Captain Future 03 - Captain Future's Challenge (Summer 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “The whole plot has grown pretty clear since I’ve been on Neptune. And a daring plot it was — an amazing conspiracy to gain power over the whole System by getting a strangling monopoly on the gravium supply.

  “That is what the Wrecker has been after — a gravium monopoly. For the Wrecker is someone familiar with the gravium industry, who saw how much power such a monopoly would give. He saw that with all gravium in his hands to sell or to withhold, he could dominate the life of the System. He could ask anything, any price, for gravium, since he alone would be able to supply it. It was this vista of possible power that stirred an ambitious man to plot to become the Wrecker.”

  “I knew it!” Orr Libro cried. “I told you that Gunn was trying to get a monopoly on gravium —”

  Captain Future silenced him with a glance. “The Wrecker,” Curt continued, “had been here on Neptune and knew the planet well. He had, during explorations for underwater gravium beds, encountered the hidden sea-people. And he saw how that strange race, with its super-scientific powers, could be made allies in his great plot.

  “The sea-folk have always hated the intruders into their ocean — all the Neptunian legends told that. So the Wrecker made alliance with them on the following terms: he would help them drive the planetary races away from Neptune forever, and in return the sea-folk would supply him with as much gravium as he required. That, I’m certain, was the foundation of the Wrecker’s conspiracy!”

  Curt Newton continued searchingly.

  “You see what success of that plot would have meant? The Wrecker would b« able to get gravium from the sea-folk in the Neptunian ocean. No one else would be able to get it. The Wrecker would thus have his gravium monopoly!

  “But to make it a monopoly, the other gravium sources in the System must be destroyed, those on Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Oberon. And to destroy them, the Wrecker needed ships and followers. The sea-folk would follow and obey him, but couldn’t live out of water. However, they knew the scientific secret of mind-exchange and this was brought into play. Scores of fishermen were kidnaped, sea-men’s minds were transferred into their bodies, and those alien-minded men became the Wrecker’s band.

  “To get spaceships for his forays, the Wrecker planted some of his men on four of the gravium-run ships that stopped here at Neptune — he caused some of the crews to be kidnaped and replaced them by his own men. Those four ships struck simultaneously at the Mercury, Mars and Saturn mines, destroying them utterly. The fourth ship was detailed to capture me, to make sure Captain Future didn’t interfere with this great conspiracy. It failed to keep me a captive, but it or one of the Wrecker’s ships did destroy the Oberon mines.

  “That left only the mines on Neptune here. Mine One and Mine Two were destroyed by the sea-men exactly on schedule as agreed by them with the Wrecker. They were then to destroy Mine Three and wreck this island and city. There would be no gravium mines and no colonists left on Neptune. The sea-folk would prevent them from being re-established. And the sea-folk would give the Wrecker, in return for his aid, a certain amount of gravium each year, no doubt, which would make him gravium-master of the System!”

  CAPTAIN FUTURE concluded. “And that plot almost won success. The Wrecker almost got a strangle-hold on interplanetary life.”

  “But you haven’t, said who he is!” Ezra Gurney exclaimed.

  “Gentlemen,” Captain Future said softly, “the Wrecker is — Carson Brand!”

  “Yes,? said Brand quietly. “I am the Wrecker.”

  Carson Brand’s pleasant, brown young face was a stony mask, his eyes bitter with throbbing emotion. His gaze swept the thunderstruck faces of the others, and rested on Curt’s stern features. Then Brand opened his hand. In his palm he disclosed a small glass tube filled with blue fluff.

  Captain Future recognized that tube. It was the vial of the deadly Saturnian “death-fungus.”

  “Make one move toward me, any of you,” throbbed Brand’s voice,” and I crush this tube. We’ll all be masses of fungus-spores in a split-second.”

  Appalled, the others stood frozen. All knew that the threat was no idle bluff. The terrible fungoid death would destroy them all if Brand broke that tube’s contents among them.

  Curt stalled desperately for time, racking his brain for some way of keeping that death from the others.

  “Would you like to know why I suspected all along that you were the Wrecker?” he asked grimly.

  “Yes, I would — before you die, Future,” Brand said harshly. Curt smiled.

  “You gave yourself away out in Mine One, Brand. You remember, you went down into the submarine dome with me. You saw the little bulge in the wall. You cried that the whole dome was going to give way, and got yourself and the men out of there. And the dome did give way soon after and almost trapped me in it.

  “But, as your mine-boss had said, that bulged wall in itself wasn’t dangerous, Brand. There didn’t seem a chance of its collapsing. Yet, as I realized later, you had been sure it would be destroyed in a few minutes. You were forewarned, therefore, that the dome would be destroyed at an exactly scheduled time. Which meant that you were in alliance with those outside the dome who would destroy it! You only went down in the dome for a minute to avert all suspicion falling on yourself.”

  “You’re right, Captain Future,” Brand rasped. “And you were right about the rest of my plan. You were only guessing about my treaty with the sea-folk, I know, but your guess is correct. I did discover that hidden people in my submarine mine-explorations, and I did see the chance to win a gravium monopoly of the System with their help. I killed Kerk El and Quarus Qull to keep them from developing new mines, I’d have won, too — except for you.”

  BRAND’S voice thickened with hate.

  “From the first, you were the one man in the System I feared. That’s why I tried to make sure you wouldn’t interfere. But you did. You’ve won the game. But you’re losing your life —”

  Suddenly Grag acted! The robot had been bunching his metal limbs and now he sprang like a great projectile at Brand. Brand, with a yell of hate, smashed the deadly tube in his hand as the robot and he lunged backward.

  Out of the smashed tube puffed an expanding cloud of blue fluff, ballooning with awful rapidity. Fungus spores that blossomed with such speed that as they hit the ground, both Carson Brand and Grag were covered with the deadly fluff.

  Brand cried out horribly, waved fungus-covered arms in agonized convulsions — then was still. Curt had swept Joan and Ezra and the others back, away from the terrible blight.

  “Grag!” he yelled.

  Grag was rising to his feet. Calmly, the robot drew his proton-gun and began searing the fluff off his metal body by a weak beam.

  “It’s all right, master — his blight had no effect on me,” boomed the robot. “He should have realized that fungus can’t harm metal!”

  Chapter 20: Rockets in the Night

  CURT NEWTON breathed gratefully the warm, balmy night air of old Earth, as he emerged from the looming Government Tower. He walked with slow strides in the direction of the spaceport where the Futuremen awaited him in the Comet.

  Before Curt, all New York seemed blazing with light tonight. The moonlit metropolis of stupendous pinnacles pulsed with an almost frantic revelry of celebrations. For this city, like every city on every world in the System, was celebrating the lifting of that dark pall of terror which had threatened to paralyze the nine worlds.

  Curt’s ears still rang with the tremulous praise just given him by James Carthew, System President, to whom he had made report.

  “Captain Future, you don’t realize how much you’ve done for the System by exposing that ambitious plotter in time. Isn’t there any way we can show you the gratitude we feel?”

  “Just let me get going to the Comet,” Captain Future had smiled. “The others will be getting tired waiting for me.

  Curt felt tired himself as he strode through the parks and streets of the joy-mad metropolis, toward the spaceport. He f
elt the terrific strain of that deadly struggle out on far Neptune.

  Throbbing, lilting music from a gayly lit pleasure palace he was passing, reached his ears. He stopped, looking in through its broad windows. In there, men and women were dancing joyously, under soft lights, celebrating the passing of the terror.

  A queerly wistful expression came onto Captain Future’s tanned, handsome face as he watched them. He was as young as they, really. Yet never had any such gayety been his.

  Even in boyhood, when other lads his age had been growing up with friends and family he had been already roving the spaceways with the Futuremen, meeting the dangers of far worlds. And since manhood, as Captain Future, he had never known at what time he might meet disaster on some mission in distant, perilous solar spaces.

  THEN Curt Newton’s shoulders straightened, and the bright gleam came back into his gray eyes. Though he had missed much that other men had, he had had much that they could never even dream of. The wild thrill of battling with the loyal Futuremen through hazardous battles in the void; the thrill of discovery at penetrating weird, hidden lands of strange, far worlds! “It’s enough — it’s more than enough, for me,” Curt Newton whispered to himself. He looked up at the bright full moon. “Time we were getting home."

  He strode on. And the gay dancing crowd inside that place never dreamed that Captain Future had stood looking in on them. But, minutes later, as a small, streamlined ship rocketed up across the city’s pinnacles, the crowd streamed out excitedly.

  “It’s Captain Future’s ship!” one of the merry-makers was crying. “He’s been here on Earth!”

  They looked up tensely at the little ship as it screamed across the city in a rising slant, its rockets thundering in a drumming drone. Rockets in the night, pluming tails of fire as the rising ship curved up and up toward the great, mellow disc of the full moon!

  Curt Newton and the Futuremen were going home. But only until the signal-light at the North Pole blazed again to call them forth to battle solar dangers.

  Always, Captain Future had answered that call. Always, he would answer.

  Earth could dance in peace.

  THE END

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