by Allen Steele
After all, I'm the last person to see Captain Future alive.
The news media helped us maintain our alibi. After all, it was a story that had everything. Adventure, romance, blood and guts, countless lives at stake. Best of all, a noble act of self-sacrifice. It'll make a great vid. I sold the rights yesterday.
Because it's been so widely told, you already know how the story ends. Realizing that he had been fatally infected with Titan Plague, Bo McKinnon—excuse me, Captain Future—issued his final instructions as commanding officer of the TBSA Comet.
He told me to return to the ship, and once I was safely aboard, he ordered Jeri to cast off and get the Comet as far away as possible.
Realizing what he intended to do, we tried to talk him out of it. Oh, and how we argued and pleaded with him, telling him that we could place him in biostasis until we returned to Earth, where doctors could attempt to save his life.
In the end, though, McKinnon simply cut off his comlink so that he could meet his end with dignity and grace.
Once the Comet was gone and safely out of range, Captain Future managed to instruct the mass-driver's main computer to overload the vessel reactors. While he sat alone in the abandoned bridge, waiting for the countdown, there was just enough time for him to transmit one final message of courage...
Don't make me repeat it, please. It's bad enough that the Queen read it aloud during the memorial service, but now I understand that it's going to be inscribed upon the base of twice-life size statue of McKinnon that's going to be erected at Arsia Station. Jeri did her best when she wrote it, but between you and me, I still think it's a complete crock.
Anyway, the thermonuclear blast not only obliterated the Fool's Gold, but it also sufficiently altered the trajectory of 2046-Barr. The asteroid came within five thousand kilometers of Mars; its close passage was recorded by the observatory on Phobos, and the settlements in the Central Meridian reported the largest micrometeor shower in the history of the colonies.
And now Bo McKinnon is remembered as Captain Future, one of the greatest heroes in the history of humankind.
It was the least Jeri could have done for him.
Considering what a jerk Bo had been all the way to the end, I could have tried to claim the credit, but her strong will persevered. I suppose she's right; it would look bad if it was known that McKinnon had gone out as a raving lunatic who had to be coldcocked by his second officer.
Likewise, no one has to know that four missiles launched from the Comet destroyed the mass-driver's main reactor, thus causing the explosion that averted 2046-Barr from its doomsday course. The empty weapon pod before the Comet reached Ceres, and the small bribe paid to a minor Pax bureaucrat, insured that all records of it ever having been installed on the freighter were completely erased.
It hardly matters. In the end, everyone got what they wanted.
As first officer of the Comet, Jeri Lee became its new commander. She offered me her old job, and since the Jove Commerce deal was down the tubes, I gratefully accepted. It wasn't long after that before she also offered to show me the rest of her tattoos, an invitation that I also accepted. Her clan still won't speak to her, especially since she now plans to marry a Primary, but at least her fellow Superiors have been forced to claim her as one of their own.
For now, life is good. There's money in the bank, we've shucked our black sheep status, and there's no shortage of companies who want to hire the legendary Futuremen of the TBSA Comet. Who knows? Once we get tired of working the belt, maybe we'll settle down and take a shot at beating the odds on this whole cross-breeding thing.
And Bo got what he wanted, even though he didn't live long enough to enjoy it. In doing so, perhaps humankind got what it needed.
There's only one thing that still bothers me.
When McKinnon went nuts aboard the Fool's Gold and tried to attack me, I assumed that he had come down with the Plague. This was a correct assumption; he had been infected the moment he had come through the airlock.
However, I later learned that it takes at least six hours for Titan Plague to fully incubate within a human being, and neither of us had been aboard the Fool's Gold for nearly half that long.
If McKinnon was crazy at the end, it wasn't because of the Plague. To this day, I have no idea what made him snap ... unless he believed that I was trying to run off with his ship, his girl, and his goddamn glory.
Hell, maybe I was.
Last night, some nervous kid—a cargo grunt off some LEO freighter, his union card probably still uncreased—sidled up to me at the bar and asked for my autograph. While I was signing the inside cover of his logbook, he told me a strange rumor he had recently heard: Captain Future managed to escape from the Fool's Gold just before it blew. According to him, prospectors in the inner belt report spotting a gig on their screens, one whose pilot answers their calls as Curt Newton before transmissions are lost.
I bought the youngster a drink and told him the truth. Naturally, he refused to believe me, nor can I blame him.
Heroes are hard to find. We need to welcome them whenever they appear in our midst. You've just got to be careful to pick the right guy, because it's easy for someone to pretend to be what they're not.
Captain Future is dead.
Long live Captain Future.
THE END
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
Although largely forgotten today, Captain Future was a popular pulp-fiction character of the 1940's. Created by Better Publications editor Mort Weisinger during the 1939 World Science Fiction Convention, Curt Newton was featured in his own magazine for several years, and later in Startling Stories. Several Captain Future novels were reprinted in paperback in the late ‘60s; since then, however, the character has vanished into obscurity.
This story is dedicated to the late Edmond Hamilton, author of most of the Captain Future adventures.
The author wishes to thank Eleanor Wood, the executor of Hamilton's literary estate, for permission to use brief quotes from his Captain Future stories.
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Copyright © 1995 by Allen M. Steele
First published in Asimov's, October 1995
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