Captain Future 22 - Children of the Sun (May 1950) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online

commandership — 1 don’t want it.”
    Ezra Gurney was already a gray, grim veteran of the service, when he first met Curt Newton and the Futuremen.
    That was when Captain Future and his three unhuman comrades were first bursting dramatically upon the System, blazing a crusade against the most dangerous interplanetary criminals.
    Curt Newton and Ezra Gurney were drawn to each other at first meeting. The brilliant red-haired youth and the grim, aging veteran had two things in common — unrelenting courage and unrelenting hate of evil. They came to know each other well.
     
    GURNEY JOINS THE FUTUREMEN
    It was the famous “Space Emperor” case on Jupiter, that amazing plot which almost smashed the System law on its greatest world, which brought Curt and Ezra into work together. Since then, Ezra has participated in most of Curt’s exploits.
    Beside his deep affection for Curt, Ezra admires the Wizard of Science tremendously as a fighting-man. He swears by Curt’s ability as a space-fighter. But he sometimes gets impatient with Curt’s deep scientific researches. Ezra is a fighting-man, not a scientist, and inclines to think science can be a nuisance.
    “Didn’t go in for all these researches and laboratories in my day,” he will grumble. “We just unhitched our atom-guns and hunted ‘em out and blazed away.”
    He knows, quite well, that only the unparalleled scientific ability of Curt and the Futuremen has brought retribution to the super-scientific criminals Captain Future quelled. But he likes to pretend he thinks it all a waste of time.
     
    THE COUP THAT GURNEY WON — AND LOST
    Ezra can tell great yarns of his unrivaled experiences in the old wild days, though the crusty veteran seldom thaws enough to tell them to strangers. But there is one story of his past that Ezra never told to anyone but Curt Newton.
    That is the story of how he destroyed the third of those great space-pirates of past years. That pirate leader, known as The Falcon, was considered the deadliest corsair in space. He was known to be an Earthman, but that was all. After one squadron-leader after another of the Patrol had met defeat trying to destroy him, Ezra Gurney was sent out against him.
    The saga of Ezra Gurney’s fight against the Falcon is still told in the System wherever space-men meet. Ezra brought the Falcon to bay off Saturn, and destroyed him in one of the most terrific cruiser-action battles ever seen. Immediately after, Ezra requested to be transferred from space-duty. Everyone wondered why, but he never told the reason to anyone but Curt.
    No one in the System but Curt knows that the Falcon was Ezra’s own younger brother, gone wild in their early space-days and drifting into piracy as his brother entered the Patrol. And no one but Curt can quite appreciate the grim, bleak strain in the crusty old veteran’s make-up, and the reason for it.
     

     
    Joan Randall of the Planet Police
    From the Spring 1941 issue of Captain Future
     
    JOAN RANDALL, like Marshal Ezra Gurney, is not strictly one of the Futuremen. For the Futuremen, Captain Future’s trio of unhuman friends, are composed of the Brain, Grag the robot, and Otho the android. Yet Joan has been involved in many of Captain Future’s cases, as an agent of the Planet Police, and has come to be identified with the Futuremen throughout the System.
    Perhaps there should be inserted here a prefatory word of explanation concerning the Planet Police. Everyone knows, of course, that the jurisdiction of the Planet Police extends to every planet, asteroid, moon and other celestial body in the Solar System. When the Solar System Government was first organized, provision was made in its Constitution for such a police organization to enforce its laws.
    Headquarters of the Planet Police are on Earth. It has main planetary offices on every world, and besides these nine main offices, it maintains a post in every city, town or village of any importance in the whole System.
     
    THE