Captain Future 25 - Moon of the Unforgotten (January 1951) (7 page)

The looming barrier was real enough, as they labored and sweated to scale its lofty slopes. They gained the ridge, and scrambled down the other side until they again stood upon the level plain.

But now a deep, broad river ran between them and their distant ship. It had not been there before.

“Nothing to do but swim it,” Curt rasped. “Simon, you can fly over and Grag can walk it. Come on, Otho.”

He and Otho, poised on the bank and dived into the river. Before they hit the water, the river instantaneously swirled into mist and vanished.

Curt and the android found themselves colliding with the hard earth.

Otho scrambled up, sputtering with rage. “Jokes, is it! If I get my hands on whoever’s behind all this —”

“Hey, look out!” yelled Grag wildly.

A herd of enormous reptilian monsters was bearing down on them from the north. The ground quaked to the rumbling tread of the scaled monstrosities.

They whipped out their weapons. Before they could fire, the menacing creatures melted into mist and were gone.

“There’s the
Comet!”
Curt cried. “Run for it!”

PTAR EXPLAINS

They reached and tumbled into the ship. Then they froze. In the cabin, sitting and smiling pleasantly at them, was Ptar.

“Now I
know
we’re all out of our heads!” Otho groaned.

Curt’s proton-gun covered the pleasant-faced young stranger. “I don’t know whether you’re real or not, but I’m going to find out!” Captain Future gritted.

“Wait a moment, please,” said Ptar unruffledly. “I owe you an explanation, before you leave my world. I give it to you, because you have afforded me a brief welcome relaxation by this little jest I have been playing on you.

“This planet has no other inhabitant than a single Intelligence. I, that Intelligence, am speaking to you. I am a mind, vast and ancient beyond your imagining. Long ago, I freed myself of physical body and took this whole uninhabited
planet
as my body.

“I control every atom and electron of this world, just as you control your fingers. I can thus instantly by effort of will shift electrons and atoms here into new combinations, into new substances and shapes, and can dissolve them as swiftly.

“When you landed here, I amused myself by mystifying you. Now that you are departing, I shall recompense you for the relaxation you have afforded me, by giving you not only this explanation but also the copper which you need.”

As he spoke the last words, Ptar’s figure shifted into swirling mists. The mists almost instantly resolidified in different form.

Where Ptar had stood, there was now a neat pile of copper ingots.

“Let’s get out of here,” begged Otho shakily. “I can’t take much more of this.”

REFUELED AND HEADED HOME

The
Comet
was soon arrowing up into space. Not until the incredible planet was far out of sight behind, did Captain Future dazedly examine the mass of copper ingots.

“It’s pure copper, as far as I can make out,” he declared. “We’ll see whether it works in the cycs.”

He used two of the ingots as fuel for the cyclotrons. The generators throbbed cheerfully loud.

“It works!” exclaimed Curt unbelievingly. “And we’ve far more of it than we need to get back to the System.”

When they had reached home, Curt and the Brain utilized every scientific instrument in the Moon-laboratory to test the remaining copper ingots. The tests showed only that the ingots were of absolutely pure but ordinary copper.

“I give up,” Curt said finally. “Either that impossible explanation was true, or else we landed somewhere and mined and smelted copper and then forgot all about it. I don’t know which solution is the more fantastic.”

Grag still maintains that it was all a dream. But every now and then, the big robot secretly takes out that pile of copper ingots and sits staring fixedly at them for a long time. He has a sneaking idea that if he wishes hard enough, he can turn them into diamonds.

THE END