Captain Future 06 - Star Trail to Glory (Spring 1941) (9 page)

Zamor, the hot-tempered little Mercurian, made an angry answer.

"You Earthmen are too cocky! You wouldn't be able to make your ships were it not for the metals here on Mercury. Why didn't you stay on your own planet and build your ships?"

"We got our concession from the System Government," Rissman said. "We've complied with all its regulations."

"Yes, all you other-planet manufacturers have come swarming in to Mercury to exploit my world's resources," Zamor accused bitterly. "The Mercury authorities should never have agreed to let you start factories here."

Rissman laughed curtly. "You accuse me of seeking a monopoly, yet you would dearly love to monopolize the metal resources of Mercury, Zamor. It would give you a stranglehold on the space ship industry."

Captain Future had deliberately incited the quarrel between these hostile magnates, and had been listening keenly. Now he intervened.

"We're not getting anywhere with all these charges and counter-charges. I have some further questions to ask."

They subsided, though Rissman still glared angrily at the others.

"Have any of you ever used semi-intelligent machines as workers in your factories, instead of human laborers?" Curt asked.

He was thinking of the machine men who were being used to capture the space ships, though he did not mean to disclose how much he knew. All denied having ever done so.

"You know the Government restricts the use of robots as factory laborers," Gray Garson said.

"Any of you ever have anything to do with the manufacturer of such intelligent machine-workers?" Curt pressed.

Again the general answer was negative. But Curt noticed that Durl Cruh, the senior of the two Jovian partners, had a sudden uneasy look on his aging green face.

"Cruh!" he rapped. "Do you know anything on this angle?"

BURL CRUH squirmed. "Well, nothing important, maybe. But your mention of intelligent machine-workers made me remember something. I'll tell you about it later, when we're alone."

"You can tell me right now," Curt Newton said. "If you don't want to talk in front of these others, we'll go into the next room."

Reluctantly the aging Jovian consented. His fellow-magnates stared at him in suspicious silence as he shuffled to the door of the next room. Curt followed the Jovian into the large library, its shelves lined with rows of metal-cased "stereo-books." Captain Future closed the door.

"Now what is it?" he asked. "I presume what you have to tell me is about one of those men we just left."

"Yes, it is," Durl Cruh answered unwillingly. "It's just something I remembered about one of them when you mentioned machine-workers." Thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket for a
rial
leaf to quiet his nerves, he went on. "Have you ever heard of a Doctor Webster Kelso? He —"

The Jovian stopped suddenly. He looked down at the strange little object he had drawn from his pocket.

"Why, how did this get in my pocket?" he faltered. It was a thick metal disk, two inches across. "It's a spy button!"

Curt recognized the tiny instrument. Spy buttons were often used by the Planet Police. Minute televisor transmitters, they picked up and broadcast on a chosen wave any sound or sight near them.

"It wasn't in my pocket a few minutes ago!" Durl Cruh cried. "Someone in the study just now dropped it in my pocket, to eavesdrop on us."

"That's too thick to be just an ordinary spy button!" Captain Future yelled. "Throw it away!"

He lunged forward across the library to snatch it from the hand of the amazed Jovian. Before Curt took one flying step, the spy button in Durl Cruh's hand exploded in a blazing flare of atomic force that knocked Curt backward, half-blinding him. Curt staggered up. The Jovian lay in a huddled heap, his body warped and scorched by the blast. He was dead.

There had been a tiny, powerful atomic bomb imbedded in that spy button. It had been detonated by remote control as soon as it was discovered.

FUTURE realized instantly the significance of this tragedy. One of the space ship magnates in the study must be connected with the ship-hijacking! That magnate, whoever he was, had dropped the deadly spy button into Durl Cruh's pocket to learn what the Jovian told Curt. He had detonated the bomb in it when Cruh was about to give his information. Curt Newton swiftly remembered what Cruh had started to say.

"Have you ever heard of a certain Doctor Webster Kelso?" the Jovian had begun.

"Kelso?" Curt muttered. "Of course, I remember now. So that's the connection!"

He sprang to the door of the study. There had been no sound of alarm elsewhere in the Space Palace. The detonation of the tiny atomic bomb had not been loud, and these rooms were all sound-proofed. Captain Future burst into the study. His eyes swept the room. Only two of the magnates were there now. Lan Tark sat at his big desk, calmly going over some papers.

Gray Garson was pacing worriedly to and fro.

"Where are the others?" Curt demanded.

The Martian shrugged. "They drifted back to the ball."

"Did you learn anything?" Garson asked hopefully.

"Cruh's been murdered," Curt rapped. "I'm going to search you two!" Stupefied, Tark and Garson made no resistance as Curt rapidly searched them. He did not find on either of them the thing he sought.

"Wait here," he ordered, and hastened out of the study.

He meant to find and search the other magnates, but he was too late. In a corridor outside, he found a compact remote control apparatus for the operation of a spy button. The minute microphone that fitted invisibly into the ear and allowed the wearer to hear through the spy button lay beside it.

Curt's tanned face was bleak as he picked them up.

"Whoever he was, he knew I'd be looking for this, and dropped them here," he muttered.

His thoughts were racing. More than one of the magnates had motives, as had been brought out by their mutual accusations. But which was guilty? Captain Future realized that he could not answer that yet. The murderer had been too cunning. His best chance now, Curt decided, was to follow the possible clue that Durl Cruh had furnished.

He sent Gray Garson to summon back the space ship manufacturers. They viewed Cruh's scorched body in stark horror.

"My old partner — killed like this!" Rin Cholo babbled dazedly. "Captain Future, who did it? I'll kill him with my own hands!"

"One of you gentlemen did this," Curt said quietly.

They stared, then looked at each other in quick suspicion. Cholo glared at Christian Rissman.

"If I were sure that you were the man —"

"You're crazy!" barked Rissman. "You can't accuse me of this ghastly crime."

"Everybody knows you'd stop at nothing to get a monopoly of the industry," snapped Zamor.

"Gentlemen, the murderer among you will be exposed," Curt Newton said. "In the meantime you're to say nothing of this."

There was nothing more that Captain Future could do in the Space Palace now. Besides, he wanted to follow up the lead Cruh had given him. He went out into the ballroom to find Grag and Otho. Midnight had struck and the guests were unmasking, yet he could not see the Futuremen. Then he saw a crowd in one corner, and heard shouts of laughter from it. Curt found that a half-dozen guests were holding Grag. The big robot could have freed himself by exerting his mighty strength, but he couldn't do that without exposing his real identity.

"Take that metal suit off him!" one reveler was shouting.

"Sure, all guests gotta unmask now!" another cried hilariously.

"Just pry at that tin suit and it'll come off easy," Otho was encouraging them, chuckling at Grag's predicament.

Captain Future broke it up.

"Sorry, folks, but my friends and I have to leave," he said pleasantly. "Come along, you two."

WHEN they were in the rocket-flier, darting away from the Space Palace through the darkness, Grag exploded.

"I'll get you for that trick, Otho — inciting that bunch to take my skin off! You wait!"

"You should have seen Grag trying to dance, Chief!" Otho gasped. "I'll never forget it."

"There was murder in there, you idiot," Curt interrupted. He told them of Durl Cruh's mysterious death.

Their flier rushed low over the dark, frozen wilderness of the Cold Side. As they approached the Twilight Zone, they passed over great mines. The workings flared with krypton lights. In them hundreds of men toiled to excavate the rich metallic ores of Mercury.

When they reached the Twilight Zone, Curt flew straight southward toward Solar City. They flew above the great Tark and Rissman space ship factories, and a few of the smaller plants. Captain Future glanced down at them broodingly. It was night in Solar City, but the Mercurian metropolis lay unchanged in the eternal dusk, except that few people were now abroad. Day and night were artificially defined here.

When they landed in the court behind Planet Police headquarters, Curt hastened at once into the parked
Comet.
The Brain looked up sharply. Simon had been consulting a reel of micro-film from the ship's reference works. Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall had been watching him, waiting impatiently for Captain Future's return. The girl came forward eagerly.

"Did you learn anything at the Space Palace?" she asked.

"I learned what a stupid, space-struck fool I am," Curt blurted bitterly. "I let a man who knew something be killed under my nose."

He gave a brief account of what had happened. Ezra Gurney swore in picturesque interplanetary profanity.

"Fiends of Pluto, you mean that one of them big space ship tycoons is mixed up with this ring that's hijackin' ships?"

"They've all got motives," Captain Future stated. "Especially Rissman, who hasn't lost a single ship. He makes no secret of the fact that he'd like to crush out the others and get a monopoly."

"Sure, I've heard talk of that all the while I’ve been on Mercury," Ezra corroborated. "They say Garson and Zamor and some of the smaller manufacturers are about forced out now. Only reason they're hangin' on, I hear, is because they're hopin' to win the Round-the-System Race, which would boost their prestige and business."

"You say Durl Cruh started to talk about a Doctor Webster Kelso?" rasped Simon.

Captain Future nodded his red head. "That's about the only real lead I got. You remember the story of Kelso, of course."

"Sure, I remember, too," Ezra cut in. "The old
Star
Streak
mutiny." Say, maybe that hooks up with these machine men who are stealin' ships."

"That's my idea," Curt agreed. "But we'll need to dig out more information on the old
Star Streak
tragedy, to learn anything sure."

"What was this
Star Streak
mystery?" Joan Randall asked puzzledly. "I don't remember hearing of it."

"IT HAPPENED before any of us were born," Captain Future told her, "but it's still one of the great mysteries of space. Decades ago, the
Star Streak
sailed from Earth to establish a colony on Pluto. Head of the expedition was Doctor Webster Kelso, a brilliant physicist and engineer who possessed a number of potent scientific secrets he'd never disclosed. Kelso had built a number of semi-intelligent machines that were going to do the heavy work for him and his colonists.

"The
Star Streak
sailed into space and vanished. A broken televisor message came back that indicated some sort of mutiny or disaster had hit the ship. Space was searched, but the ship was never found. And Kelso's great scientific secrets vanished with it."

"That's the tale," commented Ezra Gurney. "It's always been supposed that Kelso's machines mutinied and seized the ship."

"What a ghastly story!" breathed Joan. "Machines, mutinying —"

"But they were not robots like me!" Grag exclaimed troubledly.

CURT NEWTON'S bleak face softened. He laid his hand on the giant robot's shoulder.

"No, Grag, they were not
human
like you."

Grag seemed to swell with pride.

"Lad, is it possible that these machine men who are hijacking the space ships are the same ones that Kelso made long ago?" rasped the Brain.

"They may be," Curt admitted. "Someone may have found the
Star Streak
after all these years, and got hold of Kelso's intelligent machines and his lost scientific secrets. If that's so, and if we can find out
who
did that — " He made an impatient gesture. "But saying 'if' won't help us any. The first thing is to dig out the stereo-records of the
Star Streak
business and see if these machine men we're after are really the same as Kelso's machines."

"There should be a full record of the case in the Interplanetary Library, lad," remarked Simon quickly. "Luckily we're right here on Mercury."

Curt nodded. "You and I will go over to the library now and check on that. It won't take long. The rest of you wait here."

Interplanetary Library occupied a square, massive metal building in a park on the west side of Solar City. This building held the archives of the whole Solar System. Scholars, historians and scientists came from every world to conduct their researches here.