Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 18 - Red Sun of Danger

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"Curt!" Joan screamed to Captain Future (CHAP. XVIII)
RED SUN OF DANGER
By BRETT STERLING
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!
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 freak-ish
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 space-
ships 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 Future-men,
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 Fu-turemen
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
摘要：

"Curt!"JoanscreamedtoCaptainFuture(CHAP.XVIII)REDSUNOFDANGERByBRETTSTERLINGFromthearchivesofthemightyAncients,CurtNewtonbringsbackforgottenDenebiansciencetobalkagreed-maddenedschemerwhoseekstolooseunspeakableterrorontheUniverse!CHAPTERISevenAgainstaWorldTOSEEyourwholelife-worksmashedtoruinsbynofault...

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