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

beginning to affect their bodies.
    The gravitation of this little asteroid was powerfully reinforced by a strong, peculiar magnetic field. This magnetism affected the electric nerve-currents of any living creature which remained more than a few minutes on Eros. It slowed down those nerve-currents, and thus stepped down consciousness, thought and physical metabolism.
    Thus, any man who remained more than a few minutes on this asteroid found himself living at a tempo a hundred times slower than normal. Yet because all other life on Eros lived and moved at the same tempo, he would seem to himself unchanged. It was this peculiar condition of the asteroid that made it sedulously avoided by spacemen.
    “We are slowing down already,” the Brain observed with keen interest.”Do you notice?”
    “I don’t feel any different,” Grag declared skeptically.
    “Look at those people in the street!” Otho told him. “Can’t you see the difference?”
    The yellow Erosians around the Futuremen seemed to be moving faster than they had. More and more rapidly they appeared to move — but in reality, it was only that the Futuremen were living and moving slower. Within a few more minutes, the Erosians around Curt and his comrades seemed walking and talking at normal tempo.
    Captain Future realized that he and his companions were now on the same motion level.
    “I’m glad that’s over,” he declared, and added with a fleeting grin, “When on Eros, live as slowly as the Erosians.”
    The yellow people were now gathering around the Futuremen with excited cries. Curt and his comrades had been recognized.
    “It is the four explorers who came to our world before!” went up the cry.
    “Glad they remember us,” remarked Curt with relief. “Though I guess they have so few visitors they don’t forget ‘em.”
    The gathering crowd made way for the approach of a dignified yellow man of advanced age. Captain Future recognized the Erosian ruler.
    The yellow official greeted him with apparent pleasure. Curt had a unique faculty for cultivating the friendship of strange planetary races. And he had made friends with these Erosians on his first visit. “You have come to explore our world again?” asked the yellow king after his formal greeting.
    “Not this time,” Captain Future replied. He spoke frankly, as was his inborn instinct. “We were being pursued by men who believed we had committed a crime of which we were innocent. To escape them, we landed here.”
    “You shall stay here as long as you wish,” avowed the Erosian ruler. “You are welcome to be our friends and guests.”
    They were led to one of the little minareted buildings, and given to understand that it was their home for as long as they cared to stay. Yellow women brought food — cooked fungi, and a colorless wine.
    “Not bad, if you don’t mind a musty taste,” remarked Otho, wiping his lips. He stretched hugely. “Can’t we get some sleep, Chief?”
    Curt nodded.
    “Might as well. Keep your eye on things, Grag. Wake us at once if you hear anything like a ship.”
    Captain Future slept dreamlessly on the woven grass mat that was an Erosian bed. He woke to find that night had come. The minareted little structures outside gleamed palely in the starlight. In the distance, the fungus forest was a dark obscurity.
    “Nothing’s happened,” reported Grag, stalking in from outside. “Nothing except that Otho’s snores drew a crowd of Erosians for a while.”
    “I resent that!” exclaimed Otho, who had also awakened.
    “Cut it, you two,” ordered Curt. “It’s time we held a council of war. We’ve got to plan how to defeat Larsen King’s grab for the Moon radium.”
    He paced to and fro in the dim room, frowning in thought.
    “We’ve got to keep King’s Moon miners from reaching that radium,” Captain Future said. “That’s our prime objective. Once we’ve assured the safety of the radium, then we can endeavor to clear our names of this ‘outlaw’