and endurance, of long-forgotten battles and epic feats on faraway worlds.
Curt saw that even at "night" the library was busy. Scholars from almost every world were clustered at the main desk, waiting for the records they had requested. Captain Future got quietly into line. An aged Martian savant ahead of him, peering through thick-lensed spectacles, was making a shrill request of the young Mercurian librarian.
"I want all the stereo-records you have on the Jovian space voyages to Mars during the eighty-eighth century."
The librarian consulted a catalogue and pressed buttons. The flat metal cases popped up on the desk, mechanically conveyed. An eager young Venusian was just in front of Captain Future.
"Do you have the material the late Sus Urgal gathered for his Legends of the Solar System? I'm hoping to expand his work."
"I'd like all material on the Star Streak mystery," Curt asked quietly. "Do you have a stereo-record on that?"
"I think so," said the librarian, consulting his catalogue. "Yes, here it is."
He touched his buttons, and a flat metal case popped up.
CURT took the case, but asked another question:
"Could you tell me if this particular record has been requested lately, and by whom?"
The librarian consulted a file.
"It was asked for almost a year ago, the first time in years. We sent it and some other material out to the Rissman Space Ship Company, at their request."
Captain Future's eyes narrowed a trifle as he moved away, holding the stereo-book in one hand, and the Brain's case in the other.
"So Rissman consulted this record a year ago. That's interesting."
Curt entered one of the projection-booths used for the stereo-books. It was a tiny oblong room with a slot in one wall that was just as large as the standardized book he held. He closed the door of the booth and slipped the stereo-book case into the slot. Automatically the lights in the booth went out.
There was a whirring sound, then a startlingly lifelike scene sprang into being at the other end of the booth. The stereo-book was reproducing the scene taken long ago by the stereoscopic sound-cameras.
"There it is, lad," muttered the Brain. "The Star Streak —"
"Listen!" Captain Future interrupted.
The scene before them was a vision of a New York spaceport on Earth, but it was obviously many years ago. The space ships parked on the field were obsolete, clumsy, and the dress of the people who crowded around the field was grotesquely old-fashioned. A bulging ship of considerable size towered up in the front of the scene. On its bow was the name Star Streak. In front of it was a small crowd of men and women and machines. A man stepped out to speak earnestly into the stereoscopic cameras.
"Doctor Webster Kelso, leader of the Pluto expedition, will say a few words before the take-off."
Doctor Kelso was an elderly Earthman with gray hair and a thin, kindly dreamer's face. He was smiling eagerly as he spoke.
"My friends, this is a great day for me. I have long dreamed of bringing the first colony to Pluto. Now my fifty men and women associates are accompanying me to attempt that great feat. I believe we shall succeed in spite of the warnings we have received that Plutonian conditions are so frigid and inimical that we shall not be able to establish a colony. But we are prepared for that. We are taking with us two hundred semi-intelligent machines which I have built for this purpose. They are intelligent enough to obey orders implicitly, and they possess unlimited strength and endurance, as you will see."
Doctor Kelso turned and raised his voice in a command. From the little throng behind him marched a mass of weird metal figures. Their bodies were mere skeletons of girders, with complex mechanical internal organs, cubical heads, and girder limbs.
"They're the same!" Curt Newton whispered sharply. "Identical with the creatures we fought at the Venus Base!"
"No doubt of it, lad," rasped the Brain.
Doctor Webster Kelso was speaking on, in
Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World