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

the jewels of force are protection.”
    Utter possession. Curt knew now, with agonizing clarity, what the inscription had meant. Not just mental possession but physical possession also — the solid body of the Linid entering and interpenetrating the solid body of its victim, due to an unearthly power of manipulating its bodily atoms that only so alien a creature could have.
    Joan stood before them, face dark, masklike and strange, eyes pits of swirling shadows that looked at the stricken Futuremen and Ezra.
    Words that were not her own came mockingly from her stiff lips.
    “Now, humans, shall we speak of freedom for me?”
     

     
    Chapter 4: Last Weapon
     
    TO CURT NEWTON, as they stood petrified, came the dreadful realization that he had at last overreached himself.
    The Futuremen, in the years they had blazed their adventurous trail across space, had faced many dangerous antagonists. Had faced, and ultimately defeated them. He knew now it had bred overconfidence. It had made him dare pit himself against man’s most dangerous foe in all history, against a monstrous survival of elder eons to whom he was but a child.
    “It’s got Joan,” whispered Ezra, his face deathly. “It’s got Joan, and there’s nothing we can do.”
    Joan? Not Joan, the dark-faced, shadow-eyed puppet that stood and confronted them. Not Joan’s, the taunting words they heard.
    “Shall I give you more knowledge, oh man? Shall I tell you more — before I speed back to rejoin my brothers in their war against the human spawn?”
    The Linid meant to destroy them, Curt knew. Not from personal malice. But because they were its racial enemies. It meant to destroy them, before it left.
    And it could do it using Joan as its tool. There was only one way to stop it and that was to break the tool it held.
    To kill Joan.
    Grag’s booming voice came falteringly, as the robot stood rigid with uncertainty. “Chief — what can we do?”
    They all recognized the terrible impasse, Curt knew. They knew that only one thing would stop the Linid, and that was a thing that not even imminent death could make them do.
    Raging self-accusation swept Curt. His foolhardiness, his too-great passion to solve cosmic mystery, had brought this end to the Futuremen, and Ezra, and Joan.
    He would not let it happen. He would not. The old, cold anger, the emotion that was not human fury but a relentless thing learned of his strange tutors long ago, took hold of him.
    “Hasten, human!” came the mockery again from Joan’s stiff lips. “Speak your questions! For my brothers await me, in the great struggle!”
    Two things flashed simultaneously across Curt’s mind. One, that the Linid was again speaking to distract them, that in Joan’s body it was moving stealthily forward so that it might snatch away their protective jewels and have them completely in its power.
    The other thing was a thought that crossed his brain like a thin lightning flash of wild hope. He had one tiny advantage over the Linid — one only. But he might use it as a weapon.
    Not as a physical weapon. No such weapon could harm the Linid without slaying Joan. No, his last weapon was a psychological one.
    The Linid meant to destroy them. It could use Joan to do it. His only hope was to divert the Linid from its intention, by psychological attack.
    Curt spoke, to that which had been Joan. He said harshly, “Go back then to your brothers, if you can find them! Go back to Andromeda — and rejoice with them at their great victory over man!”
    The Linid halted its subtly stealthy movement. It had caught a disturbing something in Captain Future’s thought.
    “How long do you think you lay frozen beneath the Hall of Ninety Suns?” Curt demanded. “Years? Centuries? No — for ages! And how fared the Linid race in those ages? To victory?
    “No, to death! Your brothers perished long and long ago, and are not known in the universe! Not known except for you, the last — the last!”
    Contempt and rage flared