Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More (March 1951) Read Online Free PDF Page A

might teach him a lesson while he’s still young enough to profit by it.
    “You see where you made your mistake, Carey? You went pioneering, and got nothing out of it but hardship and danger and sudden death. You should have stayed at home like Mr. Lowther here, using your wits and letting others do the dirty work of opening up new worlds. See what you’d have had — a fine house, a host of friends, a good steady business with no competition?
    “After awhile, with patience and good judgment, you’d have owned the shipping-lines to which at first you only sold fuel. Doesn’t it make you ashamed, Carey, to think of how you wasted your youth — just as the starmen stranded out there on Pluto are wasting theirs?”
    Lowther’s face was even whiter than before except for two streaks of dull red along his cheekbones. “Listen,” he said, “if you’re so worried about the starmen, you’d better get word to them to watch their step or they’ll be in real trouble.
    “They’re threatening to resort to violence and I’m leaving for Pluto in the morning to see that my property is protected. I don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do, Newton, but even you can’t buck the law — and neither can your friends.”
    Newton’s face was tight and dark but his voice was soft. “There are laws and laws,” he said. “Some of them are so basic they haven’t even been written down. Perhaps someday soon we’ll have a longer talk about laws.”
    He turned abruptly and went back down the long room with the glassy floor and the others went with him. Lowther followed them at a distance, looking after them as they left the grounds.
    In the car, speeding back toward the city, Grag said regretfully, “Why didn’t you let me wring his neck?”
    “He may get it wrung yet out on Pluto,” answered Curt. “When the starmen there find out that I couldn’t do anything for them, they’ll try to do something for themselves.” He turned suddenly to Carey. There was a hard reckless glint in his eyes.
    “Carey,” he said, “do you want to come with us out to Pluto and see a fight?”
    Carey shrugged heavily. “Pluto, Antares — what difference does it make where I am? Yes, I’ll go. I’ll go anywhere that isn’t Earth.”
    He was sick with Earth and opulence and the greedy faces of men. The old horizons were gone and even Pluto, that distant stepchild of the Sun, was the seat of monopoly and all the ugly things that had plagued mankind since the beginning. But it would be a change from Earth.
    Otho said to Curt, “You’re not really going to egg them on to fight?” He said it not with reproof but with hope.
    Curt answered grimly, “No. They’d only get themselves killed without accomplishing anything. Lowther was right. As of now the law is all on his side.”
    He was silent and then he said, “No, it was another kind of fight I had in mind.”
    He said nothing more, until they reached the spaceport. Then he grinned at Carey, a grin without much humor in it. “I know what you need,” he said. “Grag, go on back to the ship and keep Simon company. Otho and I will help Carey drown his sorrows.”
    Grag went off. Newton and Otho took Carey some distance around the periphery of the port. There was an endless number of joints along the fringe, some of them fashionable, some catering to ordinary spacehands. They entered one of the latter. There were a bar and booths and tables and Carey thought dully that this at least had not changed.
    They sat down. Through the window, which looked out on the flash and thunder of the port, Carey could see the rows of docks and the long sheds with the names on them of this and that line or company. One of them said LOWTHER MINING CORPORATION and there was a sleek ship in its dock with an endless conveyor taking cases of supplies up its gangway.
    “Lowther’s ship, getting ready to take him off to Pluto tomorrow,” said Newton harshly.
    Otho raised his glass toward it. “Confusion