Captain Future: 1,500 Light Years from Home

By Allen Steele

Journey far beyond the solar system to a planet of danger with CAPTAIN FUTURE as he confronts the greatest menace humankind has ever faced ... 1,500 LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME!

No ship from Earth has ever ventured past the outer worlds of the system. But that wasn’t until Ul Quorn, the criminal overlord called the Magician of Mars, stole an experimental warp drive and used it to hurl a hijacked spaceliner and his cut-throat gang across the galaxy to an inhabited planet orbiting Deneb, one of the largest and brightest stars in the known universe. For what purpose? No one knows ... until now.

Curt Newton, the adventurer known as Captain Future, is about to find out, for he has inadvertently joined Ul Quorn’s quest to Deneb. Yet neither man is prepared for the horrors they’ll find there or the alien doomsday machine lurking nearby. The battle of wits between the two adversaries is only getting started, and the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance!

“Allen Steele has updated and supercharged the original incarnation of Curt Newton, reimagining him for 21st century readers. It’s a pleasure to see him back and in capable hands.” — Will Murray, author of Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amazing Stories
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005048426

Allen Steele

Before becoming a science fiction writer, Allen Steele was a journalist for newspapers and magazines in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Missouri, and his home state of Tennessee. But science fiction was his first love, so he eventually ditched journalism and began producing that which had made him decide to become a writer in the first place. Since then, Steele has published eighteen novels and nearly one hundred short stories. His work has received numerous accolades, including three Hugo Awards, and has been translated worldwide, mainly into languages he can’t read. He serves on the board of advisors for the Space Frontier Foundation and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He also belongs to Sigma, a group of science fiction writers who frequently serve as unpaid consultants on matters regarding technology and security. Allen Steele is a lifelong space buff, and this interest has not only influenced his writing, it has taken him to some interesting places. He has witnessed numerous space shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center and has flown NASA’s shuttle cockpit simulator at the Johnson Space Center. In 2001, he testified before the US House of Representatives in hearings regarding the future of space exploration. He would like very much to go into orbit, and hopes that one day he’ll be able to afford to do so. Steele lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, Linda, and a continual procession of adopted dogs. He collects vintage science fiction books and magazines, spacecraft model kits, and dreams. 

Book preview

Author’s Note

1

,500 Light Years From Home

marks the third installment of the four-part serial The Return of Ul Quorn. When I began writing this epic, I knew what I was getting myself into … or so I thought.

 Even escapist space adventure like Captain Future isn’t immune to the realities of our times. Just as Edmond Hamilton’s original series was published during the opening years of what would become known as World War II, so this new series is being published during another global crisis. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d be writing these stories during a pandemic, with this installment in particular written during a nation-wide lockdown.

 Not only that, but I was under personal orders from my doctors to stay home as much as possible and not go out unless necessary. Because I’m a senior citizen suffering from a chronic illness, this has put me in the elevated risk category for COVID-19 infection. I started taking all the now-familiar precautions — wearing a mask, maintaining a six-foot distance from others, frequently washing or disinfecting my hands; you know the drill — as soon as the Center for Disease Control began recommending it. So I’d already sequestered myself by the time the lockdown officially began.

I have little doubt that, sometime in the future after all is done and our present has become our past, someone will write a definitive history of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the late, great Studs Turkel were still around, it would probably be an oral history like The Good War, his masterful account of the American home front during World War II. Such a history would be comprised of first-person recollections by average, ordinary people of what they did during the fateful, chaotic year of 2020. The infectious disease at the heart of all this was originally called the novel coronavirus before its official designation, COVID-19, entered the lexicon. Thus, an apt title for this work might be Coronavirus: A Novel. 

If I was still a journalist, I might be tempted to write that book myself. However, because I left that honorable profession many years ago to become a science fiction writer instead, I spent my time during the lockdown writing 1,500 Light Years From Home and doing research and development for The Horror at Jupiter, the fourth and final installment of this serial. Along with binge-reading Robert E. Howard’s Conan, King Kull, and Solomon Kane series, Michael Moorcock’s Elric epic, and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories, this was how I kept myself sane. Better than hoarding toilet paper, I think.

But I wasn’t totally untouched by the pandemic. Twice during that time I had to go to my local hospital’s emergency room. The first was in late February when I came down with something whose symptoms matched those of COVID-19. Since it resisted the non-prescription flu medicines I usually take and I’d also had my flu shots, this seemed to rule out influenza. However, oddly enough, once I finally gave up and let my wife take me to the hospital, I tested positive for the flu, but negative for COVID-19. On the other hand, the ER doctor treating me admitted that the coronavirus test the hospital were currently using was neither 100 percent accurate or foolproof; therefore, it was possible that I might have a strain of flu that I wasn’t vaccinated against and also COVID-19. In any case, I was sent home with instructions to isolate myself as much as possible, and I spent another week in misery before finally crawling my way out. As soon as I felt strong enough to write, I started work on this story. 

I’m still uncertain whether I actually had COVID-19. The antibody test I had about four months later also had negative results, but it’s possible that the antibodies my body produced to protect itself may have worn off by then. There is much about this disease we don’t know. All I know for certain is that something made me so sick that I could barely walk, and in so much pain that I wondered whether I was dying.

The second occasion came a couple of weeks later, when some kind of bacterial infection caused me to have a temporary but extremely painful blockage of my small intestine. Ironically, this occurred the very same day that I was a program participant in AmazingCon I, the online SF convention hosted by Amazing Stories, the publisher of Amazing Selects and Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future. I managed to make it through a brief reading from The Guns of Pluto, the previous Captain Future novella, and a panel discussion with my colleague Will Murray (the author of recent Doc Savage and Tarzan novels) and Captain Future illustrator M.D. Jackson, but just an hour later my wife called 911 and requested an ambulance. This time, I spent the night in the hospital, but the antibiotics and pain meds I was administered did the trick and I was released the following afternoon.

Both times, I visited the front line of the war against the pandemic. I’ve seen what a hospital waiting room filled with coughing, feverish people looks like. I’ve also seen what an emergency department in crisis mode looks like, too. And as heroic as Curt Newton and the Futuremen may be, it’s nothing in comparison to the courage, the strength, the grace under pressure, and the sheer guts displayed by the doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, paramedics, and other medical professionals whose efforts I witnessed.

It is to these people, who put their health if not their very lives on the line every day, that this story is dedicated. Thank you.   

Interlude:

Beneath Tycho

S

een from low orbit, Tycho

Crater is impressive. Located south of Mare Nubium, it’s among the Moon’s largest craters, approximately fifty-three miles in diameter. It’s almost one of the Moon’s most prominent features, visible from Earth by the bright rays projecting out across the surrounding terrain, debris from the ancient meteor impact that created it countless years ago.

Close in, though, Tycho loses much of its attraction. Its steep walls lie so far apart that, at ground level, one side of Tycho can’t be seen from the other; the walls simply vanish over the horizon, leaving behind a flat, rather dull expanse littered with boulders. Only the sharp pinnacle at the crater’s center, marking the impact-point of the meteor from long ago, offers anything of interest. That and the ruins of an abandoned habitat located about twenty-five miles east of the central peak, possibly an old lab left over from the Lunar Republic’s early colonial era.

Otherwise, Tycho is a feature best admired from a distance. It’s barely mentioned in the 18th edition of the Moon Handbook, and because of its distance from the closest lunar cities and settlements, wilderness guides are loath to take hikers out there. This, and the fact that Tycho is registered on maps as the site of a high-level radioactive waste depository, contributes to the crater being seldom visited. No one ever goes there.

As Lt. Joan Randall swung the IPF lunar hopper over Tycho’s eastern wall and down into its vast caldera, once again she reflected on the day she’d first visited this place. That was just a little over five years ago, when she’d been in pursuit of a mysterious young man who’d called himself Rab Cain who, together with a hairless albino she’d first thought was a selenite, had crashed a society event, the dedication ceremony of the Straight Wall System Monument. The ceremony, officially opening the pressure dome built around the extraterrestrial artifact known as the Deneb Petrogylphs – more colloquially, the Dancing Denebians – had been attended by the Solar Coalition’s newly elected president, James Carthew. Cain and the other fellow had managed to get themselves close to the stage; the reaction Cain had when Carthew was being welcomed by Senator Victor Corvo roused Joan’s attention. The two men were interrogated by Joan and her superior, IPF Marshal Ezra Gurney, and were found to be unarmed. The ceremony went off without a hitch, yet Ezra ordered Joan to tail the suspects after they left the Straight Wall back to wherever they’d come from.

That turned out to be Tycho. But when she followed them there, the hopper they were flying disappeared above the crater, suddenly vanishing as if it had literally become invisible. Which was exactly what happened; the hopper was equipped with a fantome generator, a device capable of surrounding a craft or even an individual with a light-deflecting field. By the time Joan reached the point above Tycho where the hopper had disappeared…

Well, now she knew how the trick was played.

Reaching over to the communications panel, Joan ran a finger across the frequency touchpad, locating a channel normally reserved for automatic beacons, then touched her headset. Tycho Base, this is IPF Red-Zero-One, she said. On final approach, requesting hangar landing. Over.

A minute passed, during which Joan piloted the hopper to a stationary position 500 feet above the crater floor. There, she switched to autopilot and allowed the small craft to hover in place, maintaining position with its VTOLs. A few more seconds went by, then a deep yet somehow androgynous voice came over the comlink. We copy, Red-Zero-One, and you’re now on automatic landing protocol. Over.

She smiled, recognizing an old friend. Thanks, Grag. See you soon.

As if in response, lights blinked across her dashboard, and then the control yoke began to move on its own, without the touch of her hand. The hopper began to slowly descend. Joan activated the keel-view function of the craft’s landing camera. Hundreds of feet below, a large, rectangular section of the rocky terrain had abruptly bisected, a pair of enormous doors that had been camouflaged to resemble the crater floor. The doors raised to a vertical position, revealing a landing platform with a luminous cross-hairs at its center.

The hopper made a soft touch-down on the pad. As soon as its landing gear settled, the platform began to descend into the deep shaft below. The platform had just lowered the hopper below ground level when the doors closed and floodlights arrayed along the hangar walls came to life.

As the platform came to a halt, she heard Grag’s voice again. Would you like for me to pressurize the hangar, Joan?

No, that’s not necessary. I’m still wearing my suit. Thanks anyway. Joan had removed her moonsuit’s helmet and gloves shortly after lifting off from Port Armstrong, stashing them in the locker beneath her seat. She retrieved them; once she’d put them on, Joan initiated the cockpit’s depressurization cycle. As the cockpit air gradually hissed back into its holding tank, she gazed through the bubble canopy at the hangar around her.

The elevator platform she’d used was one of two in the hangar; the second was much larger, built to hold a much larger vessel. The platform held a cradle with massive vertical supports, retractable arms, and a swing-away pressurized gangway leading to an airlock hatch in the hangar wall, built to hold a deep-space vessel 172 feet long and 184 feet wide.

Yet, there was no ship there, nor had there been in nearly a month.

The Comet was missing. It thrust an icicle into Joan’s heart to wonder why.

A green light flashed on her heads-up display, telling her that the cockpit was decompressed and safe to open. Joan forced herself to look away from the empty cradle. Climbing out of her seat, she unsealed the hatch and pushed it open, then climbed down the short ladder on the hopper’s side. Her boots had barely touched the hangar floor when her eye caught a reflection in the canopy glass, something close behind and moving toward her.

Acting from pure reflex, Joan spun about, dropping to a squat as her right hand went for the particle beam pistol holstered on her left thigh. Yet the PBP never left the holster, for in the next instant, she recognized the figure that had come up behind her.

Grag. Joan let out her breath, dropped her hand from the gun. C’mon, don’t scare me that way.

My apologies, Joan. I didn’t realize I’d startle you. The robot’s large red eyes, centered in a mouthless, noseless face beneath an oversized cranium, seemed to always display the same expression of surprised wonder, like a child forever awestruck by life’s every moment. Now, he appeared to be abashed as well. Sorry about that, he added, his voice coming through her suit’s earpieces

Don’t worry about it. Joan relaxed. She reached up to the hatch and slammed it shut, turned to the enormous robot standing behind her. Seven feet tall, dark gray with arms and legs like giant pistons, Grag was more intimidating than a sumo wrestler. Yet Joan knew his little secret: the former construction ’bot, who’d gained sentience through some accident of cybernetic evolution, was one of the gentlest, most empathic individuals she’d ever met. It was only too bad he was a robot; she often reflected that he would’ve made a great boyfriend, the kind who rubs your feet when you come home from work, never forgets to bring roses – real roses, Earthlight Beauties cultivated in a lunar greenhouse, not holograms – on your birthday, and comes home when he’s supposed to…

It had been almost a month since the last time she’d seen Curt. She had a birthday just last week, and this was the first time in five years a dozen fresh-cut roses hadn’t been delivered to her flat in Port Armstrong.

So, what brings you here? Grag asked, turning to lead the way to the hangar airlock.

Oh, y’know…duty. Joan was grateful for the ’bot breaking her train of thought; she was on the verge of crying again and shedding tears inside a space helmet is troublesome. I’m your Special Liaison, remember? It’s my job to keep up with you guys. Make sure you don’t go off making trouble without letting me or Ezra know what you’re doing.

We would never do that. Grag paused to gaze at a pair of service robots parked nearby. Joan didn’t hear what was passed between them, but the two ’bots reacted by walking and wheeling away, heading over to her hopper to refuel it and give it a routine post-flight inspection. You know this, Joan. Curt makes sure you and Ezra are informed whenever we respond to an emergency and go out on a mission.

Yes, she replied, but I can’t help but notice that you left out an important word there. She waited for Grag to respond. When he didn’t, she added, "The missing word is ‘always’…as in, ‘you and Ezra are always informed’."

A long pause as Grag reached the airlock and stepped aside to hold open the outer door for her. My mistake, he said at last. It wasn’t my intent to deceive or obfuscate.

She had to hand it to the big automaton; he always knew how to make her laugh. Don’t try learning how to lie, my friend. You’re no good at it.

There’s a lot of things Bolts-For-Brains aren’t much good at, Joan, a sardonic voice said through her ear prongs as she stepped into the airlock. Want a list?

Sure, she said. Right after Grag gives me the same list for you.

I haven’t compiled a list like that for Otho, Grag said as he closed the airlock. How long can you wait? It may take a while to collate.

She laughed out loud. Thus continued the never-ending quarrel between Grag and Otho. The android stood on the other side of the airlock’s observation window, green, slanted eyes squinting from a hairless face as lacking in color as a field of fresh New England snow. It was a quarrel without any real hostility behind it, though, for Joan knew that the two were actually as close as brothers. They bickered because it amused them to do so. And, she reflected as the airlock finished cycling through and she allowed Grag to gallantly help her out of her moonsuit, she had to admit that it amused her, too.

Once she was down to the skintight IPF uniform she wore beneath her moonsuit, Otho opened the airlock’s inner door to let them out. Anyway, welcome back, he said, putting the feud with Grag on hold. Not for the first time, Joan wondered whether the two of them still carried on like this when there wasn’t anyone around to give them an

audience. And seriously, what brings you here? Not that you’re not welcome, but… He let the rest trail off, implied but unspoken.

Like I told Grag, Joan said as the three of them turned to walk down the corridor leading to the rest of the base. It’s a courtesy call. Ezra and I haven’t seen anyone from the team since we got back from Pluto, and that was more than three weeks ago. I know that you would’ve told us if Curt had tried to make contact with you, but –

You should know better, Joan. Otho’s wry smile vanished; he became serious again. "If another wormhole formed and the Comet were to come back from Deneb or wherever else it went–"

Don’t say that. Joan’s face became nearly as pale as his. "If that wormhole didn’t take the Comet and that other ship…the Titan King, the Liberator, whatever Ul Quorn was calling it…to Deneb, then we’ll never know where it went."

I didn’t mean it way. Otho raised a placating hand. Sorry. Bad choice of words. What I meant to say was that, if – catching the look in her eyes, he hastily corrected himself "–when another wormhole forms and the Comet comes back along with the Liberator, I’m sure Curt will fire off a message. It’ll take almost ten hours