by Allen Steele
And then he continued to beat at the deck with the severed human arm he grasped in his left hand.
I don’t know how long I stared at him. A few seconds, several minutes, perhaps longer. Jeri was saying something I couldn’t understand; I paid no attention, nor could I respond. It wasn’t until I heard another noise—from behind me, the faint sound of the hatch being shoved open—that I tore my eyes away from the mad captain of the Fool’s Gold.
Bo McKinnon.
He had followed me from the Comet.
And, like the idiot he was, he wasn’t wearing an EVA suit.
The little teardrop ship, the Comet, blasted at top speed toward the Earth and its summoning call. Captain Future thought somberly of the many times he had answered that call. Each time, he and the Futuremen had found themselves called on to battle deadly perils. Was this to be the same this time?
“We can’t always win,” he thought grimly. “We’ve been lucky, but the law of averages eventually has to turn against us.”
—Hamilton; The Triumph of Captain Future (1940)
Despite the name, no one knows the exact origin of Titan Plague.
It was first contracted by members of the Hershel Explorer expedition of 2069, during the Pax’s ill-fated attempt to establish a research outpost on Titan. Although it was later theorized that the virus was indigenous to Titan itself, the fact that it thrived in an oxygen-nitrogen environment led many people to speculate that the Plague had originated somewhere other than Titan’s nitrogen-methane atmosphere. There was even hearsay that the expedition had encountered an extrasolar race on Titan and that the Plague had been passed from Them…but, of course, that was just rumor.
Regardless, the indisputable facts are these: by the time the PARN Hershel Explorer returned to the inner system, the majority of its crew had been driven insane by an airborne virus. The only reason why the three surviving expedition members, including the ship’s commander, were not infected was that they had managed to seal themselves within the command center, where they survived on emergency oxygen supplies and carefully rationed food and water. Most of the unquarantined members butchered each other during the long voyage home; those who did not died in agony when the disease rotted their brains in its terminal stages.
Once the Hershel Explorer reached the asteroid belt, the survivors parked it in orbit around Vesta, then used a lifeboat to escape. Three months later, the Hershel Explorer was scuttled by the PARN Intrepid. By then, Queen Macedonia had decreed that no further expeditions would be sent to Titan and that any vessels attempting to land there would be destroyed by Her Majesty’s navy.
Despite the precautions, though, there had been a few isolated outbreaks of Titan Plague, albeit rare and confined to colonies in the outer system. No one knew exactly how the disease spread from the Hershel Explorer, although it was believed that it had been carried by the survivors themselves despite rigorous decontamination. Even though the first symptoms resembled little more than the once-common cold, the homicidal dementia that quickly followed was unmistakable. When someone came down with the Plague, there was no other option than to isolate them, remove anything that could be used as a weapon, and wait until they died.
No cure had ever been found.
Somehow, in some way we would never know, the Plague had found its way aboard the Fool’s Gold. In the close confines of the mass-driver, it had swept through the entire vessel, driving its crew insane before they realized what had hit them. Perhaps the captain had figured it out, yet despite his precautions he himself was infected.
I was safe because I had worn a spacesuit while exploring the ship. But Bo McKinnon…
Captain Future, Man of Tomorrow, dauntless hero of the spaceways. In his search for adventure, McKinnon had recklessly entered the vessel without bothering to don a suit.
“Did you shut the airlock?” I snapped.
“What? Huh?” Pale, visibly shaken by the horrors he had seen, McKinnon was staring at the maniac crouched in the airlock behind us. “Airlock? What…which…?”
I grabbed his shoulders and shook him so hard his headset fell down around his neck. “The Comet airlock! Did you shut it behind you, or did you leave it wide open?”
Unable to hear me now, he stammered until he realized that his headset was ajar. He fumbled with it until the earphones were back in place. “The airlock? I think so, I…”
“Think so? You moron, did you…?”
“Furland, oh my God…” He gaped at the wreckage around him. “What happened to these people? Did they…watch out!”
I turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of the madman as he lurched to his feet. Howling at the top of his lungs, he charged toward us, flailing the severed arm like a cricket bat.
I threw McKinnon aside. As he sprawled across the deck, I grabbed the airlock hatch and shoved it closed. An instant later the creature hit the opposite side of the hatch. He almost banged it open, but I put my shoulder against it. The hatch held, and a twist of lockwheel sealed it airtight; nonetheless, I could feel dull vibrations as the madman hammered against it with his hideous trophy.
I couldn’t keep him locked in there forever. Sooner or later, he would find the lockwheel and remember how it worked. Perhaps then I could overcome him—if I was lucky, considering his berserk rage—but even then, I didn’t dare bring him aboard the Comet.
There was only one solution. I found the airlock’s outer control panel and flipped open its cover. “I’m sorry, sir,” I whispered to the lunatic. “May God have mercy on us both.”
Then I pushed the switch that jettisoned the outer hatch.
The alarm bells that rang throughout the bridge were the poor man’s funeral dirge. There was long silence after I shut off the alarms, finally broken by McKinnon’s voice.
“Mr. Furland, you just murdered that man.”
I turned back around. McKinnon had managed to struggle to his feet; he clutched the back of a chair for support, and he glared at me with outraged eyes.
Before I could respond, Jeri’s voice came to me over the comlink: “Rohr, he shut the airlock on the way out. The Comet hasn’t been infected.”
I let out my breath. For once, Bo had managed to do something right on his own. “Good deal, kiddo. Keep it shut until I come back aboard.”
I stepped away from the airlock, heading for the helm station on the other side of the bridge. McKinnon planted himself in my path. “Did you hear me, Mr. Furland?” he demanded, his adam’s apple bobbing beneath his beard. “You just killed a man…I saw you do it! You…”
“Don’t remind me. Now get out of my way.” I pushed him aside and marched toward the helm.
One of its flatscreens depicted a schematic chart of the asteroid’s position and estimated course. As I suspected, someone aboard the mass-driver had deliberately laid in the new course during a fit of insanity. Probably the captain himself, considering the fact that he had locked himself in here.
“I’m placing you under arrest!” McKinnon yelled. “Under my jurisdiction as an agent of the Planet Police, I…”
“There’s no such thing.” I bent over the keypad and went to work accessing the main computer, my fingers thick and clumsy within the suit gloves. “No Planet Police, no asteroid pirates. Just a ship whose air ducts are crawling with the Plague. You’re…”
“I’m Captain Future!”
The virus must have already affected him. I could have checked to see if he was displaying any of the flu-like symptoms that were supposed to be the Plague’s first signs, but he was the least of my worries just now.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t access the program for the central navigation system. Lack of a password that had probably died along with one of the damned souls aboard this ship, and none of the standard overrides or interfaces worked either. I was completely locked out, unable to alter the vessel’s velocity or trajectory that had it propelling 2046-Barr straight toward Mars.
“And what are you talking about, not letting
anyone aboard the Comet until you give the word?” McKinnon was no longer hovering over me; he had found the late captain’s chair and had taken it as his own, as if assuming command of a vessel far larger than his measly freighter. “I’m the boss of this ship, not you, and I’m staying in charge until…”
Okay. The helm wouldn’t obey any new instructions. Maybe it was still possible to scuttle the Fool’s Gold. I accessed the engineering subsystem and began searching for a way to shut down the primary coolant loop of the gas-core reactor and its redundant safety systems. If I timed it right, perhaps the Comet would make a clean getaway before the reactor overloaded…and if we were goddamned lucky, the explosion might knock the asteroid sufficiently off-course.
“Rohr?” Jeri again. “What’s going on up there?”
I didn’t want to tell her, not with McKinnon eavesdropping on our comlink.
At the sound of her voice, he surged to his feet. “Joan! He’s working for Ul Quorn, the Magician of Mars! He’s going to…!”
“Fuck him!” I yelled. “I’m working on it! Just get the Comet ready to…!”
I heard him coming long before he reached me. I stood up and, pulling back my arm, landed a right hook square against his hairy jaw.
It stopped him, but it wouldn’t keep him stopped. McKinnon was a big guy. He staggered back, his eyes unfocused as he groped at the chair for support. “Traitor,” he mumbled, feeling at his mouth with his left hand. “You traitor, you…”
I didn’t have time for this shit, so I punched him again, this time square in the nose. Second shot did the trick; he reeled backward, sagged against the chair, and flopped flat on his back.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
Even within the thick padding of my gloves, my knuckles hurt like hell. “Something that should have been done a long time ago,” I murmured.
Cute line. I used up the last of my luck that way. I scrambled at the helm console for several more minutes before I submitted to the inevitable. Like the navigation controls, the engineering subsystem wouldn’t obey my commands without the proper passwords. It was possible that they were written down somewhere, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to go searching through the operations manuals, especially since most of them were strewn across the bridge like so much garbage.
We weren’t out of options yet. There was still one final alternative, one which McKinnon himself had given us.
It was then that I knew that Captain Future had to die.
“Captain Future is dead!”
The rumbling voice of the big green Jovian space-sailor rose above the laughter and chatter and clink of goblets, in this crowded Venusopolis spacemen’s café. He eyed his little knot of companions at the bar, as though challenging them to dispute him.
One of them, a hard-bitten spacemen, a swarthy little Mercurian, shook his head thoughtfully.
“I’m not so sure. It’s true that the Futuremen have been missing for months. But they’d be a hard bunch to kill.”
—Hamilton; Outlaws of the Moon (1942)
As I write, I’m back on the Moon, occupying a corner table in Sloppy Joe’s. It’s close to closing time; the crowds have thinned out and the bartender has rung the bell for last call. He’ll let me stay after he closes the doors, though. Heroes never get booted out with the riff-raff, and there’s been no shortage of free drinks ever since I returned from Ceres.
After all, I’m the last person to see Captain Future alive.
The news media helped us maintain our alibi. After all, it was a story that had everything. Adventure, romance, blood and guts, countless lives at stake. Best of all, a noble act of self-sacrifice. It’ll make a great vid. I sold the rights yesterday.
Because it’s been so widely told, you already know how the story ends. Realizing that he had been fatally infected with Titan Plague, Bo McKinnon—excuse me, Captain Future—issued his final instructions as commanding officer of the TBSA Comet.
He told me to return to the ship, and once I was safely aboard, he ordered Jeri to cast off and get the Comet as far away as possible.
Realizing what he intended to do, we tried to talk him out of it. Oh, and how we argued and pleaded with him, telling him that we could place him in biostasis until we returned to Earth, where doctors could attempt to save his life.
In the end, though, McKinnon simply cut off his comlink so that he could meet his end with dignity and grace.
Once the Comet was gone and safely out of range, Captain Future managed to instruct the mass-driver’s main computer to overload the vessel reactors. While he sat alone in the abandoned bridge, waiting for the countdown, there was just enough time for him to transmit one final message of courage…
Don’t make me repeat it, please. It’s bad enough that the Queen read it aloud during the memorial service, but now I understand that it’s going to be inscribed upon the base of twice-life size statue of McKinnon that’s going to be erected at Arsia Station. Jeri did her best when she wrote it, but between you and me, I still think it’s a complete crock.
Anyway, the thermonuclear blast not only obliterated the Fool’s Gold, but it also sufficiently altered the trajectory of 2046. The asteroid came within five thousand kilometers of Mars; its close passage was recorded by the observatory on Phobos, and the settlements in the Central Meridian reported the largest micrometeor shower in the history of the colonies.
And now Bo McKinnon is remembered as Captain Future, one of the greatest heroes in the history of humankind.
It was the least Jeri could have done for him.
Considering what a jerk Bo had been all the way to the end, I could have tried to claim the credit, but her strong will persevered. I suppose she’s right; it would look bad if it was known that McKinnon had gone out as a raving lunatic who had to be coldcocked by his second officer.
Likewise, no one has to know that four missiles launched from the Comet destroyed the mass-driver’s main reactor, thus causing the explosion that averted 2046-Barr from its doomsday course. The empty weapon pod before the Comet reached Ceres, and the small bribe paid to a minor Pax bureaucrat insured that all records of it ever having been installed on the freighter were completely erased.
It hardly matters. In the end, everyone got what they wanted.
As first officer of the Comet, Jeri Lee became its new commander. She offered me her old job, and since the Jove Commerce deal was down the tubes, I gratefully accepted. It wasn’t long after that before she also offered to show me the rest of her tattoos, an invitation that I also accepted. Her clan still won’t speak to her, especially since she now plans to marry a Primary, but at least her fellow Superiors been forced to claim her as one of their own.
For now, life is good. There’s money in the bank, we’ve shucked our black sheep status, and there’s no shortage of companies who want to hire the legendary Futuremen of the TBSA Comet. Who knows? Once we get tired of working the belt, maybe we’ll settle down and take a shot at beating the odds on this whole cross-breeding thing.
And Bo got what he wanted, even though he didn’t live long enough to enjoy it. In doing so, perhaps humankind got what it needed.
There’s only one thing that still bothers me.
When McKinnon went nuts aboard the Fool’s Gold and tried to attack me, I assumed that he had come down with the Plague. This was a correct assumption; he had been infected the moment he had come through the airlock.
However, I later learned that it takes at least six hours for Titan Plague to fully incubate within a human being, and neither of us had been aboard the Fool’s Gold for nearly half that long.
If McKinnon was crazy at the end, it wasn’t because of the Plague. To this day, I have no idea what made him snap…unless he believed that I was trying to run off with his ship, his girl, and his goddamn glory.
Hell, maybe I was.
Last night, some nervous kid—a cargo grunt off some LEO freighter, his union card probably still uncreased—sidled up to me at the ba
r and asked for my autograph. While I was signing the inside cover of his logbook, he told me a strange rumor he had recently heard: Captain Future managed to escape from the Fool’s Gold just before it blew. According to him, prospectors in the inner belt report spotting a gig on their screens, one whose pilot answers their calls as Curt Newton before transmissions are lost.
I bought the youngster a drink and told him the truth. Naturally, he refused to believe me, nor can I blame him.
Heroes are hard to find. We need to welcome them whenever they appear in our midst. You’ve just got to be careful to pick the right guy, because it’s easy for someone to pretend to be what they’re not.
Captain Future is dead.
Long live Captain Future.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although largely forgotten today, Captain Future was a popular pulp-fiction character of the 1940’s. Created by Better Publications editor Mort Weisinger during the 1939 World Science Fiction Convention, Curt Newton was featured in his own magazine for several years, and later in Startling Stories. Several Captain Future novels were reprinted in paperback in the late ’60s; since then, however, the character has vanished into obscurity.
This story is dedicated to the late Edmond Hamilton, author of most of the Captain Future adventures.
The author wishes to thank Eleanor Wood, the executor of Hamilton’s literary estate, for permission to use brief quotes from his Captain Future stories.
THE CAPTAIN FUTURE DUET
The Exile of Evening Star
Joan Randall ran into his arms. Tears of joy glimmered in her eyes as her soft face lifted to his. In this moment, she did not look like the cool, alert girl agent of the Planet Police who had shared more than one dangerous adventure with Curt Newton.
“Captain Future, I knew you’d come back!” she cried. “Everyone said you’d met death out there in interstellar space, but I knew you’d return some day!”