Free Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) by Edmond Hamilton Page A

criminal’s ship in mid-space and had been picked up by a liner and brought to Mars. He didn’t tell about his experience in the freak-show, for that was a chapter in his life that Grag meant to keep secret.
    “I grabbed a rocket-flier and came down here full speed to this Machine City,” Grag concluded. “The machine guards didn’t sense me when I entered, since I’m not flesh and blood. I hunted until I heard your voices just now. When I saw you searching among these metal statues, I thought I’d play a little joke on Otho.”
    “Is that your idea of a joke?” Otho demanded furiously.
    The android began to swear, calling on his exhaustive knowledge of interplanetary profanity. He referred savagely to Grag’s unhuman nature, to his thick-headeness his general all-round worthlessness.
    Grag just made the booming sound that was the nearest to a chuckle he could ever utter.
    “You are angry only because I scared the life out of you,” he accused Otho.
    “Me, scared?” Otho hissed. “Why, I knew it was you all the time. Nobody could mistake a big junk-pile like you —”
     
    CAPTAIN FUTURE cut off the android’s torrent of denunciation. He addressed Grag keenly.
    “You say those syndicate men were going to report back to the Life-lord? They were heading for Saturn?”
    “Yes, Master,” the robot boomed. “From their talk, I learned that they had formerly been pirates of the Saturnian moons. The Life-lord enlisted them as followers when he formed the Lifewater syndicate.”
    “Then there’s no further doubt about it,” Captain Future declared” with a triumphant flash in his gray eyes. “Saturn is where we’ll find the Fountain of Life. And if we find that, we’ll also get the Life-lord behind the syndicate.”
    “Aye, lad, every clue so far points that way,” rasped the Brain.
    “Come along, we’re getting back to the Comet,” Curt ordered. “No time to waste now!”
    The intrepid quartet hurried back through the blazingly illuminated Machine City. Easily now they threaded its bustle of useless mechanical activity. Curt’s protective mechanism still guarded them from discovery. They slipped between the patrolling guard cars and tramped away from the weird metropolis, across the black desert that was red by day.
    Phobos and Deimos were setting, one in the west and the other in the east. The two moons cast weirdly forked shadows around Curt Newton and the Futuremen as they hastened toward the Comet.
    Inside the little ship, Curt immediately went to the powerful televisor. He sent a call to Planet Police headquarters, far away on Earth.
    The magic name of Captain Future brought Commander Halk Anders hastily to the screen. Anders’ bulging eyes stared inquiringly from the screen.” Commander, I’ve a couple of stereophotos here that I want you to check in the identity files,” Curt requested. “The men in these pictures have been changed to metal. But their features are the same as when they were alive, of course.”
    “Changed to metal?” Anders repeated wonderingly. “What in the world? But go ahead and shoot the pictures, Captain Future.”
    Otho had taken the self-developing stereophotos from Curt’s tiny camera. The wizard of science held them in front of the televisor. The Police identity clerk, whom Anders had called, rephotographed them from the other end of the connection.
    Halk Anders reappeared on the screen a short while later, with a couple of identity cards in his grasp.
    “Both of your men had interplanetary Police records,” he told Curt. “The Earthman was Roscoe Arns, space-sailor, former miner on Mercury. Our last data on him was that six months ago he sailed as crewman on a small space cruiser to the outer planets. His employer was Martin Graeme, an Earth Ethnologist. The Venusian had a slight record, too, and was another tough egg. He was Vase Cay, Venusian adventurer. He also went off on a scientific expedition some months ago, with Doctor Zin Zibo, a Venusian