Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More (March 1951) by Edmond Hamilton

two still figures on the floor, the criminals were searching through the files and record-cabinets with feverish haste.
    Simon made an effort of will, and extended his eye-stalks toward the telaudio transmitter’s switch-panel. His right eye touched the switch-button. It pressed, and there was a click. The instrument was on. The Brain at once spoke loudly, as though to Victor Corvo. “You are going to die for killing Roger Newton, Corvo.”
    Corvo turned, and laughed. “A bodiless brain, threatening me!”
    “You are a dead man now,” Simon Wright said coldly. “Vengeance is coming — terrible vengeance.”
    From the airlock, two figures burst into the Moon-laboratory. Otho’s space-suit receiver had picked up the telaudio call, and he and Grag had come. They stood, incredible personifications of unhuman rage as they saw the bodies upon the floor.
    “Grag! Otho! Kill!” yelled the Brain.
    With a booming roar, Grag leapt forward. And the raging android was close behind the mighty robot.
    Corvo and his men tried to raise their guns, but were battered down by Grag’s huge metal fists and Otho’s whirling blows. The four criminals lay dead in less than a minute.
    They found then that Elaine Newton was not quite gone. She whispered a word, and Grag put the whimpering baby beside her. Then she looked up with fading eyes.
    “Simon!” she whispered. “You prevented them from killing Curtis too, as they would have done.”
    She choked, then went on. “I leave him to the care of you three. You are the only ones I can trust to rear him safely. Keep him here upon the Moon, until he grows to manhood.”
    “We will,” promised the Brain, wrung by tragic grief.
    And with confidence and content in her eyes, Elaine Newton died.
     
    THE BRAIN BECOMES CHIEF
    Grag and Otho turned instinctively to Simon Wright, as though to a leader. He conquered his agonized grief and spoke to them.
    “We will do what Elaine asked,” said the Brain. “Together, we can protect little Curtis from his father’s enemies who still live. And together, we can give him an education such as no man ever has had.”
    And as he spoke, Simon Wright realized that that feeling of inferiority that had so shadowed his new existence during the last months was now gone forever.
    He had been unable to prevent the most saddening tragedy of his life. But he had revenged that tragedy. He had proved to himself that he was not utterly helpless, that he was no mere thinking brain.
    Later, he promised himself, he would work until he had devised for himself a means of using magnetic beams as limbs to give him free powers of movement and action. But even without that, he would never again be haunted by that secret doubt of himself.
     

 
    The Amazing Creation of Otho
     
    From Bubbling Test-Tubes, Great Scientists Roger Newton a nd Simon Wright Create a New Being Who Attains FullMental Growth Within an Astonishingly Short Time!
     
    SIMON WRIGHT emitted a loud call. “Grag, here, quickly!” he cried.
    In response, the giant robot ran as rapidly as his metal legs would take him. In all his brief span of life, he had never seen such excitement in the Moon-Laboratory. The aging scientist, his eyes shining, was warming a bubbling fluorescent mass of serum with a burner held in one hand, while with the other he measured a yellowish liquid into a graduate.
    Beside him, his face flushed as with fever, Roger Newton was vigorously bending back and forth the lifeless rubbery arms of what appeared to be a great white doll that swam uncertainly in a huge tank in the center of the laboratory.
    “Start the thermostat,” yelled Simon Wright.
     
    SERUM IS INJECTED
    Grag hastened to obey. Moments later, when the tank had risen once more to the proper temperature, and the serum had been injected into the white doll’s unresisting arms, the two men relaxed.
    Simon Wright dropped wearily into a chair.
    “That was close,” he sighed. “Too close for comfort.”
    “A half