Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) (18 page)

He had computed the direction of Earth carefully. He knew just what he must do, and do rapidly, if the y were to make the traverse in safety.

The big switch of the vibration drive closed under his fingers, throwing the powerful vibrations into the drive-ring at the ship’s tail.

Click! With the snap of the switch the dark interior of Great North Chasm that lay outside, suddenly vanished. The
Comet
had been hurled up out of the great canyon into the open vault of space with a breathtaking velocity that seemed faster than thought.

They were being hurled through space at a speed that was merely a fraction of the velocity of light! The gleaming surface of the rugged Moon dropped from below, with dizzy rapidity. Almost as soon as their eyes noticed it, the shining satellite receded to a great ball behind them.

The hanging green globe of Earth was expanding outward ahead of the space travelers like a swelling balloon. They were now traversing thousands of miles through the void with each ticking second: The
Comet
was being flung from Moon to Earth at a speed that had been designed, not for the cramped spaces of the Solar System, but for the vast reaches of the interstellar abyss.

Curt Newton was attempting the most perilous feat of space flight any pilot had ever undertaken. He must brake their speed at exactly the right moment, by throwing the force of the propulsion vibrations forward. A split second of difference either way meant disaster.

Superhumanly tense as he crouched, he eyed the ballooning green sphere of Earth. He had computed that New York was now on the planet’s sunlit side. The
Comet
has already screaming toward the sunward face of the rolling, cloud-screened ball.

Click! Captain Future had slammed the vibration drive into reverse. Friction alarms exploded in frantic clamor, simultaneous with an intolerable, knife-edged wall of parting air. The ship was sickeningly checking speed, only the protective stasis saving its shell from collapse.

“We’ve still too much velocity!” Otho cried thinly above the screeching dive. “We’re going to crash —”

Sunlit green continent and blue ocean were rushing madly up toward them. They glimpsed the clustered, gleaming towers of New York. The spaceport’s central field slammed up at them.

Ezra Gurney closed his eyes. Joan Randall flung her arm across her face. The falling
Comet
was slowing in stunningly swift deceleration —

CLI
CK! Click! Click!
Curt was alternating the direction of the drive with frantic speed. The ship bounced back and down again toward the spaceport. There was a jarring shock. Then silence.

“We made it,” Curt Newton said unsteadily, stumbling to his feet. His whole body was trembling, his throat dry with tension.

“Captain Future!” Ezra’s faded eyes were agleam with hero worship. “The greatest feat of space-pilotin’ in history! No one else in the universe would even have tried it!”

Curt was helping Albert Wissler to his feet. The thin scientist’s eyes were still bulging glassily from the dazing shock of that wild traverse. Curt shook him back to normality.

“Wissler, we’ve got to get to Larsen King at once, before we’re stopped. You know where he would be?”

Wissler gulped, and nodded weakly.

“His home and offices are in one of those sky-castles atop a big tower not far from here.”

“Lead the way!” Curt exclaimed. “There’s not a moment to lose.”

They emerged onto the sunlit spaceport. It was a scene of frozen inactivity. No spaceships were taking off or landing. No repair machines were whirring in the great reconditioning docks. Everything was silent, dead. The men about the place looked dazed and bewildered.

And all New York was frozen and silent around them. No swift taxi flyers came and went, no atom-cars dashed through the streets. The blinking “ion-signs” were dark. Knots of confused, anxious people were wandering or standing about helplessly.

Earth was a world without power, all its industries and utilities frozen, its transport inoperative, its spaceships pinned down, unable to take off into space. Earth — isolated from the entire Solar System.

Then quickly a cry of discovery went up as Curt Newton and his little band started from, the spaceport through the streets under Wissler’s guidance.

“Captain Future! The Futuremen! The outlaws have come back to Earth!”

“The Futuremen are back!” echoed down the broad avenues. The bewildered throngs shrank back in alarm from the determined group that Curt Newton was leading rapidly through the streets.

“There come some of the Planet Police!” yelled Otho warningly.

A squad of the dark-uniformed officers was charging out from a side street toward Captain Future’s hurrying little band.

“Their atom-guns won’t work now — we can smash through them with our fists!”

Curt cried to his comrades. “But hurry!”

The Planet Police squad was not even trying to use its atom-guns, evidently having already discovered that they were as dead as everything else that depended on atomic power. Instead, the men ran forward to seize the Futuremen bodily.

Curt and his followers waded into their opponents with fists flying. They battered a way through the line that tried desperately to halt them.

“King’s tower is only two more blocks away!” Wissler exclaimed.

“But more police are coming!” Joan cried, pointing ahead.

The alarm that had raced through the streets by word of mouth had rapidly brought more officers. Several squads now barred the wav.

“Let me handle those fellows!” Grag boomed loudly.

THE big robot was in the forefront as Curt’s band fought their way through. The Planet Police officers showered Grag with blows from their gun butts, blows that fell without effect on his metal figure. He swept a path through their ranks, great arms flailing and scattering them like straw.

Captain Future’s band was now at the entrance of the big tower, atop which loomed Larsen King’s citadel in the sky. The elevators were dead. They started up the winding stairway, the battered Planet Police seeking to follow them.

“Hold those officers back, Grag!” Curt yelled to the robot.

Grag planted himself on the narrow stairs, facing downward. The police surged up at him, hitting him with gun barrels, metal bars and numerous other heavy objects, but without the slightest effect. Grag disdainfully extended his mighty arms and almost boredly pushed his attackers back down the stairs.

“Go on, Chief — I can hold ‘em here forever!” he yelled up.

A rising clamor of alarm showed that the audacious return of the Futuremen was galvanizing New York and when Curt and his band raced up the last stair toward the sunlit terrace of Larsen King’s sky-castle, they found that news of their arrival had preceded them.

For Gil Strike stood at the top of the stairs, his hard, hawklike face dark and dangerous, as he tipped a massive metal table with the intention of sending it crashing down upon their heads.

“Look out, Chief!” yelled Otho in frantic warning.

But Curt Newton was lunging up the stairs in a tremendous sprint. It brought him to Strike before the criminal could set free the murderous object.

Captain Future tore Strike around. They grappled, Strike furiously seeking to hammer in Curt’s skull with the butt of a useless atom-pistol. Curt ripped the gun from his hand, sent the man spinning back across the terrace toward the stairs.”

Strike screamed as he caromed off the massive upended table and tumbled backward down the steps. His head struck a metal step twenty feet below with a cracking thud, and he sprawled motionless.

Curt hastened down and bent over Strike’s unmoving form for a few moments. He finally straightened.

“He’s dead,” Captain Future said grimly.

He plunged backup and across the terrace, into the luxurious interior of the tower-top citadel. Then he and his band halted.

Larsen King stood confronting them with folded arms, his brusque, harsh face and cold black eyes defiant.

“You can’t get away with whatever you’re planning, Captain Future!” King snapped. “You’re already outlawed for murder. You can’t escape from this building, no matter what you may do to me.”

Otho’s slant green eyes flamed at King.

“We’ll make you confess that you and Strike murdered the President!” hissed the android. “Wissler is going to testify in our behalf.”

“Bah! Wissler’s charges will carry no weight,” jeered the unscrupulous promoter. “That Ear-record proved that you killed President Carthew, Captain Future!”

“He’s right, lad,” muttered the Brain. “That faked Ear record will outweigh Wissler’s testimony.”

“Not when I produce the real Ear-record of my conversation with the President!” Captain Future said grimly.

HE SHOWED them a small object in his hand — a spool of steel tape, of the type used to record a sound-track.

“This is the true record, King! I just removed it from Strike’s pocket!”

Larsen King’s eyes widened with mingled incredulity and alarm.

“You’re lying!” he burst out. “I told Strike to destroy —”

He stopped, realizing what he was saying. His face grew deathly pale.

Curt Newton finished the story.

“You told Strike to destroy the real Ear-record. I knew that, King. But I was gambling that Strike hadn’t destroyed the real record. I was certain he would keep it to give him a hold over you!”

Curt’s grim voice swept bleakly on.

“Strike didn’t trust you, King. I knew, from what Wissler told me, that Strike was afraid you’d cheat him out of his share of the Moon’s radium profits. So I figured Strike would keep the bonafide Ear-record to hold over your head, in case you did try to cheat him. And I figured rightly!”

“Chief, I don’t understand!” gasped Otho. “Why would Strike keep the real record? Wouldn’t it prove that he himself killed the President, if anyone got hold of it?”

Curt shook his head.

“No, there’s no proof in the record that Strike killed Carthew by remote-control. But there is proof in that record that I didn’t kill President Carthew; that Carthew and Larsen King had an angry argument. Strike could hold the thing over King’s head, if he had to, without implicating himself directly.”

Captain Future’s hard accents raked the ruthless promoter who stood there now, his face livid, trembling with rage.

“This proves my innocence of the murder, King. This proves that the President was killed by a telautomaton. A thorough Planet Police investigation will trace that telautomaton to you. And that, plus Wissler’s testimony —”

Larsen King, raging, lunged forward to seize the incriminating spool of steel tape from Curt Newton’s hand. But Otho seized the promoter, roughly and held him back.

“Don’t be in a hurry, King!” hissed the android. “You’re not going any place anymore — except out to Interplanetary Prison on Pluto’s moon for the rest of your worthless life!”

Six hours later, power suddenly returned to the frozen Earth. The big atomic-power plants began suddenly to function again. Wheels started whirring once more, spaceships found themselves able to take off, lights came on with a brilliant burst of splendor in darkened New York.

From high in Government Tower, Curt Newton saw the lights go on. He breathed a sigh of relief. Hours before, he had flashed a televisor-message to Ezra Gurney’s detachment guarding the dome in Great North Chasm. Curt had directed his loyal followers to make their way down to the lunar underworld, shut off the wave-transmitter that had blacked out all power.

Much had happened, in those crucial hours. Word had gone out, to the System that the Futuremen had been cleared beyond all doubt of the crime ascribed to them. They were no longer outlaws. Larsen King himself was in prison, awaiting trial for the crime.

The System Council had swiftly revoked the lunar concession of King’s company. The Council had unanimously adopted Captain Future’s earnest suggestion that the lunar radium be preserved for future emergencies.

Looking out over New York’s brilliant panorama now, Curt Newton felt himself relaxing at last.

“Well — it’s all over,” he said. “And I hope that we never see Earth blacked out again.”

HALK ANDERS, chief of the Planet Police, and young North Bonnel, the late President Carthew’s assistant, glanced miserably at the assembled Futuremen.

“I’d still feel better if you’d kick me,” muttered the Police, commander shamefacedly. “We ought to have known better, than to go out and make big fools of ourselves by what we did to you.”

“Forget” it,” Otho said grandiloquently. “I — even I — can make mistakes!”

He turned to Captain Future with a satisfied air.

“Chief, can’t we go home to the Moon laboratory now we’re free?”

“You’ve had your fill of adventure for once, eh?” grinned Curt.

“I’ll tell the starry universe I have!” swore Otho. “When I get back to the Moon laboratory, I’m going to sit down and not leave the place for five years. All I want is peace and quiet.”

“Here, too!” rumbled Grag. “Anybody that tries to get me away from the old home will have a tough job. No more trouble hunting for me!”

Ezra Gurney scoffed at the Futuremen.

“I’ve heard you talkin’ that way before. But you always get bored and start lookin’ for adventure.”

“Not this time!” vowed Otho. “Little Otho has had enough!”

But somewhere in his subconscious mind, he had his mental fingers crossed.