Captain Future #2: Calling Captain Future

Edmond Hamilton

Description

Curtis Newton, wizard of science, and his trio of Futuremen blaze a trail across the stars to forestall the coup of Dr. Zarro—leader of a legion of peril!



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.

Sujets

• Science fiction
• Pulp Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Thrilling
• Date de parution: 25 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788828364429
• Langue: English

Extrait

Calling Captain Future

Captain Future book #2

by
Edmond Hamilton

Curtis Newton, wizard of science, and his trio of Futuremen blaze a trail across the stars to forestall the coup of Dr. Zarro—leader of a legion of peril!

Thrilling
Copyright Information

“Calling Captain Future” was originally published in 1940. 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
The Menace from Space

THE big liner Pallas throbbed through space on its regular run from Venus to Earth. In the brightly lighted saloons of the big shop, throngs of men and women drank, laughed, talked or danced to the haunting music of the native Venusian orchestra.
Up in the televisor room, “Sparks” yawned over his instruments. Then the youthful Earthman operator looked up quickly as the stocky first mate of the liner entered the room.
“Call Earth Spaceport Four and tell them we’ll dock at ten sharp tomorrow,” the mate ordered.
Sparks punched his switches, pressed the call-button. The televisor screen broke into light. In it appeared the chief dispatcher, on duty at Earth Spaceport 4.
The dispatcher heard the report and then nodded.
“Okay, Pallas. We’ll have Dock Fifteen ready for—”
Then it happened!
The televisor went blank as an untuned wave of incredible power crowded onto it. Then the image of a man appeared in it.
“What the devil—” Sparks gasped. The man in the screen was an extraordinary-looking individual. He seemed an Earthman, yet his tall, gaunt, black-clothed figure, his enormous bulging forehead and skull, and his hypnotically burning black eyes, gave to his aspect some indefinable but startling aura of the superman.
“Doctor Zarro calling the Solar System peoples,” he rasped in a deep, harsh voice. “People of the nine worlds, I bring you warning of a dreadful peril—a peril which your bungling, stupid scientists have not yet even discovered.
“A huge dark star is rushing upon our Solar System from the boundless abyss of outer space! This colossal dead sun is coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius—its exact position is Right Ascension, seventeen hours, forty-one minutes, Declination, minus twenty-seven degrees, forty-eight minutes. It is coming straight toward us and will reach our System in several weeks, at its present speed. This on-coming monster will wreck our System—unless it is turned aside.”
DOCTOR ZARRO’S rasping voice deepened into a reverberating thunder.
“I can turn aside that oncoming dark star, if I am given power to do so in time!” he shouted. “I alone! I am master of forces unknown to your ignorant scientists, for I am not really a native of this System at all. Who I am or what I am does not matter in this emergency.
“I am going to form a legion of men who believe in me and will help me avert this peril—a Legion of Doom! But to prepare the forces that can turn aside the onrushing menace, I must have complete authority over all the resources of the System. I and my Legion must have temporary dictatorship over the System, if this terrible danger is to be averted.”
The figure of Doctor Zarro vanished from the televisor screen, leaving the operator and the mate of the Pallas thunderstruck.
“Who the devil was that?” gasped the stocky mate. “He didn’t look completely human!”
The young operator shook his head dazedly. Now the Earth Spaceport dispatcher, reappearing in the televisor, cried:
“Did you get that broadcast of the man who called himself Doctor Zarro? He crowded onto all wave-bands—every televisor in the whole System heard him!”
The dispatcher switched hastily off. Young Sparks looked excitedly up at the mate.
“Do you suppose there’s anything to his warning? If a dark star really is coming toward the System—”
“Nuts, there can’t be anything to it,” the mate declared. “It’s just a publicity stunt, but a queer one.”
“It didn’t sound like a stunt,” Sparks muttered uncertainly.
He pressed switches, tuning in on many stations. A kaleidoscope of faces passed across the televisor screen. A hurricane of messages was being flashed back and forth between planets, concerning the startling broadcast of the self-styled Doctor Zarro.
“He’s sure stirred up the System!” the operator declared. “And judging from the messages, not everybody is as skeptical as you.”
A buzzer sounded from atop the televisor set.
“General Government Call!” exclaimed Sparks, his youthful face stiffening. He reached and touched a stud.
An official of the System Government appeared in the televisor. He spoke with decisive firmness.
“This is to inform the System peoples that the so-called Doctor Zarro who broadcast a warning tonight is merely a cheap faker trying to scare the System,” said the official. “His assertions are not true. Astronomers have quickly checked the position in space he gave, and found nothing. The dark star does not exist!”
“What did I tell you?” scoffed the first mate as the System official switched off. “Just a crazy fake, that’s all.”
“Maybe,” muttered the operator. “But that man didn’t look like a faker. He looked queer, powerful—superhuman!”
“Rats—he’s just a crank alarmist,” repeated the stocky mate. “The Planet Police will soon hunt him down.”
BUT the Planet Police did not hunt Doctor Zarro down. Two weeks later the Mercurian newscaster was announcing:
“—and so the Planet Police have been completely unable to find the mysterious Doctor Zarro who made that broadcast, for his wave was of a strange new type whose source could not be located or analyzed.
“Karthak, Saturn: A disastrous atomic explosion in this colony today took toll of—”
The crowd of chromium-miners and engineers in this little drinking-shop in one of the Twilight Cities of Mercury paid no further attention to the news bulletins. One of them, a big, bald Earthman miner, had started arguing with a little Mercurian engineer.
“I tell you, I heard that broadcast,” the Mercurian insisted, “and that Doctor Zarro wasn’t any Earthman! He looked—”
“Look—there he is now!” yelled one of the crowd, pointing at the televisor.
They stared stupefiedly. The newscaster had been crowded off the ether, and the tall, gaunt, burning-eyed image of Doctor Zarro had appeared in the screen.
“You did not believe my warning, people of the nine worlds,” Doctor Zarro thundered, “you chose to believe your stupid ‘scientists’ instead. But now you shall see for yourself. The dark star approaching is now grown so large that it can be seen in small telescopes.
“Look for yourselves to the position in space I mentioned, and you will see that monster dead sun that is coming nearer to us each fateful minute. Look—and see for yourselves whether your ‘scientists’ or Doctor Zarro was right.”
The figure of Doctor Zarro vanished from the televisor, leaving the gathered miners and engineers gasping.
“Another fake warning!” cried the bald Earthman.
“I wonder,” muttered the little Mercurian engineer. He turned to a younger Mercurian. “Atho, you have a small telescope, haven’t you? Get it and set it up—we’ll see for ourselves.”
Presently, in the dark street of the metal Mercurian city, they were crowded around the small electro-telescope that was pointed toward a spot in the constellation Sagittarius.
“There is something there!” the young Mercurian cried. “I can see it!”
One by one, they stared through the eyepiece. They saw a tiny disk of darkness out there in the Milky Way.
“It’s a dark star, all right,” muttered the little engineer. “And it must be of great size, to present a visible disk far outside the System.”
THE motley interplanetary group of men looked at each other. A chill of doubt had settled on them.
“If a dark star is rushing toward the System, it will wreck the nine worlds as Doctor Zarro warns!” cried a wide-eyed Venusian. “Maybe we ought to give him the System-wide authority he asks for.”
“Aw, I still don’t believe it,” declared the bald Earthman miner. “Let’s see what the Government has to say on it.”
They crowded back to the televisor in the drinking shop. A Government announcer was on.
“People of the System, our scientists have now located a dark body of some kind in Sagittarius,” admitted the official; “But there is no danger from it! As far as the scientists have ascertained, it has almost no mass. So there’s nothing to fear.”
“See?” exclaimed the bald Earthman miner triumphantly. “I told you it was all nonsense.”
But the others looked worried. One of them, the younger Mercurian, voiced what all were thinking.
“The scientists said at first there was no dark star at all! Now they admit that Doctor Zarro was right, that there is a dark star. They claim it lacks sufficient mass to harm us, even though it’s big. Suppose the scientists are wrong again? Suppose Doctor Zarro’s warning is right?”
They looked at each other in wild surmise.
“If it is, then Doctor Zarro is the only one who can save us from the dark star! He was the one who told us about it when our scientists denied even its existence—”
The bald miner shook his head. Like all modern people, he had always had complete faith in the scientists of the System. That faith was still unshaken, even though Doctor Zarro had proved the scientists wrong once.
“I still take our scientists’ word against this mysterious Doctor Zarro’s,” he declared stubbornly. “They’d tell us if there was any real danger—”
This particular Earthman might persist in his faith. Others, in various quarters of the System, were losing it rapidly.
“There is danger! Terrible danger to the whole Sy