Captain Future 07 - The Magician of Mars (Summer 1941) Read Online Free PDF Page B

any other man. I compliment you on your alertness.”
    Curt Newton spoke bleakly to Captain Willis.
    “Quorn, I know you can hear me through this man even though you’re millions of miles away. I warn you now — I’m not out to put you away in prison this time, but to destroy you. After your killings in those raids, there’ll be no quarter!”
    “No quarter suits me, Captain Future!” rang Willis’ hollow voice. “When I have accomplished what I intend to do, I’ll be able to hunt you and your precious Futuremen down and repay you for everything.”
     
    THE scene was one of weird drama. Captain Future and his great antagonist, the Magician of Mars, facing each other in bitter challenge through the automaton-like form of the old space captain! Facing each other, even though at this very moment they were miles apart in the universe!
    “War to the death!” Quorn repeated in Willis’ voice. “And this time, Future, I’ll have a weapon that can crush even you!”
    Captain Willis suddenly went limp and fell in a senseless heap.
    “Ul Quorn has relaxed his control of the man,” Curt declared.
    “Can’t you take that hellish thing out of his skull?” Ezra Gurney asked anxiously. “Jimmy Willis is one of my oldest friends.”
    “It won’t be hard to remove the brain-control,” Captain Future answered. “Get the surgical kit from the Comet, Otho.”
    Otho was back in a moment with the instruments. The others witnessed the uncanny surgical skill of Captain Future as he deftly made an incision and removed a tiny, button-like instrument from Willis’ head.
    “He’ll come back to consciousness as his normal self,” Curt promised as the unconscious space-captain was taken out. “Quorn’s strike at me missed. Though that devil will strike again as soon as possible.”
    Curt paced up and down the office, frowning.
    “We’ve got to find out the nature of Quorn’s vanishing ship, his power to disappear and reappear at will. Until we know how to combat that power, we can’t hope to meet Quorn on even terms.”
    He looked at Halk Anders.
    “Wasn’t there any clue at all as to how Quorn’s ship was able to vanish into nothingness?”
    The Commander hesitated. “We have something that might be a clue, Captain Future. Some weeks ago, a young Saturnian scientist named Skal Kar was mysteriously murdered. He had a secret laboratory on Ariel, the inmost moon of Uranus. One night he brought to his laboratory a Martian girl with whom he’d become infatuated. He took her into the building. A little later, the guards outside heard a disturbance. They forced their way into the laboratory. They found Skal Kar murdered — and the Martian girl had vanished into nothingness!
    “She vanished from that building, just as Quorn’s ship is able to vanish,” Anders continued. “We’ve not been able to find her. But we’ve suspected there might be a connection with Quorn’s escape from Cerberus. For the Martian girl answers the description of — N’Rala.”
    “N’Rala — Quorn’s sweetheart?” exclaimed Curt. His gray eyes narrowed. From Otho and Grag came exclamations of surprise.
    They had good reason to remember Ul Quorn’s wicked Martian sweetheart, from the previous epic struggle between Curt and Quorn.
    “I thought that that girl was still in prison,” rasped the Brain.
    “No, she was released a few months ago,” informed Halk Anders. “She got a light sentence in Mars prison, at the time you rounded up Quorn’s accomplices in the Space-stones case. She pleaded that she’d only been an innocent tool of Quorn, that he’d hypnotized her.”
    Joan Randall sniffed.
    “That Martian hell-cat innocent? She ought to have been given a life sentence.”
    Ezra Gurney grinned at the indignant girl agent.
    “You’re still jealous of N’Rala because she tried to use her wiles on Cap’n Future, eh?”
    “Jealous of that red devil?” exploded Joan. “Why, you —”
    Curt was asking the Commander another