Read Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942) for Free Online Page A

android’s foolish threats as he was conducted down the corridor. The passage ended in a guard room full of Cometae soldiery. Curt was led out of it into the open air. He blinked, half-blinded by the coma’s brilliant sky. Its electric force tingled through him strongly. Khinkir and the guards kept their weapons trained upon him alertly as they conducted him around the plaza to the looming white palace.
    The high-arched white halls of the palace were magnificent, their alabaster walls decorated by frescoes of silver. They passed into a large, circular throne room whose ceiling was the curving white dome far overhead. Facing Captain Future was a sunburst throne, a wide benchlike chair of solid silver backed by a golden disk.
    Upon it sat a man and a woman of the Cometae, two richly dressed, radiant figures who were listening now to an older man.
    “So that’s King Thoryx and Queen Lulain,” Curt thought, as he was led toward the rulers. He glanced swiftly around. “I don’t see any of the mysterious Alius.”
    Around the big throne room were knots of the Cometae nobility, handsome men and beautiful women, whose glowing electrical radiance of body deepened their strangely angelic look. But their faces were not those of angels! Curt read in many of those faces a shadowy oppression, a dim, haunting dread.
    Then Captain Future stiffened as he noticed one of the Cometae women. In her scanty silver-cloth garment, she was a figure of shining, unearthly beauty, her slim white body brilliant with glowing electric energy. But she was not fair-haired, as all the other Cometae. Her hair was dark.
    Curt Newton felt a staggering shock. He could not believe the terrible thing his eyes told him.
    “It’s impossible!” he muttered hoarsely.
    Then as he came closer to the girl, he saw that it was true. This girl of the Cometae, this weirdly shining electric figure, was none other than Joan Randall!
     

     
Chapter 5: Shadow of the Alius
     
    IN THE prison cell, after Captain Future had been taken away and the door had been relocked, the Brain faced Otho condemningly.
    Simon Wright never gave way to anger. The cold, intellectual mind of the Brain abhorred useless emotion. But for that very reason, his rebuke was the more stinging.
    “You have committed a rash piece of folly,” he told Otho severely. “Your empty boasts have convinced the Cometae captains that we are dangerous. Now we shall be guarded even more closely.”
    “I lost my temper,” Otho admitted sulkily. “Anyway, what difference does it make? We couldn’t get out, anyway.”
    Presently they heard footsteps reapproaching their cell. But to the amazement of all three Futuremen, the door of the cell was unlocked. Zarn, the prison captain, stepped inside.
    Zarn held one of the electrode-barreled weapons ready for use. But the Cometae captain stood eying his charges for a moment in silence. His stocky, shining figure had an attitude of indecision, and there was an expression of mingled doubt and hope upon his massive face. Finally he spoke to the Brain.
    “Is it true, what your comrade said, that you are master of a science greater than that of the Alius?”
    Simon answered cautiously.
    “My, comrades and I possess certain scientific powers, yes. I do not know whether they are greater than those of the Alius, for I do not know anything about the Alius or their methods.”
    Zarn came a little closer and thrust out his hand. That hand, glowing, as all his body with electric energy, was trembling a little.
    “You see that I am now an electric creature, as are all my people,” Zarn said hoarsely. “It was the science of the Alius that made me like this. Could you undo what they have done?”
    “You mean, could I change you back into a normal, non-electric man?” the Brain asked surprisedly.
    Zarn nodded anxiously, his eyes clinging to the weird face of the Brain.
    “Could you?” he repeated.
    Simon sensed that much might depend upon his answer. He could not yet