Captain Future 24 - Pardon My Iron Nerves (November 1950) Read Free Page A

it was me!
    “Oog is now playing ‘Sick Robot!’ ” guffawed Otho.
    I leaped up, flung aside the blanket and started toward Otho. “This does it, android!” I roared. “This time you’ve gone too far!”
    My anger at being thus mocked when I was unwell was so great that I don’t know what I would have done to Otho if my voice hadn’t brought Curt running.
    “Otho, get out of here!” snapped Captain Future. “I told you to let him alone.”
    “I’ll crush that plastic-puss synthetic imitation of a man back into his original chemicals!” I said furiously.
    “Grag, don’t lose your temper — it’s bad for you if you have any psychotic trouble,” Curt reminded me.
    That cooled me down. I’d forgotten my precarious psychological condition.
    Captain Future continued quickly, “Grag, you said your psychoanalyst told you to get away from people to cure your inferiority complex?”
    “Yes — he said people were bad for me and that New York was especially bad that way, so I wasn’t to come back to him,” I said.
    Curt’s face again twisted in that queer strained look I knew indicated deep worry. “He wasn’t so dumb,” Captain Future commented. “But I think he was right. I think it might do you good to get away from humans — I mean of course us other humans — for a little while.
    “And it so happens,” he went on, “that you can carry out a rather urgent mission for us at the same time. You’ve heard of the moon Dis?”
    “Pluto’s fourth little moon?” I said. “The one where they do the remote-control actinium mining?”
    Captain Future nodded. “That’s the place. It’s rich in actinium but has a poisonous atmosphere that instantly kills oxygen-breathers. So it has been exploited by automatic machine-workers, which mine, crush and load the actinium into barges to be picked up without need of any humans living on the poisonous little moon.
    “But now something’s wrong there. They told me at Government headquarters that they’d got a flash on it from the ship that went to Dis to pick up the loaded barges. The barges weren’t loaded this time and the Machs, the automatic machine-workers, were not around.
    “Since it will take time to prepare an expedition to investigate that dangerous little world, they asked if we Futuremen could have a quick look now to see why the Machs have failed. I told them we would if we could.”
    “What’s all this got to do with my condition?” I demanded.
    “This — I want you to go out there and look things over,” he explained. “Simon and I are busy with the Andromeda data. But you could run out there and investigate, since naturally the poison there doesn’t affect you and you wouldn’t need any protection.
    “It’ll give you the change your doctor ordered, Grag. It’d get you away from humans for there’s nobody on Dis except those Machs. And they’re merely clever automatic machines — you could set them right wherever they’ve gone wrong and get them to working again.”
     
    I THOUGHT it over. I hated to leave Curt but after all, I had to follow doctor’s orders. “It’ll be pretty tough on me with only a bunch of dumb machines like that for company,” I said.
    “Yes, their reaction-circuits are of the most elementary sort,” Curt admitted. “But you can soon set them right, Grag. They’ll naturally be absolutely subservient to you — subservience to human commands is inherent in their circuits.”
    “Well, I don’t like to leave human society to give orders to a lot of dumb mindless machines but if Doctor Perker thinks it’ll be good for my condition I’ll do it.”
    “Grag, I think it’d be the best thing in the world for your inferiority complex,” Captain Future said, smiling in his relief.
    My preparations were soon made. I wouldn’t need the Comet — the space-sled would be enough for me. It was a streamlined craft I’d built for my own use — nobody else could use it for it had no over-deck, no