Free Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) by Edmond Hamilton

eyes were blazing, their great fangs and razor-like talons gleaming.
    Excited, fearful cries came from the audience. These Venusians knew that marsh tigers, the most terrible beasts of their world, had seldom been captured and never tamed. “Are you sure you want to go in there?” Jur Nugat asked Curt, and this time he spoke sincerely. His face was pale as he stared at the roaring monsters.
    “They won’t hurt me,” Curt said casually.
    “Take this atom pistol, anyway,” the Saturnian begged.
     
    HE INSISTED on thrusting the weapon into Curt’s belt as Captain Future stepped toward the door of the cage. The entire audience was hushed, tense. The marsh tigers were snarling and quarreling at the side of the cage farthest from the gate. Curt Newton quietly slipped inside and quickly re-locked the door.
    The scaled beasts turned at the click. Twelve reptilian eyes glared as the ferocious monsters crouched for the savage leap that no man could stop.
    “They’re going to kill him!” screamed a hysterical Venusian woman in the audience.
    “Look!” yelled another voice. “Gods of Venus, look!”
    Curt’s hand had pressed the switch of the will-dampener instrument in his pocket. The instant the radiated neuronic electric force struck the vicious brains, the crouching marsh tigers relaxed. The will-dampener completely blanked out their natural ferocity, making them as docile as kittens.
    The audience gasped incredulously as two of the marsh tigers shuffled up to Curt. But when he patted the hideous monsters, the Venusians cried out. They burst into thunderous, frantic applause as Curt mounted the largest and most terrible marsh tiger and negligently pulled its ears.
    “Kovo! Kovo!” the audience yelled in frenzied applause. Curt Newton turned to bow to the audience. A terrific roar of fury behind him made him spin around. The marsh tigers were no longer docile and submissive. They were crouching again to spring at him. Ophidian eyes glared bestial hate at him, and deadly fangs glittered murderously.
    “Devils of space!” Curt muttered. “The will-dampener’s out of order —”
    Then he realized that the instrument was still buzzing away in his pocket, radiating its neuronic vibrations. But suddenly the marsh tigers seemed to have become immune to it.
    Captain Future’s eyes flashed around the cage. He knew he was in the greatest peril. The marsh tigers were between him and the door of the cage. They would spring in another instant.
    His keen eyes, photographing every detail even in that ghastly moment, glimpsed Ul Quorn and the Hearer. Back in the shadows of the pavilion entrance, the Hearer was holding a conical machine. He was aiming its apex directly at the cage, and Ul Quorn was smiling faintly at Curt.
    “Neutralizing my will-dampener in some way!” Future muttered. “I knew he suspected.”
    Abruptly he shouted to the horror-stricken circus laborers outside the cage.
    “Put the copper gauze nets around the cage. Quick!”
    The sound of Curt’s voice acted as a trigger to the mindless ferocity of the six beasts. They charged. Then the audience saw something that none of them would ever forget. Curt Newton did not wait to be rended by fang and talon. There was one slim chance to escape death. As the marsh tigers sprang, he leaped to meet them!
     
    OVER the head of the foremost monster he sprang and landed on its back. Grabbing its neck with one hand, Curt Newton rode the marsh tiger, using his free hand to fire swift flashes from his atom pistol at the other beasts.
    To the audience, the big cage was a whirl of black, scaled bodies in which the man could hardly be seen. To Curt, it was a mad riot. The marsh tiger he clung to was bucking and rearing in roaring fury to dislodge him. But his hideous mount kept the other marsh tigers from reaching him for the moment, and his atom gun tended further to bewilder them. Though he clung to the beast with all his great strength, Curt knew that even he couldn’t