Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) Read online

  #2 Spring 1940

  Introduction

  A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

  Calling Captain Future

  by Edmond Hamilton

  Curtis Newton, wizard of science, and his trio of Futuremen blaze a trail across the stars to forestall the coup of Dr. Zarro — leader of a legion of peril!

  Radio Archives • 2012

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 1940 by Better Publications, Inc. © 2012 RadioArchives.com. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form.

  These pulp stories are a product of their time. The text is reprinted intact, unabridged, and may include ethnic and cultural stereotyping that was typical of the era.

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  ISBN-978-1610818315

  Introduction

  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 the 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!

  Calling Captain Future

  A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

  by Edmond Hamilton

  Curtis Newton, wizard of science, and his trio of Futuremen blaze a trail across the stars to forestall the coup of Dr. Zarro — leader of a legion of peril!

  Chapter 1: The Menace from Space

  THE big liner Pallas throbbed through space on its regular run from Venus to Earth. In the brightly lighted saloons of the big shop, throngs of men and women drank, laughed, talked or danced to the haunting music of the native Venusian orchestra.

  Up in the televisor room, “Sparks” yawned over his instruments. Then the youthful Earthman operator looked up quickly as the stocky first mate of the liner entered the room.

  “Call Earth Spaceport Four and tell them we’ll dock at ten sharp tomorrow,” the mate ordered.

  Sparks punched his switches, pressed the call-button. The televisor screen broke into light. In it appeared the chief dispatcher, on duty at Earth Spaceport 4.

  The dispatcher heard the report and then nodded.

  “Okay, Pallas. We’ll have Dock Fifteen ready for —”

  Then it happened!

  The televisor went blank as an untuned wave of incredible power crowded onto it. Then the image of a man appeared in it.

  “What the devil —” Sparks gasped. The man in the screen was an extraordinary-looking individual. He seemed an Earthman, yet his tall, gaunt, black-clothed figure, his enormous bulging forehead and skull, and his hypnotically burning black eyes, gave to his aspect some indefinable but startling aura of the superman.

  “Doctor Zarro calling the Solar System peoples,” he rasped in a deep, harsh voice. “People of the nine worlds, I bring you warning of a dreadful peril — a peril which your bungling, stupid scientists have not yet even discovered.

  “A huge dark star is rushing upon our Solar System from the boundless abyss of outer space! This colossal dead sun is coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius — its exact position is Right Ascension, seventeen hours, forty-one minutes, Declination, minus twenty-seven degrees, forty-eight minutes. It is coming straight toward us and will reach our System in several weeks, at its present speed. This on-coming monster will wreck our System — unless it is turned aside.”

  DOCTOR ZARRO’S rasping voice deepened into a reverberating thunder.

  “I can turn aside that oncoming dark star, if I am given power to do so in time!” he shouted. “I alone! I am master of forces unknown to your ignorant scientists, for I am not really a native of this System at all. Who I am or what I am does not matter in this emergency.

  “I am going to form a legion of men who believe in me and will help me avert this peril — a Legion of Doom! But to prepare the forces that can turn aside the onrushing menace, I must have complete authority over all the resources of the System. I and my Legion must have temporary dictatorship over the System, if this terrible danger is to be averted.”

  The figure of Doctor Zarro vanished from the televisor screen, leaving the operator and the mate of the Pallas thunderstruck.

  “Who the devil was that?” gasped the stocky mate. “He didn’t look completely human!”

  The young operator shook his head dazedly. Now the Earth Spaceport dispatcher, reappearing in the televisor, cried:

  “Did you get that broadcast of the man who called himself Doctor Zarro? He crowded onto all wave-bands — every televisor in the whole System heard him!”

  The dispatcher switched hastily off. Young Sparks looked excitedly up at the mate.

  “Do you suppose there’s anything to his warning? If a dark star really is coming toward the System —”

  “Nuts, there can’t be anything to it,” the mate declared. “It’s just a publicity stunt, but a queer one.”

  “It didn’t sound like a stunt,” Sparks muttered uncertainly.

  He pressed switches, tuning in on many stations. A kaleidoscope of faces passed across the televisor screen. A hurricane of messages was being flashed back and forth between planets, concerning the startling broadcast of the self-styled Doctor Zarro.

  “He’s sure stirred up the System!” the operator declared. “And judging from the messages, not everybody is as skeptical as you.”

  A buzzer sounded from atop the televisor set.

  “General Government Call!” exclaimed Sparks, his youthful face stiffening. He reached and touched a stud.

  An official of the System Government appeared in the televisor. He spoke with decisive firmness.

  “This is to inform the System peoples that the so-called Doctor Zarro who broadcast a warning tonight is merely a cheap faker trying to scare the System,” said the official. “His assertions are not true. Astronomers have quickly checked the position in space he gave, and found nothing. The dark star does not exist!”

  “What did I tell you?” scoffed the first mate as the System official switched off. “Just a crazy fake, that’s all.”

  “Maybe,” muttered the operator. “But that man didn’t look like a faker. He looked queer, powerful — superhuman!”

  “Rats — he’s just a crank alarmist,” repeated the stocky mate. “The Planet Police will soon hunt him down.”

  BUT the Planet Po
lice did not hunt Doctor Zarro down. Two weeks later the Mercurian newscaster was announcing:

  “ — and so the Planet Police have been completely unable to find the mysterious Doctor Zarro who made that broadcast, for his wave was of a strange new type whose source could not be located or analyzed.

  “Karthak, Saturn: A disastrous atomic explosion in this colony today took toll of —”

  The crowd of chromium-miners and engineers in this little drinking-shop in one of the Twilight Cities of Mercury paid no further attention to the news bulletins. One of them, a big, bald Earthman miner, had started arguing with a little Mercurian engineer.

  “I tell you, I heard that broadcast,” the Mercurian insisted, “and that Doctor Zarro wasn’t any Earthman! He looked —”

  “Look — there he is now!” yelled one of the crowd, pointing at the televisor.

  They stared stupefiedly. The newscaster had been crowded off the ether, and the tall, gaunt, burning-eyed image of Doctor Zarro had appeared in the screen.

  “You did not believe my warning, people of the nine worlds,” Doctor Zarro thundered, “you chose to believe your stupid ‘scientists’ instead. But now you shall see for yourself. The dark star approaching is now grown so large that it can be seen in small telescopes.

  “Look for yourselves to the position in space I mentioned, and you will see that monster dead sun that is coming nearer to us each fateful minute. Look — and see for yourselves whether your ‘scientists’ or Doctor Zarro was right.”

  The figure of Doctor Zarro vanished from the televisor, leaving the gathered miners and engineers gasping.

  “Another fake warning!” cried the bald Earthman.

  “I wonder,” muttered the little Mercurian engineer. He turned to a younger Mercurian. “Atho, you have a small telescope, haven’t you? Get it and set it up — we’ll see for ourselves.”

  Presently, in the dark street of the metal Mercurian city, they were crowded around the small electro-telescope that was pointed toward a spot in the constellation Sagittarius.

  “There is something there!” the young Mercurian cried. “I can see it!”

  One by one, they stared through the eyepiece. They saw a tiny disk of darkness out there in the Milky Way.

  “It’s a dark star, all right,” muttered the little engineer. “And it must be of great size, to present a visible disk far outside the System.”

  THE motley interplanetary group of men looked at each other. A chill of doubt had settled on them.

  “If a dark star is rushing toward the System, it will wreck the nine worlds as Doctor Zarro warns!” cried a wide-eyed Venusian. “Maybe we ought to give him the System-wide authority he asks for.”

  “Aw, I still don’t believe it,” declared the bald Earthman miner. “Let’s see what the Government has to say on it.”

  They crowded back to the televisor in the drinking shop. A Government announcer was on.

  “People of the System, our scientists have now located a dark body of some kind in Sagittarius,” admitted the official; “But there is no danger from it! As far as the scientists have ascertained, it has almost no mass. So there’s nothing to fear.”

  “See?” exclaimed the bald Earthman miner triumphantly. “I told you it was all nonsense.”

  But the others looked worried. One of them, the younger Mercurian, voiced what all were thinking.

  “The scientists said at first there was no dark star at all! Now they admit that Doctor Zarro was right, that there is a dark star. They claim it lacks sufficient mass to harm us, even though it’s big. Suppose the scientists are wrong again? Suppose Doctor Zarro’s warning is right?”

  They looked at each other in wild surmise.

  “If it is, then Doctor Zarro is the only one who can save us from the dark star! He was the one who told us about it when our scientists denied even its existence —”

  The bald miner shook his head. Like all modern people, he had always had complete faith in the scientists of the System. That faith was still unshaken, even though Doctor Zarro had proved the scientists wrong once.

  “I still take our scientists’ word against this mysterious Doctor Zarro’s,” he declared stubbornly. “They’d tell us if there was any real danger —”

  This particular Earthman might persist in his faith. Others, in various quarters of the System, were losing it rapidly.

  “There is danger! Terrible danger to the whole System! And only Doctor Zarro can avert it!”

  The speaker was an Earthman colonist of Saturn, a deeply-tanned man of forty whose face could not conceal his deep-seated worry.

  His wife and family and a few friends were gathered with him in his ranchhouse living room. Outside in the night stretched the vast plains of Saturn, with lanky Saturnians riding to and fro on their grotesque steeds in the light of the brilliant moons, herding the queer planetary cattle.

  “The dark star exists — the scientists can’t dispute that — and it’s coming on toward the System at terrible speed, judging from the way its visible size increases,” the rancher continued earnestly. “If it isn’t turned aside somehow it will wreck the whole System. And Doctor Zarro’s the only one who can possibly turn it aside.”

  “How do you know that even Doctor Zarro can do that?” demanded a Colonial Office clerk skeptically.

  “I don’t know, but who could do it if he can’t? He discovered the approaching dark star long before the scientists could even see it. Hence, he must have powers greater than any known to our science. I say: give him the System-wide power he asks, and let him do what he can.”

  “It means setting him up as a dictator over the whole System,” pointed out a neighbor Earthman rancher.

  “It’s better to have a temporary dictator than to see the nine worlds wrecked by a catastrophe!”

  The Earthman voiced what more and more people in the System were thinking. The scientists had been proved wrong once by Doctor Zarro. What if they were wrong again? The answer to that meant life or death for the System.

  MORE and more people were proclaiming that they believed Doctor Zarro’s warnings. And the mysterious prophet’s followers, his Legion of Doom, had appeared throughout the System. They all wore a black, disklike emblem on their sleeves and carried a similar emblem on the bows of their space cruisers. They sped through the spaceways of the alarmed System, mysterious couriers of the enigmatic Doctor.

  “Doctor Zarro always broadcasts at this time,” the rancher’s wife was saying. “Let’s see if he’s on tonight.”

  They switched on the televisor. Minutes later, the impressive figure of the doctor crowded on the screen.

  “People of the System, your scientists have told you there was no danger,” he shouted. “But where are those scientists now? Where is Robert Jons, the Mercurian astronomer who ridiculed my warnings? Where is Henry Gellimer, the astrophysicist who denounced me as a faker? Why have the great scientists who laughed at my warnings disappeared?

  “Those scientists have escaped from the Solar System to avoid being trapped by the coming catastrophe!” Doctor Zarro thundered. “They have fled with their families, going outside the System in space ships to wait until the catastrophe is over, and then they will return to whatever worlds are spared. They are saving themselves, while you billions of people who believed in them will perish!”

  As the dark prophet vanished from the screen, the Earthman rancher and his friends, stunned, looked at each other.

  “If those scientists have really fled from the System, that proves that Doctor Zarro is right!” cried the rancher.

  “We don’t know yet that it’s really happened — Doctor Zarro may be lying about it,” said the clerk worriedly.

  “Here’s a Government bulletin!”

  The harassed face of a System Government official on a System-wide hookup appeared in the screen, for the Government was now following each of Doctor Zarro’s broadcasts with reassuring statements. This statement was not reassuring.

  “Peopl
e of the System, it is true that many of our most eminent scientists and their families have disappeared. But we are sure they have not fled — we believe foul play is responsible. We beg the System not to credit the statements of this Doctor Zarro, but to have faith that there is no danger —”

  “Have faith?” cried the rancher of Saturn. “How can we have faith in the scientists’ assurance that there’s no danger, when they’ve fled to save themselves? There is danger — and Doctor Zarro is the only chance we have to avert it!”

  “I believe now you’re right,” his neighbor rancher agreed troubledly. “We’ll have to force the Government to turn over all power to Doctor Zarro!”

  IN FRONT of the great tower that housed the System Government, in the city of New York on Earth, a vast crowd was demonstrating this night.

  “The President — and Council — must resign — and yield their power — to Doctor Zarro — and the Legion — till the danger is past!” the crowd was shouting in unison.

  James Carthew, the President of the System Government, stood at the window of his office, looking down at the surging, terrorized throng. His secretary waited anxiously beside him.

  “This can’t go on,” Carthew said tightly as he looked down at the swaying crowd being held back by police. “A little more of this, and they’ll overturn the Government by force.”

  His fist clenched.

  “This Doctor Zarro is a cunning plotter playing upon the fears of the System to attain dictatorial power! He’s the most diabolically ingenious schemer that has ever threatened this Government!”

  North Bonnel, the young secretary, shook his head in troubled doubt.

  “But, sir,” he reminded, “Doctor Zarro did foretell the coming of the dark star, when our greatest scientists with the most powerful telescopes could not even see it.”