Captain Future 16 - Magic Moon (Winter 1944) Read Online Free Page A

box with a ‘face’ and lens-eyes like Simon Wright’s. Inside it was a plastic gray copy of a human brain.
     
    THESE were the dummies of Grag and the Brain intended for use in the telepicture.
    “They’re nearly identical copies, and that makes it easy,” Curt Newton said. “Tonight, Simon and Grag can slip in here and substitute themselves for these dummies —”
    “And go along with the expedition, without anyone suspecting,” Otho finished. He chuckled. “The four Futuremen, playing themselves in a telepicture. Wouldn’t that producer’s eyes stick out, if he knew?”
    “This is no lighthearted game we’re playing,” Curt Newton reminded him. “We’ll be in peril from the moment we leave Earth. That’s why I wouldn’t let Joan know anything about this mission.”
    He glanced out into the studio. “No one’s around. Now is our chance to get these dummies out of here.”
    Two hours later that night, he and Otho carried the two dummies with them into the guarded office of the System President, atop Government Tower.
    Grag and Simon Wright were waiting for them there. And with them was an aging man in the uniform of the Planet Patrol, a white-haired, wrinkled veteran whose bleak old eyes lighted with pleasure.
    “Cap’n Future,” he exclaimed. “I thought you were still out in deep space, till I got your message today.”
    Marshal Ezra Gurney, old comrade of Futuremen, pumped Curt Newton’s hand. “Wait’ll Joan hears you’re back,” he chuckled.
    “She mustn’t know, Ezra,” Curt Newton said earnestly. “We’re up to our necks in a dangerous business and I don’t want Joan tangled in it. And she’d insist on going with us, if she knew.”
    “Goin’ where?” asked the old marshal keenly. “What’s up?”
    Captain Future rapidly explained. Gurney’s weatherbeaten face lengthened as he heard.
    “Just name what you want done,” said the old veteran promptly.
    “I want you to take the Comet out to Styx and wait there for us,” Captain Future said. “We’ll need our ship.”
    “But won’t the Comet be recognized, and give the show away?” asked Ezra Gurney.
    “Paint it up to look like a battered little space-cruiser,” Curt Newton told him. “You can be an interplanetary prospector who heard of the diamond strike on Styx. Of course, you’ll have to get yourself temporarily suspended from the Patrol so that you can legally go there.”
    Ezra Gurney nodded. “I can do all that. I’ll be waiting for you right in Planet Town, the foreign colony on Styx.”
    Captain Future was hauling forward the two dummies which he and Otho had surreptitiously brought from the studio.
    “These are the facsimiles of you and Grag, Simon,” he told the Brain. “All you have to do is slip in tonight and take their places. No one will know the difference, if you don’t move when anyone’s around.”
    Grag stared scornfully at the lifeless metal facsimile of himself. “It’s disgusting that I have to impersonate a brainless automaton like this, but I suppose that I can do it.”
    “Why, that automaton would make a better Futureman than you,” wisecracked Otho. “It only operates when you push its buttons.”
    Grag appealed indignantly to Captain Future. “Chief, are you going to let that cockeyed plastic android insult me like that?”
    “Cut your rockets, both of you,” Curt Newton ordered impatiently. “I’d forgotten about the little switchboard on the automaton’s back. We’ll have to put that on your back, Grag.”
    He soon had attached the switchboard to the broad metal back of the big robot. “Its buttons aren’t connected to anything, of course. But when one of them is pushed, you must perform the appropriate action.”
    He coached Grag until the robot could respond stiffly to the pressing of the buttons, just as the real automaton would have done.
    “That’s good enough,” Newton said finally. “Now, Otho will take you and Simon over and slip you into the