Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) Read Free Page A

lithe, broad-shouldered figure towered six feet four. His tanned, handsome, debonair face and flashing gray eyes had a rollicking humor in them that could not hide keen intelligence and deep purpose.
    He wore a big ring on his left hand — a ring whose nine jewels were motivated by a tiny atomic power engine that kept them moving slowly around a glowing central jewel. This ring, whose jewels represented the nine worlds, was known to the whole System as the identifying emblem of Captain Future, the wizard of science and the implacable foe of evil.
    Captain Future — or Curtis Newton, by the name so few knew — stood ready by the lever of the spherical machine. On a pedestal, watching the gauges of the mechanism, was his fellow-worker.
    This was Simon Wright, the Brain. He was just that — a living human brain that had no body. Instead, his brain was housed in a square, transparent serum-case, in the front of which was his resonator speech apparatus, on the stalks of which in turn were his lens-eyes.
    “Transmutation’s almost complete now,” the Brain declared in his metallic artificial voice, his glass lens eyes closely watching the gauges. “Stand ready to shift the electron flow.”
    A moment later he spoke quickly. “Now!”
    Curt Newton slammed down the lever. The throbbing of power into the spherical machine ceased.
    The red-headed scientific wizard undamped a door and opened it. Out of the mechanism poured a stream of white powder.
    “That’s done it!” Curt exclaimed. “A hundred pounds of copper, transmuted into pure isotopic boron.”
     
    HE STEPPED back and mopped his brow, and then grinned at the Brain. “Whew, that was a job! But it will save us a trip all the way to Uranus, to get that rare isotope.”
    “Aye, lad,” rasped the Brain. “This transmutation of elements is one of your greatest achievements yet.” Curt’s gray eyes twinkled at him.
    “You’re an old fraud, Simon,” he accused. “You know as well as I do that I could never have achieved it if you hadn’t worked with me.”
    At that moment, there was a sudden explosion of angry, arguing voices from another chamber of the cavern home. One was a loud, Booming, mechanical-sounding voice. The other voice was hissing, sibilant and furious.
    “Grag and Otho are at each other again!” exclaimed Captain Future impatiently. “I swear those two will drive me crazy yet.”
    He raised his voice in a call. “Grag! Otho!”
    Two creatures of unhumanly weird appearance entered the laboratory in answer to his call.
    One of them was a rubbery white android, or synthetic man. Otho, the android, was manlike in figure, his synthetic flesh having been molded into human form when he had been made. But his hairless white head and face, his slitted green eyes that were flashing now with anger, were not like any human’s. Nor could any human move with his wonderful quickness and agility.
    Grag, the metal robot, was the other disputant. Towering seven feet high, his mighty metal arms hinted incredible strength. The chief features in his bulbous metal head were his two photo-electric eyes that gleamed with living light, and the mouthlike opening of his speech mechanism. There was no creature in the whole System stronger than Grag, the robot.
    Perched upon Grag’s shoulder was a queer, bearlike little animal of inorganic silicate flesh, with strong paws, a sharp, inquisitive snout, and bright little black eyes. It was a moon-pup, one of the strange non-breathing creatures found on the lunar plains, who assimilated food elements by direct ingestion of the mineral they could crush in their powerful teeth. The little gray creature was contentedly chewing on a piece of copper now.
    “Now what’s the trouble between you two?” Captain Future demanded of the robot and android. “Can’t Simon and I work for a minute without you two getting into your arguments?”
    “It’s Grag’s fault!” hissed Otho furiously. He pointed to the little gray