Captain Future 27 - Birthplace of Creation (May 1951)

by Edmond Hamilton

Otho stroked him to reassure him, and he changed back to his normal shape. The android looked proudly at Grag.

  “It’s disgusting!” Grag said emphatically. “It gives me the creeps to see it twist and change like that. I hope you’re not really going to take it along with us.”

  “Not only is it going along with me,” Otho replied, “but I want to warn you to keep Eek out of its way. I’d sort of hate to see it make a punching-bag out of that poor, dim-witted little moon-pup.”

  Grag rose to the challenge as expected. “That thing make a punching-bag of Eek?” he boomed angrily. “Why, you’re space-struck! Eek would tear that bag of dough wide open.”

  “We’ll soon see,” Otho affirmed. “Bring out your little pest, if you want to watch him take a thrashing.”

  THEY PREPARE FOR WAR

  Grag wrathfully agreed. He went into the cyc-room and soon stalked back with the moon-pup in his grasp.

  Eek was chewing a scrap of silver and looking very contented with the world. Then the moon-pup’s beady eyes fell on Oog, and he stared fixedly.

  They put the two small animals down on the floor, while Captain Future watched, grinning.

  “Go in and mop him up, Oog,” hissed Otho. “Change yourself into a moon-snake and squeeze him to death, or make like a Jovian jungle cat and scare him right out of his skin.”

  Grag was similarly admonishing his mascot. He spoke aloud, though it was his thought that he hoped the telepathic moon-pup was getting.

  “Show that disgusting little creature who’s boss on this ship, Eek! Give him the beating of his life.”

  They watched intently as Oog and Eek slowly approached each other. At last, Otho felt on the verge of his ambition. A moment more would see the end of Grag’s boastings.

  FRIENDLY WARRIORS

  Then the totally unexpected happened. Oog sniffed at Eek in friendly fashion. Eek, in turn, eyed the meteor-mimic without hostility. They rubbed against each other affectionately. Finally they lay down together as if they were the best friends in the world.

  “That’s not the idea, Oog!” exclaimed Otho, dismayed. “You’re supposed to be tough. Get up and tear into him.”

  Grag indignantly remonstrated with Eek in the same vein. But it was all without effect. The two just would not fight.

  The truth was that Oog was too friendly a creature to start a fight without reason. And Eek was a confirmed pacifist, who regarded all fighting with distaste.

  All the urging of Grag and Otho, in the weeks that followed, could not incite a battle. To the disgust of both masters, Oog and Eek loved each other like brothers.

  “Eek is too big-hearted to pick on Oog,” said Grag later. “But he’ll turn on him some day, and that’ll be the end of poor Oog. Better get rid of him, Otho. It’s not as though the critter was any use.”

  “No use?” cried Otho. “I suppose it wasn’t Oog that saved all our necks on Venus last month?”

  OOG SAVES FUTUREMEN

  He was referring to an episode in which Oog’s strange ability of shape-shifting had given sterling service at a critical juncture.

  The Futuremen had been imprisoned deep in the marshes of Venus by the hirelings of a certain interplanetary criminal whom they were trailing. They had been entirely without weapons.

  But Oog was with them. By dint of much patient effort, Otho had finally succeeded in getting Oog to change himself into the perfect simulacrum of a high-powered atomic bomb. With the fake bomb that was Oog, they had bluffed their way out of their imprisonment.

  “That was just a fluke,” Grag retorted disdainfully. “And it doesn’t make up for the nuisance of having Oog around. Every time I go to pick up anything, it’s apt to change into Oog.”

  “Eek is the real pest on this ship,” declared Otho. “Chewing up every bit of metal he can get his teeth into. Every time I think of all the instruments and apparatus he’s ruined, I get sore.”

  A CEASELESS DEBATE

  The argument went on endlessly in the months that followed. Again and again, the two masters tried to get their two pets into a scrap, but always without success.

  It was not that either wanted the other’s mascot really hurt. Each simply wanted to see his own pet give the other a harmless thrashing, so as to be able to crow about it.

  “You might as well give up egging them on,” Captain Future advised finally. “The more you try to stir up bad-blood between them, the more they love each other.”

  It was true. Eek and Oog had become the very Damon and Pythias of the outfit. They slept curled up together in the same corner. They sought each other out on all occasions. They might have been long-lost brothers.

  Otho tried all his ingenuity in stratagems to breakup this beautiful friendship. He and Grag by now had bet half their possessions on who would win a fight of the pets, but they couldn’t get the fight started.

  Then, at last, what they had been vainly trying for happened by pure accident. Oog and Eek, at long last, fell one day to fighting.

  It was the first and last time that the two pets ever scrapped, and it was a scrap that had a totally unexpected outcome.

  Otho, Grag and Captain Future were working in the main room of the Moon-laboratory, that day. Otho was using an atomic welder to fasten copper bars into the mechanism they were constructing.

  Oog, playing around Otho’s feet, amused himself by changing himself abruptly into a perfect replica of a big copper bar.

  By ill fortune, at this particular moment, Eek came ambling into the room. He looked around. His beady eyes fixed on the big bar of copper on the floor.

  Now if there was one metal that Eek loved to devour most of all, it was copper. He almost drooled as he sprang forward and fastened his sharp teeth in that luscious metal bar.

  Next moment the Futuremen heard a startled yelp of pain and rage and a scuffle under their feet. They looked down.

  Oog, who had changed back with the speed of light to his own doughy white shape, was standing stiff-legged and glaring at Eek. Then, growling, the meteor-mimic advanced toward the moon-pup.

  “By space, they’re at it at last!” Otho exclaimed excitedly. “Here’s where we finally see Eek get his beating!”

  “Stand up to him, Eek!” boomed Grag. “Knock the daylight out of him.”

  OOG OPENS ATTACK

  Next moment, Oog had jumped. His fat white body and the gray, agile one of Eek whirled over and over.

  Then Eek’s strong paws, paws equipped with diamond-hard talons that could dig metal out of pure rock, came into play. With a rake of those powerful paws he sent Oog flying against the wall.

  Grag cheered deafeningly. “That’s the stuff, Eek!”

  Oog shook himself, then came determinedly back toward his opponent. Eek was waiting, his paws raised for another blow.

  Oog paused suddenly. His body twisted, flowed, changed shape and color. Suddenly, he was an exact replica of Eek himself.

  It was as though two Eeks faced each other on the floor, advancing toward each other and then locking in battle.

  “Holy space-imps!” exclaimed Otho, startled. “He figured Eek’s paws were too strong for him, so he made himself just like Eek. But which of them is which?”

  There was no possibility of distinguishing between the real and the fake Eek as they scrambled around on the floor in their struggle.

  But soon it became evident that one Eek was giving the other a terrible whipping. In a few moments, one of the two identical antagonists deserted the struggle and retreated out of the room at top speed, with the other in pursuit.

  “That was Oog doing the chasing!” Otho claimed, as he and the others started after them.

  “You’re crazy — it was Eek! Oog was running for his life!” retorted Grag.

  GENTLEMEN, THE WINNAH!

  The two pets had disappeared. They searched through one after another of the Moon-laboratory’s branching chambers and corridors.

  It was not until an hour later, in the underground hangar of the Comet, that t
hey found Oog and Eek. Oog wore his own proper shape, now.

  He and Eek, apparently little the worse for wear, were curled up together in a corner — asleep!

  “The devil! They got over their scrapping and made friends again!” exclaimed Otho.

  “But which one of them was it that won?” asked Captain Future slyly.

  “Oog, of course — didn’t you see?” Otho countered.

  “If you had decent eyes, you’d know it was Eek!” stormed Grag.

  They made attempts to start the scrap going again. But it was in vain. Oog and Eek were as good friends as ever, once more. They calmly refused to be incited to more battle.

  Who had been victor, Grag’s pet or Otho’s? No one would ever know. But the argument has gone on ever since.

  Grag’s Pet, The Moon-Pup

  From the Winter 1946 issue of Captain Future

  Captain Future is averse to adopting the fierce, untamed creature — until Grag’s faith in it is fully justified!

  WILD and forbidding in the harsh glare of un-softened sunlight, stretched the lifeless surface of the Moon. This savage landscape was without vegetation, water or air. It was a rumpled expanse of giant mountain ranges, cruel craters, and vast rock plains seamed by deep, narrow canyons.

  At the shadowy bottom of one of those canyons, Captain Future, Otho and the Brain were intent on the task of unearthing a mass of gleaming metal ore. Curt Newton and the android wore their spacesuits. The Brain, who needed no such protection, hovered beside them.

  Curt finally dislodged the mass of ore, and then straightened, leaning on his steelite bar. He looked down the canyon.

  “Where did Grag wander off to?” he demanded.

  “Depend on that crazy robot to stray away when there’s heavy work to do,” complained Otho.

  A MOON-HOUND PACK

  They started down the canyon in search of Grag. Then, as they squeezed through a narrow part of the chasm, they saw a giant figure approaching them. It was the massive, metal robot.

  Grag held a small gray animal that was struggling and squirming in his grasp. It was a moon-pup, a young individual of the fierce moon-hounds that are the Moon’s strange, non-breathing species of life.

  “Look, I picked up a maverick moon-pup!” Grag exclaimed. “I’m going to tame it and make a pet of it.”

  Captain Future interrupted sharply. “Where there’s one of those creatures, there’s more of them! We’d better get out of — listen!”

  There was no sound, of course, outside the short-range telaudio instruments by which they conversed. But Curt Newton had felt a faint vibration, a rushing murmur, from the rock beneath his feet.

  “Moon-hounds — a pack!” yelled Otho. “Look there!”

  IMPENETRABLE CREATURES

  Down the canyon toward them was coming a raging horde of gray, terrible beasts — wolflike quadrupeds with enormous fangs and talons. Their small eyes glared red as they charged.

  Moon-hounds could not be harmed by ordinary weapons. Their flesh was siliceous, its curious bodily metabolism maintained by their use of raw rock and metal elements as food. Atom-guns would not hurt them.

  “Back up the canyon, quick!” yelled Curt. “If those beasts get us down, we’re done for!”

  Curt and the three Futuremen rapidly retreated along the chasm, firing a volley of brilliant atomic bolts to discourage their pursuers. But the moon-hounds, finding that the bolts of force did not harm them, rushed forward boldly.

  Curt and his comrades squeezed back through the narrow part of the chasm. As they did so, Captain Future delayed a second to thrust something into a niche of the cliff. Then he darted hastily on.

  CAPTURED PUP

  Next moment, a soundless explosion rocked the chasm around them. Its force tore away great masses of shattered rock that crashed down from the precipitous sides and completely blocked the narrow chasm. The block formed an impassible barrier between the moon-hounds and the Futuremen.

  “That was too blamed close,” panted Curt Newton. “If I hadn’t brought along a couple of atomic blasting-cartridges to help us dig the ore, the pack would have been on our necks.”

  “And it was all Grag’s fault, for picking up that miserable moon-pup,” accused Otho.

  “You’d better leave the little beast here, Grag,” advised Captain Future. “You can’t make a pet of it. Nobody’s ever tamed a moon-hound yet.”

  “I’ll tame this one,” Grag insisted. “It likes me already. You can see that.”

  NEVER BEEN TAMED

  The little gray moon-pup, squirming frantically in his grasp, chose that moment to get his head free. The animal instantly tried to sink its powerful, jewel-hard teeth into Grag’s metal arm, actually scarring the steelite.

  “Yes, we can see how much it likes you,” jeered Otho. “Its affection is positively touching.”

  “It will learn better,” Grag affirmed. “Let me keep it, chief. I always wanted a pet.”

  Curt Newton understood. Grag, mighty man of metal, knew himself to be irrevocably different from ordinary humanity. That knowledge had nursed a certain inferiority complex in the mind of the intelligent robot. He felt a dim apprehension that ordinary human people looked down on him because of his difference from them.

  Grag craved to be looked up to, by somebody or something. That was why the robot so eagerly wanted this moon-pup as a pet. Curt understood this, and so against his better judgment he gave a conditional permission.

  “All right, Grag, you can keep it, though I don’t believe you’ll ever tame it,” he answered. “But if it starts making any trouble for us, it’ll have to go.”

  STRANGE METABOLISM

  When they returned to the moon-laboratory, Grag secured the moon-pup to the wall by means of a light steelite collar and chain.

  The little gray animal was only two feet long. Its squat body was supported by four short legs whose paws ended in powerful, chisel-like digging-talons. Below its sharp little snout, were jaws set with equally powerful grinder-teeth. Its small black eyes were bright with hostility as it faced the Futuremen.

  Curt Newton inspected it with considerable interest. He had never been able to make so close an examination of an individual of the moon-hound species, one of the strangest forms of life in the System.

  Once, long ago, the Moon had had an atmosphere and many forms of life had flourished on it. Then as the satellite slowly lost its air by molecular dispersion, most of its life had perished. But a few species had managed to adapt themselves even to the airless conditions.

  The moon-hounds were such a species. They needed no air because they did not breathe. Their bodies were of strange inorganic flesh, in which silicon replaced carbon as the basic element. They ingested the elements they required to replenish their tissues, directly from the raw rock and ore they dug out and pulverized in their grinding teeth. This weird metabolism of their bodies was aided by photosynthetic processes.

  A METAL JAG

  “I’m going to call it Eek,” Grag announced. He extended his hand coaxingly to the moon-pup. “Here, Eek!”

  Eek, the moon-pup, responded by showing his teeth menacingly at the outstretched hand.

  “It can’t hear you, Grag,” Captain Future said. “Moon-hounds have no auditory or vocal organs, since sound is impossible on the Moon.”

  “I’ll tame it, anyway,” Grag insisted. “First, I’ll give it something to eat.”

  He brought some bits of metal-bearing rock and proffered them to Eek. The moon-pup, watching them suspiciously with its beady little eyes, champed the rock to dust between its teeth and swallowed it.

  Grag tried it with a scrap of pure copper. Eek devoured that with amazing speed. He brought it more copper, which was greedily bolted.

  “Copper and other pure metals, to them, must be like candy to a human being,” Curt commented.

  “You’ve given it too much — it’s sick,” Simon Wright told Grag.

  Eek had begun to wobble on his legs. His head swayed to and
fro and a glazed look came into his eyes.

  “Sick, nothing — the little pest is drunk,” Otho said disgustedly.

  Captain Future broke into a shout of laughter. “Otho’s right. So much pure copper stimulated its metabolism too fast.”

  Eek was staggering. The little moon-pup tried to take a step and fell down on his face. He stumbled up again and stood, his head wagging foolishly.

  “Boy, has he got a bender on!” exclaimed Otho.

  EEK UNDERSTANDS

  Grag was dismayed. “It’s not his fault,” he defended. “I just gave him too much at one time. I’ll cut down on his food.”

  Two days later, the Futuremen returned to the moon-laboratory to find that Grag’s cut in the moon-pup’s rations had had its sequel.

  Eek had, in their absence, eaten up his own steelite chain, had then devoured all the copper parts of one of Otho’s best atom-pistols, and was now staggering around the room in a high state of intoxication.

  Otho stormed that the moon-pup had to go at once. But Grag insisted that he would soon be able to tame and train the creature.

  The next day, Grag’s bellowing shout brought Curt and the other two Futuremen on the run from the underground hangar in which they were at work refitting the Comet.

  “What’s wrong?” Curt demanded sharply of the robot as they burst into the moon-laboratory.

  “It’s Eek,” said Grag, proudly. “I’ve learned how to talk to him.”

  “You’re dreaming!” scoffed Otho. “How can you talk to a beast that can’t possibly hear a sound?”

  “I talk to him telepathically,” Grag declared. “He can hear my thoughts. I’ve made friends with him that way. Watch, and I’ll tell him to come here to me.”

  Eek was chewing on a bit of rock in a far part of the room. Grag stared silently at the moon-pup. In a moment, Eek turned his head. Then he came trotting over to Grag and looked up inquiringly.

  “You see?” Grag said. “I just gave him a mental command to come to me, and he did.”