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

by Edmond Hamilton

  “Father!”

  He crept into Simon’s arms. Simon held him, and Dion murmured once more and then sighed. Simon continued to hold him, though the boy had become very heavy and his eyes looked blankly now into nothingness.

  It came to Simon that the hall had grown quiet. A voice spoke to him. He lifted his head and saw Curt standing over him, and Otho, both staring at him anxiously. He could not see them clearly. He said, “The boy thought I was his father. He clung to me and called me Father as he died.”

  Otho took Dion’s body and laid it gently on the stones.

  Curt said, “It’s all over, Simon. We got here in time, and it’s all right.”

  Simon rose. Taras and his men were dead. Those who had tried to foster hatred were gone, and not ever again would Harpers be brought into Moneb. That was what the pale, shaken councilors around him were telling him.

  He could not hear them clearly. Not so clearly, somehow, as the fading whisper of a dying boy.

  He turned and walked out of the council hall, onto the steps. It was dark now. There were torches flaring, and the wind blew cold, and he was very tired.

  Curt stood beside him. Simon said, “I will go back to the ship.”

  He saw the question in Curt’s eyes, the question that he did not quite dare to ask.

  Heartsick, Simon spoke the lines that a Chinese poet had written long ago.

  “ ‘Now I know, that the ties of flesh and blood only bind us to a load of grief and sorrow.’ ”

  He shook his head. “I will return to what I was. I could not bear the agony of a second human life — no!”

  Curt did not answer. He took Simon’s arm and they walked together across the court.

  Behind them Otho came, carrying gently three small creatures of silver and rose-pearl, who began now to sound ripples of muted music, faint but hopeful at first, then soaring swiftly to a gladness of prisoners newly freed.

  They buried the body of John Keogh in the clearing where he had died, and the boy Dion lay beside him. Over them, Curt and Grag and Otho built a cairn of stones with Harker’s help.

  From the shadows, Simon Wright watched, a small square shape of metal hovering on silent beams, again a living brain severed forever from human form.

  It was done, and they parted from Harker and went down through the great booming lichens toward the ship. Curt and the robot and android paused and looked back at the tall cairn towering lonely against the stars.

  But Simon did not look back.

  THE END

  Meet the Futuremen!

  In this department, which is a regular feature of CAPTAIN FUTURE, we acquaint you further with the companions of CAPTAIN FUTURE whom you have met in our complete book-length novels. Here you are told the off-the-record stories of their lives and anecdotes plucked from their careers. Follow this department closely, for it contains many interesting and fascinating facts to supplement those you read in our featured novels.

  The Moon Laboratory

  From the Winter 1942 issue of Captain Future

  DOWN from the black vault of space, a small space-ship cautiously sank upon blazing keel rocket-tubes toward the barren airless surface of the Moon. It was a ship that would look ludicrously clumsy and obsolete now, but it was the last word in design at that time.

  It landed in Tycho crater, a vast circular plain of rock glaring in the Sun, surrounded by titanic, jagged peaks. From the ship emerged a man and a woman in space-suits. The man carried a square, transparent case of metal.

  “This looks like a good place,” the man said eagerly. “The rock is soft, and it won’t be hard to excavate an artificial cavern.”

  His serious, studious face was alive with keen interest and anticipation as he looked around. But the face of his young wife paled inside her helmet as her wide gray eyes took in the savage, wild scene.

  “It seems a terrible place to live, Roger,” she murmured to him over the connecting phone. “A terrible place for our child to be born.”

  A voice came from the square case carried by the man, a metallic, alien voice. “You will become accustomed to it, Elaine,” it encouraged. “And we can work here in complete concealment and safety.”

  THE FLIGHT

  The man was Roger Newton, the girl was his young wife, and the voice from the square case had come from Simon Wright, the Brain. It had been Newton, with his scientific genius, who had on Earth not long before removed Simon Wright’s living brain from his aged, dying body and implanted it in that serum-case.

  They three, fleeing from enemies who coveted Newton’s scientific secrets, had fled here to the uninhabited, airless satellite of Earth to work in peace upon Newton’s great ambition of creating artificial life. They had brought with them in their ship every tool, instrument and device that they would need to make life possible here.

  Among these tools were several powerful atom-blasts. With these, Roger Newton went to work on the soft Moon-rock of the crater floor. The terrific energy of the blasts ate away the rock like butter, and within a comparatively short time, he had hollowed out a great circular chamber under the surface of the crater. His next work was to fuse certain lunar minerals into liquid glassite which he cast into a great round window that he set in the ceiling of the underground room.

  He had left a small passage down into the strange chamber. In this passage he installed an efficient airlock. Then he set up in the chamber a powerful apparatus for chemical conversion of lunar mineral elements into the elements of air and water.

  SUB-LUNAR LIFE

  Until then, they had lived in the spaceship. Now they moved into the sub-lunar dwelling. Newton toiled to bring all the equipment crammed in the ship down into their new home. He excavated adjoining caverns to serve as sleeping rooms, supply rooms, and the like. The big main chamber was to be their laboratory, and in it he and the Brain arranged the complex scientific equipment they had brought.

  In this unique dwelling beneath the surface of the Moon, the scientific genius of Roger Newton and the Brain created Grag, the robot, and Otho, the android. And in this wild place was born to Roger Newton and his wife the infant son whose name was one day to be blazoned across the whole Solar System — Curtis Newton.

  It was here in the Moon-laboratory, after the tragic death of his parents, that Curt Newton spent his strange boyhood and youth under the tutorship of this three un-human guardians. To him, the place was home, and he knew and loved every corner of it as he knew and loved the wild, sun-scorched lunar wastes around it.

  A CITADEL OF SCIENCE

  When he had reached manhood and had attained the full stature of his scientific genius, Curt enlarged and improved the Moon-laboratory. He made it into that marvelous citadel of science that is now so famous throughout the System, but which few visitors have ever entered.

  Captain Future’s Moon-Laboratory is the only dwelling of any kind upon the Moon, and the Futuremen are the only inhabitants. Few others in the whole System could or would live on that wild, airless world, but the four greatest planeteers of all time regard it as a cherished home.

  The Moon-Laboratory is built upon a circular plan.

  The inner circle is the large main laboratory originally excavated by Curt’s father. Its great glassite ceiling window gives a marvelous view of the starry sky, and of the bulky green globe of Earth that always hangs almost directly overhead. When the lunar “day” dawns, an ingenious photoelectric cell comes into action which turns on a device that makes the big window glare-proof against the unsoftened blaze of the Sun.

  It is in this great main room that the Futuremen are most often to be found at home, for it is alike their workshop and favorite lounging quarters. The work table of Captain Future, upon which so many miraculous scientific achievements have been accomplished, is directly beneath the window.

  Ranged around the walls of the room are the bewildering masses of scientific equipment — massive telescopes and spectroscopes that are connected photoelec-trically with lenses on the lunar sur
face, racks of atomic tools, chemical, electrical and other equipment.

  In a concentric circle around the main laboratory are the separate chambers that open off it. Starting at the entrance and working clockwise around the circle, these separate chambers are as follows:

  First, the frozen storage room in which perishable specimens are preserved, the room being refrigerated by an efficient atomic device. The next room is the compact kitchen, used only by Curt and Otho since neither Grag nor the Brain eat ordinary food.

  FRESH OXYGEN

  The room beyond this contains the air generator that assures a ceaseless supply of fresh oxygen derived by chemical conversion of mineral oxides. It also contains the atomic heater which automatically warms the air when the lunar “night” has come and the temperature inside the dwelling begins to fall.

  The next room is Captain Future’s own sleeping room, an almost austere chamber that contains only his bunk, clothing, and a few treasured mementoes of his dead parents.

  The room beyond Curt’s is the private laboratory of the Brain. It is soundproofed, and into it the Brain will often retire for long periods in which he will rest utterly motionless, brooding in strange reverie. Here are Simon’s data on pet experiments, and here too is kept the small apparatus which emits stimulating vibrations that are the Brain’s occasional “food.”

  Next is the reference library, which contains tens of thousands of scientific reference works in every planetary field, reduced to microfilm.

  There is next a large supply room, and then the chamber that the Futuremen call the “trophy room.” That is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole Moon-laboratory. In that room, Captain Future keeps the most dangerous and most valuable objects and instruments that he has acquired in the course of his crusading adventures on other worlds.

  There are powers here, such as the atavism-apparatus of the Space Emperor, the “illusion-machine” of the famous Doctor Zarro, and the legendary Water of Life from Saturn, which are beyond all price.

  This room of secrets is guarded by an invulnerable metal door that is always securely locked.

  Beyond the trophy room is Otho’s chamber. Then comes the underground passage that leads to the underground hangar of the Comet, the space-ship of the Futuremen. This hangar is so equipped that when the Comet begins to rise from its floor, the doors overhead automatically fold back to allow the ship to emerge. When it re-enters the hangar, the doors automatically close and at the same time a fresh air-supply is automatically pumped into the hangar.

  The doors themselves are camouflaged on their upper surface to resemble lunar rock.

  GRAG NEVER SLEEPS

  Beyond this passage is Grag’s room. There is not much real reason for Grag to have a sleeping-room, since he never sleeps. But the fact that Otho had a room made him jealous, and he demanded one also. The two pets, Oog and Eek, usually are to be found sleeping there.

  There is, next to this, a special sealed laboratory in which any condition of gravitation, atmosphere pressure and atmosphere content can be reproduced. This enables Captain Future to test out an instrument or experiment under the theoretical conditions of any planet.

  Beyond this is another large supply-room, and then the cyc-room which contains a great battery of powerful cyclotrons and motor-generators capable of delivering almost unlimited power. And, finally, there is the stair leading up through an air-lock to the lunar surface.

  Such are the wonders of the Moon-laboratory, citadel of the Futuremen and home of the greatest of planeteers.

  Captain Future’s Boyhood

  From the Spring 1942 issue of Captain Future

  GRAG, the robot, was angry. He stood in one of the big supply-rooms of the Moon-laboratory, looking indignantly up at a redheaded boy who peered down impishly from atop a pile of metal cases.

  “Come down, Curtis — have I not told you it is time for Simon Wright to give you your lesson?” boomed the angry robot.

  “I’m tired of lessons,” announced fourteen-year old Curtis Newton with exasperating calmness. “Every day, one lesson after another. I want to go outside and explore.”

  “If you won’t come down, I’ll come up after you.” Grag menaced.

  He started clambering up the pile of cases. But the huge weight of his great metal figure brought the stack down, and the robot fell to the floor amid a shower of boxes with a reverberating clangor.

  OTHO IS FAST

  Young Curt Newton rocked with laughter atop his perch. But into the supply-room, like a flying white shadow, came the lithe figure of Otho, the android. He surveyed big Grag’s predicament with disdain.

  “Of course, you couldn’t catch him,” Otho snapped. “Watch me.”

  Curt Newton saw what was coming. The boy darted across the stacks of cases to escape. But, fast as he was, Otho was too fast for him and he was ignominiously hauled down and marched into the laboratory.

  Simon Wright, the Brain, turned his glittering lens-eyes toward the boy.

  “It is past time for your lesson in planetary botany, Curtis,” he reproved.

  “He would not come,” boomed Grag indignantly. “He wanted to go outside.”

  Curt hung his red head. “It’s fun to explore the craters and plains,” he muttered, half-ashamedly. “I’d like to go out by myself.”

  Then the boy cried eagerly, “And I want to go farther, to the Earth, to Mars, to Venus, to all the planets you’ve taught me about! I want to know all space, not to live here on the dead Moon all my life. I want to meet other men!”

  “You shall meet other men, when the time comes,” promised the Brain. “You shall see every one of these worlds of which we have been teaching you. But it is not yet time. Grag and Otho and I have reared you here, since your parents were killed here years ago, and have educated you in preparation. In a few years, your education will be complete, you will reach manhood, and then you can meet other men. But until then, it is too dangerous. Your dead father had many enemies.”

  There was a little silence, the red-haired boy staring puzzledly into the lens-eyes of the Brain. Then Simon spoke again.

  “We will begin your lesson on planetary botany. Define the phyla and subphyla of plant life on Venus.”

  In his clear high voice young Curt Newton began reciting. “Phylum One — decalciate plants —”

  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!