Free Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) by Edmond Hamilton Page A

came swiftly into his arms.
    “Joan,” he murmured, holding her, “it’s been torture not being able to tell you who I was.”
    He explained rapidly what little he had learned of Jon Valdane’s nefarious scheme to get control of the rich diamond-deposits of Styx.
    “In a couple of days we reach Neptune,” Curt Newton concluded, “and Simon and I are going to make a final try there with a brain-scanner to expose this plot. It’ll be difficult, but it’s the only chance we have.”
    They were interrupted by the return of Jim Willard. With him now were Jeff Lewis, and Jon Valdane himself.
    “Rizo Thon is not anywhere on the ship,” Jim Willard told Joan. “He must have missed boarding it when we left Jupiter.”
    “Perhaps he was caught by that terrible Fire Sea eruption that we escaped,” Curt Newton suggested nervously. “He didn’t leave the location-camp at the same time we did, you remember.”
    “That’s what must have happened,” Jon Valdane agreed quickly. His chubby pink face assumed a look of sorrow. “Poor chap.”
    Jeff Lewis swore. “This would have to happen to me. Well, there’s only one thing we can do. Somebody else will have to double in the role of Otho. Cesar Crail, our heavy, would be the best bet.”
    “Crail doesn’t look the part, and he isn’t good at make-up,” Willard pointed out.
    “I know, but the Neptune submarine scenes will all be in sea-suits so he can get away with it there,” Lewis replied. “By the time we get to Styx, we’ll work out effective make-up for him.”
    “Will I have to go out undersea when we make the Neptune scenes?” Curt Newton asked in trembling tones.
    “Yes, Carson, you will,” barked the producer. “And I’ll have no complaints from you about it. I’m getting fed up with your scariness.”
    Joan gave Curt a look of contempt, simulated to perfection.
    “It’s a libel on Captain Future to have him played by such a man as that,” she said scathingly. Then they all departed, leaving Curt Newton alone.
    Captain Future’s assumed fearfulness faded into an expression of real worry as he looked after them. He realized that every hour of their flight, every mile that they came nearer to Magic Moon, increased Joan Randall’s danger. For her sake, he must not fail at Neptune!
     

     
Chapter 8: In Neptunian Depths
     
    LOUD, sharp words of an announcement from the loudspeaker system of the ship awoke Curt Newton, a few mornings later. "Approaching Neptune!”
    When he went up to the promenade deck, he found the whole company gathering there to gaze with wondering amazement at the world ahead. Few of them had ever been so far as this remote planet before.
    As the Perseus had hurtled toward it in the last days, Jeff Lewis had kept his actors working steadily on interior scenes for “The Ace of Space.” Captain Future had been unable except at ‘night’ to steal down to the property-room to help Simon Wright construct a brain-scanner. Grag had been of little help in such delicate work. And Grag was obsessed with a desire for vengeance for Otho. The wrathful robot flamed with a consuming hatred of Jon Valdane and his associates. Curt Newton could only restrain Grag by assuring him that Otho could not be dead.
    Curt Newton had had no further visitations like that of Kin Kurd to his cabin. But it seemed to him that the Saturnian constantly watched and trailed him through the ship, and he had been on his guard.
    “We’ll try our scheme tomorrow at Neptune,” he had told Simon Wright the ‘night’ before. “You’ll be left in the ship when the rest of us go out to make the submarine scenes. And Jon Valdane will stay here too — he won’t risk his precious skin by going out. So I’ll pretend to get lost, and will slip back secretly to the ship.”
    “I’ll keep the aft emergency airlock open for you,” the Brain had agreed. “But be careful, lad — you know the dangers of Neptune’s sea.”
    Captain Future was grimly remembering