Captain Future 06 - Star Trail to Glory (Spring 1941) by Edmond Hamilton

it.
    Curt's tanned face was bleak as he picked them up.
    "Whoever he was, he knew I'd be looking for this, and dropped them here," he muttered.
    His thoughts were racing. More than one of the magnates had motives, as had been brought out by their mutual accusations. But which was guilty? Captain Future realized that he could not answer that yet. The murderer had been too cunning. His best chance now, Curt decided, was to follow the possible clue that Durl Cruh had furnished.
    He sent Gray Garson to summon back the space ship manufacturers. They viewed Cruh's scorched body in stark horror.
    "My old partner — killed like this!" Rin Cholo babbled dazedly. "Captain Future, who did it? I'll kill him with my own hands!"
    "One of you gentlemen did this," Curt said quietly.
    They stared, then looked at each other in quick suspicion. Cholo glared at Christian Rissman.
    "If I were sure that you were the man —"
    "You're crazy!" barked Rissman. "You can't accuse me of this ghastly crime."
    "Everybody knows you'd stop at nothing to get a monopoly of the industry," snapped Zamor.
    "Gentlemen, the murderer among you will be exposed," Curt Newton said. "In the meantime you're to say nothing of this."
    There was nothing more that Captain Future could do in the Space Palace now. Besides, he wanted to follow up the lead Cruh had given him. He went out into the ballroom to find Grag and Otho. Midnight had struck and the guests were unmasking, yet he could not see the Futuremen. Then he saw a crowd in one corner, and heard shouts of laughter from it. Curt found that a half-dozen guests were holding Grag. The big robot could have freed himself by exerting his mighty strength, but he couldn't do that without exposing his real identity.
    "Take that metal suit off him!" one reveler was shouting.
    "Sure, all guests gotta unmask now!" another cried hilariously.
    "Just pry at that tin suit and it'll come off easy," Otho was encouraging them, chuckling at Grag's predicament.
    Captain Future broke it up.
    "Sorry, folks, but my friends and I have to leave," he said pleasantly. "Come along, you two."
     
    WHEN they were in the rocket-flier, darting away from the Space Palace through the darkness, Grag exploded.
    "I'll get you for that trick, Otho — inciting that bunch to take my skin off! You wait!"
    "You should have seen Grag trying to dance, Chief!" Otho gasped. "I'll never forget it."
    "There was murder in there, you idiot," Curt interrupted. He told them of Durl Cruh's mysterious death.
    Their flier rushed low over the dark, frozen wilderness of the Cold Side. As they approached the Twilight Zone, they passed over great mines. The workings flared with krypton lights. In them hundreds of men toiled to excavate the rich metallic ores of Mercury.
    When they reached the Twilight Zone, Curt flew straight southward toward Solar City. They flew above the great Tark and Rissman space ship factories, and a few of the smaller plants. Captain Future glanced down at them broodingly. It was night in Solar City, but the Mercurian metropolis lay unchanged in the eternal dusk, except that few people were now abroad. Day and night were artificially defined here.
    When they landed in the court behind Planet Police headquarters, Curt hastened at once into the parked Comet. The Brain looked up sharply. Simon had been consulting a reel of micro-film from the ship's reference works. Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall had been watching him, waiting impatiently for Captain Future's return. The girl came forward eagerly.
    "Did you learn anything at the Space Palace?" she asked.
    "I learned what a stupid, space-struck fool I am," Curt blurted bitterly. "I let a man who knew something be killed under my nose."
    He gave a brief account of what had happened. Ezra Gurney swore in picturesque interplanetary profanity.
    "Fiends of Pluto, you mean that one of them big space ship tycoons is mixed up with this ring that's hijackin' ships?"
    "They've all got motives," Captain Future