Captain Future #19: Red Sun of Danger E-Book

Edmond Hamilton

• Herausgeber: Thrilling
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

From the archives of the mighty Ancients, Curt Newton brings back forgotten Denebian science to balk a greed-maddened schemer who seeks to loose unspeakable terror on the Universe! The Captain Future saga follows the super-science pulp hero Curt Newton, along with his companions, The Futuremen: Grag the giant robot, Otho the android, and Simon Wright the living brain in a box. Together, they travel the solar system in series of classic pulp adventures, many of which written by the author of The Legion of Super-Heroes, Edmond Hamilton.

Leseprobe

Red Sun of Danger

Captain Future book #19

by

Edmond Hamilton

From the archives of the mighty Ancients, Curt Newton brings back forgotten Denebian science to balk a greed-maddened schemer who seeks to loose unspeakable terror on the Universe!

Thrilling

Copyright Information

“Red Sun of Danger” was originally published in 1945. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Chapter I

Seven Against a World

TO SEE your whole life-work smashed to ruins by no fault of your own, to see the great dream of humanity which you had helped fulfill destroyed now by trickery and greed—yes, the taste of these things was bitter!

They put a sickness in Philip Carlin’s studious, spectacled face as his rocket-car purred up the wide north ramp into the center of Great New York. They crushed his mind with a black foreknowledge of disaster to come.

He drove into the great paved plaza that is the heart of Solar System civilization. The titanic bulk of Government Tower loomed like a thundercloud above the lights of the metropolis. Far up there against the stars glowed a lighted window, like a vigilant eye looking watchfully out into the universe that man had begun to conquer.

A Planet Patrol officer met Carlin. “Dr. Carlin? I have been ordered to conduct you to the President’s office. This way, sir.”

Carlin glanced at the officer as they walked toward the mighty tower. Impulse made him ask a question. “How old are you, Lieutenant?”

The Patrol officer looked surprised. “Thirty, sir.”

Carlin brooded over the answer a moment. “I suppose you’ve got your next seventy years all planned?”

The lieutenant grinned. “Oh, sure. There’s a lot of things I want to do after I quit the Patrol, some day. But I’ve lots of time.”

Carlin’s voice was heavy with foreboding. “I’d do them now, if I were you. I wouldn’t count on those seventy years too much.”

The lieutenant’s grin widened. “You’re joking, aren’t you? Everybody will live more than a century now, barring accident. Vitron has seen to that.”

His cheerful words echoed ironically in Philip Carlin’s mind as a soundless magnetic elevator bore him upward. “Vitron has seen to that!”

Vitron! The whole Solar System depended on the magic drug these days, as much as on the air it breathed—the drug of long life!

For vitron was a super-vitamin, a chemical agent that combated the poisons which cause the human body to age. It would give people a century of life, and decades of useful youth. It had at one stroke enormously expanded man’s prospective life-span.

But nine-tenths of the precious vitron came from a world far outside the System. Now that supply was threatened!

If the System learned of that danger, there would be a panic. But Daniel Crewe, the System President, had imparted it only to the scientists who had discovered vitron and to the others whom he had summoned to this urgent conference tonight.

CARLIN was thinking of those others now, without hope. “What can they do, if the Government is powerless? What can any of us do?”

When he entered the tower-top room that was the President’s office he found that Zamok, the solemn Martian biochemist, and Lin Sao, the plump Venusian cytologist, were already there. So was Commander Halk Anders of the Planet Patrol, a hard-faced, massive man in gray uniform.

But the room was somehow dominated by the fourth man, the worn, colorless little Earthman upon whose shoulders rested the vast weight of administering the government of the System’s worlds and moons. Daniel Crewe looked as though that weight were crushing him, tonight.

“They’re not here yet?” Philip Carlin asked hesitantly.

“They’re coming now,” Commander Anders said curtly. “Hear that?”

A low, muffled drone was audible from the night sky somewhere above this tower-top room. To Carlin, who was no spaceman, it was indistinguishable from the sound of any other rocket-ship. But Anders was sure. “That’s Captain Future’s ship,” he said.

Crewe’s tired eyes lighted a little. “I was sure they would come quickly.”

Carlin was unimpressed. Why did all these people regard Captain Future as though he were something superhuman?

Who was Captain Future, anyway? The greatest of space-adventurers, people said. They told wild tales of his planeteering exploits, of his scientific achievements, of his three non-human comrades who were called the Futuremen, of his mysterious home up there on Earth’s wild, barren Moon.

But what did it all boil down to? To the fact that a young Earthman with three freakish companions had performed certain exploits in space which popular enthusiasm had magnified beyond all reason. Just as legend credited the Futuremen with impossible scientific attainments.

Of course, Carlin grudgingly admitted, these so-called Futuremen did have one major scientific achievement to their credit. Their invention of the vibration-drive, giving spaceships speeds beyond that of light, was what had made interstellar travel possible. It had enabled the System peoples, in the last ten years, to explore and even to start colonizing the nearer star-systems.

People had to have a hero, Carlin thought morosely. This brash young adventurer had caught their fancy, had become the center of nonsensical legends. But why did the President and Commander, in a serious emergency like this, place such dependence on a cheap popular hero?

“I suppose none of us are wholly immune to mob hero-worship,” Carlin thought wearily.

The muffled drone above the tower reached a crescendo and stopped. Quick footsteps sounded on the stair leading down from the little landing-deck atop the tower. A man came quietly into the room.

“Got here as quickly as we could, sir,” he said to Daniel Crewe. “Hello, Halk. I presume these three gentlemen are the vitron scientists?”

With a little shock, Philip Carlin partly revised his cynical estimate. If this man was Captain Future, he had about him little of the flamboyant or swashbuckling air Carlin had expected.

This was a tall young Earthman, lean in a close-fitting drab zipper-suit. Except for an atom-pistol unobtrusively holstered at his belt, he had none of the attributes of a space-adventurer.

His torch-red hair was uncovered. His tanned and rather handsome face was grave. His cool gray eyes looked as though they could light easily with humor, but their gaze was searching.

Carlin’s attention next centered upon the trio who were entering after Captain Future. Carlin rose sharply, astonished. He’d expected three clever, freakish automatons. He hadn’t expected these!

“This is Curt Newton,” Daniel Crewe was saying quietly to the scientists, “and these are the Futuremen—Simon Wright, Grag and Otho.”

Simon Wright, the one known to the System as the Brain, held Carlin’s fascinated gaze as he mumbled acknowledgement of introduction.

WRIGHT was totally divorced from human form. His “body” was a small, square transparent case, poised in mid-air on jetted magnetic beams. His face was merely the side of the case on which were his protruding glass lens-eyes and the curious resonator of his mechanical speech-apparatus.

Carlin now remembered the story that people told and that he heard skeptically. If it were true, inside that box was a living human brain. Once it had been the brain of Doctor Simon Wright, brilliant, aged scientist of a generation ago, but when Wright was on the point of death, so they said, his living brain had been surgically removed and placed in the ingenious serum-case which had ever since served him as a mechanical body.

If that story were true—but it must be true, after all, Carlin thought in stunned surprise, for the Brain was speaking to the President, in a metallic, inflectionless voice.

“You said in your telaudio call that the vitron supply is threatened. What’s wrong?”

“Yes, whats all this fuss about vitron?” boomed the loud voice of Grag. “It can’t be as important as people make out. I never take it.”

Grag was a gigantic robot—a metal man, seven feet high, having massive arms and legs and a bulbous head with glowing, photoelectric eyes. Carlin had always believed he was an automaton, constructed with unusual cleverness.

But this robot was no automaton! His blustering comment attested intelligence and perceptions equalling a human’s, a powerful mind and personality seated in the robot’s complex mechanical brain.

Otho, third of the strange trio of Futuremen, was wholly manlike. Yet the stories insisted that he too had been artificially created, that he was an android or synthetic man born in a laboratory long ago.

His slender white figure had a litheness that hinted agility and speed to match the titan strength of Grag. An ironical, reckless personality was mirrored in the android’s thin, mobile face and slanted green eyes.

“Of course you don’t take vitron—only we humans take it,” he said tauntingly to Grag.

Grag appealed loudly to Captain Future. “Chief, I thought you said Otho was to stop insulting me? Did you hear that crack?”

“Cut your rockets, both of you,” Captain Future said sharply.

They had sat down around the President’s big desk. All except the giant robot whom no ordinary chair would bear, and the brain who hovered silently beside Curt Newton and watched with expressionless lens-eyes.

It was a weird council indeed to gather here in a tower of old New York! Carlin still felt a sense of unreality as he looked at the Brain, robot and android.

These strange Futuremen, this quiet-eyed young Earthman—was it possible that they had done the things with which legend credited them? For the first time, Carlin’s numbed mind felt a vague hope.

“You all know how vital the vitron supply is,” Crewe was saying. “You ought to know, since it was your joint labors that gave vitron to the System.”

Carlin realized the truth of that. Zamok and Lin Sao had discovered vitron in their laboratories, but when the drug proved too complex to synthesize on a large scale, it was he himself who had developed vitron-plants which had a high content of the substance and could be grown wholesale.

Vitron-plants would grow only in powerful solar radiation and high humidity. In the System, Venus alone met those conditions, and dry land there was limited. It was then that the Futuremen’s past explorations of nearby star-systems had revealed that the star Arkar had a planet, Roo, which was ideal for growing vitron-plants. On Roo had been established the colony which now grew the precious vitron for the System.

“And you all know,” Crewe continued, “that the System depends for nine-tenths of its vitron on distant Roo. Now that supply is threatened by a rebellion of the Roo colony against the System Government!”

Curt Newton’s brows drew together. “Rebellion on Roo? What would start it? What grievance have the colonists?”

“It’s the Roons,” said the President. “They’ve been attacking the colonists, raiding their plantations. And the raids are getting worse.”

“The Roons?” echoed Otho, puzzled. “The humanoid natives of Roo? I remember them, a primitive people of the red jungles. But they weren’t hostile when we first explored Roo ten years ago.”

“They weren’t hostile to the colonists until a few months ago,” Commander Halk Anders said harshly. “Then they suddenly began attacking the colony. We believe someone is deliberately inciting them to hostility!”

“We believe it, but we can’t prove it,” Crewe said wearily. “The attacks have enraged the colonists. They want to take summary vengeance on the natives. But we can’t permit that—it would mean a massacre of the Roons. It would be an evil beginning for our interstellar expansion. We want to stop these raids without slaughtering the inhabitants of Roo.” He spread his hands helplessly. “So the agitators for rebellion claim that the System Government won’t protect the colony, and that it should secede and declare its independence.” Carlin looked troubled.

“We think someone is using this scheme to set up a puppet independent government on Roo and get a monopoly on vitron. Then vitron, which means health and life, would be sold only to those in the System who could pay high prices!”

“A neat profiteering scheme, and not a new one,” rasped the Brain. “Remember that fellow Lu Suur who tried to corner vitron production on Venus, years back?”

“Whatever became of Lu Suur, anyway?” Curt Newton asked thoughtfully.

The President nodded. “We thought of that. The fellow dropped out of sight after the Roo project broke his attempt at monopoly. He might be mixed up in this. Joan and Ezra are checking on him.”

“I’ve been saying that the way to nip this whole rebellion business is to send a big Patrol squadron, to Roo and crush the revolt before it begins,” Halk Anders cut in harshly.

WEARILY Crewe shook his head. “We’ve argued that out. The colonists are so inflamed now that any show of force would be interpreted as coercion by the Government, and would bring the rebellion to a head. It would play into Harmer’s hands.”

“Harmer?” Captain Future’s question came sharply.

“Jed Harmer is the leader of the independence movement on Roo. We think he’s only a puppet of the real conspirators, whoever they are.”

Curt Newton spoke thoughtfully. “Since your reports indicate that those conspirators have deliberately incited the Roons to hostility, why not send secret agents to Roo to expose that fact? If the colonists there learned how they’ve been tricked, they’d turn against the agitators immediately.”

“We did send four of the Patrol’s best secret agents to Roo,” the President said. “All four of them met death on the way there—‘accidentally’. Their identity and purpose had been suspected.”

Newton shrugged. “Then the job must be undertaken by agents who know Roo thoroughly yet who will not be suspected.”

He looked around their faces. “I think this is a job the seven of us could do—us Futuremen and these three scientists,” he said coolly.

Philip Carlin felt an incredulous amazement stiffen his face. “Zamok and Lin and I will go to Roo with you as secret agents? But how—”

“You three have a plausible reason to visit Roo without being suspected,” Newton pointed out. “You’re the discoverers and developers of vitron, and what more logical than that you should visit Roo again for further research? No one will dream that you’re there as Government agents.”

“But what do we know about that kind of work?” babbled Lin Sao.

“You know Roo, and that’s what will count the most,” retorted Captain Future. “Well, will you go?”

Carlin felt stunned. The last thing he had expected was a proposal such as this.

His first impulse was to refuse. He a secret agent? He, the botanist who knew nothing of secret missions, of danger or conspiracies?

Carlin opened his mouth to reject the proposal. Across the desk he met the gray eyes of Captain Future, quietly watching him.

He was never after able to explain it to himself. But with incredulous horror, he heard himself saying, “I’ll go, for one.”

Zamok nodded in his silent Martian way. And Lin Sao, his plump face eager, added, “I, too! Nobody will profiteer on vitron if I can stop it.”

Daniel gazed at Captain Future in distress. “Curt, you Futuremen can’t go to Roo,” he said. “These three men might not be suspected, but everybody knows that you four are the Government’s ace trouble-shooters. If you turn up on Roo, the men behind this thing will know your mission instantly.”

“Don’t worry, I can dope out a disguise for myself and the chief that’ll fool everybody,” Otho boasted.

“Yes, but how about Simon and me?” Grag demanded loudly. “You can’t disguise us with your make-up tricks.”

Newton spoke to the President. “Don’t worry, sir—I have a plan by which we Futuremen can go to Roo without arousing suspicion.”

“But I still don’t see—” Grag began to complain, puzzled.

“I’ll explain on the way to Venus, Grag,” said Curt Newton.

“Venus?” repeated Commander Anders, his hard face betraying surprise.

Newton nodded. “The supply ships for Roo take off from Venusopolis, don’t they? Well, that’s where our trail begins.”

He gave rapid instructions to Carlin, Zamok and Lin Sao. “You three will go separately from us to Roo, immediately. Take the first ship and announce you’ve come for research on certain vitron problems.”

Carlin nodded. “But what do we do when we get there?”

“Just fake some research until we get into touch with you,” Captain Future said. “You’ll hear from us, never fear. And—trust nobody.”

The rest of their plans were swiftly laid. Newton gave no hint of his own intentions. But when the Futuremen left, Daniel Crewe voiced another anxious warning.

“Captain Future, you seven will be on your own, there on Roo. We can’t send you help, for as I said, that would precipitate the rebellion. And you’ll find few there who aren’t with the rebels. It’ll be you seven against all Roo!”

Newton smiled understandingly. “I know. But we seven know Roo, and we’ve all got a personal stake in this. I think we have a chance.”

Later Carlin stood at the window with the two scientists and Commander and President, watching a small ship streak an arc of rocket-fire toward the zenith above New York. The Futuremen were on their way to Venus—and Roo.

Roo, world of Arkar! His dismayed thoughts leaped out to that far, alien world in whose deadly and secret struggle he too was now involved.

So distant from the familiar Solar System, and so strange, that foreign world. Its unearthly red sunlight and crimson jungles, its ocher seas and brazen sky, its weird night-dragons flitting beneath the dark moon—they rose in Carlin’s memory now.

Yet, somehow, Philip Carlin did not feel as appalled as he would have expected. Somehow he felt a buoyant throb of excited confidence, communicated to him by the strange quartet who were to be his comrades in this secret struggle of seven against a world.

Chapter II

Night on Venus

UNQUESTIONABLY, the great spaceport at Venusopolis is an epitome of the aspirations and limitations of man.

Here, in breathtaking beauty, the shimmering traffic-tower rises into the night, pointing like a shining finger at the distant planets and the far more distant stars toward which the great ships take off with thunderous crash of rockets. Watching those ships go out, one can believe man is a god.

But leave the spaceport and walk through the sordid huddle of shabby streets around it, and you see the god’s feet of clay. Beyond the ring of mountainous warehouses that hold the ores from Mercury and grain and frozen meat from Saturn, the machinery from nearby Earth and the precious vitron from faraway Arkar, lies the zone known as the. “Belt.”

The Belt is a shabby slum battening upon spacemen, adventurers, merchants and less-identifiable characters who flow into Venus through the spaceport.

It has seemed incongruous to more than one observer that men who have known the beauty and wonder of the starways should find relaxation in the tawdry drinking-places and amusements of this place.

But human nature changes slowly, too slowly to match the swift, rising beat of a star-conquering civilization.

Rab Cain had some such thought as he unobtrusively made his way along a thronged, mist-choked main avenue of the Belt.

“An ugly, tawdry place,” he thought wryly. “Still, it’s lucky for me right now that there’s such a district as this on Venus.” Cain stiffened suddenly. Two planet Patrol officers approaching along the foggy street. One was a Martian, one a sharp-eyed Mercurian, and they were keenly eying passing faces.

“If they ask to see my papers, I’m done!” Rab Cain started to sweat.

He tried to look as inconspicuous, as law-abiding, as possible. But that was not easy for Rab Cain.

His face was not the face of a law-abiding, commonplace citizen. It was a tough young Earthman’s face—the dark features subtly hardened and worn by time, and with a livid straight scar across the left cheek which was only too obviously an old atom-gun wound.

Cain fervently hoped that the deadly little atom-pistol he packed in his jacket was not bulging enough to betray its presence. The two Patrol officers were looking at him very sharply as they closed in.

Fortune favored him. A towering Saturnian spaceman further along the street chose that moment to come to blows with a Venusian whose girl he had been ogling. The small uproar drew the Patrol men forward in a run. Rab Cain uttered a breath of relief.

“If they’d picked me up now, it would sure be tough!” he muttered.

The streets were risky for him, he knew. But just ahead glowed the sign of his destination, the Inn of a Thousand Strangers.

The resorts of the Belt ran to flowery names.

Basically, they were all the same—shabby rooms choked with green rial-smoke, half-drunken patrons and the haunting wail of Venusian music.

They were not as bad as they looked. Slumming parties from the sea-garden suburbs of Venusopolis might find them excitingly suggestive of outlaws and “planet-jumpers”. There were a few of these. But most of the patrons were simply space-weary men who craved a few hours fun.

Cain pushed his way into the Inn of a Thousand Strangers, avoided the noisy crowd at the bar and took a small table in a shadowy corner.

No one noticed him in the chatter of loud voices and throb of music.

Four Venusians in the opposite corner picked at their cross-strung guitars and sang swampland songs in a muted undertone.

“Ah, let’s have some real spaceman’s music instead of that wailing,” bellowed a merry, half-drunken Jovian spaceman. “Play ‘Wind Between the Worlds’!”

Cain inserted a square coin into the automatic service-pump at the center of his table and turned the selector to “whisky.” A plastic tumbler of brown liquid popped out.

As he drank, he kept his eyes on the door. Not too steadily, but he watched it with a furtiveness that made more than one casual observer put him down as a planet-jumper dodging the Patrol.

“The wind that blows between the worlds

Has carried me from home—”

They were bawling it out, a dozen motley, merry spacemen who had bought the illusion of good cheer for a brief hour between voyages.

“It never now will let me go

And till I die I’ll roam.”

CAIN smiled mirthlessly as he lowered his glass. The song was peculiarly appropriate in his own case, he thought.

He stiffened to attention. He was looking at the door, and a gush of mist had just come in the door, and someone had come with it.