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

rooms he had expended so much toil to reach.
    “Hmph, it’s getting dark,” he muttered to himself. “I shall not have much time.” Night was falling, outside the ship. Through the windows, the Brain could see four brilliant moons climbing into the sky to throw a flood of silvery brilliance upon the fern-forests around Jungletown. And the whole northern sky was a quaking, lurid red from the Fire Sea.
    The dim radiance from the windows gave him sufficient illumination to conduct his search of the rooms. He looked around for a desk but there was nothing of the sort in this lounge-cabin, nor anything else of importance. Then he glimpsed a desk in the next cabin. He glided into that room and began a rapid search of the desk. It contained many papers connected with Jon Valdane’s multifarious financial affairs. But none of them seemed to bear on the Styx project.
    Then the Brain found one paper which he keenly inspected. It was a map of Magic Moon. Upon it, the newly discovered diamond deposits were marked, as lying north of the interplanetary colony of Planet Town.
    “This doesn’t tell much,” Simon thought. “Yet I hardly expected more.” Valdane was too clever to have left any details of his plot written down, he thought. Yet there was always a chance.
    So the Brain was searching through the other papers, when he heard the corridor door of the adjoining lounge-cabin suddenly open.
    Su Thuar’s soft, slurred voice reached his ears. “Hurry,” the Venusian criminal was surging. “Get those two cases in here before the others get back to the ship.”
    The Brain soundlessly closed the desk and darted up to a place of concealment behind the door that connected the two rooms.
    He heard something being set down in the lounge-cabin. Through the crack of the door he perceived that it was two small, oblong cases of light metal which Su Thuar and two others of Valdane’s bodyguard had brought.
    “What in space is the boss planning to do with this stuff?” asked one of the men curiously of the Venusian.
    “That’s none of our business,” Su Thuar retorted. "You’re paid to obey orders, and not to ask questions.”
    The man shrugged. “All right, all right — I just wondered why all the secrecy about the things.”
    “Valdane’s orders were to buy them secretly from Jovians here, and bring them aboard the Perseus without being seen,” said the Venusian.
    Suddenly Su Thuar gave a loud gasp. “Has anyone been in this suite since I left?” he asked in sharp tones.
    “Not a soul,” replied the Earthman guard, Rosson. “I’ve been outside the door all the time.”
    “Someone has been here,” snapped the Venusian. “The door into the next room was almost closed when I left. Now it’s wide open.”
    The Brain, hovering in his precarious concealment behind that door, heard Su Thuar striding forward to investigate.
    Simon Wright tensed himself mentally for desperate action. He could not escape discovery if Su Thuar searched the room. Nor could he regain the ventilation-tube without being seen.
    Suddenly a wild yell rose in the night, outside the ship. It was echoed by a dozen excited voices.
    “What’s that?” demanded Su Thuar, stopping and turning around.
    “I don’t know — something must have happened,” exclaimed the man Rosson. “Look, the whole north sky is blazing.”
    Su Thuar plunged out of the suite, into the corridors with the others following. “Lock and guard the door, Rosson,” he called behind him. “The rest of you come on.”
    Simon Wright came out of his concealment like a flying shadow at the door was closed.
    He was startled to notice that the whole heavens northward were now flaming with an increased lurid red light. Voices were still shouting outside the ship, and men could be heard running.
    The Brain delayed to examine the oblong metal cases Su Thuar had brought. He opened one, and was amazed. It contained nothing but a number of long, hollow wooden tubes.
    They were four-foot