Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) Read Free Page B

ancient ruins. A huge glassite air-dome of three-thousand-feet diameter rested upon the rock floor. Inside the dome, blue-white krypton lights shed a strong illumination. The dome contained power stations, air-pump houses, supply shacks, barracks and offices.
    These structures were grouped around a towering square edifice, clearly recognizable as the shaft-house of a vertical mine tunnel. Men in scores were coming and going busily around the building. And the four freighters which had preceded the Futuremen had landed amid other parked ships on the chasm floor near the dome.
    “Why, that’s a mining dome!” Grag exclaimed in astonishment.
    “They’re mining here, on our Moon!”
    Otho’s green eyes flashed.
    “Some greedy promoter has come sneaking in here while we were gone, prospecting for metals —”
    “Prospecting for radium, you mean,” rapped Curt Newton, his eyes troubled. “The location they picked for operations admits no other explanation. Somehow, they’ve learned of the radium deposit inside the Moon.”
    “And we kept that radium deposit a secret for so long!” exclaimed Otho. “How the devil did they learn about it?”
    Curt was upset. He had himself long ago discovered the existence of the deep radium deposit, by sensitive instruments.
    He had never tried to penetrate down to the radium so far beneath. For his chief desire had been to keep it secret, and he had not wanted to risk leaving a trail that would lead others to it. But now it had been found!
    “They’ve no business mining on this world!” Grag was booming angrily. “We’ll run them out and wreck their dome in double-quick time.”
    “Wait a minute, don’t fly off your orbit,” Curt interrupted. “These people are mining here illegally — the Government would never give them a Moon concession without our consent.
    When they learn that their operations are discovered, they’ll get out quickly enough.”
     
    HE BROUGHT the Comet down to a landing on the chasm floor beside the four freighters. He and Otho slipped into their spacesuits; neither Grag nor the Brain needed such protection. They strode toward the dome, found an automatic airlock entrance in its curved glassite wall. Passing through this into the air-filled dome, they looked indignantly around.
    Before them lay a busy, noisy scene. The ceaseless droning of great cyclotrons in the power stations was a monotonous undertone for the throbbing of air pumps, the rattle of metal trucks and the whirring of machinery in the towering shaft-house.
    Captain Future saw a man outside a distant office structure apparently issuing orders to a group of workmen. Future and his aides strode purposefully forward. Then came a yell of surprise and alarm from a passing Jovian miner, who had happened to glimpse the queer quartet.
    The tall red-haired figure of Captain Future, leading the stalking metal robot, the fierce-eyed android and the gliding Brain, seemed to petrify the motley crew inside the dome with amazement.
    “The Futuremen!” somebody shouted.
    The thin bony-faced man who had been giving orders turned and recoiled, appalled.
    “The Futuremen — alive after all!” he muttered.
    “Who are you?” Curt Newton demanded, his voice crackling.
    “I’m Albert Wissler,” faltered the other. “Superintendent of this lunar base of the King Planetary Metals Company.”
    “King? I’ve heard of him,” said Curt scathingly. His voice rang. “You’re breaking System law by mining here without a Government concession.”
    “But we have a concession from the System Government!” cried Wissler feverishly. “It gives us full right to mine for the radium here.”
    “Don’t lie to me,” Captain Future rapped contemptuously. “The Government would never give you a concession on the Moon, and you know it.”
    For answer, the scared Wissler darted into the office building and returned with a document that he held out triumphantly.
    Curt’s face changed as he examined the paper.