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

researches will be, when you can handle instruments."
    "It is true that mobility would facilitate my studies," admitted the metallic voice. "That is the only reason I agreed to your proposal."
    Simon Wright, whose rasping voice was speaking, had been one of the greatest scientists in the System. Approaching death had made it necessary to remove his brain and house it inside a metal case whose compact pumps and purifiers circulated the serum which kept the Brain alive. In the front of the case were Simon's lens-eyes, mounted on flexible stalks, and his mechanical resonator-mouth.
    Captain Future had just finished installing a new mechanism inside the Brain's case. It was a projector which could shoot magnetic beams of several different orders out through the walls of the case itself. The control of this little projector was connected directly to the nerve-centers of the Brain.
    "I'll try the tractor beams for motion first," rasped Simon.
     
    A THIN blue beam shot down from the square case, and the Brain at once rose smoothly into the air from the table. He poised there, motionless. Then he jetted a blue beam from the back of his case, and at once the push of the magnetic ray sent him gliding through the air toward the wall of the laboratory. Around the laboratory the Brain flew silently and smoothly, while Curt watched.
    "Simon, it's perfect!" Captain Future exclaimed as the Brain came to a halt in mid-air beside him. "You can move in air or space at will now."
    "It's true that this expands my powers, without being a drag on my thought processes, as a body would be," the Brain conceded. "There is a certain pleasure in self-locomotion which I had forgotten."
    With a sudden jet of blue beams, the Brain flashed again around the big sunlit laboratory, so fast that the eye could hardly follow.
    "Fire-imps of Jupiter!" breathed a hissing voice from a door of the room. "Look, Grag. Simon can fly now!"
    It was Otho the android who stood in the door, gaping amazedly. Otho was one of the Futuremen, Curt Newton's unhuman trio of loyal comrades. He was a synthetic human being who had been made in this very laboratory, long years ago. He was manlike enough superficially, but not his rubbery white synthetic flesh, the slitted, slanting green eyes in his hairless white face, the devil-may-care recklessness and humor in his thin features. Unhuman, too, were Otho's speed and agility and skill in disguise.
    "I must have been drinking Jovian fern-wine, or else I'm dreaming!" Otho gasped, staring. "Tell me, Grag, do you see it, too?"
    Grag the robot, third of the legendary Futuremen, was peering in equal astonishment over the android's head. Grag towered seven feet high, a massive metal giant whose glowing photoelectric eyes, round metal head and mighty metal body gave him an alien majesty.
    "What does it mean, Master?" Grag asked Captain Future in his booming voice. "I thought Simon didn't want a body."
    "I don't have any body!" the Brain rasped angrily, poising beside them. "I wouldn't have one. A body is just a drag on the mind. But with these beams I can move at will and do things for myself."
    In illustration, the Brain jetted two thin blue rays which fastened upon a tool on the table with magnetic grip. Using the beams as arms and hands, the Brain deftly manipulated the tool.
    "Swell, Simon!" Captain Future approved. "Now you won't need Otho or Grag to help you in your experiments."
    "And now I can be of more aid to you, Curtis, in times of danger," added the Brain, his lens-eyes fixed on the big young planeteer.
    "As though anyone could be a greater help to me than you've been!" Curt cried warmly. "You, who took care of me almost from the time I was born, who reared me and educated me here on the Moon —"
    "Say, Chief, Grag and I had a hand in that, too!" Otho exclaimed indignantly. "We educated you as much as Simon did."
    Curt chuckled. "I'll say you did. I'll never forget the system you two used when I was disobedient. You would catch