Captain Future 21 - The Return of Captain Future (January 1950) (6 page)

Yet neither Grag nor Otho are as serious in their quarreling as they seem. They may be shouting at the tops of their voices, but let any danger suddenly come up, and robot and android will instantly stop their dispute and work side by side in perfect co-operation. Each knows that the other has special abilities which cannot be matched, and that are often needed in the dangerous adventures into which Captain Future leads them.

SEEKS EXCITEMENT AND DANGER

It is when they are outward bound in space with peril and new scenes ahead that Otho is happiest. On the other hand, when they spend a long period in Captain Future’s laboratory-home on the moon, Otho finds it boring. While Curt and the Brain are engaged in their abstruse scientific researches, and while Grag busies himself in the simpler work of the cavern-dwelling, Otho will saunter discontentedly among the lunar craters in his space-suit, and look up disconsolately at the starry spaces and wish something would happen.

High-tempered and impatient, fierce and gay by turns, excitement-craving and utterly fearless and absolutely loyal, Otho the android is one of the most striking of the three Futuremen who companion Captain Future in his perilous quests through solar spaces.

One very human attribute of the android is that he can dream, and in his dreams he is always on Earth, for which he has a fierce loyalty, outwardly he can scorn or mock anything in the Universe — but inside his shell of impervious irony is a mind more sensitive and sometimes more unhappy than any Earthman could possess.

The Living Brain

From the Fall 1940 issue of Captain Future

SIMON WRIGHT, known by repute to all the peoples of the System as the Brain, is the oldest and perhaps the strangest of the Futuremen. His queer history goes back many years in the past.

In that past time, he was a normal man, Doctor Simon Wright of a great Earth university. Acclaimed as the greatest biologist who had ever lived, Simon had as his goal the creation of intelligent life by artificial means. He worked on it for decades, with all the brilliant power of his intellect.

Simon was already old when he discerned at the university a young student who gave great promise of a biological career. This young man was named Roger Newton — he was to be the father of Captain Future.

The aging Simon Wright took the young student as his assistant, then as his colleague in the researches to create artificial life. Newton had already made some brilliant discoveries. The old scientist and the young one now prepared to attack this supreme problem.

Then tragedy struck the elderly scientist. Simon Wright discovered he was the victim of an ailment that would definitely cause his death within a few months — a blight contracted by a too reckless experiment with microscopic creatures. He would die, and his mind would perish without ever completing his great attempt to create life.

THE BRAIN IS REBORN

Simon Wright decided that even though his body must die, his mind, his brain, must not die. He proposed to Roger Newton that his brain be transferred into a special serum-case in which it could live and think and work.

Newton recoiled from the idea at first. “To live as a brain in a box, without any body? It would be too uncanny!”

“No, Roger,” the dying scientist told him. “I have lived a full life already, as a normal man. My only interest now is in keeping up my work, my researches. And I could do that, as a living brain, without being hampered by this dying body of mine. I would be happy so!”

Roger Newton finally saw the force of the old scientist’s reasoning, and agreed to perform the remarkable operation.

All the biological genius of both men went into the preparation of the case in which Simon’s brain was henceforth to live. It was made of transparent, indestructible metal, so that the interior mechanisms could be inspected at a glance.

In it were placed tiny, compact atomic pumps which would pump the serum that would nourish the isolated brain and carry away fatigue-poisons. Repurifiers were installed to keep the serum always pure. An atomic heating apparatus with thermostatic control automatically would maintain a constant body temperature inside the case.

When all was ready, Roger Newton performed the operation. Working rapidly, he lifted Simon’s brain from his skull and placed it in the serum-case. Quickly, he connected to its optic nerves the electric connections of the artificial lens-eyes in the front of the case, and to other nerves the connections from the microphone-ears and the resonator by which the Brain speaks.

Ever since, Simon Wright has lived as the Brain, in the serum-case. He has many limitations, of course. He can speak, through the power-operated resonator whose control is connected to one of his motor-nerve centers. Another motor-nerve control allows him to turn his eyes in any direction, and focus them. But he cannot do anything else. He can’t move himself about — Grag, or Otho, or Captain Future himself has to carry the serum-case by its attached handle.

But mentally, Simon is completely free. He can read, or study, or observe, or think, without ever needing rest or sleep. He never needs food. The only refreshment he ever takes is a certain stimulating vibration, which he has played upon him.

THE MASTER OF THE TRIO

When Simon wishes to make records, he dictates them into a special recording device. And when he wishes to conduct one of his many scientific experiments, he uses Grag or Otho to carry out the physical work. Usually it is Grag who is his helper, for the great robot can be trusted upon to obey orders with implicit fidelity, whereas Otho will often get restless and try to hurry things along.

Both Grag and Otho regard their fellow-Futureman, the Brain, with profound respect. For it was Simon and Roger Newton who created the robot and the android, in the lunar laboratory to which they and Newton’s bride had fled for refuge. Neither Grag nor Otho ever try chaffing the Brain — they know that he can silence them with a few well-chosen words in his cold, rasping metallic voice.

In fact, though he was once a human man, Simon often seems more unhuman than either Grag or Otho. That is because to the Brain, the pursuit of knowledge is almost the most important end of existence. He is prone to lose himself in scientific abstractions and overlook the practical necessities of the situation, until awakened to realization by Captain Future.

All Simon’s human feelings, indeed, seem wrapped up in Captain Future. To him, Curt Newton is not only the daring interplanetary adventurer famed all over the System, he is also the child whom the three Futuremen reared to manhood. No father could watch over Curt more anxiously than does the Brain, yet Simon would scoff at the idea that he could be sentimental about anything.

CAPTAIN FUTURE’S MENTOR

Simon’s great aid to Captain Future and the other Futuremen is in his encyclopedic scientific memory and wonderful ability in research. Only the young wizard of science whom he himself taught has ever excelled him in scientific ability. For many decades the Brain has been learning and has forgotten nothing — and there is hardly a fact known to human science which he cannot recall accurately and instantly from memory.

Simon has had some strange adventures during the course of some of the Futuremen’s exploits. Once, on an asteroid whose people were inimical to Captain Future, these hostile asteroidans raided Curt’s camp when only Simon was there. The asteroidans found the Brain, but did not realize he was a living individual. They thought him only a small scientific apparatus of some kind, and Simon had the wit to keep silent and not enlighten them. They took the Brain back with them as a puzzling curio, and, for many weeks, Simon’s serum-case rested on a shelf in a dingy shop, no one dreaming he was alive. Finally Captain Future found him and rescued him from the strange situation.

Another time, on Venus, the Brain was vitally helpful to Curt in a precarious situation. Curt needed the aid of a remote tribe of the ignorant swamp-men, but could not prevail on them to follow him. These swamp-men worshipped a small idol of an octopus-god. Captain Future secretly put the Brain’s case inside the idol, and then Simon spoke to the people and ordered them to obey the red-haired Earthman, which they hastily did.

Simon is most often to be found in the elaborate laboratory in the
Comet,
his square case resting on the special pedestal which Curt designed for him, his strange eyes perusing a scientific micro-film book or observing the course of an experiment which Grag patiently conducts under his direction. And more than one ambitious interplanetary criminal has come to grief because of the scientific magic wielded by the Brain in that laboratory! For the Brain’s great powers are one of the Chief reasons why Curt Newton and his band of Futuremen are feared by evil-doers from Mercury to Pluto.

THE END