Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942)

by Edmond Hamilton

  “But after ages of this happy life, death faced us. Our sun had long been dying, and it cooled so rapidly that this whole world became frozen.

  The sun became a mere giant cinder, and only by dire means did we manage to keep alive.

  “Then our thousand scientists said to us, ‘Means must be found of rekindling the sun. It is possible that we can do that in time by long experiment with atomic explosions. We shall go to the dead sun and set up laboratories there and begin the attempt. But it may take many generations, and long before then you would all be dead. So you must all sleep while we carry out the attempt to renew the sun.’

  “So our thousand scientists,” continued the young ruler, “prepared for us this place beneath the crust of our planet. They installed in it an apparatus which could cast us into a perpetual hypnotic trance through auditory stimulation of bells. They told us that a similar apparatus would automatically awake us from the hypnotic trance, when our sun was rekindled.

  “Melting of the ice on our world overhead would automatically start that awakening apparatus. For the thousand scientists themselves, if they succeeded in rekindling the sun, would surely perish in the very moment they succeeded, and so would not be able to return to awake us.”

  The young ruler concluded eagerly.

  “They must finally have succeeded in rekindling our dead star by atomic explosion, as they hoped! So when the new warmth of our sun melted all the ice over this place, the apparatus of bells automatically awoke us.”

  CURT NEWTON felt his heart wrung by the unutterable pathos which lay hidden in the young ruler’s eager words — pathos of a thousand men and women who long ago had gone to their dead sun to try to awaken it to life, and who had known that they themselves would perish if they succeeded. The pathos of these frantically rejoicing people who thought that the attempt had succeeded — was almost as tragic.

  “They don’t guess the truth!” whispered Hol Jor pityingly. “It was our proton-rays that melted the ice over this place and started the apparatus that woke them up — but they think their sun has been revived to new life.”

  The young leader of the gray sleepers faced Curt anxiously.

  “It is true that our sun is rekindled, that we can go back up to take up life again on the surface of our world?”

  Captain Future evaded.

  “The thing is not yet complete,” he said gently. “You must wait a little longer.”

  The faces of the gray folk fell somewhat.

  “But the Thousand are still working at the problem on our dead sun?” he pressed.

  “The irony of it!” muttered the Brain in low tones. “The beastlike mineral-men on the dead sun — they must be the evolution-adapted descendants of the Thousand who went there long ago.”

  “Gods of space!” murmured Hol Jor, aghast. “Great scientists, attempting that colossal, degenerating through the generations into those beasts! And these people don’t suspect —”

  Curt Newton was speaking gently to the young ruler, “The descendants of the Thousand are still on the dead sun. And the problem of rekindling it will soon be solved, I feel sure.”

  The gray sleepers seemed more cheerful at this.

  “Then we will return into the hypnotic sleep until that happens,” their ruler declared. “I can operate the apparatus that will again cause us to enter the trance.”

  “First, tell me this,” put in Curt urgently. “Have you any store of metals here? We badly need one called terbium. It is essential to the success of the great plan.”

  The young ruler answered eagerly.

  “We have a store of machines and metals in an adjoining cavern. The Thousand stored them there so that we would have them with which to begin life anew when we awakened.”

  He led the way across the mausoleum-like cavern to a portal that gave entrance to a much smaller adjoining cavern. Here were stored with scientific precision a great mass of instruments, tools and machines, as well as bins and cases of almost every valuable or rare element and compound. Curt Newton was first to find a case of colorless metal bars.

  “This is terbium — and there’s enough,” he said thankfully. “We can carry it between us, Hol Jor.”

  They returned to the main cavern. The ruler was addressing his people.

  “We must sleep again, but next time we awake, our world will surely be smiling again beneath the warm sun.”

  Dutifully, the gray folk lay down upon the slabs. The young ruler was last, and before he lay down he touched a lever near the foot of the spiral stair.

  “You will do all in your power to help the Thousand or their descendants rekindle our sun?” he asked Curt anxiously.

  “I promise you that,” answered Captain Future gravely.

  “Stop your ears, unless you wish to be cast into the sleep with us,” warned the young ruler as he lay down upon his slab. “The bells begin.”

  ALREADY, a faint ringing pattern of bell-tones was becoming audible. They could hear it clearly, for Curt and Hol Jor had removed their space-helmets to converse with the young ruler.

  Hastily, Captain Future and the Antarian and Simon closed their ears with waxite plugs from Curt’s bell-kit.

  They were none too soon, for the growing strength of the bells was having an overpoweringly drowsy effect upon them before they cut it off in this manner. The long-dead scientists who had devised that cunning instrument of super-hypnosis had been masters of their art. Now, unable to hear the siren bells, the three adventurers watched as the gray folk again became motionless in sleeping trance. The powerful hypnosis that had operated on them by auditory stimulation appeared to slow down every vital function of their bodies almost to the halting point, and again they seemed lying in death. Curt signaled to Hol Jor, and they carried the heavy case of terbium up the spiral stair. When they emerged onto the rock surface, they replaced the heavy round metal lid in the opening of the stair.

  “There’s a tragedy of the cosmos,” Curt said gravely when they had removed the ear-plugs, inside the Comet. “A people sleeping for all these ages, dreaming of a day when their sun would be retired.”

  “And now they’ll sleep like that forever,” muttered the Brain.

  “Not forever,” contradicted Curt Newton. “I made them a promise. If we gain the secret of matter-mastery from the Birthplace, we could keep that promise by reviving their frozen world. And we will.”

  They flew back to the dead sun, landing the Comet again at their camp by the wrecked ship. And at once they plunged into the task of repairing the ship. Most important was the repair of the broken drive-ring. The terbium they had secured from the sleepers beneath the ice was melted and cast into a section of ring to replace that lost in the cloud. Also they repaired the warped stern-plates and straightened the bent girders of the stern.

  “All set to go,” reported Otho at the end of their third “day” of work. “When do we start, chief?”

  “In the ‘morning’,” Curt decided. “We need a few hours real rest after all this toil.”

  Strange dreams came to Curt in his slumber, dreams of the Birthplace as a mighty heart, ceaselessly throbbing, and of cowled figures that watched it and warned him threateningly away.

  He woke to a yell ringing in his ears. Two of the gray mineral-men had ventured to approach the camp, and Hol Jor, whose watch it was, was charging the creatures with his poison-tipped spear. The gray horrors who were the remote descendants of a once dauntless band of scientists, scuttled off into the dusk.

  “The cursed creatures are getting bolder,” Hol Jor declared angrily as he returned.

  Disturbed by his uncanny dream, Curt Newton looked around. “We’ve had enough rest. Let’s get started at once.”

  An hour later, the Comet rose from the dusk-shrouded surface of the dead sun and arrowed skyward toward the vast black blot of the cosmic cloud.

  Curt’s five new allies crowded the interior of the ship cabin and control-room. Old Ber Del had taken the space-chair next to Captain Future’
s pilot chair, and the veteran Vegan star-voyager peered anxiously toward the cloud as they again approached its limits.

  “The currents seem strongest where that bay of clear space indents the cloud,” Ber Del commented. “I suggest that we attempt to enter at some other point.”

  They cruised along the edge of the vast, rolling mass of cosmic dust. It was the keen lens-eyes of the Brain that finally picked a spot where the dust seemed less intense.

  “Try it there, lad,” proposed Simon Wright. “There where a slight back-tide of the dust seems to flow inward.”

  Curt assented.

  “I suggest that before we try it, we all get on our space-suits. We hope the ship will take the battering of the currents, but we can’t be sure.”

  His five new allies had brought their space-suits. They climbed into the protective garments — all except the Brain and Grag, who did not breathe and needed no such precaution.

  WITH increasing tenseness, Captain Future sent the little space-ship flying directly toward the brooding cloud. They plunged through the millrace currents of dust into the denser dust of the cloud itself and were at once engulfed in utter darkness. As before, the fluoroscopic searchlights were almost useless. And as before, the Comet was tossed and batted about by the violent currents streaming out from the mysterious center of the cloud.

  Curt Newton’s hands flew over the controls with miraculous speed and deftness, striving to keep the ship out of the more violent currents. He knew very well that these stronger currents could rip the ship apart, that their only hope was to creep deviously inward through less stormy areas of the cloud. It was nightmare flight and battle, this — battle against blind forces of nature that seemed malignantly intent upon crushing the puny humans who sought to attain nature’s greatest secret! The hearts of ordinary men would have quailed with dread before this appalling manifestation of brute power. But Captain Future and the Futuremen and their new star-captain allies were not ordinary men. They were, all of them, men accustomed to braving the perils of outer space. And in all their minds was the urgent knowledge that if by a miracle they could achieve their goal, they would bring back to their peoples a secret that would mean life.

  The Comet was sucked by whirling tides of dust into a dark maelstrom of currents. Curt fought desperately to break free. The hull of the ship was creaking and grinding ominously, and the new reinforcing girders were buckling slightly from the violent stresses.

  “If that drive-ring snaps again, we’re goners!” Otho exclaimed.

  “I’m doing my best to get out of this devil’s eddy,” Curt answered between his teeth.

  A wrenching, cracking sound was followed by the whistling shriek of escaping air, A hull plate had been wrenched open, and the air inside the ship was rapidly hissing out into space.

  “Good thing we put on the space-suits,” Curt thought. “But the ship can’t take this battering much longer.”

  He came to a desperate decision. It was better to risk destruction at once than to remain in the maelstrom, of dust-currents until they were pounded to fragments.

  “Hold tight, all of you,” he gritted. “We’re going to break out of this whirlpool or crack up here and now.”

  He slammed on the full power of the vibration drive. The pressure of that too-great acceleration crushed them for a moment, and the generators back in the cabin roared as though about to break loose from their mountings. Feeling blackness assail his brain, Curt cut the power. They had broken from the maelstrom by that momentary surge.

  “Don’t do that again,” begged Otho. “I think I left my stomach back there.”

  They had escaped the deadly eddy, but currents of dust hardly less dangerous continued to batter them. Racing tides of cosmic dust streamed ceaselessly out from far within the cloud where they had somehow been created!

  THEY lurched, plunged, spun, yet always Captain Future kept the Comet heading deeper into the cloud, his eyes glancing each few moments at the quivering needle of the cosmic ray compass. Space had become a roaring obscurity of dust and force, and time had become a meaningless thing as they struggled deeper and deeper into dark enigma.

  “Even if the Birthplace is somewhere in here, how can we approach it or study it under conditions like these?” muttered Grag.

  “There must be some way,” Curt retorted. “Someone once approached and studied it, if that legend of Ber Del is true.”

  The old Vegan shook his head.

  “Someone tried to approach it,” he corrected, “but was stopped by the Watchers. That is the legend.”

  The currents of outstreaming dust were becoming less violent as they penetrated deeper into the cloud. Encouraged, Captain Future drove the Comet steadily onward through the swirling dust.

  The dust grew thinner and thinner until finally they emerged from it into a vast, hazy space. It was a space of billions of miles, filled with a strange sparkling haze through which glowed a few scattered stars.

  Otho exclaimed in disappointment:

  “We’ve got turned around somehow and have come back out of the cloud.”

  Curt’s heart jumped. With a feeling of awe, his eyes travelled around the great vault of hazy space that lay ahead.

  “You’re wrong!” he said. “This space lies inside the cloud.”

  They were silent in stupefied surprise as they perceived what Captain Future’s keen eyes had already grasped. The vast cosmic cloud that covered so many tens of billions of miles of space was hollow. Here at its center was an open area many billions of miles across, containing a half-dozen scattered stars and permeated by that shooting, sparkling haze. The glittering haze appeared to stream out from the remote central region of this interior void, toward the surrounding dust-cloud. And they seemed to feel the impact of those hazy currents as a subtle, yet tangible shock of force through their bodies.

  “But where does the dust that feeds the cloud come from?” cried big Hol Jor bewilderedly.

  “I think I understand a little,” muttered the Brain. “Away off there in the haze at the center of this hollow space is the Birthplace of Matter. In the Birthplace, radiation is somehow transformed into free electrons and protons that are radiated outward in all directions. Those ceaseless waves of electrons cause the haze we see. The electrons and protons unite, out here, to form atoms of cosmic dust which are wafted out through the whole galaxy.”

  “Then why doesn’t the newly-formed dust out here drift back and fill up this hollow space?” Otho demanded puzzledly.

  “Pressure of the radiated electrons from the Birthplace itself would keep forcing the dust always outward in currents,” Curt declared.

  He was feeling a thrilling excitement at having penetrated to this unsuspected marvel of the universe. He had come far across the perils of interstellar space to reach this goal! He peered through the telescopes at the remote central region of the hazy hollow space. The source of the shooting haze of electrons was the Birthplace of Matter itself. If he could see it — But he could see nothing. Whatever lay at the center was shrouded by the sparkling haze that was very thick at that remote central region. The Birthplace still guarded its mystery.

  “I feel an awful itching,” plump Taunus Tar was complaining. The pink star rover looked puzzled, was scratching himself in his suit.

  Curt Newton also became aware of a growing irritation of his skin that was making his space-suit very uncomfortable. He realized the dangerous nature of the phenomenon at once.

  “The electron-waves radiating out through this void are penetrating our ship,” he declared sharply. “We’ll have to reinforce the Comet’s hull ray-proofing or these shooting electrons will tear us to pieces before we get near the Birthplace.”

  His gaze swung over the void ahead.

  “We’d better land at one of these stars and rayproof the hull at once. A coating of copper over the hull would proof it against those electron-waves.”

  EAGER as were the others to go on, they saw the force of Curt’s reasoning and acced
ed. They tore their fascinated gaze away and looked about at the few stars scattered inside the hollow cloud. Nearest them in the sparkling haze shone one small green sun which proved to possess a planet. Farther away were several dimmer stars, one of them a small red sun deep within the central haze.

  “The planet of this green sun has an atmosphere that we could all breathe, and its spectra shows plenty of copper,” reported Otho from the spectroscope.

  “Then we’ll make a landing there,” Curt Newton decided.

  He steered the Comet through the haze toward the green star, whose planet was two-thirds the size of Earth. Rushing down through the world’s atmosphere, they saw its sunlight side clearly beneath them. A parklike landscape of rolling bright green plains was studded by tall, graceful trees. Ahead loomed towering cliffs of solid copper, that flashed brightly in the strange green sunshine. Curt landed the Comet at the foot of the copper cliffs. They were glad to discard the space-suits and step out into the deliciously warm air.

  “The atmosphere here is proof against the electron-barrage,” Curt commented. “Now to proof the hull. Plenty of copper in these cliffs.”

  With the aid of an atomic blast, the Futuremen rapidly melted sufficient copper from the solid cliffs to coat the whole hull. They were starting the work when Hol Jor pointed into the sky, exclaiming aloud. A strange conical copper ship had appeared low in the western sky. It curved overhead, then hummed away out of sight again.

  “So there’s intelligent life on this world,” Curt muttered. “It may not be as peaceful as it looks. Let’s hurry up this job.”

  They redoubled their efforts. Within an hour they had almost finished spraying the molten copper on the hull. Then Otho suddenly straightened as his keen ears detected a louder humming.

  “Chief, look at that!” exclaimed the android.

  A dozen conical copper ships had suddenly appeared from the west, were diving down over the copper cliffs straight toward the Comet.