Children of the Sun Read online

  They crossed the end of that blackened strip, Curt and Otho hastening over the hot rocks, Grag plodding stolidly, Simon gliding ahead.

  Before them the fern jungle rose into olive-colored hills, growing dark as the dusk deepened. Almost at once Newton noticed something on the slope of the nearest hill. It was a raw lumpy scar where a landslide had recently occurred.

  “Simon, look at that landslide! Notice anything?”

  The Brain hovered, his lens-eyes surveying the dusky hillside. “Yes, the outline. Definitely unnatural.”

  Otho and Grag were staring now, too. “I don’t see anything unnatural about it”, boomed the metal giant.

  “It covers a building that stood on that hillside”, Newton informed him. “Look at the symmetry of it, even masked by soil — the central cupola, the two wings.”

  Otho’s bright eyes flashed. “The citadel Carlin mentioned?”

  “Perhaps. Let’s have a look.”

  They moved on. In a brief time they were climbing the slope to that great lumpy scar of new soil.

  Newton looked back down at the jungle. No one had followed them out of it onto the bare slope. The giant ferns stretched far away and he could catch the tawny gleam of Yellow Lake in the distant dusk.

  Through the twilight jungle, the Belt stretched like a stygian river of deepest black. He could see no building or ruin of any kind on his side of the ebon strip.

  “This must be the citadel Carlin meant”, he said. “Apparently a landslide has covered it since he was here. We’ll have to dig a way in.”

  They found flat stones in the loose soil of the slide. Using them as hand-spades Newton and the android and robot began pushing aside the ocher soil above the cupola of the buried building.

  Something flashed and hissed in the dusk. Curt Newton whirled. A long quivering spear stuck in the slope some distance below them.

  “I thought the Vulcanians were still with us!” Otho muttered.

  Newton said quietly, “Just stand still. Let me talk to them.”

  He faced down the slope toward the fern jungle. He called out in the language he had learned on his first visit to this lost world — a debased form of the once— beautiful language of the Old Empire, sunk now into barbarism like the men who spoke it.

  “Show us your faces, my brothers! We come as friends and our hands are empty of death!”

  There was utter silence. In the distance the fading shaft of sunlight lay like a tarnished sword across the dusk. The dense jungle below was untouched by wind or motion of any kind. Even the beasts were stilled by that strong human voice, speaking out across the desolation.

  Newton did not speak again. He waited. He seemed to have endless patience, and complete assurance. After a time, half furtively and yet with a curious and touching pride, a man came out of the jungle and looked up at them.

  He was clad in garments of white leather and his skin was white and the falling mane of his hair was white and his eyes were pale as mist. His only weapons were a knife and a spear.

  In his carriage, in the fine modeling of his head, Newton could still see lingering traces of the heritage that had given the men of the Old Empire supremacy over two galaxies. And it seemed sad that this man should look up at him with the shy feral untrusting eyes of a wild thing.

  Simon Wright said quietly, “Do you not know him, Curtis?”

  “Of course.” In the Vulcanian dialect Newton said, “Is the memory of Kah so short that he does not know his brothers?”

  They had had dealings with Kah before. He was lord over a third of the tribes of Vulcan and had proved a man of his word, aiding the Futuremen in many ways. But now the suspicious catlike eyes studied them, utterly without warmth or welcome.

  “Kah remembers”, said the man softly. “The name of the great one is Grag — and you are the flame-haired one who leads.”

  Behind him, by twos and threes, his men gathered silently at the foot of the slope. They were all the same tall snow-haired stock, wearing the white leather, bearing the sharp spears. They watched, and Newton saw that their eyes dwelt in wonder upon the towering Grag. He remembered that they had been much impressed by Grag before.

  Kah said abruptly, “We have been friends and brothers, and therefore I have stayed my hand. This place is sacred and forbidden. Leave it while you still live.”

  Newton answered steadily, “We cannot leave. We seek a friend who came here and was lost.”

  The Vulcanian chieftain voiced a long, harsh Ah-h! and every man with him lifted his spear and shook it.

  “He entered the forbidden place”, said Kah, “and he is gone.”

  “Gone? You mean he’s dead?”

  Kah’s hands shaped an age-old ritual gesture. Newton saw that they trembled. The Vulcanian turned and pointed to the fading Beam, which was to him a symbol of godhead.

  “He has gone there”, Kah whispered, “along the path of light. He has followed the Bright Ones, who do not return.”

  “I do not understand you, Kah!” said Newton sharply. “Is the body of my friend in this buried place? What happened? Speak more clearly.”

  “No, I have talked too much of forbidden things.” Kah raised up his spear.

  “Go now! Go — for I have no wish to slay!”

  “You cannot slay, Kah, for your spears will not fly this far. And the great one called Grag will be as a wall against your coming.”

  Rapidly, under his breath, Newton spoke to the robot. “Keep them back, Grag! They can’t harm you, and it’ll leave us free to dig.”

  Clanking ponderously down the slope, a terrifying gigantic form in the dusk, Grag advanced on the Vulcanians. And Newton cried aloud to Kah, “We will not leave this place until we have found our friend!”

  Kah flung his spear. It fell short by no more than two paces but Newton did not stir. The Vulcanian drew back slowly before the oncoming Grag, who spread out his mighty arms and roared and made the ground tremble under his feet.

  “The big ham!” whispered Otho. “He’s enjoying it.”

  There was a wavering among the ranks of the natives. A ragged flight of spears pelted up the slope and some of the obsidian points splintered with a sharp ringing sound on Grag’s metallic body. Grag laughed a booming laugh. He picked up a slab of stone and broke it in his hands and flung the pieces at them.

  “That does it”, said Otho disgustedly. “I’m going to be sick.”

  Kah screamed suddenly, “The curse will fall on you as it fell on the other who entered there! You too will go out along the Beam, lost forever from the sight of men!”

  He turned then and vanished into the jungle.

  “I have been studying this landslide”, said Simon Wright irrelevantly. “I believe that it was artificially caused by the natives to seal this place after Carlin entered it.”

  “Very likely”, Captain Future answered. He stood for a moment in deep though. “I wonder what Kah meant by the ‘Bright Ones who do not return’?”

  “Probably an euphemism for the dead”, said Otho pessimistically. “We’ll know better when we’ve found a way inside.”

  They turned to and began to dig again. The citadel stood on a sort of promontory, partly blocked now by the slide, so that the natives could only come at them up the slope, and Grag effectively barred the way. Now and again a spear whistled harmlessly into the dirt but there was no attack.

  The last glowing thread of the Beam narrowed into nothingness and was gone. Utter darkness descended on the hidden world of Vulcan. Newton and Otho worked on by the light of belt-lamps.

  They struck the solid stone of the building, and the work went faster. After a few minutes Otho cried, “There’s an opening here!”

  They discarded their improvised spades. The loose dirt flew under their hands and presently they had uncovered the upper arches of a triple window. From there the way was easy.

  Curt Newton was the first one inside. A great quantity of dirt had poured in through the open arches but most of this upper level was
clear. Otho slid agilely after him, and then the Brain.

  The lamps showed them a circular gallery, high up in the central cupola. Below was a round and empty shaft. Newton leaned out over the low carved railing. Far down in the pit he could see a soft and curdled luminescence, like spectral sunlight veiled in mist. The source was hidden from him by the overhang of other galleries lower down.

  The silence of age-long death was in the place and the mingled smell of centuries and of the raw new soil. Newton led the way around the gallery, his footsteps ringing hollow against the vault of stone.

  He found a narrow stairway, going down.

  They descended, passing the other galleries, and came at last into a small chamber. It had had a door to the outside, a massive, age-tarnished metal door that had buckled somewhat with pressure and had let dirt sift through the cracks.

  Opposite the door was a low, square opening in the stone wall. Above it was an inscription. Holding his lamp high, Curt Newton read slowly, “Here is the birthplace of the Children of the Sun.”

  CHAPTER III

  Dread Metamorphosis

  WONDERINGLY they went through into the central chamber of the citadel. Dirt had spilled down from above, covering a good part of the floor. Newton realized that only the upper gallery, serving as a stop for the soil to dam itself against, had saved the interior of the citadel from being heavily inundated.

  He scrambled up onto that heap of rock and soil, and then stood still, gazing in puzzled wonder. He saw now the sources of that dim, eerie light. Set in deep niches on opposite faces of the curving wall were two seeming identical sets of apparatus, like nothing he had ever seen before.

  The bases were of some dark metal, untouched by the passage of time. They were wide and low, separated so that their centers formed a dais. Each base bore two soaring coils of what seemed to be crystal tubing, as high as a tall man, braced in frames of platinum.

  The coils pulsed and glowed with misty light — one set giving forth a gleam of purest gold, the other a darker hue of bluish green. Opposite the arch through which they had entered was a third niche, much smaller, having within it a complicated bank of instruments that might have been a control panel.

  “Birthplace of the Children of the Sun”, said Otho softly. “Look, Curt — there above the niches.”

  Again Captain Future read aloud, the warning messages cut deep in the ageless stone. Above the apparatus of the golden coils it said, “Let him beware who steps beyond this portal. For death is the price of eternal life!”

  Above the one of somber hue, the inscription read “Death is a double doorway. On which side of it is the true life?”

  Simon Wright had approached the niche that held the strange glow of sunlight and was hovering over the edge of the fallen soil there. “Curtis”, he said, “I think we have found what we sought.”

  Newton joined him. He bent and picked something up, shaking it free from the dirt that half buried it. Mutely he nodded and showed the thing to Otho. It was a coverall of tough synthetic cloth, much stained and worn. On the label inside the collar was woven the name, Philip Carlin.

  “He was here then, Otho. “But what happened to him? Why would he strip — wait!”

  The android’s sharp eyes had perceived a mound in the soil, vaguely manlike in shape. Together he and Newton uncovered it and then looked at each other in vast relief.

  “It’s only his knapsack and bedroll”, said Newton thankfully.

  “And his boots.” Otho shook his head “I don’t get it at all. There’s no sign of blood on his clothes —”

  Newton was looking now at the yel— crystal coils, the suggestive dais-like space between them. The thing was close to him, almost close enough to touch.

  “He stripped here”, said Newton slowly. “He left his clothing and his kit behind and —” His eyes lifted to the inscription and he added very softly, “Phil Carlin went through the portal, whatever it is and wherever it leads.”

  “I agree with your assumptions, Curtis”, said Simon Wright. “I suggest that you search Carlin’s effects for any data he may have left relative to this apparatus and its uses. It is obvious that he spent months in study and such a record seems inevitable.”

  Simon’s lens-eyes turned toward the small niche with the cryptic bank of controls.

  “See, there are many close-packed inscriptions on those walls, presumably instructions for the operation of these machines. He would surely have written down his translations for reference.”

  Captain Future was already going through Carlin’s pack. “Here it is!” he said and held up a thick notebook. “Hold your light closer, Otho.”

  He thumbed rapidly through the pages until he found what he was hoping and praying for — a section headed, in Carlin’s meticulous script, Translation of Formulae, Control Niche.

  “Long, complicated and heavily annotated by Carlin”, he said. “It will take us the rest of the night to puzzle this out, but it’s a godsend all the same.”

  He sat down in the dirt, the book open on his knees. Simon hovered close over his shoulder. The two were already absorbed in those all-important pages.

  “Otho”, said Newton, “will you go up and give Grag a hand in? The natives won’t dare to follow us in here on forbidden ground.”

  AND that was the last thing he said that night, except to exchange a few terse remarks with Simon on the intricacies of some formulae or equation.

  Grag and Otho waited. They did not speak. From beyond the high windows came a distant sound of voices that was like a bitter dirge.

  Curt Newton read on and on in Carlin’s record. And as he read the terrible suspicion that had been born in his mind took form and shape and crystallized at last into a truth as horrifying as it was inescapable.

  There was more in that record than mere scientific data. There were history and hope and terror and a great dream and a conclusion so staggering that the mind reeled before it — a conclusion that brought in itself a dreadful punishment.

  Or was it, after all, a punishment?

  Curt Newton flung the book from him. He leaped up and found that he was trembling in every limb, his body bathed in sweat. “It’s ghastly, Simon!” he cried. “Why would they have let such an experiment go forward?”

  Simon’s lens-like eyes regarded him calmly. “No knowledge can be wrong in itself — only in its application. And the men of the Old Empire did forbid the use of this apparatus when they learned its effect. Carlin quotes here the inscription he found in the ruined city that so states. Also he mentions that he himself broke the seals on the great door.”

  “The fool”, whispered Newton. “The crazy fool!” He glanced at the twin sets of glowing coils and then upward at the dome.

  “He changed and went out along the Beam. And the natives, horrified by what he had done, caused the landslide to seal this place.”

  “But Carlin did not come back”, said the Brain.

  “No”, said Newton, broodingly. “No, he didn’t. Perhaps for some reason he couldn’t.”

  The android’s bright eyes were watching him. “What was it that Carlin changed into, Curt?”

  Curt Newton turned and said slowly, “It’s an almost unbelievable story. Yet Carlin notes every source, here and in the ruined city.”

  He paused as though trying to shape what he had learned into simpler terms.

  “In the days of the Old Empire the Vulcanian scientists had a predominant interest in the Sun. In fact it appears that Vulcan was first settled as an outpost for the study of solar physics. And somewhere, in the course of those centuries-long researches into the life of the Sun, one man discovered a method of converting the ordinary matter of the human body into something resembling solar energy — a cohesive pattern of living force able to come and go at will into the very heart of the Sun.

  “This was not destruction, you understand — merely conversion of a matter-pattern into an analogous functioning energy-pattern. By reversing the field the changed matter
could be returned to its original form. And, since the mental and sensory centers remained functioning in the altered pattern, thought and perception remained intact though different.

  “Never before had there been such a possibility of uncovering the inmost secrets of solar life — and the study of suns was vital to a transgalactic civilization. The scientists entered the conversion field and became — Children of the Sun.”

  Otho caught his breath with a sharp hissing sound.

  “So that’s the meaning of the inscription — and the legend! Do you mean that those little wisps of flames we saw were once men?”

  Newton did not answer, looking away at the tall golden coils that seemed to pulse with the Sun’s own light. But the Brain spoke dryly.

  “Curtis did not tell you quite all. The lure of the strange life in the Sun proved too much for many of the men who were changed. They did not come back. And therefore the use of the converters was forbidden and this laboratory was sealed — until Carlin came and opened it again.”

  “And now he’s out there”, said Captain Future as though to himself. “Carlin changed and went out there, and then couldn’t get back.” He swung around suddenly to face them. His tanned face was set. “And I’m going after him”, he said. “I’m going to bring him back.”

  OTHO cried out, “No! Curt, you’re mad! You can’t do such a thing!”

  “Carlin did.”

  “Yes, and maybe he’s dead or worse!” The android caught Newton’s arm. He pleaded, “Even if you went after him how could you find him? And if you did suppose you found that you couldn’t get back either? These machines are ancient and might fail.”

  “For once”, said Grag emphatically, “Otho is right. Every word of it!”

  “And I must agree with both of them”, said Simon Wright. “Curtis, this course of action is both madness and folly.”

  Newton’s gray eyes had grown cold with a remoteness that made Otho step back away from him. His face was now flintlike in its stubborn resolution. “Carlin was our friend”, he said quietly. “He stood by us when we needed him. I have to go after him.”