Free Captain Future 06 - Star Trail to Glory (Spring 1941) by Edmond Hamilton Page B

two Jovian partners, had a sudden uneasy look on his aging green face.
    "Cruh!" he rapped. "Do you know anything on this angle?"
     
    BURL CRUH squirmed. "Well, nothing important, maybe. But your mention of intelligent machine-workers made me remember something. I'll tell you about it later, when we're alone."
    "You can tell me right now," Curt Newton said. "If you don't want to talk in front of these others, we'll go into the next room."
    Reluctantly the aging Jovian consented. His fellow-magnates stared at him in suspicious silence as he shuffled to the door of the next room. Curt followed the Jovian into the large library, its shelves lined with rows of metal-cased "stereo-books." Captain Future closed the door.
    "Now what is it?" he asked. "I presume what you have to tell me is about one of those men we just left."
    "Yes, it is," Durl Cruh answered unwillingly. "It's just something I remembered about one of them when you mentioned machine-workers." Thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket for a rial leaf to quiet his nerves, he went on. "Have you ever heard of a Doctor Webster Kelso? He —"
    The Jovian stopped suddenly. He looked down at the strange little object he had drawn from his pocket.
    "Why, how did this get in my pocket?" he faltered. It was a thick metal disk, two inches across. "It's a spy button!"
    Curt recognized the tiny instrument. Spy buttons were often used by the Planet Police. Minute televisor transmitters, they picked up and broadcast on a chosen wave any sound or sight near them.
    "It wasn't in my pocket a few minutes ago!" Durl Cruh cried. "Someone in the study just now dropped it in my pocket, to eavesdrop on us."
    "That's too thick to be just an ordinary spy button!" Captain Future yelled. "Throw it away!"
    He lunged forward across the library to snatch it from the hand of the amazed Jovian. Before Curt took one flying step, the spy button in Durl Cruh's hand exploded in a blazing flare of atomic force that knocked Curt backward, half-blinding him. Curt staggered up. The Jovian lay in a huddled heap, his body warped and scorched by the blast. He was dead.
    There had been a tiny, powerful atomic bomb imbedded in that spy button. It had been detonated by remote control as soon as it was discovered.
     

     
Chapter 8: Interplanetary Library
     
    FUTURE realized instantly the significance of this tragedy. One of the space ship magnates in the study must be connected with the ship-hijacking! That magnate, whoever he was, had dropped the deadly spy button into Durl Cruh's pocket to learn what the Jovian told Curt. He had detonated the bomb in it when Cruh was about to give his information. Curt Newton swiftly remembered what Cruh had started to say.
    "Have you ever heard of a certain Doctor Webster Kelso?" the Jovian had begun.
    "Kelso?" Curt muttered. "Of course, I remember now. So that's the connection!"
    He sprang to the door of the study. There had been no sound of alarm elsewhere in the Space Palace. The detonation of the tiny atomic bomb had not been loud, and these rooms were all sound-proofed. Captain Future burst into the study. His eyes swept the room. Only two of the magnates were there now. Lan Tark sat at his big desk, calmly going over some papers.
    Gray Garson was pacing worriedly to and fro.
    "Where are the others?" Curt demanded.
    The Martian shrugged. "They drifted back to the ball."
    "Did you learn anything?" Garson asked hopefully.
    "Cruh's been murdered," Curt rapped. "I'm going to search you two!" Stupefied, Tark and Garson made no resistance as Curt rapidly searched them. He did not find on either of them the thing he sought.
    "Wait here," he ordered, and hastened out of the study.
    He meant to find and search the other magnates, but he was too late. In a corridor outside, he found a compact remote control apparatus for the operation of a spy button. The minute microphone that fitted invisibly into the ear and allowed the wearer to hear through the spy button lay beside