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

and looked up at Joan, who had helped him as much as possible.
    “Will we be able to get out now?” she asked eagerly. There was a most unbecoming smear of grease on her nose.
    “We’ll either get out or blow ourselves into the next dimension. You and Kansu all ready? Here go the fireworks!”
    He switched on the cyclotrons as he spoke. A dozen huge conical generators of atomic energy began throbbing back in the compartment that had originally housed but two. Their droning became a quivering vibration that seemed to be shaking the craft apart. It was deafening. Unnerving — yet Curt turned the power higher still.
    Then when the space-boat seemed about to come bodily apart from the vibration, Curt opened the throttles of the stern rocket-tubes.
    They were slammed deep into their recoil-chairs by the crushing thrust of an unimaginable acceleration. A torrent of atomic flame was bursting back from the rockets, hurling the little boat forward at dizzying speed.
    The wreck-pack dwindled behind them. Curt held the throttles tense, ready. Then they hit the maelstrom of ether-currents that raged around this central dead-area.
    For a moment, Curt thought the end had come. That hell of boiling, invisible currents batted at the space-boat like giant hands, seeking to force it back into the center of the vortex, while its super-powered rocket-tubes forced it wildly forward.
    But the space-boat’s super-power was driving it out of the vortex of currents!
    Curt dared not cut down the power yet. Tense minutes passed, as the small craft fought out through the weakening currents. Then abruptly they were out of the last current; and the space-boat was hurtling through undisturbed space like a meteor.
    Instantly Captain Future cut all the cyclotrons but two.
    “Whew!” breathed the big red-haired young man.
    “You’re the only man in history who ever brought a ship back out of the Sargasso Sea of Space!” cried Joan, her brown eyes shining.
    “And now that we’re out, what?” Kansu Kane demanded, looking sourly around the vast emptiness of space.
    “We’ll run back toward Jupiter,” Captain Future snapped. “Get a call through to the Futuremen from there.”
    “And I can get a ship back to Venus from there,” said Kansu Kane emphatically. “This knocking around space may be all right for those who like it, but I don’t.”
     
    THE little craft throbbed Sunward, toward the white speck of Jupiter. But in a few moments, Curt Newton peered closer ahead, the muttered a joyful exclamation.
    “Here come the Futuremen now!” he cried. “They must have got onto our trail somehow.”
    Joan Randall and the little astronomer peered with him, but saw only an ordinary-looking, little, glowing Comet that was approaching in an outward direction.
    “I can’t see anything but that little Comet,” complained Kansu Kane.
    “What Comet is it?” Curt asked him blandly.
    Kansu scratched his head. “Why, I don’t know — come to think of it, there’s no Comet follows an orbit like that.”
    Captain Future laughed. “It’s not a Comet — it’s the Comet, my ship. The boys are using my Comet -camouflage.”
    “How are you going to hail them without a televisor?” Joan asked anxiously.
    “I’ll have to take a chance to stop them,” Curt said. “Hold tight!”
    He moved the throttles and sent the space-boat diving straight down into the path of the Comet as though intending to bring about a collision. And that was what Grag and Otho had seen!
    As the two ships rushed together, Curt’s keen eyes got a lightning-glimpse of Grag and Otho and the Brain in the control room of the camouflaged ship. He waved his hand, and at the last moment to avoid collision sent the space-boat curving upward.
    “They’ll have seen me!” he told Joan confidently. “The eyes of those three don’t miss much!”
    In fact, the glowing Comet was rapidly decelerating. Presently it and the battered space-boat hung side by side in space.
    Captain Future