Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online

traction-beams he could emit from his queer ‘body’.
    “Valdane probably left a guard outside his quarters,” Simon thought as he floated to the door. “But perhaps not. I can soon see.” He extended an ‘arm’ that was a beam of magnetic force, and opened the door into the corridor. For a moment he poised, listening.
    The ship was quiet. The telepicture actors and technicians were all gone, and the navigation-crew had been given leave in Jungletown.
    The Brain glided along the corridors to the middle-deck passage. He hovered in its shadows, peering aft. A tough-faced Earthman with a belted atom-pistol, one of Valdane’s ‘bodyguards’, stood outside his suite.
    “That will make things a little more difficult,” thought Simon Wright coolly.
    He glided back to the dark property-room. He had in mind a stratagem for entering Valdane’s suite, which he had used more than once in similar situations, during the past.
    He first procured a few small tools and instruments which he and Grag had hidden in a corner of the property-room. Then he glided up to the square grating that covered the opening of the ventilator.
    The labyrinth of hollow tubes which forced re-oxygenated air through the compartments of the Perseus, were each two feet square. As soon as the Brain had removed the grating, he glided into the tube.
    It was a close fit. He had known it would be. He also knew the amount of toil that lay ahead. But it was the one way by which he could enter Jon Valdane’s quarters without being observed.
    “The telepicture troupe will not return to the ship until late tonight,” Simon Wright thought. “It should give me enough time.”
    Simon Wright was a strange personality. Some said that because he was a bodiless brain living in a mechanical case, he had lost all human emotions. That was not so. His emotions of love for and loyalty to Curt Newton had never dwindled through the years.
    But it was true that there was something unhumanly austere about his imperturbable calm.
    He could get excited about his scientific speculations and experiments, but not about much else. Personal danger left him completely unmoved.
    He glided through the dark tube, feeling his way with his sensitive magnetic arms. The tube forked into a larger feeder-tube. He followed this unhesitatingly upward.
    Presently he found his way blocked by one of the big fans which forced the reoxgenated air through the system. The fan was not running, since the oxygenators had been shut off when the Perseus landed.
    “I hope there are not more than one or two of these in my way,” muttered the Brain, as he began to work.
    With the tools he had brought with him, he proceeded to dismount the fan. It was a long, arduous task, working in complete darkness.
    When he had removed the fan, he had to drag it back down to the property room before he could again go forward. He reached the main feeder pipe of the middle deck and started aft. As he had expected, he soon encountered another of the fans.
    This one was larger and cost Simon Wright considerably more toil and time before he had dismounted it. When he had finally won past it and turned into the port-side tube which served Valdane’s quarters, he immediately ran into a third fan.
    A man would have sworn, or at least uttered an ejaculation of annoyance. The Brain did neither. He set patiently to work once more, though he already had been in the pipes for hours.
     
    AGAIN, when he finally got the third fan free, he had to haul it back to a point where he could get past it. Indomitably, he resumed his quest. And at last, success crowned his efforts. He came to the end of the tube, and looked out through the grating into the lounge-cabin of Jon Valdane’s comfortable suite.
    Simon Wright watched and listened. It soon became evident that there was no one in the suite, though he could hear the guard shuffling outside its door.
    Silently, he removed the grating. Then at last, he was able to glide down into the