Captain Future 01 - The Space Emperor (Winter 1940) Read Online Free PDF

menace.”
    Suddenly a bell rang sharply from the panel of complicated gauges and scientific tell-tales.
    “The ship-alarm!” Curt exclaimed. “There’s some other craft near us in space!”
    “There it is behind us!” Otho cried out. “It’s an ambush!”
    Curt glanced back through the rear curve of the Control-room’s transparent wall. A dark little space-cruiser had just darted out from behind Callisto, and from its bows a big flare-gun was loosing a flare of atomic energy that sped toward the Comet.
    No other space-pilot in the System could have moved quickly enough to escape that leaping flare. But Captain Future had reflexes trained since boyhood to superhuman speed.
    The Comet lurched sideward from a blast of its starboard tubes, just enough to let the flare shoot past it. Before the attacker on their tail could fire again, Curt Newton had acted.
    His tanned hand slammed down a burnished red lever beside the throttles. Instantly an astounding thing happened.
    From the Comet’s tubes shot a tremendous discharge of tiny, glowing particles. Almost instantly they formed a huge, glowing cloud around the little teardrop ship, hiding it from view and streaming back in a vast, shining tail.
    The Comet had become, to all appearances, what it was named after — a comet! This was Curt Newton’s method of camouflaging his ship when he wished to avoid discovery in space, or when he wished to confuse an enemy craft. It was operated by a powerful discharge of electrified atoms, or ions, produced in a special generator and released through the regular rocket-tubes.
    “I’m banking around on them!” Curt called to the android. “Stand by to use our proton beams on them, Otho!”
    “I’ll blast them out of space!” exclaimed the android fiercely as he leaped to the breech of the proton-guns.
    “No, I want those men alive if we can get them!” Captain Future snapped. “Try to cripple them by blasting their tail — that will force them down on Callisto.”
    As Curt swung the Comet sharply around, the black attacking ship rose viciously to meet it, letting go another burst of atomic energy from its flare-guns.
    “So you still want to play, do you?” grinned Curt. “That’s fine!”
     
    CAPTAIN FUTURE had avoided the leaping flares by a lightning roll of the Comet that did not change its direction of flight for more than a moment.
    Now he sent the little ship, still wrapped in its glowing cloud, swooping down upon the enemy, before it could turn.
    “Now — let go our beams, Otho!” Captain Future cried.
    The android obeyed. The pale proton beams lanced from the Comet, grazed past the tail of the black enemy.
    “Missed them!” hissed Otho in bitter disappointment. “They’re trying to escape, master!” boomed Grag, pointing a metal arm.
    The black enemy craft, its occupants apparently unnerved by the closeness of the proton beams, was diving sharply to flee away through space.
    “It’s easier to start a fight than to quit it, my friends,” muttered Curt, jerking open two of his throttles. “Here’s where you find that out.”
    Like a streak of glowing light, the Comet dived after the fleeing enemy. Pursued and pursuer rushed down through the dizzy depths of space at nightmare velocity.
    Curt felt his pulse pounding with excitement as he guided his craft in that terrific swoop. To Captain Future, this was living — this wild whirl and flash of battle out here in the awesome solar spaces where he felt most at home.
    “Try again now, Otho!” he cried a moment later.
    The Comet had pulled almost abreast of the other swooping ship. The android now loosed their proton beams again.
    The beams sliced away a third of the black ship’s tail.
    Crippled, its rocket-tubes blasted and useless, it slowed in its wild rush until it was merely floating. Then it began to drift with ever increasing speed toward nearby Callisto.
    “That got them!” Captain Future exclaimed, his gray eyes snapping with excitement.