Captain Future xx - The Death of Captain Future (October 1995) by Allen Steele Read Free Book Online Page B

his ship.
    Had I a taser conveniently tucked in my belt, I would have settled the argument by giving him a few volts and strapping his dead ass in his precious chair, thereby allowing Jeri Lee and I to continue our work unfettered. But since outright mutiny runs against my grain, compromise was my only weapon now.
    “Begging your pardon, Captain,” I said. “You're quite right. You haven't issued the orders, and I apologize.”
    Then I turned around in my chair, folded my hands in my lap, and waited.
    McKinnon sucked in his breath. He stared through the windows at the Fool's Gold , looked over his shoulder once more at the holo tank, weighing the few options available against the mass of his ego. After too many wasted seconds, he finally reached a decision.
    “Very well,” he said. He let go of our chairs and shoved himself back to his accustomed seat. “Ms. Bose, prepare to dock with the Fool's Gold . Mr. Furland, ready the main airlock hatch and prepare to go EVA.”
    “Aye, sir,” Jeri said.
    “Um, yeah ... aye sir.”
    “Meanwhile, I'll send a message to Ceres Station and inform them of the situation before we lose contact.” Satisfied that he had reached a proper decision, he lay his hands on the armrest. “Good work, Futuremen,” he added. “You've done well.”
    “Thank you, Captain,” Jeri said.
    “Aye, sir. Thank you.” I unbuckled my seat harness and pushed off toward the bridge hatch, trying hard not to smile.
    A little victory. Insignificant as it then seemed, I didn't have any idea how much my life depended upon it.
* * * *

He took the pilot chair and headed the Comet across the zone toward the computed position of the invisible asteroid.
"They'll surely see us approaching!” Ezra warned. “The Magician of Mars will be taking no chances, Cap'n Future!"
"We're going to use a stratagem to get onto that asteroid without him suspecting,” Curt informed. “Watch."
— Hamilton; The Magician of Mars (1941)
    I'm a creature of habit, at least when it comes to established safety procedures, and so it was out of habit that I donned an EVA suit before I cycled through the Comet 's airlock and entered the Fool's Gold .
    On one hand, wearing the bulky spacesuit within a pressurized spacecraft is stupidly redundant, and the panel within the airlock told me that there was positive pressure on the other side of the hatch. Yet it could be argued the airlock sensors might be out of whack and there was nothing but hard vacuum within the spar; this has been known to happen before, albeit rarely, and people have died as a result. In any case, the Astronaut's General Handbook says that an EVA suit should be worn when boarding another craft under uncertain conditions, and so I followed the book.
    Doing so saved my life.
    I went alone, leaving Jeri and McKinnon behind inside the freighter. The hatch led past the Gold's airlock into the spar's access tunnel, all of which were vacant. Switching on the helmet's external mikes, I heard nothing but the customary background hum of the ventilation system, further evidence that the vessel's crew compartments were still pressurized.
    At that point, I could well have removed my helmet and hung it from a strap on my utility belt. In fact, the only reason I didn't was that I didn't want it banging around as I went through the carrousel, which lay at the end of the tunnel to my right. Besides, the stillness of the tunnel gave me the chills. Surely someone would have noticed the unscheduled docking of an Ares-class freighter, let alone one so far from Ceres. Why wasn't there an officer waiting at the airlock to chew me out for risking collision with his precious ship?
    The answer came after I rotated through the carrousel and entered the rotating command sphere. That's when I found the first corpse.
    A naked man hung upside down through an open manhole, his limp arms dangling above the wide pool of blood on the deck. It was difficult to see his face, because the blood that