Captain Future 15 - The Star of Dread (Summer 1943) Read online

  “But they never came. It must be that, before they could come to their senses, our Denebian people irretrievably ruined their own civilization by their war, so that all memory of us was almost forgotten. And so we have slept on through the ages, until now at last you came and opened the door and awakened us.”

  As Khor’s voice ceased, Curt Newton asked the golden man the question upon which his companions were hanging with heart-and-soul attention.

  “Then you can undo your ancient work?” Captain Future asked. “You can make the man-beasts a human race again?”

  “We can — and we will,” Khor affirmed. His deep eyes had that haunting sorrow strong in them as he continued, “But not until their next generation will they be human again. The present ones cannot be changed.”

  Golo spoke eagerly. “We do not care for ourselves, if we can die knowing that our descendants will be true humans as they should be.”

  “Yes, that has been the dream of the Clans for ages,” affirmed the great man-tiger.

  “Then we shall begin with you now,” said Khor to the man-beasts. “Stand beneath the lenses of the dome.”

  Golo and the others obeyed him. The golden man and woman went to a bank of mechanisms that towered at one side of the Chamber.

  CURT NEWTON and his comrades stood back, watchful and fascinated. The enigmatic machines of the Ancients hummed with power. The moonlight, that flowed through the clustered lenses of the ceiling, changed abruptly into a shooting glare of radiance that struck down upon the man-beasts.

  It lasted for but a few moments, bathing the creatures in its fiercest glare and then snapping out. But Curt knew that in those moments, the power of unbelievably concentrated cosmic rays had been used to alter forever the gene-pattern, the units of heredity, in the bodies of the man-beasts.

  “It is done,” Khor told them. “You yourselves will not change. But your descendants will be — men.”

  The golden woman spoke softly to Khor, and he nodded and turned back to Captain Future.

  “We wish to re-transform all the man-beasts upon this world, in the same way,” he said. “Only then, will the wrong we did be undone.”

  “We’ll summon them,” cried Golo eagerly. “They’ll come from all over Aar.”

  Curt Newton and his companions left the two Ancients in the Chamber of Life, and went back outside Prism Peak.

  In the moonlight, they found out there the bodies of Osorkon and his Manlings. A glance showed how they had died. Shih and Zur had had their vengeance for an enslaved and oppressed race, at last.

  Golo’s voice rang like a trumpet as he addressed the man-condor.

  “Fly south with the clan-call, Skeen,” he said. “Fly fast and far, and carry the word to all the Clans that the redemption of our race awaits them here.”

  Skeen plunged into the air, and was gone, arrowing southward across the black sea in the moonlight.

  “And now to find the Comet,” Curt Newton said.

  It was Shih, with his marvelous tracking ability, who back-trailed Norton’s party to the overhanging cleft a mile away in which they had cunningly concealed the ship of the Futuremen.

  Curt Newton brought the Comet to the beach near Prism Peak. And after landing it there, his weary frame succumbed to the demands of nature and he slept the sleep of exhaustion. Others of his party did likewise.

  Chapter 19: Ancient Superscience

  HOURS later, Captain Future awakened. Two nights had passed and again the moons were rising over the Crystal Mountains. And from all over Aar, the Clans were coming.

  They came with wild eagerness, these hosts of man-beasts whose dream for generations had been the regaining of humanity. As they came, they trooped into the Chamber of Life to stand beneath the glare of concentrated cosmic radiation by which Khor and Ata re-altered the gene-patterns.

  For days, the subtle transformation of the heredity of a race went on. Not until ten nights later had the last of the man-beasts passed through the Chamber.

  The hosts of the Clans gathered in the moonlight and frantically exulted in the redemption of their race. They, themselves, were unchanged. But their descendants would be true humans, and their dream was fulfilled.

  “And now?” Joan Randall asked Curt Newton wonderingly, as they stood amid the Clans near Prism Peak.

  “Look,” he said. “Khor and Ata are coming forth.”

  A whole big section in the side of Prism Peak near the portal had suddenly magically opened. Out of it was emerging the strange little spindle-shaped space-ship that had been hangared beneath the Chamber of Life.

  And as the little ship emerged, Prism Peak sank suddenly to dust behind it. Some force had been released that had destroyed forever the octahedral mountain and all the wonders of ancient science it contained.

  The spindle-like ship poised beside the Comet. And from the strange craft, Khor and Ata came to speak a last word to the Futuremen.

  “This is farewell,” said the golden man. “Now that we have undone the evil we unwittingly created long ago, we have destroyed the Chamber of Life so that that evil may never again be repeated. And now we are leaving this world forever.”

  “Leaving Aar?” cried Curt Newton. “But why? Aar is your world.”

  Khor shook his head sadly. “Aar is no longer the world we knew. There is no place in it for us. So Ata and I are going back to the place from which our fathers first came to the world of this star, the place of our race’s origin.

  The Brain cried an eager question.

  “Where is that place of origin of our race, that mysterious Darkness from which the first men came? The mystery of that has baffled us all this time,” he asked.

  Khor answered slowly.

  “I cannot tell you that,” he said. “It is too dangerous for your races yet to know. For there are secrets and wonders of science at that far birthplace of man, which might tempt evil ones among your people to seek and possess. Just as evil ones among you sought to possess the Chamber of Life and its powers. Some day, your race may learn the real truth as to the origin of humanity. By then, let us hope, there will be no more evil men among your people who would make the knowledge dangerous. And now — farewell.”

  The golden man and woman entered the spindle ship. It rose smoothly into the moonlight, watched in reverent awe by the gathered Clans.

  The Brain had turned away and entered the Comet. And Ezra Gurney looked after him pityingly.

  “Simon is bitterly disappointed,” he murmured. “He was countin’ on learnin’ the answer to that mystery.”

  “I think I can guess the answer — but it’s only a guess,” Captain Future said thoughtfully.

  The spindle-shaped ship disappeared in the moonlit sky. Khor and Ata, who had waited in sleep for ages to make reparation for their mistake, had gone back to the mysterious birthplace of the human race.

  There was a long silence, in which Curt Newton looked around at the hosts of the Clans, and then at the loyal group of man-beast leaders.

  “We must leave now too, clan-brothers,” Curt Newton said to them. “Our own world calls us homeward.”

  It was the deep voice of Golo, the great man-horse, that answered.

  “Though you go back into the stars, we shall not forget you,” he promised. “We know that to you, our race owes its deliverance.”

  “Now that your races can look forward to manhood again, now that the power of the Manlings to oppress you has been broken, there should be peace here,” Captain Future said earnestly. “You and the Manlings will soon again be one race, remember. Together, you can in time restore the ancient glories of this world.”

  WITHOUT hesitation the man-horse agreed.

  “We shall work now toward peace and cooperation with the Manlings,” Golo assured. “For very soon there will not be Manlings and man-beasts on this world, but only men.”

  The others were already entering the Comet. But the man-beasts were crowding around Curt, loath to let him go.

  “You will come ba
ck some day and run the forest trails again with us of the Hunting Pack?” cried Zur, the shaggy man-dog.

  “And gather with us once more in the Valley of the Council by moonrise?” exclaimed Skeen.

  Curt Newton felt strong emotion, as he stood in the door of his ship.

  “We’ll come back, some day,” he promised them.

  Several hours later the Comet was throbbing through galactic space at all the tremendous speed of which its vibration-drive was capable. Already Deneb was a white star dropping far astern. Ahead, amid the hosts of suns, shone the faint and far yellow spark that was home. Curt Newton, sitting in the pilot-chair with Joan Randall snuggled beside him, eyed that distant spark with a great and tired content.

  Beside them, Otho was mysteriously busy. The android had brought forth his disguise-kit and was eagerly setting out its materials.

  “What are you going to do with that, Otho?” Joan Randall asked wonderingly.

  “Hush, don’t let Grag hear you,” Otho enjoined, glancing alertly back toward the main cabin. Then he chuckled. “I’m going to play a practical joke on that robot. Just watch.”

  Otho was a supreme master of the art of disguise. And now, as they watched, they saw him achieve a miracle in metamorphosis.

  He covered his white face and hands with smooth tan stain. A drop of chemical changed the pigment of his eyes temporarily to clear gray. False red hair cunningly applied to his scalp transformed his appearance further.

  Then Otho distorted his incredibly plastic features suddenly into wholly new features. The red, unruly hair, the clear gray eyes, the tanned, handsome new features —

  “Why, he’s made himself into an exact double of you Curt,” exclaimed Joan Randall unbelievingly.

  “I get it, now,” he grinned.

  Otho had indeed made himself into such an exact replica of Captain Future that even Joan Randall could not tell the difference between them.

  “Now,” said Otho exultantly, “watch me pay off Mr. Grag.”

  Imitating Curt Newton’s lithe stride, the disguised android stalked back into the main cabin. Curt Newton and Joan Randall peered around the door-edge, to watch.

  Back in that cabin, the Brain was engrossed in the mysterious calculations that had unceasingly occupied him ever since they left Deneb. Ezra was dozing in a chair. Grag sat fondling Eek and talking to the moon-pup as was his habit.

  “Grag,” said Otho, in a voice that was identical with Curt’s own.

  Grag looked up, and asked, “What is it, Chief?”

  The robot was utterly deceived. And Otho took full advantage of it. He stood, looking at Grag and shaking his head disgustedly.

  Grag grew worried at that look. “Why, what’s wrong, Chief?”

  “Grag, I’ve come to a decision,” said Otho crisply. “This bickering of yours with Otho has gone on long enough. You’re always picking on Otho, who never does anything to deserve it. I’m going to have to fire you out of the Futuremen. When we get back to the System, you can go your own way.”

  Grag seemed unable to believe his ears. He goggled at the pseudo-Captain Future ludicrously.

  “Chief, you can’t be serious. You wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “I would, and I will,” affirmed the disguised android sternly. “Otho is worth twenty of you, and I can’t stand the way you annoy him.”

  If it had been possible for Grag to have tears in his photoelectric eyes, they would have been there. “But Chief, Otho’s to blame as much as I am,” protested Grag. “It’s not all my fault if we scrap.”

  “Trying to lay the blame on poor Otho, eh?” snapped the pretended Captain Future. “That settles it. I’m through with you.”

  “No, no, Chief,” begged Grag. “I didn’t mean to blame Otho.”

  “You admit, then, that you’re totally to blame for all the arguments and that you’re one hundred percent wrong in them?” Otho demanded.

  GRAG made a strangled sound. “Y-yes, I agree I am. Otho never did anything. It’s all my fault.”

  The disguised android appeared to consider sternly, “Well, I still don’t know —”

  The real Curt Newton ruined it at that moment, by bursting into laughter that he could no longer repress.

  Grag, hearing that familiar voice, darted forward and stared bewilderedly from the pretended Captain Future to the real one.

  Then he uttered a howl of fury and swung back menacingly on Otho. “Now I understand! Why, you low-down, blasted, lying excuse for a man, I’ll —”

  “Hold it, Grag,” called Curt Newton as the infuriated robot prepared to take summary vengeance. “It was coming to you, for the practical jokes you are always playing on Otho.”

  Grag glared. “When I get you alone, Otho —”

  Simon Wright interrupted. The Brain’s metallic voice had a quiver of excitement in it as he called.

  “Curtis, look at this! I’ve finally solved the mystery!”

  They went hastily to the desk over which the Brain had pored upon his calculations for all these hours.

  Ezra Gurney, awakened, crowded with them.

  “The mystery of man’s origin!” Simon Wright continued in an excited voice. “The riddle that has baffled us so long, as to where the human race first came from to Deneb.”

  “Simon, you’ve solved that?” Joan Randall exclaimed wonderingly. “You know then where Khor and Ata went?”

  “Yes,” said the Brain. “You remember that when they left, after refusing to tell me their destination, I entered the Comet at once? What I did was to put ‘tracer-rays’ on Khor’s spaceship, by means of which I could follow its flight far out into space. He came from a different universe, the great System of stars. Now we know the Darkness from which legend says the first men came was the awful darkness of inter-galactic space. Across it they came, eons ago, colonists who sprang from that great universe far across the void.”

  Then the Brain saw Captain Future’s shining eyes.

  “You knew it already, Curtis?” he asked.

  “No, Simon,” said Curt Newton. “I only guessed it. It was the legend that the first men had the power of remaining undying when they came to Deneb, that gave me the clue. I guessed that ‘undying’ referred to a sleep of suspended animation. That would only be utilized by voyagers who had to cross such a vast abyss as the space between universes.”

  Captain Future went to the window. And they looked forth with him in awe at the faint, tiny patch of light that was the far Andromeda galaxy.

  “Our ancestors came from there, in the dim eons of the past, to colonize this galaxy. The parent-race from which they came must still exist there. Some day, somehow, we are going to go there and find out.”

  THE END

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