Captain Future 23 - The Harpers of Titan (September 1950) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

be heard arguing loudly back in the supply room as they restacked the fallen cases.
    Curt’s small, lithe figure flew up the stairs into the airlock chamber. He got into his space-suit and screwed on the glassite helmet, then touched the stud that opened the outer door of the lock.
    He emerged on the rock surface of Tycho crater, into blinding sunlight. Then he hurried in long strides across the crater, toward the cunningly concealed underground shelter nearby.
     
    ROCKET FLYERS
    In that camouflaged hangar rested the two small, swift rocket-fliers which Grag and Otho had built. Curt knew their operation thoroughly from Otho’s instructions. The boy entered one, switched on the compact cyclotrons. The craft rose rapidly up above the lunar surface.
    Curt steered up in a steep slant to cross Tycho’s stupendous ring of peaks and then headed northeastward. Over the wild, lifeless lunar plains and mountains he flew at high speed, through the blazing sunlight. In the black vault overhead loomed the great green bulk of Earth.
    A high-pitched, ringing laugh of utter happiness broke from the boy’s lips as he flew on. For the first time he was adventuring by himself, and he tasted his freedom like a young eagle spreading its wings for the initial flight. The wild pulse of long-repressed adventure throbbed strongly in his veins.
    He flew over the southern foothills of the looming Riphaean Mountains and then glimpsed a long, torpedo-like metal shape on the plain.
    “A ship!” young Curt Newton exclaimed wonderingly to himself.
     
    MEN LIKE HIMSELF
    Near the ship a little knot of figures wearing space-suits and glassite helmets were engaged in hurried activity.
    “Why, they’re men!” Curt told himself excitedly. “Men like myself — the first I’ve ever seen!”
    Immense excitement gripped him. He had never known anyone but Grag and Otho and the Brain, had never seen or talked with men like himself. They had seen him, were pointing up at his rushing little flier.
    He swooped down toward them, without the slightest thought of danger. At last, the boy thought eagerly, he was to have his first meeting with other men like himself!
    He landed near the ship and strode eagerly toward the men, his grey eyes shining in anticipation. There were eight of the men. They had been digging ores out of the lunar rock, to be used as fuel in the cyclotrons of their ship. The ship itself was a small twelve-man cruiser that looked like a private yacht, but the men were a hard-bitten, evil-faced lot.
    Their leader was a burly, beady-eyed giant who kept his hand on the hilt of his atom-pistol as he watched Curt Newton approach. Curt heard the giant’s voice speaking to his men on the universal space-suit phone.
    “It’s only a boy, men. But where in the devil’s name did a boy come from in this cursed Moon-desert?”
    “Maybe he lives here somewhere,” suggested one of the men.
    “Maybe you’re a fool!” retorted the giant. “Nobody lives on the Moon — nobody ever visits it unless they run out of fuel as we did.”
     
    SAVAGE FACES
    Curt Newton had stopped a few feet from the men and was looking at them eagerly. The first men he had ever seen! He felt a little disappointed as he surveyed their brutal faces. Somehow, he had not expected them to look so coarse, so savage.
    “Who are you, lad, and what are you doing here?” rapped the giant leader suspiciously. “Spying on us?”
    “Spying on you?” Curt repeated bewilderedly. “Why should I spy on you? Are you running away from someone?”
    One of the group snickered. “Well, Earth isn’t exactly a healthy place when you’ve mutinied and murdered!”
    “Shut up, you!” roared the giant. His savage eyes swept Curt’s small figure. “Where’d you come from, boy — and who are you?”
    “I’m Curtis Newton and I live here — over in Tycho crater,” he answered frankly.
    The big man’s eyes slitted and he stepped forward and grabbed Curt’s wrist. “You live here?