Captain Future 21 - The Return of Captain Future (January 1950)

#21 January 1950

Introduction

A Curt Newton Novelet

The Return of Captain Future

by
Edmond Hamilton

The Man of Tomorrow clashes in fierce combat with mankind’s deadliest enemy — the Linid!

Meet the Futuremen!
— A Department

We acquaint you further with the companions of Captain Future: The Metal Robot, The Synthetic Man, The Living Brain.

Radio Archives • 2012

Copyright © 1950 by Better Publications, Inc. © 2012 RadioArchives.com. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form.

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ISBN 978-1610817042

The original introduction to Captain Future as it appeared in issue #1

The Wizard of Science! Captain Future!

The most colorful planeteer in the Solar System makes his debut in this, America’s newest and most scintillating scientifiction magazine — CAPTAIN FUTURE.

This is the magazine more than one hundred thousand scientifiction followers have been clamoring for! Here, for the first time in scientifiction history, is a publication devoted exclusively to the thrilling exploits of the greatest fantasy character of all time!

Follow the flashing rocket-trail of the
Comet
as the most extraordinary scientist of nine worlds have ever known explores the outposts of the cosmos to the very shores of infinity. Read about the Man of Tomorrow today!

Meet the companions of Captain Future, the most glamorous trio in the Universe!

Grag, the giant, metal robot; Otho, the man-made, synthetic android; and aged Simon Wright, the living Brain.

This all-star parade of the most unusual characters in the realm of fantasy is presented for your entertainment. Come along with this amazing band as they rove the enchanted space-ways — in each issue of CAPTAIN FUTURE!

A Curt Newton Novelet

From the January 1950 issue of Startling Stories

by Edmond Hamilton

The Man of Tomorrow clashes in fierce combat with mankind’s deadliest enemy
—
the Linid!

Chapter 1: In the Moon-laboratory

THERE were four of them, and only one of them was a man. One had been a man once, but only his brain and mind still lived. One looked like a man, but was born of no woman. And one was mighty, and metal, and only rudely manlike.

“There were four of them — the man, the brain, the android and the robot. And that strange quartet of inseparable comrades blazed a trail that the System will never forget. They rocked worlds, in their time. They pioneered the ways to the stars. And then they went beyond the stars, they went out into the outer darkness — and never returned.”

The teleview commentator’s voice was full of hard, bright drama that went no deeper than his lips. To him, it was just another story, to be exploited and forgotten as soon as it was told.

To Joan Randall, sitting alone in an office of Planet Patrol Base in New York, the words he spoke had the icy finality of a Requiem.

With a gesture of denial, her hand moved to switch off the televiewer. Yet she paused a moment, as though yearning to hear again the name that was coming.

“They went out into the extra-galactic darkness three years ago today — those four whom the System called Captain Future and the Futuremen. No one knows the purpose of their quest, unless it be those two members of the Patrol who alone had their complete confidence. But it is known that they promised to return in less than a year.

“They did not return. They have never returned. Did Curtis Newton and his three strange comrades, somewhere out there in the infinite, meet foes or forces too formidable even for them? Did they, out there, find a tomb in endless space where —”

“No!”
the girl cried, and snapped the switch.

Silence. But the echoes fled across her heart, asking,
Did they? Did they?
And her heart could not answer.

She rose and walked restlessly to the long windows that opened on a tiny balcony. Presently she went outside and stood there, looking up into the dark night sky, not seeing it, seeing only the blacker eternity of space and a ship that drifted there forever, lightless and silent as the void itself.

HER fingers closed hard around the metal railing. She said again, to the whole universe, “No!”

The universe did not answer. There was no answer anywhere, and as she watched, the silent Moon arose and mocked her.

The sound of her office door brought her to herself again. She turned and then called out, “Ezra!”

The man who had just come in said, “Hello, Joan.” He flung himself into a chair and watched her with bleak eyes, as she came toward him. He was a stocky man, worn hard and lean and gray with years of service. He was Marshal Ezra Gurney of the Planet Patrol, and he was a tired, beaten man.

“I talked to them, Joan,” he said. “I took it right up to the top brass. I even cussed the President.”

“What did they say?”

He told her, brutally, because the words hurt him. “They said Curt Newton and the Futuremen are dead. They were nice about it. They understood how I felt. But they can’t run the Government on sentiment. The vote has been taken, and they won’t change it. They’re going to take over the Moon-laboratory.”

His voice was curiously fat. He would not meet Joan’s eyes.

“I’ve done all I can, Joan. They won’t listen.”

The girl said, “I thought they might wait, just a little longer.”

“They’ve already waited. Two years is the legal limit for men lost in space. And it’s been three.”

“But not Curt!” she flared. “He’s not like other men. And Grag, and Otho, and Simon Wright —”

She bent over the old marshal, forcing him to look at her. “You do believe that, Ezra? You do believe they’ll come back?”

Gurney’s massive shoulders sagged. He seemed suddenly shrunken, looking all his age, again avoiding her gaze.

“They went too far, Joan,” he muttered. “They tried to burst barriers no one could get through, in that attempt to reach Andromeda galaxy. We ought never to have let ‘em go.”

“I tried to stop them!” cried the girl. “But you know yourself how little chance I had!”

Little chance, indeed! Captain Future and Simon Wright, the Brain, had been too eager to solve the secret of humanity’s galactic past.

They had, for years, been penetrating deeper and deeper into that past, had uncovered the story of the Old Empire, the great human civilization that had ruled the stars a million years ago. They had even learned dimly of the pre-human races before that, the legendary Linids and the others.

Curt Newton and the Brain had been afire to learn the rest of the story. They had discovered that the first humans of the Old Empire had come from Andromeda galaxy. It had been inevitable that they would try to go there, to track down that cosmic secret of human origins.

“But no danger they might meet, even out there, could be great enough to overwhelm the Futuremen!” Joan cried.

The old marshal spoke heavily. “The Futuremen were only mortal, Joan.”

He looked up at her now, and his face was gray and sick.

“We might as well face it. We might as well quit feeding ourselves false hopes. If they were coming back, they’d have come by now.”

The girl stared at him, stricken. The old space veteran looked at her, and the pity in his eyes was hard to bear.

“You think so too, Joan. You know you do.”

The life seemed to go out of her face. “Yes,” she whispered dully. She turned and pressed her throbbing forehead against the cold window.

“Yes, I do. The System has lost him. And I’ve lost him.”

She felt his rough paw on her shoulder. “You never had him, Joan. No one ever did — not a man like Curt Newton, who was raised by a brain and a robot and an android, who never quite belonged to us others.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But I couldn’t help thinking that someday —”

She stopped, and did not speak again for a time. The Moon rose white and cold in the dark sky. She watched it, and presently she said:

“So now they’re going to take the last of him. His birthplace, his home — the work he did, the things that he and the others put all their minds and hopes into, to help mankind. There won’t be even a memory of him left.”

Ezra said awkwardly, “Try not to look at it that way. They have to do it, Joan. The things in that Moon-laboratory are too dangerous to take chances with. Criminals have tried many times to get through the barriers and steal the Futuremen’s secrets. One of them might do it. And the knowledge sealed up there should be used, not lost.”

Joan nodded. “I suppose so.” She frowned suddenly. “Secrets? Ezra, there are things there that Curt wouldn’t want anyone, not even the Government, to have. Things that wouldn’t be safe for even the top scientists to experiment with. We can’t let him down on that much, at least!”

Ezra looked at her sharply. “You’re right, Joan. I remember some of the things he showed us, and some that he only hinted at.”

He thought hard for a few moments, pondering the numerous angles involved. Finally he said:

“Yes. We’ve got enough time. Not much, but enough if we hurry.”

QUITE suddenly, Joan and Ezra looked almost themselves again. There was something to do, definite action to relieve their minds of the quiet brooding that was so hard to endure.

“We’ll get the things out of the Moon-laboratory,” Joan said. “We’ll hide them, where they’ll be safe. And then, if ever —” She stopped short and then went on again, lamely, “If ever it’s safe to give those secrets, we’ll know where they are.”

“Curt would want us to do that,” Gurney said. He grinned and turned to the door. “We’ll be courtmartialed if we’re caught, but we’re a brace of old foxes for catching! Let’s go.”

No questions were asked of Marshal Gurney and Special Agent Joan Randall. The Patrol simply cleared the way for them with swift efficiency, and within an hour, Gurney’s small flyer had blasted off for the Moon.

The two of them did not talk much. Joan watched the great dark bulk of Earth fall away from them, and then she looked through the forward port at their destination. She thought of all the times Captain Future had come this way, bound for home.

Home — Curt’s home. And his birthplace. Strange cradle for a child, the awesome, lifeless Moon! And strange eyes had watched, strange hands had served, that child.

Child of human parents, yes — of the Earth scientist and his wife who had gone to the Moon with their colleague for secret research. With their colleague, he who had once been Dr. Simon Wright but who had become the Brain.

In the Moon-laboratory they had built there, their science had created Grag, the robot, and Otho, the android. So that, after his parents’ tragic death, it had been Brain and robot and android who had been this child’s guardians!

Joan imagined again, as she had so many times before, how it must have been for Curt to grow up there, to have his first view of Earth through the great glassite ceiling of the laboratory, to hear speech first from the strange mouths of Grag and Otho and Simon Wright, to play his childish games up and down the sunken corridors of the laboratory under Tycho, with a robot, an android and a living Brain for playmates.

She pictured a small red-haired boy looking out at the bitter lunar peaks and pitiless rock plains, and thought how lonely he must have been sometimes. And there were tears in her eyes, not for the boy, but for the man he had become. For loneliness had been Curt’s heritage, had stamped him with a subtle something that set him apart from other men.

It was fitting that, if he had to die, Curt Newton had done that too in a vast loneliness, far from other men, voyaging out with his three comrades, to new continents of stars far beyond the little ken of man.

The surface of the Moon plunged upward toward them, became a bas-relief in cruel black and white. The soaring peaks of Tycho crater tore the airless sky like hungry fangs. The little flyer passed over them, sank down on blazing keel-jets to the floor of the crater.

Silently, Joan and Ezra got into space-suits and went out of the flyer, onto the surface of the Moon.

They had been here before. They knew their way. They found the hidden entrance, and Ezra, plodding and careful, operated the controls that opened the guarded door. Death, swift and terrible, awaited men who did not know the combination. The Futuremen kept their secrets well.

A section of lunar rock slid aside, revealing a dark stairway. They went down, and the rock closed again over their heads.

They went down some distance into the airlock. Its automatic controls worked smoothly. The two waited until the dials showed that the lock chamber had filled with air. Then they removed their space-suits and went toward the inner doors.

For the first time, Joan faltered.

“I don’t think I can,” she whispered. “To go in there, knowing that he isn’t there, that he won’t ever be there again —”

His home. The table where he worked, the bed where he slept, the little things he left behind, forever.
She clung to Ezra, sobbing, and he stroked her with his big hands.

“Come now,” he murmured. “Curt wouldn’t want you crying.”

She took a deep breath. “I wonder!” she said, with a sudden burst of anger at the whole vast cruelty of fate that had made her love such a man. “I wonder if he’d care at all whether I cried or not!”

She flung her head back and went on through the inner lock. Ezra came close behind her.

The stairway beyond was dark. They started down it, conscious that their boots rang loud in the rocky vault, conscious of the silence, of being two intruders in a deserted place on a lifeless world.

Three steps downward. Four. Five.

Joan screamed. The cry burst in jagged echoes from the rock, and Ezra cried out too, a deep, harsh yell.

They were prisoned, pinioned, caught. From nowhere, out of the darkness and the silence, an iron grasp had reached and trapped them.

Quite suddenly, there was light.

Joan turned her head.

A towering shadow behind her, a monstrous unhuman shadow with a face of metal, expressionless and strange. The strength of metal arms holding her against a mighty metal body, a chill, imponderable force from which there was no escape.

Ezra Gurney made a queer sound in his throat.

Joan ceased to struggle. Her body went limp, and there was a sudden dusk before her eyes. Her mouth formed a word that was almost no word at all, it was so full of tears and joyous anguish.

The rocky walls gave back the word again and again. It was a name, and the name the rock walls said was
Grag! Grag! Grag!