Free Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) by Edmond Hamilton

reach Pluto, as I had hoped. That is reserved for some, other pioneer. For yesterday we ran into appalling ether-currents, that swept us into this dead, empty area from which we cannot escape. Our air cannot last long, we were almost out and had counted on replenishing our supply on Saturn.
    Jan. 23. We found one of our air-tanks, on which we had relied, empty. It had sprung and leaked, unknown to us. Death is a matter of hours. We have sat here, silent, thinking of the Earth we shall never see again. Will our bodies ever be found, we wonder? It does not matter — yet I would like to see Earth’s blue skies again.
    Jan. 24. Crew half unconscious — air failing — partial asphyxiation. This is — the end. The end of us, but not — of our work. Others will come after us. I seem — to see — all space filled with ships — in some future time. Maybe — Gorham Johnson and I and our men — will be remembered. Hand stiff — eyes failing — can’t write — more —
     
    That last scrawled entry trailed away. There was no further writing in the little book.
    Captain Future, a hard lump in his throat, raised his hand to his helmet in salute to the sitting, staring corpse.
     

     
Chapter 7: Encounter in Space
     
    THE red-haired scientific wizard and the girl climbed out of the silent little ship that was mute monument and tomb of brave men.
    Captain Future’s attention was at once re-engaged by the big gray metal cylinder that floated in the wreck-pack close by. He had momentarily forgotten it, but now his interest was rekindled.
    “That cylinder must be a ship from outside the System!” he exclaimed. “Come on — we haven’t much time, but I’m going to have a look at it.”
    Joan Randall clambered pluckily with him to the side of the enigmatic, huge cylinder. They hung there, peering along its curved wall. There seemed no doors or port-holes in it anywhere.
    “I don’t like the look of it,” faltered the girl, her brown eyes distrustful. “It looks too strange and alien.”
    “There can’t be anything living in it after all this time,” Curt assured her. “And there must be a door in it somewhere. I wish we could find and open it.”
    Next moment, he stiffened inside his space suit and heard a sharp cry from Joan. A door was opening in the cylinder.
    It opened like the iris shutter of a camera, expanding from a tiny aperture into a circular opening ten feet across.
    “What opened that door?” cried the girl, panic-stricken. “We weren’t even near it.”
    Curt’s gray eyes flashed. “That door must be telepathically operated — when I wished a door would open, it opened!”
    His scientific passion kindled. “What kind of a race would devise such mechanisms? Come on, Joan!”
    W ith fearful reluctance, the girl followed him through the magically opened door. They found themselves in the interior of the great cylinder, a maze of girders, catwalks, and machines of unguessable design and purpose.
    Along the sides were metal shelves, atop each of which glowed a purple lamp. The purple beams of each lamp bathed a grotesque, motionless creature lying apparently frozen on each shelf.
    The creatures were wholly alien.
    They looked like horrid hybrids of octopus and man. Each had a scaly body with horny protuberances along its spine from the head down, and four tentaclelike arms.
    “They must have come from another star — drifted into the Sargasso here while exploring our System, long ago,” murmured Captain Future. “They don’t look like air-breathing creatures to me.”
    “What is the purple light over each of them?” Joan asked fearfully.
    “I don’t know — some kind of preservative force,” Captain Future muttered. “There’s a mystery here.”
    He found some tanks along the wall. All were empty. They had contained a reddish liquid, whose traces remained.
    “Blood was carried in these tanks!” Curt asserted. “It must have been their food. And when they ran out of it...”
    He