Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940)

by Edmond Hamilton

  Curt Newton saw then the work that could make best use of his amazing abilities. The System peoples needed a defender against evilly ambitious men who were making use of the expanding powers of science to further their own unscrupulous purposes. A champion was needed who could more than match such scientific criminals. Curt Newton, remembering how his parents had died, had resolved to become that champion.

  So was born — Captain Future!

  When Curt had first flown to Earth from his lonely lunar home and offered his services to the President, he had called himself by that name. The name was now famous from Mercury to Pluto. Time after time, Captain Future and the Futuremen had come from their home on the Moon in answer to the President’s call, to do battle with criminal men who wrongly used their scientific powers. And time after time, Curt and his comrades had, by sheer scientific wizardry and daring, beaten down such evil plotters.

  “We can’t always win,” Curt thought, again as he stared at Earth. Then he grinned. “But it’s a great game while it lasts.”

  SEVERAL hours later, the Comet screamed down through the darkness toward the blazing lights of New York, on the right side of Earth. Curt had not stopped at their Moon home. The emergency must certainly be vital.

  He headed the little ship toward the looming spire of Government Tower and landed it neatly on the truncated summit. Only two ships were allowed to land there — that of the President, and the Comet belonging to Captain Future.

  “Come along,” Curt said quickly. “Bring Simon, Grag.”

  They hurried down the private stair that led to the President’s office. The people in that office set in on alarm. Curt instantly recognized the President, Halk Anders, Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall.

  These four people, in turn, uttered relieved exclamations. They beheld the strange quartet — the tall, red-haired, young wizard of science, the metal robot, carrying the Brain, the lithe android.

  “Saw your signal, sir,” Curt said quickly to the President. “Hello, Joan, Ezra.”

  “You’re a darned welcome sight, Cap’n Future,” declared Ezra Gurney. “We’re in the devil of a mess, I sure don’t mind tellin’ you.”

  Joan’s brown eyes were shining with pleasure as she greeted the tall, rangy planeteer she had helped in several of his past cases.

  “We’ve been helpless against the horrible, mysterious trade that’s going on, Captain Future,” she cried impulsively. “This Lifewater traffic —”

  “Lifewater?” Curt’s brows met. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a dreadful poison that’s spreading over the System, Captain Future,” President Carthew answered haggardly.

  Carthew rapidly told of the mysterious traffic that had begun months before. He explained the strange Lifewater which could make aging people temporarily young again. But he told how it also made them addicts of the insidious elixir of rejuvenation.

  Curt’s gray eyes narrowed as he and the Futuremen listened. Joan and the others were watching him with eager hope.

  “So the Planet Police can’t break up the syndicate that’s selling the deadly stuff,” Carthew finished. “They can’t find the heart of this deadly web, the source of the poison.”

  “We’ve learned that the man at the head of the syndicate is called the Life-lord,” Joan put in. “But who is he? On what world does he have his headquarters?

  Where does he get the Lifewater? We can’t find any of that out.”

  Captain Future’s tanned face went hard. He was feeling the cold bitter anger that always arose in him when he crossed the trail of those who dared to use scientific secrets for evil purposes.

  The Lifewater traffic was the most abominable, vicious traffic he had ever encountered. Playing upon the wistful desire of aging people for youth disgusted him. He was horrified by the callous promise of rejuvenation, which made them hopeless slaves of the mysterious elixir.

  He turned to the Brain.

  “This Lifewater, Simon. Could it tie up with the Fountain legend?”

  “I was thinking of that,” rasped the Brain. “It’s possible, lad, though the Fountain has usually been considered only a myth.”

  “What are you referring to, Captain Future?” the President asked bewilderedly. “What’s this Fountain you mention?”

  “Since the first days of space travel, there have been legends all over the System. Every race mentions a wonderful Fountain of Life that’s supposed to exist on some world. The Fountain pours forth waters that presumably have the power of renewing youth. Haven’t you ever heard that story?”

  “Say, I’ve heard it, though I’d forgotten it!” Ezra gurney declared suddenly. When I was a boy and first went to space, lots of people still believed the story. Crazy dreamers were always going off to search for the Fountain of Life.”

  Curt nodded. “That’s the story. Some believed the Fountain of Life was on Mars, others that it was on Saturn, or Neptune, or Pluto. Nearly everyone now considers the tale a myth. But suppose it isn’t a myth? Suppose someone actually found the Fountain of Life, and that it is the source of this poisonous Lifewater?”

  “It seems incredible that an old legend like that could be true,” Joan Randall said wonderingly. “Yet if it is —”

  “Let’s have a look at Webber’s body,” Captain Future interrupted. “We should learn something from the body of a man who suddenly aged and died when the temporary effect of the Lifewater expired.”

  The President led him to the covered corpse in the corner. Curt bent over it.

  “Bring Simon here, Grag.”

  The gray eyes of Captain Future and the glass lens eyes of the Brain keenly inspected the withered cadaver of Wilson Webber.

  Otho and Grag had bent over the pitiful corpse, too. The others in the room maintained a silence that had a quality of awe, as they watched the four strange comrades working together in their quick, sure way.

  “Looks like the Lifewater’s effect was to step up the rate of his body’s metabolism tremendously,” Curt muttered. “As a human body ages, its metabolic processes slow down, weakening the body. I believe the Lifewater’s effect is to accelerate the metabolic processes, both anabolism and katabolism. That would cause temporary rejuvenation.”

  “Aye, lad,” agreed the Brain. “And when the Life-water’s effect expired, the anabolism, or building-up process of tissue, returned to its former low level. But the katabolism, the destructive tearing-down process, remained at the artificially accelerated level. So the man’s tissues were burned out rapidly when the Lifewater effect was not renewed.”

  “How did the Lifewater step up the metabolism like that?” Otho asked keenly. “What chemical agent could cause that?”

  “We’ll have to conduct research with this corpse in the Comet’s laboratory to find that out,” Curt answered. “We can do it on the way to where we’re going now.”

  “Where are we going, Master?” Grag asked.

  “Yes, where you plan to head for, after the Life-lord, Cap’n Future?” old Ezra Gurney repeated.

  Curt Newton spoke crisply. “You were right when you called this a poisonous traffic. It’s got to be smashed swiftly and completely. That can be done only by getting at the head of it. We must find the Life-lord and his secret source of the devilish elixir. The fastest way to penetrate the Life-lord’s syndicate is from the inside — as a customer. That’s the plan we’re going to follow.

  “We’ll try it on Venus. It might arouse suspicion if we worked it here on Earth, where the Planet Police headquarters are. We’ll go to Venus. Otho will disguise himself as an aged Venusian millionaire seeking rejuvenation. The chances are that the syndicate will try to sell Otho the Lifewater.”

  “Then we’ll spring our little trap on them, eh?” Otho said quickly. His slitted eyes sparkled. “Once we get our hands on some of those Lifewater vendors, we can work back to their headquarters.”

  “That’s the idea.” Curt looked somberly at the withered body. “The men behind this hideous business will w
ish they’d never started it, if I can get my hands on them.”

  “Won’t you need us, Captain Future?” Joan asked eagerly. “Don’t you want us to go to Venus, too?”

  Curt shook his head. “I want you and Ezra to go to Jupiter. Make a great show of investigating there. The Life-lord will hear, of it and figure that I’m somewhere around Jupiter. It’ll throw him off guard.”

  He turned to the Futuremen.

  “We’re starting now. There’s no time to lose. Grag, take Simon. Otho, bring that corpse.”

  A few minutes later, the Cornet hurtled out from Earth. Swiftly it headed toward Venus to set the trap for the mysterious Life-lord’s emissaries.

  Chapter 3: The Trap on Venus

  THE STREET of Scientists lies in the northern section of the great Venusian city of Venusopolis. The white cement avenue is bordered by soaring alabaster buildings. All those graceful arches, slender spires and gay, green file roofs show the esthetic leanings of the beauty-loving Venusians. Here are the offices and laboratories of many of the greatest scientists of the cloudy planet.

  It was late morning. The perpetually clouded sky was softly bright when a polished rocket-car throbbed softly amid the leisurely traffic along the street. The car came from the eastern section, where parks, boulevards and magnificent estates fringed the shore of the great Eastern Sea.

  The car drew up before a tall building, and two Venusians emerged. One was obviously a servant, a tall, stalwart, dark-haired young man in a livery of white synthesilk.

  The servant solicitously assisted the other man in clambering out. His master was an old white-haired stooping Venusian, wrapped in a heavy cloak. His wrinkled face and senile, blinking eyes were peering around myopically.

  “Be careful, you fool!” the old man shrilled angrily to the servant helping him. “Are you trying to trip me up? Want to murder me?”

  “Yes, sir — I mean no, sir,” stammered the tall servant. “This way, sir. Doctor Zibo’s offices are in here.”

  “I can see the sign for myself. I’m not blind, you know. Help me up that step. If you let me fall, I’ll break this cane over your thick head.”

  “Yes, sir,” the servant answered hastily. As he bent to help him into the building, he whispered into the old man’s ear. “I’ll pay you back for all this browbeating later, Otho.”

  Otho — for it was he who was disguised as the aged Venusian — chuckled under his breath at Captain Future’s threat.

  “Look where you’re stepping, you blockhead!” he shrilled, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Do you want to trip me again?”

  He and Curt entered the big building. Venusians lounging in the lobby curiously eyed them. The stooped old man and his servant approached the attendant at the televis-announcer board.

  “I want to see Doctor Zin Zibo,” Otho shrilled to the attendant in crackled tones. “At once!”

  “Sorry, you can’t see him,” the attendant replied.

  “And why not, you young whippersnapper?” demanded Otho, with senile wrath. “I’m Ros Ovor, the shipping magnate from Kaubas. I’ve read about this Doctor Zibo’s attempts to rejuvenate animals. I want to see if he can make me a little younger. I can pay him —”

  “But Doctor Zibo isn’t here, sir. He left Venus some months ago for a scientific research trip to several other worlds.”

  “Left Venus?” Otho pretended deep disappointment. “What did the fool want to do that for? I’d have paid him more than he could make in five years, if he could have helped me.”

  Muttering in wrath, Otho turned and hobbled out of the lobby, with his stalwart servant carefully helping him.

  Curt Newton, in his servant disguise, opened the rear door of the rocket-car solicitously. Growling and muttering, Otho clambered painfully inside. Curt abruptly gave him a surreptitious kick that sent the disguised android tumbling in a heap inside.

  “Hey, that’s a devil of a way to treat your employer?” Otho sputtered as he scrambled up.

  Curt laughed and took the driver’s seat.

  “That’ll teach you not to lay it on so thick next time.”

  HE GUIDED the car away from the Street of Scientists. Through the leisurely traffic of the big Venusian city, he sped toward the region of parks and estates by the eastern shore.

  “Do you think that little scene will lure the agents of the Lifewater syndicate to us?” Otho asked eagerly.

  “I feel pretty sure it will,” Curt replied. “They seem to miss mighty few prospects for their unholy wares. If my bet is right, it won’t be long till the local branch of the syndicate hears about a rich old Venusian named Ros Ovor who’s interested in rejuvenation. Then they’ll come around to sell you the Lifewater.”

  “And then we nab them and make them tell where the headquarters of the syndicate are. Hope it works, Chief. But we certainly could have been in a fix back there. What if that Doctor Zibo had happened to be there? Suppose he had agreed to see me?”

  “You don’t think I failed to check that first do you?” Curt retorted. “That’s why I picked Zin Zibo’s lobby as the place to stage our little act. Zibo wasn’t on Venus, so he couldn’t see you.”

  Curt drove across the Venusian metropolis at a sedate pace. He knew the city thoroughly, as he knew most planetary cities.

  The air was soft and warm, laden with the damp breath of the vast swamps whose edge was only a few score miles to the west. Tail, graceful green fern trees and clumps of brilliant fireflowers lined the streets. Men and women in brilliant silks strolled the streets. The white-skinned, dark-haired men were unusually handsome. The women were all languorous beauties, the by-word of loveliness in the System.

  Nobody seemed to be in much of a hurry, for Venusians are a leisurely, easy-going race. Only from the riotous Swampmen’s Quarter and the bustling busy interplanetary docks did the two hear much sound of activity.

  Captain Future drove the rocket-car into the grounds of an impressive shore estate he had temporarily rented under the assumed name. A grove of tall swamp-palms almost surrounded a beautiful oblong white mansion. From its broad porch, velvety lawns stretched down to the shore of the green sea.

  Grag the robot came clanking hurriedly to meet them as the two disguised comrades entered the spacious hall of the mansion.

  “Is Simon still in the Comet! Curt asked the robot.

  “Yes, he has been examining that body,” boomed Grag. “I have been helping him.”

  “Well, I’ll work with him now,” Captain Future told the robot. “You and Otho keep your eyes open. But I doubt if any of the Lifewater sellers will show up before dark.”

  “I hate waiting around,” grumbled Otho. “It gets on my nerves to sit and do nothing.”

  Even though it was unnecessary now, Otho spoke in the shrill, cracked tones of an aged man. He still maintained his stooped, senile appearance.

  The android was the greatest master of disguises in the System. His plastic synthetic flesh could be softened and remolded by him into whatever new features he wished. Thus he could make himself into an exact double of any person alive, with the added aid of his stains, eye-pigments, false hair and other aids to scientific makeup. And once Otho assumed an identity, he played it to the hilt.

  “While we’re waiting, we could play a game of dimension billiards,” Grag suggested to the android.

  “You always win. That’s the reason you want to play. But I’ll play. According to the law of averages, I’m sure to win this time,” Otho declared.

  CAPTAIN FUTURE left them and strode out into the grove of dense swamp-palms. The Comet was hidden in the grove. He entered the little ship.

  The Brain was in the laboratory cabin, staring thoughtfully at the body of Wilson Webber which they had brought from Earth.

  “Find out anything about the nature of the Lifewater, Simon?” Curt asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” rasped the Brain. “But I want you to make independent analysis to check my finds, lad.”

  “Okay. If we hadn’t r
ocketed from Earth in such a hurry, we could have done it on the way, as I planned.”

  He began working silently and skillfully First he drew a sample of blood from the shriveled form. Then he commenced a painstakingly minute analysis of it in a bewilderingly complex chemical apparatus.

  The laboratory of the Cornet was a miracle of completeness and compactness. Most scientists of the System would have given their right eyes just for a chance to inspect its instruments.

  The super-powered electro-telescopes and spectroscopes that Captain Future had designed would have made an astronomer’s mouth water with envy. No observatory in the System had such a complete record of star and planet spectra, and atmosphere samples of different worlds, as one cabinet contained. No botanical museum could boast such rare plant specimens and vegetable drugs as the Futuremen had gathered from all the far worlds.

  An ordinary surgeon would have been bewildered by the radically original fluoroscope, X-ray and atomic-dissector equipment he would have found here. Most physicists would have been baffled by the electrical and atomic apparatus in a single corner of the flying laboratory. Scientific librarians would have exclaimed with delight at the thousands of works of science recorded on super-compact micro-film.

  Yet all their equipment Curt Newton knew, was little enough for the task at hard. Lifewater, which effected temporary rejuvenation with such magical speed, was something astoundingly new.

  He finally looked up from his blood analysis, and spoke thoughtfully to the watching Brain.

  “It seems our first guess was right, Simon. The Life-water tremendously accelerates the twin processes of building assimilated matter into new tissue and of consuming old tissue. The anabolism or tissue-building process is only temporarily stimulated. It dies down again when the Lifewater’s effect expires. So the renewed youth caused by accelerated anabolism vanishes then.