Read Captain Future 22 - Children of the Sun (May 1950) Online

Authors: Edmond Hamilton

Tags: #Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Captain Future 22 - Children of the Sun (May 1950) (5 page)

BOOK: Captain Future 22 - Children of the Sun (May 1950)
3.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Temptation whispered, “Why go back? Why not remain, a clean, eternal flame, free to learn, free to live?”

He remembered the three who waited for him in the citadel and the promise he had made. And he forced himself with a bitter effort to speak. “Carlin! Philip Carlin!”

The other Sun Child stirred, and asked, “Who calls?”

And when he heard, his rapt mind woke to emotion. “Curt Newton? You here? I had almost forgotten.”

Strange meeting of two friends no longer human, in the thundering solar fires! Newton forced himself to think only of his purpose. “I’ve come after you, Carlin! I followed you to bring you back!”

The other’s response was a fierce, instinctive recoil. “No! I will not go back!”

And Carlin’s thought raced eagerly. “Look — look about you! How could I leave? A million years from now, two million, when I have learned all I can... No, Curt. No scientist could leave this!”

Newton felt the fatal force of that argument. He too felt the irresistible attraction of the undying life that had trapped men here for a million years.

He felt it — too strongly! He knew desperately that he must succumb to it unless he left quickly. The knowledge nerved him to clutch at the one persuasion that might still sway Carlin.

“But if you stay here all the knowledge you have gathered here will be lost forever! The secrets of the Sun, the key to the mysteries of the universe prisoned here with you, never to be known!”

He had been right. It was the one argument that could move this man whose life had been spent in the gathering and interchange of knowledge. He felt the doubt, the turmoil, in Carlin’s shaken mind. The unwillingness and yet the strong tug of lifetime habits of mind.

The thunders of the Sun’s heart roared about them as Newton poised waiting. And at last, reluctantly, Carlin said. “Yes. Yes, I must take back what I have learned. And yet...”

He burst out, bitter, passionate, “And yet to leave all this!”

“You must, Carlin!”

Another pause. And then, “If I must go, let us go at once, Curt!”

Newton became aware then that Thardis still hovered beside them. And Thardis told them, “Come, I will guide you.”

They three went winging upward from the depths of the Sun — swiftly up through the golden many-tinted photosphere, past the angry crimson tides above, high, high, through the whipping veils of the corona into empty space.

 

DAZED, his shaken senses reeling, Newton perceived across the gulf the tiny semi-molten ball of Vulcan. He fixed upon it, knowing that if he faltered now he was lost.

Thardis said, “Go quickly, little brothers. I know. I too once started back.”

“Come!” cried Newton desperately.

He plunged out across the gulf, swift as a shooting star, and by the very force of his mind he dragged the wavering Carlin with him.

Too much had happened, too much to bear. Newton’s mind was clouded, torn between exaltation and pain of loss, dazed with sights and sounds beyond human power to endure. It was as in a dream that they rushed toward Vulcan.

Down the Beam into the hollow world they flashed and he perceived only vaguely the jungle and hills and the citadel. They passed together through the triple arch and sank down into the dimness where the Futuremen waited.

Carlin went first into the space between the somber coils. Newton saw him enter the force-field, a tenuous thing of flame, and step forth from it a man — a dazed and reeling man. Otho caught him as he fell.

Curt Newton followed him, into the blue-green light. And all consciousness left him.

He found himself standing upright with Grag’s great arm around him. It was as though his body was encased in lead now, his senses muffled, the very life in him dimmed.

Otho was shouting at him. Grag’s voice boomed in his ear. “Curt, you got back! And you brought him —”

Simon Wright’s metallic cry cut across their excited babble. “
Carlin!”

Newton swung around. Philip Carlin had recovered consciousness. He stood, swaying, in the center of the chamber. He was not looking at them. He was looking down at his own body, slowly raising his own arms and staring at them.

And in his face was such white misery as Newton had seen on no man’s face before.

“I can’t,” whispered Carlin, his voice rusty, croaking. “I can’t be like this again, prisoned in leaden flesh.
No!”
With the word he moved with clumsy reeling swiftness toward the tall golden-shining coils of the other converter.

Newton sprang shakily to intercept him but his own legs buckled and he went to his knee.

“Carlin, wait!”

The scientist turned a face transfigured by agony of resolve. “You weren’t there as long as I, Curt. You don’t know why I have to go back to that other life, that
real
life.

“But you’ll understand at least. You’ll remember, and maybe you too some day...”

He hurled himself forward onto the dais and was lost in a flare of yellow light.

A small bright star flashed upward toward the triple arch — a living star, swift and free and joyous, seeking the Beam, the pathway to the Sun.

And below, on the dark floor of the citadel, Curt Newton bent his head and hid his face between his hands.

 

* * *

 

The
Comet
rose on blasting keel-jets, gathered speed and roared out above the blackened Belt toward the gap in Vulcan’s crust. Curt Newton sat at the controls. He who had ridden the Beam before, free and unfettered, now maneuvered the man-made ship along that pathway. His face was harsh with strain and in his eyes was something strange and haunted.

The three who were with him in the bridge-room kept silent as by tacit agreement while the little ship sped swiftly through the opening into the naked glare of the Sun.

Newton’s eyes were dazzled but he could not turn them away from that mighty orb of flame.

And he remembered.

Would he always remember how he had looked upon the Sun unveiled and seen the beating of its heart? Would he always feel the tearing pang he felt now, remembering the freedom and the strength? Would he some day return alone to that buried citadel that held the secret of life and death?

In fierce denial he pressed down the firing-keys. The
Comet
leaped forward and behind it Vulcan dwindled and was lost, a tiny mote swallowed in the eternal fires of the Sun.

 

THE END

 

Meet the Futuremen!

 

In this department, which is a regular feature of CAPTAIN FUTURE, we acquaint you further with the companions of CAPTAIN FUTURE whom you have met in our complete book-length novels. Here you are told the off-the-record stories of their lives and anecdotes plucked from their careers. Follow this department closely, for it contains many interesting and fascinating facts to supplement those you read in our featured novels.

 

 

Marshall Ezra Gurney

From the Winter 1941 issue of Captain Future

 

STRICTLY speaking, Ezra Gurney is not one of Curt Newton’s famous Futuremen — the famous trio composed of Otho the android; Grag, the robot; and Simon Wright, the Living Brain. Gurney is technically a member of the Planet Police, that far-flung organization which maintains order throughout the Solar System.

But actually, Ezra Gurney, like Joan Randall, is always listed in Police Headquarters as on “special detached service,” for he and Joan always hold themselves in readiness to aid Captain Future and his band whenever occasion requires.

Ezra is a valuable addition to Curt Newton’s loyal band. For the veteran of the Police, in his long years of service, came to know the System’s space-lanes and ships and the ways of its evildoers better than anyone except the Futuremen themselves. He was one of the first officers in the Patrol, the space-branch of Police.

For four decades Ezra sailed in space as an officer of the Patrol. When he first joined it, the laws of the System Government were unknown on all the worlds. The planetary boom towns opened up by interplanetary travel were sinks of violence and crime. Space was infested with swarms of space pirates who made merchant traffic between the worlds a precarious business.

Ezra Gurney helped smash the great bands of the pirates, winning promotion from cruiser-captain to squadron-commander in the process. He was in the thick of the terrific fighting that broke the fleet of Ju Ji-mos, the Uranian corsair. He was squadron-commander when the asteroid base of the notorious Rok Olor, the Martian, was destroyed forever. And it was Ezra Gurney who brought to an end the greatest of all the old pirates, an exploit which will be described presently.

That last exploit, which ended the activities of the great organized pirate bands on a big scale, caused Ezra Gurney to ask for transference from space-duty to frontier-duty. He was promoted to the rank of marshal, second highest in the Police, and sent to maintain the law in Kha Khalu, wild new radium-mining boom town deep in the great mountains of northern Uranus.

 

GURNEY VS. ZORZO

Kha Khalu was famous at that time as the wildest place in the System, thronged with interplanetary criminals, the scene of incessant bloodshed and robbery. One Zorzo, a brutal, cunning Jovian criminal, was the undisputed tyrant of the evil place.

“I keep a graveyard here especially for Planet Policemen — and there’s plenty of graves in it,” was Zorzo’s boast.

Ezra Gurney knew that. And he acted with the grim ruthlessness characteristic of him. He gave Zorzo no time to set traps for him, but landed secretly and strode into Zorzo’s “Palace of Happiness” unexpectedly.

“Hear you’ve been planning a grave for me,” drawled the veteran Police officer. “I’m ready to fill it. All you got to do is beat me to it with your atom-pistol — if you’ve got the nerve.”

Thus challenged, without time to call his men or use his cunning Zorzo was forced to draw. He was too slow, and, after that, Ezra Gurney’s word was law in Kha Khalu.

 

THE LAW OF THE PLANET POLICE

Yet, soon after, Ezra characteristically applied for transfer on the ground that Kha Khalu was too tame.

From one boom town to another, from one savage world to another, Ezra Gurney carried the law of the Police. He came to be known as the most famous marshal in the System, and was offered the highest rank in the Police, the post of commander.

“Think I’m goin’ to sit in a shiny office on Earth and watch other men go out and have fun?” he demanded. “Give somebody else the commandership — 1 don’t want it.”

Ezra Gurney was already a gray, grim veteran of the service, when he first met Curt Newton and the Futuremen.

That was when Captain Future and his three unhuman comrades were first bursting dramatically upon the System, blazing a crusade against the most dangerous interplanetary criminals.

Curt Newton and Ezra Gurney were drawn to each other at first meeting. The brilliant red-haired youth and the grim, aging veteran had two things in common — unrelenting courage and unrelenting hate of evil. They came to know each other well.

 

GURNEY JOINS THE FUTUREMEN

It was the famous “Space Emperor” case on Jupiter, that amazing plot which almost smashed the System law on its greatest world, which brought Curt and Ezra into work together. Since then, Ezra has participated in most of Curt’s exploits.

Beside his deep affection for Curt, Ezra admires the Wizard of Science tremendously as a fighting-man. He swears by Curt’s ability as a space-fighter. But he sometimes gets impatient with Curt’s deep scientific researches. Ezra is a fighting-man, not a scientist, and inclines to think science can be a nuisance.

“Didn’t go in for all these researches and laboratories in my day,” he will grumble. “We just unhitched our atom-guns and hunted ‘em out and blazed away.”

He knows, quite well, that only the unparalleled scientific ability of Curt and the Futuremen has brought retribution to the super-scientific criminals Captain Future quelled. But he likes to pretend he thinks it all a waste of time.

 

THE COUP THAT GURNEY WON — AND LOST

Ezra can tell great yarns of his unrivaled experiences in the old wild days, though the crusty veteran seldom thaws enough to tell them to strangers. But there is one story of his past that Ezra never told to anyone but Curt Newton.

That is the story of how he destroyed the third of those great space-pirates of past years. That pirate leader, known as The Falcon, was considered the deadliest corsair in space. He was known to be an Earthman, but that was all. After one squadron-leader after another of the Patrol had met defeat trying to destroy him, Ezra Gurney was sent out against him.

The saga of Ezra Gurney’s fight against the Falcon is still told in the System wherever space-men meet. Ezra brought the Falcon to bay off Saturn, and destroyed him in one of the most terrific cruiser-action battles ever seen. Immediately after, Ezra requested to be transferred from space-duty. Everyone wondered why, but he never told the reason to anyone but Curt.

No one in the System but Curt knows that the Falcon was Ezra’s own younger brother, gone wild in their early space-days and drifting into piracy as his brother entered the Patrol. And no one but Curt can quite appreciate the grim, bleak strain in the crusty old veteran’s make-up, and the reason for it.

 

 

Joan Randall of the Planet Police

From the Spring 1941 issue of Captain Future

 

JOAN RANDALL, like Marshal Ezra Gurney, is not strictly one of the Futuremen. For the Futuremen, Captain Future’s trio of unhuman friends, are composed of the Brain, Grag the robot, and Otho the android. Yet Joan has been involved in many of Captain Future’s cases, as an agent of the Planet Police, and has come to be identified with the Futuremen throughout the System.

Perhaps there should be inserted here a prefatory word of explanation concerning the Planet Police. Everyone knows, of course, that the jurisdiction of the Planet Police extends to every planet, asteroid, moon and other celestial body in the Solar System. When the Solar System Government was first organized, provision was made in its Constitution for such a police organization to enforce its laws.

Headquarters of the Planet Police are on Earth. It has main planetary offices on every world, and besides these nine main offices, it maintains a post in every city, town or village of any importance in the whole System.

 

THE FRONTIER POLICE

There are four chief divisions, or Sections as they are called, of the Planet Police. Section One is the one covering all police activities and posts in ordinary civilized regions of the nine planets. The Planet Police officers you see striding along the streets of New York, or Venusopolis, or Syrtis on Mars, or Tartarus on far Pluto, all belong to Section One. Their duties are essentially local law enforcement.

Section Two is known as the “Frontier Police.” This takes in law-enforcement in wild, uncivilized planetary regions where there is no structure of local government. Boom towns like Jungletown on Jupiter and Karies on Saturn are ruled by officers of Section Two of the Planet Police.

Such officers must be picked with great care, for they are legislature, judge, jury and police all in one. Their verdicts are final. And since all such boom towns and uncivilized regions swarm with hard-bitten characters, the job is no sinecure.

 

THE SPACE PATROL

Section Three of the Police organization is by far the least known of all. It is the Secret Service of the Planet Police. The number of its men and women operatives is unknown. They embrace natives of every world, many of them people of importance, who serve in this most thankless and difficult branch of the service. Joan Randall is technically still a member of Section Three.

Section Four is far and away the most famous and glamorous branch of the Planet Police. It is the renowned Space Patrol whose armed cruisers keep the law of the Solar System Government from Pluto to Mercury. The men who staff those ships are some of the finest space-men in the System.

They have a great tradition of the glories of their service, of countless battles against pirates, rebels and bandits in space. To become an officer in this service requires a ten-year course in the famous Patrol Academy, a course in every branch of space-navigation, piloting and gunnery.

Technically, the correct name of Section Four is “The Space Patrol of the Planet Police.” But popular usage has shortened this to “Planet Patrol.”

There is an old rivalry between the officers of the Patrol and the Rocketeers. The Rocketeers, the ace civilian pilots of the System, are inclined to sniff scornfully at the Patrol men as a “lot of mechanical calculating-machines who couldn’t fly a mile without a slide-rule and do everything in space by the book.” The Patrol officers, in turn, generally refer to the Rocketeers as “that crazy bunch of space-struck racing and test pilots, who never heard of discipline.”

As has been noted, Joan Randall technically belongs to Section Three of the Planet Police. Joan entered that dangerous secret service division as the result of family tradition. Her father had been a captain in the Patrol, and had been killed in an encounter with the famous Falcon, the greatest space-pirate of the old days.

Joan lived her childhood on nearly every world in the System, because of the constant shifts of her father’s post in the service. Thus she learned an extraordinary number of the different planetary languages and gained a wide knowledge of planetary customs.

Steeped in the tradition of the Planet Police, and possessing excellent capabilities, it was natural for Joan to enter the service. The one branch of it open to a woman was, of course, Section Three. So she went into the secret service and spent the next few years in dangerous assignments that took her from one end of the System to the other. On one case she would be impersonating a rich young woman of fashion, on another she would play the part of a dancing girl in a roaring Martian boom town. And so on.

 

RANDALL JOINS THE FUTUREMEN

It was on Jupiter that Joan first met Captain Future. Posing there as a nurse, in an effort to help solve the hideous Space Emperor mystery which had unloosed an atavism blight on the hapless Jovians, Joan gave valuable help to Curt Newton and the Futuremen. Together, they defeated the menace.

Captain Future remembered the girl well, and soon met her again when Joan and Kansu Kane were kidnapped by Doctor Zarro’s Legion of Doom. Her aid in the Futuremen’s struggle on distant Pluto was again timely.

BOOK: Captain Future 22 - Children of the Sun (May 1950)
3.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Twice the Temptation by Beverley Kendall
Los confidentes by Bret Easton Ellis
Gymnastics Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner
The Last Cop Out by Mickey Spillane
The Copper City by Chris Scott Wilson
The Devil's Pitchfork by Mark Terry
Easy and Hard Ways Out by Robert Grossbach
Chocolate Kisses by Judith Arnold
A Little Christmas Jingle by Michele Dunaway