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

by Edmond Hamilton

  He landed near the ship and strode eagerly toward the men, his grey eyes shining in anticipation. There were eight of the men. They had been digging ores out of the lunar rock, to be used as fuel in the cyclotrons of their ship. The ship itself was a small twelve-man cruiser that looked like a private yacht, but the men were a hard-bitten, evil-faced lot.

  Their leader was a burly, beady-eyed giant who kept his hand on the hilt of his atom-pistol as he watched Curt Newton approach. Curt heard the giant’s voice speaking to his men on the universal space-suit phone.

  “It’s only a boy, men. But where in the devil’s name did a boy come from in this cursed Moon-desert?”

  “Maybe he lives here somewhere,” suggested one of the men.

  “Maybe you’re a fool!” retorted the giant. “Nobody lives on the Moon — nobody ever visits it unless they run out of fuel as we did.”

  SAVAGE FACES

  Curt Newton had stopped a few feet from the men and was looking at them eagerly. The first men he had ever seen! He felt a little disappointed as he surveyed their brutal faces. Somehow, he had not expected them to look so coarse, so savage.

  “Who are you, lad, and what are you doing here?” rapped the giant leader suspiciously. “Spying on us?”

  “Spying on you?” Curt repeated bewilderedly. “Why should I spy on you? Are you running away from someone?”

  One of the group snickered. “Well, Earth isn’t exactly a healthy place when you’ve mutinied and murdered!”

  “Shut up, you!” roared the giant. His savage eyes swept Curt’s small figure. “Where’d you come from, boy — and who are you?”

  “I’m Curtis Newton and I live here — over in Tycho crater,” he answered frankly.

  The big man’s eyes slitted and he stepped forward and grabbed Curt’s wrist. “You live here? Don’t lie to me, you little space-rat!”

  Curt’s wrist hurt and his surprise and amazement at being so received by the fellow-men he had been eager to see made him react swiftly.

  JU-JITSU

  He ducked and spun around with a lightning movement and thrust of shoulder muscles that Otho had taught. The super-ju-jitsu trick sent the giant flying back to sprawl on his back ten feet away.

  Curt could have escaped, then. But he was still too startled and bewildered by the unfriendly reception to think of himself. He was grabbed by the other men before he could retreat.

  The giant leader was livid with fury. “You cocky brat, I’ll —”

  “Boss, wait!” cried one of his men excitedly. “This boy said his name was Newton, didn’t he? And he looks just like that famous scientist who disappeared fifteen years ago in space. His name was Newton, too.”

  “What of it?” roared the furious giant.

  “The Newton who disappeared had scientific secrets supposed to be worth billions!” cried the other. “If this brat is his son —”

  “By heaven!” swore the giant, his eyes lighting with avarice. He demanded of Curt, “Where’s this place in Tycho crater you live at?”

  Curt had had time to get over his amazement. The boy had never seen men before. But he knew instinctively that these men were evil.

  CURT SENSES PERIL

  He sensed peril to the Brain and Grag and Otho, if he told these men where the Moon-laboratory lay. He decided swiftly to tell nothing. With calm gray eyes, he stared at his captors through his helmet.

  “Won’t tell, eh?” said the big leader. His lips twisted in an ugly smile. “I’ve made tougher men than a stripling kid talk. Hold him tight, men — this won’t take long.”

  He reached and turned the tap on the oxygen-tank of Curt’s space-suit, shutting off the flow of air into the boy’s suit.

  “When you want bad enough to breathe, you can start talking,” he told the boy complacently.

  Curt made no answer. The boy, held by a dozen hands, knew an attempt to break free was useless.

  He remained silent, looking with level eyes into the brutal, helmeted faces of his captors.

  His head began to spin dizzily as the air inside his helmet became hot and foul. There was a roaring in his ears.

  Yet Curt Newton’s purpling face did not change a line in its expression, his glazing eyes still stared levelly at his captors. Even though his body was sagging limp, the boy’s stony face moved no muscle.

  The men holding him stirred uneasily, their brutal pleasure in cruelty changing gradually to an uneasy wonder.

  “The kid ain’t human!” muttered one of them. “He’s dyin’ — and he keeps looking at us the same way —”

  A SOUL OF STEEL

  Curt Newton felt that he was, indeed, dying. He could only dimly see, the roar in his ears was deafening. But he would not show weakness or cry out, even now. The rigid training of the Brain and the robot and the android had put steel into his soul.

  Then dimly, Curt heard a startled cry from one of his captors. He felt himself released, saw the men clawing out their atom-pistols and whirling frantically to meet two charging figures.

  The two were Grag and Otho. The android in his space-suit and the robot, who needed none, held heavy metal bars raised aloft and their eyes were blazing with deadly purpose.

  The bars crashed down on one glassite helmet after another as Otho moved with incredible speed and Grag stalked like an avenging metal giant.

  Men, suddenly suffocated by the shattering of their helmets, fell clawing at their throats.

  Curt Newton saw this much — and then for the first time in his life lost consciousness. When he came to, he found himself supported in Grag’s mighty metal arms. The robot had turned on his oxygen supply.

  Beyond him and Otho, the boy saw the still figures of the men.

  “They are dead,” came Otho’s fierce, hissing voice. “It is too bad there were no more of them to kill.”

  “You have been very bad,” Grag boomed to Curt. “Had not Simon Wright used the view-scope to locate you, when we missed you, you might now be dead. You go back now to Simon for punishment.”

  A very silent and chastened boy entered the Moon-laboratory with his two guardians.

  “I am ready to be punished, Simon,” he said in a subdued voice.

  “There will be no punishment,” the Brain said metallically. “Sit down, Curtis.”

  THE REVELATION

  Astonished, the boy seated himself. “The time has come,” said the Brain slowly, “when you must be told who you are and how you came here on this lonely Moon with us three.”

  “Those men said something about a Newton who had discovered great scientific secrets!” Curt interrupted eagerly. “Was that my father?”

  “That was your father,” answered Simon solemnly. “He and your mother died long ago — soon after you were born. Listen, and you shall hear how they died.”

  The metallic voice rasped on, telling the story of that long-dead day when Roger Newton and his young wife had met their deaths at the hands of covetous men.

  And as the tale went on, young Curt Newton’s boyish face became strained and strange.

  “So you see,” concluded the Brain, “that there are many evil men in the System who still would kill you for the secrets in this laboratory. That is why we have not let you go forth yet among other men. You are not yet able to cope with the deadly enemies you would meet.”

  The boy slowly nodded his red head. “I understand, Simon. But I still want to go, out there among the other worlds. I can go some day, can’t I?”

  “Yes, lad,” answered the Brain thoughtfully. “Someday you can go, someday you will know all those worlds. And I think that all the world will know you someday —”

  That was the first meeting with other men of the boy whom the System was one day to know as Captain Future.

  How Curt Newton Became Captain Future

  From the Summer 1942 issue of Captain Future

  The World’s Greatest Space-Farer Begins His Trail of Adventure When He Battles for Justice on Pluto!

  UPON the icy surf
ace of the Arctic planet Pluto, there gleamed a big glassite dome like a bubble of warm light. This was the small Earthman trading-town that was the one outpost of Earth on the frontier planet. For this was in the wild, early years before the bigger domed cities to come had yet been built. Across the blizzard-swept ice-fields of the bitter planet, a small group of native Plutonians trudged toward the Earthman trading town.

  These natives of Pluto, towering men whose bodies were completely covered with long black hair and whose eyes were huge-pupiled ones of odd expression, hauled with them several sledges piled high with the furs they regularly brought to exchange with the Earthman traders.

  THE YOUNG EARTHMEN

  With the Plutonians marched an oddly dissimilar figure — a young Earthman, hardly more than a youth.

  He wore a heavy felt cold-suit that could not keep out all the bitter chill of the screaming wind and snow. Yet his youthful, handsome face and clear gray eyes were vivid with excited interest.

  “What do you get in exchange for the furs, Oraq?” he asked the towering Plutonian leader beside him, speaking the latter’s tongue fluently.

  Oraq answered gloomily. “We get little enough, these days. The first Earthman traders were fair, but now they cheat us.”

  Curt Newton — for the Earth youth was he — looked incredulous. “You must be wrong, Oraq. Earthmen wouldn’t cheat you.”

  FIRST VISIT TO PLUTO

  Curt Newton was eighteen years old. And this was his first visit to Pluto.

  This was the last stop upon a voyage that had taken him and his three stranger tutors and guardians out through the whole System. This exhaustive tour of the System had been designed by the Brain as the conclusion of Curt’s unparalleled education.

  Unparalleled had been Curt’s education, indeed! For eighteen years, he had lived upon Earth’s Moon where he had been born.

  There his three guardians — Simon Wright, the Brain, Otho, the android, and Grag, the robot — had reared him and given him a training in scientific wizardry and in physical and mental skill which no other tutors could have given.

  The growing youth had chafed to leave the Moon, to see the rest of the great System that pioneering Earthmen had explored and colonized. But not until now had the Brain deemed him ready.

  PLANET TO PLANET

  Now, for months, they had been making their way from planet to planet in their small space-ship. Young Curt Newton had learned the secrets of Martian deserts, the depths of Jovian jungles, the great plains of Saturn and the sky-storming mountains of Uranus, all at first hand.

  They had been for weeks here on Pluto. They had been dwelling with the Plutonian natives, in their strange ice-city of Qulun, north of the Avernus Sea. Curt had already evinced his unique knack of making friends with non-terrestrial planetary peoples.

  He had become a comrade of the simple, primitive Plutonians — sailing the stormy ocean with them, hunting the korlats and other great fur-bearing beasts, and now he came with them to trade their furs with the Earthmen.

  The little party reached the double-doored entrance of the small domed trading-town and entered. The interior was warm and light. Great atomic generators that throbbed in a guarded building poured forth a flood of power to heat and illuminate this domed enclosure.

  Oraq, the Plutonian tribesman, grunted in discomfort. “It is too hot in here. Let us trade the furs and leave before we grow sick.”

  But young Curt Newton had thrown back the felt helmet from his red head and was breathing in the warm air with relief.

  “There is where we trade the furs,” Oraq said, pointing to the biggest of the metalloy buildings crowded inside the dome.

  THE TRADING POST

  The building had a cavernous interior, piled with great bundles of valuable Plutonian furs and with cases of cheap trade-goods. There were a few other Plutonians hanging about, and a crowd of rough Earthman hunters and trappers who stared at Curt as he entered with the Plutonians.

  “First time I ever saw an Earth youngster trail with the Hairies,” remarked a burly Earthman. “Look, he can even talk their lingo.”

  Curt Newton felt uncomfortable. He didn’t know much about Earthmen. He’d had small contact with them during his eighteen years.

  The two proprietors of the trading post had come forward — a gross-faced, stocky man of middle age and a thin-lipped older man. They looked appraisingly at the bundles of furs Oraq’s men had hauled in.

  “We trade,” Oraq mumbled, speaking his few words of the Earth language with difficulty. “We want knives, spearheads.”

  The older man nodded and brought out six cheap steel knives and as many spearheads, which he laid down.

  Oraq’s face fell. “Not enough,” the Plutonian articulated.

  “It’s all you’ll get,” retorted the thin-lipped trader calmly.

  Curt Newton burst forth. He had been watching indignantly. “Why, that’s robbery!” he declared. “Those furs are worth a thousand times what you’re offering. Take them someplace else, Oraq.”

  LORDS OF POWER

  The men in the room burst into a guffaw. And the thin-lipped older trader told Curt sourly, “You must be new to Pluto, boy. There are no other traders on this planet. Wilson and Kincaid — that’s me and my partner — have the only trading post here. For we have the only atomic power plant here, to keep a post going with heat and light.”

  “That’s right, sonny,” smirked Kincaid, his gross-faced partner. “That’s why these Hairies call us the Lords of Power.”

  Curt looked incredulous. “But the Planet Patrol of the System Government —”

  Kincaid chuckled. “Sonny, the Patrol’s got enough to handle these days in the inner planets without coming away out here. The only law out here is the law of the Lords of Power, and don’t you forget it.”

  Curt’s eyes flashed. “I’ll see that System law comes here!” he flamed. “I’ll see that the Government hears of your cheating, thieving monopoly!”

  The thin lips of Wilson, the older partner, became thinner and he looked dangerously at the redhaired youth.

  “Boy, you’ve got things to learn,” he said calmly. “You’ve got to learn who the Lords of Power are.” And Wilson spoke to the burly men behind Curt in sharp command. “Teach him who we are, men.”

  Curt tried to spin around, but a stunning blow from a clenched fist caught him before he completed the movement. He reeled and felt another blow split his lips, and his head rang with the shock.

  He was only dimly aware then of further smashing blows, of falling strengthlessly to the floor, of heavy boots kicking him. He slipped into a merciful unconsciousness.

  THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE

  When he awoke, sore and bruised and cold, he found himself being carried over the ice-fields by Oraq’s Plutonians. Oraq helped him as he unsteadily tried to stand erect.

  “They beat you and threw you out of the dome!” raged Oraq. “They held us off with their atom-guns, and would have slain us where we stood if we tried to stop them.”

  The Plutonian added fiercely, “We shall gather all the tribes and attack these evil Lords of Power, and destroy them.”

  “No!” Curt said through puffed lips. “It’s for me to see that justice is done, Oraq. Take me back now to your city.”

  When they reached the ice-city of Qulun, and Otho and Grag and the Brain learned what had occurred, the android and robot exploded with rage. Hands had been laid upon their beloved ward and pupil!

  “We’ll go back there and blast them!” snarled Otho. “We’ll make these so-called Lords of Power sorry they ever saw you before they die.”

  “No!” Curt Newton contradicted. His young eyes had a strange, cold new light. “We’ll mete out justice to them — not mere vengeance. We’ll force Wilson and Kincaid to go back to Earth and surrender themselves to the justice of the Government.”

  “But how can we do that?” Grag objected. “They’ll never leave Pluto of their own accord.”

  THE SONIC-SILENT
BEAM

  “I think they will,” Curt declared. “The atomic generators are all that make their domed trading-town habitable. And we can ‘kill’ those generators, by using the inhibiting damping-ray that you showed me how to produce. That, and the Brain’s ‘sonic-silent’ beam, will force them out.”

  “The ‘sonic-silent’ beam?” cried Otho. “Say, I begin to understand your plan now! You’re figuring to use it to —”

  “Yes,” Curt nodded. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

  Curt’s youthful, bruised face suddenly changed from its coldly grim expression. A look of dismay appeared in his eyes as he met the oddly intent gaze of the Brain.

  “I forgot myself for a moment,” Curt said uncertainly. “I was giving you orders. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  The Brain broke a long silence. “Curtis, you need not apologize. We shall do as you suggest.”

  THE DAWN OF MANHOOD

  That moment, all four of them knew, marked a change forever in their relations. It meant that Curt Newton was no longer their pupil, their ward. It meant that he had suddenly become their leader — that new, grim purpose had suddenly brought manhood.

  That night, the big atomic generators in the domed trading-town suddenly went dead. The puzzled engineers, after working for a time in vain, summoned Wilson and Kincaid.

  “We can’t understand it,” they told the two self-styled Lords of Power. “The generators should work, but they just don’t.”

  “You mean, you don’t know your business!” raged Kincaid. “You get them working, before we all freeze.”

  But though the engineers labored frantically, the great cyclotrons remained dead. The toiling men never dreamed of the little ship that was hovering far up in the dusky sky, playing upon the dome the invisible inhibiting force that “killed” all atomic activity.

  CHILL IN THE AIR

  The air in the dome began to grow cold as the powerful atomic heaters ceased functioning. It had been dark for hours except for make-shift lights. More and more chill grew the air, frost gathering on the dome. The shivering Earthmen watched anxiously as the sweating engineers labored at their fruitless task under the lashing words of their employers.