Captain Future 15 - The Star of Dread (Summer 1943)

by Edmond Hamilton

  #15 Summer 1943

  Introduction

  A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

  The Star of Dread

  by Edmond Hamilton writing as Brett Sterling

  The world’s greatest space-farers battle to expose a dangerous secret menacing mankind and face desperate risks as they pursue two scheming miscreants across the void!

  Radio Archives • 2012

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 1943 by Better Publications, Inc. © 2012 RadioArchives.com. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form.

  These pulp stories are a product of their time. The text is reprinted intact, unabridged, and may include ethnic and cultural stereotyping that was typical of the era.

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  ISBN 978-1610818520

  Introduction

  The original introduction to Captain Future as it appeared in issue #1

  The Wizard of Science! Captain Future!

  The most colorful planeteer in the Solar System makes his debut in this, America’s newest and most scintillating scientifiction magazine — CAPTAIN FUTURE.

  This is the magazine more than one hundred thousand scientifiction followers have been clamoring for! Here, for the first time in scientifiction history, is a publication devoted exclusively to the thrilling exploits of the greatest fantasy character of all time!

  Follow the flashing rocket-trail of the Comet as the most extraordinary scientist of nine worlds have ever known explores the outposts of the cosmos to the very shores of infinity. Read about the Man of Tomorrow today!

  Meet the companions of Captain Future, the most glamorous trio in the Universe!

  Grag, the giant, metal robot; Otho, the man-made, synthetic android; and aged Simon Wright, the living Brain.

  This all-star parade of the most unusual characters in the realm of fantasy is presented for your entertainment. Come along with this amazing band as they rove the enchanted space-ways — in each issue of CAPTAIN FUTURE!

  The Star of Dread

  A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel

  by Edmond Hamilton writing as Brett Sterling

  The world’s greatest space-farers battle to expose a dangerous secret menacing mankind and face desperate risks as they pursue two scheming miscreants across the void!

  Chapter 1: Stellar Secret

  LOW and ominous as distant thunder, the deep sound throbbed across the jungle moon. Through the green gloom of dense fern-forests into which the pale sunlight hardly penetrated, it pulsed like a whisper of menace. That quivering pulsation reached a big, raw clearing, recently hacked from the dense jungle. Here was a compact encampment, with light metal huts set up near the torpedo-like hulls of two small space-ships.

  The score of men moving about the camp stopped and listened intently, as that throbbing whisper reached them.

  “The danged Titanians have their Talkin’ Trees goin’ again, Joan,” drawled an old, gray-haired Earthman with the grizzled face of a veteran. His faded blue eyes narrowed. “They’re gettin’ more and more upset.”

  The girl whom he addressed, a dark, pretty Earthgirl slim in brown jacket and slacks, listened alertly. She looked at the surrounding jungle.

  “I suppose they’re still watching us, even though you can never quite see them,” she murmured.

  This incident was taking place on Titania, wild moon of the planet Uranus. The flood of interplanetary trade and travel seldom touched this small world. Little of it had ever been explored. It remained an unfathomed wilderness, inhabited only by the primitive, human moon-tribes called the Titanians.

  An observer might have wondered why this expedition had come to the moon. The men of it did not look like either traders, prospectors or space-pirates. The observer’s perplexity would have increased when he recognized one of those two small parked space-ships as the Comet, the famous ship of the Futuremen.

  The reason for this expedition lay in the jungle just west of the encampment. Huge, crumbling stone walls and columns, carved with fantastic hieroglyphs, protruded from the ground beneath the great ferns there. It was those massive, age-old ruins of a perished civilization which had brought this archaeological and scientific expedition to wild Titania.

  DOCTOR PHILIP WINTERS, biologist of the expedition, and Cole Norton, its chief physicist, came across the camp to Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall.

  “I’ve never heard those natives make such a clamor,” declared the elderly biologist in worried tones. “Do you suppose it means trouble?”

  Winters was a thin, bald little man with a pinched, spectacled face and a great dome of forehead. He looked definitely alarmed.

  Cole Norton, the physicist, scoffed at his suggestion. Norton was a big, blond young man with keen blue eyes and an intelligent, forceful face that had a touch of hardness in it.

  “I shouldn’t worry about the Titanians,” he told Winters. “They’ll make a lot of racket and keep spying on us, but that’s all.”

  “It might not be all,” drawled old Ezra Gurney dryly. “Them Titanians are plenty superstitious about these ruins. They call ‘em the Sacred Stones, and they don’t like our pokin’ around them one little bit.”

  Norton shrugged. “Captain Future and his aides don’t seem uneasy about it.”

  “How do the Titanians make those outlandish throbbing sounds?” Winters asked querulously of Ezra.

  “It’s their Talkin’ Trees,” explained the old Planet Patrol veteran. “They take big fern-trees, trim ‘em to upright trunks, hollow ‘em out inside and use ‘em like big organ-pipes, by forcin’ air up through ‘em. All the tribes here on Titania talk to each other that way, and —”

  Ezra’s explanation was interrupted at this point by a weird new sound that came from the jungle west of the camp. It was a shout, a booming cry that could have come from no human throat.

  “That’s Grag yellin’!” exclaimed Ezra, “Somethin’s happened to the Futuremen.”

  Alarm flashed into Joan Randall’s brown eyes. “Maybe the Titanians are attacking them. Come on.”

  She was already running across the camp, drawing the small atom-pistol from her belt-holster.

  “Wait a minute, Joan — oh, dang all fool reckless women!” swore Ezra Gurney, as he followed at top speed.

  His own weapon was cradled in his hand as he and Winters and Cole Norton plunged after her into the green gloom of the jungle.

  The fern-trunks rose about them like thick pillars, supporting flat fronds of foliage whose canopy excluded the pale light of the distant Sun. Bat-winged birds and giant insects flashed away from them in fright.

  They quickly reached the place in the jungle from which that weird cry had come. It was an awesome spot. Giant and mysterious ruins of black artificial stone rose on every side. Massive walls and broken columns were almost covered by trailing vines and the drifted dust of ages.

  These were the oldest and most baffling ruins on any of the nine planets of the Solar System. None of the System’s own human races had built these mighty edifices of the long ago. They had been the handiwork of a people from the stars, a people whose history furnished the scientists of the nine planets with their most colossal riddle.

  A newly-dug excavation gape
d near a lichen-covered wall. Standing beside it towered a huge and incredible figure — a massive, manlike metal robot seven feet high. His photoelectric eyes were gleaming at them as they approached, and his mechanical voice uttered again that booming cry.

  “We’ve struck it,” he was shouting. “Ezra — Joan — the chief has found something big.”

  “What are you talkin’ about, Grag?” Ezra demanded testily of the big robot. “Did you set up that tarnation bellowin’ just because you Futuremen found another crumblin’ old stone?”

  “This one is different,” Grag boomed excitedly. “Wait till the chief explains it.”

  Two men were clambering carefully out of the excavation, bearing between them a heavy stone tablet closely inscribed with weird hieroglyphs.

  Captain Future’s gray eyes were snapping with excitement as he and Otho set the heavy tablet down. The tall, red-haired young Earthman who was the most famous planeteer and spacefarer in the System was openly exultant as he turned to the newcomers.

  “This tablet we’ve unearthed is likely to he the most important Denebian inscription ever yet found,” he declared.

  “It’s certainly the heaviest,” grumbled Otho, as he straightened.

  OTHO, one of the three famous companions of Captain Future, was a striking, lithe, white figure. The synthetic man, or android, had a look of exasperation in his slant green eyes as he turned to Grag:

  “Why didn’t you give us a hand with that tablet instead of standing there bellowing like a Jovian bull-buffalo?” he demanded.

  “It was your turn to do a little work,” retorted Grag. “I did all the digging, didn’t I? I’m tired.”

  “Bah, whoever heard of a robot getting tired?” jeered Otho.

  Simon Wright, the Brain, had followed them up out of the excavation and was hovering intently over the mysterious stone tablet.

  He was the strangest figure of them all, this third member of the Futuremen. A living human brain, a brain that had once lived in the body of a great scientist, dwelt now in a square, transparent serum-case. His stalk-borne lens-like artificial eyes were studying the hieroglyphs with unusual eagerness.

  “What’s so important about this particular tablet, Curt?” Joan asked Captain Future in a puzzled voice.

  Curt Newton explained. “It’s undoubtedly of the latest date of any Denebian inscription ever found. That means that it may hold the answer to the riddle of why the Denebians’ cosmic empire fell.”

  The faces of Philip Winters and Cole Norton expressed comprehension, but old Ezra Gurney looked perplexed.

  “I’m a space-man, not a scientist,” he complained. “What’s this big riddle you’re talkin’ about?”

  “It’s the greatest mystery of history, Ezra,” said Captain Future. “You know, don’t you, that our Solar System was colonized ages ago by the people of the distant star Deneb? Those Denebians were a super-civilized race who colonized nearly every habitable star-system in the galaxy, by somehow breeding people who would fit the different conditions.

  “Then, millions of years ago, that Denebian cosmic empire was suddenly wrecked. Their far-separated colonists sank into isolation and barbarism. They were our own ancestors, the ones in this System. But why did their galactic empire meet disaster? It’s always been a baffling riddle.”

  “And you think this inscription holds the answer?” Joan asked eagerly.

  “I’m hoping that it does, because of its comparatively late date,” Curt said with a nod. “That’s why I organized this expedition to investigate these ruins, when I discovered them here last month. They looked so much later in date than any other Denebian ruins ever found.”

  He continued eagerly. “We’ll take this tablet back to camp, and Simon and I will decipher it. You carry it, Grag.”

  Grumbling a little, the big robot reached down and picked up the massive stone tablet as though it were a feather. They started back through the fern-jungle toward the encampment.

  Ezra Gurney suddenly flashed his gun. “Look there!”

  In front of them two shadowy green figures were darting away. Two green-skinned men, clad in tunica of woven fern-fibers and carrying long, slim blow-gun.

  “They’re Titanians — don’t shoot!” Captain Future warned sharply.

  The two moon-natives had already disappeared into the dense jungle. A shrill, discordant cry floated through the green gloom.

  “They been spyin’ on us — and they don’t like us movin’ this tablet from the other Sacred Stones,” Ezra Gurney muttered uneasily.

  “They’re a superstitious lot,” Curt Newton conceded. “But we’ll have no trouble with them if we don’t start a fight.”

  When they reached camp, the stone tablet was carried into the metal shelter-hut used by the Futuremen. Curt Newton and the Brain began their study of the Denebian hieroglyphs at once, while the other two Futuremen and Joan and Ezra Gurney watched with keen interest.

  The Sun, a very small one at this great distance, was sinking toward the horizon. Darkness swept swiftly across the jungle moon. But the gloom was soon relieved. Up into the starry heavens rose the vast green shield of Uranus, a monstrous disc that cast an effulgent green glow upon the surrounding jungle, the metal huts, and the two gleaming spaceships.

  Philip Winters stood at the fire that had been kindled at the center of the camp, looking uneasily toward the jungle. He started violently as someone came up beside him.

  “Oh, it’s you, Norton,” he said with a sigh of relief. “I’m afraid I’m a little jumpy. That incessant clamor is getting on my nerves.”

  THE low, muttering thunder of the Talking Trees was rumbling unceasingly through the night, as the Titanians talked across many leagues.

  “This isn’t exactly a pleasure-resort,” Cole Norton agreed brusquely. In the firelight, his blond, virile face had a frown on it. “I wish now I hadn’t come along on this party. I was hoping I’d be able to learn some of the secrets of the ancient Denebian science, that would be worth something. But the ruins have yielded little except fragments of historical data.”

  The other members of the expedition were gathering around the fire, for the night air was chili. These technicians, all Earthmen with the exception of two Martians and a single Venusian, had spent the day in photographing, measuring, excavating and other tasks amid the great ruins.

  “Plenty of Titanians around camp tonight,” growled one big X-Ray photographer. “They’re flitting around in the jungle like shadows.”

  At that moment, Captain Future emerged from the metal hut in which he and the Brain had spent long hours of study. The men turned to him with quick interest.

  “Have you succeeded in deciphering the tablet?”

  Curt nodded. His tanned, handsome face had an unusual gleam of excitement in it. “We did, and we found something terrific.”

  Cole Norton asked a quick question, “What did you learn from it?”

  Grag was bringing the stone tablet back out of the hut. He put it down by the fire. Otho and the Brain, with Joan and Ezra, followed him.

  Curt’s brilliant eyes swept the expectantly waiting members of the expedition. “The inscription on that tablet is the clue to a tremendous secret of the past,” he told them. “The greatest secret of Denebian science — their secret of artificial evolution.”

  “Artificial evolution?” echoed a Martian technician without comprehension.

  “The Denebians,” Curt reminded him, “colonized hosts of star-systems and worlds throughout the galaxy, each world differing in natural conditions. They had to have colonists who could live in such alien conditions. So they used processes of artificial evolution to breed humans who would fit those alien conditions. We’ve never known how they were able to do that.”

  “And this inscription tells the secret of their power of artificial evolution?” cried Philip Winters.

  The little biologist’s thin face was transfigured with emotion, his eyes blazing behind their spectacles, his whole body trembling with
excitement.

  “This inscription doesn’t tell the secret, but tells where the secret could be found,” Curt corrected the scientist. “It refers to a place called the Chamber of Life, located on a planet called Aar of the Star Deneb. It gives the location of that so-called Chamber of Life, which undoubtedly was the laboratory where the ancient Denebians manipulated their powers of artificial evolution to breed new species of humans for colonizing alien worlds.”

  Winters’ whisper was charged with awe. “They bred new species of humans? They knew how to do that?”

  His voice rose, shrill with excitement. “If we could find that secret, we could accelerate evolution artificially. We could transform our whole race into supermen, could make men like gods!”

  Cole Norton’s eyes narrowed slightly as he added slowly, “Why, a secret like that would be worth billions — trillions.”

  Philip Winters’ eager emotion took him to Curt’s side. The little biologist clutched at Captain Future’s arm in his excitement.

  “Captain Future, we could find that secret, if you’ll help!” he cried. “Your ship, the Comet, is the only ship in existence with speed enough to make the traverse to a star as distant as Deneb. You’ll do it?”

  “No, I will not do it,” Curt Newton replied firmly.

  The excited biologist seemed thunderstruck. “But without your help and your ship, that secret will never be found.”

  Captain Future’s face was stern. “I do not intend that that secret shall ever be found. I am against using science to tamper with the evolution of the human race. You might breed gods — or you might breed devils, It’s better for man to evolve slowly and naturally.”

  Philip Winters’ fanatic passion found shrill utterance. “That’s a stupidly reactionary attitude to take. Do you realize what giant strides our race could make overnight, with that power of artificial evolution?”