Captain Future 25 - Moon of the Unforgotten (January 1951) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online

left them, and were quarreling over something that lay on the ground.
    “It’s Grag’s brain-case,” suddenly cried Simon hoarsely. “The magnasteel has resisted their teeth! But they’ve eaten the rest of him!”
    He plunged toward the animals with a shout of rage, both guns blasting. A pair of moon-wolves fell, but another trio came leaping toward him. One howled soundlessly while still in the air, then fell motionless as an atom-ray blasted him. The others came on.
    Roger fired quickly, and the leading beast fell just as his teeth closed over Simon’s leg. The other moon-wolf hesitated, turned to run, and snarled one last time in defiance at the deadly beam which penetrated his body.
    Of the entire pack, only one of the creatures succeeded in gaining the nearby shadows safely.
     
    THE MYSTERY OF GRAG’S DEFEAT
    Simon’s leg was torn and bleeding, but he evidently felt no pain. He picked up Grag’s brain-case, his own face white. As they were to discover later, Grag’s brain was functioning inside it as well as ever. But of Grag’s enormously powerful body there was not a trace. The beasts, in their lust for metal, had devoured it all.
    “He didn’t put up a struggle!” exclaimed Roger in amazement.
    “He just let them eat his body.” Simon’s face was working with emotion. “Roger, I’ve made a terrible mistake. This robot is worthless. I may as well throw this brain away and start all over again... except that I won’t live long enough to complete another one.”
    “All you need do is make a slight change,” suggested Roger.
    “It’ll require more than that. I made the mistake, Roger, of distrusting our robot, and therefore made him too obedient. It’s impossible to go over each of those brain-paths again, and alter that. He’ll be like this as long as he lives.”
    Roger was silent. Then he spoke as if to himself. “All we need do is supply him with a few reflexes that will take the place of an instinct of self-preservation. If we succeed in that, he’ll continue to obey us just as he’s done — and he’ll resist the will of any one else.”
    Simon scowled. “It isn’t so easy to supply only the reflexes we want, and nothing else.”
    “You are forgetting the lucenite,” replied Roger.
    There was a startled look on Simon’s face. “The lucenite! Of course! We can immerse the brain in a suitable solution, subject it to lucenite radiations, and only those ions will penetrate that are sufficiently hydrophilic! And then, if we send a few telepathic currents through the solution —”
    “It won’t take long.”
    “A matter of weeks. To work,” said Simon grimly. “My time is short.”
     
    THE NEW GRAG
    Rebuilding Grag’s body took just as long a time as making the alterations in his brain. Then, once more Simon pressed the life-giving switch, once more the inanimate metal became a living robot. Observing Grag casually, the two scientists could detect no change in him. Had the treatment of his brain produced any effect?
    It was a day later that they had the answer. Simon barked out an order, received no reply, and looked around. Grag had disappeared. He was not in the moon-laboratory, and no one had seen him go.
    “He is different,” observed Simon. “In his previous existence he never went away without receiving a specific order to do so.”
    “I wonder where he is,” said Roger.
    “Someplace where those moon-wolves can get at him, I suppose. Did he take an atom-gun along?”
    All the atom-guns were still in the laboratory. Simon and Roger exchanged gloomy glances. If the same thing happened this time that had happened before, they would know that the robot was not worth saving.
    The hours passed slowly, and within the laboratory there grew a feeling of tenseness and of irritation. Grag had not only left without receiving orders to leave, but he had done worse than that. By omitting to perform the tasks that the two scientists had counted on his performing, he had