Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) (2 page)

IN THEIR unique home beneath the surface of the Moon, the four greatest scientific adventurers of the age held a conference. Curt Newton lounged back in his chair, his space-bronzed face bathed in the flood of softened sunlight from the glassite ceiling window overhead. He spoke with almost casual calm.

“There you have it, boys,” he finished quietly. “Mercury’s atmosphere must be replenished, or that agony of enforced migrations will go on to a bitter end. I’ve given my word that we would find a way to do it.”

“But you still haven’t told us
how
you expect to accomplish that!” exclaimed Otho.

The android, always restless, had been pacing up and down the room as he listened. It was a big room, biggest of all the chambers hollowed out of the solid rock here beneath the surface of Tycho’s crater. Telescopes, generators, transformers, scientific equipment of bewildering complexity of design, crowded this room. It was the main laboratory of the Futuremen. The other two of Captain Future’s famous three comrades had listened intently. They were even stranger looking than Otho. One of them was Grag, the metal robot, and the other was Simon Wright, the living Brain. Grag’s great figure would have caught the eye first. He was a metal giant, seven feet tall, with ponderous limbs hinting unmatchable strength. His bulbous metal head, with its gleaming photo-electric eyes and lipless speech-resonator, masked a spongelike metal brain whose powers of reason and initiative equalled the human.

The Brain was different. He had no real body at all. Once he had had a human body, once he had been Doctor Simon Wright, famed Earth scientist. But his living brain had been taken surgically from his aging, dying body, and had been implanted in the square case of transparent metal that he now inhabited. Inside that case circulated the serums that kept him living, and on its face were his glass lens-eyes, his microphone-ears and artificial voice, and the orifices from which he could jet traction-beams so that he could poise or move at will.

“Otho is right,” the Brain said in his rasping, metallic monotone. His lens-eyes held Curt’s face. “You must have some plan in mind for reviving Mercury, lad.”

Captain Future hesitated.

“I have a plan. You may think it fantastic —”

“Let’s hear it,” rumbled Grag. The giant metal robot’s booming voice shook delicate instruments around the room.

Curt’s gray eyes were deep with earnestness. For Curt was a dreamer, at bottom. Beneath his love of danger and excitement, beneath his gay humor, throbbed an aching earnestness of purpose — to use the powers given him by his unique birth and education to help the struggling System peoples.

“It’s not only Mercury we must think of. Mercury faces today the grim prospect of planetary death from failing atmosphere. But other worlds will face it tomorrow. And no makeshift expedients such as have been unsuccessfully tried on Mercury will solve this problem. No attempt to manufacture oxygen from mineral sources by chemical conversion can meet this situation.

“What is needed,” — his brilliant eyes swept them — “What is needed is a way of making limitless supplies of oxygen and nitrogen out of nothing. And I think there is a possibility that we can find an expedient way of doing that.”

Simon Wright, the Brain, listened to Curt with a strange feeling of pride. For to the Brain, as to the other two Futuremen, Curt was not only a leader but a son. The three unhuman beings had reared him from helpless babyhood to brilliant manhood.

Years ago, Roger Newton, young Earth scientist, had come to the Moon to establish a hidden laboratory. With him had — come his youthful bride and his scientific colleague, the Brain. They had built this laboratory-home beneath Tycho crater. Here they had labored at their great experiment of creating artificial life. Here they had created Grag, the intelligent metal robot, and Otho, the synthetic man. And here, too, Curtis Newton had been born.

It was in this very laboratory, soon afterward, that Curtis Newton’s young parents had been slain by enemies. And in this citadel on the barren, airless satellite, the Brain and the robot and the android had reared the orphaned infant. They had given him an education of unparalleled depth and scope. That education and his inherited genius made Curt Newton the audacious, brilliant scientific adventurer and crusader whom the whole Solar System knew as Captain Future.

“Make unlimited supplies of matter out of
nothing?”
Otho was echoing incredulously to Curt. “How in the sun’s name is that possible?”

“All matter,” Curt reminded, “is electrical in nature. Electrons are really particles of immaterial electricity. Why couldn’t matter be synthesized out of units of immaterial electric force?”

“It might be theoretically possible,” Grag rumbled unbelievingly to Captain Future. “But actually, it has never been done.”

“It has never been done by any scientist,” Curt corrected quietly. “But is has been done, and is being done right now, by the forces of nature.”

He pointed upward at the big glassite window in the ceiling, which framed a circle of burning stars and space in which swam the great green bulk of Earth and the dazzling Sun.

“Far in the central depths of our galaxy of stars, thousands of light-years away, matter is constantly being created out of electrical energy upon a gigantic scale.”

“You refer to the Birthplace of Matter?” rasped the Brain, startled.

Curt nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking of, Simon. If we could learn the secret of the Birthplace —”

“The Birthplace? What are you talking about, chief?” rumbled big Grag puzzledly.

Curt countered with a question.

“You know the theory that Millikan first proposed away back in the 20th century, that was later proved — the theory of the cyclic change of radiation and matter?”

“Sure, even a dumb robot like Grag knows that,” Otho cut in impatiently. “The matter of the galaxy’s suns tends constantly to melt away into radiation, into heat, light and other electromagnetic energy. It was thought for a while that the process would go on until all matter disappeared. Then Millikan guessed the truth, that somewhere in the galaxy is a point where radiation is somehow retransformed into matter, and that the so-called cosmic rays are the ‘birth-cry’ of newborn matter.”

“That’s right,” Captain Future nodded. “And it was found that that Birthplace of Matter is somewhere at the center of our galaxy, in the region of thick star-clusters and nebulae beyond Sagittarius. From that point stream out the tides of cosmic dust which are the new-born matter, and from that point emanate the cosmic rays, their ‘birth-cry’.

“We have no idea of
how
radiation is built into matter at the Birthplace,” Curt went on, as calmly as though he were not about to make the most audacious proposal in the history of the System. “But there is a chance that if we went to the Birthplace we could
learn
how. With that secret, we could create unlimited matter from radiation, could solve the problem of reviving Mercury’s wasted atmosphere.”

“IS
THAT
your idea?” Otho yelped unbelievingly. The android’s slitted green eyes were wide with amazement. “You must be spacestruck, chief. That point in the galaxy where the Birthplace is located is thousands of light-years away!”

“How would we ever get there?” Grag chimed in. “Our
Comet
may be the fastest ship in the System, but its rockets would never take us across all those millions of millions of miles. Even at the fastest speed it would take centuries!”

“Not if we used the vibration-drive we experimented with last year,” Curt retorted. “You remember — Simon and I designed it to propel the
Comet by
the reactive push of high-frequency electromagnetic vibrations projected from a drive-ring at the stem of the ship. We calculated it would build up velocities many times the speed of light.”

“You
calculated,
yes,” replied Otho significantly. “But you didn’t dare try the vibration drive once you had it built, lest living creatures couldn’t stand such acceleration.”

“Otho is right, lad,” rasped the Brain. “We had to give up the vibration-drive because our first tests showed that the acceleration necessary to build up to velocities faster than light would first ‘black out’ brains, then crush vital organs and finally pulp bodies.”

“I know,” Captain Future admitted impatiently, “but you must remember that I figured out a way to overcome that objection, by throwing our bodies into a stasis of force that would protect them completely from the acceleration pressure. Before I could build and try out such a stasis projector, the case of the Magician of Mars broke, and I’ve not had a chance since then. But I’m sure it will work. And with it, we’ll be able to force the ship to speeds so many times the velocity of light that we can fly across the whole starry universe.”

The android, always most reckless and adventuresome of the quartet, kindled.

“Devils of space, what an adventure if we
could
do it!” he said eagerly. “To get clear out of our Solar System, to explore the hidden heart of the universe, new suns and worlds and nebulae —”

“It wouldn’t be any wild, hair-raising pleasure jaunt, you
cockeyed
son of a test-tube,” Grag growled at him. “It’s those poor Mercurians and their dying world that the chief is thinking of.”

Simon Wright had been silent. Now the Brain’s rasping, metallic voice gave utterance to his doubt.

“Lad, I fear this stupendous voyage you propose is beyond our powers. I don’t think that even such a stasis of force as you designed can withstand that terrible acceleration pressure. And then —”

“And then we’d be corpses somewhere out in interstellar space,” Curt Newton admitted. His expression became earnest. “Simon, I know the danger you speak of is real. But I hope that I can guard against it. Shall we risk it? Or shall we let a world die, let its people be driven homeless to alien worlds?”

“We go, of course,” came the Brain’s cool answer. “I only wished to point out the possibilities. For myself, the scientific value of finding the secret of the Birthplace outweighs all risks.”

“Then we begin work at once,” Curt declared eagerly. “It’ll take plenty of it to fit up the
Comet.”

IN THE days that followed, the matchless scientific ability of the four Futuremen focused unceasingly upon the task of preparation. The deft skill of Otho with tools, the un-human strength and precision of Grag, the supreme technical knowledge of the Brain — these were the instruments unerringly wielded by the genius of Curt Newton.

The underground hangar of the
Comet
was the chief scene of activity as the long lunar evening waned to night. The four heavy cylindrical generators of the vibration drive were installed in the cabin of the streamlined space-ship. The terbium drive-ring was fitted around the tapering stern of the craft, just forward of the tail rocket-tubes, and linked to the generators by coaxial cables.

Captain Future himself labored upon the stasis projector. It was the very heart of their plan, for without its shield of force their bodies could not for a moment withstand the stupendous acceleration they meant to exact of the ship. He recessed the projector beneath the control-room floor, so that it showed only the fiat silver disk from which the protective force would emanate.

“It
seems
to work perfectly,” Curt declared when he had tested the stasis effect.

“We’ll soon know if it doesn’t work,” Otho muttered. “The pressure will splash us all over the ship if the stasis breaks down.”

The Brain said nothing. But Curt read from his silence the doubt that still haunted Simon’s mind.

While Grag and Otho stocked the
Comet
with the last cases of supplies and tanks of oxygen and water, Captain Future made a final anxious check of instruments.

“No, you don’t, Grag!” he exclaimed suddenly. “You’re not going to smuggle Eek aboard — I told you that he and Oog stay home this time.”

Grag stopped guiltily. The robot and concealed his pet, a small, gray, bearlike moon-pup, in some cases he was carrying aboard.

“Eek will be lonely here,” Grag protested worriedly.

“He’ll have Oog to keep him company,” Curt retorted, pointing to a fat little white “meteor-mimic” that was Otho’s pet. “The automatic feeder will take care of their food. And those two would be in our way on a crowded, dangerous trip like this.”

As Grag reluctantly carried his cherished pet out of the ship, the Brain looked inquiringly at Captain Future.

“Lad, should we have told our friends on Earth what we plan? Joan Randall, and Marshal Ezra Gurney, and the others?”

“I thought it wiser not to tell them,” Curt said soberly. “They’re working night and day with the other Planet Police to handle the migration from Mercury. And I didn’t want to raise their hopes.”

The last supplies were aboard. As casually as though about to start an ordinary interplanetary voyage, the four entered the ship. In a moment the great roof-doors of the hangar folded silently back, and the
Comet
rose on roaring rocket-tubes from the surface of the Moon.

Captain Future was in the control-chair. He drove the roaring ship up on a steep slant across the barren lunar plains and peaks, that lay bathed in the soft green glow of the hanging Earth. He was looking beyond the planet, toward the glittering star-streams that flowed together near the constellation Sagittarius.

“Tens of thousands of suns, planets, dark stars, nebulae, bunched there together at the galaxy’s heart,” he murmured. “The densest, most dangerous part of the universe, hiding the supreme mystery of the Birthplace. It’s mad, perhaps, to think we can —”

“To think we can penetrate that secret?” rasped the Brain. “It’s on the knees of the space-gods now, lad.”

THE ship flew outward through the Solar System under the full power of its rockets. Curt had not as yet touched the switches of the vibration drive. There were ten such switches, for the vibration drive could be used in ten different stages of power and speed.