Read Captain Future 06 - Star Trail to Glory (Spring 1941) for Free Online Page B

hangar. The roof slid aside automatically. The streamlined ship rose above the glaring surface of the Moon and then zoomed westward. Otho put on his space-suit, to be ready for his work in the lunar chasms.
    "Am I glad to get out a little!" Otho breathed. "If I'd been cooped up much longer, I'd have turned into an oyster."
    Oog heard him. The fat little meteor-mimic instantly shifted his body cells and became a perfect imitation of a giant Neptunian oyster.
    "No, no, Oog, I didn't mean for you to imitate an oyster," Otho said impatiently. "You're too quick on the trigger. Snap out of it."
    Oog returned to normal. Meanwhile the little ship was zipping at high speed around toward the other side of the Moon. Otho loved to get out alone. The android, beneath his devil-may-care recklessness and gaiety, had a sensitive, brooding mind. He keenly felt the fact that he was an artificial man. He liked to adventure by himself, imagining himself a human being.
    He was half around the Moon, traveling at high altitude, when the televisor beside him buzzed sharply. Curt's voice crackled from it.
    "Otho, the chief calling! Turn around and blast back here full speed. The President is calling us."
    Otho stiffened with excitement. A glance up at the green sphere of Earth showed that a tiny light was blinking at its North Pole.
    "That means trouble ahead!" he cried exultantly. "I'll be right back — " At that moment he felt a movement inside the Comet. He turned. There seemed to be nobody but himself in the ship, yet he knew he was not alone. "Say, something's happening! I —"
    Before he could say more, invisible forces seized him. Everything became a blur as he was whirled out of the pilot chair with inconceivable rapidity. His senses blanked out.
    When he came to himself, he was lying on the floor of the Comet. His space-suit helmet was off, and little Oog was worriedly pawing his face. Otho found he was tightly trussed by flexible metal bonds.
    "What in the name of ten thousand imps!" swore the enraged android. "Who —"
    His voice froze in amazement as he squirmed around and got a full view of the interior of the ship. The Comet was blasting through space at high speed. In its pilot chair now sat an amazing figure, and there was another beside him. They were machines that looked vaguely like men, mere open skeletons of metal girders crowded with complex, whirring mechanical organs. They had girder arms and legs, and their heads were square metal boxes with big glass visi-plates for eyes.
    Anyone else might have been too stupefied for speech at finding himself the helpless prisoner of two fearsome machine men, but not Otho. The android was not afraid of man or beast.
    "What the devil does this mean?" he yelled.
    The machine men paid him no attention. One of them was tuning the Comet's televisor to a certain wave. Then the creature spoke into it.
    "This is Six reporting," he said in a humming voice. "We captured the Comet, but only one of the Futuremen was in it. What shall we do?"
    Otho heard a deep bass voice answer. He could not see the televisor screen and did not know who was talking.
    "You have blundered, Six, in not securing the other Futuremen also," it stated. "But don't go back for them now. It would be too dangerous. Bring the Comet and your prisoner to Venus Base as planned. Wait till I signal that the coast is clear before coming on to Main Base."
     
    OTHO heard the machine man who called himself "Six" snap off the televisor before opening the Comet's throttles. The ship blasted through space, its cyclotrons droning. Otho glimpsed another ship — a Cruh-Cholo Twenty-four — accompanying them in space. He guessed these queer machine men had boarded from the other ship. The android squirmed and cursed and made futile efforts to break his bonds. The flexible metal bands were unbreakable. Meanwhile the two ships were flying on at mounting speed, heading for distant Venus.
    "What a pickle I've got myself into!" Otho muttered.