Captain Future 23 - The Harpers of Titan (September 1950) (6 page)

SUPER-EDUCATION

For minutes he spoke, systematically cataloguing the flora of Venus. Only super-education could have produced that knowledge — the education that for fourteen years had been carried on by the three unhuman beings who had made themselves the guardians of Curt Newton.

Yet when Curt had finished the long catalogue, the Brain’s rasping voice spoke no word of commendation.

“You made four mistakes,” the Brain declared. “You must restudy your Venusian botany until you discover them for yourself.”

Silently, Curt took the book and retired with it into his own small chamber at the side of the Moon-laboratory. He sat down and dutifully tried to locate his errors. But he could not concentrate today. His thoughts kept wandering to what lay outside the laboratory, the lonely, luring surface of the Moon. He loved that, the wild lunar landscape where no one lived, the stupendous peaks and blazing sunlight and deep shadows. He was always happiest when outside there in his space-suit, exploring.

LURE OF THE OUTSIDE

He laid down the book. His gray eyes were snapping with excitement and resolution. He was not going to study Venusian botany any longer today. He was going to do what he had long wanted to do — go outside, all by himself!

Silently, Curt slipped out of his little chamber. The Brain was reading absorbedly and did not see him. Otho and Grag could be heard arguing loudly back in the supply room as they restacked the fallen cases.

Curt’s small, lithe figure flew up the stairs into the airlock chamber. He got into his space-suit and screwed on the glassite helmet, then touched the stud that opened the outer door of the lock.

He emerged on the rock surface of Tycho crater, into blinding sunlight. Then he hurried in long strides across the crater, toward the cunningly concealed underground shelter nearby.

ROCKET FLYERS

In that camouflaged hangar rested the two small, swift rocket-fliers which Grag and Otho had built. Curt knew their operation thoroughly from Otho’s instructions. The boy entered one, switched on the compact cyclotrons. The craft rose rapidly up above the lunar surface.

Curt steered up in a steep slant to cross Tycho’s stupendous ring of peaks and then headed northeastward. Over the wild, lifeless lunar plains and mountains he flew at high speed, through the blazing sunlight. In the black vault overhead loomed the great green bulk of Earth.

A high-pitched, ringing laugh of utter happiness broke from the boy’s lips as he flew on. For the first time he was adventuring by himself, and he tasted his freedom like a young eagle spreading its wings for the initial flight. The wild pulse of long-repressed adventure throbbed strongly in his veins.

He flew over the southern foothills of the looming Riphaean Mountains and then glimpsed a long, torpedo-like metal shape on the plain.

“A ship!” young Curt Newton exclaimed wonderingly to himself.

MEN LIKE HIMSELF

Near the ship a little knot of figures wearing space-suits and glassite helmets were engaged in hurried activity.

“Why, they’re men!” Curt told himself excitedly. “Men like myself — the first I’ve ever seen!”

Immense excitement gripped him. He had never known anyone but Grag and Otho and the Brain, had never seen or talked with men like himself. They had seen him, were pointing up at his rushing little flier.

He swooped down toward them, without the slightest thought of danger. At last, the boy thought eagerly, he was to have his first meeting with other men like himself!

He landed near the ship and strode eagerly toward the men, his grey eyes shining in anticipation. There were eight of the men. They had been digging ores out of the lunar rock, to be used as fuel in the cyclotrons of their ship. The ship itself was a small twelve-man cruiser that looked like a private yacht, but the men were a hard-bitten, evil-faced lot.

Their leader was a burly, beady-eyed giant who kept his hand on the hilt of his atom-pistol as he watched Curt Newton approach. Curt heard the giant’s voice speaking to his men on the universal space-suit phone.

“It’s only a boy, men. But where in the devil’s name did a boy come from in this cursed Moon-desert?”

“Maybe he lives here somewhere,” suggested one of the men.

“Maybe you’re a fool!” retorted the giant. “Nobody lives on the Moon — nobody ever visits it unless they run out of fuel as we did.”

SAVAGE FACES

Curt Newton had stopped a few feet from the men and was looking at them eagerly. The first men he had ever seen! He felt a little disappointed as he surveyed their brutal faces. Somehow, he had not expected them to look so coarse, so savage.

“Who are you, lad, and what are you doing here?” rapped the giant leader suspiciously. “Spying on us?”

“Spying on you?” Curt repeated bewilderedly. “Why should I spy on you? Are you running away from someone?”

One of the group snickered. “Well, Earth isn’t exactly a healthy place when you’ve mutinied and murdered!”

“Shut up, you!” roared the giant. His savage eyes swept Curt’s small figure. “Where’d you come from, boy — and who are you?”

“I’m Curtis Newton and I live here — over in Tycho crater,” he answered frankly.

The big man’s eyes slitted and he stepped forward and grabbed Curt’s wrist. “You live here? Don’t lie to me, you little space-rat!”

Curt’s wrist hurt and his surprise and amazement at being so received by the fellow-men he had been eager to see made him react swiftly.

JU-JITSU

He ducked and spun around with a lightning movement and thrust of shoulder muscles that Otho had taught. The super-ju-jitsu trick sent the giant flying back to sprawl on his back ten feet away.

Curt could have escaped, then. But he was still too startled and bewildered by the unfriendly reception to think of himself. He was grabbed by the other men before he could retreat.

The giant leader was livid with fury. “You cocky brat, I’ll —”

“Boss, wait!” cried one of his men excitedly. “This boy said his name was Newton, didn’t he? And he looks just like that famous scientist who disappeared fifteen years ago in space. His name was Newton, too.”

“What of it?” roared the furious giant.

“The Newton who disappeared had scientific secrets supposed to be worth billions!” cried the other. “If this brat is his son —”

“By heaven!” swore the giant, his eyes lighting with avarice. He demanded of Curt, “Where’s this place in Tycho crater you live at?”

Curt had had time to get over his amazement. The boy had never seen men before. But he knew instinctively that these men were evil.

CURT SENSES PERIL

He sensed peril to the Brain and Grag and Otho, if he told these men where the Moon-laboratory lay. He decided swiftly to tell nothing. With calm gray eyes, he stared at his captors through his helmet.

“Won’t tell, eh?” said the big leader. His lips twisted in an ugly smile. “I’ve made tougher men than a stripling kid talk. Hold him tight, men — this won’t take long.”

He reached and turned the tap on the oxygen-tank of Curt’s space-suit, shutting off the flow of air into the boy’s suit.

“When you want bad enough to breathe, you can start talking,” he told the boy complacently.

Curt made no answer. The boy, held by a dozen hands, knew an attempt to break free was useless.

He remained silent, looking with level eyes into the brutal, helmeted faces of his captors.

His head began to spin dizzily as the air inside his helmet became hot and foul. There was a roaring in his ears.

Yet Curt Newton’s purpling face did not change a line in its expression, his glazing eyes still stared levelly at his captors. Even though his body was sagging limp, the boy’s stony face moved no muscle.

The men holding him stirred uneasily, their brutal pleasure in cruelty changing gradually to an uneasy wonder.

“The kid ain’t human!” muttered one of them. “He’s dyin’ — and he keeps looking at us the same way —”

A SOUL OF STEEL

Curt Newton felt that he was, indeed, dying. He could only dimly see, the roar in his ears was deafening. But he would not show weakness or cry out, even now. The rigid training of the Brain and the robot and the android had put steel into his soul.

Then dimly, Curt heard a startled cry from one of his captors. He felt himself released, saw the men clawing out their atom-pistols and whirling frantically to meet two charging figures.

The two were Grag and Otho. The android in his space-suit and the robot, who needed none, held heavy metal bars raised aloft and their eyes were blazing with deadly purpose.

The bars crashed down on one glassite helmet after another as Otho moved with incredible speed and Grag stalked like an avenging metal giant.

Men, suddenly suffocated by the shattering of their helmets, fell clawing at their throats.

Curt Newton saw this much — and then for the first time in his life lost consciousness. When he came to, he found himself supported in Grag’s mighty metal arms. The robot had turned on his oxygen supply.

Beyond him and Otho, the boy saw the still figures of the men.

“They are dead,” came Otho’s fierce, hissing voice. “It is too bad there were no more of them to kill.”

“You have been very bad,” Grag boomed to Curt. “Had not Simon Wright used the view-scope to locate you, when we missed you, you might now be dead. You go back now to Simon for punishment.”

A very silent and chastened boy entered the Moon-laboratory with his two guardians.

“I am ready to be punished, Simon,” he said in a subdued voice.

“There will be no punishment,” the Brain said metallically. “Sit down, Curtis.”

THE REVELATION

Astonished, the boy seated himself. “The time has come,” said the Brain slowly, “when you must be told who you are and how you came here on this lonely Moon with us three.”

“Those men said something about a Newton who had discovered great scientific secrets!” Curt interrupted eagerly. “Was that my father?”

“That was your father,” answered Simon solemnly. “He and your mother died long ago — soon after you were born. Listen, and you shall hear how they died.”

The metallic voice rasped on, telling the story of that long-dead day when Roger Newton and his young wife had met their deaths at the hands of covetous men.

And as the tale went on, young Curt Newton’s boyish face became strained and strange.

“So you see,” concluded the Brain, “that there are many evil men in the System who still would kill you for the secrets in this laboratory. That is why we have not let you go forth yet among other men. You are not yet able to cope with the deadly enemies you would meet.”

The boy slowly nodded his red head. “I understand, Simon. But I still want to go, out there among the other worlds. I can go some day, can’t I?”

“Yes, lad,” answered the Brain thoughtfully. “Someday you can go, someday you will know all those worlds. And I think that all the world will know you someday —”

That was the first meeting with other men of the boy whom the System was one day to know as Captain Future.

How Curt Newton Became Captain Future

From the Summer 1942 issue of Captain Future

The World’s Greatest Space-Farer Begins His Trail of Adventure When He Battles for Justice on Pluto!

UPON the icy surface of the Arctic planet Pluto, there gleamed a big glassite dome like a bubble of warm light. This was the small Earthman trading-town that was the one outpost of Earth on the frontier planet. For this was in the wild, early years before the bigger domed cities to come had yet been built. Across the blizzard-swept ice-fields of the bitter planet, a small group of native Plutonians trudged toward the Earthman trading town.

These natives of Pluto, towering men whose bodies were completely covered with long black hair and whose eyes were huge-pupiled ones of odd expression, hauled with them several sledges piled high with the furs they regularly brought to exchange with the Earthman traders.

THE YOUNG EARTHMEN

With the Plutonians marched an oddly dissimilar figure — a young Earthman, hardly more than a youth.

He wore a heavy felt cold-suit that could not keep out all the bitter chill of the screaming wind and snow. Yet his youthful, handsome face and clear gray eyes were vivid with excited interest.

“What do you get in exchange for the furs, Oraq?” he asked the towering Plutonian leader beside him, speaking the latter’s tongue fluently.

Oraq answered gloomily. “We get little enough, these days. The first Earthman traders were fair, but now they cheat us.”

Curt Newton — for the Earth youth was he — looked incredulous. “You must be wrong, Oraq. Earthmen wouldn’t cheat you.”

FIRST VISIT TO PLUTO

Curt Newton was eighteen years old. And this was his first visit to Pluto.

This was the last stop upon a voyage that had taken him and his three stranger tutors and guardians out through the whole System. This exhaustive tour of the System had been designed by the Brain as the conclusion of Curt’s unparalleled education.