Captain Future 11 - The Comet Kings (Summer 1942) (2 page)

“You said in your call that Joan and Ezra were in trouble. What is it, Bonnel? And why didn’t you call me before?”

Captain Future — as the whole System called Curtis Newton — towered a full head above Bonnel. His tall, ranged figure, clad now in a gray zipper-suit, hinted of strength and speed. And the heavy proton pistol belted to his waist recalled that he was not only the famous Wizard Science, but also the most renowned fighting planeteer in the System.

Beneath Curt’s torchlike mop of red hair, his space-tanned handsome face and clear gray eyes now mirrored an urgent anxiety. He had few friends, but those few were very close to him. Marshal Ezra Gurney was one of the oldest. And even closer to his heart was the gay, gallant girl agent whose safety now was threatened.

“Where are Joan and Ezra?” he repeated.

“We don’t know,” Bonnel answered helplessly.

“What do you mean — you don’t know?” cried one of the Futuremen. “Devils of space, is this a joke?”

The three Futuremen who were Curt Newton’s faithful, lifelong comrades made a striking contrast to their tall, red-haired young leader. Otho, the one who had just spoken, was a lithe, white, rubbery-looking figure of a man, with a devil of fierce recklessness in his slant green eyes. He seemed almost an ordinary man, but was not. Otho had been created in a laboratory, long ago. He was a synthetic man, an android.

Grag, second of the Futuremen, was even more extraordinary. He was an intelligent robot — a giant metal figure towering seven feet high, with photoelectric eyes gleaming from the bulbous metal head that shielded his mechanical brain. Strongest of all beings vas Grag!

The third and strangest was Simon Wright, the Brain. He was just that — a living human brain, dwelling in a transparent metal case whose constantly repurified serums kept him alive. His glass lens-eyes were watching, his microphone ears listening, as he hung poised upon the pale beams of force by which he could move through the air at will.

“You must have some idea where Joan and Ezra are! Otho was exclaiming impatiently to Bonnet. “Or did you bring us all the way from the Moon just for a silly hoax?”

“Shut up, Otho,” Curt Newton ordered. His gray eyes bored into Bonnel’s face. “Tell us what happened.”

BONNEL told them, as briefly as he could. He told of the scores of slips that for weeks has mysteriously vanished in that sector beyond Jupiter, of the assigning of Joan Randall and old Marshal Gurney to investigate, and of the inexplicable interruption of their televisor call.

“The thing has me baffled, Captain Future,” confessed Halk Anders when Bonnel finished.

Curt’s eyes were hard. “We’re going out there at once and find out what did happen to them,” he said sharply. He turned toward the door. Otho’s slant green eyes flamed with excitement as he followed. And Grag, too, followed Captain Future silently. But the Brain’s metallic voice held them back. “Wait a moment, Curtis. I know you’re worried about Joan, but getting into too big a hurry won’t help us. We need to know more about this.”

Otho groaned exasperatedly. “Every time we’re in a devil of a hurry, Simon has to delay to plan things out.”

There was truth in the charge. The cold, almost emotionless mind of the Brain was always more careful in planning action than were the others. That was natural, for the Brain was the oldest of them all.

The Brain could look back across the years to the time before Curt Newton had been born. He had been an ordinary man, at that time. He had been Doctor Simon Wright, brilliant, aging scientist of a great Earth university, dying of an incurable ailment.

His body had died but his brain had lived on. His living brain had been surgically removed and implanted in the artificial metal serum-case which he still inhabited. That had been done by Roger Newton, his gifted young colleague in biological research.

Soon after that, threats to their scientific secrets had caused the Brain, Roger Newton and Newton’s bride to leave Earth in search of a safe refuge. They had found such a haven on the lifeless Moon, where they built an underground laboratory-home beneath the floor of Tycho crater.

In that strange home, Curt Newton had been born. And in it, the science of the two experimenters had created Otho, the android, and Grag, the robot.

Death had come to Roger Newton and his young wife, soon after that. The orphaned infant they had left had been adopted by the three strange beings, the Brain, the robot and the android. These three had faithfully reared the boy to brilliant manhood, giving him the unparalleled education that in time had made him an unsurpassed master of science.

Ever since Curt Newton had begun to use his great powers against the evil-doers of the System, his three former guardians had followed him as the Futuremen.

“Before we go out there,” the Brain was saying deliberately in his metallic voice, “I want all available data about the spaceships that disappeared. I want to know the route each ship was on, its date of departure, its approximate cruising speed, and about when it vanished.”

Captain Future’s gray eyes showed quick understanding.

“I see what you mean, Simon. By calculating the courses and speeds of the ships, we may be able to fix the approximate point in space where they vanished.”

Halk Anders gave rapid orders into an office interphone. The file of data requested by the Brain was soon brought to him.

“We’ll call you the moment we learn anything out there,” Curt called back earnestly from the door to the two officials. “Come on, Grag.”

THEY hurried up the little private stair to the landing deck atop Government Tower, Otho taking the steps three at a time, Grag’s metal limbs clanking, the Brain gliding silently at Curt Newton’s side.

Up there in the windy darkness atop the tower, the small ship of the Futuremen crowded the deck. The four boarded the
Comet
in a minute, the airlock door was slammed shut, the cyclotrons started, and Captain Future grasped the space-stick in the crowded little control room.

He sent the
Comet
climbing steeply up to the stars with a burst of white flame from its tail rocket tubes. It angled sharply above the glittering towers of New York to fling itself space-yard amid a roar of splitting atmosphere, as Curt’s foot pressed the cyc-pedal.

Presently they were out in clear space, Earth receding rapidly behind them as Curt Newton built up the speed of the
Comet
to fantastic velocity. Like a man-made meteor gone mad, the ship of the Futuremen hurtled outward. The bright speck of Jupiter gleamed ahead, a little to the right.

Far out to the left, well beyond the orbit of the monarch world, glowed the brilliant splendor of Halley’s Comet. The great comet was plunging Sunward again in its vast, seventy-five-year orbit. Its giant coma or head shone like a blazing world, the long tail streaming backward.

“The ships all disappeared in the quadrant ahead, between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus,” Curt told Otho thoughtfully. “Since all space-lanes have been rerouted to give Halley’s comet a wide berth, it cuts down the area that we must search.”

There came a sudden booming cry of alarm from Grag, back in the main cabin.

“Someone has planted an atomic bomb on this ship!”

Springing up in alarm, Curt Newton slammed the switch of the automatic pilot and bounded back with Otho into the cabin. This main cabin of the
Comet
was more laboratory than living quarters. It was crowded with telescopic, spectroscopic, electrical and other apparatus. There was a table at its center over which the Brain had been poised, studying a mass of calculations.

Grag was standing, pointing his metal arm in alarm at a small, square black case in a corner. It exactly resembled a “live” atomic bomb.

“Don’t touch it, Chief — it may let go any minute!” the big robot cried. “Somebody must have put it in the ship while we were out.”

Captain Future moved swiftly toward the bomb, snatched it up and tore open the airlock door to throw the thing out. But the “bomb” suddenly writhed and changed form in his hands.

It changed with swift protean flow of outline, into a small, living animal. It was a doughy-looking little white beast, with big, solemn eyes that looked up innocently at Curt.

“It’s my pet, Oog!” cried Otho. He jumped forward in alarm. “Don’t throw him out!”

Curt disgustedly tossed the little animal to its master.

“It isn’t his fault,” Otho said protectively. “You know Oog loves to imitate anything he sees. That’s his nature.”

Oog was cuddling contentedly in his master’s arms. The little beast was a meteor-mimic, a species of asteroidal creature which had developed the art of protective coloration to great lengths. This species had the power of shifting its bodily cells to shape itself after any model, and completely controlled its own pigmentation. It could imitate anything.

“I don’t mind your keeping the little nuisance around in the Moon-laboratory, but I told you not to bring any pets in this ship,” Captain Future bawled out the android.

“Well, Grag brought along his pet, Eek, and so I thought I had a right to bring Oog,” Otho answered defensively.

CURT uttered an exasperated snort. “So we’ve got Eek along, too? Where is he, Grag?”

Reluctantly the great robot opened a cabinet and released another small animal, but one of a different species. It was a little gray, bearlike creature with beady black eyes and powerful jaws, now contentedly gnawing upon a small scrap of copper.

Eek, as Grag called this pet of his, was a moon-pup. He was a member of the strange species of moon-dogs that inhabited the airless satellite of Earth. These creatures did not breathe air or eat ordinary food, but nourished their strange tissues by devouring metal or metallic ores. They were strongly telepathic, that being one of their chief senses.

“Look at the beast — he’s chewed up half the copper instruments in that cabinet,” Curt said bitterly. “Why the devil did you bring him along?”

Grag shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, Chief, I had to do it. Eek can sense what people are thinking, you know, and he knew we were going and was upset about being left behind. He’s a sensitive little fellow.”

“Sensitive? That walking four-legged nuisance? All he knows is to eat up valuable metal and to sleep,” Curt said witheringly.

Simon Wright had paid no attention to the altercation over the pets. The Brain was too accustomed to such arguments to notice them. “Curtis, I want you to look at these figures,” he said.

Curt went over to the side of the Brain, who was poised uncannily upon his pale tractor-beams above the mass of calculations. The brain had been marking small crosses upon a space-chart that showed the quadrant between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, ahead of them.

“Each cross represents where one of the spaceships vanished, as nearly as I can figure it,” the Brain explained. Captain Future felt dismayed as he looked. The pattern of crosses was not focused around any one point. It extended in a long, strung-out oval, reaching almost from Uranus’ orbit to that of Jupiter.

“I can’t understand this,” Curt muttered puzzledly. “I thought the ships would all have disappeared in the same part of space, and that by going there we could find the key to the mystery. But since that isn’t so, it means we’ll have to search the whole vast quadrant for a clue.”

“I fear so, lad,” admitted the Brain. “And a search of such dimensions will take us weeks.”

Curt went discouragedly back to the pilot chair. Gloomily he stared into the enormous, star-specked void ahead of the flying ship. It yawned empty to the eye, except for the bright spark of Jupiter to the right, and the flaring glory of Halley’s Comet far out on the left ahead.

Curt’s eyes suddenly narrowed upon the comet. His unseeing stare had brought a subconscious idea into his mind. A possibility hitherto ignored abruptly burst upon him with stunning implications. He hastened back into the cabin.

“Simon, let me see that chart of yours again!”

The Brain watched wonderingly as Curt closely examined the plotted crosses, each of which marked the disappearance of a ship.

“Look, Simon! The first ships that vanished did so near the orbit of Uranus. The next ones disappeared further Sunward. The location of disappearances has steadily moved in a Sunward direction.”

“That’s true,” the Brain admitted. “Does it mean anything?”

“I don’t know,” Curt muttered. “But Halley’s Comet has also been steadily moving in a Sunward direction, during these vanishings.”

His eyes flashed.

“Simon, I know it sounds insane, but I think that Halley’s Comet has something to do with this mystery!”

RUSHING headlong through the great deeps of space, Halley’s comet flamed in the blackness like a world afire. The gigantic spherical coma, over two hundred thousand miles in diameter, flared in a supernal glory of dazzling electrical radiance.

Within that radiant shell of force, there pulsed the deeper glow of the mysterious nucleus. And back from the head streamed the millions of miles of the glowing growing tail.