Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) Read Free Page A

scientists lay on the floor in scorched, unmoving heaps.
    “Good work!” approved Ul Quorn. “Now get those bars of alloy into our ship.”
    Thikar, the Jovian, muttered protestingly to Gray Garson.
    “First we stole the super-cycs and now it’s these metal bars. Why don’t we loot something worthwhile, like gold or radium?”
    “Quorn knows what he’s doing,” Garson retorted. “He’s preparing to secure a treasure worth all the gold and radium in the System.”
    “That’s what he says. But he doesn’t tell us what it is,” grumbled the Jovian. “He just says it’s something great.”
    The bars of alloy finally loaded in the ship, the craft rose from the rocky isle into the gathering twilight. It poised for a moment, then vanished.
    The quiet dusk deepened. One of the scorched Neptunian bodies stirred slightly. This man was not dead, but was dying. He feebly tried to write with his own bloody finger on the floor. “Quorn did —” But he was dead before he could finish his message.
     
    HIGH in Government Tower, in the city of New York on Earth, was the center of the great web of the Planet Police. Here functioned the vast organization that maintained the law throughout the system. Here were headquarters of its four divisions — the planetary police, the colonial police, the secret service, and the famous Planet Patrol.
    Halk Anders, Commander of the entire organization, paced his office restlessly. He was a stocky rock of a man, with a massive head and grim, scarred face.
    He turned to face two other people, a girl and an older man. The girl was Joan Randall, ace secret service agent. The older man was Marshal Ezra Gurney, famous police veteran.
    “We don’t need to do that!” Halk Anders told the girl angrily. “Ever since Quorn’s bunch escaped you’ve been deviling me to have the President call in Captain Future. I’m tired of it. Just because you and Ezra are on assignment to work with Future, you want him on every case.”
    Joan Randall faced her irate chief calmly. She was a slim girl in gray silk space-jacket and trousers, with dark hair and liquid brown eyes.
    “But, Chief, the Patrol can’t cope with Quorn!” she protested. “That mixed breed is the greatest scientist in the System — except one. This weird vanishing ship he’s using shows what he can do.”
    “I think maybe Joan is right, Halk,” drawled old Ezra. “Remember, it took Cap’n Future to get Quorn the first time.”
    Ezra Gurney was a white-haired, wrinkled-faced old man with faded blue eyes, who chewed rial leaf deliberately as he spoke.
    “Well, well get Quorn this time ourselves,” boomed Anders. “He got away from Cerberus, and gave us the slip after his raid on the Pluto laboratory. But he won’t give us the slip this time!”
    “What makes you so danged sure you’re goin’ to get him now?” demanded Ezra Gurney.
    Halk Anders explained. “As soon as I got word of Quorn’s raid on the Neptunian research station, I had a net of Patrol cruisers flung around that whole sector of space to trap him. They’ve been closing in that net, and though Quorn may vanish in that queer way he’ll surely have to reappear somewhere inside their sector. I’m expecting a report that they’ve caught him at any moment.
    “Ah, here’s the report now!” he continued as a Martian officer entered the office and saluted. “Did they get him, Mako?”
    The Martian officer shook his head.
    “Sorry, sir — Quorn must have slipped them again. I just got a flash that Quorn’s band held up the space-freighter Eros off Saturn. They looted the freighter of certain valuable atomic machine-tools. Then they vanished as usual in their own craft.”
    “Well, Halk,” drawled old Ezra dryly, “it looks like Quorn and his vanishin’ ship gave the Patrol the slip again.”
    Halk Anders’ face was purple.
    “By all the space-gods, I give up! I can catch any ordinary criminal or pirate, but that slippery breed can vanish and