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

way.”
    James Carthew’s hands trembled as he realized the horrible possibilities disclosed. The Lifewater traffic played with evil cunning on the wistful desire of aging men and women to renew their youth. Those deceived people must inevitably become the abject slaves of the syndicate that alone could supply the insidious elixir.
    And behind the hidden, far-flung syndicate was one directing mind. That evilly ambitious individual might enslave tens of millions to the mysterious youth-elixir. Then he could use his control of the Lifewater to command his millions of slaves.
    The black potentialities of it made Carthew’s mind recoil. Moreover, the menace was growing day by day, minute by minute. The Planet Police could not penetrate and destroy the heart of the spreading cancer. There was no one else to turn to — but wait!
    Carthew’s desperate thoughts swung suddenly to one whom he could always turn to in time of dark danger.
    “This poisonous Lifewater traffic must be smashed before more people become slaves to it,” the President declared, rising determinedly to his feet. “We’re going to call Captain Future!”
     

     
Chapter 2: Coming of the Futuremen
     
    PLUNGING sunward in flaring glory, a great comet sped through the Solar System. Its vast glowing coma, brilliant nucleus, and million-mile tail were an awesome spectacle as the celestial wanderer raced to complete its parabolic orbit around the Sun. Space ships cautiously detoured far around the glowing monster.
    But one space ship, a small, streamlined craft shaped oddly like an elongated teardrop, clung audaciously to the very edge of the coma. Its rocket-tubes steadily blasting fire, the little ship boldly accompanied the great comet on its dizzy rush toward the Sun.
    The teardrop craft was itself named the Comet. It was the ship of the Futuremen, most famous of all interplanetary adventurers.
    Inside its main laboratory cabin, Captain Future, leader of the strange quartet, was studying the great comet.
    “A little closer to the coma, Otho,” he asked, without raising his head from the compact spectroscope he was using.
    A hissing voice answered from the control room in the prow of the racing ship.
    “Closer it is! But we’re nearly inside the cursed coma right now, Chief.”
    Curt Newton, the young man known to the whole Solar System as Captain Future, made no answer. He was intently maneuvering the spectroscope that was trained on the comet through a part.
    “There is a solid nucleus inside that coma, Simon,” he exclaimed finally, raising his head in excitement. “We’re going inside!”
    Curt Newton’s figure was bathed in the coma’s glare of now harmless white radiance that came through the filtering parts.
    He was lean and rangy, six feet four at height, with the wide shoulders and narrow hips of a fighting man. Under his torchlike mop of red hair was a space-bronzed face. Its handsome features and keen gray eyes bore the stamp of brilliant intelligence, a powerful will, and a gay, rollicking humor.
    Curt wore a zipper-suit of dark synthesilk with a flat gray tungstite belt. From a holster of black Plutonian leather protruded the well-worn butt of a stubby proton pistol. In his left hand he wore a ring whose nine “planet jewels” revolved slowly around a central “Sun” jewel. That was the unique identifying insignia of Captain Future.
    “What about it, Simon?” Curt eagerly asked the Futureman beside him. “Think we can get inside that coma without cracking up?”
    Simon Wright, the Futureman he had addressed, answered in a rasping, metallic voice.
    “It’ll be dangerous, lad. But we can try it.”Simon Wright was known all over the System as the Brain. For that was precisely what he was — a human brain living in a transparent serum case equipped with solutions, pumps and purifiers. In the front of his square case were his glass lens eyes, mounted on flexible stalks, and the resonator with which he spoke. At the sides were his