Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) (22 page)

“I was a numbskull not to see it before then, but the Martian’s murder opened my eyes. Sus Urgal was killed with the freezing venom — the
real
freezing venom. Freezing of his blood burst all his capillary veins. His body, being from one of the smaller inner planets, was more lightly built than the body of a native of the great outer worlds. I suddenly remembered that Zin Zibo, who also came from a smaller planet, had not had his veins burst by the poison.

“Why not? Had he been really poisoned or was it a fake of some kind? I put through a televisor-call to the captain of the Venusian space liner taking Educ Ex and the body of Zin Zibo back to Venus. The captain, at my order, had the coffin opened. It was empty. He reported back to me in a return message, and I knew then that Zin Zibo was our man.”

“Brilliant work, lad,” approved the Brain warmly. “I never dreamed myself that Zin Zibo was the guilty one.”

Curt Newton ran his hand wearily through his disordered red hair. He looked somberly from the dead Venusian to the strange, silent throng watching them.

“I’m glad it’s over,” Curt said heavily. “We’ll destroy any Lifewater left in this City, make sure Ezra and the Planet Police clean up the syndicate everywhere. And then — we’re going home!”

QUICK as a homing hawk of space, the
Comet
swept with rocket-tubes pluming white fire toward the barren, rugged sphere of Earth’s Moon. The little ship glided down on a descending slant over the towering craters, peaks and dead plains of the airless satellite.

Otho was steering toward the mountain-ringed crater Tycho. The android turned a moment toward Curt Newton and the other two Futuremen.

“Seems like a year since we left here to do some research on that comet!” he exclaimed. “We’ve sure burned up space since then.”

“I’d forgotten all about our comet research,” Captain Future admitted ruefully. “We’ll have to resume that before the comet leaves the System.”

Grag, standing and holding Eek, uttered a sound that might have been a groan.

“Aren’t we going to get a little rest here at home first, before we start fooling with that comet again?” the robot queried.

“What’s the matter, Grag, getting old?” Otho demanded snappily. “Looks like a little shot of that Life-water wouldn’t have done you any harm. Maybe it would have kept you from rusting away.”

“I don’t rust, and you know it,” the metal man retorted angrily. “I just like to spend a little time at home here on the Moon once in awhile, that’s all.”

Curt and the Futuremen had stopped at Earth on their way home from Saturn. They had left Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall on Earth. There Captain Future had reported the whole adventure to the President.

“The Fountain of Life is gone, and the Life-lord is dead,” Curt had reported. “The syndicate leaders, whom Ezra and the Planet Police captured, have confessed the names and addresses of every branch of the organization on every world. The Police have already raided them. All the Lifewater seized has been destroyed.”

“And the people who have already become addicts of the Lifewater — what about them?” James Carthew asked. “Must they all die?”

Curt Newton had shaken his head.

“No, sir. They’re not going to die. Simon found an antidote for the Lifewater’s effects. It will cure them. Here’s the formula.”

“Captain Future, you’ve stamped out the most poisonous traffic in history!” Carthew had cried. “I wish I knew how to express —”

“Don’t try to thank him, sir,” Ezra Gurney had advised dryly. “That’s the one thing Cap’n Future just can’t stand, no how. Look at him squirmin’ there.”

“Just for that, next time we go out I’m not calling you in, Ezra!” Curt had threatened. “Good-by, you old reprobate. Good-by, Joan.”

Curt was thinking of those farewells as the
Comet
slanted down into sunlit Tycho crater. He was remembering Joan Randall’s eager, hopeful cry.

“We’ll see you again, Captain Future!”

The
Comet
dropped straight toward the barren surface of Tycho crater. In the crater floor glittered the big glassite window of the Moon laboratory that was home to the Futuremen.

A SECTION of the rock crater floor, mounted on a metal framework, lifted aside automatically as the ship sank toward it. The
Comet
dropped into its big underground hangar. Softly the door above slid shut.

The red-haired wizard of science strode with the Futuremen through the corridor of solid rock, into the sunlit main laboratory. In the flood of light from the big ceiling window loomed the crowded instruments and mechanisms, the bewildering equipment of the System’s supreme masters of Science.

“It’s good to be home again, all right,” Curt Newton declared, his gray eyes relaxing.

Then he took out of his jacket a glassite flask full of a milky, opalescent, self-luminous liquid. He looked at it quizzically.

“I saved this much Lifewater when we destroyed the rest of the stuff,” he told the Brain. “We may need it sometime. Who knows when? It’s the only Lifewater in the System now, you know.”

“Put it in the trophy room, lad,” advised the brain. “It’ll be safe there.”

“Might as well be in there with the rest of the collection,” Captain Future agreed, with a grin.

He approached one of the doors in the wall of the laboratory. That door in the solid rock was of invulnerable metal and it had no visible lock or knob.

The lock was a concealed telepathic one. Curt stood in front of it, thinking the combination. The heavy door swung slowly open.

He entered the room beyond, Grag and Otho following with the Brain. The room was a chamber in solid Moon rock, In it was stored a variety of baffling objects, weapons, instruments, odd curios.

This was Captain Future’s trophy room. Here he had placed for safe-keeping the strange weapons, drugs and mechanisms which he brought back from his hazardous struggles against unscrupulous criminals. Here, indeed, was a record of his whole perilous career!

Curt was thinking that as he looked musingly around at the strange collection. The cylindrical mechanism was one of the illusion projectors with which Doctor Zarro had almost deceived the System into tragic decision. That beltlike affair, with a hemispherical instrument attached to it, was one of the immaterializers invented by the Ancients of Jupiter. With it Eldred Kells, the so-called Space Emperor, had terrorized a world.

In a corner loomed a big, enigmatic machine. That was the mind-exchanging mechanism the sea-folk of distant Neptune had used in their plot against the gravium industry. An innocent looking wand held the weapon with which the Moon Masters had almost spelled death for two planets.

All these, and other instruments with terrific potentialities, had been wrenched by Captain Future from those who sought to use them for evil ends.

Curt Newton put the flask of shining Lifewater on a table, and then looked thoughtfully at the Brain.

“If we ever need it, we’ll have it,” he said. “But like everything else in this room, it’s too deadly dangerous to be used except in direct emergency. The secrets in here mustn’t get loose again!”

“No, lad,” brooded the Brain. “And you are the only man in the whole System who could be trusted to hold all these tremendous powers and not make use of them selfishly.”

SIMON WRIGHT’S lens eyes swung slowly around, looking at the mute array of enigmatic instruments and objects.

“Each of these things represents one of your great triumphs, Curtis,” the Brain said. “But the fact that you guard these powers safely for the System — that is the
real
triumph of Captain Future.”

“As though I could have won even one of these fights without you and Grag and Otho!” Curt Newton exclaimed loyally.

His eyes traveled over the trophies.

“It’s been a long road that we’ve roamed together, we four.”

“Aye, lad,” said the Brain. “And that road still stretches ahead, perilous as ever. The System will need us again, you may be sure.”

It was the truth, Curt knew. Evil ambition was hydra-headed, never completely crushed. Sooner or later its threat would cause the signal to flash again from Earth’s pole to summon him and the Futuremen.

Silently Curt renewed the vow made long ago. His life-purpose was chosen. When the call came, Captain Future would answer.

THE END