Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) Read Free Page B

Curtis Newton looked up with wise gray baby eyes at the great sphere and stretched his chubby arms.
    Newton heard the airlock door slam. He turned surprisedly. “Grag and Otho — are you back so soon?” the voice of Simon Wright rasped with sudden alarm.
    “That’s not Grag and Otho — I know their steps,” the living Brain cried. “It’s men!”
    Elaine uttered a cry, and Newton paled. Four men in space suits, carrying long flare-pistols, stood in the doorway.
    The face of their leader was revealed as they took off their helmets. It was a hawklike face, darkly handsome.
    “Victor Corvo!” Newton cried appalledly, recognizing the ruthless man who had coveted his scientific discoveries.
    “Yes, Newton, we meet again,” said Corvo exultantly. “You thought I’d never find you here, but I finally tracked you down!”
    Newton read death in the man’s triumphant black eyes.
    And the sight of his wife’s bloodless face and horrified eyes galvanized the young biologist into desperate action.
    He sprang toward a locker in the corner in which his own flare-guns were stored. But he never reached it. Jets of fire from the pistols of Corvo’s men hit him in mid-air and tumbled him into a scorched, lifeless heap.
    Elaine Newton screamed, and thrust her baby onto a table, out of range of the guns. Then she leaped to the side of her husband.
    “Elaine, look out!” cried the Brain.
    She did not turn. The flare from Corvo’s pistol struck her side, and she toppled to the floor beside her husband.
    Little Curtis Newton, upon the table, began to whimper. Corvo ignored him and strode past the two still forms toward the square metal serum-case that held Simon Wright’s living brain. He looked triumphantly into the glittering lens-eyes.
    “Now to finish you, Wright,” he laughed, “and then all the powers gathered in this laboratory belong to me.”
    “Corvo, you are a dead man now,” answered the Brain in cold, metallic accents. “Vengeance is coming — I hear it entering now — terrible vengeance —”
    “Don’t try to threaten me, you miserable bodiless brain!” Corvo jeered. “I’ll soon silence you —”
    Two figures burst into the laboratory at that moment. Corvo and his men spun, appalled, unable to believe their eyes as they stared at the two incredible shapes who had entered.
    The huge metal robot and the rubbery android! They stood, their unhuman eyes surveying the scene of death.
    “Grag! Otho! Kill!” screamed the Brain’s metallic voice. “They have slain your master. Kill them! Kill them!”
    With a booming roar of rage from the robot, a fierce, hissing cry from the synthetic man, the two leaped forward.
    In less than a minute, Corvo and his three men lay horribly dead, their skulls smashed to pulp by the robot’s metal fists, their necks broken by the android’s rubbery arms. Then Grag and Otho stood still, gazing around with blazing eyes.
    “Set me down by your master and mistress!” ordered Simon Wright urgently. “They may still live!”
    The robot put the Brain down by the two scorched forms. Wright’s lens-eyes rapidly surveyed the bodies.
    “Newton is dead, but Elaine is not dead yet,” the Brain declared. “Lift her, Grag!”
    With ponderous metal arms, the huge robot raised the dying girl to a sitting position. In a moment she opened her eyes. Wide, dark and filled with shadows, they looked at the Brain and robot and android.
    “My — baby,” she whispered. “Bring me Curtis.”
    It was Otho who sprang to obey. The android gently set the whimpering infant down beside her. The dying girl looked down at it tenderly, heartbreaking emotion in her fading eyes.
    “I leave him to the care of you three, Simon,” she choked. “You are the only ones I can trust to rear him safely.”
    “We’ll watch over little Curtis and protect him!” cried the Brain.
    “Do not take him to Earth,” she whispered. “People there would take him away from you. They would say it is wrong to