Captain Future 10 - Outlaws of the Moon (Spring 1942) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online

atmosphere.
    Curt flew above the sunlit side of the oblong asteroid, keeping well away from the low black hills at its western end. He knew from his previous visit that those so-called Magnet Mountains could tear every atom of iron out of a ship that approached too closely.
    They flew over a rolling plain covered with tawny grass, crossed above a river that flowed in a deep canyon around the asteroid, and then found themselves above a great forest of giant yellow growths that looked for all the world like exaggerated mushrooms.
    “That’s the eastern Fungus Forest,” noted the Brain, his lenslike eyes peering closely. “The biggest Erosian town is just north of it.”
    Curt nodded.
    “I remember. We’d better land by the town and we’d better do it before that queer gravitation field starts affecting us.”
    He sent the Comet scudding down on throttled rockets over the crowded yellow fungi of the weird forest. At its northern edge lay a small town of pale stone structures, curiously minareted edifices in which dwelt the human Erosians native to this little world. Captain Future landed the ship in the concealment of the towering fungi nearest this town.
    “We’d better go into town and explain to the Erosians why we landed,” he said quickly as he cut the cyclotrons. “They don’t much like visitors, if you remember.”
    “Now it begins!” groaned Otho gloomily as they emerged from the ship. “In about ten minutes, that magnetic gravitation field will start affecting our bodies like it did on our last trip, and we’ll go screwy again.”
    Captain Future led the way, his tall, red-haired figure striding through the thin, warm air, and dappled sunlight and shade of the strange fungus forest. He looked up anxiously, but saw no ships in the brassy sky.
    The fact strengthened his confidence that their pursuers had been thrown off the trail. The Patrol would not give Eros a second glance, for the most intrepid spacemen avoided it like the plague. The squadrons would assume that they were making for Venus, to hide in the great swamps.
    A few minutes later the Futuremen entered the little town of minareted buildings. There were scores of Erosians in its streets. These yellow-skinned men, women and children all wore dark, close-fitting garments not unlike the black zipper suits of Captain Future and Otho.
    But all these yellow people looked like living statues. They seemed frozen. In all the throng, there seemed not a single movement. Here a man striding along with a burden stood with one foot raised for the next step. Here stood two wrinkled old men who appeared to be conversing, one with an arm frozenly raised to emphasize his soundless speech. Nearby, children who seemed to be chasing each other were frozen in vivid tableau. It looked for all the world as though a strange doom had stricken all these people, petrifying them instantaneously.
    The spectacle was uncanny even to the Futuremen, who had seen it before.
    “It gives me the creeps,” Otho murmured in strong distaste. “Like being in a city of the dead.”
    “They’re as alive as we are,” Curt retorted. “They just live slower.”
    “I’ll say they do a hundred times slower,” Otho muttered.
    These yellow Erosians were not completely motionless. They were all moving, but so slowly that the eye could hardly perceive it.
     
    MINUTE by minute, the upraised foot of the man striding along with his burden came down toward the paving. When it finally rested on the stone, the other foot began slowly to rise in another step. All the other yellow people were moving or talking at the same half-paralyzed tempo.
    “No wonder they call the place ‘Slow Motion World’,” rumbled Grag.
    “And in a few minutes we’ll be moving and living as slowly as they do,” sniffed Otho. “Hanged if I like it!”
    Already, in fact, Curt and the Futuremen were feeling the first tingling sensation that warned them the strange magnetic gravitational field of Eros was