“The whole System is ringing with your name again, Captain Future!” Joan was saying warmly. “Billions of people bless you and your comrades.”
Curt shifted uncomfortably.
“There’s no reason for them to. Hang it, it’s only the fun of the thing that leads me off on these adventures.”
“You’re not foolin’ anybody when you say that,” Ezra Gurney drawled. “But it’s what I’d expect you to say.”
Otho broke into the conversation. The android had been staring suspiciously at a big bundle under Grag’s arm, a bundle at which Eek, the moon-pup, was eagerly sniffing.
“What have you got there — another nuisance pet of some kind?” the android demanded of Grag.
Grag, for answer, unwrapped the thing. It was a huge chunk of pure silver.
“I got it in Tartarus for Eek,” the big robot said proudly. “I promised it to him for what he did.”
“You’re going to feed him all that silver?” cried Otho.”Why, he’ll be staggering drunk all the way home! That much silver will give him a hang-over for a year to come!”
“It will not,” Grag defended indignantly. “And I do not want to hear you speak ill of Eek again, Otho. Remember, you owe your life to him.”
“I owe my life to that pest?” Otho repeated furiously.
“Yes, you do,” Grag said severely. And then the big robot spoke to the moon-pup, voicing the thought he was projecting. “It’s all right now, Eek. Uncle Otho will be your friend.”
“Uncle Otho — uncle to that nuisance?” Otho choked, and for once could say no more.
Curt Newton was laughing. He held out his hand to Ezra Gurney and Joan, in goodbye.
“We’d better be blasting off,” he grinned. “It’s back to Earth’s Moon for us, where Simon and I have some interesting experiments to resume if we can keep these two quiet.”
The Futuremen were already entering the Comet. Curt turned at the door, waving his arm.
“See you in space sometime!” he called.
“We’re sure to be seein’ you if there’s trouble afoot!” called back Ezra Gurney.
Joan said nothing. But as the Comet lifted skyward with a roar and flash of rocket-fire, her eyes clung to it.
She watched the little tear-drop ship zooming up into the dusky sky, leaving a shining rocket trail across the stars as Captain Future and his band headed Earthward, Moonward, homeward.
Then the fading, shining trail amid the stars seemed to blur as her eyes filled. She felt Ezra’s hand patting her shoulder and the old marshal’s drawling voice was understanding.
“He’s got to go, Joan — he’s got a job to do, the biggest one any man ever had, watchin’ over the whole System,” drawled the old veteran. “But we’ll be seein’ him again, like he said. Sooner or later, we’ll be needin’ him again — and he’ll come.”
“Yes, I know that,” she said, her voice a little unsteady.
It was the truth, she knew. The future of the System, of an expanding, space-pioneering race, bulked big with threatening dangers.
When those dangers came, the great signal light on Earth’s northern pole would flare its summons again to the wizard of science and his comrades, calling Captain Future.
And then — and always — Captain Future would answer that call.
THE END
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Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) Page 19