Read Online Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) by Manly Wade Wellman - Free Book Online Page B

she wants to quarrel.”
    “I don’t,” said Joan softly. “Curt, I didn’t doubt for a moment that you’d save me but I never thought it would be so prompt as this.”
    “You’re not getting away,” said N’Rala, who had recovered her mocking smile and her self-possession. “If I don’t follow within ten minutes, they’ll be back to look for me.”
    “The ship?” said Grag, taking a ponderous step as if to enter.
    “If it should try to sail without clearing with the officer of the guard inside, it would be blasted before it was well above the ground,” said N’Rala. “I tell you that because I wouldn’t want to be blasted with it.”
    “That’s probably true,” nodded Captain Future. “Here, Otho, put these bracelets I took from Joan on N’Rala. If you and Grag really want something to battle about, see which of you can keep closest watch on her. We’re getting out of here — on foot — in this jungle.”
     
    HE TURNED to lead the way, but N’Rala hung back between her two guards.
    “If I refuse to come?” she suggested mockingly. “Will you kill or punish me, Captain Future? Or am I right in diagnosing a weakness in you — hesitancy about rough treatment of women?”
    “That’s easily fixed,” spoke up Joan Randall. From N’Rala’s weapon-belt, now worn by Captain Future, she took the atom gun. “I’ll be your guard,” she told N’Rala. “And I’m no gentleman to be taken advantage of. As a woman, N’Rala, I have no qualms about blasting you with this pistol. March!”
    N’Rala marched.
    Captain Future led the way, with the Brain soaring high above him, to spy over the blunt-boughed tops of the jungle. Next came N’Rala, guarded by Joan. Grag followed, and Otho, sensitive of ear, held the rear-guard position. The little cavalcade moved along a narrow trail, winding here and there, past the resting place where the Futuremen had paused to watch the landing of N’Rala’s ship. At last they came to a little stream, narrow but swift and apparently deep.
    N’Rala chuckled despite herself, and Captain Future paused on its very brink. He stooped, and sniffed.
    “Taint of acid,” he announced. “Don’t step in it, anyone. Thanks, N’Rala, for warning me by that chuckle.”
    He flexed himself suddenly and sprang across. The two women were not such jumpers, but Simon Wright dropped down, and used his traction beams to help first one, then the other, to make the leap safely. Otho bounded over like a rubber ball, and the heavier, clumsier Grag ripped up treelike stems to make himself a bridge.
    At Captain Future’s order, he tossed those bridge-poles into the stream itself. They floated only briefly. The liquid of the stream crumbled and dissolved the growths, like sugar lumps in water.
    Joan, watching, gave a little shuddering shrug.
    “I saw those plants wriggle, as if they were alive. What an awful world, with deadly acid for its natural liquid! We’ll die of thirst.”
    “I doubt it,” said Captain Future. “N’Rala doesn’t seem parched. Come, draw into the clearing yonder. Simon can watch if any pursuit comes, and that stream will delay it. I have some questions to ask of N’Rala.”
    “Think I’ll answer?” challenged the Martian girl, sitting on a little hummock of mosslike fibers.
    “You’ve already told us some things,” said Otho. “One, when you thought I was that big Jovian and suggested that you’d operate on my brain for your own purposes, not Ul Quorn’s.” He glanced at Captain Future, “Chief, I don’t think that N’Rala and Ul Quorn are quite as closely allied as they used to be.”
    “I don’t think so, either,” contributed the Brain, from his overhead position of hovering sentry. “Remember that Ul Quorn was a little savage when we mentioned N’Rala to him.”
    “How clever!” sneered N’Rala. “You don’t seem to need to ask questions. You deduce so much.”
    “Which is half an admission that we’re right,” commented Captain