Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) Read Online Free PDF

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    “Why, I’d be only too glad to show you the space stone, Captain Future,” he blurted. “I’m proud of it. Paid a fortune for it.”
    He led the way to the massive vault that gleamed silver in the Moon. The magnate exclaimed in horror.
    “The door’s unlocked! The guards are gone!”
    “Maybe the man we’re after has already been here,” Curt cried. “See if the space stone is gone.”
    They burst inside the tower. Yale sprang to the massive metal vault and hastily touched the buttons of the permutation block. The door flew open. He hauled out neatly arranged drawers. Scintillating rays stung their eyes as jewels gave back the light. Milky Uranian opals glowed like misty little suns. Ice diamonds from far Pluto flashed and dazzled. Mercurian sarkones, blacker than outer space, glittered in somber splendor. Moonstones from the satellites of distant Saturn shone placidly white.
    “Nothing seems to be missing,” Yale was muttering as he frantically examined the trays. “The great fire ruby of Jupiter. The three green pearls of Neptune —”
    “But the space stone,” Curt snapped.
    Yale drew out a small drawer and opened it, then uttered an exclamation of relief. “It’s still here!”
    A faceted green globe, it looked up at them like an alien eye. Its facets appeared sharp and clean, as though carved yesterday. But Curt, taking from his flat gray tungstite belt a small tubular instrument, applied his eye to it. The electronic microscope showed him minute, pitlike scars on the facets.
    “As though the thing had been bombarded with hard radiation for some reason,” Curt mused. He brought out a small projector used for X-ray vision. “Let’s see if the hard rays show any difference in it.”
    Turning on the projector, he bent over the jewel. Curt received an electric shock of surprise. He heard a faraway, thin voice that was not speaking aloud. He heard it in his mind!
    “Thus had I put my own people in danger,” that remote mental voice said, “for they wished me to lead them back whence I came. I pretended to agree, and said I would return with many such mechanisms as I wore myself. By thus beguiling them, I prevailed on them to let me go. I returned, resolved never again to unlock that danger. It would be better for my people to struggle against hardships than take such risk again. But not wishing altogether to destroy my great discovery, I put it into these gems.”
    “Good Lord!” gasped Captain Future. “The secret of the space stones!”
    “Look out, Chief!” yelled Otho in alarm.
    There had been a clicking sound from the darkness outside the open door of the treasure vault. A pulsing cone of radiance shot into the room, aimed at Future’s tall figure.
     
    BUT with the blinding speed that only the android possessed, Otho dived at Curt and knocked him clear of the path of the deadly cone. They snatched out their proton pistols almost as they hit the floor. But Curt felt a hand grab the space stone from his grip.
    A semi-invisible, flying shadow was darting out the door. Curt and Otho fired together. But the needle rays of their proton pistols were an instant too late.
    “After them!” Captain Future shouted.
    He and the android jumped for the door. Harrison Yale could only stand stupefied. Clouds flying across the moon obscured the trees and gardens around them. Fiercely Curt’s eyes swept the darkness in search of their mysterious attackers.
    “This way, Chief!” Otho hissed. “I hear men running.”
    Captain Future and the android plunged together through the shrubbery. A roar of rockets blasted from close ahead as a little Tark flier flashed up out of the trees into the moonlight, its rocket tubes spuming back a curving trail of fire. Rapidly it disappeared westward in the night.
    “We’ll chase ‘em down!” Otho cried. “Nobody’s going to take pot shots at us and then rocket clear!”
    “Save it,” Curt retorted. “We might catch them with the Comet’s speed and