Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) Read Free Page B

bodies could not for a moment withstand the stupendous acceleration they meant to exact of the ship. He recessed the projector beneath the control-room floor, so that it showed only the fiat silver disk from which the protective force would emanate.
    “It seems to work perfectly,” Curt declared when he had tested the stasis effect.
    “We’ll soon know if it doesn’t work,” Otho muttered. “The pressure will splash us all over the ship if the stasis breaks down.”
    The Brain said nothing. But Curt read from his silence the doubt that still haunted Simon’s mind.
    While Grag and Otho stocked the Comet with the last cases of supplies and tanks of oxygen and water, Captain Future made a final anxious check of instruments.
    “No, you don’t, Grag!” he exclaimed suddenly. “You’re not going to smuggle Eek aboard — I told you that he and Oog stay home this time.”
    Grag stopped guiltily. The robot and concealed his pet, a small, gray, bearlike moon-pup, in some cases he was carrying aboard.
    “Eek will be lonely here,” Grag protested worriedly.
    “He’ll have Oog to keep him company,” Curt retorted, pointing to a fat little white “meteor-mimic” that was Otho’s pet. “The automatic feeder will take care of their food. And those two would be in our way on a crowded, dangerous trip like this.”
    As Grag reluctantly carried his cherished pet out of the ship, the Brain looked inquiringly at Captain Future.
    “Lad, should we have told our friends on Earth what we plan? Joan Randall, and Marshal Ezra Gurney, and the others?”
    “I thought it wiser not to tell them,” Curt said soberly. “They’re working night and day with the other Planet Police to handle the migration from Mercury. And I didn’t want to raise their hopes.”
    The last supplies were aboard. As casually as though about to start an ordinary interplanetary voyage, the four entered the ship. In a moment the great roof-doors of the hangar folded silently back, and the Comet rose on roaring rocket-tubes from the surface of the Moon.
    Captain Future was in the control-chair. He drove the roaring ship up on a steep slant across the barren lunar plains and peaks, that lay bathed in the soft green glow of the hanging Earth. He was looking beyond the planet, toward the glittering star-streams that flowed together near the constellation Sagittarius.
    “Tens of thousands of suns, planets, dark stars, nebulae, bunched there together at the galaxy’s heart,” he murmured. “The densest, most dangerous part of the universe, hiding the supreme mystery of the Birthplace. It’s mad, perhaps, to think we can —”
    “To think we can penetrate that secret?” rasped the Brain. “It’s on the knees of the space-gods now, lad.”
     
    THE ship flew outward through the Solar System under the full power of its rockets. Curt had not as yet touched the switches of the vibration drive. There were ten such switches, for the vibration drive could be used in ten different stages of power and speed.
    At last they were beyond the orbit of Pluto, running infinity itself. Behind the Sun and its planets were a small bright disk circled by gleaming dots. Ahead glittered the bunched star-clouds of Sagittarius, unthinkable light-years away.
    Curt’s hand moved to the switches of the vibration drive.
    “All ready,” he said calmly. “Stand by.”
    “We’ll know in a few minutes whether the protective stasis works,” muttered Grag. “Feeling jumpy, Otho?”
    “What are you trying to do, you perambulating junkpile, scare me?” Otho demanded belligerently.
    Curt closed the switch. The great generators back in the cabin began throbbing in a low murmur that mounted to a loud drone.
    A dim blue force flooded the whole interior of the ship. It emanated from the silver floor-disk of the stasis projector, which was designed to go into operation automatically when the drive was turned on.
    The pervading blue force of the stasis had a strange effect upon the