Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More (March 1951) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

pain and weakness gave him a clarity of mind he had never attained before. He did not even need sleep.
    His case rested usually on the laboratory table. There, he either advised and superintended Roger Newton in their joint researches, or studied volumes from their extensive scientific library.
    They often asked him anxious questions. “Do you feel all right, Simon? You’re not sorry you made the change?”
    “No, I’m not sorry in the least,” he replied truthfully. “I’m happy in the knowledge that I can continue my work.”
    That was true. But in Simon Wright’s mind there was one doubt, one foreboding, that he never mentioned. It was the shadowing realization that he was unable to do anything himself.
    He had never lived a life of physical action. But this realization that he would be unable to perform any physical act, no matter how dire the emergency, was the one flaw in his contentment. It bred in him a gnawing inferiority complex that he could not conquer.
     
    CAPTAIN FUTURE IS BORN
    Months passed. In the Moon-laboratory beneath Tycho crater, where they had taken refuge from Victor Corvo and the others who had sought to rob their scientific secrets, Elaine Newton’s son was born.
    The Brain looked down from his table at Grag and Otho playing with the growing, red-haired infant. Secretly, he wished that he could join them. He, too, loved little Curtis Newton. But he could do nothing but look on. “If I weren’t only so utterly helpless,” he thought, brooding over his inferiority. “I never thought it would make any difference. But it does.”
    Grag and Otho went out to excavate certain metallic ores from a vein they had opened in the wall of Tycho crater, some miles away. Roger Newton and the Brain were planning a spaceship of new design, and were gathering materials for the purpose.
    An hour later, the airlock door of the Moon-laboratory suddenly burst open. Four men in space-suits, carrying heavy atom-guns, strode into the room. The Brain looked up startledly from the table upon which he had been studying a formula. He instantly recognized, through the glassite helmet, the dark, hawklike face of the intruders’ leader.
    “Victor Corvo!” cried Simon. “Roger, call Grag and Otho.”
    Newton sprang toward the telaudio transmitter on the table. He never completed the movement.
     
    A COWARDLY MURDER
    Corvo’s atom-gun blasted two crackling bolts of fiery energy. One cut down Roger Newton, killing him instantly. The other bolt drove into the side of his youthful wife as she sprang forward.
    Simon Wright raved in his metallic voice, possessed by wild fury. The men behind Corvo stared at the Brain in uneasy wonder.
    “What is that thing?” one of them demanded.
    Corvo laughed. “It’s Simon Wright, the old scientist — or what’s left of him. I heard about it. Newton put his brain in that case. That’s all he is — a harmless brain in a box.”
    His voice rose in triumph. “I told you we’d finally track Newton down. Now start going through this place. I want every scrap of paper, every formula and diagram in it. Newton and Wright worked out secrets worth billions. We’re going to take them all — and we’ll take that Brain with us, to explain anything we can’t understand.”
    Simon Wright writhed mentally in anguish. Roger Newton and his wife were dead. And now Corvo and his band were going to take all the dead man’s scientific work and turn it to criminal purposes.
    He must prevent that. But how could he? He was just what Corvo had taunted him with being, a helpless brain in a box. He could do nothing. If only Grag and Otho were here!
    Simon Wright had a sudden wild idea. He was resting on the table only a few inches away from the telaudio transmitter which they used for communication with Otho and Grag when the two went out. He had no hands with which to turn on the transmitter. But maybe there was a way.
    He glanced at Victor Corvo and his men. Ignoring the whimpering baby and the