Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

stretched the rolling ashen plains of the dark-star world. Wrapped in the somber obscurity of eternal death and night lay this once — mighty sphere. Only at one point did ruddy light beacon through the dusk. Captain Future and his friends had set up an atomic glower in the camp of the castaways. They sat around it now, the wrecked star-sailors eagerly sharing a meal of frozen Jovian beef and Earth bread and Uranian fruits that Curt had brought from the frozen-storage compartment of his ship. The bright radiance of the glower dispelled the chill and darkness. It gleamed off the hull of the Comet, wavered over the shattered hulk of the nearby wreck and picked out the strangely assorted group around it — Curt Newton, tanned, handsome, keen-eyed, Grag’s mighty metal limbs, and Otho’s lithe white figure, the brooding lens-eyes of the Brain and the faces of the old Vegan, the two Antarians and the Fomalhautian and Sagittarian.
    They talked for hours, these strangely-met star-captains from far-separated parts of the galaxy. Fascinating to Captain Future were the tales these men could tell of exploration and adventure and dire peril and marvelous beauty which they had met with in intrepid voyages through this region of the starry universe.
    “ — and so we combed sun after sun in that part of the star-cluster.” It was Ki Lllok, the brown Sagittarian, who was speaking in his clipped, curt way. “We saw wonders on some of those weird worlds! But the sight I’ll never forget is the night sky of those worlds — all the suns of the cluster blazing in the heavens like a million moons.”
    Old Ber Del, the withered blue Vegan, nodded his hairless head.
    “I was through some of those star clusters, years ago. It’s crazily dangerous piloting, picking your way through those thousands of swarming suns. I remember we’d picked up a load of rare metal in there and were heading back for Vega when we got into trouble running between the two suns of a double star. We were lucky to see our own worlds again.”
    Otho’s green eyes were sparkling with excited interest.
    “If you chaps have been going and coming between stars here for so long, why is it you’ve never visited our own sun, Sol?” he asked them.
    Hol Jor, the giant Antarian, answered.
    “Your sun is too far across the galaxy! No ship of ours could make it in less than many years. In this part of the universe, where the stars are much closer together, interstellar travel has been feasible.”
    Taunus Tar, the fat pink star-captain from Fomalhaut, nodded agreement.
    “It is so,” he told Captain Future. “That is why we were so awe-stricken when we learned how far across the universe you had come.”
    “We had a strong motive for the voyage,” Curt Newton said earnestly. “One of the worlds of our System is dying from failing atmosphere. Only the secret of complete matter-mastery can revive it. And only at the Birthplace of Matter can that secret be learned.”
    Old Ber Del nodded understanding.
    “I came searching for the Birthplace with the same motive. My native world at Vega is dying. And it was a similar purpose that brought Hol Jor and the others on their separate quests, which ended in disaster.”
    Curt’s jaw hardened.
    “My quest isn’t ended yet. It has to go on, somehow. For the life of a world, the future of a people, depend on it.
    “You were telling me something about a legend or tradition connected with the Birthplace of Matter — something about the Watchers. What is the story?”
    Hol Jor snorted.
    “It’s just a crazy yarn you hear from many star peoples. They’ve been telling it for ages.”
    “I don’t know — there may be truth in it,” muttered old Ber Del. “Maybe someone, long ago, did penetrate to the Birthplace and brought out this story. That’s what they say, anyway.”
    The old Vegan bent toward Curt.
    “The story was to the effect that the Birthplace does exist far inside the cosmic cloud, but that it is guarded by