Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) (4 page)

“So you didn’t die out there, Captain Future,” he sneered. “I wonder that you had the nerve to come back to the System, after your selfish trickery had been exposed.”

“Why, you lying four-flusher —” Grag exploded, his huge metal arms reaching as he plunged toward the promoter.

Albert Wissler recoiled with a squeak of terror, and Gil Strike snatched for a concealed weapon in his jacket. But King did not flinch.

“Hold it, Grag!”Curt ordered sharply. His voice was slow and bitter as his gray eyes bored into King’s face. “I know your type, King. It’s a type that would squander the life of the System itself for a filthy profit. I’ve dealt with men of your kind before.”

“You seem to think you’re still a hero to the System,” Larsen King taunted. “You’ll find out that’s all over. Furthermore —”

Curt coldly brushed past him and entered the office of the President. He stood silent for a moment after he had closed the door.

“Captain Future!”

James Carthew, venerated President of the Solar System Government, rose to his feet behind his desk. He came across the room to Curt Newton.

Carthew’s figure was stooped, his shoulders sagging, his hair gray. Crushing responsibility had aged him before his time. But in his fine face and tired eves, there was warm understanding as he gripped Curt’s hand.

“We feared you were dead, my boy. But I never quite believed it, any more than I believed the malicious slanders spread about you.”

THE tautness went out of Curt Newton’s face.

“Thanks, sir. That means a lot to me,” he said unsteadily.

Carthew led him over to a chair by the desk. It was a small, austerely simple room. It was hard to believe that from it was guided the destiny of nine worlds. But though bare of ornament, its windows that were open to the summer night gave it a background of New York’s splendor.

“Tell me where you have been all these months, my boy,” Carthew insisted. We’ll talk later about this Moon radium business.”

Carthew sat, listening intently and nodding quietly now and then as Curt Newton told of their long quest in outer space. At one point, the President straightened in astonishment.

“Do you mean to tell me you discovered on your trip the secret of creating matter out of cosmic radiation?”

“Yes, sir, we have,” Curt replied. “The formula can create only small amounts of the heavier elements — there’s too much distortion of cosmic radiation if you try to create heavy elements in quantity. But an unlimited supply of the lighter elements of air and water is available.”

Incredulous relief shone in Carthew’s eyes.

“Unlimited atmosphere can now be produced? Why, that means new life for fading Mercury!”

Curt’s voice was earnest.

“But that radium deposit inside the Moon is even more important, sir. A day may come when the System will face a dire emergency, which could be solved only by use of that radium as a source of super-power. It must be conserved for such an emergency. It mustn’t be squandered by exploiters.

“That’s why, when we discovered its existence, we didn’t try to dig down to it but kept it an utter secret.”

“I thought that might be your reason,” Carthew nodded. “But I couldn’t convince the Council members. King’s propaganda campaign had turned them against you. They insisted on granting the concession.”

“But will you try to get the Council to revoke that concession?” Curt asked tensely.

“I’ll try, and I feel sure that I can do it,” Carthew promised. “This wonderful thing you have brought back for Mercury will certainly counteract King’s vicious propaganda. Moreover —”

There came a sudden, incredible interruption. A glittering, buzzing object flew into the office from the open window. It looked like a little metal torpedo, two feet long, propelled by diminutive rocket-jets. In its prow was a glass electric-eye, and a pair of powerful jointed pincers like metal claws.

“A telautomaton!” exclaimed Curt Newton, leaping to his feet in alarm.

Curt had recognized the flying object. Telautomaltons were self-propelled and guided by remote radio control. The operator of one could see to direct it by its electric-eye. Telautomaltons had been designed for undersea salvage and similar jobs, but criminals often used them for theft and other low purposes. The telautomaton was flashing with blurring speed toward Carthew’s desk. Its large pincers grabbed up a heavy iridium vase on the desk. Holding the vase, it whizzed on through the air making toward the petrified President.

“Look out, Sir!” cried Captain Future.

His proton-pistol had flashed into his hand. Bur before he could fire, it was too late. The hurtling telautomaton reached its goal. The iridium vase it clutched struck the head of President Carthew with shattering impact.

CARTHEW collapsed without a groan. In the same split second, the telautomaton dropped the crimsoned vase and streaked out of the window.

“Carthew!” yelled Curt in an agony of alarm, dashing forward to the prone figure behind the desk.

James Carthew laid face upward. His tired face was peaceful — more peaceful than it had been in life. The whole side of his skull had been crushed in by the terrific impact of the heavy vase.

Appalled, Curt Newton looked down at the pallid features. His first reaction was one of choking grief. It was the oldest friend of the Futuremen who lay dead here.

He heard the door burst open. Halk Anders, young Bonnel, Larsen King and others were bursting into the room. They stopped with exclamations of horror as they saw the prostrate figure and the blood-stained iridium vase beside it.

King’s horrified cry came loudly in the frozen silence.

“Good heavens, Captain Future has killed the President!”

CURT NEWTON paid no attention to the accusation for the moment. He was rushing toward the window through which the murderous telautomaton had vanished. He peered out into the summer night. There was no sign of the deadly little mechanism. Its work done, it had been recalled at once by whoever operated it by remote control. Larsen King pointed accusingly at him.

“You murdered the President because he had given my company a concession on the Moon, and wouldn’t revoke it!” he charged.

“You’re talking nonsense,” Captain Future rapped. “Carthew was going to revoke the concession. He’d just said so when a telautomaton flashed in through the window seized that vase and struck him on the head, then disappeared.”

“So, that’s your story, is it?” Halk Anders said grimly to Curt. “You maintain that a telautomaton did it?”

“It’s not just my story — it’s the truth,” Curt retorted. “You don’t doubt it, do you?”

To his amazement, Halk Anders shook his head.

“You may be telling the truth, Future. Or, on the other hand, you may not. It seems queer that if a telautomaton was used to kill the President, the mechanism utilized that vase to strike the blow. Why wasn’t it just flung right at Carthew’s head?”

North Bonnel, the dead President’s secretary and assistant, had stood until now with his studious young face dazed by grief. But now Bonnel seemed to have become aware of the controversy.

“Wait, we can soon prove whether or not it was Future who killed the President!” he exclaimed. “Every word said in this office, every sound, will be on the record of the Ear.”

“The Ear?” Larsen King demanded, frowning. “What’s that?”

“This office of the President,” Bonnel explained, “has a hidden supersensitive microphone called an Ear. It picks up and records on steel tape every word spoken in here. That is so that every one of the President’s conferences with officials will be on record.”

Curt Newton drew a breath of relief. For a moment it had looked as though suspicion would really rest on him. But the record of his conversation with the President would clear him.

“The recorder of the Ear is in my own office,” North Bonnel was saying agitatedly.

They all followed Bonnel back through the other offices into a contiguous room. The young secretary went to a secret panel in the wall. Opened, it disclosed a recording mechanism of the type that transcribed distant sounds electrically upon a moving steel tape.

“Bonnel took the spool of tape out of the mechanism, placed it in a little boxlike instrument on his desk. He touched a switch.

“This spool will have recorded everything said in the President’s office this evening,” he said. “First, you talk with him, Mr. King.”

Voices issued from the little box. They were clearly recognizable as the voices of the murdered President and of Larsen King.

The colloquy was short. King expressed his anxiety lest the return of Captain Future endanger his Moon concession.

“You need not fear that, King,” Carthew answered. “The Government will not revoke your concession, now that it has been granted to you.”

Curt felt puzzled. This didn’t sound like Carthew. There was a short silence. Then the recorded transcription of his own talk with Carthew began to come from the unwinding steel tape.

Curt recognized his own voice. But to his amazement, it was saying things that he had never really said!

“What do you mean by giving King a concession to the Moon radium?” Curt heard himself angrily demanding. “That radium belongs to me!”

“It belongs to the System peoples, Captain Future,” replied Carthew’s voice. “You did wrong to hoard it secretly for your own selfish use.”

Thunderstruck, Curt Newton heard his own voice storming on, reproaching the President for granting the concession, demanding its instant cancellation. And the voice of Carthew, angrily refusing.

In a flash, Curt understood. This Ear record was faked! It had been previously prepared by clever imitation of his and the President’s voices. The phony transcription had been substituted for the real record.

Larsen King’s work! King, knowing the President was about to revoke his concession, had planned this murder. He had had a confederate substitute the faked record, so that it would point to Curt Newton as the killer.

“You’ll either cancel that concession or I’ll kill you!” the imitation of Curt’s voice was storming on the faked record.

“No, don’t do that, Captain Future — Oh, God!” came the imitated voice of Carthew in appalled accents.

There was a crunching thud, then silence. The Ear record had come to an end. Curt Newton spun fiercely around to expose the fiendish trick.

Halk Anders was covering him with his atom-pistol! The bulldog face of the Planet Police chief was dark and grim. And the face of young North Bonnel was appalled.

“Don’t move, Future!” rapped Anders harshly. “You are under arrest for the murder of President Carthew.”

“I still don’t believe it!” flamed Joan Randall. “Captain Future never said things like that to the President!”

“Of course he didn’t!” exclaimed Ezra Gurney disgustedly.

“That Ear record was faked,” Curt said levelly to the Planet Police Chief. His eyes stabbed at Larsen King. “I know who faked it and planted it there. I know who killed the President by means of that telautomaton. Just give me a few hours to prove if, and I’ll —”

Halk Anders laughed mirthlessly.

“You’ll get more than a few hours. You’ll get a few weeks, down in our prison, until your trial.”

Curt made his decision then. He wasn’t going to let these misguided officials lock him away! It was better to risk life in an attempt to break away to freedom, for only if he were free could he possibly combat Larsen King’s scheme. Bonnel had gone to the audio phone on the desk, and was summoning a detail of officers from the Planet Police floor.

Curt Newton flashed a glance at the Brain, Simon Wright. He was hovering unnoticed beside Grag in mid-air. The Brain’s expressionless lens-eyes instantly caught the direction and meaning of Curt’s glance at the atom-gun in Anders’ hand.

The Brain acted! Hurling his square “body” of transparent metal through the air upon a sudden jet of traction beams, Simon Wright moved with such velocity that the eye could hardly follow.

He struck Halk Anders’ right forearm with a sharp impact that sent the atom-pistol of the Planet Police Chief flying from his hand. At the same moment, Captain Future drew his own proton-pistol.

He fired at the glowing krypton bulb in the office ceiling. The needle-like ray of protons shattered the bulb. The room was plunged in darkness.

“The
Comet
!” Curt yelled to the Futuremen in the dark. “Quick!”

“They’re getting away!” bellowed Halk Anders furiously. “Grab them — turn in a general alarm!”

Curt, Grag and Otho were driving through the confusion and darkness toward the door. The mighty metal form of Grag brushed the others in the room aside like tenpins. They heard Simon Wright ahead of them. Curt turned and called back into the dark, confusion-filled office.

“Ezra — Joan — we’ll be back!”

THEY plunged down a softly lighted corridor, heading toward the stairs that led to the landing deck atop Government Tower.

Clang! Alarm bells were letting go all over the great building. Bonnel had found the alarm switch in the dark.