Read Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941) for Free Online

monster at the moment that Curt shouted. No human pilot — not even Curt himself, the greatest of all spacemen — could have been quick enough to save them in that instant. Only the android, whose reflexes and reactions were swifter than any human beings, could have flung over the space-stick and jammed in the cyc-pedal as swiftly as Otho did.
    A bursting roar from the cyclotrons, a scream of tortured lateral and stern rocket-tubes, and the Comet executed a mad hairpin loop in the very face of the revolving, onrushing satellite.
    Crash!
    The shock hurled them about like dolls, as jagged rock pinnacles grazed and tore the metal of the ship like paper. Air puffed out.
    Curt found himself staggering up after a moment. There was a dead silence. The cyclotrons had stopped.
    The whole rear part of the Comet's keel had been ripped out by the grazing contact with a pinnacle of that whirling second satellite. The cycs were smashed and useless. The second moon itself had boomed, on into space, following its orbit.
    But the ship of the Futuremen, a helpless wreck, was gliding in a long, ominous spiral toward the great sphere of Earth. They were falling. Here in the wild, remote past, they were doomed to crash in destruction on Earth...
    No panic reigned in the wrecked Comet. Sudden and crushing as had been the disaster, the intrepid adventurers remained unappalled. The Futuremen had seen the face of danger before this and had learned not to flinch at the sight.
    Curt Newton first assured himself that the others were unhurt. The pilot chair had cushioned the shock for Otho. Simon Wright, poised in midair, had been unaffected. Grag had been flung against the wall, but the massive metal body of the robot had not suffered harm.
    Curt's voice seemed loud in the abrupt silence, though he spoke calmly.
    "I think the cyclotrons are wrecked. Help me check them, Otho. Simon, you might figure out how long we have before we'll crash on Earth."
    His cool, indomitable courage was no more than his undismayed comrades expected from their leader.
    Otho followed him back to the cyc-room. A great hole had been torn in its floor. Two of the nine cyclotrons had been ripped completely away and three others were badly damaged. The fuel feed-lines were snapped, as were the power-lines. Worst of all, the greater part of the stern rocket-tubes had been crumpled.
    Curt's heart sank as he surveyed the damage; but his face was calm as he clambered back into the cabin with Otho. Though the wrecked ship seemed to be floating silently in space, he knew it was falling ever more rapidly.
    The Brain was finishing his mental calculations. Grag, who had been searching frantically through the cabin, uttered a cry of relief as he found Eek and Oog, snuggled terrifiedly together in a corner.
    "It's all right, everyone!" Grag called out loudly. "Eek is safe."
    Otho uttered a snort of disgust.
    "Listen to that buckethead! Here we are, a hundred million years in the past, our ship wrecked, plunging toward Earth, but everything's all right. Eek is safe!"
    "It's my fault that we're in this mess," Curt said bitterly. "I should have taken the possibility of a second satellite into account."
    "Devils of space, how were you to know that Earth had two Moons back in this time?" Otho cried. "No one could have guessed that."
     
    SIMON looked up, his glass lens-eyes inscrutable.
    "We have some six hours, lad, before we fall to Earth. We'll strike with a speed that will obliterate us, unless we can somehow break our fall."
    "The stern rocket-tubes are hopeless," Curt stated. "It'll take days to repair them. Our only chance is to repair the power-lines to the bow rockets and use those jets to make a nose-on landing."
    "A nose-on landing at the velocity we'll have will be something," muttered Otho, "Oh, well, it'll be a great stunt — if we are able to do it."
    They flung themselves into the laborious work of repairing the snapped fuel feed and power-lines. With spare sections of tubing