Captain Future 21 - The Return of Captain Future (January 1950) Read Online Free PDF Page A

shall pass. But, before we depart, let us raise up a new race that will be supple and adaptable enough to succeed someday where we failed.’
    “And for such an heir, the First-Born raised up — man! The crawling apes, the unclean, chattering hordes of the far worlds, the liars, the cheats, the cunning ones! They said, ‘Though he is all these things, in him is the seed of power, of power someday to unite the universe under the law of justice as we dreamed of doing.’
    “So, from the noisy apes, the First-Born developed your race, human! A race that had no attribute of the great galactic races, that had nothing but curiosity — curiosity that unlocked powers for it that it could ill use. So your race was first loosed upon the universe far away in lost ages, by the First-Born before they passed!”
    As the mechanical voice paused, Captain Future stood with a wild thrilling in his nerves.
    Cosmic mystery dispelled at last — even though beyond it loomed deeper and older mysteries!
    “So that is the secret of man’s cosmic origin!” breathed Joan.
    “Yet apes evolved to man on Earth too, the scientists say,” muttered Ezra bewilderedly.
    The Linid answered him mockingly. “Always and on many worlds, the humans whom the First-Born raised from apehood slip back quickly to the ape, and must toilsomely climb again.”
    “But where did the First-Born do this?” Curt Newton pressed. “Where, amid the galaxies, was their home?”
    “Not even the Linids know that,” was the answer. “Though there are traditions —”
    The creature’s toneless, translated speech halted. A queer tense immobility had come over the coiling capes and veils.
    “What traditions?” pressed Captain Future harshly. “Speak, if you wish eventual freedom!”
    He was unaware, as he himself spoke, of a small gray shape that had crept silently into the room.
    The Linid’s translated voice spoke, suddenly rapid. “I shall tell you what I know. Perhaps it answers your question. Listen closely —”
    They strained forward, hungering for every word. And then, out of the corner of his eye, Curt Newton saw motion — looked, and saw Eek the moon-pup, going with a strangely swift and stealthy rush toward Joan.
    Realization came to him with a sickening shock. He leaped forward, crying out a warning, and knew as he did so that it was too late, that he had made a fatal blinder. He had forgotten Eek. He had forgotten the moon pup’s highly telepathic mind. And the Linid had reached out and found the one unshielded, receptive tool. All this rapid talk, this promise of a final piece of knowledge, had been to distract their attention.
    There was an alarmed uproar, triggered by Captain Future’s cry. Joan turned. Curt’s hand brushed the small hurtling body, but it was going fast, too fast. Eek sprang, unerringly, straight for Joan’s face. His jaws caught the jewel of force, and ripped it from the girl’s head.
    Eek fell to the floor, taking the jewel with him, and was instantly docile. And Curt Newton made a desperate lunge for Joan. For she had whirled around, the instant the protective aura left her. She was leaping toward the rheostat of the stasis-cage.
    The Linid had no use for Eek now, it had a better tool.
    Joan was closer to the machine than Curt. He might have shot her — that alone would have stopped her in time. Her hand opened the rheostat wide, in an instant.
    And, with supernal swiftness, the Linid was out of the broken stasis and had grasped her. Cowled dark veils and capes swirled and enveloped Joan as she stood blank eyed.
    With a hoarse cry, Curt sprang forward. Grag leaped with him, uttering a booming roar, and Otho and Ezra and Simon.
    They recoiled. They shrank back from what was happening to Joan. Ezra covered his face with his hands.
    The Linid was melting into her body! The dark capes and veils, even the darker, denser core of the thing, were sinking into Joan’s flesh!
    “— a power of utter possession, against which only