Captain Future 22 - Children of the Sun (May 1950) Read Online Free PDF Page B

they hovered above a burning river that ran across the face of the Sun. And they talked.
    “Are you — were you Philip Carlin?”
    “Philip Carlin? No. In human form I was Thardis, chief physicist to Fer Roga, Lord of Vulcan. That was long ago.”
    Silence, except for the booming thunders of the Sun.
    “Tell me, little brother. You are new here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do they still come then, the Bright Ones? Is the portal open still?”
    “It has been lost and forgotten for many ages. And then he found it, who was my friend — and he came through. Do you know him, Thardis? Do you know of Philip Carlin?”
    “No. My studies keep me much alone. Do you know, little brother, that I have almost attained the boundaries of pure thought? The greatest minds of the Empire said that was impossible. But I shall do it!”
    Two flecks of living fire, whirling, tossing on the solar winds above the flaming river. And Thardis said, “What of the Empire? What of Vulcan? Was the portal forbidden and did our scientists forget?”
    “It was forbidden,” Newton answered. “And then...” He told Thardis slowly how the Old Empire had crashed and died, how its far-flung peoples had sunk into barbarism, how only yesterday as time goes in the universe they had climbed back part way up the ladder of knowledge.
    He told Thardis many things and most of them were bitter and sad. But even as he told them he knew that to the other they were less than dreams. He had gone too far away into some strange distance of his own.
    “So it is all gone,” mused Thardis. “The star-worlds, the captains, the many-throned kings. It is the law. You will learn it here, little brother. You will watch the cycle — birth and death and eternity — repeated forever in the heart of the Sun.”
    His tenuous body rippled, poised for flight. “Farewell, little brother. Perhaps we shall meet again.”
    “Wait! Wait! ” cried Newton. “You do not understand. I can’t remain here. I must find my friend and then go back with him.”
    “Go back?” repeated Thardis. “Ah, you are new! Once, I remember, I started to go back.”
    His thought was silent for a long while and then it came again with a kind of sad amusement. “The little Sun Child, who is so very new! Come then, I shall help you find your friend.”
    He led off across the tortured moving mountains of the Sun, across the lashing burning seas. Newton followed and as Thardis went he called and presently from out of the veils and clouds of fire came two others who joined them.
    Thardis asked, “Do you know of one called Carlin? He is new.”
    One did not but the other answered, “I know him. He has gone deep into the inner fires to study the Sun’s life.”
    “I will take you to him,” Thardis said to Newton. “Come.”
    He dropped swiftly downward into the raging wilderness of flame. And Newton was afraid to follow.
    Then he was ashamed. If Carlin had gone that way he could go. He plunged down after the fleeting Thardis.
     
    THE crested waves of holocaust reached up and received them and buried them in depths of smoky gold, shot through with gouts and shafts of blazing color. They entered a region of denser matter and to Newton it was like swimming under troubled waters, sensible of the pressure and the awful turmoil, blending his own substance with the medium that held him.
    He clung close to Thardis. Gradually as they sank deeper and deeper beneath the surface the golden depths grew quieter, the flashing colors softer. Buried currents ran fiercely like rivers under the sea. Thardis entered one of these, breasting the mighty flowing force as a man walks against the wind, finding exhilaration in the battle.
    Newton joined him, and felt his own strength surge in joyous pleasure.
    The gold began to fade, gathering the diamond shards of color into itself, lightening, paling. Newton became aware of a glow ahead, more terrible than all the fires he had yet seen — a supernal whiteness so searing in its