Edmond Hamilton - The Futuremen Collection

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THE FUTUREMEN
COMPANIONS OF CAPTAIN FUTURE
A Complete Collection of the Original Pulp Department
CONTENTS:
"Meet the Futuremen!" .........................................................................................................1
No. 1 - The Metal Robot .....................................................................................................2
(from: "Captain Future - Wizard of Science", Issue 1, Winter 1940: "Captain Future and the Space
Emperor")
No. 2 - The Synthetic Man ..................................................................................................4
(from: "Captain Future - Wizard of Science", Issue 3, Summer 1940: "Captain Future's Challenge")
No. 3 - The Living Brain ....................................................................................................6
(from: "Captain Future - Wizard of Science", Issue 4, Fall 1940: "The Triumph of Captain Future")
No. 4 - Marshal Ezra Gurney ..............................................................................................8
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 5, Winter 1941: "Captain Future and the Seven
Space
Stones")
No. 5 - Joan Randall of the Planet Police .........................................................................10
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 6, Spring 1941: "Star Trail to Glory")
No. 6 - The Comet ............................................................................................................12
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 8, Fall 1941: "The Lost World of Time")
No. 7 - The Moon Laboratory ...........................................................................................15
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 9, Winter 1942: "Quest Beyond the Stars")
No. 8 - Captain Future's Boyhood ....................................................................................18
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 10, Spring 1942: "Outlaws of the Moon")
No. 9 - How Curt Newton Became Captain Future ..........................................................22
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 11, Summer 1942: "The Comet Kings")
No. 10 - Captain Future Trails the Chameleon ..................................................................26
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 12, Fall 1942: "Planets in Peril")
No. 11 - The Puzzling Case of the Space Queen ...............................................................30
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 13, Winter 1943: "The Face of the Deep")
No. 12 - The Birth of Grag ................................................................................................36
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 14, Spring 1943: "Worlds to Come")
No. 13 - Captain Future's Strangest Adventure .................................................................40
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 15, Summer 1943: "The Star of Dread")
No. 14 - The Metamorphosis of Simon Wright .................................................................44
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 16, Winter 1944: "Magic Moon")
No. 15 - The Amazing Creation of Otho ...........................................................................48
(from: "Captain Future - Man of Tomorrow", Issue 17, Spring 1944: "Days of Creation")
No. 16 - Otho Finds a Mascot ............................................................................................51
(from: "Startling Stories", Spring 1945: "The Red Sun of Danger")
No. 17 - Grag's Pet, The Moon-Pup ..................................................................................55
(from: "Startling Stories", Winter 1946: "Outlaw World")
1
MEET THE FUTUREMEN!
In this department, which is a regular feature of
CAPTAIN FUTURE, we acquaint you further with the
companions of CAPTAIN FUTURE whom you have met
in our complete book-length novel. Here you are told the
off-the-record stories of their lives and anecdotes plucked
from their careers. Follow this department closely, for it
contains many interesting and fascinating facts to
supplement those you read in our featured novels.
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 1 - The Metal Robot
RAG the robot is the largest and strongest of
Captain Future's three strange comrades. He is
probably the strongest being in the whole Solar
System.
G
He towers over seven feet in height, a massive, man-
like figure of gleaming "inert" metal.
This metal, being impervious to most forces and
weapons, has protected Grag from destruction many
times. Yet old scars show where his body-plates have
been broken and rewelded in the past.
IMBUED WITH INTELLIGENCE
Grag was built in the cavern-laboratory on the moon
by Roger Newton, Captain Future's father, and Simon
Wright, the Brain, according to an intricate design.
The robot was not designed to be merely an automa-
ton, but to have an intelligence and individuality of his
own.
His creators endowed him with a brain consisting of
metal neurones roughly corresponding to the neurone-
pattern of a human brain, though more simple. The
thought-impulses set up inside this metal brain are elec-
trical. Electrical and magnetic "nerves" control the
robot's great limbs.
ATOMIC POWER
Grag's source of energy is atomic power. A com-
pact, super-powerful plant is located deep within his
metal torso for safety. A small amount of metal fuel in-
serted into this power-plant inside his body is sufficient
to keep his strength for many months.
The metal robot can hear better than any human be-
ing, because bis microphonic ears are super-sensitive.
They enable him to hear sounds which are above or
below the range of human audibility, and Captain Fu-
ture has sometimes made use of this fact to communi-
cate through Grag with planetary creatures who talk in
tones beyond the range of human hearing.
Grag has an immense and unshakable loyalty to
Captain Future, which is his chief emotion.
The robot tended Curt Newton through his infancy,
and because Curt needed constant watching then, Grag
thinks that his master still needs watching over.
THE BRAIN'S HANDS
Toward Simon Wright, Grag feels respect and some
awe. For he knows that Simon helped create him.
Also he has long been accustomed to acting as the
Brain's hands, performing experiments and researches
under the Brain's direction.
But toward Otho, the android, Grag is deeply jeal-
ous. For the robot's great desire is to be thought of as
human or near-human. Grag has always been angry
when anyone has referred to him as a machine, or au-
tomaton. He feels that he is just like other humans, ex-
cept that his body is made of metal instead of flesh.
But Otho, who was also created by Captain Future's
father and the Brain, likes to taunt the big robot on that
point. Long ago Otho found out that the great, simple-
minded robot was most sensitive about his unhuman
appearance, and ever since then Otho has gibed about
it.
CAMARADERIE
Grag invariably becomes furious at these taunts. Yet
the bickering between these two comrades of Captain
Future is at bottom one of mischievous camaraderie.
Each of them has saved the life of the other, more than
once, in a tight spot.
Grag has been able to extricate his comrades from
more than one perilous situation, through his great
strength or through his special capabilities. One of the
2
No. 1
THE METAL ROBOT
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 1 - The Metal Robot
most valuable of the robot's abilities is that he requires
no breathing apparatus.
This has enabled him to go where neither Captain
Future nor Otho could venture.
One time on Venus, when Curt and Otho and Simon
Wright were all trapped in deadly peril, and could not
be reached in any other way, Grag had walked days un-
der an ocean, over the sea-floor, to reach the island
where they were imprisoned. The robot was nearly lost
many times in that perilous traverse, in constant danger
of sinking into the ooze at the bottom of the sea, but he
finally made it and brought help to his trapped com-
rades.
CAST ADRIFT
Another time, Grag was cast adrift in space when
outlaws destroyed the little space-flier in which he was
trying to reach his master on Saturn.
The great robot floated in space for many days,
helpless and yet still living, needing no food or a air,
and finally was picked up by Curt Newton. Only the
robot could have survived such an experience.
There is a great weld-scar down the back of Grag's
metal back, which tells a tale of an adventure that nei-
ther he nor his master will ever forget.
Captain Future had penetrated into one of the cav-
erns of Uranus' chasmed abysses, with Grag. The out-
laws Curt was after blew up the tunnel entrance to that
cave.
Captain Future would have been crushed beneath
falling rock had not Grag, with his superhuman
strength, held up the masses of falling stone until his
master could jump clear. Grag himself was crushed be-
neath the rock, but Captain Future dug him out later,
and the great weld-scar on his back is his memento of
the adventure.
NO SENSE OF HUMOR
Grag has no sense of humor, as humans know it. He
is puzzled sometimes by Curt's jokes or the sly drollery
of Otho. And that makes him uneasy, for the robot's
great ambition is to be human in everything.
His happiest moments have been when Captain Fu-
ture has told him, "Grag, you are more human than
most humans I know."
Huge, incredible in strength, his great metal head
towering high, his photoelectric eyes gleaming and his
mighty metal arms raised, Grag is a terrible figure to
evildoers when he goes into battle at the side of Captain
Future and Otho.
And woe betide the person whom Grag suspects of
trying to harm his master!
3
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 2 - The Synthetic Man
THO, the android or synthetic man, is the only
being of his kind in the Solar System. He is a
man who was never born, but was artificially
made!
O
In his natural form no one would mistake him for a
human being. For the android's arms and legs have a
rubbery, boneless look. His artificially created flesh is
pure white, not pink like human flesh. Otho's dead-
white face has no eyebrows or eyelashes, and there is
no hair whatever upon his well-shaped white head. In a
beltlike harness he carries his ray-pistols, make-up
pouch and other belongings.
Otho's face was carefully molded by his maker, Cap-
tain Future's father, before the final "setting" of his
flesh. The man-made features are regular, yet there is
something unusual about Otho's expression.
Like a cat's eyes, his jade-green orbs can see in dark-
ness. And there is a queer, alien humor, a gay, mocking
deviltry in the cool way in which they stare.
THE WORLD'S FASTEST BEING
When Roger Newton and the Brain planned Otho's
Creation, they modeled the synthetic man after the hu-
man body, but simplified the pattern. Otho has no ap-
pendix or other such superfluous organs which in the
human body are atrophied and useless. The android's
physical make-up is streamlined for efficiency. To
more than one Earthman, he has seemed almost diabol-
ic - for his ironic, twisted mental outlook occasionally
leads to strange results.
The skeleton around which the synthetic man's
flesh was molded is composed, not of rigid bones, but
of artificial bones that are many times stronger and so
flexible that they can be bent double without breaking.
This fact, and the great strength of his artificial muscle-
tissues, gives Otho his wonderful agility and speed. The
fact that he is a superman has alienated him from nor-
mal beings, and at times, through sheer loneliness, the
android will assume a human disguise and visit Earth
incognito.
The android can run faster, jump higher, and move
more quickly in an emergency than almost any other
creature in the System. It was Otho who taught Captain
Future speed and skill in the days when Curt Newton
was a boy upon the moon.
It was he who taught Curt the method of super ju-jit-
su which he had evolved, and which enables him to
overpower an ordinary man in a twinkling. But, though
Captain Future is capable of faster action than any oth-
er human in the System, he can't quite match the unhu-
man Otho.
Otho's body requires both air and food to maintain
its metabolism. He must breathe - but his lungs are ca-
pable of breathing air that is so poisonous it would kill
the average human.
While he can eat ordinary human food, the android
prefers to take his nutrition in the elementary form of
simple chemical elements. It saves time, and Otho is al-
ways in a hurry about something.
POWERS OF DISGUISE
Most famous of Otho's accomplishments is his pow-
er of disguise. By softening and re-setting his synthetic
flesh, and changing the stature and posture of his flexi-
ble-skeletoned body, Otho can make himself up to be
an exact double of anyone in the System, no matter
what planetary race he belongs to.
Otho's power of assuming disguises has been of vital
4
No. 2
THE SYNTHETIC MAN
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 2 - The Synthetic Man
aid to Captain Future many times. Perhaps Otho's great-
est feat of make-up was disguising himself as one of the
Mind Men of Saturn.
That strange race who inhabit a legendary land hid-
den far in the endless Great Plains of Saturn are mere
immobile and featureless balls of flesh outwardly,
though they possess minds of incalculable power and
can use mental force as a powerful weapon.
Otho, by his wizardry of make-up, succeeded in the
incredible feat of passing himself off as one of the
Mind Men for a whole day, in a desperate emergency.
The unhuman Otho loves danger for its own sake.
He is soon bored when there is a lack of excitement.
For the android has neither the superhuman patience of
Grag, the robot, nor the cold, austere detachment of the
Brain.
LOYALTY TO CAPTAIN FUTURE
Otho would go through fire and water for Captain
Future. To him, as to the other two Futuremen, the
chief purpose of life is loyalty to the young wizard of
science whom they three reared from a helpless infant.
But while he would carry out any mission that Curt
Newton ordered, Otho will generally, through sheer
boredom and recklessness try to stir up a little excite-
ment on the way, and that often gets him into trouble.
Once, while on a mission for Captain Future, Otho
went too far off his course to pursue a fleeing enemy,
and got himself wrecked and marooned on an asteroid
with a poisonous atmosphere. A human would have
been asphyxiated there, but Otho's impervious lungs
breathed the lethal air without great harm. But he had
tramped the little world for a month before Grag finally
found him. Otho had passed the time by constructing an
underground hide-out which later proved invaluable.
The unhuman android's queer, mocking humor is
one of his strongest characteristics. He never tries
chaffing the Brain - Otho has too vast a respect for that
brooding, icy-minded being. But Grag is the great butt
of his gibes. He long ago found out that Grag has no
sense of humor, and he has been deviling the great,
simple-minded robot ever since.
OTHO'S FEUD WITH GRAG
The chief subject of his taunts is Grag's unhuman-
ness. The big, naive robot wouldlike more than any-
thing else to be thought human. Nothing so pleases
Grag as the idea that he is almost as human as other
people.
But Otho denies that Grag is human with sly, decep-
tive casualness, he keeps pointing out that humans
breathe, and eat, and have flesh instead of metal bodies,
and that Grag has none of these abilities. This invari-
ably excites the indignation of the robot, and makes
him deny vociferously that Otho is human, either.
And that always provokes an argument, for Otho
loses his temper easily. Grag's customary retort is that
humans can't remold their bodies and faces as Otho
does, and that therefore Otho isn't human. The two have
disputed the question all over the System from Mercury
to Pluto - usually they get so bitter about it that Captain
Future or the Brain has to interfere.
Yet neither Grag nor Otho are as serious in their
quarreling as they seem. They may be shouting at the
tops of their voices, but let any danger suddenly come
up, and robot and android will instantly stop their dis-
pute and work side by side in perfect co-operation.
Each knows that the other has special abilities which
cannot be matched, and that are often needed in the
dangerous adventures into which Captain Future leads
them.
SEEKS EXCITEMENT AND DANGER
It is when they are outward bound in space with per-
il and new scenes ahead that Otho is happiest. On the
other hand, when they spend a long period in Captain
Future's laboratory-home on the moon, Otho finds it
boring. While Curt and the Brain are engaged in their
abstruse scientific researches, and while Grag busies
himself in the simpler work of the cavern-dwelling,
Otho will saunter discontentedly among the lunar
craters in his space-suit, and look up disconsolately at
the starry spaces and wish something would happen.
High-tempered and impatient, fierce and gay by
turns, excitement-craving and utterly fearless and abso-
lutely loyal, Otho the android is one of the most strik-
ing of the three Futuremen who companion Captain Fu-
ture in his perilous quests through solar spaces.
One very human attribute of the android is that he
can dream, and in his dreams he is always on Earth, for
which he has a fierce loyalty, outwardly he can scorn or
mock anything in the Universe - but inside his shell of
impervious irony is a mind more sensitive and some-
times more unhappy than any Earthman could possess.
5
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 3 - The Living Brain
IMON WRIGHT, known by repute to all the peo-
ples of the System as the Brain, is the oldest and
perhaps the strangest of the Futuremen. His
queer history goes back many years in the past.
S
In that past time, he was a normal man, Doctor Si-
mon Wright of a great Earth university. Acclaimed as
the greatest biologist who had ever lived, Simon had as
his goal the creation of intelligent life by artificial
means. He worked on it for decades, with all the bril-
liant power of his intellect.
Simon was already old when he discerned at the uni-
versity a young student who gave great promise of a bi-
ological career. This young man was named Roger
Newton - he was to be the father of Captain Future.
The aging Simon Wright took the young student as
his assistant, then as his colleague in the researches to
create artificial life. Newton had already made some
brilliant discoveries. The old scientist and the young
one now prepared to attack this supreme problem.
Then tragedy struck the elderly scientist. Simon
Wright discovered he was the victim of an ailment that
would definitely cause his death within a few months -
a blight contracted by a too reckless experiment with
microscopic creatures. He would die, and his mind
would perish without ever completing his great attempt
to create life.
THE BRAIN IS REBORN
Simon Wright decided that even though his body
must die, his mind, his brain, must not die. He proposed
to Roger Newton that his brain be transferred into a
special serum-case in which it could live and think and
work.
Newton recoiled from the idea at first. "To live as a
brain in a box, without any body? It would be too un-
canny!"
"No, Roger," the dying scientist told him. "I have
lived a full life already, as a normal man. My only in-
terest now is in keeping up my work, my researches.
And I could do that, as a living brain, without being
hampered by this dying body of mine. I would be happy
so!"
Roger Newton finally saw the force of the old scien-
tist's reasoning, and agreed to perform the remarkable
operation.
All the biological genius of both men went into the
preparation of the case in which Simon's brain was
henceforth to live. It was made of transparent, inde-
structible metal, so that the interior mechanisms could
be inspected at a glance.
In it were placed tiny, compact atomic pumps which
would pump the serum that would nourish the isolated
brain and carry away fatigue-poisons. Repurifiers were
installed to keep the serum always pure. An atomic
heating apparatus with thermostatic control automati-
cally would maintain a constant body temperature in-
side the case.
When all was ready, Roger Newton performed the
operation. Working rapidly, he lifted Simon's brain
from his skull and placed it in the serum-case. Quickly,
he connected to its optic nerves the electric connections
of the artificial lens-eyes in the front of the case, and to
other nerves the connections from the microphone-ears
and the resonator by which the Brain speaks.
Ever since, Simon Wright has lived as the Brain, in
the serum-case. He has many limitations, of course. He
can speak, through the power-operated resonator whose
control is connected to one of his motor-nerve centers.
Another motor-nerve control allows him to turn his
eyes in any direction, and focus them. But he cannot do
6
No. 3
THE LIVING BRAIN
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 3 - The Living Brain
anything else. He can't move himself about - Grag, or
Otho, or Captain Future himself has to carry the serum-
case by its attached handle.
But mentally, Simon is completely free. He can
read, or study, or observe, or think, without ever need-
ing rest or sleep. He never needs food. The only re-
freshment he ever takes is a certain stimulating vibra-
tion, which he has played upon him.
THE MASTER OF THE TRIO
When Simon wishes to make records, he dictates
them into a special recording-device. And when he
wishes to conduct one of his many scientific experi-
ments, he uses Grag or Otho to carry out the physical
work. Usually it is Grag who is his helper, for the great
robot can be trusted upon to obey orders with implicit
fidelity, whereas Otho will often get restless and try to
hurry things along.
Both Grag and Otho regard their fellow-Futureman,
the Brain, with profound respect. For it was Simon and
Roger Newton who created the robot and the android,
in the lunar laboratory to which they and Newton's
bride had fled for refuge. Neither Grag nor Otho ever
try chaffing the Brain - they know that he can silence
them with a few well-chosen words in his cold, rasping
metallic voice.
In fact, though he was once a human man, Simon of-
ten seems more unhuman than either Grag or Otho.
That is because to the Brain, the pursuit of knowledge
is almost the most important end of existence. He is
prone to lose himself in scientific abstractions and
overlook the practical necessities of the situation, until
awakened to realization by Captain Future.
All Simon's human feelings, indeed, seem wrapped
up in Captain Future. To him, Curt Newton is not only
the daring interplanetary adventurer famed all over the
System, he is also the child whom the three Futuremen
reared to manhood. No father could watch over Curt
more anxiously than does the Brain, yet Simon would
scoff at the idea that he could be sentimental about any-
thing.
CAPTAIN FUTURE'S MENTOR
Simon's great aid to Captain Future and the other
Futuremen is in his encyclopedic scientific memory and
wonderful ability in research. Only the young wizard of
science whom he himself taught has ever excelled him
in scientific ability. For many decades the Brain has
been learning and has forgotten nothing - and there is
hardly a fact known to human science which he cannot
recall accurately and instantly from memory.
Simon has had some strange adventures during the
course of some of the Futuremen's exploits. Once, on
an asteroid whose people were inimical to Captain Fu-
ture, these hostile asteroidans raided Curt's camp when
only Simon was there. The asteroidans found the Brain,
but did not realize he was a living individual. They
thought him only a small scientific apparatus of some
kind, and Simon had the wit to keep silent and not en-
lighten them. They took the Brain back with them as a
puzzling curio, and, for many weeks, Simon's serum-
case rested on a shelf in a dingy shop, no one dreaming
he was alive. Finally Captain Future found him and res-
cued him from the strange situation.
Another time, on Venus, the Brain was vitally help-
ful to Curt in a precarious situation. Curt needed the aid
of a remote tribe of the ignorant swamp-men, but could
not prevail on them to follow him. These swamp-men
worshipped a small idol of an octopus-god. Captain Fu-
ture secretly put the Brain's case inside the idol, and
then Simon spoke to the people and ordered them to
obey the red-haired Earthman, which they hastily did.
Simon is most often to be found in the elaborate lab-
oratory in the Comet, his square case resting on the spe-
cial pedestal which Curt designed for him, his strange
eyes perusing a scientific micro-film book or observing
the course of an experiment which Grag patiently con-
ducts under his direction. And more than one ambitious
interplanetary criminal has come to grief because of the
scientific magic wielded by the Brain in that
laboratory! For the Brain's great powers are one of the
Chief reasons why Curt Newton and his band of Fu-
turemen are feared by evil-doers from Mercury to Plu-
to.
7
THE FUTUREMEN: No. 4 - Marshal Ezra Gurney
TRICTLY speaking, Ezra Gurney is not one of
Curt Newton's famous Futuremen - the famous
trio composed of Otho the android; Grag, the
robot; and Simon Wright, the Living Brain. Gurney is
technically a member of the Planet Police, that far-
flung organization which maintains order throughout
the Solar System.
S
But actually, Ezra Gurney, like Joan Randall, is al-
ways listed in Police Headquarters as on "special de-
摘要：

THEFUTUREMENCOMPANIONSOFCAPTAINFUTUREACompleteCollectionoftheOriginalPulpDepartmentCONTENTS:"MeettheFuturemen!".........................................................................................................1No.1­TheMetalRobot....................................................................

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