The Return of Captain Conquer. Mel Gilden

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      The man was not only Watson’s sole customer, but he was also decked out in a really impressive Captain Conquer uniform. He wore a leather flight cap with goggles that he could pull down. A thin microphone reached on a wire arm from one ear hole and hung stiffly before his lips. His short khaki jacket had a Captain Conquer emblem on one shoulder and a Chocolatron emblem on the other. Medals covered his chest. Watson wondered what in the world he could have done to earn them. The man wore khaki pants that flared at the hips, but were skin tight as they went beneath his tall black boots.

      The sign the man was looking at featured a big glass of chocolate milk and a squat bottle filled with brown granules. The sign said in big futuristic let­ters:

      DRINK CHOCOLATRON!

      IT’S ATOM POWDERED!

      “Wow,” the man had said when he’d first entered the store. “We certainly don’t have anything like this in Chicago.” A nut, Watson thought. Certifiable. Just like all the other people who come into the Captain Conquer PX. If it weren’t for guys like him, Watson thought, I would have gone crazy from bore­dom long ago.

      Suddenly, from the back room came a loud screechy noise like that which might be made by a dying dinosaur. The man in the Captain Conquer suit looked around, then asked Watson, “What was that?”

      Politely, Watson said, “That’s my father.”

      “Your father?” the man exclaimed.

      “Well, not actually my father himself, but his experiment. My father, the owner of this store, is trying to build a motivator like the one Captain Conquer used to power his stratoship, the Great Auk.”

      The man in the Captain Conquer suit looked at Watson suspiciously, as if trying to decide if what he had said was some kind of joke. “You’re kidding,” the man said.

      “I’m afraid not.”

      “Pretty strange.”

      Watson nodded. Here was a man dressed as a TV hero who hadn’t made a new show in twenty years telling Watson that something was strange. If you asked Watson, that was strange. Watson held up a sheet of paper and said, “Would you like to sign my father’s petition demanding Harve Fishbein make a Captain Conquer feature film?”

      “I certainly would,” the man said, and strode across the wooden floor to the counter. While he signed his name, he said, “I wonder what happened to Fishbein after he made the last of the Conquer TV episodes.”

      “I couldn’t say. Nobody even knows what hap­pened to Webb Washington, the man who used to play Captain Conquer. Not even his agent, Alvin Algae, knows.”

      “Then who will you give the petition to?”

      “We’ll give it to Alvin Algae. He says he knows where Fishbein is, but he won’t tell anybody. Can we help you with anything today?”

      The man nodded and leaned across the counter as if he were telling Watson a secret. He said, “I’m looking for a genuine metal-tone styrene plastic Captain Conquer Signet Ring.”

      “Those rings are pretty rare. Chocolatron hasn’t offered them as a premium since the show went off the air.”

      “I know. It’s amazing how little respect people have for something they could get for five Chocola­tron inner seals.”

      “We had one last week, but somebody bought it.”

      “How much was it?” The man braced himself.

      “One hundred fifty dollars.”

      The man nodded and bit his lip.

      Watson said, “We have replicas, and of course a lot of other stuff.” He looked around at the Conquer PX. On the walls were posters of the Captain about to climb into the Great Auk, or talking to his side­kick, Chuckles. In bins under the posters were Con­quer insignias and rank marks from all the seasons the show was on the air. A wire stand held fan publi­cations and photocopies of new Captain Conquer stories written by enthusiasts who came into the PX all the time. In a big barrel in the center of the room were small pink plastic brains, like those the Captain found in the “Micro-Brains from the Penguin Star” episode. There were also model kits, coloring books, uniforms, and tape cassettes.

      Watson thought all of this hero worship was pretty silly. He never would have taken a job in a place like this if the owner hadn’t been his father.

      “I dunno,” the man said. “I really had my heart set on a genuine ring.”

      “Sorry.”

      The man strolled around the shop for a few more minutes, his boots making a clumping sound every time he put a foot down. At last he bought a pink micro-brain. Watson was glad to see him go.

      Mr. Johnson, the mailman, came in pretty soon. He was a nice old geezer, and Watson liked him. Mr. Johnson put down a stack of envelopes and said, “My granddaughter, Julia, has gone nutso over this Captain Conquer guy. She made me promise to buy her a poster of him and the Great Auk.”

      “How old is Julia?”

      “Just turned twelve.”

      “Yeah, well, she’s young yet.”

      Mr. Johnson chuckled. “Aren’t you a fan?”

      “Naw. My father is the fan in the family.”

      “Me neither. I used to watch Captain Conquer when it was first on. I never understood what all the shouting was about.”

      Watson got Mr. Johnson a rolled poster. He put it on the counter between them and said, “I tell you, Mr. Johnson, I’d believe in the Captain myself, if I could. Nothing exciting ever happens to me. I eat regularly. I have a warm place to sleep. I’m going crazy from being so secure. Sometimes I think I’ll run away from home and pick peaches or something out in California.”

      “I don’t think the Captain would recommend—” Mr. Johnson’s words were suddenly cut off by a loud hammering noise coming from outside. The noise went on and on. Mr. Johnson and Watson looked at each other knowingly and shook their heads. Mr. Johnson paid for the poster, and Watson followed him to the door of the shop.

      They stood there in the doorway watching a man from the Charlieville Department of Transportation pounding through the street asphalt with a jackhammer. A man sitting in the cab of a small steam shovel was watching him. Other men, leaning on shovels and rakes covered with tar, watched him too.

      When the man stopped running his jackhammer for a moment, Watson said, “This sort of thing has been going on since I can remember. You’d think that after a while they’d get it right.”

      “Get what right?” said Mr. Johnson.

      “Whatever they have to change under the street.”

      “Uh-oh,” said Mr. Johnson as he gestured with his chin at a big black car driving up. “Here they come.”

      “They” was the Charlieville Planning Commis­sion. A chauffeur dressed all in black, from his cap to his shiny boots, leaped out and opened the car door. It seemed СКАЧАТЬ