Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941) Read Free Page A

objections, but Curt grabbed him and examined the flat case strapped to his belt — the equalizer whose aura of force made its wearer's weight the same on any world.
    "Just as I thought," Curt said witheringly. "You've set your equalizer to make you weigh only ten pounds. No wonder you could jump high enough to make those catches."
    "Why, that's a dirty foul!" raged Grag. "Let me at that hunk of rubber. I'll wipe up the Moon with him!"
    "Aw, it was only a joke," Otho said sheepishly. "I just did it for a laugh. Go on back to bat and quit your howling."
    But Grag was still furious as he picked up the bat and again faced Otho. The android let the ball go again. Grag, now thoroughly enraged, swung with all the force of his mighty metal arms. A resounding crack followed and the rocket-ball whizzed upward. This time it didn't come down.
    "Devils of space, Grag's knocked the ball clear off the Moon!" Otho exclaimed in dismay.
    Curt laughed. The low surface gravity of the Moon had not been able to retain the ball against the robot's tremendous blow.
    "That gives Grag the game," Curt said. "He can run around the bases a thousand times, if he wants to, but I'll concede it to him."
    "I'll get another ball and we'll see who takes the next game," declared Otho angrily.
    The android started toward the flight of steps that led down through the lunar rock to the airlock entrance of the underground Moon-home. He stopped.
    "Here comes Simon and in a hurry."
    Out of the Moon-home had emerged an astonishing figure. It was the third Futureman, Simon Wright.
    Simon had once been a brilliant, aging scientist of Earth. When he was on the point of death, Curt Newton's father had surgically removed the living brain and installed it in a special serum-case.
    That case was of transparent metal, containing the serum and pumps and purifiers that kept the brain alive. In the front of the case were Simon's glass lens-eyes, mounted on flexible stalks, and the aperture of his mechanical speech apparatus. From his case the Brain could shoot magnetic beams, which he was able to use as substitute hands to wield tools or instruments, or upon which he could glide swiftly through space in any direction.
     
    THE Brain rarely showed emotion. His icy, bodiless mentality, so utterly absorbed in scientific research, was ordinarily aloof to all disturbance. But now, as his strange form glided swiftly toward them on his flashing traction beams, his metallic voice came with a sharp, urgent note.
    "Lad, the automatic sura-warning just sounded!" he called to Curt Newton. "A ship is approaching the Moon!"
    Instantly Captain Future's face hardened.
    "It must be someone with an unfriendly purpose," the Brain continued in his rasping, metallic voice. "Only an enemy would try to come here. Everyone in the System knows that this is forbidden territory."
    "We'll wait and see who these visitors are," Curt said quietly. "Get behind those rocks and make no move until I give the order."
    Swiftly, with the efficiency characteristic of the supreme cooperation among the Futuremen in times of emergency, they melted from sight behind a clump of jagged, towering rocks. There Curt waited with them, loosening his proton pistol in its holster.
    They soon glimpsed a flash of rocket-flame up in the starry sky. A ship was coming straight down to Tycho crater, firing its brake-blasts.
    "A five-man Kalber cruiser," muttered Otho. "There can't be many in it. If it's an attack, it's a queer one."
    "Shall I unmask our hidden proton cannon and blast it?" Grag asked.
    "Not yet," Curt said, keenly eying the descending craft.
    It came to a rather unskilful landing near the glassite window of the Moon-home. The ship's door opened and a man in a space-suit climbed out. He was a young Earthman whose thin, brown face showed uncertainty and apprehension in his transparent helmet. He looked doubtfully toward the window.
    "Looks more scared than anything else," Grag muttered, "but it may be a trap. There may be