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

biophysicist.”
     
    CAPTAIN FUTURE’S tanned face was thoughtful as he spoke.
    “Marshal Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall are on Jupiter, where they’re creating a smoke-screen of activity to deceive the Life-lord. Will you call them and ask them to wait for us to pick them up there?”
    “Of course,” the commander replied.” He spoke hopefully. “Do you think the Lifewater syndicate has its center on Saturn?”
    “Perhaps,” Curt Newton answered noncommittally. “I am not in a position to say at the moment.”
    Halk Anders nodded understandingly. There was a quality of desperate appeal in the burly commander’s voice as he replied.
    “I hope you’re getting somewhere against that syndicate, Captain Future! The nine worlds are literally being flooded with that cursed Lifewater now. God knows how many poor devils are becoming addicts to the stuff every day.”
    “I know,” Curt Newton said bitterly. “We’re working as fast as we can, Commander.”
    He switched off the televisor and turned to the FFuturemen They had been listening attentively.
    “So Doctor Zin Zibo, the bio-physicist we pretended we wanted to consult on Venus, has been here in the Machine City!” Otho cried.
    “Yes, and one of his men was caught by that hellish transmutation force,” Curt declared. He went on, broodingly, “Zin Zibo was interested in scientific rejuvenation. That’s why we pretended to call on him. He was interested in rejuvenation!”
    “Then perhaps it was Zin Zibo who came here and got the secret of the Fountain of Life’s location,” the Brain suggested.
    “Maybe Zin Zibo, or maybe the Earth ethnologist, Martin Graeme. He must have been here also. Or maybe they came later than the real Life-lord, for all we know.”
    He jumped to his feet.
    “We’re rocketing for Saturn! The heart of this web lies somewhere near there. We’re going to find it.”
    A few moments later, the Comet rose from the dark desert with a blast of rocket-tubes. Swiftly it screamed up into the stars on its way to Saturn.
     

     
Chapter 7: Murder on Saturn
     
    SHROUDED in his concealing aura of blue force, the Life-lord sat in the secret metal room with the air-lock doors. The master of the Lifewater syndicate was receiving the report of Thorkul, the Martian criminal, and his crew.
    “And so,” Thorkul finished, his red face anxious, “the robot escaped from us on our way here. We searched around when we found him missing, but we couldn’t find him. Some other ship had picked him top.”
    “You blundered badly, Thorkul,” came the Life-lord’s harsh accusation.
    “Still, there’s no harm done,” the Martian protested. “Captain Future certainly must have perished by now in that trap of transmutation-force in the Machine City.”
    “I hope so,” brooded the Life-lord. “If not —”
    The televisor on his desk buzzed sharply. He pressed its switch. On the screen appeared a Saturnian, who spoke excitedly.
    Thorkul and the other criminals listened. Outside the hermetically sealed windows, thin sunlight trickled dawn on a grotesque, monstrous forest. The Rings were a pale sword of radiance in the sky.
    “Life-lord, I’ve get bad news!” the man in the televisor was babbling. “One of our men spying on the Planet Police just reported. Captain Future and the Futuremen are headed for Saturn, to the city Ops.”
    “”That red-headed devil didn’t perish at Mars, then,” the Life-lord muttered. His shrouded body tensed. “He’s striking like lightning, as usual. He’s the biggest danger our syndicate has yet faced. He’s got to be smashed before he can smash us!”
    The Life-lord rose to his feet, a blue-shining figure of mystery. He spoke rapidly to Thorkul and the other criminals.
    “I’m returning at night to the city Ops. Future will be there soon, and I have a plan for getting him. Listen —”
     
    * * * * *
     
    AT THAT very moment, Captain Future, the Futuremen, and old Ezra Gurney, whom they had picked up on