THE FACE OF THE DEEP

By EDMOND HAMILTON

Carried Far Outside the Solar System, and wrecked on a Volcanic Planetoid in Company with a

Shipload of Condemned Criminals, Captain Future Faces the Surpreme Test of His Courage!

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

CHAPTER I

Prison Ship

HE had been a proud ship once, a splendid,

shining liner rocketing between the planets

with laughter and music and happiness aboard. But

that had been years ago. Tonight she lay grim and

black in her dock at New York spaceport, somberly

waiting to carry damned souls to their place of

punishment.

Her name was the Vulcan and she was the

famous prison-ship of the Planet Patrol. Once a

year, she went out through the worlds upon a

fateful voyage. At each world, criminals sentenced

to life imprisonment came aboard her. The end of

the voyage was at the grim, gray Interplanetary

Prison on Cerberus, moon of Pluto.

Men in purple-striped convict dress were

shuffling now under the krypton lights' blue glare

toward the looming black hull. They were a motley

crew of vicious, hardened criminals- mostly hard-

faced Earthmen, but a few green-skinned Venusians

and red Martians.

They were guarded by vigilant, armed officers in

the black uniform of the Planet Patrol.

A girl who also wore that black uniform stood

under the lights near the ship, shaking her dark

head at her tall, redhaired male companion.

"I have to go, Curt," she was protesting. "The

Patrol is short-handed because of that trouble on

Mercury. And these criminals must be well-

guarded, for they're the most dangerous lot in the

System."

"But to send a girl as a guard-officer on that hell-

ship!" exclaimed the tall, redhaired young man

angrily. "Your Commander must be crazy."

Joan Randall, slim and dark and youthful in her

black jacket and slacks, was distractingly pretty in

her resentful denial.

"You talk as though I were a simpering

debutante who had never been off Earth before,"

she said indignantly. "Haven't I been working for

the Patrol for four years?"

Curt Newton objected. "You've been in the

Secret Service section of the Patrol. That's different

from guarding a lot of hellions on a prison ship."

His lean, space-bronzed face was sober with

anxiety, and his clear gray eyes had a worried frown

in them as he expostulated with the girl.

He did not often worry about danger, this

brilliant adventurer and scientific wizard whom the

whole System knew as Captain Future. To him and

his three comrades, the famous Futuremen, danger

wore a familiar face. They had met it countless

times in their star-roving quests to far worlds, in

their ceaseless crusade against the master-criminals

of the System.

UT danger to himself was to Curt a very

different thing than a danger that

threatened this girl he loved. That was why the tall,

redheaded planeteer bent toward her in a final

earnest appeal.

"I've got a premonition about this voyage, Joan.

A hunch, you can call it. I don't want you to go."

Her brown eyes laughed up at him. "You're

getting jumpy as a Saturnian shadow-cat, Curt.

There's no danger. Our criminals will be tightly

locked up until we reach Cerberus."

There came a startling interruption. It was the

sudden shrieking of one of the convicts who were

being marched into the ship.

He was a middle-aged Earthman, with a mass of

iron-gray hair falling disorderedly about his

haggard white face and terror-dilated eyes.

"You're taking me to death!" he was screaming

wildly, struggling with the uniformed guards.

"There's death on that ship!"

There was something peculiarly disturbing about

the wild face and crazy screams. But the alert

Planet Patrol officers guarding the line of shuffling

convicts quickly hurried the struggling prisoner

aboard.

Joan Randall's fine eyes had pity in them. "That's

Rollinger -- you remember, Doctor John Rollinger

of American University."

Captain Future nodded thoughtfully. "The

biophysicist who killed his colleague last month? I

thought his attorneys pleaded insanity?"

"They did," the girl answered. "They claimed

Rollinger's mind was wrecked by an

encephalographic experiment he carried too far. But

the prosecution claimed he was shamming. He got

life on Cerberus."

"And you're going on a voyage of weeks with

scores of others like that homicidal maniac!" Curt

Newton said, with deepened dismay. "Some of

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

them worse! I've seen the prisoner-list. Kim Ivan,

the Martian space-pirate, Moremos, that poisonous

Venusian murder-ring leader, Boraboll the Uranian,

the wiliest trickster in the System -- and dozens

more. Joan, I won't let you do it!"

Joan shook her dark head stubbornly. "It's too

late to argue about it now. All the prisoners are

aboard. We take off in five minutes."

A voice came from the darkness behind them --

a sightly hissing voice that was oddly alien in

timbre.

"What's the matter. Chief? it asked Curt.

"Haven't you talked reason into her yet?"

It was Otho, one of the three Futurmen. He and

Grag and the Brain were advancing into the circle

of light.

The three Futuremen made a spectacle so

strange that many people would have recoiled from

them in terror. But Joan was too well acpointed

with these three loyal comrades of Curt, to see any

strangeness about them.

Otho, the android, was perhaps the most human-

looking of the three. He looked, indeed, much like

an ordinary man except that his lithe body had a

curiously rubbery, boneless appearance, and his

chalk-white face and slanted green eyes held a

superhuman deviltry and mocking humor. Otho

was a man -- but a synthetic man. He had been

created in a laboratory, long ago.

Grag, the robot, had been created in that same

laboratory, in the long-dead past. But Grag had

been made of metal. He was a gigantic, manlike

metal figure, seven feet high. His metal torso and

limbs hinted his colossal strength. But the strange

face of his bulbous metal head, with its gleaming

photoelectric eyes and mechanical loudspeaker

voice-orifice, gave no sign of the intelligence and

loyalty of his complex mechanical brain.

The Brain, third of the Futuremen, was by far

the strangest. Yet he had been an ordinary human,

once. He had been Simon Wright, brilliant, aging

Earth scientist. Dying of an incurable ailment,

Wright's living brain had been removed from his

human body and transferred into a special serum

case in which it still lived, thought and acted. The

Brain now resembled a square box of transparent

metal. Upon one face of it were his protruding lens-

like eyes and microphonic ears and speech

apparatus. From compact generators inside the case

jetted the magnetic tractorbeams that enabled the

Brain to glide swiftly through the air and to handle

objects and tools.

THOUGHT," Otho was saying to Captain

Future, "that we came on this rush trip to

Earth to stop Joan from going on this crazy

assignment."

"We did, but we might a well have stayed at

home on the Moon," Curt said disgustedly. "She's

as mule-headed as -- as -- "

"As a mule," Joan finished for him, with a laugh.

Grag stepped forward. The giant metal robot

suddenly picked up Joan in his mighty arms as

though she were a doll.

"Do you want me to keep her here, Chief?" he

asked Captain Future in his deep, booming voice.

"Grag, you put me down!" stormed the girl.

"Curt, if you try to keep me here by force --"

"Put her down, Grag," growled Captain Future.

"You can reason with a Jovian marsh-elephant or a

Uranian cave-bear -- but not with a woman."

An elderly officer in the black uniform of the

Patrol was hurrying toward them from the black

ship. His grizzled face and bleak old eyes lit with

pleasure as he recognized Curt and the Futuremen.

"Come to see us off, Cap'n Future?" he asked.

"Where's your Comet?"

Marshal Ezra Gurney, veteran officer of the

Planet Patrol, was referring to the famous little ship

of he Futuremen. Curt answered by waving his

hand toward the distant, lighted pinnacle of

Government Tower.

"The Comet's up there on the tower landing-

deck. And we didn't come to see you off. I came to

dissuade Joan from going." A bell rang sharply

from the big black ship that loomed into the

darkness nearby.

"Nearly take-off time!" warned Ezra Gurney.

"Better say your goodbyes, Joan."

Joan's brown eyes danced as she kissed Curt

quickly. "For once," she laughed, "it's I who am

going to space while you stay behind and worry,

instead of the other way around."

Curt Newton could not smile. He held her, loath

to let her go.

"Joan, won't you listen --"

"Of course I'll listen -- when I get back from

Cerberus!" the girl cried gaily, slipping out of his

detaining grasp and running after Ezra toward the

ship. "See you then, Curt!" She and the white-

haired old marshal reached the gangway. A final

wave of her hand, and she disappeared into the

black vessel. "Why didn't you let me hold her back,

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Chief?" demanded Grag. "You've got to treat

women rough."

"Listen to Grag -- now he's setting up to give

advice to the lovelorn!" exclaimed Otho

witheringly.

Curt Newton paid no attention to the argument

that instantly developed. Grag and Otho were

always arguing, usually about which of them was

the most nearly human. He didn't even hear them,

now.

His eyes were upon the Vulcan. The last officers

were going aboard. The bridge-room up at the nose

of the long hull had sprung into light. Dock-hands

were hastily knocking out the holding-pins.

The vessel, with it freight of scores of dangerous

criminals, was about to take off on its long voyage.

It would zigzag out through the Solar System for

weeks, stopping at each planet to pick up more

sentenced men. It would be a long time before it

returned from the somber voyage.

There was nothing to worry about, Captain

Future told himself earnestly. The ship had made

this voyage to Cerberus many times before, and

nothing had ever gone wrong. Surely nothing

would go wrong now.

But Curt couldn't expel foreboding from his

mind. The Vulcan this time was carrying the largest

and most desperate cargo of convicts it had ever

taken. There were men aboard it who would kill

merely for pleasure, let alone to prevent their being

taken out to the grim living death of Interplanetary

Prison. And Joan Randall was one of the guards of

those human tigers!

URT NEWTON reached decision, swiftly

as he always did. He wouldn't let Joan take

such chances. If she insisted on going, then --

"I'm going, too!" Captain Future said suddenly.

He plunged toward the gangway of the ship. Over

his shoulder he called to his astonished comrades,

"Take the Comet back to the Moon and wait for

me!"

The gangway was already being drawn in. But

the Patrol officers inside halted it as they saw

Captain Future racing toward them.

The rangy, red-haired planeteer raced up the

metal gangway and stood pantingly inside the

airlock. The Patrol men looked at him amazedly.

"It's all right," Curt laughed. "I'm going with

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

you, this trip. There's no objection, is there?"

"Objection?" The swarthy young Mercurian

lieutenant flushed with pleasure. "Objection to you

coming along? I'll say there isn't!"

His eyes were sparkling with excitement. To this

young lieutenant, as to most space-men, Curt

Newton was an idolized hero.

"I'll inform Captain Theron that you and the

Futuremen are aboard, sir," he told Curt eagerly.

"That I and the Futuremen?" Curt repeated,

turning swiftly. In the airlock were Otho and big

Grag and the calmly poised Brain.

"What the devil!" exploded Captain Future. "I

told you to go back to the Moon with the Comet."

"The Comet," Otho answered coolly, "is safe

enough, locked up atop Government Tower. We're

going with you. You're not going to leave us sitting

on the Moon, twiddling our thumbs and waiting for

you."

"This is what women get you into," growled

Grag gloomily. "Now we're stuck on this craft for

weeks."

"It is certainly annoying that I shall have to

spend all that time in a ship that does not even have

a decent research laboratory," said the Brain sourly

in his rasping, metallic voice.

Captain Future was not deceived by their

grumbling. He knew that it was loyalty to himself

that had made the Futuremen instantly follow him.

The tie between himself and the three strange

comrades was old and deep. It went back to his

infancy. For when his own parents had met death in

their laboratory-dwelling on the lonely Moon, it

was these three strange beings who had become his

foster-parents.

The Brain, who had been his dead father's

colleague in research; the robot, who had been

created as an experiment by the two colleagues; and

the android, who had been similarly created -- these

three had first been Curt's tutors and guardians, and

then his comrades in the crusading adventures

which had won him the name of Captain Future.

They had followed him faithfully to far stars and

worlds. They were following him now.

"Oh, all right," Curt said, dissimulating his

feelings. "But you'll find this a pretty dull voyage."

"I wonder?" replied the Brain, his strange lens-

eyes fixed thoughtfully on Curt's face.

The Vulcan suddenly lurched upward with a roar

of bursting rocket-tubes. They clung to stanchions

as the ship took off. Swiftly, it screamed up through

Earth's atmosphere into the vast and shoreless sea

of space.

The young Mercurian lieutenant started with

them through the ship toward the bridge-room. As

they left the airlock, they met Joan Randall. Her

jaw dropped ludicrously at sight of them. Then her

eyes grew stormy.

"You came along! As though I were a baby who

needed watching over! Curt Newton, I won't stand

for it!"

" Afraid you'll have to, darling," grinned Curt.

"We're already at least ten thousand miles away

from Earth."

She was still protesting indignantly as they went

forward through the mid-deck of the ship. This was

the prison-cell deck. Along its main corridor were

the barred doors of scores of cells. From behind the

bars, convicts glared like caged wolves a they

passed.

SQUAT, evil-faced Jovian in one of the

cells set up a roar as he saw Curt and his

comrades pass.

"It's Captain Future, mates!" he shouted. "He's

aboard!" A raging tumult instantly arose. Threats,

maledictions, oaths, were hurled at the Futurermen

as they passed along the corridor.

Not a criminal in the System but had good

reason to hate the name of Captain Future. He had

sent many an evil-doer out to the gray inferno of

Interplanetary Prison to which these men were

destined.

The tumult rose. The senseless shrieks of the

madman Rollinger added weirdly to it. Captain

Future's bronzed face was coolly imperturbable as

he strode along. He seemed unaware of the raging

voices. Then as he glimpsed a sudden flash of

movement beside him, he yelled a warning.

"Look out -- your pistol!" he cried to the

Mercurian lieutenant.

A Venusian convict in one of the cells had

hurled out through his barred door a little noose

improvised from his belt. The loop had settled

around the hilt of the Mercurian lieutenant's belt-

weapon. The Venusian tugged hard, snatching the

atom-pistol toward himself as Future shouted.

Captain Future spun and charged that cell-door

with superhuman speed. The Venusian had got the

pistol into his hands. His blazing black eyes looked

over its sights at Curt, with deadly purpose.

Curt ducked and flung up his hand in an oddly

slicing gesture at the convict's arm. The crash of

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

blasting white fire from the atom-pistol grazed over

his head and fused a patch in the metal ceiling.

Next moment, Curt had got hold of the

Venusian's arm through the bars and had wrenched

hard. The gun clattered to the floor. He picked it up

and grimly returned it to the scared young

Mercurian lieutenant.

"Next time, keep your holster buttoned when

you walk through this for corridor," Curt advised

him meaningly.

"Next time I'll get you, Future!" hissed the

Venusian convict, nursing his wrenched arm and

glaring his hatred through the bars.

"It's that devil, Moremos," volunteered the

shaken young Patrol officer. "Only he would have

thought of a trick like that."

"Oh, Curt -- I wish you hadn't come," breathed

Joan. Her brown eyes were shadowed by dread.

"They all hate you so terribly."

Raging threats were following Curt Newton and

the others as they went on along the prison-deck.

But the bellowing order of a huge Martian in one of

the cells put a period to the tumult.

"Silence, you space-scum!" roared the big

scarred-face red convict. "You hear? Kim Ivan

orders it."

The uproar quieted almost magically. It was as

though all the convicts recognized authority in the

notorious Martian pirate's command.

But one voice remained unquieted. The uncanny

shriek of John Rollinger still reached their ears as

they left the prison-deck.

"There's death here!" the mad Earthman was still

screaming. "I tell you, there's death on this ship!"

CHAPTER II

Attacked

THE Vulcan was no

more than a billion miles

from Neptune when the

real trouble came.

For many days, the

black ship had droned out

through the System on a

zig-zag course. At Mars,

Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus

it had stopped, to pick up

more sentenced criminals.

Now, with more than two

hundred convicts aboard,

it headed for Neptune, the

last stop before reaching Pluto and the prison

moon.

Nothing untoward had yet occurred to justify

Captain Future's premonition. The convicts

imprisoned down in the cell-deck had growled and

grumbled, but seemed reconciled to their grim fate.

Yet Curt Newton had not been entirely reassured.

Upon the first day of the voyage, he had voiced his

doubts.

"They're too quiet," he declared. "They shut up

like magic when that fellow Kim Ivan ordered them

to."

"Well, that there big Martian swings a lot of

weight with them," drawled Ezra Gurney. "He was

one of the biggest pirate leaders before the Patrol

caught him."

"Even so, that bunch of tough criminals wouldn't

obey him now without a reason," Curt insisted.

"You think they've hatched up some scheme of

escape?" asked Captain Theron anxiously.

Captain Jhel Theron, who had command of the

navigational operation of the Vulcan, was a veteran

of the Patrol. He was a tall, grave-eyed Uranian,

bald like most of the men of that planet, his saffron

skin darkened by years of exposure to the

unsoftened radiation of space.

He and his next of rank, Lieutenant K'kan of

Mars, commanded an operational crew that

comprised three pilots, a chief engineer and two

assistants, three space-mechanics and four deck-

hands.

Distinct from these fifteen members of the

operational crew were the guards of the convicts.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Marshal Ezra Gurney was guard-commander, with

Joan Randall and young Rih Quili of Mercury as

his sub-officers. They commanded eight non-coms

of the Patrol, who watched over the convicts.

Curt Newton and the Futuremen had gathered

with Ezra and Joan and the captain in the chart-

room just abaft the bridge.

"I don't say Kim Ivan is plotting anything," Curt

answered the captain's question. "But I do say that

if he had something in his mind, he'd prevent the

convicts from staging any premature outbreak -- as

he has."

Ezra Gurney snorted. "Cap'n Future. I got all the

respect in the world for your judgment, but this

time I think you're chasin' comets. How the devil

can Kim Ivan or anybody else pull off anything,

when they're locked up tight in cells that they won't

leave till we reach Cerberus?"

"Men can get out even a chromaloy cell, if they

have the right tools," Curt answered significantly.

"And men like Kim Ivan and that snake Moremos

had criminal friends who would have been glad to

smuggle things to them."

"Not a chance!" Ezra affirmed. "I'll stake my life

that not one of those space-scum has any kind of

tool or instrument."

"You searched them when they were brought

aboard?" Curt asked.

"What kind of amateur outfit do you think the

Patrol is?" Ezra demanded injuredly. "O' course we

searched them. We used the X-Ray 'scanner' on

each convict as he was brought into the ship."

"Did you 'scan' the cells, too, to make certain

that nothing had been planted in them?" Captain

Future asked keenly.

"No, we didn't do that, but there wasn't any need

to," the old marshal declared. "The Vulcan was

always under guard, and nothin' could have been

planted in her."

"Nevertheless, I'd like to use the 'scanner' on the

cells now," Curt said. "Any objection?"

"Oh, no, if it'll ease your mind any," growled

Ezra. He glanced winkingly at Joan as he added,

"You're sure takin' a lot of precautions, Cap'n

Future. Must be somebody aboard you're worried

about."

RAG and Otho, bored by the discussion,

had got into one of their interminable

arguments. Curt left them with Joan, and went

down with Captain Theron and Ezra and the Brain

to conduct his inspection.

The Vulcan, as a former small liner, was built

along standard lines. It had three main decks, one

above the other. Top-deck held the big bridge-

room, the operational and chart rooms, and officer

quarters. The little cabins occupied by the Patrol

officers and by the Futuremen were in the rear part

of this deck.

The mid-deck, which had formerly contained

passenger cabins, had been redesigned into a cell-

deck. Entrance to it was only through two massive

chromaloy doors, one fore and one aft. Both were

locked and had guards posted outside them at all

hours.

The cyc-deck, as the lower deck of a liner was

usually called, was a noisy, crowded place. It's fore

part was crowded with fuel tanks and supply-

rooms, and the whole stern of this lowest deck was

the big cyc-room in which the huge atomic

generators droned away to feed streams of atomic

power to the great rocket-tubes.

Captain Future and Simon and the captain

followed the old marshal down the zigzag

companionway to the fore door of the mid-deck. It

was locked, and two armed Patrol officers stood

guard outside it.

"Open her up an' bring the X-Ray 'scanner',"

Ezra Gurney drawled to the guards. "We're goin' to

run a little inspection."

The "scanner" was brought by one guard while

the other unlocked the massive door. The

instrument looked like a powerful searchlight,

beside which was mounted an eyepiece that

resembled binocular tubes.

When Curt Newton entered the cell-deck

corridor with the others, a low, muttering growl ran

along the crowded cells. It quickly sudsided, but the

caged criminals glared in silent hate at the tall,

redhaired planeteer who was the greatest enemy of

their kind.

"You can see that these cell-doors can only be

opened by the outside control," Ezra Gurney was

saying to Curt. "Furthermore, this whole deck, like

the other compartments of the ship, can be

exhausted of air by the master-valves up in the

bridge-room. If these fellows started anythin', we

could kill 'em all in five minutes and they know it."

"You certainly must admit that there is no

chance of a break here, Captain Future," said

Captain Theron relievedly.

"It's a good, tight set-up," Curt admitted.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"Nevertheless, I'd like to 'scan' the cells. Wheel the

machine along, will you, Ezra?"

He began his X-Ray inspection of each cell

along the corridor. The, searchlight projector of the

scanner flooded each cell in turn with invisible

Roentgen rays. Through the fluoroscopic eyepiece,

Curt Newton could have seen the tiniest scrap of

metal in the cells.

But there was nothing. The gray-clad convicts

had not even any metal in their plastic belt-buckles

or shoes. Even their dishes, water-jugs and eating

utensils were of soft fiber or unbaked clay.

Curt paused as he reached John Rollinger's cell.

The mad Earthman had been confined in a cell to

himself. He sat muttering in a corner, paying no

attention to Captain Future's inspection.

"Hello, Rollinger -- how are you feeling?" Curt

asked him.

The ex-scientist stared at him, but made no

answer. His haggard face and peculiarly burning

eyes gave them all a creepy sensation.

"Hate to see a man with his mind shot like that,"

muttered Ezra in a low voice. " 'Specially, a man as

brilliant as he was."

John Rollinger had been a famous biophysicist,

Curt knew. He had specialized in encephalographic

research, testing the effect of various form of

radiation upon the human brain. Boldly using

himself as a subject, he was supposed to have

shattered his mind in his experiment.

"I wonder if he's really as mad as he looks,"

Captain Theron said skeptically. "The prosecution

at his trial maintained he killed his colleague in a

quarrel, and then used faked insanity to excuse

himself."

"Well, if he's fakin', it hasn't done him much

good," Ezra shrugged. "They sentenced him to

Cerberus just the same, for a homicidal maniac has

to be locked up just the same as a deliberate killer."

OREMOS, the slender and wiry

Venusian murderer in the next cell,

glared at Captain Future in silent hatred as his cell

was "scanned."

But Kim Ivan, the big, battered Martian who

shared a neighboring cell with Boraboll, fat

Uranian swindler, greeted Curt with a calm grin.

"Nice of you to come down and visit us boys,

Future," said the big pirate. His froglike grin

deepened. "Looking for something special?" Curt

scanned that cell twice running before he answered.

But there was no tool, instrument or tiniest scrap of

metal anywhere in it, nothing whatever hidden. He

looked up at the grinning pirate.

"You've kept things here pretty quiet, Kim," he

remarked. "You seem to have the others pretty well

under control."

"Sure, I won't let 'em start any trouble," Kim

Ivan affirmed. "I'm a peace-loving man, that's why."

Ezra snorted. "A peace-loving man who led the

biggest pirate band since Rok Olor was on the

loose."

The big pirate laughed. "Aw, that's all over and

done with now. I tell the boys, what's the use of

beating our brains out against these bars, when all

it'll get us is six months' solitary when we reach

Cerberus."

Curt Newton finished his close inspection of the

cells. When they had gone back of the cell-deck,

and its massive door was again locked and under

guard, Ezra Gurney challenged him.

"Didn't find anythin', did you?"

"No, not a thing," Curt admitted. "There's no

tool or weapon of any kind hidden in those cells,

that's sure."

"We Patrol men ain't as sleepy as you seem to

think," the old marshal told him. "Those birds are

safe till we reach Cerberus, never fear."

His apprehension somewhat dispelled, Curt had

felt less worried about Joan's safety during the long

days of the voyage that followed. At each world

where they stopped, the new prisoners brought,

aboard were thoroughly scanned. But no attempt to

smuggle tools or weapons was detected.

Now they were drawing near to Neptune. The

eighth planet was still more than a billion miles

ahead, but that was only a few days of travel at the

great speed with which the Vulcan was flying

through space.

At dinner in the officers' mess that "evening"

before the night watch, Ezra commented upon their

approaching stop at the Water World.

"Remember last time you Futuremen an' Joan an'

I were out here, Cap'n Future? It was when we were

after the Wrecker."

Curt nodded grimly. "I'm not likely to forget

what happened to me on Neptune that time, up in

the Black Isles."

"Can you tell us about it, Captain Future?"

eagerly asked Rih Quili, the young Mercurian

lieutenant, with hero-worship in his voice.

"Some other time," evaded Curt, unwilling to

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

recall near-tragic memories.

"We've all finished dinner now."

"I ha-haven't finished my p-p-prunes," hastily

stuttered George McClinton, the chief engineer.

There was a burst of laughter. McClinton, a

lanky, spectacled, stammering young Earthman,

was the butt of constant jokes because of his

inordinate fondness for prunes. He always kept his

pocket full of dried ones, which he munched

ceaselessly as he supervised the cyc-room.

"If we wait till you have enough prunes, we'll be

here forever," Ezra said dryly, getting up. "I'm goin'

to turn in."

When Curt and Joan and Otho went to the

bridge-dack, they found Grag leaning against a

section of glassite window and looking

disconsolately back toward Earth. The big robot

turned to them.

"I wonder how Eek is getting along, back

home," Grag said anxiously. "I wish I had brought

him with me."

EK was a queer little interplanetary animal

that was Grag's mascot. Otho had a

somewhat similar pet, which he called Oog. Both

pets had been left in the Futuremen's Moon-

laboratory when they had flown to Earth on the

errand that had unexpectedly resulted in this long

voyage.

"Eek will be all right, Grag," reassured Curt.

"The automatic feeding-arrangement in the Moon-

laboratory will keep him fat and happy."

"I know, but he'll nearly die of loneliness

because I'm not there," Grag affirmed. "He's such a

sentimental little fellow."

"Sentimental? That miserable little moon-pup?"

cried Otho jeeringly. "Why, all that little pest

knows is to eat and sleep. He has about as much

sentiment in him as a Venusian fish."

Grag swung wrathfully on the android. "Why,

you cockeyed rubber imitation of a man, if you

slander little Eek like that again, I'll --"

Captain Future and Joan, chuckling, left them to

the inevitable argument which might go on now for

an hour. It was the favorite method of passing time

for Grag and Otho, to find new insults for each

other. Curt and the girl went back to a deck-

window out of earshot.

The silence of the night watch reigned over the

ship. Its cycs and rocket-tubes had been cut, for its

speed of inertia was now great. In an unnatural

stillness the Vulcan rushed on and on through the

vast. star-decked vault toward the distant green

speck of Neptune.

The vista from their window was a magnificent

one. The golden eyes of a million million suns

steadily watched the soundless rushing ship. Jupiter

was a white blob away back to the left, and the sun

itself was only a little, fiery disk far astern. Far out

in the void, they could glimpse a tiny red light

creeping Sunward across the starry background.

"That will be the bi-weekly Pluto-Earth liner,"

remarked Curt Newton.

Joan's brown eyes watched wistfully. "Don't you

wish we were aboard her, Curt? There'll be lights,

music, dancing."

Curt looked down at her. "What's the matter,

Joan? Is this trip getting on your nerves?"

She smiled ruefully. "A little, I'm afraid. We're

so different from any other ship, with our cargo of

human misery and hate. I wake up sometimes

dreaming that the Vulcan will sail on like this

forever."

Curt nodded soberly. "Like the dead space-ship

in Oliver Owen's poem. Remember?

" 'Darkling she drifts toward the

outer dark,

Silently falling, into eternity.'"

"Beautiful, but depressing," Joan said, with a

little shudder. She turned away. "I'm going to turn

in, too. I have the guard-command in the next

watch."

Captain Future went back to his own little cabin.

The Brain was there, his square case resting

quiescent upon a small table. But Simon did not

look up or speak when he entered. His lens-eyes

stared unseeingly.

Curt knew that the Brain was deep in one of his

unfathomable reveries of speculation. Simon's cold,

intellectual mind could lose itself for hours in

contemplation of scientific problems. It was his

method of relaxation when he had no laboratory for

his endless researches.

Curt Newton slept soundly. Yet when he

suddenly awakened an hour later, it was with every

nerve thrillingly alert. He listened. The big ship was

still rushing silently on through the vast deeps of

space.

Then to his ears came suddenly the sound of

distant yells and the crash of atom-guns. Instantly

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Curt was out of his bunk and plunging across the

cabin toward the door.

"Something's wrong! If the prisoners --"

The words died on his lips as he burst out into

the corridor. A mass of gray-clad convict were

pouring into the fore end of the passage, In their

front rank was Moremos, the Venusian murderer,

grasping an atom-gun.

He aimed instantly at Captain Future. And Joan

Randall, who was emerging hastily from her cabin,

was plunging directly into the line of his aim.

CHAPTER III

Jailbreak

DOWN in the cell-

deck, a few hours before,

an odd atmosphere of,

tension gripped the scores

of prisoners as the night-

watch began.

The massive doors at

the fore and aft ends of the

deck had been and locked

by the Patrol officers, who

were now standing guard,

outside them. A few

uranite bulbs in the ceiling

cast a vague, dim light

upon the shining chromaloy bars and the shadowed,

brutal faces behind them.

The hissing whisper of Moremos traveled along

the row of barred doors. The Venusian's sibilant

voice was silkily vicious as he addressed the big

Martian pirate in a neighboring cell.

"We're only three or four days out of Neptune --

I heard a guard say so today. I thought you were

going to get us out of here before we reached

Neptune, Kim Ivan?"

"Yes, what about it, Kim?" asked a squat Jovian

killer's rumbling voice. "You've been telling us all

the way to keep quiet and that you'd manage a

break, but you haven't done anything yet."

"He's just been stringing us along to keep us

quiet," accused the quavering voice of a white-

haired, rial-chewing Saturnian, a hoary old sinner

named Thuhlus Thuun. "I'll lay that the Patrol men

put him up to giving us that story ."

A fierce, low babble of accusations, threats and

demands instantly arose from the prisoners. All

were addressed to the big Martian.

Then Kim Ivan's deep voice cut through the

babble, in low, harsh command. "Cut your blasts,

you chattering space-monkeys! Do you want the

guards coming in here?"

The authority in his voice, the authority that had

made this towering Martian one of the great pirate

leaders of his time, again silenced them.

"I said I'd stage a break, and I will," Kim Ivan

continued harshly. "And what's more, tonight's the

night for it."

An electric spark of excitement seemed to leap

along the crowded cells at his statement. The voices

broke out again, but in eager questions now.

"What's your plan, Kim? How are you going to

get us out of these cursed cells"

"You'll soon find out," the big Martian

promised. "Now shut off your cycs and keep quiet

while I start."

The prisoners instantly became still, though all

pressed against the bars of their cells in a surge of

sudden hope. The only sound was the low,

monotonous muttering from the cell of John

Rollinger.

Kim Ivan turned to his cell-mate. His fellow

prisoner was Boraboll the swindler, a fat Uranian

whose moon-like yellow face was ludicrous as he

gaped at the big Martian.

"Kim, can you really do it?" he squeaked. "How

are you so much as going to get out of this cell,

when you have nothing to work with?"

"I have all I need," Kim Ivan replied. "My old

pals on the outside smuggled the stuff to me, before

we ever left Earth, It's hidden right here in the cell

with us."

"Are you crazy?" gasped Boraboll. "There's

nothing hidden in here, not so much as a pin. The

X-Ray scanner would have detected it if there was."

"The cursed scanner wouldn't ever find my

equipment," Kim Ivan replied, with a chuckle. He

was stripping off his gray convict jacket, and there

was a look of triumph on his massive, battered face

as he added, "I've got wit enough to outsmart the

Patrol, every time."

Boraboll watched him, open-mouthed. The big

Martian had filled the biggest of their soft food-

dishes with water from the fiber jug. Now Kim Ivan

tore a sleeve off his jacket, and bent over the dish

of water.

"Cell-crazy!" muttered the fat Uranian to himself

with sudden conviction. "He's gone clear cell-crazy.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"He's as delirious as Rollinger."

Kim Ivan wadded up the sleeve of his jacket and

thrust it into the dish of water. He turned around,

with a sharp command.

"Now hand me that salt." Pityingly, Boraboll

handed him the little fiber container of salt. Kim

Ivan took it and squatted down, waiting and

watching the dish.

Gradually, a curious change came over the water

in that dish. It turned blue, as though it had

dissolved some dye or chemical in the jacket-sleeve

that was immersed in it. Kim Ivan waited until the

water was a dark blue color, before taking out the

wadded sleeve.

"Now the reagent," muttered the big Martian,

and poured a carefully estimated quantity of salt

into the dark blue liquid.

The blue liquid began to seethe and boil, and

turned dark purple. Kim Ivan's massive face flashed

a light of triumph.

"It works!" he muttered exultantly. "Boraboll,

we're as good as out of here right now."

"But what is that stuff?" Boraboll stammered,

looking bewilderedly at the seething purple liquid.

"It's an acid that eats through the toughest metal

as though it were cheese," the big Martian retorted.

"The basic elements of the acid were mixed by a

smart outside chemist into a gluey mixture that was

soaked into a regulation convict jacket, and then

dried. The jacket was smuggled in to me by my

outside pals, along with plans of this ship."

He chuckled as he added, "The scanner couldn't

show the chemicals soaked into my jacket. But they

needed only to be dissolved into water, and then to

have ordinary sodium chloride added to the

solution, to form one of the most powerful metal

acids known. Now watch it work!"

Kim Ivan picked up the vessel of seething liquid,

and carefully poured a trickle of it upon the cross-

bars of the cell's barred door.

The purple liquid foamed and hissed, eating

swiftly into the tough chromaloy bars. Careful to

avoid splashing himself with the acid, the Martian

pirate continued the operation. In a few moments,

the crossbars were eaten through. He put down the

bowl of acid, and lifted out a whole section of the

door. Then he squeezed out into the corridor.

"Kim, how did you do it?" came the excited,

wondering exclamation of Grabo, the squat Jovian

criminal across the corridor.

"Can you get the rest of us out, too?" Moremos

asked swiftly. A chorus of amazement and excited

hope was rising from the rest of the convicts. Kim

Ivan quieted it with a wave of his big hand.

"Take it easy! I'll soon have you out of those

cursed cages."

The cell-doors did not have indidual locks. They

were all secured by a master electro-lock whose

controls were outside the cell-deck.

But Kim Ivan knew what he was doing. He

secured his receptacle of purple acid and stooped

over a certain section of the corridor floor.

"The main wiring for the electro-locks runs

under here," he muttered. "If the ship plans my pals

sent me are right."

He used a trickle of the acid to burn out a two-

foot section of the metal floor-plate. This exposed

the tangle of wiring inside the floor. Kim Ivan

studied it for several minutes, then began working

with the wires.

Presently, his work bore results. With a loud

clicking, all the locks of the scores of cell-doors

drew their bolts. He had actuated the master control

of the locks.

The convicts swarmed instantly out into the

corridor. Brutal faces of Earthmen, Venusians,

Jovians, Saturnians blazed with fierce hope.

"You've done wonders, Kim," Moremos

applauded tensely. "But now what?"

"Now," answered the big Martian with a flash in

his eyes, "we're going to seize the ship! Then ho for

freedom!"

"The Patrol will hunt us down no matter where

we go, once they find out we've seized the Vulcan,"

muttered fat Boraboll doubtingly.

"Don't worry, I've got a plan," reassured the

Martian. "The Patrol will never catch up to us

where I'm figuring on going."

Tuhlus Thuun, the hoary old Saturnian pirate,

spat rial juice on the floor and demanded, "How're

we going to grab the ship? We're locked on this

deck, with Patrol men on guard outside both

doors."

Kim Ivan grinned. "There's another way out of

here. The ship-plans showed that when this craft

was a liner, it had an emergency escape-hatch

leading from this passenger-deck to the top-deck.

The hatch was walled shut when they made this a

prison ship. But I know where it is."

E APPROACHED a blank section of

metal wall between two cells midway inH

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

the main corridor. Motioning the others

peremptorily to stand back, the Martian poured his

remaining purple acid upon that wall.

The liquid hissed and burned into the metal

panel. In a few moments, it had eaten out a big

section. Through the hole they looked into a dark,

small escape-hatch whose ladders ran up toward the

top-deck.

Kim Ivan faced the swarming, eager convicts

grimly. "Now listen to me. I'm running this show,

and anyone who doesn't like that can speak up right

now."

There was no challenge to the authority of the

towering, hard-faced Martian pirate. But a shrill

voice back in the throng laughed wildly.

"It's only that crazy Rollinger," muttered

Moremos. He viciously shoved the staring, mad-

eyed Earthman back into his cell.

"This hatch will let us out into the forepart of the

top-deck," Kim Ivan continued rapidly. "We'll jump

first on the ship officers on duty in the bridge and

chart-rooms. Once we have their guns, we can

overpower the others before they're awake enough

to know what's going on. But no massacre --

undertand?"

Moremos' green face stiffened. "You mean we're

not to blast down that devil Captain Future? He and

his cursed Futuremen have sent plenty of our pals

to Cerberus!"

A low growl of agreement came from the other

convicts.

"You blockheads, they are the most valuable

hostages we could have aboard, if we're not fools

enough to kill them!" lashed Kim Ivan. "And we

may need hostages once the Patrol starts hunting

us."

His grim reminder silenced them. "Now come

on!" the big Martian exclaimed. "If luck's with us,

we'll pull off a feat that'll go down in pirate

history!"

The mutineers poured up the escape-hatch after

their big leader. Kim Ivan opened the unsealed door

at its top, and they emerged with a sudden rush into

the top-deck just behind the chart-room.

Two pilots were on duty in the bridge ahead, and

Lieutenant K'kan was checking the drift-gauges in

the chart-room. The young Martian second officer

turned, appalled, and then reached swiftly toward

an alarm-button.

Kim Ivan's balled fist knocked him senseless

before he could press the button. Old Tuhlus Thuun

eagerly snatched up the officer's atom-pistol.

"Get that pilot, Grabo!" yelled the Martian

leader furiously.

One of the two pilots had evaded the Jovian

criminal and his group who had burst into the

bridge. The pilot, with a yell, was darting back

through the chart-room to escape.

Crash! The fiery blast from old Tuhlus Thuun's

gun cut the man down in mid-stride.

The old Saturnian cackled. "Ain't my aim yet!

First man I've led down for two years."

"You old fool, there wasn't any need that!" raged

Kim Ivan. I told you to --

Crash! Crash!

"Where the devil's the Moremos?" cried the

Martian furiously, striding hastily back toward the

main corridor of the top-deck.

Boraboll answered, his moon-like yellow face

muddy with fear. "Moremos killed Captain Theron

with his own gun! He and the others have gone

back for the Futuremen!"

"I might have known that murderous Venusian

couldn't hold his trigger!" roared Kim Ivan. "Come

on!"

They burst into the top-deck longitudinal

corridor, stumbling over the slain bodies of Captain

Theron, a Patrol guard and a deck-hand.

CHAPTER IV

Trapped

A TENSE tableau met

their eyes. Ahead of them,

Moremos and a half-

dozen other mutineers

were charging the stern

corridor. Captain Future's

tall figure had just burst

out of his cabin, and the

Venusian murderer was

raising his gun to fire at

the hated planeteer.

Curt Newton's draw

was the swiftest in the

Solar System. His proton-

pistol came out of his holster with the speed of

light. Yet he could not fire, for Joan at this moment

emerged into the corridor. She was between him

and the Venusian.

"Joan, get back!" he yelled to her. She hesitated

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

dazedly. Curt couldn't fire at the Venusian while

she stood between them. But Moremos, who had no

interest in the girl's safety, was going to shoot!

Curt's desperate expedient came with such

lightning speed that it seemed an instinctive

reaction rather than a deliberate decision.

He fired the blazing white bolt of his weapon,

aiming at the metal wall of the corridor beside

Joan. Most of the energy of the oblique blast

burned into the wall. But a part of that blazing blast

of force was reflected and deflected on along the

corridor toward the mutineers.

The deflected blast was not strong enough to be

fatal. But it was enough to scorch and daze

Moremos and the others. They recoiled.

Captain Future lunged forward, swept Joan

behind him, and triggered swiftly.

His blasts cut down two of the men beside

Moremos. The Venusian and the others hastily

darted back out of the corridor.

"Holy space-imps, what's going on?" It was

Otho, his green eyes blazing and his proton-gun in

his hand, who had emerged with Grag from the

cabin they shared. Ezra Gurney, too, was

scrambling startledly out.

"Mutiny!" Curt Newton cried. His voice was

bitter with self-reproach. "Just what I feared, and

yet I let it happen."

OUNG Rih Quili, the Mercurian

lieutenant, and another Patrol officer had

wakened and come out to join them.

A stentorian voice echoed back to their little

group from the fore part of the top-deck. It

reverberated along the corridors.

"Future, will you and the others surrender? You

haven't got a chance. We hold the bridge and

control the ship."

"That's Kim Ivan," gritted Ezra. His thin hand

clenched upon his atom-gun and he started forward.

"I'll show that cursed Martian!"

Grag and Otho started forward with him, but

Curt Newton held them back. "Don't be foolish!

There're scores of convicts up there and they've got

all the guns in the arsenal by now. They' d get us no

matter how many of them we got first."

He glanced swiftly around, his gray eyes

snapping. "We can't stay here. They'll come up the

aft companionway, and then they'll have us caught

between them. We'd better retreat down the aft stair

to the cyc-room. If we can hold the cyc-room

against them, we'll get the upper hand over them

yet."

"I get it!" exclaimed Otho. "If we hold the cyc-

room, we can keep the cycs shut off and prevent

them from taking the ship anywhere save Neptune."

Hastily, the little party entered the aft

companionway and went down its short, zigzag

stair to the lowest deck of the Vulcan.

The big cyc-room took up the whole rear half of

this deck. It was crowded with machinery -- the

huge, massive, cylindrical cyclotrons, the tangle of

fuel pipes and power-leads, the squat generators of

the auxiliary drive whose vibration-thrust was used

only in emergencies.

George McClinton ran bewilderedly toward

them. The lanky young chief engineer had

apparently just been aroused from his nearby bunk

by the Neptunian engineer on duty. He was

automatically popping a dried prune into his mouth,

as his spectacled eyes blinked at them amazedly.

"Wh-what's going on?" he stammered. "Orluk

says that he h-h-heard shooting --"

"The cursed convicts have grabbed the bridge-

room and upper decks!" answered Ezra Gurney, his

faded eyes still raging.

C APTAIN FUTURE was snapping orders.

"Grag, you and Rih Quili lock the fore door and

watch it. Otho, take the aft door."

"You're not h-hurt, are you, M-m-miss Randall?"

the prune-loving engineer was asking anxiously of

Joan.

"I'm all right," she said. "But I've failed in my

duty. This is the first time there has ever been a

break on the Vulcan."

"It's more my fault than yours or Ezra's," Curt

said bitterly. "I felt all along that that desperate

bunch might try something. That's why I came

along and took all the precautions I could. But they

somehow outsmarted me."

There was a loud hammering at the fore and aft

doors of the cyc-room. The mutineers had

apparently discovered the whereabouts of the

group.

"They can't break in here," Ezra muttered

hopefully. "They know if they do, we'll blast 'em

down as fast as they come through the door."

Curt was searching the crowded cyc-room with

intent gray eyes. "Are there any space-suits down

here?" he asked McClinton.

"N-n-no," stuttered the lanky engineer

wonderingly. "Suits aren't ever k-kept down here,

for there's n-n-no need for them here."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"We'll need them pretty quickly, if my guess is

right," Curt exclaimed. He pointed at two big

valves inset in niches in the thick wall of the cyc-

room. "Those are air-exhaust valves, controlled

from the bridge-room. They're part of the valve

system designed to make possible the exhaustion of

air from any section of the ship."

"Good God, I forgot all 'bout those exhausts!"

cried Ezra, aghast. "They were intended to enable

the ship's commander to quell any convict mutiny

in any part of the ship. If the convicts learn about

'em and turn 'em against us --"

"They will, and quickly," Curt snapped. "That

Kim Ivan seems to know all about this ship. Can

we fix those valves to keep them from being

opened?"

"There's n-n-no way!" answered McClinton,

paling. "Operation of the v-v-valves is all by r-r-

remote control through w-wires in the w-walls."

"Then we've got to weld metal patches over the

valve-niches -- and quickly!" Captain Future cried.

"You've got atomic welding-torches here? Get them

out, and bring some sheet metal stock."

As they started to work with the sputtering

atomic torches to cut metal patches that would seal

the exhaust-valve openings, the hammering on the

doors ceased.

Grag, Otho, Rih Quili and Ezra remained on

guard inside those doors while Curt and McClinton

worked hastily.

Before they had even cut out the first metal

patch, a loud voice bellowed through the cyc-room.

It came from the interphone that connected with the

bridge.

"Captain Future!" it bellowed.

"This is Kim Ivan talking. We've taken the

whole ship except the cyc-room. You haven't a

chance. Unless you open the fore door and toss out

your atom-guns, I'm going to open the cyc-room

exhaust-valves."

"That Martian devil!" gritted Ezra Gurney

furiously. "He knew about the valve-system, all

right."

"What about it, Future?" bellowed the Martian's

voice. "I'm going to give you two minutes. Unless

you agree by then, the valves open!"

Stricken by the threat, the others looked at Curt.

His bronzed-face was a taut mask as he assessed

their hopeless situation.

HEY could not seal the deadly valves in

two minutes. That job would take a half

hour, at least. Long before they finished it, the

valves would be opened and the air would puff out

of the cyc-room, slaying them all.

"They've got the doors locked on the other side

now, chief!" Otho reported.

"So we can't come out fighting," Curt gritted.

His eyes swung to Joan. Then he stepped to the

interphone. "Captain Future speaking, Kim Ivan!

What assurance have we that if we do surrender

you won't blast down every one of us?"

"If I wanted to kill you, I could do it right now

by opening the cyc-room exhaust valves," retorted

Kim Ivan. "I want to keep you for hostages. If the

Patrol catches up to us, you'll be valuable to us. I

give you my word that if you surrender, none of

you will be harmed."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Curt looked at the others in his silent group.

"You all heard. What's your decision?"

"Looks like there ain't any choice," muttered

Ezra somberly. "We can either die right now, or

accept Kim Ivan's proposition. It's to his interest to

keep us alive as hostages, all right. An', black-

hearted pirate though he is, he's got the reputation

of keepin' his word."

Captain Future and the Futuremen might have

taken their chance and refused surrender, by

themselves. But to sentence Joan to death?

Curt's mind was decided by the threat to the girl.

He turned and spoke slowly into the interphone.

"All right, Kim Ivan. We agree."

HE words were bitter in his mouth. It was

almost the first time the Futurernen had

acknowledged defeat and made quiet surrender.

Otho's eyes were blazing, and Grag's huge metal

figure was still rigidly ready for action.

But the Brain's chill, logical mind approved.

"It is all we can do," rasped Simon. "While we

live, we have a chance of reversing the situation."

Curt unlocked the fore-door, which had now

been unbolted outside also. Silently, he cast their

atom-guns out onto the landing.

Instantly, convicts appeared out there and

snatched up the weapons. Then the fierce, exultant

crowd swarmed into the cyc-room with Kim Ivan's

towering figure leading them.

The big Martian's battered red face was jovial

with high good humor at his success. But

Moremos, the Venusian, glared at the Futuremen

with a hatred reflected on the fierce faces of most

of the other mutineers.

Curt ignored the threat in their tigerish stare.

"What have you done with Captain Theron and the

others?" he demanded.

Kim Ivan looked uncomfortable. "They're dead,

all except four crewmen. I told the boys there didn't

need to be any killing, but they didn't follow my

orders. That's your fault, Moremos."

Moremos had a sneer on his emerald-hued face

as he answered the Martian. "You're too chicken-

hearted, Kim. If I had my way, we'd blast down all

the rest of them right now. Why should we let

Future and his pals live, when we've got a chance to

wipe them out?"

The Venusian's venomous words kindled

explosive agreement among the majority of the

mutineers.

"Moremos is right!" roared Grabo, the squat

Jovian. "Future and his bunch have sent lots of

good lads to Cerberus. Now we can pay 'em off."

Kim Ivan's bull bellow rose above the fierce

tumult. "I'm giving the orders here and I say we

don't kill these prisoners."

His voice rang with contempt. "Are you all so

thick-headed you can't see our danger? When the

Vulcan fails to arrive at Neptune a few days from

now, the whole Patrol will start out looking for it. If

they overtake us, we'll have these prisoners as

hostages."

His grim reminder of the Planet Patrol seemed to

sober the mutineers somewhat. Every one of them

had good reason to know the remorseless efficiency

of that great organization.

"The Patrol will hunt us till they find us, all

right," muttered fat Boraboll nervously. "They'll

comb the whole Solar System."

"They will," Kim Ivan agreed. "But they won't

find us if you agree to my proposal. I propose that

we leave the System altogether."

APTAIN FUTURE and his fellow-captives

were as startled by that proposal as were

the mutineers.

"Leave the system?" gasped Grabo, the Jovian.

"What do you mean?"

Kim Ivan's eyes flashed. "I've thought it all out.

If we stay in the System, no matter what wild moon

or asteroid we hide on, the Patrol will finally find

us. Our only chance is to leave this Solar System

forever."

He swept his hand in a grandiloquent gesture.

"Out there beyond Pluto's orbit is a whole universe

for our refuge! Out there across the interstellar void

are stars and worlds beyond number. You know

that exploring expeditions have already visited the

worlds of Alpha Centauri, and returned. They found

those worlds wild and strange, but habitable."

The Martian's voice deepened. "I propose that

we steer for Alpha Centauri. It's billions of miles

away, I know. But we can use the auxiliary

vibration-drive to pump this ship gradually up to a

speed that will take it to that other star in several

months. We have enough supplies for that long a

voyage. Once there, we'll have whole worlds for

our own! We can easily dominate the primitive

peoples that were found on those worlds."

The sheer audacity of the proposition held the

mutineers in stunned silence.

Then Curt Newton saw their faces kindle with

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

excitement.

"Kim's right!" exclaimed Grabo. "If we stay here

in the System we'll be caught and sent to Cerberus

sooner or later."

"I say, let's go," shrilled old Tuhlus Thuun. "The

voyage may be long, but at the end of it there'll be

whole new worlds to loot."

Boraboll, the fat Uranian, looked scared. "We

don't know what we'll run into out in uncharted

outer space. It's a terrible risk."

"The risk is no greater than the one we'll run if

we stay here in the System," Grabo retorted. "We're

with you, Kim. It's starward ho!"

Stunned by dismay at what the daring decision

meant to them, the Futuremen and their fellow-

captives heard the mutineers' fierce, excited chorus

of agreement.

"Starward ho!"

CHAPTER V

Wrecked

SHUDDERING and

creaking, the Vulcan

hurtled out into the great

deeps of interstellar space

at the highest speed of its

rocket-tubes. Days ago it

had crossed the Line, as

the orbit of Pluto was

called.

It was already more

than four billion miles out

into the vast abyss that

stretches between the

stars.

As yet the mutineers had not dared make use of

the auxiliary vibration-drive. For the powerful

propulsion vibrations of that mechanism set up a

peculiar excitation of the ether which could be

spotted at great distances by the instruments of the

Planet Patrol. Not until they were still farther from

the System could the high speed drive be safely

used.

Down in the cell-deck, in one of whose cells he

was confined, old Ezra Gurney gloomily considered

their situation.

"We're a couple o'billion miles from the System

now. Soon as we get a little farther, there won't be

any chance o' the Patrol overtakin' us. Then we

won't be any more use to these space-scum as

hostages."

"You think they'll murder us then?" asked Joan

Randall incredulously from her own cell. "But Kim

Ivan gave his word they woudn't."

"I know, an' Kim Ivan would proba'ly keep his

word, but the others won't," Ezra predicted

pessimistically. "That snake Moremos an' the rest

like him are just achin' to put the blast on all of us."

Curt Newton, confined in his own separate cell,

looked anxiously across the corridor at the barred

door of Joan's cell.

"It's my fault, letting you in for this," he said

ruefully. "I was overconfident, and they tricked me

neatly."

"You know that isn't so, Curt," Joan denied

staunchly. "The Patrol was in charge of this ship,

and we fell down in spite of all your warnings."

The shrill, insane laugh of the crazed Earthman

scientist came from farther down the corridor.

"I said that there was death on this ship!"

They had been imprisoned here for days, ever

since the mutineers' seizure of the ship. The

electrolock cables had been repaired by Kim Ivan,

and the Futureman and others had been confined in

separate cells. Two mutineers armed with atom-

guns constantly watched in the corridor.

There were fifteen of them imprisoned here.

Beside the Futuremen and Ezra and Joan, there

were George McClinton, the stuttering chief

engineer, and his two assistants; Rih Quili, the

young Mercurian lieutenant; three space-hands and

one Patrol guardsman; and John Rollinger, whose

insane babbling had so exasperated the mutineers

that they had reconfined him.

"If ever I get my hands on that Kim Ivan," Grag's

rumbling voice threatened, "I'll tear him into little

bits -- slowly."

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" promptly,

asserted Otho's hissing voice. "You'll simply watch

while I give him the Venusian water-torture."

George McClinton, the lanky chief engineer,

was arguing through his bars with their two guards.

"l t-t-tell you, you've got to give me some p-p-

prunes with my rations! I'm s-starving for l-lack of

them."

"Cut your blasts, all of you!" ordered the guards

harshly. "You people are lucky just to be living yet

-- you don't know how lucky."

Silence fall upon the dim-lit deck of cells.

Captain Future squatted down against the front wall

of his own cell, and seemed to doze.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Actually, Curt had never been more awake. His

position concealed from the vigilant guards the fact

that his left hand was twirling a rude little metal

drill which was biting ever deeper into the metal

floor.

Curt had not been idle during these days. From

the moment of their capture, he had racked his

brain for an expedient by means of which he might

turn the tables on their captors. He had found one

slim chance.

The control-cables of the master electro-locks

ran beneath the corridor floor just outside his cell.

If he could drill through the floor of his cell, out

beneath its wall, he could short-circuit the cables as

Kim Ivan had done, and thus unlock all their cell

doors.

He had nothing to drill with. They had all been

thoroughly searched with the scanner when they

were locked in. His cell contained nothing but the

fiber and clay dishes for food and water, and a flat

metal bunk. But Captain Future had managed to

unbolt one of the metal rods that supported his

bunk. It was of harder metal than the floor.

ATIENTLY, Curt had shaped the end of

this rod into a drill by grinding it against his

bunk-edge. For days now, he had been using it to

drill surreptitiously through his cell-floor toward

the lock cables. He could work only in moments

when the guards were not directly watching him.

But his hopes were fast rising as he felt himself

nearing the vital cables.

Suddenly the rough voice of Grabo, the Jovian,

interrupted Curt's tensely hopeful work.

"Fetch Captain Future out of his cell," the Jovian

pirate was ordering the two guards in the corridor.

"Kim Ivan's orders."

Curt Newton's heart sank. Had they discovered

his secret labors?

His cell door was unlocked separately. He had

already hastily secreted his drill by restoring it to

position as a support of the bunk. Curt stepped

obediently into the corridor, the two guards

covering him with the guns.

The red-haired planeteer looked at Grabo with

cool inquiry. "What does Kim Ivan want with me?"

"You'll find out on the bridge," the Jovian

answered harshly. "Get moving. One of you guards

come along to cover him."

Grabo himself was not armed. Brawls among the

mutineers during the first days had resulted in so

many killings that Kim Ivan had decreed that only

the guards of the prisoners should henceforth carry

atom-guns.

Curt walked calmly ahead of the Jovian and the

watchful guard, up to the bridge-room. Old Tuhlus

Thuun was in the pilot-chair. The hoary Saturnian

criminal looked nervous, and there was a worried

expression on big Kim Ivan's massive red face.

Moremos was arguing angrily with them.

The broad sheet of the pilot-window, above the

complex instrument panel, framed a glittering vista

of interstellar space. The firmament was a great

drift of stars, amid which the white spark of Alpha

Centauri shone like a beacon in a direction dead

ahead.

Curt Newton's practised eyes, noticed at once the

tiny red lights winking and flashing on the

instrument- panel, and the buzzers whirring.

"Future, we need some help," Kim Ivan told

Curt bluntly. "We're running into something out

here, I don't know what. Tuhlus Thuun can't figure

it out, either."

"I never did any piloting outside the System

before," angrily defended the old Saturnian pirate.

"Everything is cockeyed out here beyond the Line."

"You've been out here in deep space before,

Future," Kim Ivan said to Curt. "Can you figure out

what's got our instruments acting crazy?"

"Suppose I do, will you turn around and go back

to land us on Pluto?" Captain Future demanded.

T WAS Joan's safety he was thinking of.

There was a chance that he could bargain

them into at least releasing the girl.

Before Kim Ivan could reply, Moremos

answered for him. The venomous Venusian

murderer thrust his head toward Curt like a striking

swamp adder of his native world. as he hissed:

"No! You're not dictating to anybody now,

Future! You'll either help us out or we'll blast you

down here and now."

"Go ahead and blast." Curt retorted. "It won't get

you out of your troubles. And you'll have plenty of

trouble, piloting deep space."

He was bluffing, trying to high-pressure them

into agreeing to the bargain he had proposed. And

Kim Ivan called his bluff.

"You're not fooling anybody, Captain Future,"

said the big Martian. "You won't let this ship be

wrecked for lack of your help. Because if it's

wrecked, the Randall girl dies -- and you think

plenty of her."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Curt winced. It was true. They held a trump card

in the fact that Joan's safety was tied up with that of

the ship.

"Let me see those instruments," Curt said

shortly, admitting defeat. He still had his secret

plan of escape, he was thinking.

Old Tuhlus Thuun began a voluble explanation.

"I never saw instruments act so crazy! They

indicate a meteor-swarm or some other celestial

body near us, but the readings of its position they

give are impossible!"

"That's because you're not allowing for ether-

drift and relativity space-warp," Captain Future told

him. "Out here in deep space, you have to correct

for those factors."

His keen gray eyes swung along the deep bank

of complicated dials. The red tell-tale lights under

four of the meteorometers were blinking.

The readings of those meteorometers showed the

presence of a body of planetoidal dimensions,

several hundred thousand miles away. That was a

far greater distance than the instruments could

actually function. The reading was being distorted

by ether-drift and space-warp and must be

corrected.

Curt Newton hastily made nimble mental

calculations. Trained in the routine of correction by

his own former interstellar voyages, he rapidly

reached a mental approximation of the true

readings of the instruments.

"The body indicated by those readings is really

dead ahead of us!" he exclaimed. "Shift your course

three arcs to port!"

"God!" screeched Tuhlus Thuun, stiffening in

the pilot-chair and staring through the broad

window with dilated, bulging eyes.

For a heartbeat, they were all frozen by what

they saw as they followed the old Saturnian's gaze.

They were looking into the awful face of death.

In the starry darkness full ahead of the hurtling

ship, there had suddenly loomed up a spinning

world. It was no more than a hundred miles in

diameter. But it bulked gigantic as they raced

headlong toward it.

"Don't try to brake!" yelled Curt frantically to

the old Saturnian. "At this speed you'll pile us up."

His warning went unheeded. Terror-stricken by

the awful apparition ahead, Tuhlus Thunn madly

jammed the brake-blast pedal to the floor.

Next moment, the Vulcan seemed to explode

around them. The roaring shock sent the men in the

crowded bridge caroming into the walls.

Captain Future clutched a stanchion. He heard

the scream of tortured metal coincident with the

reverberations of the explosion.

He dragged himself erect. A dead silence

reigned, then was broken by oaths and cries of pain

from the other parts of the ship.

Kim Ivan, bleeding from a gash on his forehead,

dragged himself indomitably to his feet. "What's

happened?" he husked dazedly.

"The bow rocket-tubes have back-blasted!" Curt

cried. "You can't use full brake-blasts at the speed

we had -- inertia forces the blast back up the tubes.

I think the laterals let go, too."

"Look at that!" shouted Boraboll. The Uranian's

fat moon-face was a muddy yellow as he pointed

shakily ahead. "We're going to crash!"

A cold hand seemed to close around Curt

Newton's heart as he caught a glimpse through the

broad window. The tremendous force of the

disastrous brake-blast had sharply checked the

Vulcan's headlong rush toward the planetoid ahead.

But the crippled ship was still falling onward.

The uncharted little world already filled half the

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

starry heavens before them. The thin, feeble light

from the distant Sun vaguely illumined it. Dark,

dense forests were visible upon it. And at one point

on its surface, a great bed of smouldering volcanoes

flung a lurid red glow.

"This is your fault!" roared Kim Ivan to the

terrified old Saturnian.

"I lost my head!" shrilled Tuhlus Thuun. "I

jammed the brake-blast pedal before I realized."

Captain Future jumped to the interphone. He

called the cyc-room: "What happened down there?

Did the tail-tubes go, too?"

The scared, hoarse voice of the mutineer in

charge of the cyc-room answered him. "We got a

dozen dead men down here-half the cycs blew up

when the bow and lateral tubes back-blasted! The

tail-tubes didn't give way, though they seem to be

badly strained."

"Switch the power of the remaining cycs into the

tail rocket-tubes!" ordered Curt. "Then get out of

the cyc-room!"

He turned and hauled the stunned old Saturnian

out of the pilot-chair . "Give me those controls."

OREMOS leaped forward, deadly

suspicion on his face. "Wait a minute.

Future! You're not pulling any of your tricks!"

"Tricks, the devil!" flamed Curt. "We're falling

toward that planetoid, and in ten minutes we'll

crash. We can't get away, for the bow and lateral

tubes are blown, and the tail-tubes are strained and

can't be used for more than a few minutes of

firing."

He was seating himself in the pilotchair and

grabbing the space-stick as he talked. "If we crash

on that planetoid, everybody in the ship dies. I don't

care a curse about you pirates. But I've got friends

aboard. There's a chance I can make a safe

landing."

"Go ahead and try, then!" exclaimed Kim Ivan.

"Get back and give him room, the rest of you!"

The Vulcan was turning slowly over and over in

space as it fell at appallingly increasing speed

toward the mystery planetoid. Captain Future's eyes

tensely estimated the distance of the little world, by

the graduated scale etched in the glassite window.

The hundred-mile sphere now filled most of the

firmament. The edges of its dark green mass were

rimmed by a haze that told of a thin atmosphere.

Superhuman tension gripped the watching

criminals as the ship fell on toward doom. Curt's

brown face was like rock, his hands holding the

space-stick in the rigidly upright position that

would fire the tail rocket-tubes when he depressed

the cyc-pedal.

"We're going to hit in a minute!" quavered fat

Boraboll.

A wild scream came to their ears from the lower

part of the ship. The mad shriek of John Rollinger.

"Are you going to let us crash without even

trying?" roared Grabo to Captain Future.

The falling Vulcan was only miles above the

surface of the uncharted planetoid. They were

rushing down toward a convexity of green jungle in

the center of which glowed the evil red volcanoes

and lava-beds.

Air whistled outside the plunging ship, in a

rising roar. It was still turning over, as it fell.

Captain Future waited for one more turn.

"Do something, you fool!" yelled Boraboll in

terror.

"We're falling toward those volcanoes!" shouted

another of the mutineers. The iron-nerved Kim Ivan

silenced them. "Shut up and let him alone!"

The volcanic region of the mystery planetoid

stretched only a few miles beneath the plummeting

ship. The center of the infernal activity was a

double row of huge black craters separated by a

stupendous chasm. From the craters flowed lurid

crimson cataracts of molten rock that crept

sluggishly down toward vast black beds of solid-

crusted lava.

Curt Newton was estimating their speed of fall

by split-seconds. He knew that the tail-tubes upon

which all depended would stand but a few moments

of firing before their strained walls exploded. It

required all the superb spaceman's nerve to wait for

the Vulcan to turn once more. Yet he waited, till the

instruments showed its tail pointed straight down.

Curt's foot instantly jammed the cyc-pedal to the

floor. The roar of raving power that lanced

downward from the tubes flung him deep in the

pilot-chair and jammed the others against the wall.

The hull of the crippled ship grated and screamed

from the shock of deceleration.

"We're going to land in that lava!" cried Grabo.

APTAIN FUTURE saw the glowing red

river that flowed from two volcanoes

rushing up toward them. It was straight beneath the

slowing ship.

His hands flashed desperately to the bank of

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

individual rocket-tube throttles. He cut the tubes on

the starboard side of the tail.

The off-balance thrust of the remaining tubes

sent the falling Vulcan lurching to port. It sagged

down toward the black lava beds beyond the fiery

river. Instantly, Curt cut in all the tail-tubes again.

Crash! Crash! The flaming tail of the ship came

to rest upon the solid crust of lava. In a flash, he cut

all tubes. The ship toppled over on its side and lay

still.

"Good God, what a landing!" choked old Tuhlus

Thuun, hoarsely.

Curt Newton, his face haggard and dripping with

perspiration from superhuman strain, suddenly

raised his hand. "Listen!"

The momentary silence that had followed the

landing of the Vulcan was broken by ominous

cracking sounds beneath the ship. The prostrate

vessel shuddered violently as the cracking sounds

became louder

"We're sinking into the lava!" yelled a mutineer's

wild voice. "The ship's weight is cracking the solid

crust -- it's going to sink into the molten rock

beneath!"

With the cry came a louder cracking, and a sharp

lurching of the ship There was a screech of rending

metal plates. Scorching, superheated air laden with

choking sulphurous fumes flooded up through the

ship.

"She's going through the crust now!" bellowed

Kim Ivan. "Out of the ship, everybody!"

The mutineers scrambled madly down toward

the space-door of the cyc-deck. All else was

forgotten in the wild instinct to escape.

Curt Newton fought his way down the

companionway with the scrambling convicts. But it

was toward the mid-deck he was struggling.

He paused briefly outside its door to fling the

switch of the master electro-control. Then he

plunged into the cell-deck corridor. The guard in it

had aready fled.

"Joan! Ezra!" Curt cried chokingly through the

swirling smoke. "We've got to get out of here!"

Figures were stumbling out of the unlocked

cells, slipping upon the tilted floor, gasping as they

breathed the scorching sulphurous air.

Curt found the staggering figure of Joan and

steadied her with his arm. Ezra Gurney's grizzled

face appeared through the smoke, a big bruise upon

his cheek and his faded eyes wild.

"Name o' the Sun, what happened?" he was

crying.

The Brain's weird form flashed like a flying cube

through the swirling fumes to Curt's side, hastily

followed by Curt and Otho.

"Young Rih Quili was stunned by the shock --

he's lying in his cell!" cried Simon.

"I'll get him!" Captain Future yelled. "Ezra, get

Joan to the space-door! Otho, see to McClinton and

the crew-men!"

He plunged back to Rih Quili's cell and picked

up the unconscious young Mercurian. A sharper

lurch of the settling ship staggered him as he did so.

The sulphurous air was choking him. As the

fought up the tilted floor toward the door, he

glimpsed the dazed McClinton and other crewmen

being rushed by Otho toward the exit. Grag was

coolly waiting for Curt. Through the mad uproar, a

shrieking of mad laughter smote their ears.

"Rollinger's back there!" Curt gasped. "Grag!"

HE great robot, who did not breathe and

was not affected by the overpowering

fumes and heat, was already clanking back to the

madman's cell. He returned quickly, clutching the

insanely struggling scientist.

They tumbled down to the space-door. As they

reached it, a violent downward movement of the

sinking Vulcan threw them out.

Curt hit a surface of rough lava that was so

searingly hot that he cried out. He staggered up

with Rih Quili. Blinded by swirling smoke,

scorched by almost unendurable heat, he glimpsed

crevices cracking open in the solid crust around the

ship. Fiery red lava gushed from beneath.

"This way, Chief!" boomed Grag's tremendous

voice.

Captain Future struggled forward. The vague

figures of his friends and of the fleeing mutineers

were dimly visible in the smoke ahead.

Crack! The crust of lava shook violently under

their feet. Curt turned and through the smoke he

glimpsed the Vlucan's black hull sinking swiftly

into the hissing molten rock beneath the solid crust.

He stumbled on, choking, scorched, half-

blinded. Presently the air seemed a little purer. And

then it was no longer hot, jagged lava under his

feet, but black soil. He had reached the edge of the

lava-bed and was standing upon ground that sloped

gently in the dusky light toward a distant wall of

weird jungle.

Kim Ivan and the mutineers who had escaped

were standing here, but they paid no attention in

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

this moment to Captain Future and his group. The

convicts were staring strickenly out across the

smoking lava-field.

Curt Newton turned and looked. Out there in the

smoke, he saw the curved black hull of the Vulcan

finally disappearing beneath the cracked crust. A

pool of molten lava glowed redly where it had

been.

"She's gone," muttered the big Martian pirate.

A heavy silence followed, unbroken for long

minutes. The appalling enormity of the disaster was

coming home to them all.

Captain Future felt an iciness in his heart that he

had never before experienced, as he realized their

situation.

They were marooned here on an uncharted

island of space, more than four billion miles

outside the Solar System. A mere unknown speck

in the void, to which no other ship would ever

come.

They were utterly without tools or weapons.

And, worst of all, he and his friends and the girl he

loved had as fellow castaways more than a hundred

of the most dangerous criminals of the nine worlds,

every one of whom cherished a bitter enmity

toward him.

CHAPTER VI

Mystery Planetoid

NIGHT was creeping

across the little world, the

dusky day deepening into

complete darkness as the

bright star of the distant Sun

sank beneath the horizon.

From the brooding black

jungle in the distance, an

uncanny babble of weird

animal or bird calls came to

the ears of the stricken

castaways.

Their faces were drawn

and haggard in the lurid red light from the

volcanoes. From those towering black craters in the

east, evil-glowing rivers of molten lava crept

constantly downward like crawling snakes of fire.

Showers of burning ashes shot up ever and again

from the seething craters, and there was a low,

continuous growling and quivering of the ground

beneath them.

Curt Newton felt a cold chill, despite the

sulphurous warmth of the air. It was so terribly

isolated from the universe of man, this drifting

speck of land in the vast, shoreless sea of outer

space. And they were so utterly unequipped to deal

with whatever alien perils it might hold.

He felt Joan shiver inside the protecting cicle of

his arm, and looked down anxiously at her.

"You're all right, Joan? That shock jar you when

we crashed?"

"It didn't hurt me." Her face was very pale, her

eyes dark and wide as she looked up at him. "I'm

just scared, I guess. This weird, forbidding place --

that we'll never get away from."

"Never is a long time," Curt said quickly. "Don't

worry about it now, Joan."

"Oh, Curt, you know we're marooned here

permanently!" Her voice broke in a sob. "We've no

ship, no weapons, no tools."

Captain Future could not answer that. His arm

tightened almost fiercely around her, as though in

protection against what was to come. The

Futuremen and their allies, like the mass of Kim

Ivan's mutineers, were still staring frozenly at the

lava-beds in which the ship had perished.

"Did anyone manage to salvage anything from

the ship?" Curt asked them.

George McClinton, the lanky young engineer,

was the only one to answer. He pointed hesitantly

down at a fiber case at his feet.

"I g-g-grabbed that up as I r-r-ran out of the

ship," he stammered.

"What is it? A tool-kit?" Curt Newton demanded

quickly.

McClinton's spectacled face looked abashed in

the red light. "N-no, it's only a c-c-case of p-prunes.

I j-just happened to see it in the s-s-supply-room

door as I went past."

"Blast me down!" swore old Ezra Gurney

furiously. "Of all the crazy, useless things to snatch

up, that's the limit!"

A burst of laughter rose from the others at

McClinton's shame-faced admission. It came from

the mutineers as well as the Futuremen's party, and

it was hysterically loud. It was a reaction on the

part of all from their own terrifying thoughts, their

realization of the appalling situation in which they

stood.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

It eased that frozen tension a little. Men relaxed

enough from their stunned rigidity of mind and

body to inspect their burns and bruises. And Kim

Ivan strode out and turned to face the mutineers.

"Did any of you bring atom-guns out of the ship

with you?" the big Martian pirate demanded.

Curt stiffened. He realized instantly what was in

Kim Ivan's mind.

UT none of the mutineers answered in the

affirmative to the question. Grabo, the

Jovian, growled the explanation of the lack of guns.

"You wouldn't let any of us wear atom-pistols in

the ship," he snarled, "for fear we'd kill each other

in brawls. And there wasn't any time to go digging

them out of the arsenal-room when the ship

crashed."

Kim Ivan's voice rose to a roar. "Don't take that

sulky tone with me. I'm still boss here! There may

not be an atom-gun on this world, but I can beat the

ears off any pair of you with my bare fists!"

None of the mutineers took up the redoubtable

Martian's challenge. But Grag's big metal figure

moved clankingly forward.

"Do you think you can beat the ears off me?"

rumbled the great robot.

Kim Ivan faced the robot with an unflinching

scowl. "I know you're stronger than any four of us,"

he admitted belligerenly to Grag. "But there's more

than a hundred of us, remember that. We can pull

you down, big and tough as you are."

New tension sprang into being, as the mutineer's

hatred and antagonism toward the Futuremen's

party came again to the fore. Curt Newton realized

that it would not take much to precipitate a

struggle.

"It seems to me," his cool voice cut in, "that

we've had enough for one day without trying to kill

each other right now."

Kim Ivan roughly agreed. "We're groggy and

tired, and some of us are hurt. And there's nothing

to be gained by a scrap now. We'll get some rest,

and see how things stand in the morning."

The tension diminished. With little further talk,

the castaways dropped to the warm ground and

stretched out exhaustedly.

Curt and his friends kept at a little distance from

the mutineers. He noticed that Kim Ivan himself

was not sleeping, but was keeping vigilant watch

from where he sat.

Captain Future pillowed Joan's head on his knee.

"Try to get some sleep, Joan."

"M-m-maybe I could g-g-get some moss or

leaves from that jungle, to m-m-make a bed for

her," suggested George McClinton anxiously.

"No, it's bad business to go blundering into an

alien interplanetary forest by night," Curt answered.

"You never know what queer kind of creature is

waiting for you."

Silence and darkness held the makeshift camp of

survivors. No one felt like talking, and most were

already exhaustedly sleeping. The only sounds were

the medley of uncanny calls from the starlit jungle,

and the low rumbling of the distant volcanoes. Now

and then, the ground quivered slightly under them,

with a low, muted growling.

Captain Future looked down at Joan's dark head,

upon his knee. She was sleeping, her face white in

the starlight. He perceived that Grag, who never

slept, was standing watch nearby like an immobile

metal statue.

John Rollinger was not sleeping. The crazed

biophysicist was looking toward the distant jungle

in an attitude of intent listening.

"Rollinger, what's the matter?" Curt asked in

low tones.

The Earthman turned dazed eyes toward him. "I

hear voices talking, inside my head. I'm afraid.

There's somebody on this world."

"There's no one here," Curt soothed. "Go to

sleep. You haven't anything to be afraid of."

The Brain had been brooding silently nearby.

Like Grag, Simon never slept. Now he glided to

Captain Future's side, and whispered.

"Lad, I've been thinking about this planetoid," he

said. "There's something puzzling about it. I mean,

all this volcanic and seismologic activity. There

shouldn't be volcanism on a world this small."

Curt was grimly amused. "Same old Simon! All

our predicament means to you is just an intriguing

scientific problem."

HE BRAIN'S metallic whisper was cold

and annoyed. "If my reasoning is right, this

particular scientific problem has an important

bearing on our present predicament. Lad, you saw

the meteorometer readings on this planetoid before

we crashed on it. Can you remember its

approximate mass, direction and speed of drift, and

distance from the System?"

Captain Future was puzzled. "I think I can,

thought I don't see why it's so important. The mass

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

of it is two-thousands-Earth, position is slightly

over four billion miles from the edge of the System,

and its drift is almost straight toward the System at

ten miles a second velocity --"

Curt stopped suddenly, as his keen scientific

mind abruptly realized the significance of the data

he was quoting.

"Good Lord, Simon, I didn't see it before! This

planetoid is approaching the Limit!"

"Yes, lad," rasped the Brain. "And that accounts

for its volcanic activity."

Curt Newton was appalled. The ominous fact to

which the Brain had called his attention made their

predicament vastly more menacing.

In taut whispers, he and Simon Wright discussed

it with feverish intensity as the night hours passed.

Between these two master-scientists sped

whispered formulae, equations and corrections, as

they sought to solve mentally a problem which was

of direst import.

The sky in the 'east' began to lighten at last. A

growing pallor crept across the starry heavens. And

with it came a sharper, more violent tremor of the

ground beneath them. The shock and the grinding

roar brought the sleeping castaways into alarmed

wakefulness.

"Curt, what's happening?" Joan's small hand

clutched his sleeve as she awakened.

"It's only a stronger seismic tremor," he

reassured her. "But it's sun-rise now, Joan."

The Sun came up as a bright, tiny disk hardly

larger than a very brilliant star. It cast a feeble

daylight across the alien landscape of smoking

volcanoes, black lava-beds, and distant green

jungles.

Kim Ivan stood, looking grimly around the

unfriendly vista. The other mutineers were getting

to their feet, staring about in dismal silence.

"This is a devil of a place to be marooned in,"

muttered Grabo, the squat Jovian.

Kim Ivan shrugged. "It's better than

Interplanetary Prison, anyway. There'll be fruits and

meat-animals in that jungle. We can live here

indefinitely."

Captain Future grimly contradicted the big

pirate. "We can't live here indefinitely. This little

world isn't going to exist indefinitely."

The big Martian frowned at him. "What do you

mean?"

"I mean that in a little more than two months,

this planetoid will be shattered and destroyed,"

retorted Curt.

"Bah, what are you trying to do, scare us?"

scoffed Kim Ivan, incredulously.

Moremos, eyeing Curt Newton hatefully, hissed:

"We ought to settle these cursed Futuremen right

here and now. I say, let's rid ourselves of them for

good. All except the girl."

Captain Future rarely lost his temper. But at the

evil implication in the Venusian's last words, and at

the sudden pallor that came into Joan Randall's

face, Curt's bronzed face went a dull red.

His voice was low and steady, but his gray eyes

were fiery as he promised the Venusian murderer:

"Moremos, when the time comes you are going

to pay for that suggestion with your life."

The mutineers started threateningly forward, and

Grag and Otho sprang instantly to Curt's side. But

Kim Ivan intervened roughly.

"Cut your blasts!" he bellowed to his glaring

followers. Then, with eyes narrowed suspiciously,

he snapped to Curt: "What's this story of yours

about this planetoid exploding in two months?"

APTAIN FUTURE slowly withdrew his

flaming gaze from the Venusian. He

explained in short, grim sentences.

"This planetoid is becoming internally unstable.

That is because it is drifting toward our Solar

System. The gravitational influence of our System

is setting up seismic strains inside its mass. The

quakes and volcanic activity here are due to those

interior strains. They'll become worse as it draws

nearer the System.

"Two months from now, this planetoid will be

so near the System that its tidal strains will burst it

asunder. Roche's Limit, which determines the

critical distance at which a celestial body nearing a

larger body will burst into fragments, operates in

the case of this worldlet as though the whole

System were one great body it was approaching."

Kim Ivan seemed baffled by Captain Future's

scientific reference, and there was still strong

skepticism on his battered red face.

He turned toward Boraboll, the Uranian. "What

about that, Boraboll? You had a scientific

education. Does Future's claim make sense?"

The fat Uranian's moonlike yellow face twitched

with fear, and his voice was husky. "It's true that

Roche's Limit will operate for the whole System as

though for one body, in affecting an unstable

planetoid like this. If this planetoid gets much

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

nearer than four billion miles, it will burst."

Old Tuhlus Thuun added a shrill word. "This

planetoid isn't a lot more than that from the System

now, according to what our instruments read before

we crashed. And it's heading toward the System, all

right."

"Then Future's right," gasped Boraboll, terrified.

"My God, this little world is going to burst under us

in two months!"

The panic of the fat Uranian convinced the other

mutineers as nothing else would have done. They

looked at each other in fear.

"Name o' the Sun!" exclaimed Ezra Gurney. "I

didn't think last night that we could be in a worse

jam, but this makes it plenty worse."

Even big Kim Ivan looked a little appalled. He

muttered, "That's luck for you -- cast away on a

planetoid that'll explode beneath us in a few

weeks."

Curt Newton spoke incisively. "We've got just

one chance. That is to get away from here before

the catastrophe occurs."

"Get away?" echoed the big Martian blankly.

"How the devil can we get away? We've got no ship

now."

"Which means," retorted Captain Future, "that

our only chance of life is to build a ship."

Kim Ivan stared. "Build a ship, when we don't

have a single tool or piece of equipment? Build a

spaceship, with our bare hands?"

"He's raving," growled Grabo. "A spaceship

takes tons of metal plates and girders, glassite for

instruments and ports, copper for cables and coils,

refractory alloy for rocket-tubes, and about forty

other elements for the cyclotrons, fuel and other

parts. And we've just got our fingers!"

"We've got our fingers, and our brains." Curt

corrected. "We've got the accumulated knowledge

of centuries of experimenters, from the first cave-

man who made a stone hammer on up to

yesterday."

His eyes flashed. "Why shouldn't we be able to

start from scratch? The primitive peoples of the

remote past did. All the raw elements we need

should be present on this world. And if we have

courage and skill enough to wrench them free and

build with them, we can save ourselves."

His intensity seemed to make an impression

upon the others. The mutineers listened as though

clutching at a precarious straw of hope.

But old Tuhlus Thuun shook his head. He

muttered, "Nobody has ever built anything as

complicated as a spaceship from scratch, in the

whole history of the System."

"It's never been done," Curt admitted, "but that

doesn't say it can't be done."

CHAPTER VII

The Tangle-Tree

SOMETHING of Curt

Newton's driving purpose

seemed to communicate

itself to the doubting

mutineers. They might hate

this red-haired planeteer,

but they were nevertheless

impressed by him.

It was at such moments

that Captain Future's

genius for leadership

asserted itself. The Brain

was more deeply versed in

scientific lore than he. Grag was stronger than he

was, and Otho swifter. But he was leader of the

Futuremen because of his indomitable will and

courage.

"If anybody could build a ship out of nothing,

which I still doubt, you Futuremen maybe could,"

muttered Kim Ivan.

"It's worth trying!" Boraboll exclaimed

nervously. "Anything's better than just sitting here

waiting to die."

A general murmur of agreement came from the

mutineers. Appalled as they were by the vista of

approaching doom, they grasped at any straw.

"There's just one thing," Curt said incisively. "If

we Futuremen are to try building a ship, we must

have absolute freedom of action and must have

authority to command the assistance of all of you."

Moremos flared at that. "Me take orders from

you, Future? Not in a million years!"

"By God, you'll take orders from me!" roared

Kim Ivan to the green-faced Venusian. "And I'm

agreeing to Future's conditions. We can't reasonaby

expect him to achieve this feat without the help of

us all."

"It's all a lot of nonsense," shrilled old Tuhlus

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Thuun skeptically. "Nobody can build a spaceship

out o' nothing. It just can't be done."

"Suppose we do manage to build a ship and get

away? What then?" Grabo demanded suspiciously.

Curt was ready for that. "Then you'll agree to set

myself and my friends down on some inhabited

world of the System."

He knew better than to demand more. If he could

once assure Joan's safety, the pursuit of the

mutineers could be taken up later.

"I agree to that, Future," said Kim Ivan

promptly. "Now how do we start?"

For a moment, even Captain Future was daunted

by that question. It made him realize to the full the

appall magnitude of the thing they were about to

attempt.

How did you start building a big, complicated

space ship when you had literally nothing but your

bare hands? He groaned mentally as he envisioned

the complexity of thousands of massive and

delicate parts which must be correctly fabricated

and assembled to form a navigable vessel.

It wouldn't do to show doubt. He quickly looked

around the hostile, alien vista of the mystery

planetoid.

"Our first step necessarily must be to establish

safe living-quarters for ourselves and investigate

for food," he declared. "Then we'll make

preliminary survey for sources of the raw materials

we'll need."

Kim Ivan assented to that with a nod. "I'm

hungry already, and getting more so by the minute."

George McClinton had opened his fiber case of

prunes. The lanky, spectacled engineer stopped

munching the dried fruit to inquire:

"Anybody w-w-want some prunes? They're very

n-n-nourishing."

"Not until I'm hungrier than I am now, will I eat

those danged things," growled Ezra Gurney. "When

you was snatchin' up somethin', why didn't you

snatch up a case of beef or somethin' like that?"

Captain Future and Kim Ivan, after a brief

colloquy, had decided that they must find a suitable

spot for a base nearer to the jungle. From the jungle

must come whatever food they could glean. And

the sulphurous air that clung over these lava-beds

made proximity to them unpleasant.

HE whole party started toward the jungle.

Its green wall was less than a half-mile

away. They could see birds or winged creatures

flitting above the roof of the forest, and deduced the

presence of a varied animal life from the calls and

noises they had heard during the night.

Joan asked Curt an earnest question as they

tramped forward. "Curt, is it really possible to build

a ship? I know you could do it if anybody could,

but can anybody do that?"

"Joan, I don't know," he admitted. "But our lives

hang on the answer, and it's up to us to find out."

"If we had unlimited time and materials, it might

be done," remarked the Brain pessimistically. "But

to do it in two months, with no tools to begin with

and criminals for workers --"

Grag's deep voice shouted from behind them,

interrupting. "Hey, Chief, this crazy Rollinger won't

come along."

The crazed scientist, whom Curt had deputed

Grag to keep an eye on, was refusing to accompany

the party toward the jungle. Rollinger's haggard

face was distorted by overpowering fear, and his

eyes were wild as he babbled objection.

"I won't go there!" he cried, peering terrifiedly

toward the distant jungle. "They are there -- the

mighty ones. I heard Them speaking last night, in

my mind. They know we are here, and They don't

like it."

"Who's he talking about?" Grag asked puzzledly,

as Curt and Otho and Joan came back.

"He's just raving again." Otho commented.

Rollinger's voice rose to a shrill pitch. "They

warned last night that we must not stay here, that

They will kill us if we do!"

"Pick him up and bring him along, Grag,"

ordered Curt. "We can't delay now to soothe him."

Rollinger struggled frantically, but was like a

child in the grip of the great robot.

"Do you suppose there really could be

intelligent, malign life on this world?" Joan asked

Curt.

"I doubt it. We've seen no signs of intelligent life

here so far," Captain Future replied. "Of course,

we're likely to find some very queer plant and

animal life here. For this planetoid doesn't belong

to our own System. It's a wanderer of the

interstellar void, a tiny planet that must long ago

have been torn away somehow from its parent sun."

He continued thoughtfully. "Perhaps it has

drifted through space for ages. Undoubtedly it has a

radioactive core that has furnished sufficient

warmth to support life on its surface. Evolution

might take some weird paths upon a little, isolated

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

worldlet like this."

The green wall of the jungle loomed before them

in the feeble daylight.

The castaways halted and stood silently looking

at the alien, grotesque forest.

It was composed chiefly of towering tree-ferns,

whose colossal fronds were interlaced by lianas and

vines. Thorny underbrush decked with brilliant

scarlet and yellow flowers, and big pale-green

mosses choked much of the space between the

trunks of the mighty ferns.

"There's some kind of a natural clearing in

there," Kim Ivan reported to Curt. "Want to go in

and look it over?"

Captain Future nodded, and he and the big

Martian pushed their way beneath the shadow of

the towering ferns. The air was hot and steamy

inside the jungle, and many transparent-winged

insects flashed about them.

"Makes you think of the Jovian forests, and yet

everything is different," Kim Ivan said soberly.

"Ah, here we are."

They emerged into the natural clearing that lay a

little within the jungle. It was actually a low knoll,

a few yards high and several hundred yards in

diameter.

OTHING grew within this clearing except

a few dozen gigantic cacti. They were

dark, barrel-shaped growths twelve feet high,

spineless and with fluted sides.

"Lucky, finding a natural clearing like this," Kim

Ivan remarked. "It's just what we're looking for,

isn't it?"

Curt nodded. "We can build a stockade of fern-

trunks around it for protection against possible

beasts of prey. And it looks as though we could dig

a spring at that moist patch of ground."

He turned to go back and bring the others, but

Kim Ivan delayed him with a hand on his arm. The

big Martian pirate had an oddly earnest expression

on his massive, battered red face.

"Future, wait a minute. I got something to tell

you."

Curt looked at him keenly. "What is it?"

Kim Ivan scratched his ear. "Well, it's like this. I

know you got it in for me because I led the mutiny.

Not that I'm excusing that -- I still say anything's

better than Interplanetary Prison. Though if the

boys had obeyed my orders, there wouldn't have

been any killing."

Curt Newton wondered what this rambling

introduction was leading toward. "So what?"

"Well, I gave you my word we'd work with you

all the way, trying to build this ship, and I'm a chap

who keeps his word," Kim Ivan went on. "But I

can't always control the boys. So -- watch out for

Moremos!"

Captain Future stiffened. "Is that Venusian

already planing to make trouble?"

"He hates you like poison," Kim Ivan said. "He

was saying a little bit ago that he'd figured out how

to get you and your pals, when the time came. And

I'm afraid some of the boys would side with him. I'd

keep an eye open for death-traps, if I was you."

Curt said thoughtfully, "I doubt if he'd try

anything right away, for building this space ship is

his only hope's well as ours. But I'll watch out for

his clever little traps. And thanks for the warning,

Kim."

"Don't thank me," disclaimed the big pirate

bluffly. "I'm not worried about you for any reason

except that you're our only chance of getting off

this cursed little world. I know that we can't build a

space ship out of nothing, but maybe you can."

They went back and brought the rest of the

castaways to the clearing which they had selected

for an encampment. Then Captain Future issued

orders which were backed up by Kim Ivan's

authority over the mutineers.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"The first essential is to build a stockade for

protection and to find food," he declared. "Then we

can build huts for living-quarters, and start work

assembling materials and tools for the ship."

He formed them into work and foraging parties.

The former were to bring saplings and vines with

which to build a rough wall around the clearing.

The foraging groups were to look for fruits, nuts or

other possible edibles, and bring them back to the

Brain for inspection.

"Ezra, you stay here with Joan," Curt told the old

marshal. "How are you, Rih Quili?"

"The injured young Mercurian lieutenant

gingerly touched his bandaged head. "It still aches a

little, but I'm fit for work now."

"Better take it easy," Curt advised. " And, Ezra,

keep an eye on Rollinger all the time."

OHN ROLLINGER had exhibited an almost

pitiful terror of the jungle, and had had to be

dragged by Grag to this clearing. The crazed

Earthman now crouched, looking about the place

with wild, scared eyes.

Curt, Grag, Otho and George McClinton formed

one of the work parties. They plunged into the

shadowy green jungle of giant tree-ferns and

choking underbrush, in search of suitable material

for the stockade.

"If we had just a b-b-bush-knife, it would be a l-

lot easier," mumbled the lanky McClinton, who

was munching dried prunes as he marched.

"Why not wish for an atomic blaster, while

you're at it?" suggested Otho. "Besides, this is

where Grag comes in handy. He can tear up trees by

the roots. You never saw anybody so strong."

"Meaning that you're trying to flatter me into

doing all the work," growled Grag. "Well, it won't

go, my slippery rubberoid friend."

They were already deep in the green jungle. Big

tree-ferns reared their glossy trunks for fifty to sixty

feet, bearing masses of flat fronds and spore-pods.

Yet these were not true pteridophytes at all, but the

result of a wholly different line of plant evolution,

which appeared not to rely on photosynthesis as a

source of life.

There were other and even stranger trees. Huge

ones like banyans reached out many leafless limbs

from a massive central trunk. Others looked like

big horse-tails. Club mosses flourished in the

spaces between the crowding trunks, and creeping

vines were everywhere. Many of the vines and the

thorny smaller shrubs bore unfamiliar fruits.

Insect life was abundant. But most of the winged

arthropods possessed perfectly transparent wings

and were hard to see. There were no true feathered

birds, but white, bat-winged creatures were

numerous and noisy in the tree-tops. And Curt

Newton found tracks and other traces of animals

that were apparently several species of small

rodents.

"There doesn't seem to be any sign of large

animals," Captain Future declared. "Though all the

life here is so alien it's hard to tell."

George McClinton's spectacled face was

discouraged as he looked about the green gloom of

the jungle.

"It's certainly w-w-wild enough." Grag was

already at work, uprooting saplings and ripping off

big branches from the tree-ferns to be stripped into

stockade-poles. The other three pitched in, but the

huge robot had the advantage here. His steel arms

could break tough limbs that the others could not

tackle.

Leaving a trail of trimmed poles behind him,

Grag advanced toward one of the big banyan-like

trees. He seized one of its leafless, drooping

branches. Instantly, the branch retaliated by seizing

him. It and others of the scores of branches coiled

around him like tough plant-tentacles and dragged

him toward the central trunk.

"Hey, Chief, this tree's fighting back!" yelled

Grag alarmedly.

"It's some kind of carnivorous form of plant-life

that can devour animals!" Captain Future cried.

"Tear those branches away, Grag."

"I can't!" shouted the robot. "The cursed things

are strong as steel! It's a regular tangle-tree."

CHAPTER VIII

The Cubics

AT least twenty of the tentacle-

like limbs had now coiled around

Grag. They were lifting his massive

figure toward the central trunk. This

was a cylindrical mass of fiber

twelve feet in diameter. The tangle

of branches grew from its sides, and

its top was a huge, hollow calyx.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Curt and the other two sprang forward to aid the

robot. But they were themselves gripped by other

branches. As they sought to free themselves, Grag's

struggling form was being hoisted up into the air

and held above the hollow calyx of the tangle-tree.

From inside the huge calyx spurted up streams

of sticky green liquid that smeared the helpless

robot from head to foot. Grag yelled with fury at

this, but the sticky juices continued to spurt over

him.

"The thing is covering Grag with its digestive

juices before it eats him!" exclaimed Curt. "Try to

reach him."

But they couldn't reach him. Each of them had a

coiling branch around him. Only the fact that most

of the tangle-tree's branches were occupied with

Grag made it possible for them to avoid being

drawn in also.

Grag, bellowing in rage and completely covered

by sticky plant-juice, was now being drawn

remorselessly down into the hollow calyx of the

trunk. He disappeared inside it, though his muffled

roaring still sounded.

"Good Lord, he's g-g-gone!" stammered

McClinton. "The thing has d-d-devoured him."

But after a few moments, during which they

fought to free themselves, Grag was suddenly

drawn up again from the calyx of the tree.

The robot was held as before, while the sticky

digestive juices of the carnivorous tree spurted

again over his raging figure.

Otho uttered a mirthful shout as he tore himself

free from the branch holding him. "The tree

couldn't digest Grag's iron carcass that time, so it's

going to try again."

In fact, Grag was now being drawn back down

into the calyx of the massive trunk. Again came his

muffled bellowing. Curt and McClinton had by

now managed to release themselves also.

But there was no need for the three to spring

forward to Grag's aid. For now the robot was being

hoisted up again out of the calyx. And with an

almost human gesture of disappointment and

disgust, the tangle-tree's gripping branches hurled

the robot away. He flew through the air and lit upon

the soft ground some distance away, with a

resounding thud.

Otho collapsed in a fit of laughter when they

reached Grag's side. "The thing couldn't digest

Grag, nohow! I'll never forget how he looked

squirming up there with the tangle-tree hopefully

squirting sap over him!"

"Laugh, you misbegotten son of a test-tube!"

roared Grag furiously.

The big robot was a ludicrous figure, smeared

from head to foot with thick green plant-juice.

Curt, too, was shaking with mirth. "It's lucky the

tree did happen to grab you instead of one of us,"

he consoled the angry robot. "Any one of us would

have found it no joke."

Grag ruefully tried to clean himself off. "Of an

the screwy forms of life that I ever --"

Captain Future suddenly interrupted, holding up

his hand sharply. "Listen! I heard a cry!"

A distant yell came to them through the green

gloom of the weird forest.

"One of the other parties has run into trouble!"

Curt exclaimed. "Come on!"

They plunged through the jungle in the direction

from which the cry had come. Now they could hear

a chorus of alarmed voices.

It was one of the work-parties headed by Grabo,

the Jovian, that was doing the shouting. The squat

Jovian pirate turned as Curt and his companions

appeared.

"Look at those things!" he exclaimed. "We don't

know what to make of 'em."

URT NEWTON stared. He too, in all his

extensive experience with the strange life

of far worlds, had seen no creatures such as these.

There were six of the creatures, and they were

busily working in a little open glade of the forest.

Each of the things looked like a giant centipede,

with an oddly geometrical body eight feet long and

many square legs set along it. They were carrying

slabs of stone along.

A closer look revealed the amazing details of

their appearance. Each of these big creatures

appeared to be composed of scores of small, living

fleshy pink cubes. Each cube was four inches

square, and had two twinkling, bright little eyes and

a small mouth-opening.

"Why, I never saw anything like these before,"

Captain Future muttered, stepping forward.

"You haven't seen the half of it yet!" exclaimed

Grabo. "They can split themselves up when we start

toward 'em. Look at 'em! They're doing it again!"

The weird, geometrical creatures had until now

ignored Curt Newton and the others, diligently

resuming their work of carrying away the stone

slabs.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

But now, as Captain Future approached, the

centipede creatures suddenly dropped the slabs and

then underwent an incredible transformation.

Their big, geometrical bodies disintegrated.

They broke up into the scores of living cubes of

which they were composed. Each cube was

revealed to be a separate, living creature. Each had

eight tiny claws or legs, one at each corner of its

cubical body, as well as its own eyes and mouth

and ears.

These hundreds of cube-creatures scurried

swiftly together, and joined into a single big figure.

The living cubes joined tightly, each to the next, by

instantly hooking their tiny claws together.

Silently and quickly as though by magic, the

cubical creatures had combined to form a towering,

semi-human figure ten feet high. It advanced on

square, stocky legs with its massive arms raised

menacingly toward the Futuremen.

"Get back!" Curt Newton cried warning. "The

creatures think we're hostile."

They hastily recoiled. Grabo and the mutineers

already had fallen back, and George McClinton was

gaping incredously.

The geometrical monster halted its advance. As

though satisfied they had nothing more to fear, the

cube-creatures that composed it broke up into

separate units. Quickly, they recombined into the

six centipede-figures. Then, carrying the stone

slabs, they calmly disappeared into the jungle.

"Did I dream that or have I been drinking radium

highballs?" gasped Otho. "What the devil are those

freakish little cubics?"

"That's a good name for them -- the Cubics,"

Captain Future commented. "As to their nature, it

seems pretty obvious that they're small animals

who have developed to a great degree the faculty of

living in a cooperative community. Just like a hive

of bees or a colony of beavers, only more so."

"But how can the little devils go through those

quick formations of theirs without any hesitation or

discussion?" marvelled Grabo.

Curt thought he could guess. "They must be

constantly in telepathic rapport with each other.

Something like the "hive mind" of the bees, even

further developed. Maybe the individual

intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group-

intelligence, just as their bodies combine. They're at

least semi-intelligent, judging from the way they

were working."

HE discovery of the Cubics made all of

them more cautious in the hours of work

that followed. It was increasingly evident that their

former surmise was correct, and that evolution in

plant and animal life had indeed followed strange

paths upon this age-long isolated planetoid.

What other uncanny forms of life might haunt

the dense fern-jungles, they wondered? And what if

the Cubics themselves should prove definitely

hostile? They could be, Curt Newton realized,

formidable enemies. And the tangle-trees, which

seemed numerous, were a constant danger.

By sunset of that day, they bad gathered in the

clearing a mass of strong poles sufficient to build a

stockade. The foraging parties had also brought

back a mass of fruits, berries and nuts. These were

of every shape and color, and most of them were

utterly unfamiliar in appearance.

The Brain, whose knowledge of planetary

botany was encyclopedic, had inspected the fruits

and had ruled out a few which he considered likely

to be poisonous. The castaways ate hungrily of the

others, finding a big, spherical, meaty nut the most

nourishing.

"We'll need meat, too," Captain Future declared.

"There are small animals in the jungle. Any of you

know anything about trapping?"

Grabo, the squat green Jovian, nodded. "I used

to trap 'diggers' in the jungle north of Jovopolis,

when I was a kid on Jupiter. All I needed was a

cord to make into a snare for their runways."

"Take a couple of men and get some snares set

tomorrow," Curt suggested. "You can make the

cords from strips of clothing."

George McClinton distastefully put down a very

ripe, squashy yellow fruit of egg shape which he

had been eating.

"Too m-m-messy," he said. "And it doesn't have

the f-f-flavor of a p-p-prune."

The tiny disk of the Sun was sinking again

toward the horizon. The shadows of the grotesque,

towering cacti in the center of the clearing grew

longer .

Night was falling. The stars were already

pricking forth in the dusking sky, and the heavens

eastward showed a quivering red glare from the

volcanoes and lava-beds there.

"I think," Curt decided. "that we'd better keep a

fire going nights until we have our stockade up.

We've already learned that there are formidable

forms of life on this worldlet."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

A fire of dry fern-logs soon blazed up near the

center of the clearing. Curt had kindled it by

striking sparks from his steelite belt-buckle against

a hard stone. The castaways gathered around it as

though taking comfort from it as the night

deepened.

Captain Future musingly looked around the

circle of many firelit faces. What an oddly assorted

company they were, he thought. Joan's lovely face,

and McClinton's spectacled, serious countenance.

Otho lolling indolently with slant eyes watching the

blaze, and young Rih Quili's bandaged head. Kim

Ivan's massive, jovial red face, and Grabo and old

Tuhlus Thuun and fat Boraboll, and Moremos'

sulking features and secretive eyes. And the Brain

poised outside the circle a little, while big Grag

stood in the shadows keeping watch upon the

raving John Rollinger.

"We've got a fire and some food," Kim Ivan was

saying, "and tomorrow we'll put up a stockade and

some huts. Then what?"

"Yes, what then?" Moremos asked Captain

Future with an open sneer. "Just how do we start

building a space ship with our bare hands?"

Curt answered tersely. "Our first need will be

tools -- durable metal tools. Let's see how much

metal we have among us."

The result of the inventory of their possessions

was discouraging. They had a few metal trinkets

and buckles. One of McClinton's engineers had a

small chromaloy wrench.

F course, they all had their gravity-belts.

Every interplanetary traveler constantly

wore his belt, whose compact gravitation-equalizer

made his weight the same on any world. But they

couldn't sacrifice their belts, without suffering

dangerous effects from the low gravitation of the

little planetoid.

"I also got a big package of chewin' rial, if that's

any good," shrilled old Tuhlus Thuun.

" And I have this c-c-case of p-prunes," stuttered

McClinton.

"There isn't enough metal here to do us any

good," Curt Newton declared. "We'll have to make

our own steelite tools, from scratch."

"Say, what about Grag?" Otho asked. "There's a

ton of metal in his carcass. If we melted him down

--"

"I heard that!" bellowed Grag from out in the

shadows where he was watching Rollinger.

Kim Ivan asked gloomily, "How're we going to

get steelite for tools?"

Captain Future shrugged. "We'll have to locate

iron deposits, and smelt the metal out, and make

our own alloys. It won't be easy, but it's the first

essential step toward building a ship."

"And then what will be the next?" Boraboll

squeaked skeptically.

"Then we'll try building an atomic smelter for

large-scale operations," Curt answered. "Some of

us can be reconnoitering this worldlet in the

meantime for the raw materials we're going to need.

Chromium, beryllium, manganese, copper, calcium,

and about forty or fifty others."

They all seemed dashed by the magnitude of the

task proposed. To many of them, the difficulties

looked insuperable.

"How do we know we'll find any of those

elements here?" Ezra objected. "Those are elements

of our own Solar System, but this planetoid ain't a

part of our System. It's from way off in the Galaxy,

you said."

The Brain woke from his brooding reverie to

answer that. "The matter of the whole Galaxy is

largely homogenous in nature, for all its stars had a

common cosmic origin. The remotest suns show

the spectra of much the same elements as our own

Sun. We should find most of the needed elements

here, though on this small body a few of them may

not be present."

"Is this planetoid really a wanderer from some

distant star-system?" Joan asked Curt with eager

interest.

He nodded. "It must be. Probably it was torn

away from its parent-star by some gravitational

disturbance, and has been drifting through the void

ever since."

"A little star, falling alone through space for

ages," Joan murmured. "Let us call it by that name

-- Astarfall!"

The fire died down, and they split into separate

groups to prepare for sleep. George McClinton had

prepared a mattress of soft fern-fronds for Joan,

which the lanky engineer shyly showed her.

"It's not m-m-much, but it's b-better than the

ground," he stuttered, and retreated awkwardly

from her thanks.

She looked at Captain Future with pretended

indignation. "Why didn't you think of that?"

Curt grinned. "I don 't believe in pampering my

women."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"Your women!" she echoed scornfully. "There's

no other girl beside myself who'd waste time on a

crazy, foot-loose planeteer like you."

He chuckled as he turned away. The others were

already stretched out, asleep. The fire had died to

glowing embers, but the red glare of the smoking

volcanoes eastward cast weird, flickering shadows

in the camp.

Curt went to where Grag was standing guard

beside John Rollinger. He bad bound the crazed

scientist's feet to prevent him from fleeing. For

Rollinger was still muttering and babbling in

unabated terror .

"I hear," Rollinger was muttering, his mad,

brilliant eyes staring into nothingness. "I hear, but I

cannot obey --"

Grag asked uneasily, "What do you suppose he's

raving about? He gets on my nerves."

"He's just delirious," Curt said. "It's a pity -- a

fine mind like that, irretrievably wrecked."

Captain Future stretched out tiredly on the

ground nearby. The night air was growing chill, and

he wrapped his zipper-jacket more tightly around

him.

As he dropped off to sleep, the low, babbling

mutter of the crazed Earthman scientist was the last

sound in his ears.

CHAPTER IX

The Work Begins

CURT awakened

suddenly. It was still dark,

and everything was

drenched with a cold dew.

But by the shifting of the

starry sky, he perceived that

he had slept for several

hours.

He soon discovered what

had awakened him.

Rollinger's ravings had

become louder and shriller,

were ascending to a

frenzied pitch. Curt quickly rose and went over to

the spot where Grag was standing watch over the

madman.

"No, do not make me!" Rollinger was gasping.

"I can't do it -- I can't!"

The man's face was frantic in the starlight, and

his body was writhing and shuddering.

"Chief, he's been getting worse by the minute!"

Grag reported. "He keeps talking to somebody he

calls the Dwellers."

Curt knelt by the bound madman, and spoke

earnestly in an effort to reach that dimmed,

distorted mind.

"Rollinger, what are you afraid of?"

The man's wild eyes looked up at him, as though

dimly recognizing him.

"The Dwellers!" gasped the madman. "The

hidden lords of this world, whose powers are

strange and mighty! They have been speaking to me

in my mind, have been commanding me to do that

which I cannot do."

Captain Future frowned. There was something

uncanny about the raw, shuddering terror of the

crazed scientist.

"Chief, do you suppose there could be malign

creatures on this world that he can sense but we

can't?" Grag asked in a low voice. "There's

scientific proof that an unhinged mind is more

sensitive to outside telepathic influences than a

sound mind," muttered Grag.

Curt felt definitely uneasy. He straightened and

looked around the starlit, sleeping camp.

"There don't seem to be any intruders here. You

didn't see anything strange, did you?"

Grag shook his head. "No, nothing at all. And

everyone else has been sleeping, except for that

Neptunian mutineer, Luuq, I saw moving around a

little bit ago."

"Maybe Luuq saw something," Captain Future

murmured. "I'll see if he did."

He went through the camp, searching the

sleepers for Luuq. To his surprise, he could not find

the Neptunian anywhere in the camp. The ex-bandit

had disappeared.

Kim Ivan awoke with catlike alertness as Curt

renewed his search for the missing man. The big

Martian. instantly got to his feet.

"What's the matter? Something wrong?" he

demanded.

"I'm afraid so," answered Captain Future. "Your

friend Luuq is missing. Grag saw him moving

about, but now he's gone."

Others were awakening, aroused by the

Martian's loud voice. They looked at each other

uneasily.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"See if anyone else is missing," ordered Kim

Ivan, frowning.

They soon discovered that one other of the

mutineers had also disappeared, a little Mercurian

ex-thief.

"Maybe the two of them just went out into the

jungle and will come back," suggested Boraboll,

the fat Uranian, hopefully.

"They wouldn't go prowling around in that

jungle by night," Kim Ivan said emphatically. "If

they left the camp, it was because they were

dragged out of it."

"Future seems to know more about it than

anyone else," said Moremos insinuatingly.

The gathered mutineers understood the

Venusian's veiled accusation. They turned hard

eyes upon Curt Newton.

"I know no more than you do,". Curt said

quietly.

"Future couldn't have made away with Luuq and

the other," Kim Ivan said loudly. "Not without

some sound that would've roused us all."

"I don't know," muttered old Tuhlus Thuun.

OHN ROLLINGER interrupted. The crazed

scientist, still lying bound under Grag's guard

nearby, was sobbing hysterically.

"We must leave this world!" he screamed.

"Unless we leave, the Dwellers will kill us all!"

"What's he talking about -- the Dwellers?" Kim

Ivan asked puzzledly.

"The hidden ones -- the mighty lords -- they

watch us now and they wait!" raved Rollinger.

Grabo, the Jovian, stirred uneasily, his dark face

nervous in expression. "I don't like this place. It's as

spooky as the Place of the Dead, on Jupiter."

"Do you s'pose there could be critters of some

kind on this planetoid cunning enough to steal into

the camp and carry away them two men?" asked

Ezra Gurney.

Surely we'd have seen any creatures as

intelligent as that," objected Joan, eyes bright with

concentration.

"I don't know," Curt muttered. "Everyhing about

this planetoid is alien, different from the life of our

own System. It comes from remote regions of the

galaxy, and during its ages of isolation, its

evolution has taken different paths."

There was an uneasy silence. The night suddenly

seemed pregnant with mysterious menace. The low

calls of small animals and the squeak of birds from

the dark surrounding jungle fell upon tensely

listening ears.

Had some formidable beast of prey actually

entered the camp and slain the Neptunian and

Mercurian, it would not have have been so

terrifying as this baffling disappearance of the two

men. It was the unearthly mystery of it that chilled

them. Their minds conjured pictures of malign and

alien creatures lurking out there in the dark,

watching and waiting.

"The most intelligent-lookin' creatures we've

seen on this planetoid are the Cubics," drawled

Ezra. "Do you s'pose they're the Dwellers?"

"They didn't look of high intelligence," Curt said

doubtfully. "Besides, how could they enter the

camp and make off silently with two men?"

"Luuq and the Mercurian must have went

sleepwalking into the jungle and got grabbed by

some beast," Kim Ivan growled.

"Just the same, I propose we post our own

guards at night to prevent any more 'sleepwalking',"

said Moremos, glancing toward Curt Newton.

For the remaining few hours of that night they

sat around the fire, talking in low voices. All

realized more completely than ever before the alien

nature of this wandering worldlet from outer space.

What dark riddle was it hiding?

The coming of day was a relief to strained

nerves. Almost cheerfully, they breakfasted on fruit

and berries. Then Captain Future got to his feet and

incisively addressed them.

"We've got to organize our operations, if we're to

get anywhere with the task ahead of us," he

declared.

He was a confidence-inspiring figure as he

stood, his tall, rangy figure and red head silhouetted

against the pale sunrise, his keen gray eyes

sweeping their faces. But he was not nearly so

confident as he looked. He was a little

overwhelmed by the audacity of what they were

about to attempt.

"First, we've got to complete the stockade

around this knoll and build some huts," he stated.

"Others of us have to form regular foraging parties

to supply fruit, roots, and small meat-animals if

possible."

IM IVAN spoke up. "I'll superintend the

building of the stockade and huts. And

Grabo can take care of the food-supply. He says he

knows how to set traps for the animals whose traces

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

we saw in the jungle."

Curt nodded. "I'll leave all that to you, then," he

told Kim Ivan. "The Futuremen and I will begin an

exploratory survey for the metallic ores and other

materials we'll require. That's our first step toward a

ship."

The big clear knoll soon was buzzing with

activity. Kim Ivan's stentorian voice bellowed

orders, supervising a large party of the mutineers in

hauling fern-poles from the jungle and setting them

up in a stockade and in framework for huts.

Grabo had chosen a dozen of the men and had

gone into the fern-forest to set the animal-snares he

had improvised from strips of clothing. Other of the

men were already bringing in fruits and roots.

Curt asked Ezra Gurney, "Will you stay here and

keep an eye on Moremos? I don't think he'll try to

make any real trouble until we have built a ship.

But I don't want to take any chances."

"I understand," nodded the veteran marshal. "I'll

watch that varmint."

Captain Future and Grag and Otho and the Brain

set forth eastward upon their quest for ores,

accompanied by George McClinton and Joan. The

girl had insisted upon going.

Curt headed toward the nearby region of

volcanic activity. All around that region were

chasms and crevasses that had been split by the

recent seismic disturbances.

"Our best chance of finding surface deposits of

iron, beryllium and the other ores we need, is in

those chasms," he pointed out. "We have to find the

stuff in easily worked surface deposits at first, for

as yet we have no tools for mining."

"When I think of all the work ahead of us, I wish

I was back home on the Moon," Otho said

gloomily.

They approached the black fields of solidified

lava. Beyond that crusted expanse lay the smoking

valleys through which came the sluggish red rivers

of molten rock that flowed down from the towering

volcanoes. The sulphurous fumes half-veiled the

forbidding vista.

Curt Newton turned to the Brain. "Simon, will

you reconnoiter as many of the chasms and gorges

as you can? See what deposits of ores you can spot.

We'll be working northward, from here."

The Brain glided off upon his mission, looking

like a glittering flying cube as he shot away through

the pale sunlight upon his traction-beams. He was

quickly out of sight.

George McClinton, to whom Simon was not as

familiar as to the others, looked after the Brain with

marveling wonder .

"If the Brain can f-f-fly like that so easily, w-w-

why couldn't he f-f-fly back to the System for

help?" he asked.

Curt shook his head. "Simon derives the power

for his beams from a tiny atomic generator inside

his case. It holds a charge of fuel sufficient for

many hours' activity, but not enough for a long

flight in space."

"That reminds me," Grag said dismayedly, "I'll

be needing copper and other elements for fuel for

my own generators pretty soon. Otherwise, my

power will run down."

Otho told the robot, "That's all right -- when

your power runs out, we can make some swell tools

out of you. Yes, sir, you're going to come in mighty

handy, Grag."

"Chief, will you make Otho quit threatening

me!" demanded Grag angrily. "He's getting on my

nerves by his talk of using me for metal."

"He can use up some of his wind climbing down

into this crevice and prospecting for iron, " Captain

Future said acidly as they started forward.

They had been moving northward and had come

to a deep crevasse driven in the rock of the

planetoid by quakes. It was quite narrow and its

jagged walls were almost vertical.

THO'S rubbery figure went down the walls

as though he were a fly. Presently his

voice echoed hollowly up to them.

"Yes, there's nickel-iron down here. Looks like

the core of Astarfall."

"That's what I was hoping for ," Curt declared. "I

figured from its mass that Astarfall would have a

nickel-iron core like most planetoids and planets,

and that its rock crust could not be a thick one."

They went back to the jungle and secured a

quantity of tough vines from which they fashioned

a strong, flexible ladder. Curt and Grag went down

this into the gloomy depths of the crevasse.

Glittering outcrops of nickel-iron ores were

plentiful in the bottom of the chasm. But digging

out the ore without tools was another matter. Here

Grag's great strength came into play. With a few

chunks of hard rock for hammers, the big robot

loosened small masses of ore.

Joan and McClinton had woven wicker baskets

which they let down by a vine rope. Thus the

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

masses of ore were hauled to the surface. It was

slow, toilsome work. The day was waning when

they finally had enough of the ore for Captain

Future's immediate purposes.

The Brain had returned and made his report. "I

investigated a good many of the chasms. And I

found indications of copper, manganese, chromium

and several other of the ores we need."

He listed them all, and Curt Newton listened

intently. He asked then, "What about the beryllium,

calcium and lead? They're vital."

"I've not found any of them yet," admitted the

Brain. "There are signs of possible beryllium: and

lead deposits in that huge gorge between the double

range of volcanoes. But I didn't risk going far down

into it, for, that abyss is highly dangerous. The

terrific air-currents, heat and fumes from the lava at

its bottom make it a veritable canyon of chaos."

"The Canyon of Chaos sounds like a good name

for that place, at that," remarked Otho.

"It's hardly worth while naming places on a

world that's going to blow up two months from

now," grumbled Grag.

The Sun was sinking when they returned to the

camp. The transformation there proved that Kim

Ivan and his men had been at work.

The stockade around the knoll was roughly

complete. A spring had been dug. The framework

of a dozen huts was up, and several had already

been thatched with flat fronds. The huge, barrel-

shaped cacti in the clearing had been left

untouched, since to attempt to cut down those giant

growths would have entailed immense labor for no

particular reason.

"Not bad," Kim Ivan admitted when Curt

complimented him on the day's work. "It won't take

us long to finish up the huts now."

RABO and his trappers soon returned

from the jungle. "We eat tonight, and not

just fruit," proclaimed the Jovian complacently.

They had snared four plump, rodent-like animals

as big as small pigs. And they had brought several

new varieties of edible fruits.

"But that jungle is a devilish place." swore the

Jovian."Beside those cursed tangle-trees, there's

smaller plants that eat insects and birds in the same

way. I never saw such evil plant-life as this world

has."

Nevertheless, the animals made a palatable sort

or stew. Although he didn't eat. the Brain passed

upon the flesh as being harmless and containing

nutriment. He waved his eye-stalks questioningly

when Captain Future thoughtfully fished a couple

of bones out of the stew and offered them for his

inspection.

"What is it, lad?" he asked.

"Note the glazed appearance of these bones,"

said Curt. "Just an interesting side problem, but do

you make the same thing I do of the skeletal

structure of mammals here?"

"Siliciferous compounds!" ex-claimed the Brain

at once. "The bony structure of creatures on

Astarfall are built up from silicon. Altogether

different from Earthly specimens. It's

unmistakable."

"Exactly," said Captain Future, nodding. He

turned to speak to one of the cooks.

"Save the skins of those animals for me," he

requested. "I'll need them tomorrow.

"To build the space ship?" sneered Moremos,

who had returned with the Jovian.

"Yes, to build the ship," Curt nodded, with a

calm smile.

He and Grabo scraped and cleaned the hides that

night, and he used strong fiber threads and a thorn

needle to sew two of them together into a rude but

effective bellows. This he mounted in a rough

wooden frame.

It was late when he finished this work by the

firelight. Joan had retired to the smallest hut, which

had been assigned for her use. Most of the

mutineers and others were also already asleep.

Grag had taken up his tireless and sleepless

watch. And old Tuhlus Thuun and Boraboll were

remaining awake and watchful tonight, too.

"I'm going to turn in," Curt yawned,

straightening. "How's Rollinger?"

"Muttering a little, but not as noisy as he was

last night," Grag replied. "I think he's quieting

down."

The crazed scientist was now confined in one of

the other small huts. He had been subdued and

silent all during the day.

CHAPTER X

Dread Warning

CURT slept heavily. When he awakened and

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

went out into the sunrise,

he found Kim Ivan

swearing.

"There is something

cursed spooky about this

place," declared the big

Martian. "I had queer

dreams all night -- as

though somebody was

talking inside my mind."

Boraboll spoke

nervously. "Nothing

happened all night. And

nothing came near the camp that we could see or

hear."

That day, while most of the mutineers resumed

the work of building the huts and replenishing the

food-supply, Captain Future and his party began the

next step of their task.

"We've got iron ore, and now we've got to smelt

it out for steel," Curt stated. "Since we don't have

any atomic smelter, we'll have to go back to ancient

ways."

He supervised the bringing of massive stones,

and the building of them into a small furnace. They

had no coal with which to fire this, but the Brain

had located a deposit of combustible peat in one of

the swampy sections of the jungle.

Curt Newton attached his rude bellows to the

stone furnace. He used its draft to fan the peat fire

he kindled inside. Then he arranged a mass of the

nickel-iron ore inside the furnace. When the ore

became molten, he forced air through it by hard

pumping on the bellows.

"This arrangement goes back to primitive

times," he commented. "It's crude, but we'll have to

use crude ways until we have some tools."

When the forced air had reduced the ore to a

mass of molten iron, Captain Future added a small

quantity of carbon.

"Hey, that isn't the way you make steelite,"

objected Otho.

"We can't make a modern steelite alloy without

beryllium and other elements which we haven't got

yet," Curt retorted. "We'll have to be satisfied at

first with this old-fashioned steel."

The product of his labors for the day were two

chunks of solid steel. One, which was much larger

than the other, was roughly shaped to serve as an

anvil. The other Curt attached to a limber wooden

handle, converting it into a crude but heavy

forging-hammer.

Joan looked a little disappointedly at these two

unlovely products of their day's toil.

"It's wonderful that you've been able to make

them, but they seem a long way off from a big,

complex space ship," she murmured.

"They're the seeds of a space ship," Curt old her.

"You have to crawl before you can walk.

Remember that we're starting here completely

empty-handed. That means that we're forced to

retrace a lot of the steps by which thousands of

generations of men ascended from the discovery of

fire to the building of space ships."

All during the next two days, he kept their

improvised furnace and forge at work. McClinton

was his chief helper, while Otho untiringly pumped

the bellows and Grag utilized his huge strength in

bringing fresh masses of ore from the surface

working they had discovered.

Kim Ivan had detailed a party of the mutineers to

dig that ore and help transport it to the camp. The

Brain was away from dawn till dark each day,

searching .the face of Astarfall for the other needed

elements. He had already managed to locate

deposits of several of them.

The first thing which Captain Future beat out

upon their forge was the steel framework for a

larger and more efficient smelter. When that was

going, a larger amount of better quality steel began

to result.

"We're still only in the first stages of tooling up,"

Curt declared. "We can't really make any start on

ship-building until we have atomic power and an

atomic smelter for turning out high-grade light

alloys."

"Why don't you start on that right away, then?"

Joan wanted to know. "Be reasonable, woman,"

pleaded Captain Future. " An atomic power set-up

requires certain chemicals which we can't dig out

until we have strong steel tools for mining."

HEY were concentrating now upon making

tough steel picks, bars and other tools for

mining operations. Each tool had to be beaten into

shape upon their forge. The camp rang with the

clangorous hammering.

By now, the huts had been completed and a

routine system of gathering and preparing food set

up. These last few nights had brought no recurrence

of the mysterious disappearances, although several

others beside Kim Ivan had complained of

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

uncannily oppressive dreams. The stockade gate

was guarded each night by a couple of the

mutineers.

"Now," said Captain Future on the fourth

morning, "we can start mining copper and the other

elements we need for the next step."

"I told you of the copper-ore deposit I found,"

said the Brain. "But I've still not located any

calcium, beryllium or lead."

"Let me scout for those and the other elements

we still lack," begged Otho. "I can maybe find them

where Simon would miss them."

"All right, you can prospect the chasms

northwest of the volcanic area," Curt acceded. "The

rest of us will start copper-mining today ."

Otho departed upon his prospecting mission.

Captain Future, Grag, McClinton and Rih Quili

gathered their new tools and started out for

preliminary work upon the copper deposit the Brain

had located. Joan was ready to accompany them,

but Curt firmly overruled her this time, leaving her

standing rebelliously outside the stockade. But

before they had gone far through the jungle, he

stopped.

"I thought I heard Joan calling," he said.

"Listen!"

They heard Joan's voice raised sharply again, in

an exclamation that had more of anger than fear in

it.

Instantly Curt plunged back through the jungle

the way they had come. When he came into sight of

the stockade, a sudden tide of red fury pulsed

through his brain.

Joan was struggling angrily in the arms of

Moremos. The green-skinned Venusian was

laughing as he drew her toward him.

"You are a little wildcat," he chuckled.

In all the years, Captain Future had killed more

than one man. But always he had slain as the

personification of stern, icy justice. He had almost

never before felt the hot, raging desire to slay that

now flung him forward.

Moremos thrust the girl away and recoiled

startledly. Next moment Curt had him by the throat.

The Venusian fought furiously, a savage hate

flaming in his eyes as he sought a deadly swamp-

man's grip.

"Curt, wait!" Joan pleaded appalled by the

terrible expression upon his face, one she had never

seen there before.

Captain Future did not even hear her. The raging

desire to kill bad momentarily made him forget all

his own skill in super ju-jitsu. He broke Moremos'

deadly grip by sheer strength, and slammed the

Venusian down to the ground like a doll. His

fingers tightened on the man's throat.

Then big hands gripped Curt's collar and pulled

him back off the Venusian. Grabo and a score of

the other mutineers had come running from the

camp.

Moremos staggered up, his face livid. his voice a

choking gasp. "Future. I'll pay you for this, too. It

adds to an old debt."

"Let go of the Chief!" roared a new voice. Grag

had followed Curt back and now charged on the

scene, ready for battle.

"What the devil's going on here?" bellowed Kim

Ivan. The big Martian was pushing his way through

the crowd.

"Future was trying to kill Moremos!" squeaked

fat Boraboll.

Curt made no explanations. But his voice was a

throbbing whisper as he spoke to the Venusian.

"If ever you so much as touch Joan again,

nothing will stop me from killing you."

A growl came from the mutineers. Their deep

and ancient feud against Futuremen and the Patrol

flamed quickly to the surface.

At that moment came a low, grinding roar from

far beneath their feet. The ground quivered slightly

under them, and then shook wildly.

The powerful and unexpected shock threw them

from their feet. They heard the crash of some of the

huts collapsing, and a section of the stockade near

them fell inward.

The fat Uranian mutineer uttered a screech and

there were cries of alarm from others. Curt Newton,

scrambling to Joan's side, felt the ground rolling

and heaving sickeningly under them. Then the

shocks subsided, and the grinding roar of

diastrophism died away.

"Gods of space, that was the worst tremor yet!"

gasped Grabo.

They looked at each other in a tense silence. All

realized that the quakes were now growing stronger

as Astarfall approached near the critical distance

from the System at which it would be shattered and

desroyed.

THO had set out in high spirits upon his

prospecting expedition that morning. The

restless android, always impatient of monotony had

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

been chafing during the lasst few days of steel-

making.

He swung eastward through the jungle and then

started around the rim of the great region of

earthquake-riven chasms and smoking black lava-

beds whose center was the towering double range

of active volcanoes. As he moved along, he

mentally listed the raw materials they still lacked.

"Cobalt, beryllium, lead, calcium, and about a

dozen others," Otho thought ruefully. "We might do

without a few of those in a pinch. But there just

can't be any space ship without beryllium and

calcium."

Beryllium was important, for it was the chief

ingredient of the metallic alloy whose strength and

lightness were necessary for the construction of a

space ship hull.

Calcium was even more vital. A small anount of

it was an absolute necessity before a ship's

cyclotrons could operate to produce atomic power.

For calcium was the only inhibitory catalyst that

could control the production of atomic power from

copper, and prevent a disastrous explosion.

"So it's up to me to find the stuff," the android

told himself determinedly.

The Brain had sketched for Otho a rough

diagram of the chasms around the volcanic region.

Many of these Simon had not closely explored.

Otho began a systematic exploration of them.

The rubbery android could climb like no other

being in the System.

He went down into the first chasm by

imperceptible holds on the jagged wall.

His keen, scientifically trained eyes strained in

the dusk to inspect the rock formations.

With the small steel hammer he had brought, he

tapped loose samples here and there. A streak of

bluish ore he uncovered at one spot proved to be

cobalt, one of the necessary materials. But he found

none of their other requirements in that chasm.

He clambered back up out of it and stood

panting upon its rim, looking a little dashedly

across the wilderness of lava and crevasses.

"No wonder Simon couldn't explore all these

cracks," he thought. "I've picked myself a job."

He resolutely went on to explore the next chasm.

But in it, he found nothing at all. Otho felt

increasingly worried about the lack of beryllium

and calcium as he climbed back to the surface.

The beryllium would soon be needed for hull-

construction, and a few pounds of the calcium

catalyst must be found before their projected ship

could leave this world.

As he reached the surface, he suddenly recoiled.

A half-dozen weird creatures had emerged from the

jungle and were silently marching across the lava-

beds nearby. They looked like gigantic centipedes.

Then Otho recognized them as a band of the

Cubics, the weird little cooperative cubical

creatures they had already seen. The things had

grouped together into the centipedal formations.

They were solemnly crossing the lava-beds

toward the towering double range of volcanoes.

"Now what the devil are they going out there

for?" Otho wondered. "They must know it's

dangerous around the volcanoes."

The Cubics were heading toward the gigantic

canyon between the volcano-ranges, that which the

castaways had named the Canyon of Chaos.

The weird creatures approached a point some

distance along the rim of that terrifying abyss, and

then disappeared down into it.

"Holy space-imps, what reason can they have for

entering that devilish place?" muttered the android.

YSTIFIED and intrigued, Otho started

out across the lava-beds after the Cubics.

He picked his way as they had done, across the hot

expanses of solidified lava.

Swirling smoke made him cough and gasp for

breath. But he pressed on until he reached the rim

of the Canyon of Chaos at the point where the

Cubics had entered it. He peered down into the

abyss.

The Canyon was a fearsome spectacle. Many

miles long, a mile in width, and almost that in

depth, its gloomy rock walls sank downward almost

vertically everywhere. Far below, a glowing,

narrow river of crimson lava crawled along the

floor of the titan gorge.

Sulphurous smoke and blasts of superheated air

screamed up from its depths. The lava river at its

floor, Otho perceived, bubbled up from fiery

springs at the north end of the canyon and flowed

down its length and away through an underground

chasm at the southern end.

"But where did the Cubics go?" he muttered,

trying to peer down through the rushing smokes.

Then Otho perceived that a precarious pathway

led downward from where he crouched, along the

steep wall below him. The creatures he had

followed had obviously descended by that path.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

He was on the point of starting down after them,

when he glimpsed them returning up the pathway.

At once Otho ducked behind a mass of rocks for

concealment.

The Cubics, still joined in groups to form the

centipede-like figures, emerged laboriously from

the abyss. But now each of these cooperative

figures carried with it a chunk of rock shot with

gray metal.

"That rock is lead-bearing," Otho thought

swiftly. "That's good-we need lead. But what are

they going to do with it?"

There was no apparent answer to that riddle.

The Cubics started marching back across the

lava-beds toward the jungle with their burdens.

Otho remembered now that when they had first

encountered the Cubics the little cooperative

creatures had been carrying similar chunks of rock

with them.

"Why, they come to this canyon for lead-bearing

rock!" he thought astonishedly. "They must be

more intelligent even than we figured. Wonder

what they do with it?"

He decided at once to enter the abyss and locate

the source of the lead ores.

Lead was one of the needed materials they had

not yet located. And there might well be other

required substances down there.

Yet even the hardy Otho hesitated a few

moments before entering that fearsome abyss. The

smoke and scorching air threatened to asphyxiate

even his tough lungs. His own respiratory system

was much more resistant to fumes and gases than

the ordinary human's. Still, he took care to make

himself a rude respirator from strips of cloth which

he tore from his jacket and bound across his nose

and mouth.

HEN Otho started down the pathway. It

was so. precarious, and had so many

sections torn out of it by recent seismic

convulsions, that only the agile android or creatures

like the Cubics could possibly descend.

Smoke-laden winds shrieked and howled

upward around him, as he made his way slowly

down. Hot ashes rained constantly upon him, from

the showers cast up constantly by the towering

volcanoes that flanked the canyon. The evil glow of

the lava river far below seemed to yawn for him.

Otho kept on. Presently he descried a big ledge

or shelf in the vertical wall close beneath him. In a

few minutes, he was standing upon this ledge. He

looked wonderingly around.

"Imps of the Sun, the Cubics never did all this!"

he exclaimed.

There were ancient mine-workings upon this

ledge. Tunnels had been driven back into the rock

wall for a dozen yards, and marks of the tools

which had dug them were still evident.

It was obvious that the purpose of the tunnels

had been to tap several rich veins of metallic ores

here. Otho's trained eyes at once recognized the

glittering streaks in the rock.

"Not only lead deposits, but also beryllium --

and plenty of it!" he exulted. "Now if we can only

find the calcium and a few others, we're all set as

far as materials are concerned."

Then wonder returned to conquer his exultation.

Who had dug these shafts? Who had mined here for

lead and other metals?

It could not have been the Cubics, he thought.

These cooperative little creatures appeared not to

make use of tools. They apparently came down here

and secured chunks of the lead-bearing rock which

had already been loosened by the ancient mining

operations.

CHAPTER XI

Cosmic Mystery

OTHO advanced into one

of the, shafts. Something

upon its wall caught his eye.

It was a smooth plate of

pure lead, affixed to the

rock. He discovered that it

was engraved closely with

unfamiliar symbols.

"Why, that's writing!" he

exclaimed. "Then whoever

did the mining here long

ago were intelligent

creatures -- maybe humans."

He pried the soft lead plate out of the rock and

excitedly examined its engraved characters. They

were not, of course, in any language of the Solar

System. Here was a cosmic mystery, indeed!

"The chief and Simon will be plenty excited by

this thing," Otho thought. "And by the beryllium

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

and lead I've found."

At that moment, there came a slight quivering of

the rock walls around him. It put him instantly on

the alert.

"Better get out of here, and tell the others about

this!"

At the moment the words left his lips, he was

thrown from his feet by a terrifc shock. Flattened

upon the floor of the ledge, he heard an awful

grinding roar as the whole Canyon of Chaos rocked

wildly.

It was the same unprecendentedly strong quake

which at this very moment was so startling to the

other Futuremen and the mutineers, back at the

camp. But it had disastrous effects here.

Otho heard a cracking, crashing reverberation

from above as he struggled to his feet on the

swaying ledge. He looked up. A whole vast mass of

the canyon, wall above him had been split loose by

the shock and was falling toward him.

With a smothered yell, Otho plunged into the

nearest of the ancient mine-tunnels. He was not a

moment too soon. A shower of boulders crashed

down upon the ledge, as a huge mass of the rock

above split loose and fell.

The shock gradually died away. Otho picked his

way out onto the rock-strewn ledge, and then

uttered a cry of consternation.

"Now how am I going to get out of here?"

The violent quake had split off. a great section

of the rock wall just above the ledge, destroying the

precarious path upward. There was a great cleft in

the wall there, which even Otho could not hope to

climb. He was trapped upon the ledge.

Otho, as he looked around in dismay, became

aware of a louder roaring and hissing beneath him.

He peered down into the canyon.

His dismay became acute. The molten lava river

down there at the floor of the abyss was rapidly

rising. The shock had opened new rifts by which

the liquid lava was pouring into the bottom of the

canyon faster than the single narrow outlet could

carry it away.

"Holy sun-imps, this is a real jam!" muttered the

android. "That lava will be washing over this ledge

in an hour."

He peered intently through the swirling smoke,

endeavoring to discover some way of escape from

the ledge. There was none. And the lava continued

to rise relentlessly.

How to get help? Captain Future and the others

didn't even know he was down here in the Canyon

of Chaos. He had to signal them somehow. How?

"I'd give my right arm for a rocket signal-pistol

right now," he thought.

That thought brought a vague possible expedient

into his fertile mind. There might be a way of

signaling the others.

Hopefully Otho began searching through the

mass of broken rock that now littered the ledge. He

finally found some chunks of a rock that he thought

might be suitable for his purpose. It was a tawny

stone streaked with rich veins of orange mineral.

Otho experimentally tossed a small piece of it

down into the rising lava. As the rock melted and

vaporized in the molten river, a small puff of

orange-colored smoke shot up from it.

"Yes, that might do it," Otho told himself. "Here

goes, anyway."

E assembled a number of chunks of that

orange rock. Then be began tossing them

down into the fiery lava.

He dropped them in a certain order first a small

chunk, then a large one, then two small ones, and

so on.

From each chunk of rock, as it melted and

vaporized, a brilliant puff of orange smoke shot up

through the swirling fumes to the surface above the

canyon. The succession of short and long puffs of

orange smoke were spelling out Otho's message in

the Futuremen's code. ,

"I-n C-h-a-o-s C-a-n-y-o-n-c-o-m-e k q-u-i-c-k-l-

y --"

He came to the end of bis message. Hopefully,

be peered up through the drifting smoke. Those

distinctive orange puffs should have been visible

from a distance. If the others bad only seen them.

But no one came to answer bis signals. His

hopes declined. And the molten lava was still

rising. The beat was becoming terrific. He

assembled more chunks of orange rock and

repeated his smoke-puff message.

Again be waited. There was still no answer. And

the crimson tide of rising lava was now only a few

hundred feet below the ledge.

"This," muttered the undaunted android calmly,

"begins to look serious. I won't have time for many

more signals."

Then be discovered that he had not enough of

the chemical-laden rock for even one more signal.

There were only a few chunks of it left.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Otho used them to spellout a last, incomplete

smoke-signal. "I-n C-h-a-o-s C-a-n-y-o-n --"

"If none of them see that, this cursed place is

liable to be the end of Otho's rocket-trail," he

muttered.

A few minutes passed. Then a thrill of hope shot

through the android as he glimpsed a small, cubical

object flying down toward him through the swirling

fumes.

It was the Brain. And Simon Wright was having

a difficult time to beat against the wild currents of

up-steaming hot air. Otho yelled and waved his

arms, and his old comrade saw and came toward

him.

The Brain was quickly beside the ledge the. His

square, transparent "body" hovered in the air, his

lens-like eyes estimating the desperate situation as

Otho explained his predicament.

"Humph, it's lucky for you that I saw your last

smoke-signal," said Simon. "I've been

reconnoitering some of the chasms northeast of

here. I found some rich veins of magnesium and

cadmium in one of them."

"You can talk about that later," Otho said

hastily. "Right now, how am I to get out of here?

That rising lava will be over the ledge soon."

"Well, I can't possibly lift you out of here,"

rasped the Brain. "I'll have to find Curtis and Grag."

Simon's gaze fell upon the inscribed lead plate

which Otho had wrenched from the wall of the

ancient shafts. "What's that?"

Otho explained hurriedly how he had found that

mysterious relic of the past.

"Why, that's amazing," Simon exclaimed with

deep interest. "I believe those characters have a

resemblance to the Antarian language. Let me see

it."

"For space's sake, Simon, forget your scientific

curiosity for now and go get the others!" howled

Otho.

"All right, but take care of that plate," cautioned

Simon. "I don't want to see it destroyed."

"You're worrying a lot more about the cursed

plate than you are about me," Otho declared,

outraged.

The Brain shot up through the streaming smoke

and disappeared. The lava was still rising

menacingly, and the heat and fumes from it had

become almost overpowering.

UT Otho felt reassured. He had unlimited

confidence in his fellow Futuremen. He

crouched as far back on the ledge as he could get.

gasping for breath against the choking fumes.

It seemed a long time to him before he heard a

yell from above. Then a long rope made of tough

vines knotted together was let down to him. The

agile android instantly grabbed it and was drawn

up.

Captain Future, Grag and the Brain greeted him

diversely when he thankfully emerged onto the rim

of the Canyon of Chaos.

"So we had to pull you out of another crazy

jam!" said Grag loudly. "What the devil were you

doing poking around in this place?"

"Did you find any beryllium or calcium, Otho?"

Curt asked.

"I found beryllium, lead and some other metals

in plenty, but it won't do us any good now," Otho

answered ruefully. "Look, the lava down there is

covering the whole ledge."

"That doesn't matter -- we can trace the

beryllium vein and mine it from up here," Captain

Future assured. "What about calcium?"

Otho shook his head. "No sign of that."

Curt frowned. "That's not so good. We've now

found almost every element we'll need, except

calcium. And we haven't found a grain of it."

"You saved the lead plate?" the Brain asked

Otho anxiously. "Cur-tis, look at this."

Curt was as astounded as Simon had been when

he learned of Otho's discovery of the ancient mine-

workings, and inspected the plate.

"You say the Cubics were taking chunks of lead-

bearing rock out of the place?" he repeated

puzzledly.

"Yes, but the Cubics never sank those shafts,"

Otho replied. "It was done ages ago, by the look of

them."

"This is a mystery," Captain Future said

thoughtfully. "It seems that Astarfall once had an

intelligent human or semi-human race. Who could

they have been? How long ago did they exist on

this planetoid?"

"Don't the symbols on that plate look something

like the characters of the Antarian language, that we

learned on our quest for the Birthplace?" the Brain

keenly asked the red-haired planeteer.

Simon was referring to a previous adventure of

the Futuremen, an epic quest amid the more remote

stars of the galaxy for the Birthplace of Matter.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

During that quest, they had had contact with natives

of the star Antares' worlds and had learned

something of the Antarian language.

"It does look a little like Antarian," Curt

admitted.

"Maybe there are Antarians hidden on Astarfall

yet?" Grag proposed. "Maybe they're the

mysterious Dwellers that Rollinger keeps raving

about ?"

"That doesn't seem possible," Curt muttered.

"Yet there is some great riddle about this planetoid

which we haven't guessed."

"I think that with sufficient study I could

partially translate this inscription," saud the Brain

quickly. "It might tell us something."

"Later on, Simon," Captain Future agreed.

"We've got too much work on hand right now,

starting construction of a ship. You all know what

that shock meant. It meant that Astarfall is

sweeping toward doom !"

The day was already far advanced, but before

they returned to the encampment, they had used

their geological knowledge to trace the beryllium

vein to one of the chasms some, distance from the

volcanic area.

HEN they entered camp, Curt stiffened.

Moremos was coming toward them. The

Venusian spoke earnestly.

"Captain Future, I want to apologize for

molesting the girl this morning. I was clear out of

orbit."

The Futuremen and the other mutineers who

heard were equally astonished. But Curt Newton

eyed the Venusian unforgivingly.

"Then I'm to understand that you've had a

change of heart?" Curt asked dryly.

Moremos shrugged. "There's no love lost

between us, you know that as well as I do. But

we're all in the same boat, and Kim Ivan gave his

promise to you that there'd be no trouble. I'll stick

by that."

When the Venusian had gone, Otho, looked after

him surprisedly. "I never thought that he would

knuckle down."

"He's only nursing us along until we have built a

ship and got away from here," Curt predicted.

"We're his only chance of escape, and he's smart

enough to realize that. But once away from

Astarfall, look out! That Venusian hates me worse

than anyone else here. Anyway, there shouldn't be

any more trouble to interfere with our work."

URT was wrong. That very night, three

more men disappeared inexplicably from

the camp.

The disappearances were not discovered until

after breakfast the next morning. Then Grabo, who

was assembling his foraging party for the day's

work in the jungle, discovered that one of his men

was missing. A quick check disclosed that two

others of the mutineers were gone also.

The disappearances were utterly baffling this

time. For the stockade of high, pointed poles now

formed a complete enclosure around the camp. The

only gate through it had been guarded all night by

old Tuhlus Thuun and George McClinton. And

both the old pirate and the prune-loving engineer

insisted that the three missing men had not gone out

the gate.

"We sat with our backs to that gate all night!"

Tuhlus declared.

"That's r-right," stuttered McClinton. "l was t-

trying to convince Tuhlus Thuun of the f-food

value of p-prunes. We were awake all the t-time."

"Those three men must have gone out the gate.

It's the only way out of the camp, and they're not

here now!" swore Kim Ivan.

Boraboll's teeth were chattering with fear as the

fat Uranian suggested, "Those Dwellers Rollinger

raves about took them for sure."

"How could your supposed Dwellers enter the

camp if they didn't come through the gate?" Captain

Future asked incredulously.

"They might be queer creatures of the ground,

who could tunnel up through the soil." advanced

the terrified Uranian.

They made a thorough search of the whole

surface of the knoll. But though they inspected

every foot of the ground, and even stirred. the soil

around the sills of the huts and the roots of the giant

cacti, they found no traces of such mole-like

monsters as Boraboll suggested.

"That settles it," muttered Grabo. "The Dwellers

must be invisible mon-sters of some kind."

"Even invisible monsters couldn't come through

a closed gate," sourly reminded Kim Ivan.

"If you ask me." drawled Ezra Gurney earnestly.

"I still say that the Dwellers are none other than

them Cubics. They could get in where nothin' else

could, by breakin' up and slippin' in one by one."

Some of the castaways were struck by this idea.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Grabo said, thoughtfully, "The Cubics' community

must be near here in the jungle. We've glimpsed the

creatures several times when we were out

foraging."

Curt shook his head. "Even if the Cubics could

get in, they couldn't take three men out through the

stockade like that."

He turned to the Brain. "Simon, you never sleep.

Did you hear or see anything during the night?"

"No, lad," was the reply. "I spent the whole night

attempting to translate that Antarian lead tablet

Otho found in the Canyon of Chaos. I was too

engrossed to notice anything."

Neither had Grag, it developed, heard anything.

All their attempts at solution of the menacing

mystery seemed to end in a blank wall.

"Well, I don't see that we can do anything but

double the watch from now on at the gate of the

stockade," Curt said. "We've got too terrific a job

on our hands to lose time investigating now."

In fact, the task ahead was beginning to look

impossible even to the indomitable planeteer. They

had spent nearly a week with little more to show for

it than an array of steel tools. And within seven

more weeks, Astarfall would be shattered as it

approached the dreaded Limit.

UTURE drove the work that day with a

fierceness of purpose born of dreadful

apprehension. He pressed into service all of Kim

Ivan's followers except those engaged in the task of

maintaining the food supply.

He divided them into two parties. One engaged

in mining copper ore from the chasm in which the

Brain had located a deposit. The other party began

excavating lead-bearing minerals from the vein

which Captain Future had traced from the Canyon

of Chaos.

"Future, I'm not kicking, but it seems to me

we're not getting anywhere on a ship," said Kim

Ivan, wiping sweat from his brow. "What are we

digging all this lead for? You can't build a space

ship of lead."

"You can't build a ship," Curt countered,

"without an atomic smelter and forge to turn out

your beams and plates. It would be hopeless to try

doing it by hand. Therefore, our first need is an

atomic smelter ."

He added, "That's what the lead is for. To make

a cyclotron for production of atomic energy, you

have to have inertron. Nothing else will withstand

the explosion of disintegrating atoms. And inertron

is a compound of lead and other elements."

"But why have you got the other lads digging

copper?" the big Martian wanted to know.

"Because a cyclotron's heart is the electric

apparatus that explodes its unstable atomic fuel by

a powerful charge," Captain Future answered.

"Electrical apparatus means coil-wire and

condensers, and they mean copper."

He concluded grimly. "And that's only the half

of it. We'll also have to have calcium and a half-

dozen other substances before we can get going.

And we haven't even found some of them yet."

"You make the thing sound impossible,"

groaned Kim Ivan discouragedly.

Curt smiled grimly as he stooped again with his

pick at the toilsome work of loosening masses of

the lead-bearing rock.

"Cheer up, Kim. Once we manage to get a cyc

built, things will go a little faser."

Yet Curt Newton himself felt dark apprehension

all through the long day of back-breaking toil. An

icy premonition of possible failure oppressed his

mind.

Had he, for once, set himself and the Futuremen

too gigantic a task? To build a space ship out of

nothing! And to do it within a terribly short time-

limit, with dangerous criminals who hated him for

workers, and with a malign mystery of this alien

world menacing them?

He let none of the others see his doubts. He kept

his mein confident in spite of his bone-crushing

weariness, as they dragged their masses of lead and

copper ore back to the camp at the end of the day.

CHAPTER XII

Who Are the Dwellers?

KIM IVAN came to Curt as

darkness fell.

"I've put a couple of men on

guard at each side of the

stockade tonight," he

announced.

Curt nodded. "I'm going to

keep watch myself tonight also,

Kim."

"I'll watch with you, then,"

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

the big Martian declared. "Though space knows I'm

tired enough to sleep a week."

The Brain had a discouraging report for Captain

Future that night. Simon had spent the day

exploring the more distant chasms in search of the

few elements they still lacked.

"I still can 't find any traces of calcium, lad.

There just doesn't seem to be any of it on this

world."

"That's bad," Curt admitted. "We simply have to

find a little of it, or no space ship we build will ever

take off."

His thoughts were somber as he sat with Kim

Ivan outside one of the huts later and kept watch

upon the sleeping camp. Except for an occasional

shuffle of movement by the guards around the

stockade-gate, and the low medley of bird and

animal noises from the jungle, it was silent.

The great drift of stars that belted the night sky

shed a vague light upon the camp. The gigantic,

barrel-shaped cacti nearby threw grotesque

shadows. Near the fire poised the strange, cubical

shape of the Brain, intently studying by the firelight

the inscribed lead tablet of mystery.

Kim Ivan woke from a growing drowsiness at a

low, wailing sound. "What's that?"

"Only Rollinger starting again," Curt answered

in a low voice.

The raving mutter came from the hut in which

Grag kept patient watch over the bound madman. It

raoe slowly in pitch, grew mare frantic.

Captain Future suddenly stiffened. Joan Randall

had just emerged from her hut into the starlight.

She started to walk in an oddly rigid, mechanical

stride. Her face was white and expressionless.

"Joan, what's the matter?" he called anxiously.

There was no answer from the girl. In sudden

alarm, Curt sprang to her side and grasped her arm.

"Joan!"

Joan struggled to free herself of his grasp, for a

moment. Then she suddenly shuddered violently,

and looked wildly around.

"Curt!" she gasped. Quivering, she clung to him.

"Curt, they had me! They were drawing me out to

them."

He soothed her. "Relax, Joan. You've just had a

nightmare, and started sleep-walking."

Her fine face was pallid with horror. "No, Curt --

it was more than a nightmare! In my sleep, they

hypnotized me somehow, drew me!"

Captin Future's brows knitted together. "Tell me

just what happened. Who or what are 'they'?"

It was some moments before the shuddering girl

could speak calmly. The stamp of a terrible

experience still in her dark eyes.

"I don't know what or where they are," she said

breathlessly. "All I know is that soon after I fell

asleep, I began to feel cold, powerful minds that

somehow were reaching out to grip my mind."

"Say, that's what I felt a little of in the bad

dreams I had the other night," Kim Ivan interrupted

hastily. "It was so bad, I woke up. Some of the

other chaps had the same kind of dreams."

"But I didn't wake up. I couldn't, though I

wanted horribly to," Joan gasped. "The icy grip of

those mental attackers held me just as a rabbit is

held by a snake's eyes. And just like a hypnotized

rabbit, I felt myself getting up and walking out of

my hut. I knew that I was walking toward

something awful, but I couldn't stop until you

awoke me, Curt."

APTAIN FUTURE was thoughtful as he

held her protectingly in his arms. He

looked over her dark head at Kim Ivan.

"I begin to see now," he muttered. "The

Dwellers, as Rollinger called them, are creatures

who somehow use tremendous telepathic power to

draw victims toward themselves. There's no other

explanation."

Kim Ivan looked scared. "You mean that

something or things out there in the jungle reached

in here with hypnotic telepathy and dragged out all

our men that disappeared?"

"But whoever heard of a creature of prey that

drew its victims to it by hypnotism?" exclaimed

Otho.

Curt shrugged helplessly. "The life of this

planetoid has followed freakish paths of evolution,

for some reason."

"I'm still bettin' that them Cubics are what's doin'

it," muttered Ezra Gurney darkly.

The commotion had aroused many in the camp.

They seemed stricken by a chill horror as they

speculated upon the mysterious Dwellers who

somehow could reach into the camp by telepathic

power to seize their prey.

"You'll notice," Curt Newton commented. "that

none of us are ever mentally attacked when we're

awake. It's only in sleep. when the conscious mind

is no longer on guard. that the Dwellers make their

telepathic attack."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"M-m-maybe that. explains why R-rollinger is

more sensitive to the th-things than we are,"

stuttered George McClinton. "His c-conscious mind

is so shattered that he has n-n-no guard against the

Dwellers."

The Brain had joined them. And Simon Wright

now imparted news to them.

"I've been trying to translate that Antarian tablet

which Otho found. It's extremely difficult, and I've

only translated a few phrases here and there. But

what I've deciphered seems to refer to predatory

creatures who use mental attack to seize victims.

Undoubtedly, the Dwellers."

"If you can translate all of that, it might tel us

more about the Dwellers and identify them for us!"

Captain Future exclaimed. "There's some

tremendous riddle about this planetoid and its

strange forms of life. The lead tablet may prove the

key to the riddle. Keep working on it, Simon."

There seemed nothing more they could do to

protect themselves until they should have found

some clue to the identity of their attackers. And the

work that engaged them was too vital to halt for

any reason.

During the next days, the Futuremen kept their

improvised smelter running full blast. With painful

slowness, they managed to refine a considerable

quantity of copper, lead and other necessary metals.

Curt kept Kim Ivan's men at work mining and

bringing in more of the ores. The mutineers swore

at the labor of the task, but were too conscious of

the life-or-death necessity of it to refuse. Twice,

strong tremors shook the surface of the planetoid in

those few days. And the activity of the volcanoes

nearby seemed becoming ominously greater .

During these few nights, they had no more

attacks from the mysterious enemy and no more

disappearances. They were nearly all on the watch

the first nights. But nothing happened. It was as

though the Dwellers were aware of their

watchfulness, and would not make their telepathic

attack when the humans were on guard.

Grabo and his foragers found no clue to the

identity of the Dwellers in the jungle. "We've kept

our eyes open, but we haven't seen any creatures

who might be them," reported the Jovian. "Except

for the Cubics and those big rodents and birds,

there isn't much animal life here -- just a wild mass

of those tangle-trees and other devilish queer

plants."

"If we could spare the time to beat thoroughly

through the jungle we might find the Dwellers."

Curt said.

"But we can't. The days are going by and we still

have'.t even started real construction of a ship."

The work of preparation for construction

seemed, indeed, agonizingly slow. The terrific

necessity of building every tool. mechanism and

instrument they needed was making big inroads

into their limited time.

Captain Future and Grag and Otho and George

McClinton had begun building the first cyclotron,

or atomic power generator.

IRST, they had had to go back to steel-

making and forge big crucibles of heat-

resistant steel. With these, they could handle the

softer metals of lead and copper and others, when

in a molten condition.

Curt built up a clay mold, with infinite care. Into

this they poured molten inertron, the alloy

composed of lead and tempering elements. When

the metal had cooled, they broke open the mold and

had a small but massive cylindrical shell of

inertron. This was to be the main power-chamber of

the cyclotron. The only openings in the cylinder

were the small ones at the top for the fuel-feed and

injector, and the bigger one for the power-take-off.

"Now to cast the fittings," Curt said. "The fuel

feed-lines and the power take-off lines all have to

be inertron, too, as well as the valves. And our only

way to get 'em is to cast 'em. We've not the

elaborate equipment that you need for machining

inertron."

"Oh, L-L-Lord," groaned George McClinton.

"I've worked with cycs for years, b-b-but never

realized what it was to b-b-build one."

While they toiled to finish the fuel-feed, injector

and power-leads, the Brain was ranging out every

day to explore the chasms and gorges.

Calcium was what Simon was looking for, most

of all. The vital catalyst was imperative If they were

to utilize the tremendous atomic energies locked up

in copper. But the Brain reported no success.

"I am beginning to fear," said Simon, "that there

is no accessible calcium on Astarfall."

Curt bit his lip. "We've got our makeshift cyc

almost finished. But we can't use copper fuel in it

until we have a little calcium."

Copper was the fuel most ordinarily used in

cyclotrons. That metal released more atomic energy

when disintegrated than did any other ordinary

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

substance. It released so much energy, indeed, that

it would blow any cyclotron apart unless its

disintegration was slowed down by calcium.

"We c-c-could use iron for fuel, instead of c-c-

copper," McClinton suggested. "It won't p-produce

half as much power as c-copper would, but it c-

could be used w-without the c-calcium catalyst."

"It's what we'll have to do, to get going," Captain

Future agreed. "But we still must have calcium!

Only copper will release enough energy to power a

space-ship! Unless we get a little calcium, any ship

we build will never take off."

He put McClinton to work upon casting the

inertron valves and fittings. The lanky engineer

labored diligently, stopping only to munch a few of

his dried prunes now and then.

"They g-g-give me energy," he defended when

Joan chaffed him about his addiction. "P-people

don't realize the value of p-prunes."

"What'll you do when they're all gone?" Joan

laughed. "Your case is almost empty ."

He looked dismal. "I know. That's why I'm w-

working so hard to g-get the ship started. To get

back to c-civilization and p-prunes."

Captain Future himself was engaged upon the

harder job of building the electric firing-mechanism

for their cyclotron.

A cyclotron is operated by disintegrating

powdered metal fuel atoms into their constituent

electrons. This exploding cloud of free electrons

was in reality what people called atomic energy.

NCE the disintegration process was

started, It was self-continuing as long as

the injector fed powdered fuel. But to start it, it was

necessary to have a trigger-apparatus consisting of

an electrostatic generator that would release a bolt

violent enough to start the disintegration within a

small trigger-tube attached to the main power-

chamber.

"How the devil do we build an electrostatic

generator when we don't even have a foot of wire?"

Otho demanded.

"We make the wire first," Curt retorted.

"This thing gets more complicated the further we

go with it," groaned the android.

But he fell to with Grag and Curt in the

tremendously difficult task of drawing out the

necessary wire from their supply of smelted copper.

Joan's deft fingers wove fine fiber threads from

certain plants into the necessary insulation for the

wire. Curt wound the complex coils, upon wooden

frames. Gradually the electrostatic generator took

shape.

The inertron trigger-tube was fitted into one of

the small openings of their cyclotron, with its

electrodes in place inside it and with heavy copper

cables running from it to the generator itself.

The generator contained the condensers for

storing the charge, the transformer coils, and the

copper spheres, belts and brushes of an electrostatic

machine which was to be turned by a geared crank.

"We're about r-r-ready," said McClinton

hopefully, at last. "I p-p-put the refined iron powder

into the f-f-fuel-hopper."

Everyone of the castaways was gathered that

morning to witness the test of the vital cyclotron

upon which all of them had labored in some way or

other. An atmosphere of tension held them.

Grag had already for some time been turning the

crank of the electrostatic generator, building up the

charge in its condensers. Lacking instruments, Curt

had to calculate mentally the amount of charge

available.

"It should be enough to fire the trigger-tube," he

said tautly. "Shove in the injector, George."

The prune-chewing engineer eagerly obeyed,

pushing down the knob atop the massive little

cyclotron, injecting a charge of powdered iron into

it.

Captain Future instantly closed the heavy switch

that broke the copper cable connecting the

generator to the cyc. The stored electric charge

flashed into the trigger-tube of the cyclotron.

There was a sharp detonation as the terrific

electic bolt started the bit of fuel in the trigger-tube

disintegrating. Almost instantly, it was followed by

a bursting, vibrating roar as the process of atomic

disintegration spread to the main charge of

powdered iron in the power-chamber .

Curt depressed the valve-lever atop the power

take-off. From that take-off tube, a jet of pale white

fire lanced out. It was a sword of atomic energy that

cut deep into the side of the knoll behind the

cyclotron.

"She works!" yelled Otho, his face aflame with

excitement.

"By space, you've done it!" bellowed Kim Ivan.

"We've got atomic power now!"

Weary as he was, Curt Newton felt a thrill of

inextinguishable pride in what they had done. In

two short weeks, they had retraced the whole

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

history of human invention from fire to atomic

power .

They had started from nothing, as the first

primitive savages of Earth had done. The only

difference was that they had had the knowledge

slowly gathered by hundreds of generations, and

had been able to apply it.

"N-n-now do we start laying the f-frame of the

ship?" McClinton asked eagerly, but Captain Future

shook his head.

"Not yet. We've got to build more cyclotrons

first. We'll need them for the immense labor of

actual construction. Then when we've built the ship,

our cyclotrons can be installed in it as its

propulsion machinery."

URT drove the work relentlessly on in the

next days, spending every possible minute

on the construction of more cyclotrons. Progress

was much faster now, for they could use the cyc

they had already built to power an atomic smelter

that reduced the time of operations greatly.

But on that first night after com-pleting the

original cyclotron, two more men had mysteriously

disappeared! Old Tuhlus Thuun and one of

McClinton's engineers vanished as inexplicably as

though they had been swallowed by thin air. And

the stockade wall had been guarded all night!

Next night, another mutineer vanished. Few

slept on the following nights, so great was the

alarm and fear. Nothing happened those nights.

Than the vanishings started again.

Panic halted the operations of the mutineers.

Their terror was so great that they refused longer to

assist the Futuremen's labors.

"There's no use of working to build a ship!"

cried Boraboll when Curt tried to get them to

resume work. "Long before we get a ship built, the ,

Dwellers will have murdered all of us!"

Curt felt baffled desperation. He had depended

on the mutineers to mine the great amount of metal-

ores necessary for construction. Their panicky

stoppage of work imperiled, all his hopes of

building a ship in time to escape from this doomed

world.

"We demand that the cursed Dwellers be found

and destroyed before we'll go on working!" shouted

one of the rebels.

"We can't stop work now to search for the

Dwellers," Captain Future pleaded desperately.

"We're behind schedule as it is. In a little more than

four weeks, Astarfall is going to.be destroyed." ,

Kim Ivan added his authority to Curt Newton's

plea. "Don't be idiots!" the big Martian stormed his

followers. "The Dwellers may get same us, hut

unless we build a ship in till we're all finished."

Moremos nodded agreement. The Venusian

murderer not to have seen the force of arguments.

Its logic was undeniable.

"You know I have no love for Future, but he's

right in this," snapped Moremos. "We still haven't

the faintest clue as to what or where the Dwellers

are. We might spend weeks hunting for them

without success."

But the superstitious terror of most of the

mutineers was not to be allayed by cold reason. The

nearer danger loomed bigger to them.

"We're not going to work in those diggings all

day and then be afraid to sleep at night, lest we

vanish, too!" Boraboll squeaked.

Curt Newton felt a sense of frustration. He could

understand the terror of these men. But their

panicky strike was the last straw.

Unexpectedly, the Brain came to his help. Simon

Wright glided to his side and spoke coolly.

"Tell them to quit acting like scared children --

that I now have at least a clue to the Dwellers," said

the Brain. "I've managed partially to decipher that

inscribed tablet from the Canyon of Chaos."

"Simon, then you've found out something about

the mystery of this place?" demanded Curt.

"Yes, lad," answered the Brain. "I have at least

begun to solve the riddle of this planetoid's strange

history."

CHAPTER XIII

Tragedy of the Void

FUTURE was more than a

little excied by this in-

formation.

"Does that inscription

identify the Dwellers?" he asked

quickly.

"No," admitted Simon

Wright. "But it does give a

possible clue to them, if we

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

could decipher all the writing. You see, the

inscription was the Antarian language, as we

surmised. But none of us have more than sketchy

acquaintance with that tongue from our brief

experience with it. And this writing seems to be in

a quite ancient form of it. Many terms I could not

translate."

"What became of the men who left that tablet?"

asked Joan wonderingly.

"I'm coming to that," said the Brain. "It appears

that this little world we call Astarfall has a strange

and terrible history. But I shall read you my partial

translation itself."

Everyone listened with deep interest as the

Brain's chill, metallic voice recited his translation

of the old tablet.

"We men of Antares colonized this small world many

generations ago. This world was then the moon of a planet in

the system of **** near our own star. It possessed mineral

resources, and to exploit those resources a band of our people

settled here and established mines. Each **** came ships

from Antares which brought us supplies and took away the

ores we had mined.

"But then came unforeseen catastrophe. A dark star was

approaching the system **** of which this moon was a

member. The passing dark star came so close that its huge

gravitational pull dragged this moon from its orbit and flung it

off into space. The moon left that system and drifted steadily

out into the vast interstellar void.

"Our colonists had but a few ships of their own. These

could contain only a smal1 number of people. So only that

smal1 number were able to escape the torn-away moon. There

was no escape for the others, for by the time ships could have

been assembled and come from Antares, this drifting world

was too far out in the trackless void.

"So some thousands of Antarian colonists were marooned

upon this moon as it traveled steadily out into the face of the

deep. They knew that they were cut off forever from their

parent system, but they did not despair of life. For the

radioactive core of the moon **** sufficient heat to maintain

life upon it even in the sunless depths of the outer void.

"Farther and farther into the vast abyss traveled the

drifting moon, on into the remote **** a sector of the galaxy

which no ship had ever traversed. The older generation of

colonists passed away and a new generation was born who

had never known anything but this little world. It seemed that

generation would fol1ow generation without change, and that

some day the drifting moon would reach the distant star-

system of *** and perhaps attach itself to a planet there.

"But out in the face of the deep a terrible thing began to

happen. The drifting moon had entered a region of terrific

cosmic radiation. It was an area of space in which cosmic

radiation swept in a concentrated current, due to **** and

other obscure factors of space-warp. The result was that all

life upon this little world was drenched by constant

penetrating radiation which soon caused a subtle and fearful

change.

"Evolution began to speed up terrifically upon our drifting

world. The unprecedented radiation produced **** and other

changes in the genes of every living species, which caused a

tremendous flowering of new mutations. Each species of

animal and plant life on the world began a rapid new

evolution. And our human species, too, began to evolve.

"We humans became less and less human! New mutations

rising among us, such as **** radically altered the nature of

our species. By now it seems evident that we **** destined to

evolve hideously onward into species entirely unhuman.

"But all the other forms of life on this world have also

been evolving at terrific speed. Plant life here has developed

weird new carnivorous forms of trees and shrubs, animal life

has evolved into equally uncanny and alien forms, and one

species of **** has evolved into such great intelligence and

mental power that it has been able to menace us by means of

hypnotic mental attack.

"We found a way to protect ourselves from that dreadful

hypnotic attack of the **** We still cling to life, by means of

that protection. But our world is still traversing the region

**** cosmic radiation, and evolution stil1 continues to alter

our human species with nightmare speed. We fear that by the

time this world has final1y drifted out of the region of ****

radiation and the burst of evolution stops, we shal1 have been

conquered by our evermore powerful enemies, and shal1 have

disappeared forever. And so we leave this table as record of

our fate should ever men of Antares manage to reach this

world."

HEY were all silent for a little when the

Brain finished reading his translation of the

tablet. All were gripped by an overpowing sense of

the cosmic tragedy that was the history of this little

world.

An inhabited moon, torn away from its native

system and drifting fatally out into the vast night of

the interstellar void, never to return! They seemed

with their own eyes to look back and see that

Antarian, a man whom hideous evolutionary

changes had perhaps already made inhuman,

writing upon the lead tablet his tragic record of the

awful fate of his people.

Captain Future broke the silence. "So that is the

reason for the unprecedentedly weird animal and

plant life of this planetoid! Out there in the abyss, it

passed through a region of radiation that caused

nightmare evolutionary change in every species."

"What do you suppose became of the people

who had been human?" Joan whispered.

"They must have perished entirely," said the

Brain. "No doubt despite their attempts to protect

themselves, they finally succumbed to the hypnotic

attacks of the new species, whom we call the

Dwellers."

Otho voiced an urgent question. "That's what I'm

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

most interested in the Dwellers. Doesn't the

inscription, tell just what they are?"

"Yes, if we knew that, we could hunt the devils

out and destroy them," put in Kim Ivan.

"The inscription does not help us much there,"

denied the Brain. "It names the species who

evolved into the Dwellers. But their scientific name

for that and other species is meaningless to us.

There's no way I can translate their scientific terms

or: proper names."

"Try it anyway, Simon," urged Curt Newton.

"Our safety depends on it. Until we have some idea

what and where the Dwellers are, we're helpless, to

do anything against them."

Ezra Gurney made an emphatic assertion. "That

inscription just proves what I said before -- that the

Dwellers are none other than the Cubics. It's clear

as daylight. One o' the animal species here evolved

into them little cubic monsters, whose group-minds

are strong enough to carry out those telepathic

attacks."

"I still can't believe that the Cubics, are the

Dwellers," Curt demurred "They just don't appear

to be of high enough intelligence. But if Simon can

translate the gaps in the inscription, it will give us a

clear clue to the Dwellers. Then we can act."

"I will try, but I am not too optimistic of

success," rasped the Brain "I know almost nothing

of the scientific terminology of the Antarian

language."

"What are we going to do in th meantime?"

demanded Boraboll.

Captain Future reassured him. "We'll fix up an

alarm-signal around the whole stockade. Then if the

Dwellers get a mental grip on any of us and try to

draw us out, there'll be an alarm that will rouse the

others."

That promise placated the uneasy castaways a

little. Curt Newton worked hastily to arrange the

alarm, grudging the time spent upon it.

He devised a strong cord of vegetable fibers,

which was so looped around the inside of the

stockade that anyone touching it would sound a

clamorous copper gong to which the cord was

attached.

"That will keep anyone from being drawn out

over the wall," he pointed out. "And the gate is

guarded at night. Now, back to work!"

LL that day, Captain Future kept .the

others so busy that they had no time toA

think of the Dwellers. They finished their battery of

six cyclotrons, and started the rigging of several

atomic smelters.

The smelters were big inertron crucibles into

which large amounts of ore could be shoveled. A

stream of atomic energy brought through inertron

pipes to each smelter would burn out the mineral

impurities and permit the molten refined metal

which remained to be suitably alloyed and run off

into casting-molds.

"Twenty-two days -- we're behind schedule,"

sweated Curt Newton that evening. "We should be

casting beams and plates by now. We've got to

speed up somehow."

Weary as the mutineers were that night from

their toil in the ore-diggings, few of them slept.

Their fear of the Dwellers was too great. They sat

in close groups around the fire, listening nervously

for the alarm that would signify that the mysterious

enemy had hypnotically seized one of them and was

drawing him out of the camp.

But the alarm did not come. And morning found

none of them missing. It reassured the men a little,

though some contended that the Dwellers had not

struck simply because they had been wakeful. The

hypnotic attacks had always been made upon

sleeping men.

The atomic smelters were finished this day.

During his work upon the smelters, Captain Future

had detailed McClinton and Grag to a special job.

This was the construction of several very small

cyclotrons which could be used to power such

portable tools as atomic welders. They would be

neces-ary for the fabrication of the ship.

"We've g-g-got the welders about ready,"

McClinton reported to Curt that afternoon. "How

are you c-c-coming?"

Captain Future straightened and mopped his

brow. He was grimy, sweating, haggard-looking

from the driving toil.

"We're ready to cast the keel-beam now," he

said. "Otho and I have been preparing the mold."

The mutineers, returning in troops from their

day's mining and dragging with them their rough

sledges laden with beryllium and chromium ores,

came flocking through the sunset to witness the

operation.

Curt and the Brain had already sketched detailed

plans for their projected space ship, working at

night by firelight to draw their designs on thin

sheets of lead. They had designed the simplest and

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

smallest ship that would serve their need. And they

had carefully planned so that it would require but

few different sizes of beams, plates and struts.

The molds for the beams had been accurately

fabricated from a perdurable cement made of

certain rocks ground to powder. To the biggest of

these molds was now connected the inertron spout

of the big atomic smelter, which at this moment

throb- bed with power.

"The alloy should be thoroughly compounded by

now," Curt Newton declared. "Start her pouring,

Otho."

Otho opened the spout-valve. From the spout, a

dazzling stream of molten beryllium alloy poured

into the long cement mold.

A cheer went up from ragged band who had

gathered to watch.

"Now we're getting somewhere!" Kim Ivan

exclaimed. "We'll soon have a ship to take us off

this cursed world, now we've cast the keel."

"In h-honor of this occasion, t-tonight I'll eat the

last of my p-prunes," George McClinton declared.

"I've been s-saving them."

Captain Future himself was perhaps the least

excited of them all. He knew only too well the vast

amount of work still to be done in short time.

He turned, looking for Joan. And he was

surprised not to find her. Everyone else was

present, and the stockade gate had been closed for

the night.

"Where's Joan?" he asked McClinton sharply.

The spectacled engineer looked startled. "Why, I

d-don't know. Come to t-think of it, I haven't seen

her for s-several hours."

Without a word, Captain Future started a rapid

search of the encampment. By the time he had

finished, night was falling.

"She's not anywhere in the camp!" he exclaimed

worriedly. "And Ezra Gurney is missing, too!"

CHAPTER XIV

Riddle of the Jungle

EZRA GURNEY had sat

all morning brooding over a

plan which had taken shape

in his mind. Finally in mid-

afternoon, the old marshal

had risen decisively to his

feet.

"I'll do it!" he muttered

resolutely. "No matter what

Cap'n Future says, I'm sure

I'm right."

The old Planet Patrol

veteran was used to action.

Ezra had spent more than forty years out in the

great spaces and wild worlds. He had fought space-

pirates in the old lawless days, had brought order to

raw boom-towns on the interplanetary frontier, and

was now the oldest and most experienced officer in

the Patrol.

But Ezra was a fighter, not a scientist, and thus

could be of no aid to the Futuremen in planning and

building the new ship. And Curt had tactfully

suggested that the work of mining ore or foraging

in the jungle would be too arduous for him, and had

requested that he spend his days in seeing to it that

there were no dissensions or fights in the camp.

"Too old, that's what he thinks of me!" snorted

Ezra disgustedly. "Me, that could still show these

young kiwis somethin' in a scrap."

His iron-gray hair almost bristled with.

indignation, and his keen, faded blue eyes snapped.

"Maybe he thinks I'm so old I got softenin' of the

brain, too," growled Ezra. "Maybe that's why he

won't listen when I tell him that them Cubics are

the Dwellers. I guess at that, he don't want to spare

time now to reconnoiter the Cubics. Time is all I

have. I'm goin' out there and scout the critters

myself!"

His decision made, the old marshal proceeded to

put it into effect.

Grabo and the other foragers had reported that

each time they had glimpsed any Cubics, the little

creaures were going to or coming from the

northwest. It was logical to assume that their

community lay somewhere in that direction.

Armed with a steel bush-knife forged for

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Grabo's gang, he entered the green gloom of the

weird forest and made his way in a northwestward

direction. The great tree-ferns looming around him,

and the other grotesque trees and shrubs, made an

unearthly vista. He wondered, fleetingly, why the

jungle contained no huge cacti like those at the

camp.

After a few moments of travel, he suddenly

stopped. There had reached his ears a clear call

from behind him.

"Ezra! Wait!"

He recognized Joan Randall's voice. And the old

marshal's wrinkled face expressed dismay.

"That danged girl! She saw me leavin' the camp

and she's run after me to stop me. Treatin' me like I

was a ru'away child!"

Indignantly, he decided that he would not argue

with Joan. He would simply slip out of sight until

she had given up hunting him.

With that idea in mind, Ezra hastily melted back

into the jungle and sought concealment inside the

thick foliage of a grotesque, towering shrub whose

green limbs drooped limply like those of a

weeping-willow.

Those drooping limbs suddenly came to life!

They wrapped themselves around Ezra and began

drawing the old veteran into the shrub.

"What the devil!" swore Ezra startledly.

He slashed hastily with his bush-knife. Swearing

and sputtering with rage, he hacked through one

after another of the clutching tendrils.

It took him several minutes to free himself. He

finally was able to tear loose from the grip of the

thing, and stood puffing some distance away.

OU SEE what happens to you when you

come slipping out here by yourself!"

accused a clear, stern voice.

Joan Randall had been attracted by the sound of

struggle. She stood, her hands on her hips, eyeing

him severely.

"You were starting out to find the Cubics," she

went on. "You've been wanting to for days. It's a

good thing I saw you slipping out of camp."

"You wouldn't have caught up to me if that

danged snaky bush hadn't .grabbed me," Ezra

sputtered. "Blast me if I ever saw such queer, evil

plant-life as this world has! From the big tangle-

trees down to them nasty shrubs, most of the plants

here seem to prey on animals."

"It's what you get for sneaking out this way,"

Joan retorted unsympathetically. "I'm not going to

let you go any farther."

"Now, Joan, listen," wheedled the old veteran.

"I'm doin' this for Cap'n Future's sake. It's to help

him that I want to investigate the Cubics."

Joan's pretty face was serious as she considered

this. Her brown eyes looked thoughtfully at him.

"You're right, Ezra. We'll go out together and

see what we can learn about the Cubics."

Ezra's brief feeling of triumph turned to dismay.

"But you can't come along with me, Joan! Curt

would never forgive me if I took you."

"Either I go with you, or you don't go at all," the

girl said firmly. "Try to go on without me, and I'll

shout."

"Oh, dang all mule-headed women!" muttered

the old marshal. "They haven't got any business out

in space. When I was a youngster, women stayed on

Earth and didn't go gallivantin' all over creation. All

right, come on."

They started together through the jungle,

threading their way through the more open glades

in a northwest- ward direction.

"Grabo an' the others said every time they saw

the Cubics, the critters were comin' from or goin' in

this direction," Ezra explained. "They didn't think

the things could live very far from here."

"I hope not," said Joan a little anxiously. "We

haven't many hours of daylight left."

Ezra used his bush-knife to hack a way through

thickets of vegetation around which they could not

detour. But they were careful to avoid all tangle-

trees and other similar carnivorous forms of plant-

life with which the old marshal had so lately had

his upsetting experience.

"Blast me if I don't think the plants on this world

have more strength and intelligence than the

animals," declared Ezra. "The way some of them

growths try to grab a person is uncanny."

"The Brain says that all this unprecedented

evolution of plant-life is due to the burst of

accelerated evolution when Astarfall passed

through that realm of cosmic radiation," Joan told

him.

"Maybe so, but it still seems creepy and

unnatural to me," grunted the old veteran.

They went on for mile after mile, while the

shafts of pale sunlights that struck through the

weird forest slanted more and more toward the

horizon. They were by now penetrating into

completely unexplored jungle. For Grabo and his

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

foraging parties had been too engrossed by the

difficult task of gathering sufficient food to do any

unnecessary exploring.

HEY had kept an alert eye out for the

Cubics, but had so far seen none of the

strange creatures. The only animal life they had

encountered were a few of the rodent-like animals

darting away in the thickets and a number of the

bat-winged, featherless birds flying overhead.

Suddenly they struck a hard-packed, beaten trail

that led due westward through the jungle. Ezra and

Joan stopped, amazed.

"Why, the Cubics must have made this path!"

the girl exclaimed. "You remember that Otho said

the creatures seemed to be in the habit of mining

'nd taking away ore from the volcanic area east of

here? This must be the path they use."

"If that's so this path would lead us right to the

home or community of the Cubics!" Ezra said

excitedly. "Now we're gettin' somewhere."

Joan hesitated. The Sun was now sinking toward

the horizon and the feeble daylight of the jungle

was darkening into a somber dusk.

"Perhaps we ought to turn back, and return

tomorrow," she suggested. "It'll soon be night."

"Turn back when we're this close?" Ezra scoffed.

"Besides, night is when we want to watch the

Cubics. If they're the Dwellers, it's at night that they

somehow make those telepathic attacks on our

camp."

The reminder of those dreaded hypnotic attacks

was one not calculated to reassure the girl. But Joan

had courage, and she saw the logic in Ezra's

argument. Without further objection, she

accompanied him onward.

Their progress was now much more rapid, for

they were now following the beaten path. It ran due

west except at places where it swerved aside to

avoid a clump of tangle-trees or other dangerous

vegetation. Those alien growths loomed dark and

for- bidding in the gathering dusk.

Stars were peeping forth in the darkening sky.

Far behind them, the heavens were lighted by the

quivering red glow of the smoking volcanoes.

Presently Ezra and Joan heard a low, persistent

sound from ahead. It sounded like the clash and

clatter of many hammers beating upon rock.

"Must be the Cubics," Ezra said in a low voice.

"But what're they doin' to make that sound?"

"I don't know," answered the girl bewilderedly.

"We're very near."

They went with much more care, following the

path but ready to dart off it into the thickets at any

alarm. The din ahead came louder to their ears.

Then they came abruptly into full view of an

amazing spectacle.

The path debouched ahead of them into a broad,

flat clearing. This open plain contained the little

city of the Cubics.

It was one of the strangest communities upon

which human eye had ever looked. There were

several scores of small buildings, built and arranged

with mathematical precision. They looked like

stone beehives, each having only a single opening.

They were ranged in concentric circles.

Hundreds upon hundreds of the Cubics were

visible in this weird little city. The little cube-

shaped creatures were engaged in bewildering,

activity. With their queer faculty of combination,

they were gathered into many different figures that

engaged upon several inexplicable tasks.

There was a row of grotesque, four-armed

figures twice the height of a man. They were

engaged in hammering and splitting chunks of rock,

using harder masses of rock for hammers. There

were other figures like huge centipedes, who

carried the shattered rock away and sorted its

pieces.

And each of those big, grotesque figures was

composed of scores of the little Cubics! An arm of

one of the hammers might be made up of ten

separate Cubics, hooked together. Joan and Ezra

could plainly see the tiny, twinkling eyes and

mouths in the faces of those constituent cubes.

"Why, this is crazy!" muttered Ezra. "Why in the

name o' the Sun are they workin' so hard, crushin'

that rock?"

"They're crushing the metallic ores out of it,"

Joan said quickly. "Look -- the centipede-ones take

the metal back to those big heaps."

ZRA'S eyes traveled in the direction she

indicated. Behind the little Cubic city there

loomed colossal heaps of small fragments, heaps

big as small hills. The fragments were of metal

ingots or rich ore.

"Why they must have been laborin' like this for

centuries to amass all that metal ore!" gasped the

old marshal. "There's millions of pounds of it, and

it looks like it had been gatherin' there for ages."

He was stunned by the riddle of the Cubics'

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

tremendous toil. Then a thought occurred to him.

"Maybe this is the answer, Joan. If these Cubics

are the Dwellers, maybe they've been attackin' us

telepathically because we've been minin' metal. It

seems like these critters are crazy on minin' ore

themselves."

"That might be the answer," Joan admitted in a

whisper. "Let's take a closer look at those big ore-

heaps. We can circle around nearer."

She and the old marshal started skirting around

the clearing to approach nearer that side of it on

which the vast heaps of ore towered. They moved

with extreme care in the dark jungle, to make no

sound.

Joan was in the lead. Ezra suddenly descried a

snaky movement as of tentacles in the thick foliage

just ahead of her.

"Look out, Joan -- you're walking into a tangle-

tree!" he shouted warning.

The girl recoiled in time. But next moment they

both realized with dismay that the clatter of the

Cubics' activity had suddenly halted.

"They heard me!" Ezra groaned. "We got to beat

it out of here on full-rockets!"

They scrambled back toward the path and started

a hasty retreat away from the Cubic City. But it was

too late.

Cubics who formed big centipedal figures were

already racing along the path after them. In an

instant they had overtaken and surrounded the old

veteran and the girl.

Before the horrified eyes of Joan and Ezra, the

Cubics who formed those figures abruptly shifted

into new, towering formations. They became giant,

semi-human shapes who advanced on the two

humans with clutching arms.

CHAPTER XV

Secret of the Cubics

NO SOONER had

Captain Future discovered

the absence of Ezra and

Joan from the camp, than

he realized that it had but

one logical explanation.

"Ezra's slipped off to spy

on the Cubics!" he

exclaimed. "He's been

wanting to for days. He

thinks they're the

Dwellers."

"B-b-but M-m-miss

Randall?" asked George McClinton anxiously.

McClinton's deep solicitude for Joan's safety

was obvious -- as obvious as the shy, whole-souled

admiration which the stuttering engineer had shown

for the girl agent since the beginning of the

Vulcan's voyage.

"Joan would go after him if she saw him leaving

camp." Curt guessed. "But I would have thought

she'd have brought him back by now."

"Ezra can be plenty mule-headed when he gets

an idea into his head," reminded Otho. "He

probably insisted on going on. and she went along!"

Curt was thoroughly alarmed. Night was already

falling upon the jungle. He knew from experience

what uncanny dangers it contained.

"Otho, Grag -- get picks for weapon and come

on!" he said swiftly. "We're going after them. and

quickly."

He was himself grabbing up one of the steel

bars. They hastened toward the gate of the

stockade, and found that others had come with

them.

Grabo, the Jovian mutineer, was one of them. "I

know a path in there that I think leads toward the

Cubics." he said. "I'll go along and show you."

"And I'm g-g-going, too." George McClinton

insisted.

Kim Ivan was already opening the gate of the

stockade, and the big Martian pirate swung along

with them as they rapidly entered the jungle.

Grabo led the way through th:e dark fern-forest,

avoiding tangle-trees and other dangers whose

location he knew. They soon reached the path.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"We never followed it very far, but we've seen

the Cubics using it," the Jovian informed.

"Here's a fresh slash by a bush- knife," called

Otho, bending over a hacked vine that had until

recently lain across the path. "Ezra and Joan must

have gone this way, all right."

Curt's anxiety mounted by the minute as they

hurried westward along that beaten trail.

"Barging off into this jungle by night, as though

she was strolling around in a Venusian park!" he

exclaimed.

"Listen!" said Grag suddenly, after they had

traveled some miles.

The super-sensitive microphonic ears of the

robot could pick up sounds no one else could hear.

Grag stood, a towering, gleaming silhouette in the

starlight, motionless and listening.

"I can hear a lot of activity from somewhere far

ahead," finally reported the robot. "It sounds like

rock being shattered."

"You're crazy!" Otho jeered. "Who the devil

would be pounding up rock here in the jungle?"

"The Cubics wouldn't be -- or would they?" Kim

Ivan wondered. "Come to think of it, they're always

carrying rock when you see them."

Captain Future imperatively enjoined silence,

and led the way on along the path toward the west.

Presently he and the others could also hear the

distant sound of clashing rock that had reached

Grag's ears.

FEW minutes later found them crouching

at the edge of the jungle and looking out at

the starlit little city of the Cubics, with in-

credulous astonishment. The stone beehive

structures, the hordes of Cubics engaged in

crushing rock ores, the towering heaps of crushed

ore behind the village, all stunned them as they had

so recently dumfounded Ezra and Joan.

"Why, those Cubics are grinding out ore!" Otho

gasped. "And look, when they get it crushed out,

they simply carry it over to those big heaps and

dump, and then go get more. They're balmy as

Martian fool-monkeys!"

"I'll be blasted!" Kim Ivan was swearing in a

whisper. "Why would the little creatures crush out

all that ore when they haven't any use for it?"

"I see Joan and Ezra!" Grag announced. "Look,

Chief!"

With sharp relief, Curt Newton perceived that

Joan and Ezra were sitting on the ground in front of

one of the little stone beehive buildings. A ring of

Cubics surrounded them, guarding them.

Obviously, the Cubics had taken the girl and the old

marshal prisoner but had not harmed them.

"They've not been hurt," exclaimed Otho in a

low voice. "Now all we've got to do is to crash in

there and bring them out."

The android raised his steel weapon, as he and

Grag and the others prepared to follow Captain

Future in a sortie into the community. "Wait a

minute," ordered Curt Newton. There was a

strange, frozen look on his face.

Curt's eyes had been traveling over that bustling,

inexplicable scene. And a possible explanation of it

had entered his mind, one whose implications were

paralyzing.

The possibility that had occurred to him sent

through him an icy horror such as he had almost

never before experienced. He seemed to see behind

this half-comic, purposeless activity of the Cubics,

a ghastly story.

"Good God!" he choked. "If I'm right, we're

looking at the most awful scene our eyes have ever

rested on."

"Chief, what are you talking about?" whispered

Otho. "I can't see anything awful about those

Cubics breaking up ore for metal they don't know

how to use. It seems funny, to me."

"Yes, and look at the big heaps of it they've piled

up," chuckled Kim Ivan. "They must have been

doing this for hundreds of years."

"Yes, for hundreds of years," muttered Captain

Future. His face was pale in the starlight. "For

hundreds of years."

They stared at him, completely perplexed by the

emotion of horror that seemed to have

overwhelmed him.

"Listen," he said after a moment. "If my guess is

right, we won't have to fight these Cubics to get

Ezra and Joan away. I want you to refrain from

making a single hostile move toward them when we

go out there. Let me talk to them."

"Talk to them?" echoed Otho incredulously.

"But they won't understand you. They're only queer,

clever little animals."

"Maybe they will understand me," Captain

Future muttered. "Though I almost hope they

don't."

Completely without understanding, the four

followed him out of the jungle as he stepped

straight into the starlight of the open clearing.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

Instantly they were glimpsed by the Cubics. At

once the noisy crushing and carrying of ore was

broken off, and the creatures came gliding toward

the five newcomers.

They approached menacingly, in the form of

huge, semi-manlike figures with upraised,

threatening arms. Curt Newton waited until they

were quite near, and then he spoke loudly to them.

He used a queer language.

The Cubics stopped short! They froze where

they were, every eye of the grotesque little cubical

creatures staring at Captain Future.

"What's he saying?" murmured Kim Ivan

wonderingly.

"He's talking to them in the Antarian tongue!"

Otho said dumbfoundedly. "I don't get it."

UT Captain Future's speech seemed to be

having a paralyzing effect upon the

Cubics. Curt was saying to them, in the Antarian

language:

"We come from the home world, from Antares."

He waited. Had his appalling guess been right?

It seemed that it had, for the Cubics were now

betraying the wildest excitement.

The creatures had not the intelligence or

memory to understand the meaning of his words,

Curt divined. But the language in which he spoke

was striking some deep, buried chord of memory in

their queer minds.

For the creatures had broken up their menacing

formations and were rushing forward and swarming

around Curt in a swarm of swirling cubical bodies.

Their little eyes were fixed upon his face, and from

their tiny mouths came little, piping sounds

indicative of immense excitement.

Captain Future advanced toward the little city,

with Otho and the others amazedly following. The

Cubics continued to swarm around Curt eagerly.

All work had ceased, and every Cubic was

gathering.

Joan and Ezra saw them coming. Relief and

astonishment were both in the girl's face as she

greeted Captain Future.

"Curt, how did you win over the Cubics? They

took us prisoner and they've been holding us here."

" Joan, you and Ezra speak to the Cubics," he

ordered. "Say a few words to them in Antarian.

You know I taught you a few phrases of it."

Wonderingly, the old marshal and the girl agent

obeyed. No sooner had the words left their lips,

than the attitude of their captors changed. The

Cubics who had been guarding them now clamored

pipingly around them as well as around Captain

Future.

"What in the name o' the Sun does it mean?"

Ezra Gurney exclaimed. "How come just hearin'

Antarian spoken has such an effect on these

critters?"

Curt answered solemnly. "Because these Cubics

are Antarians. At least, they're the remote

descendants of human Antarians."

It was too staggering a statement for the others

to take in immediately. They looked

uncomprehendingly at the weird little creatures

swarming by the hundreds around them -- the tiny

cubical bodies, the queer, clawlike little limbs, the

twinkling eyes and piping mouths.

"These critters human once?" gasped Ezra. "you

must be jokin'."

Joan paled. That horror which had so shaken

Curt Newton was invading her mind as she began

to realize what he meant.

"Oh, Curt, no! You can't mean that the human

Antarians who once colonized Astarfall, who left

that inscribed tablet, changed into --"

"Into these Cubics, yes," Curt finished somberly.

"We wondered what had become of those human

colonists. Well, here they are."

A stunned silence held his companions, while

the unearthly little creatures continued their mad

dance of excitement about them.

"Every species of life upon this worldlet suffered

tremendous evolutionary development when

Astarfall passed long ago through that region of

cosmic radiation," Curt continued. "But evolution

can work in a downward direction as well as an

upward one. Some of the species on this world

evolved upward, notably its plant-life. But others,

like its human species, were subjected to a

progressive degeneration by the mutational

changes.

"The Antarians here mutated gradually into

unhuman form. We know from that inscription that

it was so. They mutated into a form in which they

had lost the intelligence and memory that had been

theirs. Their former telepathic method of

communication developed prodigiously, to

compensate for the diminishing of their size and

strength. By necessity, they developed an uncanny

ability for physical and mental cooperation. That

ability is all that has even kept them surviving,

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

when intelligence and size and strength were

gradually lost."

ORROR was on the face of every one of

Captain Future's companions, now. The

little Cubics were no longer comic, but tragic.

These tiny, semi-intelligent creatures -- the

descendants of men! The ghastliness of it shook

them all.

"But why have they kept mining metals, all these

centuries?" cried Kim I van. "They no longer have

the intelligence to use it."

"Racial memory," Curt answered somberly,

"persists in a species long after intelligence is lost.

In these Cubics has persisted the tradition of their

human ancestors who upon this world mined metal

which the ships of Antares came to get."

"Good God!" whispered George McClinton

horrifiedly. " All these c-c-centuries, the c-creatures

have been faithfully m-massing ores because of that

tradition."

Captain Future nodded. "That's why I spoke to

them in the Antarian tongue. I hoped it would strike

a chord of racial memory. And it has. They have a

dim idea that we are those who have come for their

gathered metal."

Tears glistened in Joan's eyes. There was

something terribly poignant about the excited

happiness of the simple little creatures swarming

around them.

The Cubics eagerly led Curt and his companions

toward the giant ore-heaps behind their community.

There was a quality of pride in their excited,

meaningless piping.

"There's almost all the metal here that we'll need

for our shp," Curt said aftr a quick examination of

the great heaps. "Everything except calcium."

"Blast it, why is it we can find everything on this

world except the few pounds of calcium that are the

most vital of all?" Otho muttered.

"Say, this will save us the work of mining ores,

if the Cubics will let us have what we need of these

metal piles," Grag declared.

Captain Future nodded. "And we need to save

all the time we can, for we're far behind schedule

on the ship. I'm sure they'll let us have it."

He stepped forward, and gathered up an armful

of sample chunks from the great pile of beryllium

ores. Instantly, as though comprehending his

purpose, the Cubics rushed forward toward that

pile.

The creatures swiftly formed themselved into

several dozen of the big centipedal figures whose

formation they took for carrying purposes. Other

Cubics became octopoid figures who rapidly loaded

the centipedal ones with masses of the beryllium

ore. They they stood, eyeing Curt expectantly.

"They're going to carry the stuff wherever we

want it," Captain Future guessed. "Poor devils --

they have some dim traditional notion that we've

come in ships to this world to get it."

He and Joan and the others started back through

the jungle, in the direction of the camp. Quickly the

Cubics carrying the masses of ore swung into the

jungle behind them and followed them along the

path.

T WAS a weird procession through the dark

fern-forest, the eager piping of the Cubics

sounding incessantly as they followed the humans.

But when they were still a few miles from the

camp, the attitude of the Cubics changed. They

began to move more slowly, to show an extreme

reluctance toward going farther in this direction.

Finally they stopped altogether, putting down their

loads and clustering with dismayed pipings around

Captain Future.

"They won't go any farther!" said Otho

surprisedly. "I wonder what they're afraid of?"

"I believe," Curt said thoughtfully, "that they

know of something dangerous in the area in which

our camp is located. That would explain why the

Cubics have never come close to the camp."

"The Dwellers!" cried Kim Ivan. "Future, they're

scared of the Dwelers!"

"Say, that's right," Grag rumbled. "We thought

the Cubics might be the Dwellers, but we know

now they're not. Who are the Dwellers, then?"

"They're somewhere in the area around our

camp, whoever they are," Curt Newton murmured.

"If the Cubics could only tell us."

He tried to get into intelligent communication

with the little creatures. But it was impossible.

Their only method of communication was the weird

sixth-sense of cooperation by which they

interlocked their own minds and bodies. Their

piping sounds were utterly without meaning.

The only definite thing that could be gathered

from the actions of the Cubics was that the area

around the castaways' camp held danger, and that

the creatures would not enter it. And the creatures

set up a distressed piping when Curt and his

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

comrades finally strode on and left them.

"We can have our own men come this far and

sledge that metal ore to camp," Curt planned as

they went on. "And the Cubics will let us have all

the other ores we need from those great heaps. It'll

save precious time!"

Joan looked at him soberly. "When Astarfall is

destroyed, those little creatures will all perish?"

"Yes," said Captain Future heavily. "There's no

possible way in which they could be saved. And

would you want to keep alive those pitiful

descendants of a once-human race?"

CHAPTER XVI

Dire Awakening

UPON the next

morning, Curt's improvised

organization began the

work of casting the scores

of great beams that would

form the frame of the ship.

The atomic smelters

throbbed and hummed. the

molten alloy hissed into the

cement molds, the shining

beams were later broken

free of the molds and the

same routine was

immediately repeated.

During the next days, a mass of numbered

beams and struts rapidly accumulated near the

towering, giant cacti at the center of the camp. Grag

and McClinton operated the smelters under Curt

Newton's direction, while Otho, Kim Ivan and most

of the mutineers hauled the loads of ore to camp.

The Brain still ranged out over the surface of

Astarfall in vain search of calcium. So far, they had

not found a grain of the vital catalyst. And so far,

the Brain had not been able to translate the gaps in

the ancient inscription, which might have given

them a clue to the identity of the Dwellers.

"The Dwellers are somewhere within a few

miles of our camp," Curt reasoned. "We know that

from the actions of the Cubics. But what and where

are they? We've seen no creatures of high

intelligence in all this area."

"It's possible, I suppose," murmured the Brain,

"that that fellow Boraboll's suggestion had truth in

it, and that the Dwellers are subterranean or

invisible creatures. Rollinger's ravings indicate

they're somewhere near."

Captain Future shook his head wearily. "It's a

hideous riddle. And two more men disappeared last

night, despite our new system of guards."

Curt had instituted a regime of guards designed

to halt the disappearances. It was evident that the

Dwellers only made their hypnotic attacks upon

sleeping men.

So Captain Future had posted guards over all the

sleepers, each night. He had instructed them: "If

you see any man get up and start sleep-walking, it

means he's in the hypnotic grip of the Dwellers. But

don't awaken him. Follow him. "

"Follow him?" the others had said startledly.

"But the Dwellers will draw him right to them!"

Curt nodded. "Which means that by following

their victim, you'll be led right to the Dwellers

themselves. At last we'll find out what they are and

where they lurk, and can take measures against

them."

But here, again, the unearthly cunning of the

mystery Dwellers showed itself. So long as Curt's

guards remained wakeful and watching the sleeping

men, not one hypnotic attack was made upon them.

It was obvious that the Dwellers were aware of

the watchers, and were too crafty to give

themselves away by drawing victims to themselves

while anyone was watching.

"Anyway, it seems to have stopped the attacks

and that's something," Captain Future said. "We

need every man, now!"

For as these short days passed, the stark

necessity of accelerating construction of the ship

was terribly evident. Time was flying -- and each

day meant Astarfall was nearer to the System and to

destruction.

Curt Newton soon began fitting the growing pile

of beams into the framework of the ship. The stout

metal girders, the curved ribs, were attached solidly

to the massive keel by means of their atomic

welders. The torpedo-shaped framework of the

vessel took definite form.

"Let's call it the Phoenix," Joan suggested. "In a

way, it's rising out of the ashes of the old Vulcan."

"We'll start tomorrow casting plates, and making

the refractory alloy for the rocket-tubes," Captain

Future said haggardly. "We've got to go faster than

we have."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

HAT night two men disappeared from

camp. The Dwellers had struck again.

Curt's alarm-signal around the stockade had failed.

And his guards had failed, for they admitted they

had slept.

Curt had not the heart to blame them, for the

men were all now nearing exhaustion. Yet their

sleep had cost two lives, and had increased the

terror of the Dwellers. Rollinger's shrieking was

now incessant.

"I'll watch tonight myself," Captain Future

declared.

All that day he sweated at the labor of producing

the plates which would be welded onto the torpedo-

like framework of the Phoenix. But he insisted on

keeping his watch that night.

"You're too exhausted yourself," Joan pleaded.

"Grag or Simon --"

"Grag is at the Cubics' city with the party

transporting ore, and Simon is searching night and

day for calcium," he answered. "I'll be all right."

But for once, Captain Future had overestimated

his iron strength. Fagged by the superhuman strain

under which he had been laboring, he fell asleep

before midnight as he sat listening to John

Rollinger's babbling.

In his sleep, he dreamed. He dreamed that out of

depths of swirling darkness, a cold, vast, unseeable

intelligence was approaching him.

He felt the icy grip of it upon his dazed mind.

And deep within Curt's subconscious, an instinct

shouted frantic warning.

"The Dwellers -- they're seizing you!"

He knew in his subconscious that that was what

was happening. But he could not wake, he could

not struggle. The tremendous power of the hypnotic

grip upon his slumbering mind and body was now

complete.

Curt dimly felt himself rising and moving

forward. That helpless, unconquered corner of his

mind told him that he was being drawn as a

hypnotized victim toward the Dwellers. But still he

could not wake nor do anything to break the hold of

those vast, icy intelligences upon him.

There came a sudden violent shock! Curt

suddenly found himself lying on the ground,

awake.

He staggered to his feet. He had fallen to the

ground near the pile of metal struts beyond which

towered the giant cacti. And the ground was

rocking and rolling violently under him like the

waves of a sea.

"My God!" choked Curt Newton. "The Dwellers.

had me, but a sudden ground-quake knocked me

awake and saved me."

The quake was not subsiding. It was growing

every minute more violent, and everyone in the

camp was awakening in wild terror.

They were all flung off their feet, onto the

ground that rolled sickeningly under them with a

dull, tremendous roar of diastrophism. The pile of

metal struts collapsed with a clatter. Cries of terror

arose.

"Keep your heads!" Captain Future shouted. "It's

another quake."

"Look!" screamed Boraboll, pointing wildly to

the east.

The sky there was blazing with fire. Up from the

distant volcanoes were shooting huge geysers of

flaming lava that painted the heavens crimson.

Vast clouds of steam and smoke and ashes

whirled up to veil that titanic eruption. The air was

thick with sulphurous fumes, and hot ashes rattled

down upon them as the ground quivered ever more

wildly beneath them.

"The end of this world has come already!"

hoarsely yelled a terror-stricken mutineer .

HE darkness became Stygian as vast clouds

of smoke from the erupting volcanoes

filled the air. Winds were shrieking like fiends, and

the sickening heave and fall of the solid ground

beneath them continued.

Choking and gasping as he breathed the

superheated, sulphurous fumes, Curt Newton

struggled to the side of Joan.

"Lie down!" he yelled to her over the tumult.

"This will soon pass."

Grag's tremendous voice shouted through the

infernal uproar. "Chief, the ship's framework is

going to break loose!"

A new and appalling sound had entered the

symphony of destruction. It was the heavy rumbling

and thumping of a great mass rocking on the

ground.

The heavy metal framewrk of the Phoenix was

rocking wildly in its rough cradle as the quakes

continued. It threatened to roll free entirely, to roll

down the knoll and crush out their camp and

themselves.

"Get away!" shrieked a scared mutineer. "She'll

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

come loose on us any minute!"

"No!" blared Captain Future's voice. "We've got

to pin her dow ! Grag, get the sledges and some of

the smaller beams for stakes! Otho, grab those

sledge-cables and bring them!"

Not even the terrifying nature of their situation

could temper the instant loyalty and obedience of

the Futuremen. They sprang to obey.

And Curt found big Kim Ivan beside him as he

ran to help Otho unfasten the tough, strong cables

by which they had drawn the ore-sledges.

"If she goes when we're beside her, we'll never

see the Moon again!" gasped Otho as they ran

toward the ship with the cables.

Clang! Clang! Grag towered like an incredible

metal giant in the storm, using the heaviest of the

sledges to drive small, straight metal beams deep

into the ground beside the Phoenix.

The torpedo-shape:d framework, upon which

they had expended such tremendous toil and

thought, was leaning toward them threateningly

with each new heave of the quake. If it broke loose,

it would smash itself and them, too.

Curt and Otho fumbled furiously in the darkness

to tie their cables to the stakes and then to the lower

beams of the frame. Kim Ivan had found a sledge

and was helping Grag drive more stakes, while

George McClinton had groped his way to them to

help.

"Tighten those cables! Put two more on each

side!" Curt shouted.

The framework was securely lashed down to the

stakes. Now the tremors seemed subsiding a little.

But now the buffeting winds were rising to a gale

of hurricane force.

For two hours, they all lay flat upon the ground

while the raging gale swept over them. By the end

of that time, the quakes had ceased except for an

occasional quiver. The disastrophic roar of shifting

rock beneath had stopped, and the eruption of the

volcanoes seemed lessening.

AWN came as the gale died down. The

feeble, murky light disclosed a scene of

destruction in their camp. The grimed, haggard

castaways surveyed it in mute dismay.

The framework of the Phoenix was undamaged,

except for a bent beam which could soon be

straightened. The huge barrel-like cacti still

towered unharmed at the high central point of the

clearing. But nearly everything else was wrecked.

Most of the stockade was down, all the huts but one

had collapsed, and their cyclotrons, tools and

supplies were covered with debris.

Captain Future discovered that none of them had

been seriously injured, though there were many

bruises and minor hurts.

"By the Sun, I never thought I'd see another

day," declared Kim Ivan feelingly. "I sure thought

the cursed planetoid was cracking up."

"This is a warning," Curt told them urgently.

"We can expect more and heavier cataclysms as

Astarfall draws nearer the System. This unstable

little world is starting to respond to the

gravitational perturbations that in a couple of weeks

will shatter it completely."

"Can we finish the Phoenix in time?" Joan asked

breathlessly.

"We've got to," Curt said tightly. "And we've got

to find the calcium which will enable us to operate

it."

He detailed a small number of the men to clear

up the battered camp. The rest he drove throughout

the day with unremitting energy.

Grag and George McClinton straightened the

few bent beams of the ship-frame, by softening the

metal with atomic welders and exerting pressure

upon it with improvised jacks. Meanwhile, Captain

Future and Otho supervised the ceaseless operation

of the big smelters.

They toiled all through that day casting the big

beryllium alloy plates for the hull. The work parties

of the mutineers brought constant new loads of ore

upon their makeshift sledges. There was a quality

of scared desperation in the way the convicts

worked this day. They had been thoroughly

impressed by the catastrophic outbreak of the night.

The Brain, returning that evening from his

ceaseless search for calcium, reported that the

whole volcanic area was in violent activity.

"New craters have broken out in the eastern

section, and the Canyon of Chaos has partly

collapsed on itself and is now a large lake of lava, "

he stated.

Curt nodded grimly. "The increasing shocks are

allowing the radioactive hellfire at Astarfall's core

to gush to the surface. It'll get rapidly worse. But

what about the calcium?"

"Curtis, I haven't seen a sign of the element,"

Simon Wright confessed. "It and certain related

elements like potassium and scandium just do not

seem to exist upon this world."

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

"If we can only find a few pounds of the stuff,

it'll be enough," Captain Future sweated. "Even a

pound or so would at least allow us to use the cycs

long enough to take off."

That night Grag stood watch over the camp. But

since the tireless robot could not alone keep watch

over all the sleepers, young Rih Quili shared his

guard.

But the next morning Rih Quili himself was

missing. It was tragically obvious that the

Mercurian officer had fallen asleep and had been

seized hypnotically by the Dwellers.

Ezra Gurney raged. "I liked that, boy a lot! If

ever I find out who the cursed Dwellers are, I'll --

Cap'n Future, maybe them devilish tangle-trees are

the Dwellers? Maybe they're intelligent."

URT shook his head haggardly. "No, they

can't be the Dwellers. I admit that plant-life

on this world seems to have evolved further than on

any planet I've ever visited. But the Cubics, who

know more than we do, show no fear of tangle-

trees. It is this region that they dread and refuse to

approach."

The other castaways were less stricken by the

new disappearance than Curt had expected. Their

fear of the Dwellers was still great, but even greater

now was their terror of the coming cataclysm.

Through the next days, Captain Future drove the

work around the clock. Their last two weeks were

slipping rapidly away. And the ominously

increasing volcanic activity and recurrent tremors

showed that the final catastrophe was near.

They welded the big plates onto the framework

of the Phoenix, joining each plate to the next with

the atomic welder to form an airtight joint.

Presently, the inner hull of the torpedo-like ship

was all on. But they still must build on the outer

hull.

Captain Future put that work into the hands of

Grag and Otho, who trained the mutineers and

divided them into gangs that worked in successive

shifts. Curt himself, with McClinton and Kim Ivan,

toiled to melt sand and minerals into glassite for the

portholes and bridge-windows, to cast the inertron

rocket-tubes, and to fashion tight tanks for water

and oxygen.

Kim Ivan, mopping sweat from his brow and

staggering from sixteen hours of unresting labor,

found one consolation.

"The only good thing about it is that now we're

working day and night both, the cursed Dwellers

have let us alone," panted the Martian.

Curt nodded exhaustedly. "Tomorrow we'll

install the cyclotrons in the ship, and fit the rocket-

tubes."

"And then we'll be able to leave this cursed

planetoid!" exclaimed Moremos forcibly.

"Not until we find calcium," warned Captain

Future.

The venomous Venusian's dark eyes narrowed.

"What do you mean -- till we find calcium? I'm no

engineer, but I've rocketed enough to know that a

ship's cycs run' on copper fuel, and we've plenty of

copper. In this emergency, we can take off without

that catalyst you talk about, surely."

"You're a f-f-fool, Moremos," said George

McClinton emphatically. "Without the calcium

catalyst, the released energy of c-copper would b-

blow us sky-high."

CHAPTER XVII

Disaster

THAT night came a

frightening series of sharp

shocks, like tremendous

gunnings underground. The

Phoenix rocked in its cradle,

and great jets of fire shot far

into the heavens from the

neighboring volcanoes

filling them with brilliance.

Joan Randall had

incredible news for Curt

when he awakened after that

night of fear.

"John Rollinger has recovered his sanity!" she

exclaimed. "I think the shocks last night somehow

did it. He's asking for you."

Curt went with her to the physicist, who all these

days had been confined a babbling madman in one

of the huts. Rollinger's spare face looked dazed but

sane as he stared up at Curt.

"Captain Future, they've told me what's

happened," the physicist said hoarsely. "I can't seem

to remember anything. Yet I'm clear enough in my

mind now."

"Take it easy, Rollinger," Curt advised. "You've

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

had a wonderful recovery, but you'll relapse if you

undergo any strain now. I'll talk to you later ."

At regular intervals throughout that day came

the ominous thunder-gunnings from beneath round.

There was something terrifying about their

regularity. Yet the volcanoes seemed unusually

quiet, not even smoke rising from them.

Thoroughly frightened by these new

developments, the castaways worked furiously all

through the day under Captain Future's direction.

They hauled the six massive cyclotrons into the

Phoenix, and bolted them fast. The fuel-feed and

power-lead pipes were installed, the heavy rocket-

tubes were screwed into place, the hermetically

tight space-door was hung.

By sunset the men were dropping in their tracks.

The periodic sharp shocks had completely ceased

two hours before. A dead, heavy hush reigned, and

the air seemed thick and oppressive. Curt Newton's

worn brown face was dripping with perspiration as

he and McClinton and Otho staggered almost

drunkenly out of the ship.

"Now -- the calcium," Curt panted. "We've less

than five days in which to find it, or perish."

McClinton's face was hopeless. "The Brain has

h-h-hunted all these weeks without finding a g-

grain."

A wild yell interrupted them. It came from back

inside the Phoenix. and was in Boraboll's voice.

"Rollinger is wrecking the ship!"

Curt lunged back into the vessel. John Rollinger

towered in its cyc-room, his face flaming as he

battered with a heavy bar at the cycs.

"Get him!" Curt yelled, plunging forward

himself.

The whirling bar sliced toward him in a blow

meant to shatter his skull. He ducked under it and

tackled Rollinger.

The crazed scientist seemed to have the strength

of ten men, and Curt's weary muscles could not

hold him. But Grag and the others were rushing

forward. In a few moments, Rollinger was bound.

Joan came running in to them, her face deathly

white and a big bruise on her forehead.

"It's my fault!" she sobbed. "He seemed so sane

all day, that finally I untied his bonds as he asked.

Then he struck me down and ran toward the ship."

Rollinger was looking up at them with an

expression of hatred and contempt upon his face.

Then, abruptly, his face changed before their gaze.

It distorted into what it had been before, the face

of a madman. A stream of insane babblings fell

from his lips.

"They took my body!" whimpered the madman.

"They guessed that you mean to escape from here-"

He trailed off in unintelligible mouthing.

"The Dwellers!" swore Otho. "They've always

had a grip on Rollinger's shattered mind. And

because they don't want their victims to leave here,

they used him today to try to wreck the ship."

"Good God, what kind of creatures are they that

can use such diabolical methods of attack?" cried

Boraboll, shaking wildly.

"Take Rollinger back to his hut," Curt ordered.

"He didn't have time to do any real damage.

Though, in a few minutes more- -"

The words were swept from his lips by a

tremendous, booming sound that broke the heavy

hush. The ship quivered suddenly in its cradle.

SHRILL yell from Ezra brought them

tumbling out into the open. The ground

was shuddering like a harp-string. The booming

was increasing in volume and rapidity by the

second.

"The volcanoes are going to blow!" Curt

shouted. "Everybody get --"

For a second time he was interrupted. And this

time the interruption was an explosive detonation

of such titanic magnitude as to stun them.

They glimpsed the crests of the distant volcanic

range hurtling into the sky in great masses of rock

and lava. The whole top of the range had blown off

Fiery lava raved up in spouting geysers, then was

hidden by a tremendous wave of dark, smoky gases

that puffed outward gigantically.

"Into the ship!" Curt cried. "That burst of fumes

will asphyxiate us all if it catches us!"

They tumbled back into the ship, Grag dragging

the raving Rollinger in with them. Otho slammed

shut the heavy door.

It was not a moment too soon. The wave of

poisonous fumes rolled over the camp a minute

later. Everything outside was blotted from sight by

the swirling gases.

Then the fumes began to thin. The Phoenix was

still shuddering in its cradle. When the titanic burst

of gases had been swept away, they staggered out

of the vessel.

They stood, appalled by what they saw.

Innumerable colossal fountains of lava were

pouring up from the shattered craters and chasms of

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

the neighboring volcanic area. And already a ten-

foot crest of the flaming molten rock was rolling

toward the jungle and their camp.

"That lava will wipe out everything here!"

Moremos shouted. "Our only chance is to take off

in the ship at once."

"No!" Captain Future cried. "I tell you, we can't

take off without calcium."

"I don't believe you!" flamed the Venusian.

"You're only stalling so that you and your friends

can slip away in the ship and leave the rest of us

here."

"It's better to risk starting without the calcium

than to stay here and be killed by the lava!" howled

Boraboll.

"Listen to me!" Curt Newton's voice rang out.

"That lava may rollover the jungle but it won't

touch us yet, for our camp is built on this knoll. The

lava may surround the knoll, but won't be high

enough to cover it. There's still a chance to find the

calcium. The Brain can still come and go even

though the lava surrounds us. You've got to trust in

me."

"I'm with you, Future," said Kim Ivan promptly.

"I think we're sunk, but we gave you a promise and

we'll play it out to the end."

"Then get your men to work hauling everything

up here to the highest part of the knoll!" Cut

exclaimed. "Put the ores, tools, food supplies,

everything up here between the ship and those

cacti. Otho, you and Ezra come with me and we'll

see whether the lava can be deflected in any way."

Ezra Gurney and the android, as well as

McClinton, raced beside Captain Future through

the jungle toward the oncoming flaming tide.

Curt's eyes desperately studied the topography

of the ground as they advanced. He was hoping that

some freak of the surface might enable them to

build a temporary dam or wall to shunt the lava

away from the knoll.

His hope died within him as they came closer to

the advancing tide. The crimson-glowing wave was

higher than a man, rolling forward with majestic

slowness, hissing and crackling as it ate the jungle

before it.

"Holy sun-imps, nothing can deflect that!" cried

Otho.

RASH! The hollow sound of the explosion

came from the camp behind them.C"That s-sounded like cycs exploding!" cried

McClinton.

Curt whirled. "Good God, if those fools --"

He didn't finish. He was already racing back

toward the knoll. As he ran up its low slope, Kim

Ivan and Joan and others came stumbling

frantically to meet him.

"The ship?" cried Captain Future. "Did

Moremos --"

"Yes, he did!" raged Kim Ivan. The big Martian

was mad with wild anger. "When we others were

hauling the stuff up out of danger, Moremos and

Boraboll and a dozen other fools like them tried to

take off in the Phoenix."

Curt and the others came into sight of the ship.

An icy feeling of utter despair clutched at his heart

as he saw.

The cyclotrons had exploded when copper fuel

was released into atomic power without the

inhibitory calcium catalyst to control the violent

energy. The explosion had rent a great hole in the

stern of the ship.

The battered bodies of Moremos and Boraboll

and others who had been with them in the cyc-room

had been blown out of the gaping hole in the hull.

Other stunned mutineers were staggering dazedly

beside it.

Ezra Gurney's voice was calm in despair. "So

this is the end. Well, we made a good try, didn't

we?"

Through murky veils of smoke and steam. the

rising Sun looked down upon a world in dreadful

travail. The whole surface of Astarfall was

shuddering uneasily as the little planetoid felt the

increasing gravitational grip of the planetary system

toward which it was rushing. The volcanic area was

now a hell's-caldron of geysering lava, from which

an angry red tide had crept out like an ominous blot

over the jungle for miles.

Only the rounded knoll still, rose above the

hissing lava flood which completely surrounded it.

Upon this clear knoll towered the stark, barrel-

shaped forms of a score of grotesque, gigantic cacti.

And near those monstrous growth bulked the

metallic torpedo shape of the space ship around

which less than fifty men were frantically laboring.

"We've got the first two cycs repaired," Crag

reported to Captain Future as the red-headed

planeteer came out of the ship. "How about the

hull?"

"The inner hull is patched. We're still working

on the outer one," Curt Newton panted.

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

He swayed a little from exhaustion as he stood,

passing his hand wearily across his bloodshot eyes.

For two days and nights of terror, Captain Future

had driven the survivors in this last burst of

seemingly hopeless activity. It was he who had

fought against the utter despair which had

possessed them after the ill-starred attempt of

Moremos and the others had crippled the Phoenix.

"Are you going to stand here and fold your

hands and wait to die?" Curt had lashed them. "Or

are you going to keep fighting?"

"What's the use, Future," said Kim Ivan

hollowly. "The cycs are wrecked, and the hull torn

open. And we've got only a few days left."

"We can repair those cycs and the hull if we

hurry," Curt had insisted. "The lava won't come up

over this knoll for awhile."

"Even if we do," Ezra muttered fatalistically,

"we still can't get away without calcium. Look what

happened when Moremos and the rest of them tried

it."

"There's still a chance that Simon will find

calcium" Curt said. "A chance for life. Are you

going to take it?"

HEY looked at him, most of them, with

faces sick with hopeless discouragement."TThe Brain has been looking for calcium all these

weeks without finding it," said one mutineer. "He

can't find it now in a couple of days."

"He may," Curt stated, his face tightening. "And

if he doesn't, we'll still get away. For I promise you

that in that case, I will get the calcium."

They stared.

"Curt, you can't be serious," protested Joan. "If

the Brain can't find calcium on this world, where

would you get it?"

"I'll get it," Captain Future replied firmly. "I give

you my solemn word that I will. And I never broke

a promise in my life."

A faint gleam of hope stirred upon the faces of

the stricken castaways. There was no ground for

hope except their belief in Curt's promise. Yet they

clutched at this straw.

"We'll have to bring the cycs out of the ship and

repair their cracked jackets, "Captain Future was

continuing rapidly. "Also, there'll be the job of

repairing that hole in the hull, and the wrecked

power and fuel-pipes. Every minute counts, from

now on! To work!"

His indomitable resolution sparked the whole

frenzied effort that followed. Every pair of hands

was needed now. Joan helped with the others,

dragging masses of ore toward the smelters to be

used in repairing the cycs.

The fearful disturbances were not dying down.

Instead, they were becoming worse. Tremendous

thunder of deep diastrophism continually shook the

ground under their feet. Strangling fumes drifted

over them, and then were torn away by the howling

winds.

The hissing lava flood was crawling toward

them from the east. They could hear the ominous

crackling and snapping as it rolled over the jungle

and lapped around the slopes of their knoll. It soon

completely surrounded the knoll. They were now

trapped here. The space ship was their only possible

way of escape!

That did not apply to the Brain. Simon Wright

could still fly out over the lava floor, and he did so

again and again in his quest.

"Lad, I've been almost everywhere on this

world," he reported to Curt that evening. "It's

always the same. No calcium!"

Curt's face was dripping, his red hair disordered,

his zipper-suit torn and soiled. He had been

working on getting out the cyclotrons.

"Keep at it, Simon," he urged tautly. "We don't

need much calcium, remember. A few pounds

would be enough. Even a pound to use as catalyst

in one cyclotron would be at least enough to get the

ship off Astarfall."

The Brain looked at him closely. "If I don't find

any, have you really a plan for getting calcium or

was that promise of yours just a story to encourage

the others?"

"I have a way of getting a little calcium, enough

to allow a take-off," Captain Future replied. "But I

only want to use that way if everything else fails."

The Brain seemed startled, but Curt did not

elucidate. He had already strode back to the work

with the cycs.

That night was a fearsome one. They had plenty

of light by which to work, for the surrounding,

glowing lava cast a lurid red glare. By that terrible

illumination they toiled at the task of repairing the

wrecked cycs.

Before midnight a terrific electric storm raged

across the doomed planetoid. Blue lightning danced

and flashed incessantly, and the bawling hubbub of

thunder drowned the more ominous sound of

seismic tremblings. Hot, hissing rain slashed down,

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

battering the half-blinded men.

Throughout the next day, the seething lava crept

slowly up the sides of the knoll. Curt and his toiling

men scarcely glanced at that inching, threatening

tide. They were becoming numb to danger.

Late that afternoon, came two violent quakes.

The Phoenix shifted dangerously in its cradle. And

the big atomic smelters were overturned, spilling

molten metal that almost engulfed Curt and Grag

standing nearby.

"Get those smelters back up!" Captain Future

shouted. "Move them into that little hollow near the

cacti. They'll be better braced there."

"This is a n-n-nightmare," George McClinton

stammered as he strained at the job with them.

"We'll w-w- wake up back in the V-Vulcan."

Over the din came the incessant, crazy shrieking

of John Rollinger . "Masters, spare us! Do not slay

us!"

"He seems to think the Dwellers are causin' all

this," Ezra Gurney said. "He's been prayin' to them

all day."

They got the smelters upright in the little hollow

near the towering cacti and soon had them in

operation again. But their molds had been cracked

by the quakes and had to be repaired before they

could go on with the work of casting new jackets

for the wrecked cyclotrons.

Men dropped and lay unconscious, during the

fearful hours of that night of labor. Joan, staggering

herself from weakness and strain, worked to revive

them.

CHAPTER XVIII

Supreme Sacrifice

KIM IVAN was a tower

of strength. The big Martian

pirate, his battered face

grimed and terrible, his eyes

a little wild, drove the

faltering mutineers on

whenever they showed signs

of halting work.

"We may be outlaws and

pirates, but we're fighters,

aren't we?" roared the

Martian, to them. "This is

the biggest fight we ever had. Nobody is going to

quit. There'll be no more traitors like Moremos. We

shall work and survive together -- or we shall die

together!"

They got the new jackets onto the cycs with

fumbling hands. By morning they had moved the

cycs back into the Phoenix and re-installed them.

While McClinton superintended this, Curt and

others wielded atomic welders to repair the rent in

the hull. Curt had not slept for forty-eight hours. He

was staggering when Joan came to him with food.

"The job's almost done," he said thickly.

"McClinton's hooking up the fuel-pipes now. Has

Simon come back?"

The Brain had been gone all through the

previous day and the night.

"Not yet," Joan answered. "Oh, Curt, maybe he's

been caught by one of the quakes when he was

exploring for calcium."

"He'll be back," Captain Future husked with

unquenchable confidence. "Maybe his staying so

long means that he has found calcium."

There was suddenly a low moaning sound in the

air. Winds and streamers of smoke whirled

frightenedly from a dozen different directions. They

felt a curious lightness on their feet, as though they

were sinking.

"Another quake!" Curt yelled warning. "Down,

everybody!"

They flattened themselves upon the ground just

as the shock hit. The ground seemed to rise and

sink beneath them with inconceivable rapidity, like

an elevator alternately ascending and descending.

A bursting, prolonged roar hit their ears. The

Phoenix bounced up and down in its cradle,

threatening to smash its keel by its own weight.

"Gods of Mars, look at that " yelled Kim Ivan.

Out there in the haze, miles away, whole new

fiery mountains were rising majestically into being.

The tortured throes of doomed Astarfall were

buckling up its crust.

Tremendous explosions of steam veiled the

distant spectacle of planetary chaos. A new, higher

wave of lava came hissing across the smouldering

crimson sea that surrounded the knoll. It splashed

higher against the sides of their elevation, breaking

in fiery spray.

Choking from the fumes as he stumbled to his

feet, Curt Newton saw vaguely that John Rollinger

had escaped from his hut. The madman, his bonds

apparently snapped by that last shock, was praying

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

frenziedly upon his knees.

"Masters, do not slay us! Spare us!" he was

praying insanely to the Dwellers.

APTAIN FUTURE, his brain rocking in

this hour of planetary doom, disregarded

the madman. "He had glimpsed a wavering shape

flying down through the smoke and steam.

"It's Simon!" he shouted. "He's come back!"

Buffeted about by the howling currents of hot

air, the Brain's glittering, transparent cube struggled

down toward them.

"The calcium?" cried Ezra Gurney to him.

"I could not find any," said the Brain. He spoke

as though with a great effort, his metallic voice

hesitating and jerky. "There is no calcium."

"Masters! Masters!" came Rollinger's wild,

insane shriek of imploration in the stunned silence

that followed Simon's fateful news.

And Curt Newton suddenly noticed that, as he

prayed, Rollinger was kneeling in front of the big

clump of gigantic, barrel-shaped cacti.

Blinding revelation crashed into Captain Future's

brain. The veil was abruptly torn from the sinister

mystery of the planetoid.

"Good God!" he choked. "The Dwellers! I've

found them out, at last!" The others looked at him,

obviously believing that the superhuman strain had

unseated his reason.

Curt ran forward to the nearest of the giant cacti

in front of which the madman was kneeling. He

laid his hand shakingly upon the fluted, spineless

side of that mighty growth which towered high

above him.

"We've been blind," he choked. "We knew that

plant life had been tremendously developed by the

burst of evolution through which Astarfall passed.

We knew that the tangle-trees and other plants had

developed the power to prey upon and ingest living

creatures. We should have known that plant

intelligence would have been developed too by that

evolutionary spurt!"

A look of awe came on their faces.

"What do you mean?" Kim Ivan asked huskily.

"I mean that one species of the mutating plants

of this world developed intelligence to the point

where it could use hypnotic mental power to draw

its victims to it!" Captain Future cried. "I mean that

these giant cacti are the Dwellers!"

"Curt, look out!" screamed Joan.

An opening had suddenly appeared in the fluted

side of the gigantic cactus-creature beside Curt

Newton. It was like a perpendicular, slitted mouth

that suddenly yawned in the elastic fiber body of

the thing.

Curt, off balance, was falling in toward the

hideous, yawning maw. By a superb effort, the

Brain flashed through the air and thrust Captain

Future aside. He fell sprawling a little beyond the

plant-monster.

The gaping slit-maw in the side of the great

growth instantly closed.

"Name o' the Sun!" Ezra Gurney cried wildly.

"All our men that disappeared -- those things drew

them to themselves and swallowed them!"

"And all this time we've been hunting the

Dwellers, they've been right here in our own

camp!" Kim Ivan was saying dazedly.

Curt snatched up one of the heavy bush-knives.

"Come on and help me!" he panted. "We're going to

cut that creature open."

"Curt, there's no time for mere revenge on the

Dwellers," pleaded the Brain.

"This is not just revenge," Captain Future

flashed. "These plant-creatures are intelligent. If

there's any calcium on this planetoid, they'll know

of it. And we'll make this one tell where it is."

HEY snatched up the heavy bush-knives

and attacked the cactus-monster's mighty

base. As they started slashing into the tough fiber,

the hideous maw of the thing opened and closed in

vain effort to snatch them.

"Don't!" screamed Rollinger. "You are hurting

the Master. They will destroy us all!"

Captain Future suddenly reeled as into his brain

came the impact of a raging telepathic attack. A

furious thought-order to desist.

The others felt that mental resistance of the

Dweller, too. Kim Ivan cried out.

"The thing's fighting back telepathically! This is

like a crazy dream."

"Keep at it!" pressed Curt. "We know the

Dwellers can't dominate us hypnotically when our

conscious minds are awake. It can't stop us!"

The ground under them was shuddering

violently from new quakes, as they fiercely slashed

deeper into the base of the monstrous growth.

Ten feet in diameter was the massive thing, its

outer skin of elastic plant-fiber shielding softer

plant-tissues of pale white. Severed capillaries bled

sticky sap in horrible imitation of a wounded

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

animal as they cut deeper.

The hypnotic resistance of the Dweller was

frantic, and their minds seemed clouded and

chaotic. Yet it could not overcome them. They

slashed ever deeper -- and the whole towering,

barrel-like mass of the creature was finally cut

through and toppled aside.

Curt Newton slashed carefully down through the

white fibrous tissues of the creature's base, until he

uncovered that which he sought.

"God, it's the thing's brain!" choked Ezra

Gurney.

Deep within the base of the giant plant-creature

nestled a pink, convoluted mass of fiber. It pulsated

and quivered with uncanny life. From it branched

strange fibrous nerve-tendrils.

Brain of the Dweller! Brain of the great plant

whose species had been evolved toward high

intelligence by that same burst of mutations which

had caused the degeneration of"the humans upon

this planetoid!

Curt Newton poised his heavy knife over that

helpless, quivering plant-brain. And he thought to

it, in a concentrated mental message.

"I can kill you," Curt telepathed. "I will kill you.

unless you give me information I require."

Back into his mind came the quick telepathic

reply of the Dweller. "What do you wish to know?"

"I must know at once where upon this world we

can procure a small quantity of calcium," Captain

Future thought. "It is necessary to us if we are to

escape from this doomed planetoid."

The answering thought of the Dweller was

sharply startled. "What ? Is it true that this world is

doomed?"

"It's starting to crack open now!" Curt answered.

"The end is close at hand. Didn't you suspect that?"

"No, for we Masters have not visual or tactile

senses with which to observe," was the reply. "We

have noticed increasing tremblings of the ground,

but had not thought that they implied a catastrophe

to the whole world."

The cold, uncannily alien thought of the Dweller

continued broodingly. "So this is the end of our

glorious, brief history! For centuries, we have been

evolving to greater intelligence and mental power,

since the first mutations chanced to change us in

that direction. We have dreamed of making

ourselves the mental masters of all this world, of

growing to such power that we could send our

thoughts far out into the universe to explore and

learn. And now that dream is ended."

There was an overtone of weird tragedy in the

thing's brooding thoughts. But Curt Newton

desperately seized upon one possibility.

OU COULD still live if you tell , us where

there is calcium," he thought, to the thing.

"We could take your plant-body or roots and brain

with us in our ship. You could grow again upon

another world."

"It is impossible. Our bodies are so adapted to

the chemical conditions of this planetoid that we

could not live in a different habitat," answered the

Dweller. "However, I would tell you where there

was calcium if I could. I bear you no ill will. It is

true that we were forced to catch and devour a

number of your party, but you forced us to it by

camping here. The small animals on which we

formerly preyed would no longer approach this

place with you here. And our bodies had to have the

animal food upon which we subsist."

The Dweller continued his calm mental

message. "But though I would help you if I could, I

cannot. It is my belief that there is not, and has

never been, a single atom of calcium on this

world."

Curt felt the blood drain from his heart. "No

calcium here at all? How can you know that, when

you can neither see nor hear nor move?"

The Dweller replied. "We long ago investigated

the history of this planetoid by probing the minds

and knowledge of the degenerating human colonists

here. We learned thus that this world was a moon in

a planetary system whose sun was completely

without calcium, potassium and several other

elements. An atomic disintegration process similar

to the carbon-nitrogen cycle had burned out all

those elements before that sun ever gave birth to

worlds."

Captain Future turned toward the others. He told

them what he had just heard from the Dweller.

"The Dweller is speaking the truth," said the

Brain gravely. "That explanation of why Astarfall is

with- out calcium is scientifically probable. It

explains the silicon structure of the bones of the

jungle pigs."

"Then -- then it's all over for us?" Joan Randall

whispered, her face very pale but her eyes fixed

steadily on Curt.

At that moment a violent new quake rocked

them. They saw through the swirling haze that

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

immense new bulks of rock were rising with a

prolonged, grating roar from the lava nearby. The

knoll rose and fell beneath them like a chip upon

the sea. A new, higher wave of lava rolled its fiery

crest toward them.

"That new wave o' lava will cover the knoll!"

yelled Ezra Gurney.

One of the mutineers clutched wildly at Captain

Future's arm. "You promised that if everything else

failed, you had a way to at least get the ship off this

world!"

Curt Newton's haggard face set, his lips

tightening. The dreadful last expedient that he had

kept in mind all these terrible days now stared him

full in the face.

He met it unflinchingly. He knew what he had to

do -- and there was small time left in which to do it.

His voice rang like a trumpet through the din.

"Into the Phoenix, everybody. We're going to take

off."

"But, Chief!" expostulated Otho wildly. "You

know that as soon as we start the cycs without the

calcium catalyst, they'll blow again."

"I have enough calcium to act as catalyst for one

cyclotron," Curt answered swiftly. "I didn't tell any

of you, because I was hoping to get more. But one

cyc will be enough to get the ship off Astarfall."

"It's raining fire!" screeched one of the mutineers

in terror.

A fiery sleet was indeed falling upon them from

the smoke-darkened heavens as the burning ashes

of the latest continuing eruptions descended.

HEY fought their way toward the ship.

Curt steadied Joan's staggering steps, and

yelled for Grag to bring the shrieking Rollinger.

Inside the Phoenix, he slammed shut the door to

keep out the wave of scorching, superheated air that

was rolling up from the lava which now was

advancing to wash over the knoll.

"Up to the bridge-deck, all of you!" he shouted.

"There'll be less danger there if anything happens to

the cycs."

They slipped and tripped, for now the Phoenix

was rocking wildly in its cradle. Curt thrust Otho

into the pilot-chair, in front of which were the

space-stick, throttles and few simple instruments

they had devised.

"Otho, I want you to pilot the take- off," Captain

Future ordered. "Now listen closely. I've only

enough calcium cataylst for one cyclotron. I'll put it

in the Number One cyc. You must only use that one

cyc to power the take-off. And you must not let it

run for more than a minute, for by the end of that

time the cataylst will be used up.

"In that minute," he told the android tensely,

"you must get the ship off and start it in the

direction of the System. Then cut the cyc at once.

But do not start to take off, until ten minutes after I

have gone down to the cyc-room to put in the

catalyst."

Otho nodded his head understandingly. "I get it,

Chief. Ten minutes after you go down, I cut in the

Number One cyc, use its full power for one minute

to get the ship off, and then cut it off again."

Curt Newton paused. His gray eyes bad a queer

brilliance in them as he met the gaze of his three

old comrades.

"Simon � Grag � Otho -- just in case anything

should go wrong, I want to say that no man ever

bad finer pals. I'm thinking of the old days on the

Moon, of all we four went through together."

It was a moment of tense emotion, and that

emotion gripped Joan Randal as she clung to

Captain Future.

"Curt, do you think we're not going to make it?

Is that why you're saying goodbye?"

"We'll make it -- I'm sure we will," he told her

earnestly. His eyes searched her face with strange

wistfulness. He held her fiercely close, kissed her,

then turned abruptly away. "Remember, Otho -- in

ten minutes!"

Curt's heart was bursting with overpowering

emotion as he flung himself down the

companionway and back to the cyc-room.

George McClinton was there. McClinton

had,just unscrewed the heavy inertron top of the

massive Number One cyclotron. He clambered

hastily down off the towering cylinder as Curt burst

in.

"McClinton, get up with the others!" Curt cried.

"We're going to start, and I want everybody else up

there out of harm's way."

The lanky engineer showed no sign of obeying.

He came toward Curt, a strange smile on his

homely, spe tacled face.

"No, Captain Future." It was odd that in this

moment of superhuman strain his stammer finally

left him. "I know what you're planning to do. I

guessed it when you made that promise to the

others. And I'm not going to let you do it."

His voice was deep as he told Curt, "You mean

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

too much to the System's future, to do this. And you

mean too much to her."

There was a faraway tenderness that transfigured

the engineer's homely face, as he spoke of Joan.

"But I don't mean much to the System or

anyone," George McClinton continued. "That's why

I'm doing -- this!"

The engineer's right hand flashed out as he

spoke. He had a heavy wrench in that hand, and he

aimed the unexpected blow at Curt Newton's head.

Curt had no chance to dodge, so utterly

unforeseen was the attack. His skull rang, and he

sank unconscious.

CHAPTER XIX

The Call

CAPTAIN FUTURE

struggled back to

consciousness a few minutes

later to hear a bursting roar

and feel a violent shock. H e

was pressed against the floor

by brief, terrific

acceleration.

The sensation passed

swiftly. His head began to

clear and he was able to

stagger to his feet. He

looked dazedly around.

The Phoenix was out in space. Its cyclotron had

operated for the brief, prearranged moment, and the

short blast of power from its rocket-tubes had flung

it out in the take-off.. It was rushing now toward

the gleaming flecks of the Solar System. Astarfall

was a smoky, fire-shot ball receding rapidly astern.

Curt looked wildly around the cyc-room.

"McClinton!"

There was no answer. The lanky chief engineer

was gone. And Curt knew where he had gone.

The Number One cyclotron was still hot from

that moment of operation that had enabled them to

take off. Curt Newton bowed his head against the

side of the cyc, his face working.

The others found him thus when they came

down into the cyc-room. Their voices were ringing

with excitement and hope, but they were startled

into silence when Curt raised his head.

Few men had ever seen tears in Captain Future's

eyes. But they saw them now.

"Chief, what is it?" Grag cried anxiously.

"What's wrong?"

Joan was looking puzzledly around. "Where's

George McClinton? I thought he was down here."

Curt pointed back toward space. His voice was

choked. "McClinton is back there."

They read tragedy in his face. "Curt, what do

you mean?"

"I mean that McClinton gave up his life to allow

us to escape from Astarfall," Captain Future

husked. "He supplied calcium to the Number One

cyc from the only possible source, the calcium of

his own body's skeleton.

"He knew the only possible source of calcium,

since there was none on Astarfall, was in our own

bodies. The average human body contains more

than a pound of calcium. Enough to act as catalyst

in a cyclotron for at least a minute! McClinton

knew that, and gave himself so that we could

escape!"

"My God!" cried Ezra Gurney. "Do you mean

that he --"

Curt Newton nodded heavily. "Yes. McClinton

got inside Number One cyc. When it was turned on,

the blast of atomic energy reduced his body to

ashes. But in those ashes was enough calcium-

catalyst to control the flow of energy and keep it

from wrecking the cyc during that minute."

He added, "He knew I'd have stopped him. He

knocked me out; when I came down into the cyc-

room."

Curt did not tell them, would never tell them,

that he had himself had made desperate decision to

sacrifice his own life in the same way rather than

that they should all perish. But they all understood

that now. And every surviving outlaw was

humbled.

"When you said good-by to us up in the bridge-

room --" Joan began. Then, as her stricken eyes

traveled from the silent cyclotron back to the vault

of space behind the stern window, she began to sob

wildly.

"Oh, Curt, that shy, stammering boy we all

teased!"

He held her, soothing her. He heard the calm

voice of the Brain.

"It was a fine thing McClinton did. It is too bad

that his sacrifice was probably all for nothing."

"What do you mean?" cried Kim Ivan. "We're

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

clear of Astarfall."

"Yes, and we are rushing toward the System,"

answered the Brain. "But we still have no calcium.

We can 't operate the cyclotrons again. That means

we can't change course to land on any planet.

Unless we somehow get help, we'll fall helplessly

through the System toward the Sun."

HEY looked at each other, stunned. In all

their minds, the same terrible fact had

become obvious. If they were to operate the

cyclotrons again, another of them must die!

Ezra Gurney yelled suddenly. "Look back there

at Astarfall! She's goin'!"

They crowded to the windows. A we that made

them forget their own deadly peril fell upon them at

the spectacle of cosmic catastrophe they beheld.

The little planetoid had entered its final

convulsions. The veils of smoke and steam were

momentarily torn from its surface, and they looked

upon its appalling surface.

Great rifts were opening in the crust of the

worldlet, radiating outward like spreading cracks.

Up from these rifts boiled the infernal core of the

planetoid. Whole sections of the surface sank

beneath this bursting lava like ice-floes submerging

beneath the sea.

Wild streams of fire and steam shot for hundreds

of miles out from the surface. For several minutes,

the geography of the flaming sphere was fluid and

formless. Blue lightning wreathed the dying world.

Astarfall exploded! As the cloven crust let the

hydrosphere into its interior fiery core, the resulting

blast of expanding steam tore the crumbling

planetoid into fragments that hurtled out in every

direction.

"She's gone!" cried Ezra hoarsely. "That was the

end of her!"

They heard the Brain's brooding voice. "The end

of the pitiful history of the Cubics, and the strange

dreams of the Dwellers."

"Some of those fragments are coming after us!"

Kim Ivan exclaimed. " And we can't dodge 'em!"

"We'll have to take our chance," Captain Future

said tensely.

The fragments of the exploded planetoid were

rushing after them with a speed that would soon

overtake the Phoenix. They waited tautly.

They soon glimpsed jagged masses of rock

whirling past nearby. Smaller debris struck against

the Phoenix' sides and stern with a rattling clatter

that shook the ship in every beam. Then it was soon

over.

"The inner hull wasn't holed by any of that

debris," Grag soon reported.

"Then that danger is past," said the Brain. "But

we'll soon be rushing into the System. Our speed

will accelerate by the hour as we fall toward the

Sun. What are we going to do?"

Again their terrible dilemma faced them.

Without calcium, they could not operate the cycs to

reach any planet. And they had but one source of

the element, and that was their own bodies.

Kim Ivan spoke up. "Captain Future, I've been

thinking. It was your work and McClinton's

sacrifice that saved me and my boys from that

world's end. We owe you something for that. I

propose that we boys draw lots among ourselves."

"Agreed!" roared the voices of all the mutineers

in chorus.

"Oh, no!" Joan sobbed. "No more of us must die

in that terrible way! Please, Curt!"

"We'll find another way," Captain Future

promised. "We've got to -- now."

He went up with them to the bridge-room. The

Phoenix' was rushing silently on. The Line, the

edge of the System, was not so far ahead. For the

planetoid had been steadily approaching it during

all these past weeks.

The bright little disc of Pluto gleamed, ahead of

them and far to the left. Beyond lay the shining

specks of the inner planets and the brilliant, small

sphere of the Sun.

"If we could only call for help to the Patrol

somehow," Curt muttered. " A cruiser could easily

System to death."

Ezra shrugged hopelessly. "We ain't got no way

to call -- no audiophone."

T HAD been impossible, of course, for them

to undertake the construction of a complex

audiophone transmitter when they had built the

ship. They had barely completed the ship itself in

time. But now their lack of a transmitter seemed to

spell their doom.

"Could we build a small transmitter?" Joan

asked hopefully:

Curt shook his head. "By the time we got it

finished, we'd be crashing in through the inner

planets to the Sun. And even then, if we had a

transmitter, we'd have no power to operate it. We

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

still couldn't use the cyclotrons."

The Brain, hovering beside them, spoke

thoughtfully. "There is a possible solution. You

know that my serum-case embodies a small atomic

motor which furnishes power to the generator of

my traction-beams and the pumps which repurify

the serum. You could take out that motor and

generator from my 'body' and soon convert them

into a small improvised audiophone transmitter."

Captain Future protested. "No, Simon! You

would die when the pumps and purifiers stopped

working and your vital serum became toxic!"

"I would not die at once," the Brain said coolly.

"I would live for twenty-four to forty-eight hours,

though I would lapse into unconsciousness during

that time as my serum became toxic. In that time,

you might be able to receive help in answer to your

call. You could then revive me."

"But if help didn't come soon enough, it would

be too late ever to revive you!" Curt exclaimed.

"The power of your motor would be exhausted."

The Brain's metallic voice was annoyed. "You

are being illogical, Curtis. It is certainly preferable

that I should take that risk than that we should all

perish. Remember what you had intended doing."

The logic was unassailable, yet Captain Future

still hesitated. His haggard face was deeply moved

as he looked into the lens-like eyes of his old

companion.

"Simon, if this should cost your life --"

"Come. come, you know how I abhor

sentimentality," interrupted the Brain annoyedly.

Yet his metallic voice seemed oddly softer as he

added, "Get on with it and stop wasting time."

The Brain glided to the shelf-like table beside

the instrument panel -- the navigation-desk. His

transparent cube rested there, waiting.

Sweat stood out on Curt Newton's brow as he

and Otho got their meager supply of tools and

began work. Deftly, quickly, they unbolted the

bottom section of the Brain's strange body which

contained its motive mechanisms.

They removed it, disconnecting and clamping

the tiny pipes and cables which connected with the

serum-case proper. Now the Brain was merely an

isolated living brain in a transparent box of serum.

His powers of speech, hearing, movement, had

been stripped from him.

Captain Future worked with utmost speed now.

Every minute counted, for the Brain's hours of life

were now numbered. Rapidly, he and Otho and

Grag took apart the mechanisms that had enabled

Simon to live.

The small, powerful atomic motor, with its own

compact charge of calcium catalyzed fuel, they set

aside. They dissembled the motors from the serum-

pumps and hooked them to the generators that had

produced the Brain's magnetic traction-beams.

They thus set up a complete new circuit which

would emit electro-magnetic waves in the

frequency-range of audiophone usage. The little

atomic motor was connected to furnish the power .

Curt Newton connected this little improvised

transmitter to the makeshift antenna-sphere which

Grag had prepared and attached outside the space-

door.

He used the microphonic "ears" of the Brain for

microphones.

"It's finished," Curt announced finally. "Turn it

on, Otho."

The atomic motor throbbed with power. The

generators began to hum, casting their roughly-

tuned wave out into space.

Curt spoke into the microphones. "Ship Phoenix,

Captain Future commanding, calling all Patrol

vessels or other ships! We need help in the form of

calcium supplies/ We are approaching the Line

from outer space, in the following approximate

position."

He gave the figures of their position as they had

calculated it. Then he again repeated the call.

For the next few hours, Curt repeated the

message at regular intervals. The last time, the little

atomic motor went dead on the last words.

"She's played out!" Otho reported. "Fuel's clear

gone. No wonder, when we've been running it full

load all this time."

"Do you suppose our message was heard?" Joan

asked Curt tensely.

"There's no way of telling," he muttered. "We've

no receiver. All we can do is wait."

The Phoenix rushed silently on and on toward

the Line. In torturing suspense, Captain Future

peered haggardly out into the star-flecked void.

The superhuman strain under which he had been

laboring for many days took its toll. He slept. his

head against the window.

It was many hours later that he was awakened by

Otho shaking his shoulder.

"Chief, come look at Simon!" begged the

android fearfully.

Curt rubbed red-rimmed eyes dazedly. That his

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

exhausted slumber had been long, he knew from a

glance at the planets far ahead. They were brighter,

nearer.

Joan and the others were sleeping druggedly.

Curt hastened with Otho to the shelf on which

rested the now lifeless cubical case of the Brain.

He looked into the transparent cube. Its colorless

serum had now assumed a dark tinge.

"What's happening, Chief?" Grag asked

anxiously.

Curt's answer was a dry whisper. "The serum, no

longer repurified, is becoming toxic. Simon is

dying."

"But Simon can't die!" burst out the great robot.

"Why, we've been together, he and Otho and I, all

my life! Even before you were born!"

Curt Newton felt an icy, utter despair. He looked

at them numbly. And then came a hoarse cry from

Ezra Gurney, watching at the window.

"Cap'n Future, I saw a rocket-flash in space

ahead of us!"

Curt and the others feverishly plunged to the

window, and scanned the vault. But there was

nothing save the cold, mocking eyes of the stars.

"I -- I guess I'm gettin' delirious," faltered Ezra.

"No !" Grag bellowed suddenly. "Look there!"

They still could see nothing. But the robot's

super-keen photoelectric eyes had seen. And

presently they caught it, too.

A long, slim cruiser with the familiar emblem of

the Planet Patrol upon its bows was driving toward

them through the void.

By the time that cruiser came into magnetic

contact with the Phoenix. and space-suited men

from it entered their ship, Curt Newton and the two

Futuremen were waiting in the airlock.

The young Venusian captain of the Patrol

cruiser, when he took off his helmet, stared at Curt

and the others unbelievingly.

"Captain Future! It's really you and Agent

Randall and Marshal Gurney, too! But tell us, what

happened to the Vulcan? We've been searching for

weeks, and then we heard your faint call yesterday."

"No time to explain now!" cried Curt. "The

calcium, man! Where is it!"

The astonished Venusian thrust a heavy sack

toward him. "I brought this much along. We have

as much more as you need in the cruiser."

URT raced back up to the bridge. His

bands were shaking as he tore open theC

sack and placed a little of the precious calcium in

the catalyst-chamber of the atomic generator from

the Brain's body.

The copper fuel was already in the mechanism.

They worked with frantic speed, reassembling the

apparatus back into the case of the Brain. They

could hear it start humming at once, operating

pumps and purifiers.

They waited for minutes that to Curt seemed

eternities. The dark tinge of the serum in the Brain's

case slowly faded away. But that was all.

"We were too late,"' Otho whispered strickenly.

"Too late to revive Simon."

Then the Brain spoke. Simon. Wright abhorred

show of emotion. He would have died rather than

to have displayed his feelings now.

He said metallically, "Well, what are you all

staring at? The experiment was a success, wasn't

it?"

The Phoenix landed on the spaceport of Tartarus

City, on frigid Pluto, two days later. With it landed

the Patrol cruiser that had brought them salvation.

Its officers came to take charge of the mutineers

and transport them out to the prison moon.

Kim Ivan and his men trooped out into the chilly

dusk and stood quietly while the Patrol guards

gathered around them.

"You won't have any trouble with us, boys," the

big Martian said tersely. "We've been so close to

death that we're not going to find Interplanetary

Prison such a bad place for a while."

Curt Newton went toward the towering Martian.

He held out his hand quietly. "Kim, will you shake

hands?"

The big pirate's battered face grinned at him as

he extended his fist. "I'm glad there's no hard

feelings, Future. We went through quite a lot

together."

"We did," Curt nodded. " And I've an idea we'll

meet up again."

"Oh, sure, when you come out to Cerberus

prison visiting," said the Martian ruefully.

"Kim, Moremos and the other men who actually

killed the Vulcan's officers are dead, and they did it

against your orders," Curt said. ."That won't be held

against you and your chaps. And there's such a

thing as commutation of sentences for men who

have had enough of outlawry and would like to

blast a straight rocket-trail."

Kim Ivan's massive face flamed. "Future, me

and my boys won't mind Interplanetary Prison one

THE FACE OF THE DEEP

little bit, if we have that to hope for!"

Curt Newton grinned in turn. "I'm not promising

anything, you big ruffian. But I've an idea we'll

meet up on the space-trails some day."

When the convicts were gone, Curt turned. Grag

and Otho had resumed their interminable argument.

The Brain had gone with Ezra Gurney.

But Joan was standing in the frigid dusk,

looking up at the dark vault of the heavens. She did

not turn when he reached her side.

"Curt, I was thinking," she said softly. "It's

where he would have wanted to be buried -- in

space."

He did not need to ask of whom she spoke.

He put his arm around her shoulders as he

answered slowly.

"Yes, Joan. Any spaceman would want such

burial, to have his ashes scattered out there on the

face of the deep."

And they stood silent, gazing out into the vast

vault of that shoreless sea in which a world and a

hero had perished.