Captain Future 04 - The Triumph of Captain Future (Fall 1940) Read Free

same damned story every time, sir!” exploded Halk Anders to the President. “That cursed syndicate sells people the Lifewater without telling them they’ll have to keep drinking it or die. That way, they make people slaves to the stuff.”
    Carthew’s fine face turned haggard with worry.
    “Then our broadcast warning to the System did no good? Do they still refuse to believe that the Lifewater is infinitely deadly?”
    “No, it hasn’t done any good,” Anders answered bluntly. “The criminals who self the stuff tell people that our warning was false. They say it’s mere propaganda to break up the illicit trade. Some people are so crazy to get their youth back, they’re only too ready to believe that.”
    Carthew’s hand clenched and banged the desk.
    “Anders can’t your organization smash the syndicate that’s behind this abominable traffic?”
     
    THE commander shrugged helplessly. “God knows we’ve tried, sir. We’ve raided hundreds of the syndicate’s outlets, but the Lifewater vendors almost always get away. The few we’ve captured won’t say a word.”
    “But I told you to put the best secret agents of the Planet Police on the search for the source of the stuff.”
    “I did,” Halk Anders replied desperately. “Two of them are here now. They’ll tell you themselves what we’re up against.”
    The commander opened the door and called out. A grizzled, white-haired man and a slender girl entered.
    The man was Ezra Gurney, famous veteran Planet Police marshal of the interplanetary frontiers. The dark-haired, dark-eyed girl was Joan Randall, ace secret agent of the Intelligence organization.
    “Ezra and Joan can tell you how much they’ve found out about the syndicate, sir,” Halk Anders declared grimly.
    Old Ezra Gurney shook his head, his faded blue eyes discouraged.
    “Ain’t found out anything that’d help, sir,” he drawled. “I’ve been combin’ the inner planets trying’ to discover where the Lifewater’s cumin’ from. I thought a check of space traffic would work, only it doesn’t. It’s certain the stuffs all comin’ from one single world. But what world is it?”
    Joan Randall’s brown eyes were clouded as she also addressed the man who governed the mains worlds.
    “I’ve been to Mars, Venus and Mercury without learning any more,” she admitted. “I only found out that the Lifewater traffic is expanding by leaps and bounds. Thousands of aging people en every world are eagerly paying extortionate sums for the elixir. I think the whole traffic is directed by some ruthless criminal who means to expand it to the limit. Frankly, I’m getting afraid. Every day, more thousands of youth-hungry people are drinking the Lifewater, becoming enslaved to it. And if the syndicate isn’t broken up, if the diabolic traffic keeps on —”
    She was interrupted by a shrill, terrible scream. It came from the convicted embezzler. Wilson Webber.
    They stared at him in horror. He suddenly began aging at an appalling rate. His youthful looking face rapidly grew parched and wrinkled. His hair whitened.
    “The Lifewater’s effect — expiring!” Webber gasped, his thin hand horribly clutching at the air. “I — dying —”
    He slumped to the floor and lay there. An old, wrinkled man now, feebly stirring, his finny eyes ware swiftly glazing.
    “Get a physician, quickly!” cried Carthew.
    Hulk Anders shook his head somberly.
    “There’s no help for him, sir. Nothing can help a Lifewater addict who’s been deprived of the elixir.”
    In a few moments, Webber lay still, a shrunken dead figure. There was utter, shocked silence as the commander pulled down a rich drape to cover the ghastly body.
    “An’ that,” came Ezra Gurney’s grim drawl, “is what happens to a man who drinks the Lifewater once and then steps drinkin’ it. Only a few have died like this, so far. But all the thousands drinkin’ the stuff will have to obey the master of the syndicate or die the same