Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) (2 page)

“People of the System, it is true that many of our most eminent scientists and their families have disappeared. But we are sure they have not fled — we believe foul play is responsible. We beg the System not to credit the statements of this Doctor Zarro, but to have faith that there is no danger —”

“Have faith?” cried the rancher of Saturn. “How can we have faith in the scientists’ assurance that there’s no danger, when they’ve fled to save themselves? There is danger — and Doctor Zarro is the only chance we have to avert it!”

“I believe now you’re right,” his neighbor rancher agreed troubledly. “We’ll have to force the Government to turn over all power to Doctor Zarro!”

IN FRONT of the great tower that housed the System Government, in the city of New York on Earth, a vast crowd was demonstrating this night.

“The President — and Council — must resign — and yield their power — to Doctor Zarro — and the Legion — till the danger is past!” the crowd was shouting in unison.

James Carthew, the President of the System Government, stood at the window of his office, looking down at the surging, terrorized throng. His secretary waited anxiously beside him.

“This can’t go on,” Carthew said tightly as he looked down at the swaying crowd being held back by police. “A little more of this, and they’ll overturn the Government by force.”

His fist clenched.

“This Doctor Zarro is a cunning plotter playing upon the fears of the System to attain dictatorial power! He’s the most diabolically ingenious schemer that has ever threatened this Government!”

North Bonnel, the young secretary, shook his head in troubled doubt.

“But, sir,” he reminded, “Doctor Zarro did foretell the coming of the dark star, when our greatest scientists with the most powerful telescopes could not even see it.”

“I know, and I can’t understand that,” Carthew admitted. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re up against a devilish scheme to usurp power over the whole System. There can’t be any real danger in that approaching dark star when it has such a ridiculously low mass. The public only thinks there is danger, and Doctor Zarro is fanning their fears higher every hour.”

The door of the office burst open. The man who entered wore a dark uniform with silver stars on the shoulders. He was Halk Anders, commander of the Planet Police.

“Sir, I have to report,” he told the President breathlessly as he saluted, “that those crowds are getting out of hand. We can hardly hold them out of this building now. I’ve had calls from headquarters on the other planets, and the people there are rioting too, calling for Doctor Zarro to be given full emergency authority.”

Carthew’s lined face whitened.

“Haven’t you been able yet to locate this Doctor Zarro?” he cried. “If we could arrest him and stop those inflammatory broadcasts of his —”

The stocky commander shook his head.

“We’ve been unable to find Doctor Zarro’s headquarters. His broadcasts are on a new-type wave that we can’t track down. We’ve tried to trail the ships of his Legion of Doom, but they always manage to give us the slip in space.”

“What about Jons and Gellimer and all the other scientists who vanished?” Carthew asked. “Have you learned anything?”

“No, sir.”

North Bonnel turned haggardly to his superior.

“What are we going to do, sir? If the public terror increases like this, the Government will be in Doctor Zarro’s hands in a week!”

JAMES CARTHEW’S pale face set. He looked out through the eastern window of the tower room, at the fun moon that was rising majestically in the heavens like a great silver shield.

“There is one man who can smash Doctor Zarro’s plot, if anybody can,” he muttered. “I did not want to call upon him before this, for he is not the kind of man to be annoyed with matters the regular authorities can handle —”

The secretary stiffened. His lips trembled.

“You mean — Captain Future?”

“Yes, Captain Future,” the President said, his eyes still fixed on the rising moon. “If anybody can stop Doctor Zarro and his Legion, Captain Future and those three weird comrades of his can do it.”

He turned abruptly, desperate determination written on his kindly, bewildered face.

“Televise an order to have the North Pole signal-flare set off at once, Bonnel!”

A half hour later, amid the frozen wastes of eternal ice at the North Pole, there blossomed a huge flower of flame as a great, dazzling magnesium flare was detonated.

Far out in space that brilliant beacon was visible. Throbbing, winking and blinking, it cast its beams out through the void in silent, urgent appeal.

“Calling Captain Future!”

Calling the great, glamorous foe of evil, to a struggle with the mysterious Doctor Zarro’s plot against misled humanity!

A BARREN, deathly white waste stretched across the surface of the Moon. Beneath the glare of the blazing sun, the lunar plains rolled in eternal silence toward the colossal craters that towered like menacing jagged fangs. Upon this desolate world there was no air, no sound, and no human life — except in one place.

Upon the floor of Tycho Crater glittered something like a round crystal lake. It was a big, glassite window set in the lunar rock. Underneath that window, excavated out of the soft rock, was the artificial cavern that was the laboratory and home of the most famous man in the System — Captain Future.

The big laboratory of the cavern home was bathed in light from the window above it. Here loomed mechanisms and racks of instruments in bewildering array. Giant generators and condensers that could furnish limitless atomic power. Big telescopes and spectro-telescopes whose tubes protruded through the lunar surface.

Chemical and electrical apparatus of bewildering complexity and design. All the crowded equipment of the System’s supreme master of science!

The two individuals working tensely in a corner of the laboratory could be heard over the throbbing of a machine.

“Time to shift the electron-flow, Simon?” the deep, clear voice of one was asking.

“Not yet, Curtis,” answered the other’s voice, a rasping, metallic, unhuman one. “Transmutation is not complete yet.”

These two were working with a spherical machine into which the great atomic generators were pouring vast power.

One of the two was a big, red-headed young man in a gray synthesilk zipper suit. His lithe, broad-shouldered figure towered six feet four. His tanned, handsome, debonair face and flashing gray eyes had a rollicking humor in them that could not hide keen intelligence and deep purpose.

He wore a big ring on his left hand — a ring whose nine jewels were motivated by a tiny atomic power engine that kept them moving slowly around a glowing central jewel. This ring, whose jewels represented the nine worlds, was known to the whole System as the identifying emblem of Captain Future, the wizard of science and the implacable foe of evil.

Captain Future — or Curtis Newton, by the name so few knew — stood ready by the lever of the spherical machine. On a pedestal, watching the gauges of the mechanism, was his fellow-worker.

This was Simon Wright, the Brain. He was just that — a living human brain that had no body. Instead, his brain was housed in a square, transparent serum-case, in the front of which was his resonator speech apparatus, on the stalks of which in turn were his lens-eyes.

“Transmutation’s almost complete now,” the Brain declared in his metallic artificial voice, his glass lens eyes closely watching the gauges. “Stand ready to shift the electron flow.”

A moment later he spoke quickly. “Now!”

Curt Newton slammed down the lever. The throbbing of power into the spherical machine ceased.

The red-headed scientific wizard undamped a door and opened it. Out of the mechanism poured a stream of white powder.

“That’s done it!” Curt exclaimed. “A hundred pounds of copper, transmuted into pure isotopic boron.”

HE STEPPED back and mopped his brow, and then grinned at the Brain. “Whew, that was a job! But it will save us a trip all the way to Uranus, to get that rare isotope.”

“Aye, lad,” rasped the Brain. “This transmutation of elements is one of your greatest achievements yet.” Curt’s gray eyes twinkled at him.

“You’re an old fraud, Simon,” he accused. “You know as well as I do that I could never have achieved it if you hadn’t worked with me.”

At that moment, there was a sudden explosion of angry, arguing voices from another chamber of the cavern home. One was a loud, Booming, mechanical-sounding voice. The other voice was hissing, sibilant and furious.

“Grag and Otho are at each other again!” exclaimed Captain Future impatiently. “I swear those two will drive me crazy yet.”

He raised his voice in a call. “Grag! Otho!”

Two creatures of unhumanly weird appearance entered the laboratory in answer to his call.

One of them was a rubbery white android, or synthetic man. Otho, the android, was manlike in figure, his synthetic flesh having been molded into human form when he had been made. But his hairless white head and face, his slitted green eyes that were flashing now with anger, were not like any human’s. Nor could any human move with his wonderful quickness and agility.

Grag, the metal robot, was the other disputant. Towering seven feet high, his mighty metal arms hinted incredible strength. The chief features in his bulbous metal head were his two photo-electric eyes that gleamed with living light, and the mouthlike opening of his speech mechanism. There was no creature in the whole System stronger than Grag, the robot.

Perched upon Grag’s shoulder was a queer, bearlike little animal of inorganic silicate flesh, with strong paws, a sharp, inquisitive snout, and bright little black eyes. It was a moon-pup, one of the strange non-breathing creatures found on the lunar plains, who assimilated food elements by direct ingestion of the mineral they could crush in their powerful teeth. The little gray creature was contentedly chewing on a piece of copper now.

“Now what’s the trouble between you two?” Captain Future demanded of the robot and android. “Can’t Simon and I work for a minute without you two getting into your arguments?”

“It’s Grag’s fault!” hissed Otho furiously. He pointed to the little gray bearlike animal. “That damned moon-pup pet of his has eaten up one of my best pistols!”

GRAG, the robot, cuddled the little gray moon-pup protectively with a great metal hand. “It’s not Eek’s fault, master,” he told Captain Future in loud indignation. “Eek was hungry — and he loves copper.”

“Either that moon-pup leaves here or I leave!” stormed the android. “The beast eats any metal it can get its paws on — and when it gets hold of some precious metal, it gets howling drunk on it! It’s got a lot of other habits that make it a pest. It was crazy of Grag to catch the cursed thing and make a tame pet of it.”

“We humans like to have pets,” the robot defended.

“Otho does not understand, master, because he is not human like us.”

“Not human like you?” Otho howled furiously. “Why, you walking machine-shop, anyone can see that I’m a flesh-and-blood human while you’re nothing but a clever mechanism! If I —”

“Now don’t start that argument again!” Captain Future interrupted hastily. “I’ve heard enough of it.”

“Aye, and so have I,” rasped Simon Wright, the Brain, his lens-eyes dourly surveying the two disputants. “You two are always arguing about which is the most human. And I, who really was human once, can tell you that it’s nothing worth arguing about.”

“Simon is right,” Curt Newton said severely. “Every time you two have any time on your hands, you start scrapping with each other, and I’m getting tired of it.”

Despite his severity of tone, there was a fond twinkle of affection in the gray eyes of the big red-headed scientific adventurer, as he surveyed the robot and the android and the Brain.

These were the Futuremen, the loyal trio of comrades who had fought and sailed around the whole System with him! These three weird comrades of his, un-human in form yet superhuman in abilities, had stood at his side in more than one great struggle out in the solar spaces. And, furthermore, the three had reared Curt Newton from babyhood to manhood, in this very cavern home on the Moon.

Twenty-five years before, Captain Future’s parents had come secretly to the moon. Roger Newton was a young Earth biologist who dreamed a great dream. He hoped to create life — artificial, intelligent living creatures who could serve mankind. But his work was in danger. Certain ambitious men coveted his scientific discoveries and tried to steal them.

Roger Newton had decided to seek refuge on the wild, uninhabited Moon. He had sailed secretly in a small rocket for the Moon. And with him had gone his young wife, Elaine, and his loyal co-worker and assistant, Simon Wright — the Brain.

Simon Wright had been a famous, aging scientist who was about to die of incurable disease. Newton had by brilliant surgery removed Simon’s brain and transferred it into a special serum-case. Ever since, the Brain had been his most loyal friend.