allus have

no gate or guards, it's because they don't need there. Get

it through your iron skull that we're up against creatures

such as our cosmos has never seen before. I'd as soon

dive into the sun as to walk through that entrance."

"But the chief's in there we've got to get inside,"

Grag anxiously protested.

"Not that way," Otho insisted. His eyes keenly in-

spected the looming wall. "I believe I can climb that

slant wall and get on the roof."

"What good will that do you?" Grag demanded

skeptically.

"I won't know until I try it, will I?" Otho flared. "But

there ought to be some ventilation or other aperture in

the roof."

"But I can't climb it!" Grag complained anxiously.

"I know you'll have to wait here," Otho said hasti-

ly. "Keep Oog and Eek here, too. I'll reconnoiter and

come back for you."

HEN the android wormed himself through the high

grass toward the wall of the mighty citadel. Ibis

rubbery flesh crept at the sensation that he was being

watched by alien eyes from within the blank, massive

pile.

Yet he reached the wall without mishap. It resem-

bled the side of a steeply sloping mountain, above him.

Otho could see that the great blocks of synthestone

were tightly joined together by cement.

The Joints gave his incredibly nimble and deft fin-

gers a precarious hold. The inward slant of the wall

helped him. With spidery agility, the android started up

the wall. Clinging to holds from which a bird might

have fallen, using his phenomenal litheness and skill,

Otho climbed higher

The climb seemed endless. He had ascended a thou-

sand feet when he finally reached the roof. He drew

himself onto it with a sigh of relief.

Now he made a startling discovery. The citadel was

ring-shaped. At the center of its roof yawned a circular

opening a hundred yards across. From it projected a

ring of copper electrodes, pointing at the coma-sky.

"What the devil is the meaning of it?" Otho won-

dered.

He crawled silently across the synthestone roof to

the lip of the circular opening. Then he froze, petrified

by the unimaginable terror and strangeness of the scene

which lay before his eyes.

CHAPTER XI

The Allus

URT NEWTON awoke from the hypnotic trance

that had crushed his senses into oblivion. Wonder-

ingly, he looked around him.

He was lying on a couch in a small room. The walls,

floor and ceiling were of black synthestone. There was

no window, but there was a door, and the door was

open to a brightly lighted hallway.

"Now what in the name of Pluto's ice-fiends " Curt

began bewilderedly.

Suddenly, he remembered everything: the revolt of

the Cometae whom he had helped Aggar and Zarn to

lead; their triumph in the court of the Lightning Feast;

then the escape of Querdel and the dark wave of force

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

from the black sphere, which had plunged him into un-

consciousness.

Sharp dismay invaded Captain Future's mind, as he

realized that the others had been overcome like himself.

They must have succumbed, he knew, as he had done.

That meant that the Cometae rebellion was by now

completely crushed, that Thoryx and Querdel and the

Allus still ruled. It meant that Joan Randall must re-

main one of the deathless Cometae.

That thought brought Curt Newton to his feet in an

excess of raging emotion. He was not through yet! He'd

find a way to undo the devilish thing that had been

done to Joan, to overthrow the tyranny that made the

Cometae slaves of unguessably alien masters ...

His rage faded away, and a queer chill possessed

him as he glanced around. This black, cell-like room

did not look as though it was part of any building of the

Cometae City. He had seen not one such black structure

in all that alabaster city.

He suddenly remembered a phrase that Zarn had

used. "The black Citadel of the Allus."

He was in that citadel now! The truth crashed home

to Curt's mind in staggering shock.

Icy certainty possessed his mind. Thoryx and

Querdel and the other Cometae rulers were but pawns

of the Allus. The fact that he had been a ringleader of

the revolt, added to the strangeness of his three unhu-

man comrades, had apparently made the Allus think

him dangerous. They had therefore had him brought

here.

So Curt Newton reasoned swiftly. And his reaction

to the situation was characteristic. A grim, bleak look

entered his gray eyes. His tanned face set in a fighting

expression.

"So I'm up against the real masters now," he mut-

tered. "At least, I ought to find out what they're plan-

ning."

The Allus, the mysterious lords of whom all the

Cometae spoke with such shuddering dread yet whom

none could describe! What was the core of truth in the

fearful stories that he had heard from Zarn and the oth-

ers, Curt wondered.

Was it true that the Allus came from outside the cos-

mos? Did he, Curt Newton, stand now inside the

unimaginable stronghold of beings utterly alien to the

universe? He still could not completely believe that.

His scientist's mind rejected the possibility that the mat-

ter of one universe could ever exist under the physical

laws of a totally strange cosmos.

Above all, what was the Allus' purpose? Whoever or

whatever they were, why had they made of the Cometae

deathless electric slaves? What unimaginable scheme

of extra-cosmic or non-human minds was being hatched

on this weird world inside Halley's comet?

"They can't plan just to kill me out of hand," Captain

Future reasoned. "They could have had their Cometae

underlings do that without delay, once I was senseless.

What do they want of me?"

E turned his attention to the door that led into the

brightly lighted hallway. It was not a real door at

all, but just an opening. There seas no gate or barrier of

any kind.

But Captain Future was not so naive as to believe he

had been left completely unguarded. Examining the

opening closely before venturing through, his keen eyes

detected a faint, dark haze across it.

"That might be a barrier of some sort," he muttered.

"I'll soon know."

He thrust his hand swiftly in and out of the haze in

the doorway. Nothing happened. He felt no new sensa-

tion.

Doubtfully he started to walk through the opening

into the hallway. But the moment his figure entered the

haze, Curt suddenly changed his mind about leaving

the room.

"No, I don't want to go out in that hall," he thought

sharply. "I don't want to, at all!"

And he stepped quickly back into the room. Then a

feeling of bewilderment overcame him.

"Why the devil didn't I go on through? Why did I

change my mind? Of course I want to get out of here."

Again he started through the door. But again the mo-

ment he was halfway through he changed his mind and

came back.

He couldn't understand it. Was it some strange,

warning instinct at work?

Nonsense! Curt uttered a low exclamation.

"What a fool I am! That's the barrier! A mental bar-

rier!"

He understood now. That dark haze was a curtain of

hypnotic force across the opening. Incredible mastery

of mental science had devised that intangible curtain to

affect the minds of anyone who attempted entry. That

person would become mesmerized with the powerful

conviction that he did not want to go through the door.

Curt's respect for the mysterious Allus went up sev-

eral notches. Creatures who could invent and utilize

such subtle powers knew more about mental currents

than anyone alive.

"Why lock up your prisoners, when you can simply

make them want to stay in their cells?" he reasoned.

"Clever, simple and economical."

Calmly Curt went back to his couch and sat down.

He was trying, in his clear-minded way, to assemble

from his scanty facts about the Allus a working hypoth-

esis concerning them.

But there was not yet enough data.

Curt felt that there would be facts in plenty before

long, and that they would be highly unpleasant. But he

doubted whether he would ever live long enough to

make use of them.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"No doubts!" Captain Future reprimanded himself

fiercely. "If you're dealing with creatures who use men-

tal force as their chief weapon, doubt and fear would be

fatal."

He sat there, letting his mind rove back to Joan Ran-

dall. He remembered her with vivid clearness as she

had parted from him in that frantic last minute at the

prison, on the eve of the revolt.

Horror and rage shook Curt again as lie remembered

the unearthly, terrible beauty of Joan's altered form. He

swore again that he would somehow win clear and find

the means to restore the girl to normality.

Somewhere here in the Allus' citadel, he knew, was

where it had been done the metamorphosis of Joan

into a Cometae. Here, too, all the other Cometae had

been changed into electric beings. If he had only a sin-

gle hope of finding out how the Allus had done it, of

correlating his and Simon's and Tiko Thrin's researches

to undo the process

URT NEWTON suddenly became aware that the

dark haze in the doorway had disappeared. He was

on his feet in an instant, striding toward the opening.

He stepped through the door, half expecting that queer

mental compulsion to operate again and force him back.

But this time, nothing happened. He strode through

the opening without hindrance, to find himself in a

long, lighted hallway.

Captain Future smiled grimly.

"They turned off that barrier of mental force by re-

mote control. Which means they want me to come out."

He shrugged coolly.

"All right, gentlemen I'll play."

He was near the end of the long hall now. It was a

passageway with dead-black synthestone walls and

floor, lighted by concealed sources of white brilliance.

It stretched away in a broad arc, curving out of sight.

There was only one way Curt could go down the

hall. He had not the slightest doubt that was where the

Allus intended him to go. Without hesitation, he started

along the curving passageway.

He came to a doorway in the side of the hall. It was

screened by an opaque curtain of dark haze. From the

other side came unfamiliar rustling sounds, and now

and then the clank of metal.

Curt Newton stopped and approached the door. He

wanted to see what was beyond and it. But as soon as

he started through the dark, opaque haze he halted.

He didn't want to go through that doorway! His

whole being clamored against such an action, forcing

him to step hastily back into the hall. He had he knew,

run into another barrier of mental force.

Curt smiled crookedly.

"It seems there's just one way I can go in this rat-

trap, and that's the wav they want me to go."

He went on along the curving passage. There were

other doors in its side, but all of them were curtained by

the opaque haze. He did not try to enter them, for he

knew now it would be quite useless.

Captain Future's nerves were strung to highest pitch.

There was something ghastly about these brooding

black corridors, with their background of uncanny

whisperings and rustlings and their emptiness of all vis-

ible life. The most hideous planetary monster he had

ever met would have been almost a welcome sight in

this forbidding, alien labyrinth.

He had followed the curving hall for several hun-

dred feet, when he came to a door in its wall which was

tot curtained by the dark haze. Curt stopped, staring

ahead at that innocent opening.

"So I'm supposed to go in there. But what if I choose

to keep right on?"

Then he perceived that a little further ahead, one of

the hazy mental-force barriers extended across the hall.

He laughed mirthlessly.

"They leave nothing to chance, it seems."

Deliberately, he approached the open door. His mus-

cles were tense for possible action, though none knew

better than he the futility of physical strength against

the mental masters of this weird stronghold.

Sounds came to him from the room or rooms beyond

the door. They were louder and different sounds than

the mysterious whisperings that had oppressed him. He

sensed in there the presence of more than one individu-

al.

Captain, Future felt a terrific tension. He knew that

he was at last to face the enigmatic masters of the

comet world, the dreaded Allus. Well he was ready

for anything. He would not be surprised if the Allus

were monsters more fearsomely alien than the weirdest

inhabitants of the System's farthest worlds.

E REACHED the door and stepped through it into

a great, brilliant room of cruciform shape. He

halted and stared frozenly at its occupants.

"Good God!" Captain Future said huskily. He was

completely overwhelmed by surprise, in spite of his ex-

pectation.

The cruciform chamber itself was astonishing. Its

four alcoves contained an array of apparatus and ma-

chines, of which even Curt Newton's scientifically

trained eyes could tell nothing.

He did dimly recognize a big black sphere, sheathed

by crawling, metallic films. This was the counterpart of

the globe he had seen in Querdel's laboratory the

transmitter-receiver of mental force through which the

Allus had intervened to suppress the Cometae revolt.

But the other apparatus was unguessable. A mas-

sive, barrel-like chamber of copper, with a myriad tiny

lenses set in its floor and ceiling, proved the central at-

traction in a quite bewildering mass of electrical equip-

ment. Other mechanisms were as baffling. Yet the most

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

staggering sight of all was the half-dozen individuals at

the center of the cruciform laboratory.

"They can't be the Allus!" Captain Future told him-

self numbly. "They can't be "

Yet he knew they were Allus. For some of them

were working leisurely over certain of the unfath-

omable machines, with all the attitude of mastery and

authority. And the rest were staring at Curt Newton ex-

pectantly.

These six Allus were men! Just ordinary, normal-

looking young men like himself! They were not even

electric, like the Cometae. They were dark-haired,

fairskinned young men who might have come straight

from Earth, and who ever wore commonplace zipper-

suits very much like his own.

One of them, a tall, likable young man with clear

blue eyes, advanced a few steps toward Curt Newton.

Ire smiled engagingly.

"Come on in," he said. "We've been expecting you.

My name is Ruun, by the way. I'm sort of a leader

among us Allus."

Curt still couldn't believe his eyes or ears.

"But you can't be the Allus!" he stammered. "Why,

you're only men!"

Ruun laughed, and the other young men chuckled.

"That surprises you, doesn't it? I knew it would. It

surprised Querdel, here, when he first found out that we

were only human."

The Allus leader gestured his dark head as he spoke,

toward a shadow; corner. Curt saw now that the old

Cometae noble stood there, his radiant electric body

shining through the shadows.

Querdel as standing in an attitude of extreme, almost

cringing respect. There was an overpowering awe and

fear in the old wizard's face as he watched the Allus.

Ruun, the young Allus leader, went on in earnest ex-

planation.

"You see, if the Cometae populace knew that we Al-

lus are just ordinary men, they would never obey us.

So, through Querdel and Thoryx, we put out the legend

that we were strange and terrible beings from the un-

known. We played on the superstitions of the Cometae

in that way."

Curt felt a terrific reaction from his previous ten-

sion.

"Then all that talk about your being from an alien

universe was just a hoax?"

Ruun chuckled. "That's it," he said. "Do we look as

though we came from another universe?"

APTAIN FUTURE grinned shakily.

"No, you don't. You look as though you came from

my own world, Earth."

"Actually, we're simply part of the Cometae race

ourselves," Ruun explained. "We're a scientific sect

who have been working in seclusion to help our people.

We've made some great discoveries in electricity and

mental force. We even discovered how to make our

people electrically immortal though it seems that now

they're dissatisfied even with immortality."

"But why did you have outside ships dragged into

the comet?" Curt asked bewilderedly. "Why did you

make electric Cometae of your captives?

Ruun shrugged.

"It was wrong to drag those ships in here, I admit.

But we needed certain materials for our research that

we could obtain in no other way. And we thought we

were recompensing the crews of those ships, by offer-

ing them electric immortality."

Curt Newton felt a vast relief. The knowledge that

the Allus had worked a beneficent hoax on the Cometae

put everything in a new light.

"Yet you crushed the revolt of Agar and his men "

he said uncertainly.

"Of course. We didn't want any more bloodshed,"

Ruun told him. "If the Cometae people are dissatisfied

with immortality, why, we'll change them back to nor-

mal again. We were only trying to help them."

Ruun went on eagerly.

"We had you brought up here because we think you

can help us, stranger. It's obvious that you possess great

scientific knowledge. We think you may know much

about things outside the comet, which we have had no

chance to learn."

"You'll restore to normal the girl I came here after?"

Curt Newton interposed quickly.

"Why, of course!" Ruun declared. He pointed to the

massive barrel-like chamber in the alcove. "It'll require

only a reversal of that converter's circuits to change her

back to normal, if she doesn't like being immortal."

Curt felt his spirits lift immeasurably. For the first

time, his deep and agonized worry over Joan disap-

peared.

"I'll help you with any knowledge I have, if you're

really working for the good of the Cometae," he said.

"Fine!" exclaimed Ruun. He turned toward Querdel.

"You can go back to Mloon, now. Try to quiet down

the people there."

Querdel, cringing in almost ludicrous respect,

bowed tremblingly and squeezed past Ruun.

The old noble almost ran out of the chamber.

Ruun turned brightly to Captain Future.

"Now, stranger "

Abruptly Curt's face had gone dead white. He stared

at the young man and the other Allus with dilated eyes.

His heart was suddenly pounding.

He had seen something, when Querdel had brushed

past Ruun, that had made him doubt his senses. He had

seen Querdel's elbow seemingly past through the solid

body of Ruun!

A ghastly knowledge dawned slowly upon Captain

Future. If the old noble's elbow had passed through Ru-

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

un's body, it meant but one thing. It meant that Ruun

wasn't really there at all!

True enough, he saw Ruun and the other Allus; he

could hear them. They were a half-dozen ordinary

young men, as solid and real as himself to the eye.

Ruun was gazing at him puzzledly.

"Why, what's the matter?"

Curt suddenly extended his hand toward the young

Allus leader. He wanted to touch Ruun, to assure him-

self that the fellow was real, that his eyes had just

played a cruel trick upon him.

UT Ruun recoiled swiftly from his touch. And that

furnished conclusive evidence for the conviction

that had formed in Curt's shocked mind.

"You're not real, then!" Captain Future said thickly.

"You're not real men at all."

Ruun's clean-cut face flared with anger.

"Are you insane?"

"Whatever you Allus are, you're not men!" Curt

went on stiffly, staring at them. "You made me think

you were. Ah that's it! You're masters of mental sci-

ence. You hypnotized me into believing that I was talk-

ing to men like myself!"

As that bitter enlightenment burst upon Curt New-

ton, a sudden and awful metamorphosis took place in

Ruun and the other Allus.

Their human-seeming bodies abruptly vanished.

And Curt knew that his sudden enlightenment had bro-

ken the hypnotic spell in which they had held him the

spell that had made them seem human.

But what were these six shapes now poised before

him, where Ruun and the others had stood?

Why, they were six black, opaque shadows! But

they were shadows that had a definite form. And that

form was a terrible one.

They emerged as shadows of a horrible travesty on

humanity. The upright figure was that of a lithe, snaky

body, with serpentine arms and legs, and a blunt,

hideously ophidian head from whose face grew a mass

of writhing tentacles.

Yet these ghastly figures were not solid matter, but

were living shadows like dreadful silhouettes of mad-

ness come to life. As though the darkness of outer

space had spawned fearful, nebulous, unhuman chil-

dren.

"Gods of space!" choked Captain Future, staring

wildly.

He knew that he was looking at last upon the true

aspect of the Allus.

CHAPTER XII

Mental Duel

APTAIN FUTURE had faced terrifyingly unhu-

man creatures on many a world in the past. In the

depths of Jupiter's mighty jungles, upon the floor of

Neptune's planetary ocean, on worlds of far-off suns, he

had confronted beings far removed from humanity. Put

never had he felt the impact of such horror as he felt

now, facing the Allus.

Had they been solid and real, the terror of it would

have been lessened. Even such hideous serpentine crea-

tures as their outline showed them to be, even those

ghastly faces of writhing tentacles, would not have

been so appalling to look upon.

But it was the fact that they were living, moving

shadows, black and monstrous silhouettes rather than

tangible beings, that gave the last turn of the screw to

Curt's horror. He felt every fiber in his body and brain

clamoring in frantic revulsion.

The black silhouette of the nearest Allus, the one

who had called himself Ruun, moved glidingly toward

Captain Future.

"No! Stay back!" yelled Curt, hardly aware that he

was shouting.

In an excess of mingled horror and loathing, he

struck out frenziedly with his clenched fist. His fist

went right through that opaque black serpentine shad-

ow. He felt no contact with real matter.

He knew then that the Allus were not material,

whatever else they might be. But what were they? Bod-

ies of black gas? Of force? Did they even exist outside

his own chaotic mind? Was he dreaming all this?

"Stand still, Earthman!"

The command rang inside Curt's brain like a clear,

spoken voice. Yet he knew that it had not been spoken.

It had been thought by the Allus, and the thought had

reached his brain.

At the same moment, he felt his mind grasped by a

powerful force. He had the same chilling, uncanny sen-

sation as when the power of the Allus had reached from

Querdel's black sphere to crush the Cometae rebels.

Curt Newton stood rooted to the floor, unable now

to move a muscle. Mentally, he was like a child in the

grasp of these alien, shadowy creatures.

The foremost Allus the one he still thought of as

Ruun was but inches from his face. That dreadful

black silhouette was clear in every ghastly outline

against the background of the lighted laboratory.

Captain Future's dilated eyes now perceived that

from the shadowy black figure of Ruun, a strange, thin

filament led to the end of the cruciform chamber, to

disappear through the solid wall. That filament moved

when Ruun moved, remaining always attached to his

immaterial black figure. Each of the other Allus had

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

similar filaments, leading in the same direction out of

the room like weird puppet cords.

"Earthmen, you have penetrated our deception," The

icy mental voice of Ruun was sounding in Curt's brain.

"It is unfortunate that you did so. We Allus hoped to at-

tain our ends with you painlessly, through deceiving

you into willing cooperation. Now we must use other

methods."

Curt found his voice. Ire could not move, but he

could still speak. And strength and resolution were

coming back into his numbed mind.

T was the threat implicit in the monster's words that

had galvanized him out of that deadly numbness.

Curt Newton was a fighter. A challenge, a threat, was

the most powerful of all stimulants to his indomitable

nature.

"Then everything you Allus said was a lie," he said

huskily. "You did come from outside our universe! No

part of our cosmos ever spawned creatures such as

you."

"It is true, we came from Outside," replied Ruun's

icy thought. "Your cosmos of curved, three-dimension-

al space is merely a bubble floating in the abyss of ex-

tra-dimensional infinity. In your cosmos, you are like

insects crawling around the inside of a spherical shell.

You have never burst out of the shell, have never pene-

trated the outer abyss in which we Allus live.

"For our home is in that abyss Outside. There,

where the laws of force and matter differ far from the

laws of our universe, we grew to power arid wisdom.

We planned finally to enter the bubble of your cosmos.

Slut, with all our power, we could not open a door

through its shell from our side alone. The door must be

opened from both sides.

"So, Earthman, eve sent our thought through the

wall to the man of the Cometae you call Querdel. We

could contact him. For thought, mental force, could

pass from one universe to another, where matter could

not. We promised him, and promised him truly, that he

might attain immortality, if he would but follow our in-

structions and help us open the door between universes:

"We chose him as our agent, chose a man of this

comet world, because the vast electric power of the

comet would be needed to open that door. And he

opened the door, and we came through."

The commanding mental voice of the alien creature

came more strongly into Curt Newton's brain, as he

stood paralyzed and listening.

"Earthman, why do I tell you these things? It is be-

cause you must realize that we are beings from a uni-

verse vaster than your own. Our powers make resis-

tance on your part a futile folly."

Captain Future's hoarse voice was steady as he

countered with a question.

"Why did you come into our cosmos. What do you

plan?"

There was a tinge of amusement in Ruun's mental

answer.

"Earthman, your thoughts are childishly clear. You

fear we mean harm to your universe, to this little Sys-

tem's worlds. That perhaps we plan to attack them.

"You may dismiss such apprehensions from your

mind, Earthman. We have not the remotest intention of

attacking your petty worlds and peoples. Of what con-

cern can they be to us, the lords of the Outside?"

"I don't believe that," Captain Future spat. "If that is

true, why should you have dragged ships of my worlds

into to this comet, through your Cometae tools?"

The creature answered with bored disdain.

"The Cometae are our servants, it is true. We have

used them, and have made sure that they did not escape,

transforming them into electric creatures who cannot

now survive beyond this comet.

"But we need other servants than these people for

what we plan. We need men from outside the cornet,

men of your System's worlds, whose minds hold scien-

tific knowledge about your cosmos that will be neces-

sary to us in our work here. Men such as you, Earth-

man."

"You'll get no knowledge or help from me," Curt

Newton answered unshakenly. "In spite of your denial,

I'm convinced that you're planning an invasion of my

System or an abduction of its peoples to your worlds."

HE thought-reply of Ruun had a quality of exas-

peration in its icy impact.T"We would not want to live upon your System's pet-

ty planets, even if we could. And we could not abduct

your peoples into our universe, for matter of one uni-

verse cannot exist in the alien dimensional conditions

of another. All that we want out of your cosmos is pow-

er."

"Power? Energy?"

It was as though a searing flash of lightning illumi-

nated Captain Future's mind. He saw it now, the reason

for this long labor of the Allus to penetrate his own cos-

mos.

Ruun had read his thoughts, it seemed.

"Yes, Earthman it is energy that we are after here.

Energy that we Allus need in our home Outside, which

we have come into your cosmos to obtain."

"You mean you'll drain the energy of this whole

comet through your door into the Outside?" Curt whis-

pered unbelievingly.

The energy of this comet comprises not a fraction of

what we need!" throbbed the icy answer. "We require

power on a vast scale. Your universe generates power

on a scale commensurate with our needs.

"We shall have our Cometae servants build here for

us a great transformer, which will first draw into itself

all the energy generated by your sun. That energy will

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

flow through the door we have opened, into our world

Outside."

"Of course," the alien being added as an af-

terthought, "our power needs are so great that in time

they will exhaust your sun. But there are many other

suns in this universe. It is not like our own dark, power-

starved universe."

Captain Future had listened in growing horror. At

last he understood the devil-spawned purpose behind

these nightmare creatures from outside the cosmos.

An inter-cosmic theft of energy on a stupendous

scale was what the Allus planned! At the thought of

what that would mean to his own System, of its worlds

starved of all power, of all the radiant energy of the sun

itself being sucked into the outer abyss, apprehension

froze Curt Newton rigid.

The shadowy creature before him now delivered its

ultimatum.

"You can help us willingly with all your knowledge

of thus universe, and be rewarded by electric immortal-

ity. Or you can refuse. In that case, we will strip your

mind of all knowledge and then destroy you immediate-

ly."

Curt's brain seethed with impotent rage. Yet he

knew that anger against the Allus was foolish. They,

the utterly alien offspring of a strange cosmos, saw no

wickedness in the monstrous theft of energy they pro-

posed. The morality of his cosmos was completely out-

side their minds.

With such alien beings, parley would be futile. The

only answer to their plan was to destroy them. Yet how

could that be done? Never had Curt Newton felt so

helpless. His body was petrified by the mental grasp of

the Allus upon his brain. Even had he been free, how

could he harm creatures who seemed wholly immaterial

Shadows?

"You cannot harm us in any way." Ruun read and

answered his thought. "No weapon of this universe

could make the slightest impression upon us. I advise

you to see the folly of resisting our will."

Captain Future made a desperate, rapid decision. To

get himself destroyed would remove all chance of his

acting against the Allus. He must play for time must

pretend to cooperate with them, but must actually with-

hold any information that might be of help.

E had no sooner hit upon this plan than Ruun's

thought impinged upon his mind. And the mental

voice of the creature held an ironic contempt.

"Do you really think that we are as easy to deceive

as that, Earthman? I thought I had made you understand

our mastery over you."

Curt realized that Ruun had read the desperate plan

he had formed, even as he had formed it! ''Their knowl-

edge of his mental processes was almost absolute.

"It is regrettable that you did not choose to cooper-

ate willingly with us," the alien being's mental words

continued. "It will require needless time to strip your

mind of all your scientific knowledge. But I perceive

now that this is what we must do, and then destroy

you."

"No!" Curt Newton thought fiercely with all his

mental power. "You'll get nothing from me I'll give

you no knowledge "

He concentrated upon mental resistance, seeking to

keep his mind resolutely blank,

But he felt his resistance weakening as the vast,

alien intelligences of the shadowy creatures assailed

him. These masters of mental pressure crushed down

his defenses. He could feel their thoughts probing the

innermost recesses of his memory.

Then came a dark senselessness.

Curt drifted out of unconsciousness, to find himself

still standing in the cruciform laboratory. The group of

shadowy Allus were a short distance from him now,

and appeared to be in deep mental conference.

Captain Future realized what had happened. They

had stripped his mind of all his scientific knowledge!

They now knew everything about the laws of his cos-

mos which he himself knew. He did not doubt that they

were discussing this newly gained knowledge in rela-

tion to their gigantic plan.

Curt realized that for the moment they had relaxed

their mental grip upon him. But he well knew that as

soon as they had made certain of extracting his last

scrap of knowledge, they would destroy him.

His mind searched feverishly for a way out of this

dreadful trap. His body was temporarily free, but he re-

alized the futility of physical action. Neither a physical

attack upon the Allus nor an attempt at flight had the

slightest hope of success. Yet he must somehow keep

them from destroying him, must gain time in which to

work against them

A desperate idea came to him. It was a stratagem

that had perhaps only a slim chance of success, but it

might work if he could keep his mind steady.

The group of nightmare shadows was turning again

toward him, each Allus dragging with him that curious

filament so like an immaterial tether. Again, Captain

Future felt himself seized by Ruun's mental Bras p.

"We have gained much helpful knowledge from

your mind, Earthman," pulsed Ruun's thought. "It is un-

fortunate that we cannot utilize you as a servant, since a

scientist of your caliber would be valuable. But your

very clear hostility to our purposes makes it necessary

to dispose of you."

Captain Future, in this moment, was thinking furi-

ously, concentrating on the idea which had suggested

itself to him.

"They looted all my other scientific knowledge, but

they didn't learn about the thermodynamic constant of

energy-flow in this cosmos!" Curt thought. "They don't

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

know that constant will prevent them from ever con-

ducting energy in great volume to their outer universe. I

mustn't let them learn about that. I must keep that factor

hidden in the depths of my mind above all else!"

UUN'S cold thoughts pulsed in sudden sharp

alarm.R"Earthman, have you managed to conceal some of

your knowledge from us? What is this thermodynamic

constant?"

The Allus had taken the bait! There was no such

thing as a thermodynamic constant that would prevent

energy-flow. It was merely scientific gibberish that

Captain Future had improvised for his purpose.

His sole aim was to gain time. The Allus would not

destroy him as long as they believed he had valuable

knowledge which they had not secured. Especially, they

would not destroy him if they thought he possessed se-

cret information about a factor that would thwart their

great plan.

"Tell us!" commanded the Allus leader sharply.

"What is this factor you managed to conceal?"

Curt answered with seeming bewilderment.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You are hiding something from us," Ruun insisted.

"You possess more mental resistance than we had sus-

pected, since you were able to conceal from us the exis-

tence of this important scientific factor."

So far, the Allus had been completely deceived by

Curt's subterfuge. They now thoroughly believed that

he guarded a secret of the scientific laws of this cosmos

which was vital to them.

The Allus were great scientists far greater even

than Captain Future. Yet he had finally managed to de-

ceive them on this one point! For their science was of

an alien universe, and the physical laws of Curt New-

ton's world were wholly strange to them. From their

point of view, it was quite plausible that there might be

some limiting thermodynamic factor, which would up-

set their scheme of stealing the System's energy.

"If you will not tell us willingly, we shall soon take

your secret from your mind forcibly," declared Ruun.

"I know nothing of such a factor, I tell you," insisted

Curt.

His protestations were of no avail. Again the com-

bined mental power of the shadowy entities heat down

his mental defenses.

Again, he went into darkness as they probed his

mind.

When Curt reemerged from that darkness, he sensed

a quality of bafflement in the attitude of the shadowy

figures.

Ruun's thought came ominously.

"Earthman, you are stronger than we supposed.

Even while your mind lay completely helpless before

ours, you managed to persist in your denial of all

knowledge of the thermodynamic factor."

The creatures had read Curt's mind. They had read

there that he knew nothing of the supposed scientific

secret, that it was all a fake. They had read the truth

but they had not believed it!

Captain Future had introduced a psychological ele-

ment of doubt into the calculations of the Allus. They

could not be certain now that the thermodynamic factor

did not exist, in spite of the sincere mental denials of

Curt's brain.

They could not be certain, either, that those denials

were not mere pretense on his part.

Curt intercepted an Allus thought.

"Let us destroy this Earthman, Ruun. His so-called

thermodynamic factor is purely an invention."

"You may be right, Siql," was Ruun's cold reply.

"But we must be certain! If there is such a vital factor

regulating energy-flow in this cosmos, we must learn of

it or our whole purpose will be thwarted."

"Physical torture of the Earthman might produce the

truth," came the chilly suggestion of another Allus.

"No. My reading of this man's mind convinces me

that he would remain obdurate to the last degree under

such pressure," replied Ruun.

URT could "hear" this mental discussion, for he

was still gripped by the vast mental force of the

Allus, and hence en rapport with them.

"There is another means of forcing him to unfold the

truth," Ruun went on. "As we have already observed,

the intelligence of these human creatures is very largely

subservient to their irrational emotions.

"I have already read in this Earthman's mind that his

strongest emotion concerns a girl of his own race,

whom we made into a Cometae some time ago. I be-

lieve that the threat of physical harm to that girt would

constitute the strongest pressure we could bring upon

him."

Captain Future felt a stab of agonized alarm. If he

had brought terrible danger on Joan

He realized instantly that he must suppress such

alarm. But it was too late. Ruun, as always, had read his

thoughts.

"You observe that the Earthman betrays deep fear

lest harm befall the girl," commented the Allus leader.

"This proves that a threat to her safety is the strongest

compulsion we can use upon him. Therefore, I will call

Querdel and order him to return here at once. with that

girl."

The shadowy, monstrous silhouette of the Allus

leader glided toward the black sphere in the alcove,

which Curt had already divined was the means of com-

munication between the Allus and Querdel.

Ruun's special black shape hovered beside the

sphere a moment, then came back.

"Querdel had just reached Mloon. He is starting

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

back here at once with the girl," Ruun announced.

"You can't do this!" Captain Future cried: "I tell

you, it was all a fake on my part! There is no thermody-

namic factor!"

"You will return to your cell," came Ruun's com-

manding, icy thought. "We shall summon you for fur-

ther questioning when the girl arrives."

Curt made a frantic mental effort to break free, to at-

tempt somehow to attack the shadowy group. it was

quite futile. The minds that gripped his own sent him

stumbling against his will from the cruciform laborato-

ry, down the long, curving passageway into his prison.

As he entered the little room, the mental compulsion

upon him ceased. But now the curtain of haze had

sprung across the doorway once more. When he tried to

go through it, he found that the mental barrier was im-

passable.

Curt Newton sat down, overwhelmed by a horror

greater than anything he had yet felt. His stratagem had

recoiled upon himself. It had gained him time, but it

had put the girl he loved in deadliest danger. The Allus

would torture her until he told them about the thermo-

dynamic factor.

And he couldn't tell them, for there was no such

thing!

CHAPTER XIII

Secret of the Invaders

THO crouched frozenly upon the roof of the vast

black Allus citadel, gazing down with incredulous

eyes at the fantastic scene within the great central court.

"Devils of space!" whispered the stupefied android.

"Have I been using dreamdust?"

In fact, the scene below him seemed more fitting to

a grotesque and terrifying nightmare than to reality.

Otho had seen queer things and places on many a world

and moon, but never anything like this.

The circular open court that pierced the center of the

Allus citadel was three hundred feet in diameter. Since

its depth was the thousand-foot height of the building,

it resembled a huge black well upon the rim of which

Otho was crouched, looking downward.

Around the edge of the court rose a ring of eighty

copper rods, that soared up out of the black well and far

above the citadel roof. The tops of these rods, high

above Otho, were bulbous electrodes, upon which

played a ceaseless violet brush of electrical force. Otho

perceived at once that this mighty ring of electrodes

was designed to milk electrical force from the coma-

sky.

The terrific electric voltage gathered by the copper

rods manifested itself at the bottom of the well as a

crackling, brilliant ring of electric flame. This ring of

flaming force completely encircled the interior of the

court, in a dazzling wall twenty feet high. It was in fact

a ceaseless falling cataract of electric energy.

"There's enough power in that to light up a planet!"

Otho thought astoundedly. "What are they using it for?"

He craned his gaze downward, seeking to discern

details on the court's floor. His eyes fastened on an

enigmatic central object.

"What the devil can that be?" he wondered mysti-

fiedly.

The torrents of flaming electrical energy that walled

in the court were canalized, through massive transform-

ers and conduit cables, toward this central object which

so puzzled hire. Evidently all this stupendous power

was used by the Allus simply for the operation of the

central object.

But what was the thing? It looked like a massive

arched door-frame which stood perpendicularly upon

the black paving. Otho judged it was ten feet high and

almost as wide. This arched frame was of solid copper,

studded every few feet with heavy, bulging coils, to

which were connected the multiple conduit cables that

conveyed electric power.

But inside the opening of this elaborate frame there

was nothing. Nothing but a featureless blackness. It

was as though space itself did not exist inside that mas-

sive arch, so strong was the impression it gave Otho of

utter, lightless emptiness.

"If I could only get down there and see for myself

what it is!" he muttered all his curiosity and passion for

adventure on fire.

Then he realized the practical impossibility. He

might be able to clamber down into the court, though

even that was doubtful, because of the vertical nature of

these inner walls. But even if he could do that, he still

would not be able to penetrate the stupendous ring of

electric flame that aped in the whole court.

"That ring of force would blast me or anyone else

who tried to go through it," Otho admitted to himself.

"But what's it all about? What's that arched frame of

blackness, and why does it have to use such terrific,

constant power?"

He strained his keen eyes desperately to inspect the

object far below.

"It seems to be the very keystone of the Allus'

citadel"

UDDENLY Otho gasped unbelievingly as he

looked downward. He was witnessing something

that made his feeling of nightmare even stronger.

A black, shadowy figure was emerging from that

mysterious, coil-framed copper arch. The figure did not

go through the arch it simply came out of it.!

It was like a monstrous, moving silhouette of repul-

sively serpentine outline. Even at this height, Otho's su-

per-keen eyes could detect the essential inhumanity of

that shadow's alien dimensions.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"Gods of space!" he whispered, appalled. "Is that

one of the Allus?"

The opaque black shadowy figure was gliding away

from the arch toward the side of the court. Otho per-

ceived that from that black shape there trailed a thin,

shadowy filament which led back into the mystery-arch

from which the creature had emerged.

The dark figure glided unharmed right through the

encircling wall of electric flame, to disappear through a

doorway which led from the court into the citadel

around it. But Otho could still see the filament of shad-

ow it trailed behind it, which still led into the arch of

mystery.

"What the devil kind of entity is that?" the android

gasped. "Creatures of shadow that come out of a door

to no place, on a shadow-string! Creatures that can

walk through that blasting wall of force!"

He soon saw another of the Allus. For that these

were the mysterious Great Ones, Otho could no longer

doubt.

He saw one of the shadowy creatures coming from

the citadel into the court, gliding into the arch of black-

ness to disappear. In the next minutes, several such be-

ings carne and went through the arch. All of them who

emerged from it trailed that curious shadowy filament

after them.

Otho felt badly upset. It had long been the reckless

android's boast that he was afraid of neither man, beast

or devil. But these Allus were none of the three. As far

as he could see; they were just opaque shadows of

hideous form. But no mere shadows, he knew, could

have mastered a planet as they had mastered this comet

world.

"No wonder the Cometae are scared to death of

those creatures," Otho thought, stunned. "How in the

devil can a man fight a shadow?"

Then a more cheerful thought occurred to him.

"Still, on the other hand, how can a shadow fight a

man? The things may have some queer mental powers,

but aside from that I don't see what they could do. I'll

bet they haven't been able to get the chief down!"

His active mind began to make plans. He and Grag

had to get into the citadel somehow, to help Curt if he

needed aid.

Otho rejected the possibility of entry by climbing

down into this central court. Too many of the shadowy

Allus were coming and going constantly down there.

He'd be sure to be detected, even if he were able to

make it.

The android quickly decided to return to Grag and

explore the exterior of the citadel for a possible way in-

side. There was no opening anywhere to the roof, but

they might find one somewhere in the walls.

Hurriedly Otho retraced his way over the synthe-

stone roof of the mighty pile, and with spidery agility

and quickness climbed back down the outer wall. Then

he raced for the edge of the luminous green jungle.

Grag greeted him with a complaint.

"You took long enough up there! I was beginning to

think they had you. What did you find out?"

"Plenty!" retorted Otho. He told rapidly of what he

had seen.

HE big robot listened incredulously.

"You mean those Allus are nothing but shadows?"T"They look like shadows, but there must be more to

them than that," Otho corrected. "The point is, there's

no practicable way into the place by the roof. We'll

have to look for some crack or window in the wall."

The two Futuremen started to reconnoiter the

mighty citadel, moving around it and keeping always in

the concealment of the jungle. In less than an hour, they

were back where they had started from, baffled. The

structure's whole exterior was blank and without open-

ings, except for the single entrance into which ran the

white road from Mloon.

"Not a chunk big enough for a Mercurian rat to get

through!" exclaimed Otho, exasperated. "Well, there's

only one thing to do. We'll have to dig a tunnel up into

the cursed place."

Grag stared at him.

"Are you crazy? There's that big, wide entrance right

in front of us. We'll go in through it."

"Don't be dumb all your life, Grag!" flared Otho im-

patiently. "Didn't I tell you that entrance would be

guarded somehow by the Allus? A child could see

that."

"Querdel went in and out of it in his power-car," re-

torted Grag. "I saw him come out and speed south,

while I was waiting for you."

"Naturally, the Allus would let Querdel in and out,

for he's one of their tools," Otho pointed out. "But you

can bet a planet that if we tried to walk in there, we'd

run right into a terrible trap."

"We've got to get in, and that door's the only way in,

and so I'm going through it," Grag announced calmly.

And the big metal robot, with Eek still clinging to

his shoulder, stalked straight out of the jungle toward

the entrance of the citadel.

Otho swore furiously, and then hastened after the

robot, with Oog trotting hastily at his heels. The an-

droid caught up with Grag just a few yards outside the

yawning entrance.

"Grag, don't be an idiot!" Otho pleaded. "If you

weren't so cursed thick-headed, you'd know that we'll

never get in this way."

Grag paid no attention. The robot's simple mind was

thoroughly made up. Curt Newton was inside, here was

a way to get in, and he was going that way without any

further talk. Grag could be obstinate upon occasion,

and this was one of the times.

They now could see that the big, open entrance that

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

pierced the citadel's massive black wall was curtained

by a zone of dark haze.

"See that haze is a force-barrier of some hind!"

Otho expostulated. "It'll either blast us to bits, or else

set off an alarm that will bring the Altus down on our

heads."

"Aw, it's just a little dark haziness, that's all," replied

Grag with sublime denseness. "There's nothing to be

afraid of."

"Gods of space give me patience!" raved Otho. Then

he uttered a grating laugh. "All right, if you're deter-

mined on committing suicide, I'll join you. I'd just as

soon get killed here and now, as to have to put up with

your company any longer."

And as Grag strode forward into the entrance, Otho

accompanied him with angry despair.

AUTIOUSLY they entered the dark haze that cur-

tained the doorway. They felt nothing whatever.

And in a moment they had passed through it into a big,

vaulted black gallery that was utterly empty. There was

no alarm.

"You see?" said Grag blandly. "There wasn't any-

thing to be afraid of."

"I can't understand it!" stammered Otho, his jaw

dropping in amazement. "The Allus must have put that

hazy curtain of force there to bar out intruders! Why, in

the name of all the ten thousand separate devils of the

nine worlds, didn't it keep us out?"

"I'm afraid your nerves aren't very good, Otho," said

Grag patronizingly. The robot looked calmly aroused.

"Let's see what's in here. I don't see how we're going to

find Curt in this big labyrinth."

Dumfounded by the fact that there had been no

alarm or challenge, Otho followed the robot through

one of the doors that pierced the walls of the big inside

gallery.

They found themselves looking into a maze of curv-

ing passageways, hose black recesses were illumined

by a bright, sourceless white light. Otho shrank back

and pulled the robot with him, as he glimpsed two dark

figures gliding across one of the distant corridors.

They were two Altus. The unearthly black, shadowy

creatures of monstrously serpentine outline looked like

dark ghosts as they moved across the distant passage.

They trailed behind them the curious, dragging fila-

ments of shadow that seemed permanently attached to

their weird forms.

So those are the Allus," muttered Grag, as the two

black silhouettes disappeared. "They don't look like any

race I ever saw."

Otho's attention had shifted.

"What the devil is the matter with that cursed moon-

pup?" he demanded angrily.

Eek, crouched on Grag's shoulder, seemed con-

vulsed by a spasm of terror. His little gray body was

trembling violently, and his beady eyes were dilated

with fear as he tried to hide under the robot's arm.

Eek's cowardice was notorious among the Future-

men. He was inclined to scare at anything unfamiliar.

Yet never in the past had the moon-pup exhibited such

abject terror as now.

"He's afraid of the Allus," Grag said solicitously.

"You know, he's strongly telepathic it's the way

moon-dogs communicate. He must be getting some

fearful thoughtimpressions from the Allus in here."

"Say, maybe we can use Eek to find the chief:" Otho

whispered excitedly. "We know Curt's in here some-

where. But if we go blundering around searching for

him, we're sure to be discovered. But Eek ought to be

able to sense Curt telepathically, and lead us to him."

Grag at once accepted the suggestion.

"I'm sure he can do it. I'll tell him what we want."

Grag told Eek by thinking, since that was the way he

always gave his orders to the telepathic moon-pup who

could not speak or hear.

"Find Curt, Eek!" Grag ordered. He added as an in-

ducement, "If you can get to Curt you'll be safe, Eek!"

Safety was what Eek craved most, at the moment.

Galvanized, he scrambled down onto the floor and

started on a run along the outermost of the curving cor-

ridors before them.

The two Futuremen followed, praying inwardly that

they would meet none of the Allus. They believed that

Eek would sense and fearfully avoid the shadowy

aliens, and so it proved. For after leading them for some

minutes along the corridors, Eek darted through a door

in the wall.

HE door was curtained by one of the barriers of

dark, hazy force. That did not prevent the two Fu-

turemen from entering. They found themselves in a

small cell. Eek was leaping and bounding in frantic

pleasure around a man who had risen in astonishment

to his feet.

It was Curt Newton.

"Grag! Otho!" exclaimed Captain Future incredu-

lously. "How in the name of all that's holy did you get

in here? Were you captured?"

Otho explained their adventures in swift, excited

phrases. As he did so, the android noted the haggard-

ness and pallor of Curt's features. He thought that he

had never seen such a strain on his leader's face.

"So we walked right in through the front door, and

Eek led us to you!" Otho finished. "Though I still don't

see how in the world we were able to pass the barrier of

force across the entrance."

"Otho, I can understand that," Curt Newton said ea-

gerly. "That barrier is a curtain of mental force a pat-

tern of electromagnetic thought-impulses which im-

presses upon the brain of any man who enters it that he

must on no account go through the door. My cell has

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

such a barrier.

"But," Curt continued, "that barrier of electromag-

netic thought-impulses is designed to bar out human in-

truders. Its frequency must be the same as the frequen-

cy of impulses in the human brain. You and Grag,

though, are not ordinary humans.

"Your artificially created brains function at a differ-

ent electrical frequency than the human mind. There-

fore the thought-barriers of the Allus have no effect

upon you two."

"Sure, that's it," said Grag complacently. "I figured

that all out before, and that's why I knew we could pass

the barrier."

"In a space-rat's eye, you did!" retorted Otho wrath-

fully. "You were just dumb enough to try it, and got a

lucky break, that's all. I should have remembered that

the Allus, mental force failed against us before."

Captain Future interrupted with a fiercely impatient

gesture.

"Listen to me! The coming of you two is a godsend.

It may furnish a chance to save Joan from those alien

devils."

"Joan? Is she here?" exclaimed Otho startledly.

"She'll be here soon," Curt answered.

He told rapidly of the intention of the Allus to extort

further information from him by threatening the girl.

"Why, the dirty so-and-sos!" swore Otho. "I'd like to

exterminate the whole shadowy crowd of them!"

"Otho, maybe we can do just that, if we can make a

particular effort," Curt declared feverishly. "The clue

that explains the nature of the Allus is in what you saw

in that central court. I want you to tell me every detail

you noticed, especially about that arched doorway into

nothingness."

Otho complied, quickly describing the entire scene

he had witnessed, when he had spied upon the Allus

from the roof of the citadel.

Captain Future's gray eyes flashed.

"It all fats together," he breathed. "It's incredible,

but I believe it's true."

"You mean, you know now what the Allus are?"

Grag asked, staring.

"I'm sure of it," Curt replied. "There's only one ex-

planation that fits all the facts. The Allus have no mate-

rial existence at all!"

"What are you talking about?" exclaimed Otho dis-

mayedly. "Chief, are you sure you're not delirious?"

"I tell you, it's the only answer," Curt insisted. "The

home of the Allus is in the four-dimensional void out-

side the bubble of our three-dimensional cosmos.

Therefore, the material bodies of the Allus out there

must be fourdimensional matter."

IS eyes flared with excitement.

"Such matter could not enter our three-dimen-

sioned cosmos! That's not just my own opinion. When

he questioned me, Ruun remarked that energy could

pass from one universe to the other, whereas matter

could not. Therefore, it's scientifically impossible for

the Allus to exist in our cosmos!"

"The ones in this cursed citadel certainly exist!"

Otho exclaimed. "Why, they've mastered this whole

world!"

They do exist, but rot materially," Curt qualified.

"Those shadowy figures consist not of matter, but of

photons particles of energy!"

Rapidly, Captain Future unfolded the astounding ex-

planation that his brilliant mind had pieced together

frown the scientific evidence.

"The Allus are real, four-dimensional creatures in

habiting the four-dimensional abyss outside our cos-

mos. They needed power, and decided to enter our, cos-

mos and set up here a giant transformer, which would

draw in the energy of our sun and pour it into their own

strange universe. Their initial step was to open a door

between universes, first getting into contact with

Querdel and the Cometae rulers and persuading them to

aid.

"The door was open but the Allus couldn't them-

selves come through it. Their four-dimensional bodies

couldn't exist in our cosmos. But energy, which is di-

mensionless, could pass back and forth through that

door between universes. Atoms, which are particles of

matter, couldn't pass through. But photons, which are

particles of energy, could.

"So the Allus projected artificial bodies of photons

through the door! Their shadowy figures that we see

here are merely photon-patterns, which are directly

connected by those filaments of energy with their tangi-

ble bodies on the other side of the door. They project

their minds along that filament into the black photon-

bodies that we see here. Thus, in those photon-shapes,

the Allus are able to act in this universe."

Captain Future's gray eyes were blazing now.

"It's the only possible scientific explanation. And it

gives us a thousand-to-one chance of ridding our cos-

mos forever of the Allus' threat."

Otho gasped. "I get it, Chief! If we could close that

door "

"If we could close the door, it would cut the fila-

ment connection between the Allus' real bodies in the

outer abyss and their photon-bodies here and thus end

all their internal activities in this universe!" Curt fin-

ished for him.

CHAPTER XIV

Curt's Way

HE three comrades gazed at each other with a

common excitement, crouching close together in

the little black cell.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

"Can we do it, Chief?" asked Grag quickly. "Can we

close that door?"

"It should be possible," muttered Curt Newton.

"From Otho's description, the mechanism consists of a

frame of super-powered magnetic coils, which set up

intersecting fields that cause an unprecedented spaces-

train. Theoretically, scientists have always known that a

strong enough strain would rip open an aperture in

three-dimensional space. Actually, it's never been done

by any System scientist, because it would require vast

power.

"But the Allus are using vast power-power of this

comet's electric coma. By means of it, they keep the

space-strain always operating, the door constantly open.

They daren't let it close."

"Then if we wrecked those magnet coils, the door

would close?" cried Otho.

Captain Future nodded.

"It would. But can we get at the coils? You said the

wall of electric flame around the court had no break in

it."

"The devil, I forgot that!" exclaimed Otho, crestfall-

en. "And that stumps us. The photon-bodies of the Al-

lus could go through that ring of electric fire, but it

would blast you or me in an instant."

"I don't think it would blast me."' Grag suggested ea-

gerly. "You know the outer surface of my body is di-

electric metal. I'll bet I could get through it."

"I doubt it." Curt hesitated. "Yet there's no other

possibility. Grag, if you're willing, we'll try it. Come on

let's get out of here."

"I thought you couldn't pass through the barrier of

mental force across the door of this cell?" objected

Otho.

"I can't, of my own accord," retorted Curt. "But you

tyro can drag me through it."

"Great space-gods, I never thought of that!" ex-

claimed the android. "Come on, Grag get hold of the

chief."

Grasping Captain Future firmly by the arms, the two

Futuremen approached the cell door. As they entered

the curtain of hazy force across it, a frantic clamor

awoke in Curt's brain.

"I don't want to go out into the hall!" he thought

fiercely. "I don't want to leave the cell!"

His obsession was so powerful that he struggled

fiercely to pull back into his prison. But Grag's great

grip dragged him out through the hazy curtain, despite

his resistance. The moment they were out in the corri-

dor and clear of the mental barrier, Curt's mental revul-

sion ceased to exist.

"Thanks, boys!" he muttered. "Now we've got to

find a way to that central court where the door is locat-

ed. It should be in this direction. I suppose we have not

much chance of reaching it without the Allus' knowl-

edge."

"I've got Eek here with me," drag told him. "He's

scared to death of the Allus, and can sense them long

before we can see them. He'll warn us of any of them

ahead."

They began the hazardous search through the

labyrinthine halls and corridors of the vast black

citadel. Twice in the next few minutes, Eek, showed

wild panic when they were about to enter passageways.

They hastily took other turnings, knowing that the little

moon-pup had sensed Allus ahead.

They passed unoccupied laboratories and supply

rooms, in which lay great masses of mechanisms and

apparatus of totally new and unfamiliar design.

Curt guessed that these were part of the giant trans-

former the Allus planned to build, for the theft of limit-

less power from this cosmos.

NCE only Eek's panicky warning enabled them to

shrink back as one of the dark Allus glided across

the corridor ahead. Curt was near despair. Their time

was short, for soon Querdel would arrive with Joan.

Then he Allus would summon him and find him gone

from his cell.

They entered a corridor, whose far end blazed with a

sunlike brilliance that outshone the citadel's sourceless

illumination.

"That's the court of the door!" Otho hissed.

They hastened forward to the end of the passage-

way, and then crouched concealed in its mouth and

gazed out into the court stunned.

Ten feet from them towered the blinding, crackling

wall of electrical fare whose unguessable energy

poured down like a cataract from the tall electrode rods.

This wall of electricity, encircling the whole interior of

the court, formed a blinding barrier to their vision.

Captain Future strained his eyes to peer through the

flaming barrier. He could only dimly descry the mas-

sive apparatus at the center of the court the ponderous

copper arch of the door, and the heavy magnet coils

that studded that arch.

A few Allus were coming and going, passing

through the wall of crackling flame as though it did not

exist. They were fortunately using other entrances of

the citadel than the one in which the Futuremen

crouched, but Curt realized that discovery might come

at any rune.

"Look, you can see all those filaments of energy that

connect them with the door." Otho whispered, pointing.

Curt counted no less than twenty of the shadowy

threads that led from the door through the electric barri-

er.

"Then there's no more than twenty of the Allus in

the Citadel!" Curt muttered incredulously. "Twenty

and they've mastered a world!"

"Shall I go through the electric wall now, Chief?"

Grag asked eagerly. "See, there's no Allus out there

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

right now"

"Yes try to make it, Grag," Captain Future said

tensely. "If you get through, wreck those coils around

the door. All depends on you."

An opportunity had come to them sooner than Curt

had hoped. For the moment, there were none of the

dark Allus anywhere in the court. Grag hastily strode

out toward the blinding, crackling wall of electric

flame. The giant robot stalked right into the cataract of

force.

They saw Grag stagger and stop. The robot swayed

drunkenly, half hidden from view by the torrents of rav-

ing, brilliant energy that were overwhelming him. Then

Grag fell backward out of the wall of flange and lay

motionless on the paving.

"He couldn't get through!" Captain Future ex-

claimed. "Quick, Otho help me get him in here!"

They darted out to the fallen robot. He had fallen

clear of the crackling cataract, and they were able to

seize his massive metal body and drag it back into the

precarious concealment of their passageway.

Grag lay utterly lifeless. Curt hastily unclamped the

broad metal chestplate of the robot's mechanical body,

then peered into the maze of intricate wiring and appa-

ratus that constituted Grag's vital organs.

"The electricity of the wall got through his outer in-

sulation and short-circuited his electric 'nerves'," Curt

said quickly. "His nerve-fuses are blown out."

T TOOK Captain Future but a few moments to re-

place the fuses, which were designed to protect

Grag's electrical nervous system from too great a volt-

age. Then he clamped down the robot's chest-plate.

Grag scrambled bewilderedly to his feet.

"What happened? Didn't I make it?"

"No, and it's useless for you to try again, Grag,"

Curt said somberly. "The Allus' photon-bodies can go

through that wall, but we can't."

"Nothing could go through that cursed torrent of

power, except one of the Cometae!" hissed Otho in baf-

fled rage.

Captain Future suddenly stiffened. He stared fixedly

at the android.

"Otho, you're right! One of the electric Cometae

could get through that wall! I could get through, if I

were a Cometae."

"Chief, what do you mean?" exclaimed Otho anx-

iously. "You surely can't be thinking of "

"Otho, the only way for me to slip through this bar-

rier and close the door is to become a Cometae," Cap-

tain Future declared.

The grimness of desperate resolution had come into

Curt's gray eyes. His haggard face was set in lines of

determination.

"There's one thin chance that I could do it," he con-

tinued rapidly. "In the cruciform laboratory where they

questioned me, I saw the converter mechanism which

the Allus use to transform ordinary men and women

into Cometae. I observed it as closely as I could. I be-

lieve that if I could get access to it without their knowl-

edge, I could use it to make myself a Cometae."

"It's crazy!" burst out Otho in a clamor of frantic ex-

postulation. "Even if you do succeed in closing the

door, then you'll be one of those pitiful electric

people!"

"Remember that Simon and I believe we can find a

way to retransform the Cometae back to normal," Curt

reminded rim. "When we find the way, I can become

my old self again."

"But suppose you never find such a way?" said

Grag, aghast. "Then you'd be a Cometae forever."

"That would be no sacrifice if I can save our uni-

verse," Captain Future said quietly. "Anyway, if we

can't find the way to undo that metamorphosis, it would

mean that Joan would have to remain a Cometae. And

I'd want to share her fate, then."

The quiet statement put an end to the objections of

the two Futuremen for a few moments. Then Otho

made a hopeless gesture.

"It's foolish even to talk of it," muttered the android.

"How are you going to get access to that converter

mechanism without the Allus' knowledge? You said

that it was located in what seemed their chief laborato-

ry. Some of the Allus will be there, too."

"We'll have to draw them out of there somehow

and at once," Curt said swiftly. "We've little time to

work."

He looked at Grag.

"Grag, you can help divert the Allus' attention. Will

you do it? It means taking a chance they might destroy

you."

Grag uttered an offended growl.

"What do you mean will I do it? Have I ever re-

fused to take chances? And aren't you yourself going to

take the craziest chance of all?"

"Then do this," Captain Future instructed the robot.

"Make your way back out to the entrance of the citadel.

Set up a big uproar there at once. Start smashing every-

thing you see. That should bring all the Allus in the

citadel. Try to keep them out there as long as you can."

Grag's photo-electric eyes gleamed with understand-

ing.

"I get it, Chief. I'll make a racket that'll go down in

the history of this comet!"

And the big robot, without further discussion, hur-

ried away back along the passageway by which they

had come. Little Eek, his moon-pup pet, went with him.

FEW minutes later, the dim sound of a distant,

banging clamor reached the ears of Curt and Otho.

From the volume of noise, Grag was more than living

up to his promise of creating a disturbance.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

Crouched in their precarious concealment, Cuit and

his comrade glimpsed several Allus gliding swiftly

through the inner corridors, in the direction of the

citadel entrance. They passed out of sight.

"That should have drawn every Allus in the place

out there," Curt muttered. "They'd be startled and

alarmed by the fact that someone had entered their

citadel, despite its barriers. Come on, Otho!"

In a hasty run, the tall, red-headed planeteer led the

way through the maze of labyrinthine passages in the

direction of the cruciform laboratory. His remembrance

of the citadel's interior plan did not fail Captain Future.

In a few moments, he and Otho reached the entrance to

the fountainhead of Allus science. A glance inside

showed them that it was unattended now.

Grag's disturbance had quite evidently drawn away

its occupants. The distant clamor of that disturbance

was still going on.

"We've little time!" Curt exclaimed, panting, as they

sprang into the laboratory. "It won't take long for the

Allus to gain mental mastery over even so unfamiliar a

type of mind as Grag's."

He ran to the big converter mechanism in an alcove

which the Allus had utilized to make the Cometae into

an electric race.

Its central feature was a massive, barrel-shaped cop-

per clamber, eight feet high. In the floor and ceiling of

this chamber were set a very great array of clustered,

tiny lenses. Around the copper chamber, and connected

to it `w complex cables, stood a number of totally unfa-

miliar mechanisms, whose purpose was quite unguess-

able.

"Oh, Chief, this is hopeless!" groaned Otho after a

look at the enigmatic mechanism. "We don't know any-

thing about Allus science. We couldn't fathom the de-

sign of this apparatus in days of study let alone in the

few minutes we have."

"That's true," Captain Future admitted tautly. "But

even though we don't know how the thing works, we

may be able to put it into operation. A savage wouldn't

have the faintest, idea how an electric light works, yet

he could turn it on if he found the switch."

Curt was already tensely examining the complex

mechanism.

"The Allus used this machine for just one purpose

the conversion of men and women into electric beings,"

he was muttering. "It stands to reason the Allus would

have the thing set to project the correct forces that

cause that metamorphosis in the cells of the human

body. if we could find out how to turn it on "

Yet during the next few moments of frantic study,

Curt Newton almost lost hope himself. The science and

mechanics of the alien Allus were completely unlike

those of the System. Even Captain Future, master of

System science, could comprehend almost nothing of

the converter's design.

But he did locate the heavy main cable that brought

power to the machine. Hastily he traced the cable in

search of a switch.

He found no switch. The cable went straight into the

complex apparatus around the copper chamber. At one

point, the cable passed through a square box on which

was mounted a silver disk. But though Curt twisted and

tugged at the disk, it did not move nor was there any re-

sult.

"It looks as though it might be a switch but it can't

be moved," Curt said in exasperation. His haggard face

seas dripping with sweat. "Yet there must be some kind

of power cut-off."

RENZIEDLY he retraced the power cable, but

there was no break in it except that square box and

silver disk. Captain Future felt his hopes sinking fast.

His plan had been too fantastic to succeed, after all.

He could bear the distant clamor of Grag's distur-

bance dying down, as though the Allus were overpow-

ering the robot. Few minutes were left now. Curt told

himself wildly that he must not get rattled, he must

think

"Thinking, that's it!" Curt cried hoarsely. "That must

be it! The Allus have immaterial photon-bodies. They

could have had these machines built for them by their

Cometae aides, but the Allus' photon-bodies could not

turn on a material switch. It'd have to be a switch em-

bodying a telepathic relay, a switch they could turn on

by thought!"

"Chief, what do you mean?" Otho exclaimed bewil-

deredly.

Curt paid no attention. He was staring at the silver

disk on the enigmatic switch-box. He was concentrating

every ounce of his mental power upon that disk.

"Power on!" he was thinking, over and over.

Something clicked inside the switch-box! The deli-

cate electro-magnetic vibration of Curt's projected

thought had operated a sensitive relay.

The massed apparatus around the copper chamber

hummed with sudden power. From the myriad lenses in

floor and ceiling poured a gush of brilliant blue light.

"We've got it going!" Curt exclaimed. "I'm going to

try it. Otho, if my attempt fails, you try to get away and

warn the System of the Allus' plan. Here goes!"

Before Otho could protest further, Captain Future

stepped into the chamber into the full rood of blue

force!

He felt an awful, instantaneous impact through ev-

ery fiber of his body. Ire reeled beneath the shock of a

force cunningly calculated to effect the deepest molecu-

lar and atomic changes.

There seas a sharp clicking somewhere in the con-

verter's auxiliary apparatus. The blue force changed

abruptly to deep purple. A new, staggering shock ran

like lightning through Curt Newton's swaying body.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

It seemed to him that every cell of his brain and be-

ing seas on fire. Sick and fainting, he reeled against the

side of the chamber. The tinge of the projected force

that bathed him was now altering to green. It was run-

ning through the spectrum in quick, sharp changes.

Captain Future realized dimly that each change was

bringing into play a new frequency of unknown forces.

Each alteration was patterned to break down the molec-

ular and atomic structure of different elements of living

cells, then remold them into new, strange patterns.

Curt seemed swimming in liquid fire, he felt as

though he were breathing flame through his burning

body. The wrenching at his body's subtlest and deepest

structure made him think that his very flesh was ex-

ploding.

The great `naves of sickness and weakness that

came over him began to dissipate. The fiery torment of

his body passed into a strange tingling.

"Gods of space!" he heard Otho exclaim hoarsely.

Curt opened his eyes. He still stood in the chamber.

But the spectrum-hued forces had reached the end of

their gamut and had automatically cut off.

Captain Future looked down at himself. His whole

body glowed! It shone with brilliant electric radiance

that matched the uncanny tingling which he felt in ev-

ery fiber.

"I've done it," he said huskily as he staggered out of

the copper chamber. "I'm a Cometae "

He swayed from sick weakness. Instinctively, Otho

leaped forward to support him.

But as Otho's hand touched him, the android re-

coiled with a cry of pain. His arm hung limp, paralyzed

by the electric shock of contact with Curt 's shining

body.

A shuddering horror threatened to dominate Curt

Newton's mind in that moment He had suddenly real-

ized to the full how ghastly a gulf now separated him

from all ordinary humanity.

CHAPTER XV

The Door to Outside

HE distant clamor of Grag's struggle with the Allus

had died completely away by this time.T"Chief, they must have overpowered Grag!" Otho

was exclaiming frantically. "They'll be back here in a

moment!"

The urgency of his cry penetrated through the sick

spasms that still gripped Captain Future. Drunkenly he

staggered across the cruciform laboratory. He grasped a

heavy-metal bar he had noticed amid other tools in a

corner. Then, in an unsteady run, he tottered with Otho

out into the corridor.

His body still felt utterly devoid of strength from the

terrific shock he had undergone. He felt at each step

that he could not make another, but always his in-

domitable will forced him: forward.

His outraged, metamorphosed body clamored for

rest. He told himself despairingly that even if he could

manage to reach the inner court, he would not have

enough strength to do what most be done to close the

door. Yet blind purpose kept him stumbling forward

through the corridors.

They emerged, Curt and Otho, into the central court.

A few yards in front of them loomed the blinding,

crackling cataract of electric flame that walled every-

thing inside the court. With a convulsive effort, Captain

Future pitched forward into that raving torrent.

Stunned, blinded, shocked by impact of inconceiv-

able electric force, he came to a halt in the middle of

the roaring barrier. He was standing in a raging inferno

of electricity that would have destroyed an ordinary hu-

man being in the wink of an eye.

Yet, weirdly enough, Curt Newton felt suddenly

stronger. His tingling electric body was drinking in the

energy that was now its food, from the flood of electri-

cal power in which he stood. He could feel that new en-

ergy seething through every fiber of his being.

"Chief, hurry!" Otho's frantic cry reached his ears.

Curt lunged on, through the wall of electricity and

into the interior of the court. He stumbled straight to-

ward the massive door.

It was surrounded by the bulky, enigmatic pieces of

apparatus which fed it unceasing power from the elec-

tric cataract. But the door itself towered up above ev-

erything else.

It was a massive, arched copper frame, ten feet high

and eight feet wide. Inset around this frame were six-

teen bulging, complex coils, linked by baffling com-

plexities of wiring to the mechanisms which fed them

power. Curt knew that these were the magnet coils

whose intersecting fields set up the constant space-

strain that held the door open.

But it was the door itself at which Captain Future

wildly stared, like a man turned to stone.

"God!" he husked through stiff lips.

It was not an expletive of astonishment, but a

prayer. He, first of all men, was looking through a rent

in the fabric of the cosmos into the outer abyss. He was

looking Outside!

The arch of the door framed darkness. But it was no

darkness such as Captain Future had ever seen before.

It was the murky dusk of a world whose light is too

alien for human eyes ever fully to discern.

That murky twilight shrouded a scene that no human

gaze could entirely comprehend. For the world into

which Curt Newton gazed was a world of the Outside,

where there are four dimensions instead of three. And

he, a three-dimensional creature of a tri-dimensioned

universe, could not receive clear sense-impressions of

such a world.

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

HERE seemed to be a city in the murky dusk of

that Outside universe, But its buildings were of a

fantastic geometry that defied reason. Those black

structures rose from slender bases and mushroomed

outward like giant, angled black fungi growing upon

slender stems.

The streets of that mad city were all perfectly

straight to the eye. Yet each of those streets returned

upon itself to form a circle, in insane defiance of three-

dimensional geometry. The perspective of the black

city was that of a surrealist nightmare, for the most dis-

tant of the mushroom buildings bulked far larger to

cum's eyes than the nearer ones.

Most ghastly of all were the dark creatures who

glided in troops and throngs through the straight-circu-

lar streets of the Outside city. Their bodily outlines

were vaguely like the silhouetted shadows of the Allus

whom curt encountered. There was the same blood-

freezing suggestion of serpentine bodies and limbs, of

faces that were masses of feelers only. But the forms of

those dark citizens of the abysmal city seemed to

change in outline with each movement they made. And

they walked through the walls of their own city!

Captain Future, rooted in horrible fascination by this

ghastly vision into the Outside, noted then the most

hideous detail of all. Through the door, into the murky

dusk of the four-dimensioned city, ran the score of

shadowy filaments that connected the photon-bodies of

the Alfas in the citadel with their real bodies in the Out-

side metropolis!

"Chief, the Allus are coming!"

Otho's distant yell broke the trance of horror that

had held Curt Newton petrified.

He flung himself upon the magnet coils that studded

the arch, endeavoring to tear loose their feed-wires. But

the tough wiring resisted his stamina.

Baffled, Captain Future lifted his heavy metal bar

and thrust it with all his strength into the complex

windings of the lowest magnet coil. He tore and twist-

ed, in frantic haste, until a flash of brilliance showed

that he had shorted and destroyed the coil.

He destroyed a second coil in the same manner. And

now the aperture of murky darkness in the door had

grown smaller. The space-strain that held the door open

was weakening!

"Hurry, Chief! They "

Otho's warning cry was suddenly cut short, at the

moment that Captain Future wrecked the third coil.

The dark opening of the door was now but a few

feet in diameter! With mingled fear and frantic revul-

sion at the insane world beyond that opening, Curt

raised his bar to hack at the fourth magnet coil.

"Earthman, stop!"

The mental command rang icily in his brain, and at

the same moment he felt his whole mind and body

frozen motionless. Ire made a superhuman mental effort

to complete his movement, but could not control a mus-

cle.

The Allus had come! Their dark, monstrous photon-

shapes were all about him, beating down his will and

resistance with all the vast mental force they possessed.

"Earthman, you die at once for this attempt."

The most awful thing was that even now, there was

no trace of so human an emotion as anger in the Allus'

mental voice nothing but icy condemnation.

"You have tried to thwart our great work, to close

the door that was so hard to open."

URT knew that he was going to die with the bitter

taste of failure in his mouth. If he'd had but a few

moments more

He stood there, frozen with the heavy bar still up-

raised in his hands, knowing that the Allus were gather-

ing their mental force to slay him in his tracks.

"Curt!"

That scream was in a girl's voice. The radiant figure

of Joan Randall had burst suddenly through the electric

wall, running toward him.

Not until later was Captain Future to know that

Querdel and Thoryx had brought Joan to the citadel just

as the Allus overpowered Grag. Not until then was he

to learn that the sudden alarm, which had brought all

the Allus to this court, had left both Grag and Joan tem-

porarily free to act.

To Curt, the girl's appearance was startling as a mir-

acle. And it was no less amazing to the Allus. The dark

masters whirled toward her shining figure.

Their startled diversion of attention: left Curt New-

ton free for an instant of their mental grasp. He felt

strength in his body once more. And instantly he com-

pleted his arrested movement to bring his bar crashing

down upon the door's fourth magnet coil.

The coil flashed and burned out. The shrunken, dark

opening of the door instantly disappeared. The weaken-

ing of one of the intersecting magnetic fields had ended

the space-strain that kept open the aperture in space.

The door to Outside was closed. The filaments

which connected the real bodies of the Allus with their

photonbeings had been severed! The sole link between

two cosmic worlds had been cut in twain.

"Curt, look!" gasped Joan,

The Allus' dark, shadowy shapes still stood all

around them. But nosy they had no movement or life.

Now they were mere clouds of photons, since the minds

that had animated them were forever cut off.

Their shadow-shapes became rapidly more tenuous,

more immaterial. They lost outline, drifted away and

dissolved into free photons, into nothingness.

"Joan, we did it!" Captain Future said hoarsely. "We

closed the door. And they'll never again get anyone on

this side to open it for them. They're penned back in the

Outside forever. They can never loot the power of our

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

universe."

From outside the flame-walled court came the tri-

umphant, booming shout of Grag.

"Chief, guess what happened! When the Allus came

rushing here and left Joan and me free, Querdel and

Thoryx tried to kill me. But they didn't!"

"I'll say they didn't!" came Otho's spluttering, excit-

ed cry. "Chief, Grag finished off both Thoryx and

Querdel!"

"Then it's all over," Captain Future whispered

wearily. "The Allus gone, the door closed, and the

tyrants of the Cometae dead."

But Joan Randall stood looking up at him. There

were tears on her strangely shining face as she contem-

plated his radiant, electric figure.

But Curt, you are a Cometae now!" she' sobbed.

"Why did you do it?"

"For the same reason that you did, Joan."

He stepped forward and took her in his arms. He had

hungered for her all this time, tortured by the knowl-

edge that he could not even touch her electric form.

But now that his life and flesh were also electrified,

now that he too was one of the radiant Cometae, there

was nothing to prevent him. And to Curt Newton, it

seemed worth all the agony of that terrible transforma-

tion, to be able to hold her close to him again.

UT there was deep dread shadowing Joan's face as

she gazed up finally in his arms.B"Curt, what if you are not able to find a way of un-

doing the transformation? Then you'll never be able to

leave the comet. You'll have to live on here as one of

the Cometae, never roaming space again."

He looked down at her steadily.

"Joan, I hope I can find the method of reversing the

change, for the sake of the Cometae people. But if I

can't, I wouldn't mind living here the rest of my life

with you."

She buried her face in his shoulder, and her voice

came to him as a muffled whisper. "I'm almost selfish

enough to hope that you don't find the way, Curt!"

CHAPTER XVI

Lost Paradise

URT NEWTON stepped back from the work that

had so intently engrossed him. He glanced around

at the group that crowded the Allus' cruciform laborato-

ry. His shining figure stooped slightly from fatigue.

"What do you think, Simon?" he asked with some anxi-

ety.

The Brain, whose strange form had been hovering

beside Captain Future and collaborating in the work,

answered with his usual deliberation.

"I don't know, lad. I think we've got the right combi-

nation of frequencies, but of course we can't be entirely

sure."

There was a pause of oppressive silence in the labo-

ratory. The Allus were gone forever from this citadel,

in which they had plotted to steal the power of a cos-

mos. But the shadowy influence of those alien beings,

about whom so little really would ever be known,

seemed to haunt the somber hails and corridors where

once they had been masters.

Like unearthly monuments to their colossal ambi-

tions towered the big, unfamiliar mechanisms of the

laboratory. And the people in the room felt patently un-

easy.

Beside the Futuremen and Joan, the group included

Marshal Ezra Gurney, Tiko Thrin, the Martian scientist,

and the shining figures of the Cometae captains, Zarn

and Aggar.

Aggar was now the chosen ruler of the Cometae. His

people had acclaimed him as such, in the wild revolu-

tion that had swept away the nobles and their guards

forever when word of the Allus' eclipse had reached

Mloon.

Weeks had passed since then. And during all that

time, Captain Future and the Futuremen had labored to

solve the enigma of the Allus' alien science. They had

disassembled and studied one after another of the dark

masters' strange machines, in the hope of learning a

method by which to reverse the circuits of the big con-

verter and use it for re-transformation of the electric

people.

Curt himself was a brilliant scientist and he had the

help of the Futuremen and of Tiko Thrin. But even so,

he had been baffled. The design and purpose of the Al-

lus' apparatus had seemed unfathomable. It was only by

long, toilsome study and experiment that they had final-

ly made a tentative rewiring of the converter.

"I believe that it swill now project forces of a fre-

quency-pattern to reverse the molecular metamorphosis

and make electrified cells normal again," Captain Fu-

ture said slowly. "But I can't be sure!"

He gazed with a tinge of doubt at the big, bar-

relshaped copper chamber and its surrounding appara-

tus.

"We had to work so much in, the dark," he added,

frowning. "We had to try to understand the designs and

thought-processes of creatures that never even belonged

to this cosmos. And if we've erred and have got the fre-

quencies wrong, this will destroy a man instead of mak-

ing him normal."

Joan touched his arm reassuringly.

"It will be all right, Curt. You've just worked too

hard on it."

Captain Future declared his resolution.

"I'm going to try, it now on myself. I won't allow

another man to take the first chance with it."

"No, Curt you musn't!" Joan cried, her eyes wide

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

with alarm. "If anything happened to you, the rest of us

would never be able to solve the problem. Let me be

the first!"

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the Brain.

"Do you think I'd let her?" protested Curt Newton.

"Not in a million years!"

Aggar settled the argument by stepping into the big

copper chamber. The new Cometae ruler bellowed in

his bluff voice:

"It's my duty to take the first risk for my people. Go

ahead and turn it on."

ELUCTANTLY Captain Future opened the switch

that fed power into the redesigned converter. He

and the others watched tensely.

Brilliant red rays streamed from the lenses above

and below, to bathe Aggar's massive figure in a weird

aura. They saw the Cometae ruler stagger from the

shock, but he remained resolutely upright.

The real shifted into orange, the orange into yellow,

as the changing frequencies of force ran down the spec-

trum. By the time the hue had reached violet, they

could see that the intrinsic electric brilliance of Aggar's

body was rapidly fading. And when he stepped out of

the chamber, he was no loner a shining figure but a nor-

mal man!

Weak and swaying, Aggar looked down at himself,

held his hands wonderingly before his eyes. A great joy

lit his eves.

"I'm a man again!" he said hoarsely. "I'm an electric

travesty no longer. I'll age and grow hungry and get sick

now, and finally I'll die. But thank the gods, until then

I'll really live!"

Captain Future was the next to undergo the meta-

morphosis. And after that gruelling ordeal, when he too

stepped out as a normal man again, Joan insisted on be-

ing next. When she emerged, Curt took her thankfully

in his arms.

"Now for my people!" Aggar roared joyfully.

"There's not one but won't want to trade back that piti-

ful electric immortality for real life!"

It proved so, indeed. The next days saw a great mi-

gration of the Cometae people along the road from

Mloon to the black citadel. They passed by day and by

night through the copper chamber, until at last the last

of the Cometae had regained normal humanity.

There were feastings and rejoicings in Moon be-

neath the coma-sky. Infants would be born again, and

the cries of children would be heard once more. The

comet people were returning to the ancient ways of

their race.

But Ezra Gurney was worried. He confided his fears

to Curt and the Futuremen.

"How in the name of Pluto's fiends are we fellows

from outside the comet goin' to get back out of it, Cap'n

Future? Our ships are still here, but we can't get 'em out

through that coma!"

"Don't worry, Ezra," Captain Future advised. "There

won't be any difficulty about that."

Nor was there. The great magnet which the Cometae

had built, under orders of the Allus, was now made the

instrument by which their ships were enabled to leave

the comet. It was not hard to alter the magnet so that it

projected a beam of reversed polarity out through the

coma's shell.

Into that beam, one by one, rose the spaceships that

had been held captive so long. And each ship, as it en-

tered the beam, seas flung out with a force as great as

that which originally had dragged it in. Each ship was

hurled through the opening made by the beam in the

coma, to find itself in the familiar void of System space

once more.

The Comet, ship of the Futuremen, was the last of

the craft to depart, for the tearful farewells of the grate-

ful Cometae had been long. But at last the Futuremen

and Ezra and Joan found themselves in space once

more.

"What a relief!" cried Otho, gazing around with

sparkling eyes at the familiar vista of black gloom and

bright stars. "I'm cursed if I ever want to go within a

hundred light-years of any comet again!"

"You'd be back there yet if it wasn't for the help of

my little dog Eek," declared Grag, proudly caressing

the moon-pup that was snuggling in his arm.

"What are you talking about?" cried Otho. "That lit-

tle pest didn't do anything but go into one panic after

another."

"Sure, and it vas Eek's wonderful faculty for getting

scared that guided us through the Allus citadel," boast-

ed Grag. "You didn't see Oog helping us any. He hasn't

enough brains to get scared like that!"

Otho began to rave, and the Brain and Ezra Gurney

intervened. Chuckling, Captain Future left them in the

control room and went back to look for Joan.

E FOUND her in the cabin, gazing intently back-

ward through a window at the brilliant flare of

Halley's Comet. It was growing rapidly smaller as their

ship throbbed toward Earth.

To Curt's surprise, he found a glimmer of tears in

her eyes when he turned her around.

"Why, Joan, what's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing I'm just foolish," she murmured. "But

I can't help feeling a little sorry to leave the comet."

He did not understand. Joan looked up at him with

deep emotion in her fine eyes.

"Out here, Curt, you belong to the whole System. I

know you love me, but duty comes first your obliga-

tion to use your scientific powers to help the System

peoples.

"But if we'd been forced to remain on the comet

world, cut off forever from the outside, nothing else

Edmond Hamilton THE COMET KINGS

would have come first for us. It could have been a par-

adise for us. But it's lost now."

Curt Newton bent and kissed her.

"Joan, don't feel like that. Some day when our work

is done, we'll find our own paradise. I know a little as-

teroid that's waiting for us. It's just like a garden. Some

day.