Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) (22 page)

“If we could only call for help to the Patrol somehow,” Curt muttered. “A cruiser could easily contact us before we fell in through the whole System to death.”

Ezra shrugged hopelessly. “We ain’t got no way to call — no audiophone.”

IT HAD been impossible, of course, for them to undertake the construction of a complex audiophone transmitter when they had built the ship. They had barely completed the ship itself in time. But now their lack of a transmitter seemed to spell their doom.

“Could we build a small transmitter?” Joan asked hopefully.

Curt shook his head. “By the time we got it finished, we’d be crashing in through the inner planets to the Sun. And even then, if we had a transmitter, we’d have no power to operate it. We still couldn’t use the cyclotrons.”

The Brain, hovering beside them, spoke thoughtfully. “There is a possible solution. You know that my serum-case embodies a small atomic motor which furnishes power to the generator of my traction-beams and the pumps which repurify the serum. You could take out that motor and generator from my ‘body’ and soon convert them into a small improvised audiophone transmitter.”

Captain Future protested. “No, Simon! You would die when the pumps and purifiers stopped working and your vital serum became toxic!”

“I would not die at once,” the Brain said coolly. “I would live for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, though I would lapse into unconsciousness during that time as my serum became toxic. In that time, you might be able to receive help in answer to your call. You could then revive me.”

“But if help didn’t come soon enough, it would be too late ever to revive you!” Curt exclaimed. “The power of your motor would be exhausted.”

The Brain’s metallic voice was annoyed. “You are being illogical, Curtis. It is certainly preferable that I should take that risk than that we should all perish. Remember what you had intended doing.”

The logic was unassailable, yet Captain Future still hesitated. His haggard face was deeply moved as he looked into the lens-like eyes of his old companion.

“Simon, if this should cost your life —”

“Come, come, you know how I abhor sentimentality,” interrupted the Brain annoyedly. Yet his metallic voice seemed oddly softer as he added, “Get on with it and stop wasting time.”

The Brain glided to the shelf-like table beside the instrument panel — the navigation-desk. His transparent cube rested there, waiting.

Sweat stood out on Curt Newton’s brow as he and Otho got their meager supply of tools and began work. Deftly, quickly, they unbolted the bottom section of the Brain’s strange body which contained its motive mechanisms.

They removed it, disconnecting and clamping the tiny pipes and cables which connected with the serum-case proper. Now the Brain was merely an isolated living brain in a transparent box of serum. His powers of speech, hearing, movement, had been stripped from him.

Captain Future worked with utmost speed now. Every minute counted, for the Brain’s hours of life were now numbered. Rapidly, he and Otho and Grag took apart the mechanisms that had enabled Simon to live.

The small, powerful atomic motor, with its own compact charge of calcium catalyzed fuel, they set aside. They dissembled the motors from the serum-pumps and hooked them to the generators that had produced the Brain’s magnetic traction-beams. They thus set up a complete new circuit which would emit electro-magnetic waves in the frequency-range of audiophone usage. The little atomic motor was connected to furnish the power.

Curt Newton connected this little improvised transmitter to the makeshift antenna-sphere which Grag had prepared and attached outside the space-door.

He used the microphonic “ears” of the Brain for microphones.

“It’s finished,” Curt announced finally. “Turn it on, Otho.”

The atomic motor throbbed with power. The generators began to hum, casting their roughly-tuned wave out into space.

Curt spoke into the microphones.
“Ship Phoenix, Captain Future commanding, calling all Patrol vessels or other ships! We need help in the form of calcium supplies! We are approaching the Line from outer space, in the following approximate position.”

He gave the figures of their position as they had calculated it. Then he again repeated the call.

For the next few hours, Curt repeated the message at regular intervals. The last time, the little atomic motor went dead on the last words.

“She’s played out!” Otho reported. “Fuel’s clear gone. No wonder, when we’ve been running it full load all this time.”

“Do you suppose our message was heard?” Joan asked Curt tensely.

“There’s no way of telling,” he muttered. “We’ve no receiver. All we can do is wait.”

The
Phoenix
rushed silently on and on toward the Line. In torturing suspense, Captain Future peered haggardly out into the star-flecked void.

The superhuman strain under which he had been laboring for many days took its toll. He slept, his head against the window.

It was many hours later that he was awakened by Otho shaking his shoulder.

“Chief, come look at Simon!” begged the android fearfully.

Curt rubbed red-rimmed eyes dazedly. That his exhausted slumber had been long, he knew from a glance at the planets far ahead. They were brighter, nearer.

Joan and the others were sleeping druggedly. Curt hastened with Otho to the shelf on which rested the now lifeless cubical case of the Brain.

He looked into the transparent cube. Its colorless serum had now assumed a dark tinge.

“What’s happening, Chief?” Grag asked anxiously.

Curt’s answer was a dry whisper. “The serum, no longer repurified, is becoming toxic. Simon is dying.”

“But Simon can’t die!” burst out the great robot. “Why, we’ve been together, he and Otho and I, all my life! Even before you were born!”

Curt Newton felt an icy, utter despair. He looked at them numbly. And then came a hoarse cry from Ezra Gurney, watching at the window.

“Cap’n Future, I saw a rocket-flash in space ahead of us!”

Curt and the others feverishly plunged to the window, and scanned the vault. But there was nothing save the cold, mocking eyes of the stars.

“I — I guess I’m gettin’ delirious,” faltered Ezra.

“No!” Grag bellowed suddenly. “Look there!”

They still could see nothing. But the robot’s super-keen photoelectric eyes had seen. And presently they caught it, too.

A long, slim cruiser with the familiar emblem of the Planet Patrol upon its bows was driving toward them through the void.

By the time that cruiser came into magnetic contact with the
Phoenix,
and space-suited men from it entered their ship, Curt Newton and the two Futuremen were waiting in the airlock.

The young Venusian captain of the Patrol cruiser, when he took off his helmet, stared at Curt and the others unbelievingly.

“Captain Future! It’s really you and Agent Randall and Marshal Gurney, too! But tell us, what happened to the
Vulcan?
We’ve been searching for weeks, and then we heard your faint call yesterday.”

“No time to explain now!” cried Curt. “The calcium, man! Where is it!”

The astonished Venusian thrust a heavy sack toward him. “I brought this much along. We have as much more as you need in the cruiser.”

CURT raced back up to the bridge. His bands were shaking as he tore open the sack and placed a little of the precious calcium in the catalyst-chamber of the atomic generator from the Brain’s body.

The copper fuel was already in the mechanism. They worked with frantic speed, reassembling the apparatus back into the case of the Brain. They could hear it start humming at once, operating pumps and purifiers.

They waited for minutes that to Curt seemed eternities. The dark tinge of the serum in the Brain’s case slowly faded away. But that was all.

“We were too late! “ Otho whispered strickenly. “Too late to revive Simon.”

Then the Brain spoke. Simon Wright abhorred show of emotion. He would have died rather than to have displayed his feelings now.

He said metallically, “Well, what are you all staring at? The experiment was a success, wasn’t it?”

The
Phoenix
landed on the spaceport of Tartarus City, on frigid Pluto, two days later. With it landed the Patrol cruiser that had brought them salvation. Its officers came to take charge of the mutineers and transport them out to the prison moon.

Kim Ivan and his men trooped out into the chilly dusk and stood quietly while the Patrol guards gathered around them.

“You won’t have any trouble with us, boys,” the big Martian said tersely. “We’ve been so close to death that we’re not going to find Interplanetary Prison such a bad place for a while.”

Curt Newton went toward the towering Martian. He held out his hand quietly. “Kim, will you shake hands?”

The big pirate’s battered face grinned at him as he extended his fist. “I’m glad there’s no hard feelings, Future. We went through quite a lot together.”

“We did,” Curt nodded. “And I’ve an idea we’ll meet up again.”

“Oh, sure, when you come out to Cerberus prison visiting,” said the Martian ruefully.

“Kim, Moremos and the other men who actually killed the
Vulcan’s
officers are dead, and they did it against your orders,” Curt said.”That won’t be held against you and your chaps. And there’s such a thing as commutation of sentences for men who have had enough of outlawry and would like to blast a straight rocket-trail.”

Kim Ivan’s massive face flamed. “Future, me and my boys won’t mind Interplanetary Prison one little bit, if we have that to hope for!”

Curt Newton grinned in turn. “I’m not promising anything, you big ruffian. But I’ve an idea we’ll meet up on the space-trails some day.”

When the convicts were gone, Curt turned. Grag and Otho had resumed their interminable argument. The Brain had gone with Ezra Gurney.

But Joan was standing in the frigid dusk, looking up at the dark vault of the heavens. She did not turn when he reached her side.

“Curt, I was thinking,” she said softly. “It’s where he would have wanted to be buried — in space.”

He did not need to ask of whom she spoke.

He put his arm around her shoulders as he answered slowly.

“Yes, Joan. Any spaceman would want such burial, to have his ashes scattered out there on the face of the deep.”

And they stood silent, gazing out into the vast vault of that shoreless sea in which a world and a hero had perished.

THE END