Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future - Moon of the Unforgotten

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MOON of the

UNFORGOTTEN

A Captain Future Novelet By Edmond HAMILTON

Curt Newton and Otho plumb the perilous secrets of the Jovian Moon Europa—where

Ezra Gurney, friend of the Futuremen, has fallen prey to a mystic cult !

CHAPTER I

The Second Life

The machines hummed and whispered

and a man's life changed. He was an old

man, with an old man's burden of

weariness and sorrow. But now that burden

dropped from him and his years dropped

from him and he was young again.

He felt the hot blood burst along his

veins and the singing excitement in his

nerves, the pulse and throb of long-

forgotten youth. For youth was his once

more and once more a whole universe of

adventure lured and beckoned, far-off

worlds calling and calling to him.

And Ezra Gurney, he who had been old,

shouted a glad young cry that was answer

to that call.

* * * * *

A message went to Earth's Moon,

flashing across the millions of empty

miles. It went by a secret wave-frequency

that only a half-dozen people knew.

Back across the empty leagues of the

void, in reply to that urgent summons,

came a ship, driving hard for Europa,

moon of Jupiter. There was a man in the

small ship and one who had been a man

and two who were manlike but who were

not truly human.

The ship came down toward the dark

side of Europa with the rush of a shooting

star and landed in the rigidly restricted

Patrol area of Europolis spaceport. The

four came out of it and looked around in

the magnificent glow of Jupiter. Then they

heard the light running steps and the urgent

voice.

“Curt !” And again, with a desperate

gladness, “Curt, I knew you’d hurry !”

Curt Newton took the girl's tense

outstretched hands in his own. He thought

for a moment she was going to weep and

he spoke to her with an affectionate

roughness, not giving her time to be

emotional. “What's all this nonsense about

Ezra ? If anyone but you had sent that

message …”

“Its true, Curt. He’s gone. I think—I

think he won't ever come back.”

Newton shook her. “Come on, Joan !

Ezra ? Why, he’s been up and down the

System since before you and I were born,

first in the old space-frontier days of the

Patrol and now with your Section Three.

He wouldn't get himself into any jam.”

“He has,” said Joan Randall flatly. “And

if you'll stop being comforting I have all

the data ready to show you—what there is

of it.”

SHE led the way toward the low buildings

of Patrol headquarters. The four followed

her, the tall red-haired man whom the

System called Captain Future and his three

companions, his lifelong friends, the three

who were closer to him even than this girl

and the missing Ezra Gurney—Grag, the

metal giant, Otho, the lithe keen-eyed

android, and Simon Wright, who had once

been a human scientist but who for half a

lifetime now had been divorced from

human form.

It was the latter who spoke to Joan. His

voice was metallic and expressionless,

issuing from the artificial resonator set in

one side of his “body”. That “body” was a

hovering square metal case that contained

all that was human of Simon Wright—his

brilliant deathless brain.

“You say,” said Simon, “that Ezra is

gone. Where precisely did he go ?”

Joan glanced at Simon, who was

watching her intently with his lens-like

eyes as he glided silently along on the pale

traction beams that were his equivalent of

limbs.

“If I knew where I wouldn’t hide it from

you,” she said with an undertone of

irritation.

In the next breath she said contritely,

“I'm sorry. Waiting here has got me down.

There’s something about Europa—it's so

old and cruel and somehow patient...”

Otho said wryly, “You need a double

hooker of something strong and cheering.”

His green slightly-tilted eyes were

compassionate beneath their habitual irony.

Grag, the towering manlike giant who

bore in his metal frame the strength of an

army and an artificial intelligence equal to

the human, rumbled a question in his deep

booming voice. But Curt Newton only

vaguely heard him. His gaze had followed

Joan's out into the alien night.

This was not his first visit to Europa.

And he was surprised to find that Joan had

put into words exactly what he had always

felt about the silent moon, the old old

moon that was scarred so deep by time.

Here, on one side, were the modern

glare and thunder of the spaceport, busy

with freighters and one or two sleek liners.

Beyond the spaceport was Europolis, a

glow of light behind a barren ridge. But on

the other side, before him and behind him,

was a sadness of ancient rock and distant

hills, of brooding forest hung with shadow,

of great plains empty in the red glow of

Jupiter, dusty wastes where no herds had

grazed and no armies fought for a hundred

thousand years.

The woods and plains were scattered

with the time-gnawed bones of cities, dead

and forsaken even before the last

descendants of their builders had sunk into

final barbarism. A thin old wind wandered

aimlessly among the ruins, whimpering as

though it remembered other days and wept.

Newton could not suppress a slight

shiver. The death of any great culture is a

mournful thing and the culture that had

built the shining cities of Europa was the

greatest ever known—the proud Old

Empire that once had held two galaxies.

To Curt Newton, who had followed the

shadow of that glory far back toward its

source, the very stones of these ruins spoke

of cosmic tragedy, of the agelong night

that succeeded the blazing highest noon of

human splendor.

The functional gleaming Patrol building

brought his mind back to the present. Joan

took them into a small office. From a

locked file she drew a neat folder of papers

and placed it on the desk.

“Ezra and I,” she said, “were called into

this case some time ago. The Planet Police

had been handling it as a routine matter

until some peculiar angles turned up that

required the attention of Section Three.

“People had been disappearing. Not

only people from Earth but other planets as

well—and nearly all of them older people.

In each case when they vanished, they took

most of their wealth with them.

“Planet Police discovered that all these

missing persons without exception had

come to Europa. And here in Europolis

their trails ended.”

Simon Wright asked in his toneless

voice, “Did they leave no clue as to why

they came to this particular moon ?”

“A few of them did,” answered Joan. “A

few of them before they left talked a little

of something called the Second Life. That

was all—just the name. But they seemed

so eager and excited about it that it was

remembered.”

She continued, “Since they were nearly

all aging people it seems obvious that the

Second Life they were hoping for was

some form of rejuvenation. A form of

rejuvenation that must be illegal in nature

or it wouldn't be carried on secretly.”

Curt nodded. “That sounds reasonable

enough. 'The Second Life'—the term is a

new one to me. However, Jupiter and its

moons retained the civilization and

science of the Old Empire long after the

other planets had relapsed into barbarism.

To this day odd scraps of that ancient

wisdom keep rising to plague us.”

“Quite,” said Simon dryly. “You will

recall the case of Kenneth Lester, also that

of the Martian, Ul Quorn. Europa in

particular has always had a reputation in

the System as a repository of knowledge

that has been lost elsewhere. It's an

interesting problem. It occurs to me—”

JOAN cut him short, genuinely angry

now. “Are you and Curt going to start on

that archaeological obsession of yours at a

time like this ? Ezra may be dead or dying

!”

Captain Future said, “Steady on, Joan—

you haven't yet told us exactly what

happened to Ezra.”

Joan caught a deep breath and went on

more calmly.

“When we came here to investigate we

found that the missing people who had

arrived here had simply dropped out of

sight. The Europans themselves refused to

talk to us. But Ezra wouldn’t give up and

finally got a lead. He found that the

missing folk had hired native mounts at an

inn called the Three Red Moons and had

ridden out of the city.

“Ezra planned to follow that lead out

into the hills. He made me wait here—he

said he had to have a contact here. I waited

many days before Ezra got in touch with

me through our micro-wave audio. He

spoke briefly to me and switched off—and

I've never heard from him since.”

“His message ?”asked Curt tensely.

Joan took out a slip of paper. “I wrote it

down word for word.”

Curt read aloud. “Listen carefully, Joan

! I' m all right—safe, well and happy. But

I'm not coming back, not for a while. Now

this is an order, Joan—drop the

investigation, and go back to Earth. I'll

follow you later !”

That was all.

Otho said sharply, “He was forced to

make that call !”

“No.” Joan shook her head. “We have a

secret code. He could have said the same

words and yet could have let me know that

he spoke under duress merely by a certain

inflection. No, Ezra was talking of his own

free will.”

“Maybe he fell for this rejuvenation

process, whatever it is ?” suggested Grag.

“No,” said Simon decisively. “Ezra

would not do anything so foolish.”

Curt nodded agreement. “Ezra has had

plenty of tragedy in his life that few people

know anything about. It's why he's always

a little grim. He wouldn't want to live a

second life.”

“Second Life ?” murmured Otho. “The

name tells nothing. Yet there must be a

clue in it.”

Captain Future stood up. “This isn't a

case for cleverness or subtlety. Ezra may

be in danger and we're going to work fast.

We'll go into Europolis and make those

who know something talk.”

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12MOONoftheUNFORGOTTENACaptainFutureNoveletByEdmondHAMILTONCurtNewtonandOthoplumbtheperiloussecretsoftheJovianMoonEuropa—whereEzraGurney,friendoftheFuturemen,hasfallenpreytoamysticcult!CHAPTERITheSecondLifeThemachineshummedandwhisperedandaman'slifechanged.Hewasanoldman,withanoldman'sburdenofwearines...

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