Captain Future 19 - Outlaw World (Winter 1946) Read Free Page A

unaging, ever since.
     
    NOW the Brain resembled a square, transparent metal case, upon whose “face” were his lenslike glass eyes, his microphone ears and resonator speech apparatus. He hovered six feet above the floor, for Simon could glide through the air by means of magnetic traction beams which he could also use as arms and hands.
    “What is it that’s wrong?” he asked sharply.
    “Radium raiders — a mysterious band who are looting radium from ships and mines all over the System!” she answered. “We can’t find where they come from, a so we can’t stop them.”
    “We heard all about their forays,” Otho answered calmly. “The Chief is on their trail now.”
    “Curt went out after the raiders without you Futuremen?” Joan exclaimed, surprised.
    “He insisted on doing so,” Simon explained. “Curtis believes the raiders get their uncanny knowledge of radium shipments by means of spies on radium ships. So he sailed in a radium ship, in disguise.”
    “He said we couldn’t go with him,” Grag complained, “but that he’d call us when he needed us.”
    “But you don’t know that the head of these radium raiders is Ru Ghur, the Uranian!” Joan said quickly.
    It was a bombshell to the Futuremen. The name of their deadliest enemy, the man whose infamous “Lathe ray” traffic had started their greatest struggle, electrified them.
    “Ru Ghur!” exclaimed Simon Wright. “Impossible!”
    “It’s true,” affirmed Ezra. “We just got the flash from a ship the raiders attacked — the freighter Orion .”
    “The Orion ?” cried Otho, aghast. “Captain Future is aboard that ship!”
     

     
Chapter 3: Into Dreams
     
    IN THE crippled Orion , the young telaudio operator of the freighter stared in amazement at the leader of the radium raiders. For that operator was none other than Captain Future! He had dyed his red hair, before obtaining his position on the radium-carrying ship, hoping to get on the raiders trail.
    “You’re Ru Ghur — but you’re dead!” he exclaimed incredulously.
    “Ah, so you know who I am?” the Uranian raider leader said softly.
    Ru Ghur was a fat man — fat almost to grossness. His squat, tubby figure looked even more bulky in his shapeless space-suit. With his moonlike yellow face and bald head he looked the picture of a fat, friendly and harmless man — all except his eyes. They were black and bright and merciless, mirrors of the man’s brilliant intelligence and remorseless. They bored into Curt Newton’s.
    “So you recognized me?” Ru Ghur murmured. “That’s interesting. How did you know me?”
    Curt shrugged. “Your picture was posted everywhere by the Patrol, when they were fighting your Lethe-ray traffic.”
    “Ah, yes,” said the Uranian. “That explains it. But it doesn’t explain why you look familiar to me.”
    Captain Future tensed. He knew the danger of the Uranian’s sharp eyes penetrating his disguise.
    Curt Newton’s mind was seething from the shock of discovery that Ru Ghur was leading the raiders. Even the facts that the raiders had tracked down the ship, though Curt had detected no spies aboard, that the Orion was in their hands, and that his own life was imperiled, were unimportant beside the knowledge that this dangerous criminal was alive.
    At all costs, the Futuremen and the Patrol must be warned of Ru Ghur’s return. The telaudio circuit was still open. But an attempt to speak a word into its microphone would mean instant death.
    Captain Future let his hand fall idly to the microphone. His fingernail inaudibly tapped its edges, spelled out a message in standard interplanetary code.
     
    Ship taken — leader of radium raiders is Ru-Ghur.
     
    As he tapped, Curt Newton spoke loudly to the Uranian to distract his attention.
    “What are you going to do to us prisoners?” he demanded.
    The Uranian’s moon face assumed a look of sadness. “Ah. I was afraid you’d ask that. For I’m under the cruel necessity of ordering