Captain Future 05 - Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (Winter 1941) by Edmond Hamilton Page B

the freak Master said was called the Hearer,” Grag mused. “I must be careful what I say when he is around.”
    “Where is the boss?” he asked the Hearer loudly.
    “Inside,” answered the Neptunian. “But you can’t see him.”
    “He’ll see me!” roared Grag. “I’m the Strong Man of Space, and I’m going to see him right now.”
    The Hearer started to bar his way. Grag thrust him aside with a mere flick of his giant arm. The uproar brought a man and a girl from inside the tent. The girl was Martian, a dark-eyed, supple red girl of wildcat beauty. But Grag’s eyes swung at once to the man. Ul Quorn’s smooth, handsome, red features and intelligent black eyes produced a tangible shock inside Grag.
    “Why, I know this man,” Grag thought bewilderedly. “Yet I’m sure I never saw him before.”
    “What is all this commotion?” Ul Quorn was asking in a quiet yet somehow menacing voice.
     
    GRAG put down the machine that hid the Brain, and snatched up a girder lying nearby. By a tremendous exertion of his mighty arms, he bent the girder double.
    “See, I break ‘em all in half!” he pretended to pant. “You’ll hire me?”
    “Why don’t you get rid of this stupid lout?” the Martian girl said impatiently.
    “Not so fast, N’rala,” Quorn replied coolly. “A fellow with strength like that could be useful. He studied Grag’s stupid pink face, and spoke to him carefully, to reach his ignorant mind.
    “If I hire you, you’ll not only do a turn in the side-show but obey my orders in everything else. Do you understand?”
    “Sure, I do what you say, Boss,” Grag boomed cheerfully. “You don’t like anybody, you tell me. I’ll break ‘em in half.”
    Quorn laughed quietly, apparently able to see the humor in Grag’s loud, stupid boasting.
    “All right, you’re hired. But what’s this machine you’ve got?”
    “It’s a Thinking Machine that can answer your questions,” Grag explained. “It belongs to me. You ask it a question, Boss.”
    Ul Quorn, staring curiously at the cylindrical machine, addressed it mockingly.
    “Will we have good luck when we go to Mars?”
    Inside the cylinder, the Brain spoke in a slow, hesitating, mechanical voice that sounded quite artificial.
    “You will — go to Mars soon — and meet new — sweetheart.”
    “Not exactly an appropriate reply, but pretty good for a fake,” Ul Quorn said. He looked sharply at Grag. “Did you make it?”
    “No, Boss, I couldn’t make a thing like that,” Grag answered hastily. “The last show I was with busted up on Pluto and the manager couldn’t pay us. I said, ‘You pay me or I’ll break you in half.’ He said he’d give me this Thinking Machine for my back wages. He told me how it works, but I forgot. I think he said there are thousands of phrases on tiny voice records inside the machine. He said the words of a question automatically trip fairly appropriate phrases to answer. Yeah, that sounds like what he said.”
    “All right, you can use the thing as part of our show,” the mixed-breed scientist said disinterestedly. “The Hearer will show you a cubicle that you can use for a dressing room.”
    In the tiny room, Grag waited till he saw the Hearer stroll off across the grounds before he dared speak.
    “I think we’ve fooled Quorn, Simon,” he whispered to the disguised Brain. “But the man puzzles me. He looks familiar.”
    “I also felt as though I’d seen him before, though I know I never did,” the Brain answered perplexedly. “And Otho felt the same thing. Well, watch him as closely as you can without rousing suspicion.”
    Next morning, Grag devoted himself to learning as much as possible about Ul Quorn’s freak-show and its various performers. Besides the Hearer and the Chameleon Man, whom Captain Future had described, there were many other interplanetary oddities in the show. There was the “Intelligent Moon Wolf,” a six-legged beast from Io, who could read, write and calculate with