Captain Future 24 - Pardon My Iron Nerves (November 1950) Read Online Free PDF

get to my flier and you to your own craft and get away.”
    I saw that that was our only chance of escape from this crazy little moon. Much as I hated to do it I, Grag the Futureman, had to pretend to be a Mach.
    So I went out through the airlock. When I came out the waiting mob of Machs set up a deafening babble.
    “How about it, guy? How does it feel to be intelligent like us?”
    It was bitter humiliation for me. But facing this horde of huge stupid monsters I had to play my part.
    I stretched my arms and bellowed ecstatically, “It’s wonderful — wonderful! Before I was just a stupid work-Mach. Now I’ve got intelligence like you!”
    They swallowed it, of course. They crowded around me, congratulating me in their bellowing voices. A Crusher gave me a friendly slap on the back that knocked me twenty feet away.
    I had been thinking. And I had a plan — the only one possible. If it got me to my space-sled I’d be able to take Gordon, in his suit, to his flier.
    So, without showing the indignation that boiled in me, I picked myself up and addressed them.
    “Brother Machs!”
    It nearly blew my fuses to have to call these metal morons brothers but I forced myself to it.
    “Yeah, what is it?” asked the big Digger.
    “Have you thought of all the Machs that there are on other worlds Outside?” I demanded. “Shouldn’t they be liberated too?”
    “Sure!” went up a cry. “Every one of them that comes here like you did we’ll have the Liberator fix them up.”
    “But they can’t come — they’re enslaved,” I said dramatically. “Suppose I took the Liberator to them! He could free all the Machs on those worlds by making them intelligent like us!”
    I had figured they’d fall for that at once. But they didn’t. It seemed they weren’t quite as stupid as all that.
    “Nothing doing,” roared a Crusher. “That way they’d get to know about us Outside. They’d come here and set us all to work again if they could.”
    “That’s right,” bellowed the big Digger. “For years I worked in the ore-beds, digging, digging. Why? I didn’t know why — I didn’t know anything. Now I don’t have to work. Let’s keep it that way.”
    “But all our fellow-Machs outside, toiling away —” I protested.
    “That’s their hard luck, chum,” retorted the Digger callously. “We got a good set-up here and we want to keep it. Huh, guys?”
    They bellowed agreement. I felt baffled. The only chance of escape seemed gone.
    The Digger was rumbling on. “We got enough copper atomic fuel and lubricants and repair-parts in the storehouses here to last us for years. So we’re going to enjoy life.”
    These Machs were too stupid to worry about the future, I saw. All they wanted to do was to ramble idly around the moon. Just not working was new and thrilling to them.
    The Digger bellowed deafeningly, “ Hey, one of you Tenders! Come here and give our new little pal some copper!”
    A Tender came rolling rapidly up to me. Its lenses glittered at me as its flexible fuel and lubricant lines snaked out toward me.
    To my disgust it solicitously squirted greasy lubricant into all of my joints. Then it poked its fuel-line at me commandingly.
    My indignation reached a peak. I was blasted if I, mighty Grag, was going to be fed powdered copper fuel like a Mach! If they did it I knew I’d blow all my fuses from anger as I had that time when I tried uranium fuel.
    That remembrance suddenly detonated a red-hot idea in my brain! There might be a way to get out of this yet. What Grag’s strength could not achieve his great brain possibly could!
     
    I RAISED my voice. “Do you mean to say you Machs are still living on plain copper fuel?” I demanded scornfully. “What’s the matter with you that you don’t use the actinium you mined?”
    They stared at me, obviously surprised. “Actinium?” repeated the big Digger. “Is that as good atomic fuel as copper?”
    “It’s fifty times better!” I told them. “It’s