Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) (3 page)

Read Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) Online

Authors: Edmond Hamilton

Tags: #Sci-Fi & Fantasy

James Carthew hesitated before replying.

“That’s a story known only to Ezra and Joan and myself — and one other. But I don’t think Captain Future would mind if I told it to you.”

The President looked off into the windy darkness as he spoke.

“A generation ago there was a brilliant young scientist here on Earth. His name was Roger Newton. He had made certain valuable scientific discoveries that were coveted by an unscrupulous man named Victor Corvo. To escape Corvo’s plots, young Newton fled to a refuge on the barren, lifeless Moon. With him went his young wife and his colleague, Simon Wright.”

“Simon Wright?” echoed Halk Anders in surprise. “You mean the Brain?”

“Yes, the Brain,” nodded Carthew. “Wright had been a famous, aging scientist here on Earth. Newton removed his living brain from his dying body and placed it in the serum-case which it still inhabits.

“Roger Newton and his wife and the Brain built a laboratory-home on the Moon under Tycho crater,” he continued. “There they created two intelligent living creatures — Grag, the metal robot, and Otho, the synthetic android. And there was born Newton’s son, Curtis.

“But Victor Corvo pursued them to the Moon. He killed Newton and his wife — and was himself killed by the Brain and robot and android. It was those three unhuman, superhuman beings who reared the infant Curtis Newton to manhood in that wild, lonely lunar home. They raised him to be the finest scientist and the swiftest, strongest adventurer in the System. When Curtis Newton reached manhood, he entered the life-work he had chosen.”

James Carthew looked back into memory.

“I remember the night Curtis first came here. He told me he meant to devote his life to combating such interplanetary criminals as had killed his parents. He said he would call himself Captain Future, and that whenever I had need of him I had but to signal and he and the three Futuremen would come. And he has come, many times. He has crushed many criminals. But he’ll go after Quorn with an even fiercer purpose, a greater determination.”

“Why so?” Halk Anders asked. “I know he trapped Quorn before, but why should he hold a grudge against than breed?”

Carthew answered the Commander somberly.

“Ul Quorn is the son of Victor Corvo, who killed Future’s parents! There is a blood-feud between those two men.”

 

 

Chapter 3: The Futuremen

 

FAR, far outside the Solar System, in the vast and awesome deeps of space that stretch toward the stars, the formless black bulk of a great cloud of cosmic dust was drifting. Clinging to the edge of that cloud, coasting along its dark shores, moved a small tear-drop space ship.

It was the
Comet,
famous ship of the Futuremen. In its main laboratory cabin, bent intently over an elaborate scientific instrument, Curt Newton was occupied making observations on the cloud.

“I’ve nearly got its course plotted now, Simon,” announced Curt without raising his head from the eyepiece.

“Better take a couple more readings to make sure, lad,” rasped a metallic voice beside him.

“I’m going to,” agreed Curt. “But I’m almost certain that the cloud will pass billions of miles from our System.”

He continued studying the cloud through his electro-telescope. Curt Newton, the red-haired young wizard of science known to all men as Captain Future, had come out here with his Futuremen to ascertain the course of this dark, drifting cosmic cloud. He wanted to be sure that it would not drift into the System itself.

He and his comrades had been checking the speed of the drifting dust for days. They were so far in outer space that the Sun itself seemed only one bright star among the myriad stars that spangled the firmament.

Curt finally straightened.

“All readings check!” he announced crisply. “The cloud won’t come near the System, thank the stars!”

Curt Newton made a striking figure, standing erect. He was six feet four in height, long-legged and wide-shouldered in his green zipper-suit. He had the lean, rangy look of a fighter, an impression strengthened by the proton-pistol whose well-worn butt protruded from a holster at his belt.

But underneath his disordered mop of red hair, Captain Future’s tanned, handsome face and keen gray eyes were those of a thinker and dreamer. Deep in those clear eyes glimmered the brilliant intelligence that made him the greatest scientist in the System. Mentally, as well as physically, he was truly a man of tomorrow.

“Simon, I want to have a look inside that cloud,” he declared to his companion. “The instruments show there are solid bodies inside it.”

“It’ll be dangerous venturing into that dust,” warned the Brain. “Even with our infra-red searchlights, we’ll be flying half-blind.”

Simon Wright, the Brain, was a curious spectacle as he hovered beside Curt. He was a living human brain housed in a square, transparent case whose circulating serums kept him alive. He had artificial glass lens-eyes mounted on flexible stalks on the front of his case, above his resonator speech-apparatus and between his microphone ears. The Brain had an ingenious means of locomotion. Magnetic beams he could jet from his case supported him in the air, enabled him to propel himself in every direction.

“Let’s take the chance!” Captain Future proposed eagerly. “We may never again have such an opportunity.”

“I see you’re set on the crazy idea, lad,” rasped the Brain’s metallic voice. “All right, let’s risk our lives for nothing.”

“What would life be worth without a little risk?” laughed Curt. He strode toward the control room. “I’ll tell Grag and Otho.”

In the control room, Grag, the robot, sat in the pilot-chair and kept the
Comet
coasting the cloud. Otho was working intently on the floor.

“I’ll take over, Grag,” Curt told the robot. “We’re going to have a look inside the cloud.”

“I don’t see why,” grumbled Grag as he gave up the pilot-chair. “We haven’t lost anything in there.”

Grag’s metal body towered seven feet high. His massive jointed arms and legs hinted of the physical power that made him the strongest being in the System. His mighty metal figure, his bulbous metal head and gleaming photo-electric eyes, made him an awe-inspiring figure.

“Go back and check the eyes — before we enter the cloud,” Curt directed him. “We don’t want to have any trouble once we’re in there.”

“Let Otho check the eyes!” protested Grag in his booming mechanical voice. “While I’ve stood shift for hours, he’s been playing.”

 

OTHO looked up from the pieces of metal he was assembling.

“Playing?” he retorted indignantly. “I’m about to accomplish a valuable scientific achievement.”

Grag grunted scornfully.

“I’ll bet it’s valuable! It’ll be like that new-fangled space-suit you invented, that we had to cut you out of.”

“You just wait and see,” Otho promised mysteriously.

Otho, third of the Futuremen, was a synthetic man, or android. His body was quite human in shape but was of rubbery white synthetic flesh. And though his hairless head was well-shaped with regular features, his slanted, mocking green eyes had depths of alien, ironical intelligence.

Otho suddenly uttered a hissing cry of anger. A small, gray animal with sharp snout and beady little eyes had been sniffing at a metal cylinder among his materials while he was arguing.

“Get away from my work, you cursed little pest!” swore Otho, cuffing the little beast aside.

Grag snatched up the animal.

“You cuff my Eek again and I’ll stretch your rubber neck from here back to the Sun!” he threatened Otho.

“He was going to eat one of my metal pieces!” raged the android. “If ever I get that nasty little pet of yours alone —”

Eek, the guilty little animal, cringed on Greg’s shoulder. The little beast was a moon-pup, a species of non-breathing, telepathic animals that ate metals and minerals. Grag had adopted him as a pet, but Otho hated his insides.

“I’ll bet he’s been chewing at this cylinder,” Otho exclaimed, anxiously picking up the metal part at which Eek had been sniffing.

Then an astonishing thing happened. The metal cylinder changed shape in Otho’s hands. It squirmed and flowed and shifted shape and color and was suddenly a fat, doughy little animal with short, thick legs and big, solemn
eyes.

It was Oog, Otho’s own pet. Oog was a meteor-mimic, from a genus of animals on a distant asteroid which had the power of shifting the cells of their bodies at will to imitate any object or animal.

Curt burst into laughter.

“It’s your own little mutt, Otho,” he chuckled.

“Cursed if it isn’t,” swore Otho. “Oog, you know better than this.”

“Now get back and check those eyes, before I heave you and Grag and your whole menagerie out of the ship,” Curt threatened.

Otho put away his mysterious work and hastened back to the cyc-room in the stern. Quickly he returned to report the eyes all in order.

“All right, here’s where we eat dust,” Captain Future remarked.

He shifted the space-stick to the right. Now, instead of skirting the edge of the great black cloud, they were at once in the strangling darkness. But Curt snicked on the powerful infra-red searchlights, and these cut a dim path through the dust. His foot resting lightly on the cyc-pedal, Curt eased the ship further inward.

They cruised slowly through the dust for several hours. By gravitometer and meteorometer readings, Curt located the few solid bodies in the cloud. They proved to be lifeless, barren rock masses of asteroid size.

“Not much in here really worth inspecting,” Curt Newton admitted.

“Something’s coming up behind us!” Grag yelled. “There it comes — looks like a red-hot meteor bearing down on us!”

Curt turned swiftly, glimpsed the burning red speck rushing upon them from behind. Hastily he jammed the cyc-pedal down and flung the space-stick over. The
Comet
veered away with a roar of rocket-tubes. But the plunging red speck instantly veered its course also, to follow them.

“Friends of Pluto, the thing’s following us!” Otho hissed.

“Hold it!” Curt exclaimed suddenly. “That’s no meteor. It’s the torpedo signal! We’re needed at Earth!”

It was the red torpedo that President Carthew had launched from Earth. Propelled by its super-powerful charge, it had plunged into outer space at a speed almost that of light. It had followed an invisible beam straight to the
Comet,
veering aside only when its automatic steering-mechanism operated to make it avoid space ships or meteors in its path.

Now it was automatically circling the ship of the Futuremen. Even through the cosmic dust, the torpedo blazed its red summons. It had been made to emit infra-red light capable of penetrating any obscurity.

 

CAPTAIN FUTURE’S gray eyes flashed.

“Something’s up back there at Earth, boys! We’re blasting back right now.”

A tension had gripped them all. The Futuremen fully realized the significance of that urgent summons. Curt rapidly drove the
Comet
back out of the cosmic cloud. Then he really opened her up. With all the power of its nine mighty cyclotrons pouring from its tail-tubes, the little ship screamed Sunward.

Within a time that seemed incredibly short, the ship was roaring down toward the great greenish sphere of Earth. Curt Newton glanced toward the silvery, barren globe of the Moon as they raced down past it.

“Can’t take time now to stop,” he muttered, referring to their home.

He had already flashed a televisor message ahead to inform of the time of his arrival. Precisely on schedule, the little ship was diving across the daylight side of Earth toward sunlit New York.

Curt Newton’s keen eyes discerned the gleaming spire of Government Tower soaring above the streets and parks of the metropolis. He sent the
Comet
rushing down toward the little square deck atop the tower at suicidal velocity. Then, with a blast of the brake-tubes, they landed.

“Come on!” he told the others, opening the airlock door. “They’re waiting for us.”

The Futuremen made a weird quartet as they emerged down the stairway into the President’s office. James Carthew sprang to his feet. Joan Randall and Ezra Gurney and Commander Halk Anders came forward eagerly.

Captain Future’s gray eyes swept them.

“Looks like everyone’s here tonight. Must be something big in the wind.”

“Something big is right, blast it!” swore Halk Anders.

“Now, quiet down, Halk,” drawled Ezra. “Halk’s a little excited, Cap’n Future. But he’s got plenty of reason to be.”

“I’ll say he has!” Joan Randall cried tensely to Curt. “We’ve really got our hands full this time.”

“Oh,
we
have, do
we?”
Curt repeated dryly. “You’ve already figured out that I’m going to need your invaluable assistance, have you?”

“Sure I have,” retorted Joan calmly. “This’ll give me a swell chance to use my seductive feminine wiles on you, you big mug.”

Ezra Gurney chuckled.

“She ain’t entirely foolin’, Cap’n Future.”

“It’s excitement she’s crazy about, and not me,” scoffed Curt Newton. He looked at the President. “Just what is it that’s happened?”

Other books

Blood Run by Dougherty, Christine
Dangerous Legacy by Valerie Hansen
Love Takes the Cake by Betsy St. Amant
Holy Enchilada by Henry Winkler
El caballero inexistente by Italo Calvino
Cutting Edge by Allison Brennan