Free Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) by Edmond Hamilton Page A

last long.
    A cold sensation gripped the heart of Captain Future. To die beneath rending fangs in a steelite cage — It couldn’t be! He had always known that someday one of his adventures must end in disaster. But he had always thought it would be out in the spaceways with the white eyes of the familiar stars for witnesses, not in a trap like this beneath the eyes of horrified thousands.
    Suddenly the mad bucking and roaring of the marsh tiger stopped. The beast quieted down, stood plaintively purring. The other reptilian monsters had also grown docile again. The laborers outside the cage had succeeded in wrapping the copper gauze nets completely around the cage.
    “Just in time,” Curt gasped. “Lucky those workers weren’t Quorn’s men, or he’d have countermanded my order.”
    He still felt the reaction of the narrow escape, yet he let none of it show. He turned, dismounting from the quiet monster, and bowed again to the audience. They applauded until the thin metal walls of the pavilion shook wildly.
    “Kovo! Kovo!” the roar went up.
    Curt slipped out the door. Only when he was outside did he turn off the will-dampener in his pocket.
    “I thought they had you, Kovo,” Jur Nugat stammered. “Gods of Saturn, you had me scared.”
    Curt shrugged. “They were a little unruly tonight.”
    The Saturnian’s blue jaw sagged.
    “A little unruly?” he bleated.
    Curt ran hastily to the dressing pavilion entrance. Half along the covered way stood a curious-looking machine, as though left there by a careless worker. It was the cylinder that contained Simon Wright.
    “Lad!” rasped the metallic whisper of the Brain. “I came here to warn you. I rolled here in this fake body. I heard Ul Quorn speaking tonight to the Hearer. He suspects you’re Captain Future!”
    “Your warning’s a little late, Simon,” Curt said with a grim chuckle. “Ul Quorn nearly got me a few moments ago. I’m the only man who ever invented and used a will-dampener. Remember my demonstrating it last year to the Uranian zoologists? Quorn must have heard of my invention. When he saw me controlling marsh tigers, he figured only a will-dampener could do it. Hence, I must be Captain Future.
    “Quorn figured to kill me without seeming to be implicated, as he would be if he used an atom gun. He intended to neutralize my will-dampener by using a conical generator of powerful electro-magnetic vibrations that blanked out my instrument’s force. I guessed what he was doing at once. I had the Circus laborers put up the copper gauze nets around the cage to screen it from Quorn’s blanketing force. Then my will-dampener was able to function again.”
    “That mixed-breed devil,” rasped the Brain. “If we don’t —”
    “Hush, Simon,” Curt interrupted. “Ul Quorn is coming toward us now!”
     

     
Chapter 9: Challenge to the Futuremen
     
    UL QUORN was sauntering toward them, as though casually returning to his own pavilion. The Hearer and the conical mechanism that had almost trapped Curt had disappeared. There was a cool smile on Ul Quorn’s smooth, handsome red face and cold humor in his black eyes as he confronted Curt. “Let me congratulate you on your lucky escape, Kovo,” the mixed-breed said softly. “I was watching. You were indeed fortunate to escape death.”
    Despite his anger. Curt Newton couldn’t help grinning. Ul Quorn’s audacity somehow appealed to him. He knew perfectly well that Quorn suspected him of being Captain Future, and he knew that Quorn knew he knew that. Yet the mixed-breed faced him fearlessly. “The marsh tigers were a little out of hand tonight,” Curt admitted negligently. “But I always manage to bring ‘em around.”
    He spoke in the Venusian swamp dialect, though he was sure that Quorn was not deceived by his disguise.
    Quorn laughed softly.
    “Yours is a dangerous career, Kovo. Haven’t you ever thought you may some day tempt danger once too often?”
    Curt understood the subtle threat,