Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) (2 page)

“I feel certain of it,” exclaimed the President. “The whole thing is suspicious. Of course, they say they must go to Styx among other places to film scenes, because it was the scene of one of you Futuremen’s greatest exploits. And it’s said that Valdane is going along with the party simply because he is interested in its feminine star.

“But it’s all too pat to suit me. I’m convinced that Jon Valdane has some plot behind it that will enable him to get his hands on the diamond wealth of Styx, even if he has to wreck that world.”

The Brain spoke metallically. “If the expedition masks a criminal plot, why should they give it all that publicity by conducting a big talent-search for someone to play Captain Future?”

Daniel Crewe shook his head. “I can’t understand that myself. You understand, I haven’t any real proof of my suspicions. That’s why I can’t simply forbid the expedition.

“And I can’t assign any secret Patrol agents to go along with the expedition to keep watch on Valdane. It would contravene our treaty with the Stygians if we sent officers to Styx. They were granted sole authority on their own world by that treaty.”

Captain Future stared at him keenly. “So you want us Futuremen to act as your secret agents in watching this expedition?”

“That’s it.” The President nodded. “You have no official status, so I can use you without breaking the treaty with Styx. And you and Otho are masters of disguise, and should be able to get into that expedition and find out what deviltry Valdane is up to.”

He added a warning. “Yet I won’t conceal that it’ll be highly dangerous. Valdane will have the expedition packed with his men. And it will be going out through the most dangerous places in the System.”

Curt Newton’s gray eyes gleamed with the light of adventure. With characteristic swiftness of resolution, he had decided his course.

He rose to his feet. “I’ll be in that expedition, sir. And I’ll find out somehow just what Jon Valdane is plotting against Styx.”

“Remember, it would mean your life if Valdane suspected your identity,” cautioned Crewe. “He’s ruthless as a Venusian swamp-adder.”

“He won’t suspect,” answered Captain Future, grinning. “Don’t you see, I can join that expedition in an absolutely perfect disguise.”

“Holy space-imps!” exclaimed Otho excitedly. “I get it, chief. It’ll be the greatest impersonation feat in history.”

THE big studios of Telepictures Incorporated, near New York Spaceport, were highly busy. In these mammoth metal buildings were made the stereofilm dramas that were televised to receivers all through the nine worlds. And busiest of all this morning was the studio devoted to the preparations that were being made for the epic “Ace of Space” expedition.

Big cameras, krypton spotlights, powerful sun-arcs, and other highly complicated equipment of all kinds, was already being transferred from the studio to the space-ship which lay docked in the nearby spaceport. That ship, the
Perseus,
was a small liner which had been literally converted into a flying studio for this far-flung location trip. Sam Martin, the weary-looking head “prop” man, prodded his men as they trucked anti-heat equipment, special space-suits, and all the other paraphernalia to the ship. Before it was taken away, each item was alertly inspected by Lo Quior, the little, spectacled Martian technical director who was one of the industry’s greatest wizards in creating special effects.

Jim Willard, cynical-looking young assistant director, strode across the shadowy, noisy main studio and entered a room in which a crowd of nearly forty young men were nervously waiting.

They were all Earthmen, and all of them were tall and red-haired, the shades of their hair ranging from dark rust to flaming auburn.

“All right, Mr. Lewis will look you over now,” Willard told the eager crowd. “Just walk past his desk and turn to face him.”

Nervously, the crowd of young men followed him out into the noisy main studio. There they formed into single file and slowly walked past the producer’s desk. Jeff Lewis, director and producer of some of the most thrilling space-epics in telepicture history, was a middle-aged, stocky Earthman with a tight, wise face and brooding eyes. He dourly inspected the faces of the eager applicants.

A chance to break into telepictures, to star in the biggest space-film ever made! No wonder Jeff Lewis’ talent-search for a young actor who looked like Captain Future had evoked such a great response. Every day, for the last fortnight, eager, redhaired applicants had come.

Lewis curtly turned down one after another of the hopeful young men as they reached his desk.

“You’re too short — height can’t be altered by make-up. And you won’t do because your skull’s the wrong shape — that’s another thing that would show. No, not you. Nor you.” One by one, the crestfallen rejectees filed away. The others still in line obviously were losing hope at this merciless weeding-out.

But finally Lewis stopped one of them, a tall, pleasant-faced, shy-looking young fellow with dark red hair.

“What’s your name?” the producer demanded.

“Chan Carson,” replied the young man with trembling eagerness. “I haven’t had any acting experience, Mr. Lewis, but I hoped —”

“We can teach a man to act, at least enough for this picture, but we can’t teach him to look like Captain Future if he doesn’t have a strong basic resemblance,” barked Jeff Lewis. “You have it, in a way.”

The producer compared the photographs of Captain Future on his desk with Chan Carson’s face and profile. Jim Willard also eyed them.

“The color of his hair and eyes are a little off, but makeup can fix that,” muttered Lewis.

“His nose isn’t aquiline enough, but that too can be remedied. Skull-shape, weight, height and features are otherwise the closest we’ve come across yet.”

“Who are you, anyway?” the producer asked Chan Carson. “What do you do for a living?”

The tall, hopeful young man answered timidly. “I’m a clerk over in the Interplanetary Department Store.”

“Good gosh,” muttered Jim Willard under his breath. “Are we going to use a clerk who’s never been off Earth to play Captain Future?”

THE film director smiled. “Didn’t I take a big, dumb doorman from a hotel and use him as Black John Haddon in ‘Star Pirate’?” retorted Jeff Lewis. “I can teach a man to act, if he looks the part. This Carson fellow does. He’s the only one we’ve found yet who looks even remotely like Captain Future. Make-up will erase the differences, and your coaching will get him through his scenes.”

Chan Carson’s earnest face flushed with eager hope as he listened. “I’ll do anything you say if you pick me for the part, Mr. Lewis,” he promised in fervent tones.

His eagerness was not assumed. He had to get this part, Curt Newton was telling himself. For ‘Chan Carson,’ underneath a slightly disguised exterior, was none other than Captain Future himself!

It was Newton’s audacious scheme to get himself included in this mysteriously-motived telepicture expedition which Jon Valdane was backing. He had explained it to the astounded President, the night before.

“It’ll be a perfect disguise for me, if I can do it,” he had told Daniel Crewe. “They’re hunting for someone who looks like Captain Future, to play his part in their picture. If I can get that part, I can go along on the expedition without Valdane or his men dreaming that I’m really Captain Future. I’ll have a real chance to discover and checkmate their plans.”

Newton had known better than to look too much like himself when he applied for the role. That might arouse suspicion. So he had slightly altered the shape of his nose and the shade of his eyes and hair.

Jeff Lewis was speaking to the skeptical Willard. “Remember, this will be an action picture. He won’t have to do any emoting in close-ups.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of a stunning blonde girl who clung possessively to the arm of a chubby, middle-aged Earthman.

Curt Newton instantly recognized them both. He knew from posters around the studios that the girl was Lura Lind, one of the most popular feminine stars in telepictures. With her smooth platinum hair, flawless features and supple figure, she was dazzling. The man with her was Jon Valdane. Crewe’s description left no doubt. Yet it seemed incredible that this chubby little man with the kewpie-like face and beaming blue eyes could be the plotter who was scheming to loot a world.

Newton remembered the President’s warning. “He doesn’t look it, but he’s ruthless as a Venusian swamp-adder.”

Valdane was speaking in a piping voice to the producer. “I’m all ready to go with you when the expedition leaves, Lewis. My friend Kin Kurd, the Saturnian politician, is going with me too.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Valdane.” It seemed to Newton that Jeff Lewis’ words lacked heartiness. “Of course, you know that this will be no pleasure cruise. We’re going into the most dangerous spots in the System.”

If the producer was trying to dissuade Jon Valdane from the trip, he failed. The chubby little financier answered confidently.

“It’s worth a few hardships to be near Lura,” he said, with an infatuated glance at the blonde star. “And to make sure there’s no risk, I’m taking along my own personal bodyguard, Su Thuar.”

“Su Thuar.” Captain Future repeated that name to himself with sudden dismay. He knew the ‘bodyguard’ to whom the financier referred.

Su Thuar was a young Venusian criminal with whom Curt Newton had clashed four years before. He had killed the Venusian’s brother in an underworld rendezvous on Saturn, and had sent Su Thuar himself to prison.

He knew that Su Thuar wanted vengeance for that. If the Venusian’s hate-sharpened eyes penetrated his identity during the trip, it might mean disaster.

Jeff Lewis was introducing him to Valdane and the blonde star. “This is Chan Carson, folks — our ‘Captain Future’. He’s only a dry-goods clerk now, but I’ll make an actor of him.”

CURT NEWTON bowed to them. Lura Lind inspected him with scornful blue eyes, and then spoke to Lewis with strident resentment.

“If you think I’m going to play opposite a rabbity clerk who’ll spoil all my scenes, you’re crazy,” she told the producer.

“Would I pick him if I didn’t think I could mold him into the part?” Lewis demanded. “You leave the casting to me, Lura.”

Curt Newton, the picture of nervous timidity, heard Valdane mildly support the actress’ protest. But Jeff Lewis firmly overrode it.

“Take Carson over to the make-up department and fix him up,” the producer told Jim Willard. “Then bring him back here.”

“Come on,” the assistant director told Newton half-contemptuously. “We’ll soon have you looking like a real planeteer.”

In the make-up department, Captain Future was tense as the experts worked on him. Curt Newton had, by means of the infinite secrets of disguise known to Otho, so altered the shade of his hair by dyes, and the color of his eyes by pupil-stain, and the shape of his nose by injected waxite, that no ordinary make-up would discover or change his disguise.

Nevertheless, he breathed much easier when the make-up artists had finished their work. He looked into the mirror and felt like bursting into laughter. They had changed his hair, eyes and nose back to normal, never dreaming that this was his true appearance. “Well, you do make a dead ringer for Captain Future when you have the make-up on,” Jim Willard admitted reluctantly. “Here, put on the suit.”

It was a gray zipper-suit such as Captain Future habitually wore. There was a slim atom-pistol in the holster at its belt.

Willard grinned. “You don’t look like a dry-goods clerk now. Come on, and we’ll show Jeff."

As they emerged from the make-up room, they came face to face with a handsome, sleepy-eyed young Venusian. Curt Newton recognized Su Thuar! That Su Thuar recognized him as swiftly was evidenced by the sudden distortion of the criminal’s handsome face. His eyes blazed.

“Captain Future!” hissed the Venusian. His hand darted to an atom-pistol inside his jacket. “I’ve waited four years for this chance.”

Curt Newton’s mind raced with lightning speed. He could beat Su Thuar to the draw. But if he did so, he would betray his real identity and his plan to join Valdane’s expedition would be wrecked.

Newton gambled desperately. Instead of drawing his pistol, he recoiled with a pretended cry of terror from the Venusian’s drawn gun.

Su Thuar was so startled by the unexpected sight of Captain Future afraid, that he hesitated. Then Jim Willard got between them.

“Are you crazy?” Willard stormed at the Venusian. “This isn’t Captain Future — it’s Chan Carson, the actor who’s to play Future’s part.”

Su Thuar’s face stiffened, and then the fierce blaze died out of his eyes. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t have time to think. I have an old score against Future, and I thought this man was that fellow.”

“If this really was Future, you’d have been dead a second after you drew that gun on him,” snapped Jim Willard.

He turned to Newton, who was pretending to tremble with terror. “Come on, Carson.”

“Who-who was that?” Newton stammered fearfully as he followed the assistant director back across the noisy studio.