Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) (3 page)

Captain Future had taken the throttles. He depressed one, steering the little ship closer to the flaring comet.

“Hang on, you two,” he commanded over his shoulder, as the rockets blasted louder. “We’re heading for that coma.”

The comet was an appalling spectacle as the ship of the Futuremen drew nearer to it, with rockets throbbing steadily. The whole firmament before them seemed a sheet of glowing electrical flame.

Even through their ship’s super-insulated walls, the radiant electric force penetrated, Curt’s red hair suddenly bristled. A violet brush of sparks sprayed from the walls, and particularly from Grag’s metal body.

“Look at the electrical potential Grag’s working up!” exclaimed Otho, shouting with laughter. “We’ll be able to stand him up in a corner and use him for an electrostatic battery.”

“I don’t like this, Master,” complained the robot. “And Eek is scared.” He patted the cowering little moon-pup.

“Eek is always scared, the little sissy,” retorted Otho. Then he peered ahead in alarm. “Split my atoms — look at that display.”

A BOILING sea of electric force glared in front of them. The violet electric brush and snapping sparks in the control room were becoming nerve-racking. They were feeling the fierce breath of the comet’s awful power.

Yet Captain Future still drove the little ship toward the awesome coma. Looking for an opening in the great shell of force, his searching gray eyes refused to be daunted by the glare.

There was a queer smile on Curt’s tanned face. It was in moments of peril like this, in audacious defiance of the blind forces of the Universe, that Captain Future felt most alive.

“I think I see an opening,” he said quietly. “Hold tight, boys. I’ll have to shoot her through at full speed.”

“Curtis, wait!” came a rasping cry from the Brain back in the laboratory cabin. “Come here and look at Earth.” Curt turned the ship off. Locking the controls, he turned with the other two Futuremen into the laboratory cabin. The Brain moved his lens eye from the incredibly powerful telescope so Captain Future could look through it.

Earth was like a little gray ball in the heavens, companied by the smaller, whiter Moon. But even at this distance the telescope brought into bright clarity the brilliant point of light blazing on Earth’s northern pole.

“It’s the signal! boomed Grag in his deep voice. “The President is calling you, Master.”

“Hang it all,” said Curt in disappointment. “Just when were about to get inside this comet. Now we have to give it up.”

Simon looked meaningly at Captain Future with his inscrutable lens eyes.

“It must be important, lad,” rasped the Brain. “The President never summons us by that signal, unless he has a good reason.”

Curt nodded, frowning. “I know. We’ve got to blast for Earth and find out what’s up. But why in the name of a thousand Sun imps did this have to come up just now?”

Carrying Simon, he led them back to the control room.

He swept the little teardrop ship around, by a vicious jab on the throttles. Then, opening all rocket-tubes to the limit, he sent the swift craft hurtling at dizzily accelerating speed toward Earth.

Otho was more excited than any of the others.

“Troubles afoot in the System. I smell action ahead. Let’s hope it’s something serious.”

“You space-struck idiot,” growled Curt Newton. “I can toss you back into that comet if you want action so badly.”

Grag grunted agreement.

“Otho is always craving trouble. But when it comes, we have to pull him out of it.”

“When did you ever put me out of any jam?” Otho retorted disdainfully.

“How about that time on Pluto?” Grag demanded.

Curt Newton slapped listening to their bickering. His face sobered as he and the Brain stared at the gray planet toward which they were rushing.

“Wish I knew what’s wrong,” Curt muttered. “Things seemed quiet enough since we cleaned up that mess out at Neptune.”

The little teardrop ship, the
Comet
blasted on at top speed toward the Earth and its summoning signal. Captain Future thought somberly of the many times he had answered that call. Each time, he and the Futuremen had found themselves called on to battle deadly perils. Was it to be the same this time?

“We can’t always win,” he thought grimly. “We’ve been lucky, but the law of averages eventually has to turn against us.”

HIS mind was going back over the amazing career that had been his in the past few years. For his was the blazing career of Captain Future!

Years ago at Curt Newton’s birth, that career had been made inevitable by an amazing synthesis of events. Everything seemed to have combined to produce the greatest adventurer in all interplanetary history.

Curt’s father had been Roger Newton the brilliant young Earth scientist. But Roger Newton had been too brilliant for his own safety. He constantly had made discoveries that unscrupulous men coveted. To escape them, Newton and his young wife had fled for refuge to the barren, airless Moon. They had taken with them the living brain that had once been Simon Wright.

Roger Newton and the Brain dreamed of creating intelligent living beings. In the laboratory home they built beneath Tycho crater on the Moon, the two scientists labored toward that goal. They succeeded. They first created Grag, the intelligent metal robot and then Otho, the synthetic man. At almost the same time, Curt himself was born.

Curt was still an infant when his parents were murdered by the unscrupulous plotters who had followed them to the Moon. The Brain, Grag and Otho swiftly avenged the murders. And as she lay dying, Curt’s mother had left the helpless infant in their care.

The unhuman three reared Curt to manhood on the lonely Moon. It was the strangest boyhood and youth any man ever had. Besides they gave him the most exhaustive education conceivable. He learned scientific secrets from the Brain until he surpassed his teacher in scientific wizardry. He was taught swiftness and skill and cunning by Otho the android. His strength and powers of endurance were carefully fostered by the giant Grag.

Thus Curt Newton reached manhood. He was a man such as the System had never seen before. His strength, speed and endurance were unmatched by those of any other human being. He knew a dozen sciences more thoroughly than any specialist. He had roamed the spaceways of the System since boyhood, daring all the perils of the far worlds with his three unhuman tutors. In the hardest manner possible, he learned the languages and dangers of the remotest worlds, asteroids and moons.

Curt Newton saw then the work that could make best use of his amazing abilities. The System peoples needed a defender against evilly ambitious men who were making use of the expanding powers of science to further their own unscrupulous purposes. A champion was needed who could more than match such scientific criminals. Curt Newton, remembering how his parents had died, had resolved to become that champion.

So was born — Captain Future!

When Curt had first flown to Earth from his lonely lunar home and offered his services to the President, he had called himself by that name. The name was now famous from Mercury to Pluto. Time after time, Captain Future and the Futuremen had come from their home on the Moon in answer to the President’s call, to do battle with criminal men who wrongly used their scientific powers. And time after time, Curt and his comrades had, by sheer scientific wizardry and daring, beaten down such evil plotters.

“We can’t always win,” Curt thought, again as he stared at Earth. Then he grinned. “But it’s a great game while it lasts.”

SEVERAL hours later, the
Comet
screamed down through the darkness toward the blazing lights of New York, on the right side of Earth. Curt had not stopped at their Moon home. The emergency must certainly be vital.

He headed the little ship toward the looming spire of Government Tower and landed it neatly on the truncated summit. Only two ships were allowed to land there — that of the President, and the
Comet
belonging to Captain Future.

“Come along,” Curt said quickly. “Bring Simon, Grag.”

They hurried down the private stair that led to the President’s office. The people in that office set in on alarm. Curt instantly recognized the President, Halk Anders, Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall.

These four people, in turn, uttered relieved exclamations. They beheld the strange quartet — the tall, red-haired, young wizard of science, the metal robot, carrying the Brain, the lithe android.

“Saw your signal, sir,” Curt said quickly to the President. “Hello, Joan, Ezra.”

“You’re a darned welcome sight, Cap’n Future,” declared Ezra Gurney. “We’re in the devil of a mess, I sure don’t mind tellin’ you.”

Joan’s brown eyes were shining with pleasure as she greeted the tall, rangy planeteer she had helped in several of his past cases.

“We’ve been helpless against the horrible, mysterious trade that’s going on, Captain Future,” she cried impulsively. “This Lifewater traffic —”

“Lifewater?” Curt’s brows met. “What’s that?”

“It’s a dreadful poison that’s spreading over the System, Captain Future,” President Carthew answered haggardly.

Carthew rapidly told of the mysterious traffic that had begun months before. He explained the strange Lifewater which could make aging people temporarily young again. But he told how it also made them addicts of the insidious elixir of rejuvenation.

Curt’s gray eyes narrowed as he and the Futuremen listened. Joan and the others were watching him with eager hope.

“So the Planet Police can’t break up the syndicate that’s selling the deadly stuff,” Carthew finished. “They can’t find the heart of this deadly web, the source of the poison.”

“We’ve learned that the man at the head of the syndicate is called the Life-lord,” Joan put in. “But who is he? On what world does he have his headquarters?

Where does he get the Lifewater? We can’t find any of that out.”

Captain Future’s tanned face went hard. He was feeling the cold bitter anger that always arose in him when he crossed the trail of those who dared to use scientific secrets for evil purposes.

The Lifewater traffic was the most abominable, vicious traffic he had ever encountered. Playing upon the wistful desire of aging people for youth disgusted him. He was horrified by the callous promise of rejuvenation, which made them hopeless slaves of the mysterious elixir.

He turned to the Brain.

“This Lifewater, Simon. Could it tie up with the Fountain legend?”

“I was thinking of that,” rasped the Brain. “It’s possible, lad, though the Fountain has usually been considered only a myth.”

“What are you referring to, Captain Future?” the President asked bewilderedly. “What’s this Fountain you mention?”

“Since the first days of space travel, there have been legends all over the System. Every race mentions a wonderful Fountain of Life that’s supposed to exist on some world. The Fountain pours forth waters that presumably have the power of renewing youth. Haven’t you ever heard that story?”

“Say, I’ve heard it, though I’d forgotten it!” Ezra gurney declared suddenly. When I was a boy and first went to space, lots of people still believed the story. Crazy dreamers were always going off to search for the Fountain of Life.”

Curt nodded. “That’s the story. Some believed the Fountain of Life was on Mars, others that it was on Saturn, or Neptune, or Pluto. Nearly everyone now considers the tale a myth. But suppose it isn’t a myth? Suppose someone actually found the Fountain of Life, and that it is the source of this poisonous Lifewater?”

“It seems incredible that an old legend like that could be true,” Joan Randall said wonderingly. “Yet if it is —”

“Let’s have a look at Webber’s body,” Captain Future interrupted. “We should learn something from the body of a man who suddenly aged and died when the temporary effect of the Lifewater expired.”

The President led him to the covered corpse in the corner. Curt bent over it.

“Bring Simon here, Grag.”

The gray eyes of Captain Future and the glass lens eyes of the Brain keenly inspected the withered cadaver of Wilson Webber.

Otho and Grag had bent over the pitiful corpse, too. The others in the room maintained a silence that had a quality of awe, as they watched the four strange comrades working together in their quick, sure way.

“Looks like the Lifewater’s effect was to step up the rate of his body’s metabolism tremendously,” Curt muttered. “As a human body ages, its metabolic processes slow down, weakening the body. I believe the Lifewater’s effect is to accelerate the metabolic processes, both anabolism and katabolism. That would cause temporary rejuvenation.”

“Aye, lad,” agreed the Brain. “And when the Life-water’s effect expired, the anabolism, or building-up process of tissue, returned to its former low level. But the katabolism, the destructive tearing-down process, remained at the artificially accelerated level. So the man’s tissues were burned out rapidly when the Lifewater effect was not renewed.”

“How did the Lifewater step up the metabolism like that?” Otho asked keenly. “What chemical agent could cause that?”

“We’ll have to conduct research with this corpse in the
Comet’s
laboratory to find that out,” Curt answered. “We can do it on the way to where we’re going now.”

“Where are we going, Master?” Grag asked.

“Yes, where you plan to head for, after the Life-lord, Cap’n Future?” old Ezra Gurney repeated.

Curt Newton spoke crisply. “You were right when you called this a poisonous traffic. It’s got to be smashed swiftly and completely. That can be done only by getting at the head of it. We must find the Life-lord and his secret source of the devilish elixir. The fastest way to penetrate the Life-lord’s syndicate is from the inside — as a customer. That’s the plan we’re going to follow.

“We’ll try it on Venus. It might arouse suspicion if we worked it here on Earth, where the Planet Police headquarters are. We’ll go to Venus. Otho will disguise himself as an aged Venusian millionaire seeking rejuvenation. The chances are that the syndicate will try to sell Otho the Lifewater.”