Captain Future 06 - Star Trail to Glory (Spring 1941) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

Otho suddenly had an idea.
    "Oog, I believe you can help me get out of here!" he breathed.
    Otho waited until darkness came. The machine men outside did not seem to require sleep, but darkness would make his break easier. Otho picked up his little pet. He spoke in an emphatic whisper.
    "Oog, I want you to be an atom bomb. Remember the atom bombs we used to blast ores out with, on the Moon? Big, black cones, with a switch-fuse on the end of each one? Be one now!"
    Oog looked up worriedly. He seemed to understand that a new metamorphosis — was required of him. He made a visible effort. The tissues of his strange body flowed and spun and formed a new shape. He made himself a perfect imitation of Eek.
    "No, not that now," Otho whispered hastily. Oog bewilderedly came back to normal. "A bomb, Oog, an imitation of an atom bomb!"
    Oog imitated one thing after another, everything he had seen Otho handle in the past. He became a small telescope, a space-sextant, a big flagon of Jovian brandy, a televisor receiver. Then, when Otho was despairing, Oog flowed into an imitation of a conical atom bomb.
    "That's it, Oog!" the android said excitedly. "Now hold it!"
    Otho went to the door and called through the opening to the machine man on guard outside. The mechanical creature stalked forward. Otho held up his pseudo-bomb menacingly.
    "See this?" he hissed. "If you make a sound of alarm, I'll turn its switch. It will blow this whole base off Venus."
    The machine man stared. He might not have been influenced by a threat to himself, but this was a threat to ruin the base and plans of his master.
    "What do you want me to do?" he hummed after a moment.
    "Open this door!" Otho snapped. "Then walk with me to the Comet. Pretend I'm still your prisoner, if we meet any others."
    The machine man slowly unbarred the door. Otho exultantly stepped out, still threatening with the pseudo-bomb.
    "Now head for the Comet!" he hissed. "March, you metal skeleton!"
    Oog heard Otho say "skeleton." He changed at once from an imitation atom bomb to an imitation skeleton.
     
    INSTANTLY the machine man understood that he had been deceived. With a humming shout he leaped forward at Otho. Otho nimbly eluded the groping girder-arms and with a vicious shove sent the creature clattering to the metal floor.
    "You would have to do that, Oog!" he snarled.
    He grabbed up the scared pet and burst out of the building into the dusk. He saw the Comet, but it was a hundred yards away. Between him and the ship were other machine men, coming to answer the alarm.
    "Devils of space, we can't reach the ship now!" Otho groaned. "And we'll be captured again unless we get out of here fast."
    He turned and raced to the nearby edge of the floating metal base, the machine men pursuing with humming shouts. Otho dived off the edge of the metal platform. He writhed rapidly into the deepening darkness through the tangled vines and muck of the morass. Not Until he was so far that he could not hear the humming cries did he halt in a clump of fungi.
    "I ought to flay you, Oog!" he scolded angrily. Then his spirits rose. "Anyway, we got out of that hole. Now we'll wait till things quiet down and slip back and steal the Comet. They can't find us in this marsh."
    Hands grabbed Otho in the darkness, cold, webbed hands that held him despite his furious struggles. Manlike shapes had risen around him in the night. They were strange men with greenish-white, seal-like bodies, short, powerful arms and legs ending in webbed hands and feet, and hairless, bulbous heads.
    "Marsh men!" Otho gasped. "I'm worse off than before, but I'll give 'em a fight."
    It was not necessary to struggle, he found. The marsh men who had so fiercely seized him had suddenly fallen back with low cries of fear. They were staring at Oog. The little meteor-mimic, scared by the attackers, had instantly changed himself into an imitation fungus.
    "This is no man!" gabbled one of the marsh men. "It is a demon, a master of magic. He will