Captain Future 21 - The Return of Captain Future (January 1950)

by Edmond Hamilton

  They were one, Curt Newton and the creature out of the gulfs of time.

  His mind was open to the Linid — his whole life, everything he had thought and done and seen, forgotten and remembered. And the mind of the Linid, because of that uncanny oneness, was open to him.

  Not all the way.

  Much of it was incomprehensible to any human. It was a tremendously older, stronger mind, so much so that Curt felt a sort of shrinking awe in its presence. It was not an evil mind. Only — different.

  Some of its memories he now shared.

  The swift free flights along the shores of the dark nebulae, the plunges into ebony vastness beyond the ken of man. The home-place, the cloudy worlds of mist and cold fire, striding dim and majestic across the universe, dank strangers even in their own cosmos.

  The delights of thought, the unfettered strength, the ability to cross the intergalactic spaces naked and alone, learning a chill and vaulting glory from that kinship with the stars.

  Above all, the pride and power that carried that race to dominance over all that lived in a hundred far-flung continents of alien suns.

  Only glimpses, these. But enough to make Curt’s human heart almost stop in wonder.

  And now he saw his own memories, coming back to him through the mind of the Linid, as it searched and searched him for the truth.

  The dead and empty worlds, the cities without light or sound, the deserted stars. The Hall of Ninety Suns, forgotten shrine of vanished glory, with its inscriptions that spoke solemnly of a war and a species that had ended long ago. Record of death, of defeat, Epitaph of pre-human empire.

  The Linid saw, and read.

  CURT felt the awfulness of that reading. The pride, the assurance of power, shaken more and more by every scrap of knowledge gleaned from the mind of this small human creature it held so in contempt. The cruel, inexorable coming of realization — the agonized shifting of truth from a concept held through numberless ages to one sprung new-born out of this last hour. The Linids rule and are great. Not that, now. The Linids are gone, and even their name is not remembered.

  Curt felt the moment when the creature ceased to hope. I am the last. My race is dead, and I am the last!

  The terrible, urgent grip on Curt’s mind fell away. The crushing alien presence sagged within his flesh, borne down by the weight of truth. It was as though the creature had died.

  Curt knew the loneliness of utter desolation.

  It seemed an endless period before the Linid stirred again. Slowly, very slowly, like one touched already by the hand of death, the creature withdrew its substance from the body and mind of the man.

  It left him, floating free, and now its dusky veils were like funerary cloaks folded sadly around its heart.

  With a last flash of ancient pride, the Linid spoke, the words coming strong from the mechanical throat of the interpreter.

  “Time, not man, overcame us!”

  Curt’s limbs were weak. Oddly, now, he no longer felt fear or hatred for the Linid.

  There was only a strange pity.

  “The battle is over,” said the toneless voice. It had now a curious illusion of distance, of withdrawal. “It is over and done. And I am the last of all my race.”

  The dark veils quivered and swirled, shrouding the creature’s core. It seemed to look about it, not at Curt, not at Joan and Ezra and the Futuremen, but at something far beyond. Captain Future sensed that they, with all the human race, had utterly ceased to be important to it.

  “I will go back to the birthplace of my people, back to the dark nebula that gave us life. It is fitting that the last of us should there find death.”

  The cowled shape glided past them, it moved with the somber sureness of fate, unswerving, unhurried, out at the chamber.

  Curt and the others watched it go. It crossed the great central room of the laboratory and passed out of sight, into the passage that led upward to the surface of the Moon.

  They listened, but they heard no sound of doors.

  Joan, who was held now in Grag’s arms, still white-faced and dazed, suddenly pointed upward.

  “Look,” she whispered. “Up there, against the stars —”

  They looked, out through the glassite ceiling-dome. And Curt saw it, the proud creature that had watched the birth of empires and had shared the rule of a thousand suns.

  Slowly, majestically, spreading its veils like wings to the windless vault of space, the Linid rose, going outward no man knew where, a dark and lonely shape against infinity.

  Curt said somberly, “Somewhere out there, beyond wherever it is going, is the world of the First-Born that we know now was the birthplace of man — the world that we will never see. But we know.”

  They stood, the six of them, too full of thought for any speech, watching.

  Dark unto dark. And presently the vault of space was empty.

  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.

  The Metal Robot

  From the Winter 1940 issue of Captain Future

  GRAG the robot is the largest and strongest of Captain Future’s three strange comrades. He is probably the strongest being in the whole Solar System.

  He towers over seven feet in height, a massive, manlike figure of gleaming “inert” metal.

  This metal, being impervious to most forces and weapons, has protected Grag from destruction many times. Yet old scars show where his body-plates have been broken and rewelded in the past.

  IMBUED WITH INTELLIGENCE

  Grag was built in the cavern-laboratory on the moon by Roger Newton, Captain Future’s father, and Simon Wright, the Brain, according to an intricate design.

  The robot was not designed to be merely an automaton, but to have an intelligence and individuality of his own.

  His creators endowed him with a brain consisting of metal neurones roughly corresponding to the neuron-pattern of a human brain, though more simple. The thought-impulses set up inside this metal brain are electrical. Electrical and magnetic “nerves” control the robot’s great limbs.

  ATOMIC POWER

  Grag’s source of energy is atomic power. A compact, super-powerful plant is located deep within his metal torso for safety. A small amount of metal fuel inserted into this power-plant inside his body is sufficient to keep his strength for many months.

  The metal robot can hear better than any human being, because his microphonic ears are super-sensitive.

  They enable him to hear sounds which are above or below the range of human audibility, and Captain Future has sometimes made use of this fact to communicate through Grag with planetary creatures who talk in tones beyond the range of human hearing.

  Grag has an immense and unshakable loyalty to Captain Future, which is his chief emotion.

  The robot tended Curt Newton through his infancy, and because Curt needed constant watching then, Grag thinks that his master still needs watching over.

  THE BRAIN’S HANDS

  Toward Simon Wright, Grag feels respect and some awe. For he knows that Simon helped create him.

  Also he has long been accustomed to acting as the Brain’s hands, performing experiments and researches under the Brain’s direction.

  But toward Otho, the android, Grag is deeply jealous. For the robot’s great desire is to be thought of as human or near-human. Grag has always been angry when anyone has referred to him as a machine, or automaton. He feels that he is just like other humans, except that his body is made of metal instead of flesh.

  But Otho, who was also created by Captain Future’s father and the Brain, likes to taunt the big robot on that point
. Long ago Otho found out that the great, simple-minded robot was most sensitive about his unhuman appearance, and ever since then Otho has gibed about it.

  CAMARADERIE

  Grag invariably becomes furious at these taunts. Yet the bickering between these two comrades of Captain Future is at bottom one of mischievous camaraderie. Each of them has saved the life of the other, more than once, in a tight spot.

  Grag has been able to extricate his comrades from more than one perilous situation, through his great strength or through his special capabilities. One of the most valuable of the robot’s abilities is that he requires no breathing apparatus.

  This has enabled him to go where neither Captain Future nor Otho could venture.

  One time on Venus, when Curt and Otho and Simon Wright were all trapped in deadly peril, and could not be reached in any other way, Grag had walked days under an ocean, over the sea-floor, to reach the island where they were imprisoned. The robot was nearly lost many times in that perilous traverse, in constant danger of sinking into the ooze at the bottom of the sea, but he finally made it and brought help to his trapped comrades.

  CAST ADRIFT

  Another time, Grag was cast adrift in space when outlaws destroyed the little space-flier in which he was trying to reach his master on Saturn.

  The great robot floated in space for many days, helpless and yet still living, needing no food or air, and finally was picked up by Curt Newton. Only the robot could have survived such an experience.

  There is a great weld-scar down the back of Grag’s metal back, which tells a tale of an adventure that neither he nor his master will ever forget.

  Captain Future had penetrated into one of the caverns of Uranus’ chasmed abysses, with Grag. The outlaws Curt was after blew up the tunnel entrance to that cave.

  Captain Future would have been crushed beneath falling rock had not Grag, with his superhuman strength, held up the masses of falling stone until his master could jump clear. Grag himself was crushed beneath the rock, but Captain Future dug him out later, and the great weld-scar on his back is his memento of the adventure.

  NO SENSE OF HUMOR

  Grag has no sense of humor, as humans know it. He is puzzled sometimes by Curt’s jokes or the sly drollery of Otho. And that makes him uneasy, for the robot’s great ambition is to be human in everything.

  His happiest moments have been when Captain Future has told him, “Grag, you are more human than most humans I know.”

  Huge, incredible in strength, his great metal head towering high, his photoelectric eyes gleaming and his mighty metal arms raised, Grag is a terrible figure to evildoers when he goes into battle at the side of Captain Future and Otho.

  And woe betide the person whom Grag suspects of trying to harm his master!

  The Synthetic Man

  From the Summer 1940 issue of Captain Future

  OTHO, the android or synthetic man, is the only being of his kind in the Solar System. He is a man who was never born, but was artificially made!

  In his natural form no one would mistake him for a human being. For the android’s arms and legs have a rubbery, boneless look. His artificially created flesh is pure white, not pink like human flesh. Otho’s dead-white face has no eyebrows or eyelashes, and there is no hair whatever upon his well-shaped white head. In a beltlike harness he carries his ray-pistols, make-up pouch and other belongings.

  Otho’s face was carefully molded by his maker, Captain Future’s father, before the final “setting” of his flesh. The man-made features are regular, yet there is something unusual about Otho’s expression.

  Like a cat’s eyes, his jade-green orbs can see in darkness. And there is a queer, alien humor, a gay, mocking deviltry in the cool way in which they stare.

  THE WORLD’S FASTEST BEING

  When Roger Newton and the Brain planned Otho’s Creation, they modeled the synthetic man after the human body, but simplified the pattern. Otho has no appendix or other such superfluous organs which in the human body are atrophied and useless. The android’s physical make-up is streamlined for efficiency. To more than one Earthman, he has seemed almost diabolic — for his ironic, twisted mental outlook occasionally leads to strange results.

  The skeleton around which the synthetic man’s flesh was molded is composed, not of rigid bones, but of artificial bones that are many times stronger and so flexible that they can be bent double without breaking.

  This fact, and the great strength of his artificial muscle-tissues, gives Otho his wonderful agility and speed. The fact that he is a superman has alienated him from normal beings, and at times, through sheer loneliness, the android will assume a human disguise and visit Earth incognito.

  The android can run faster, jump higher, and move more quickly in an emergency than almost any other creature in the System. It was Otho who taught Captain Future speed and skill in the days when Curt Newton was a boy upon the moon.

  It was he who taught Curt the method of super ju-jitsu which he had evolved, and which enables him to overpower an ordinary man in a twinkling. But, though Captain Future is capable of faster action than any other human in the System, he can’t quite match the unhuman Otho.

  Otho’s body requires both air and food to maintain its metabolism. He must breathe — but his lungs are capable of breathing air that is so poisonous it would kill the average human.

  While he can eat ordinary human food, the android prefers to take his nutrition in the elementary form of simple chemical elements. It saves time, and Otho is always in a hurry about something.

  POWERS OF DISGUISE

  Most famous of Otho’s accomplishments is his power of disguise. By softening and re-setting his synthetic flesh, and changing the stature and posture of his flexible-skeletoned body, Otho can make himself up to be an exact double of anyone in the System, no matter what planetary race he belongs to.

  Otho’s power of assuming disguises has been of vital aid to Captain Future many times. Perhaps Otho’s greatest feat of make-up was disguising himself as one of the Mind Men of Saturn.

  That strange race who inhabit a legendary land hidden far in the endless Great Plains of Saturn are mere immobile and featureless balls of flesh outwardly, though they possess minds of incalculable power and can use mental force as a powerful weapon.

  Otho, by his wizardry of make-up, succeeded in the incredible feat of passing himself off as one of the Mind Men for a whole day, in a desperate emergency.

  The unhuman Otho loves danger for its own sake. He is soon bored when there is a lack of excitement. For the android has neither the superhuman patience of Grag, the robot, nor the cold, austere detachment of the Brain.

  LOYALTY TO CAPTAIN FUTURE

  Otho would go through fire and water for Captain Future. To him, as to the other two Futuremen, the chief purpose of life is loyalty to the young wizard of science whom they three reared from a helpless infant.

  But while he would carry out any mission that Curt Newton ordered, Otho will generally, through sheer boredom and recklessness try to stir up a little excitement on the way, and that often gets him into trouble.

  Once, while on a mission for Captain Future, Otho went too far off his course to pursue a fleeing enemy, and got himself wrecked and marooned on an asteroid with a poisonous atmosphere. A human would have been asphyxiated there, but Otho’s impervious lungs breathed the lethal air without great harm. But he had tramped the little world for a month before Grag finally found him. Otho had passed the time by constructing an underground hide-out which later proved invaluable.

  The unhuman android’s queer, mocking humor is one of his strongest characteristics. He never tries chaffing the Brain — Otho has too vast a respect for that brooding, icy-minded being. But Grag is the great butt of his gibes. He long ago found out that Grag has no sense of humor, and he has been deviling the great, simple-minded robot ever since.

  OTHO’S FEUD WITH GRAG

  The chief subject of his taunts is Grag’s unhuman-ness. The big, naive
robot would like more than anything else to be thought human. Nothing so pleases Grag as the idea that he is almost as human as other people.

  But Otho denies that Grag is human with sly, deceptive casualness, he keeps pointing out that humans breathe, and eat, and have flesh instead of metal bodies, and that Grag has none of these abilities. This invariably excites the indignation of the robot, and makes him deny vociferously that Otho is human, either.

  And that always provokes an argument, for Otho loses his temper easily. Grag’s customary retort is that humans can’t remold their bodies and faces as Otho does, and that therefore Otho isn’t human. The two have disputed the question all over the System from Mercury to Pluto — usually they get so bitter about it that Captain Future or the Brain has to interfere.

  Yet neither Grag nor Otho are as serious in their quarreling as they seem. They may be shouting at the tops of their voices, but let any danger suddenly come up, and robot and android will instantly stop their dispute and work side by side in perfect co-operation. Each knows that the other has special abilities which cannot be matched, and that are often needed in the dangerous adventures into which Captain Future leads them.

  SEEKS EXCITEMENT AND DANGER

  It is when they are outward bound in space with peril and new scenes ahead that Otho is happiest. On the other hand, when they spend a long period in Captain Future’s laboratory-home on the moon, Otho finds it boring. While Curt and the Brain are engaged in their abstruse scientific researches, and while Grag busies himself in the simpler work of the cavern-dwelling, Otho will saunter discontentedly among the lunar craters in his space-suit, and look up disconsolately at the starry spaces and wish something would happen.