Captain Future 19 - Outlaw World (Winter 1946) Read online

  “He was born here, remember,” Joan reminded.

  Years before, a brilliant young scientist, Roger Newton, and his bride had come to the lonely Moon for refuge from enemies. With them had come Simon Wright, the Brain, who was Newton’s colleague in a great experimental attempt to create intelligent living beings.

  Here they had built an underground laboratory home. Here, they had artificially created two intelligent living beings — a mighty robot and an android, or synthetic man. And here an infant son had been born to Roger and Elaine Newton.

  Then tragedy had struck. Their enemies had followed them to the Moon. The young scientist and his bride were slain. And the infant, Curtis Newton, had been left in the care of the strange trio, the Brain and the robot and the android.

  THEY had given him the wonderful education which had made Curt Newton not only a wizard of science but also the most daring and resourceful Planeteer who had ever taken the spaceways. The whole System had come to know him as Captain Future, a laughing, red-haired young Earthman who made it his mission in life to crush interplanetary criminals, and attempt to expand human empire to the stars.

  Joan’s brown eyes were eager. “There’s Tycho crater ahead — we’re almost there.”

  Old Ezra looked at her with a quizzical grin. “Sort of anxious to see Cap’n Future, ain’t you? Now in my time, women didn’t go followin’ their sweethearts all over space.”

  Joan made no retort, busy bringing the cruiser down into the giant ring of Tycho crater.

  Upon the sun-scorched floor of the mighty crater glittered a circle of smooth glassite. It marked the underground laboratory of the Futuremen. Joan landed close by it.

  Hurry, Ezra,” she urged, as she got into her space-suit.

  “Don’t rush,” drawled Ezra. “The Futuremen already know were here. They got devices that let ‘em know when any ship lands.”

  The veteran and the girl emerged from the cruiser and tramped toward a cement stairway that led down beneath the lunar surface into a large airlock. Startlingly, a giant metal figure suddenly loomed up to confront them.

  “It’s Grag,” Ezra said. “Didn’t I tell you they’d know we were here?”

  Grag was, to them, a familiar figure. To unexperienced eyes, he would have seemed awesome — a massive, manlike figure of metal, seven feet high. His giant legs and arms plainly hinted at the prodigious strength that was unmatched in the System.

  But Grag had more than mere strength. In his metal head was a complex mechanical brain that made him more than a robot. Intelligence shone from his two glowing photoelectric eyes. His mechanical voder-voice boomed in glad greeting.

  “Joan and Ezra! I thought it must be you when the alarms went. Nobody else would dare land on the Moon without permission.”

  They had passed through the airlock and now could take off their helmets, for they had entered the air-filled laboratory, the heart of an underground citadel of science.

  It was a big, round room, lit by a flood of sunlight from the glassite ceiling window. Towering machines and instruments crowded it. Doors led to store-rooms, living quarters, and the underground hangar of the Futuremen’s famous space-ship, the Comet.

  But the only occupants of the laboratory were the two queer little animals scuffling playfully in a corner — Eek and Oog, the pets of the Futuremen.

  “Where’s Curt?” Joan asked the big robot.

  “The Chief’s not here right now,” Grag answered. “But here’s Simon and Otho.”

  The other two Futuremen had just entered — Otho, the android, and Simon Wright, the living Brain.

  Otho was the most human-looking. Indeed, he was a human in almost every sense of the word except that he was an artificial man, one created synthetically in this very laboratory.

  He was of middle height, lithe and agile, with a pale white face whose sensitive and intelligent features were most remarkable for the slanted, jade-green eyes that always had sparks of deviltry and recklessness in them.

  “Nothing’s wrong is it?” Otho asked the girl and the old marshal quickly.

  Joan nodded soberly. “Something’s very wrong, Otho. It’s why we’re here.”

  “What is it, Joan?” the Brain asked in his metallic voice.

  The Brain was the strangest of the three Futuremen. Yet he had once been an ordinary human. He had once been Dr. Simon Wright, a renowned, aged master of science who had been dying when a miraculous operation had been performed. His living brain had been transferred into a serum case, in which it had dwelt, unaging, ever since.

  NOW the Brain resembled a square, transparent metal case, upon whose “face” were his lenslike glass eyes, his microphone ears and resonator speech apparatus. He hovered six feet above the floor, for Simon could glide through the air by means of magnetic traction beams which he could also use as arms and hands.

  “What is it that’s wrong?” he asked sharply.

  “Radium raiders — a mysterious band who are looting radium from ships and mines all over the System!” she answered. “We can’t find where they come from, a so we can’t stop them.”

  “We heard all about their forays,” Otho answered calmly. “The Chief is on their trail now.”

  “Curt went out after the raiders without you Futuremen?” Joan exclaimed, surprised.

  “He insisted on doing so,” Simon explained. “Curtis believes the raiders get their uncanny knowledge of radium shipments by means of spies on radium ships. So he sailed in a radium ship, in disguise.”

  “He said we couldn’t go with him,” Grag complained, “but that he’d call us when he needed us.”

  “But you don’t know that the head of these radium raiders is Ru Ghur, the Uranian!” Joan said quickly.

  It was a bombshell to the Futuremen. The name of their deadliest enemy, the man whose infamous “Lathe ray” traffic had started their greatest struggle, electrified them.

  “Ru Ghur!” exclaimed Simon Wright. “Impossible!”

  “It’s true,” affirmed Ezra. “We just got the flash from a ship the raiders attacked — the freighter Orion.”

  “The Orion?” cried Otho, aghast. “Captain Future is aboard that ship!”

  Chapter 3: Into Dreams

  IN THE crippled Orion, the young telaudio operator of the freighter stared in amazement at the leader of the radium raiders. For that operator was none other than Captain Future! He had dyed his red hair, before obtaining his position on the radium-carrying ship, hoping to get on the raiders trail.

  “You’re Ru Ghur — but you’re dead!” he exclaimed incredulously.

  “Ah, so you know who I am?” the Uranian raider leader said softly.

  Ru Ghur was a fat man — fat almost to grossness. His squat, tubby figure looked even more bulky in his shapeless space-suit. With his moonlike yellow face and bald head he looked the picture of a fat, friendly and harmless man — all except his eyes. They were black and bright and merciless, mirrors of the man’s brilliant intelligence and remorseless. They bored into Curt Newton’s.

  “So you recognized me?” Ru Ghur murmured. “That’s interesting. How did you know me?”

  Curt shrugged. “Your picture was posted everywhere by the Patrol, when they were fighting your Lethe-ray traffic.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the Uranian. “That explains it. But it doesn’t explain why you look familiar to me.”

  Captain Future tensed. He knew the danger of the Uranian’s sharp eyes penetrating his disguise.

  Curt Newton’s mind was seething from the shock of discovery that Ru Ghur was leading the raiders. Even the facts that the raiders had tracked down the ship, though Curt had detected no spies aboard, that the Orion was in their hands, and that his own life was imperiled, were unimportant beside the knowledge that this dangerous criminal was alive.

  At all costs, the Futuremen and the Patrol must be warned of Ru Ghur’s return. The telaudio circuit was still open. But an attempt to speak a word into its microphone would mean instant death.
r />   Captain Future let his hand fall idly to the microphone. His fingernail inaudibly tapped its edges, spelled out a message in standard interplanetary code.

  Ship taken — leader of radium raiders is Ru-Ghur.

  As he tapped, Curt Newton spoke loudly to the Uranian to distract his attention.

  “What are you going to do to us prisoners?” he demanded.

  The Uranian’s moon face assumed a look of sadness. “Ah. I was afraid you’d ask that. For I’m under the cruel necessity of ordering your deaths.”

  “Can’t you just leave us here in the wreck?” Captain Future asked, as he kept up his surreptitious tapping.

  The Uranian shook his head sorrowfully.

  “No, no, it wouldn’t be wise to leave you alive, possibly to give information to the Patrol. I’m surprised... Get your hand away from the microphone!” He had detected the signaling.

  Curt Newton realized the game was up. There was just one chance left, and he took it. His hand reached for the proton-pistol inside his jacket with blurring speed.

  Too late! Ru Ghur, whose atom-gun was already in his hand, had too big an advantage for even Curt’s phenomenal draw to overcome.

  But the fat Uranian didn’t shoot. He merely struck with viper-swiftness, his weapon’s barrel crashing against Curt’s skull.

  “Grab him — no, don’t kill him yet!” Ru Ghur was shouting to his men. “I want a look at him first.”

  The Uranian’s followers were men of almost every planetary race — brawny green Jovians, thin Saturnians, wizened, swarthy Mercurians, vicious-looking Earthmen. Pirates, outlaws, all of them.

  Curt Newton felt them pinion his arms, without being able to resist.

  “Hold his face to the light here,” ordered Ru Ghur. “I want to know who this chap is who’s so clever in trying to trick poor old Ru Ghur.”

  His small, bright eyes ran over his prisoner, from head to foot. He saw a six-feet-four young Earthman whose lean body was that of a fighting man; dark, curly hair, a space-browned, handsome face; and gray eyes that now were dazed and clouded.

  “No ordinary telaudio operator would be so clever,” Ru Ghur was murmuring. “Nor would he look so familiar to me.” Ru stopped suddenly, his black-eyes narrowed to pinpoints. “Ah,” he said, “I might have known.

  “Old Ru Ghur’s wits must be wandering, or I’d have recognized him at once in spite of that dyed hair.”

  A TWITCHING of his flabby cheeks alone betrayed his intense excitement.

  “There’s blind justice in the universe, after all,” he said softly. “A justice that has brought into my hands the man who so cruelly wronged me.”

  “Who is it, Chief?” asked the thin gray Saturnian who was holding Curt’s left arm.

  “You’ll find out later, Kra Kdol,” said Ru Ghur. “Put a space-suit on him and take him over to the Falcon. The rest of you get out that radium.”

  “Why bother taking a prisoner?” grumbled the Saturnian. “I can blast him right here, and save trouble.”

  Ru Ghur’s voice rose to a whine. “If you do, I’ll cut you into ribbons — and soft-hearted old Ru Ghur would hate to do that.”

  Curt Newton had heard their voices as though from a great distance. He was only dazedly aware of the raiders hastily putting a space-suit on him, and hauling him into Ru Ghur’s flagship.

  When his sense cleared he saw that he had been taken into the main cabin of the raider cruiser, and bound in a recoil chair. His head aching violently, he looked around.

  The cabin was almost a laboratory. Scientific instruments, some of them unfamiliar even to Captain Future’s trained eyes, crowded it.

  Through the port-holes he glimpsed raiders hastily bringing aboard the square lead cases of refined radium ore.

  And his dominant emotion was disgust with himself. His scheme to find the radium raiders had ended disastrously.

  “A fine bright Planeteer I am, to fall into their trap while I was setting one of my own,” he muttered. “But how was anyone to know that Uranian devil was alive and mixed up in this thing?”

  He ignored the peril of his own situation. He knew the depth of Ru Ghur’s hate, and realized that if the Uranian had not killed him instantly, it was because he had something worse in mind. But Captain Future lived by the fatalistic, fearless creed that had been bred into him by the Brain, the robot, and the android. Until death stopped him, no danger to himself would swerve him from a fixed purpose.

  “One sure thing,” he muttered, “if Ru Ghur planned these radium raids, they’re far bigger than we feared. Why is he gathering all this radium?”

  Ru Ghur and his Saturnian second-in-command now entered the cabin.

  “Get going before the Patrol boxes us in, Kra Kol,” snapped the Uranian leader, “Follow the course I plotted and hurry!”

  The Falcon’s cyclotrons throbbed, its rocket-tubes roared, and it and the other three raider cruisers darted off into the abyss away from the floating wreck of the Orion.

  Ru Ghur divested himself of his helmet and suit, came over and looked down at his bound prisoner with a beaming smile on his moonlike face.

  “I’m too fat and old to be skittering around space like this,” he puffed. “I ought to be in my villa in Uranopolis — and I’d still be there if you hadn’t driven me out of the System, Captain Future.”

  “Where is this Outlaw World of yours, Ru Ghur,” asked Curt coolly.

  The Uranian’s small eyes twinkled. “Ah, that’s my secret, a secret the Planet Patrol would give much to know. You thought I would perish out there in the starry abyss. But I found a refuge of whose existence none of you have dreamed. Aye, a strange and fearful place is Outlaw World, as you call it.”

  His fat cheeks quivered in pretended self-pity. “But it’s a sad thing for a poor, unoffending old scientist to be driven out of his home into such terrible, unknown regions. It was a wicked persecution that you Futuremen visited upon me.”

  “We should have killed you,” Curt Newton said bleakly. “You deserved it for operating that Lethe-ray traffic.”

  Ru Ghur shook his bald yellow head reproachfully. “You were always bigoted about my great contributions to humanity. The Lethe-ray was a blessing to many poor souls. It allowed them to achieve all their hopes and desires, in dreams.”

  “And in time made them, ready to rob or kill to pay you for the ray,” rapped Newton.

  “Ah, I see that you’re still intolerant,” replied the fat scientist. “And that means that I must take steps to prevent your working against me again.”

  “Why not say straight out you mean to kill me?” Curt said disgustedly.

  Ru Ghur looked shocked. “Why, lad, poor old Ru Ghur is far too chicken-hearted to murder you, especially when you can be useful to me.”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE looked at him sharply. “Just what do you mean?”

  The Uranian’s small eyes glistened. “I have planned a great enterprise, the greatest any man ever conceived. And I don’t want to be interfered with while I am making the necessary preparations for it. You will be a valuable hostage, Captain Future. If those Futuremen of yours should get too troublesome, or even if the Planet Patrol should get close on my trail, I can bargain with them for your life.”

  “Just what is this great enterprise of yours?” Captain Future asked. “Why are you going to such lengths to amass great quantities of radium?”

  “You’ll soon find out,” promised Ru Ghur, with a benevolent smile. “Yes, the whole Solar System will find out, to their cost.”

  Captain Future speculated swiftly. “You’re going to your Outlaw World base now?”

  “Yes, but first we are going to stop and pick up some more radium from certain wicked outlaws who tried to forestall poor old Ru Ghur. They are a bunch of Martian outlaws headed by one Bork King and are connected with the Companions of Space, as the pirates are called. A few days ago, Bork King’s band held up the Pluto-Venus liner and took a valuable shipment off it.”

  Ru Ghur shook his head a
s though at the wickedness of men.

  “Bork King’s ship is now lying in hiding on Leda, one of the smaller moons of Jupiter, waiting for the Patrol hunt to die down so that they can make another foray,” he went on. “They think themselves safely hidden, but won’t they be surprised when old Ru Ghur swoops down on them, and takes that radium away from them!”

  The Uranian’s moonlike face beamed in a smile of happy anticipation.

  “How do you manage to trace every ship that has radium in it, as you do, Ru Ghur?” Captain Future asked.

  Ru Ghur smirked. “Poor old Ru Ghur has his little scientific secrets, lad. You’ll learn all about them when you get to Outlaw World.” His small bright eyes glinted with mirth as he went on, “I can see what you’re thinking, Captain Future. You think that long before we get to my base you’ll find a way to escape from this ship. I know how clever and resourceful you can be. But you’re not going to make any effort to escape. You’re going to Outlaw World as peaceable as a lamb. And you’re going to be happy, so happy that you won’t even think of trying to get away from us.”

  The Uranian went across the cabin and wheeled over to the side of Curt’s chair a tall and complicated instrument, whose most striking feature was a quartz-lensed projector like a small searchlight. This projector hung from a tall standard and was linked by cables to electrical apparatus in the base of the machine.

  Ru Ghur adjusted the projector so that its quartz lens was just above Captain Future’s skull. As he arranged the apparatus and touched a graduated intensity control, he talked in his unctuous, mocking way.

  “This is what’s going to keep you happy and contented while you’re on my ship, Captain Future. It’s the great boon and blessing that old Ru Ghur’s science gave to the unhappy worlds, my Lethe-ray that brings such joy to the soul.”

  Chapter 4: Surprise Attack