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

defeated the menace.
    Captain Future remembered the girl well, and soon met her again when Joan and Kansu Kane were kidnapped by Doctor Zarro’s Legion of Doom. Her aid in the Futuremen’s struggle on distant Pluto was again timely.
    So Joan, with Ezra Gurney, was detached from her regular section for special service. She and Ezra had proved they could work so well with Captain Future that they were assigned to cooperate with the wizard of science and the Futuremen whenever required.
    Curt Newton likes to chaff Joan by pretending that she is merely a thrill-hunter who is more trouble than help.
    “You only joined the Police for excitement,” he accuses her. “And you got put on special service with us Futuremen simply because you thought you’d be able to dabble in more trouble that way.”
    Joan has a standard retort for that.
    “That’s what I get for running after you all over space, and helping you,” she complains. “If you weren’t such an unromantic idiot, you wouldn’t make a girl chase you all the way from Mercury to Pluto.”
    Beneath her jesting complaints, Joan’s feelings toward the famous planeteer are very real. And she suspects that Curt Newton reciprocates, but can’t get him to admit it, which sometimes exasperates her.
    But she knows that Captain Future feels that he cannot let any other consideration interfere with his chosen career of championing the cause of law and order in the System. Until there’s no further need for him to blast the spaceways, he’ll have no time for romance. And until then, Joan Randall is glad to be one of the few coworkers of Curt and his famous Futuremen.
     

     
    The Comet
    From the Summer 1941 issue of Captain Future
     
    NO account of the Futuremen would be complete without a description of their famous space ship, the Comet.
    This craft is the fastest ship in space. It can go where no other vessel would dare go, and contains within its compact interior full equipment for almost any emergency. It is, in fact, the flying laboratory of Captain Future and his comrades.
    The Comet was built on the Moon by Curt Newton and the Futuremen. Into it, they put all their unparalleled scientific knowledge and skill. As a result, no ship in the System can outrival the Comet.
    The hull is of an odd shape, like that of an elongated tear drop. This streamlined design was adopted because it combats air-resistance perfectly. Of course, there is no air-resistance in empty space. But streamlined construction makes for efficiency when cleaving through the atmosphere of a planet.
    The hull is made with triple-sealed walls, each wall composed of a secret alloy devised by Curt and the Brain for special lightness and strength. The space between the walls is packed with a super-insulation. Thus the Comet can resist temperatures that would destroy an ordinary ship. Of course, when it ventures into extreme heat like that of the solar corona, it has to be protected by its “halo” of screening radiation.
    The power-plant of the Comet consists of nine cyclotrons of unusual design. The cyclotrons are the heart of any space ship. They convert powdered mineral fuel into raving energy, by atomic disintegration. The process is started by a switch which releases a powerful flash of force from a condenser into the cycs. After that, it is self-continuous, a small fraction of the generated power being constantly “fed back” into the cycs to keep up the process of atomic disintegration.
    The main flood of terrific atomic energy flows through the control valves into the various rocket-tubes of the ship, as directed by the pilot. If the energy is blasted out of the tail rocket-tubes, it hurls the ship straight forward. If directed into the bow or braking tubes, it slows down the craft. If turned into the lateral tubes along the aide of the ship, or the top tubes in the upper side or the keel tubes in the lower, it pushes the ship up or down or to one side.
     
    THE SPACE-STICK
    The Comet owes its