Captain Future 13 - The Face of the Deep (Winter 1943) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online

was a great drift of stars, amid which the white spark of Alpha Centauri shone like a beacon in a direction dead ahead.
    Curt Newton’s practiced eyes, noticed at once the tiny red lights winking and flashing on the instrument-panel, and the buzzers whirring.
    “Future, we need some help,” Kim Ivan told Curt bluntly. “We’re running into something out here, I don’t know what. Tuhlus Thuun can’t figure it out, either.”
    “I never did any piloting outside the System before,” angrily defended the old Saturnian pirate. “Everything is cockeyed out here beyond the Line.”
    “You’ve been out here in deep space before, Future,” Kim Ivan said to Curt. “Can you figure out what’s got our instruments acting crazy?”
    “Suppose I do, will you turn around and go back to land us on Pluto?” Captain Future demanded.
     
    IT WAS Joan’s safety he was thinking of. There was a chance that he could bargain them into at least releasing the girl.
    Before Kim Ivan could reply, Moremos answered for him. The venomous Venusian murderer thrust his head toward Curt like a striking swamp adder of his native world, as he hissed:
    “No! You’re not dictating to anybody now, Future! You’ll either help us out or we’ll blast you down here and now.”
    “Go ahead and blast.” Curt retorted. “It won’t get you out of your troubles. And you’ll have plenty of trouble, piloting deep space.”
    He was bluffing, trying to high-pressure them into agreeing to the bargain he had proposed. And Kim Ivan called his bluff.
    “You’re not fooling anybody, Captain Future,” said the big Martian. “You won’t let this ship be wrecked for lack of your help. Because if it’s wrecked, the Randall girl dies — and you think plenty of her.”
    Curt winced. It was true. They held a trump card in the fact that Joan’s safety was tied up with that of the ship.
    “Let me see those instruments,” Curt said shortly, admitting defeat. He still had his secret plan of escape, he was thinking.
    Old Tuhlus Thuun began a voluble explanation. “I never saw instruments act so crazy! They indicate a meteor-swarm or some other celestial body near us, but the readings of its position they give are impossible!”
    “That’s because you’re not allowing for ether-drift and relativity space-warp,” Captain Future told him. “Out here in deep space, you have to correct for those factors.”
    His keen gray eyes swung along the deep bank of complicated dials. The red tell-tale lights under four of the meteorometers were blinking.
    The readings of those meteorometers showed the presence of a body of planetoidal dimensions, several hundred thousand miles away. That was a far greater distance than the instruments could actually function. The reading was being distorted by ether-drift and space-warp and must be corrected.
    Curt Newton hastily made nimble mental calculations. Trained in the routine of correction by his own former interstellar voyages, he rapidly reached a mental approximation of the true readings of the instruments.
    “The body indicated by those readings is really dead ahead of us!” he exclaimed. “Shift your course three arcs to port!”
    “God!” screeched Tuhlus Thuun, stiffening in the pilot-chair and staring through the broad window with dilated, bulging eyes.
    For a heartbeat, they were all frozen by what they saw as they followed the old Saturnian’s gaze.
    They were looking into the awful face of death.
    In the starry darkness full ahead of the hurtling ship, there had suddenly loomed up a spinning world. It was no more than a hundred miles in diameter. But it bulked gigantic as they raced headlong toward it.
    “Don’t try to brake!” yelled Curt frantically to the old Saturnian. “At this speed you’ll pile us up.”
    His warning went unheeded. Terror-stricken by the awful apparition ahead, Tuhlus Thunn madly jammed the brake-blast pedal to the floor.
    Next moment, the Vulcan seemed to explode around them. The