Captain Future 25 - Moon of the Unforgotten (January 1951) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Through ancestral memory, you can live again in the days of the Old Empire — perhaps even before it.”
    He smiled and added slowly, “You have a thirst for knowledge. And there are no limits to the learning you might acquire in the Second Life!”
    Curt stood silent and there was a strange look in his eyes.
    Otho laughed, a peculiarly jarring sound. “There is nothing in this for me, Konnur. I had no ancestors!”
    “I know. The guards will care for you.” Konnur turned to Newton. “Well?”
    “No,” said Curt, with a curious harshness. “No! I won’t have anything to do with it.”
    He turned and there was a solid phalanx of men against him, barring his way. Konnur’s voice came to him softly.
    “I’m afraid you have no choice.”
    Irresolute, with a whiteness around his mouth, Curt Newton looked from Konnur to the guards and back again and a tremor ran through his muscles that was more of excitement than fear.
    Otho sighed.
    The guards moved forward one short step. Curt shrugged. He lifted his head and glanced at Konnur, challenging him, and Konnur pointed to an empty slab.
    Captain Future lay down, in the hollowed place. The marble was cold beneath him.
    Another man had come, an old man in a threadbare gown who stood ready at the controls of the machine. Konnur set the metal band on the Earthman’s head, fitting the chill plates of metal over his temples. He smiled and raised his hand.
    The machine came humming into life. A somber glow illumined Curt’s face and then two shining tendrils of force sprang out and spun themselves swiftly downward.
    They touched the twin electrodes. Curt Newton felt a flash of fire inside his skull and then there was the darkness.
     

     
    Chapter 4: The Unforgotten
     
    ONE by one disjointed far-separated slices of his past suddenly came real and living again to Curt Newton. Each one was farther back in the past. And he did not just remember them. He lived each one with every one of his five senses, with almost all his conscious being.
    Almost all — but not quite. Some inner corner of his mind remained aloof from this overpoweringly vivid playback of memory, and watched.
    He was striding with Otho and Grag and the gliding Simon upon a night-shrouded world. In the heavens flamed the vast stunning star-stream of Andromeda galaxy and out of the darkness ahead of them loomed the mighty Hall of Ninety Suns...
    He was in the bridge of the Red Hope, Bork King’s ship. That towering Martian pirate stood beside him and the brake-rockets were crashing frantically as they came in fast, fast, toward the red sullen sphere of Outlaw World...
    He was running, running toward the ships. The whole world beneath him was rocking and shaking, the sky wreathed in lightnings and great winds moaning. He was back on Katain, that lost world of time that was rocking now toward its final cataclysmic doom...
    “Back farther — farther —” whispered the faraway voice, and the humming note of the machines seemed to deepen.
    “You will do as I say, Curtis!”
    Curt stood, rebelliously facing the implacable gaze of Simon Wright, in the corridor of the Moon-laboratory under Tycho. He was only a fourteen-year-old boy and he felt all a boy’s resentment of restrictions, of fancied injustice.
    “All I’ve ever seen is this place and you and Otho and Grag,” he muttered. “I want to go to Earth and Mars and all the other worlds.”
    “You will someday,” said Simon. “But not until you are ready. Grag and Otho and I have reared you here, in preparation for what is to come. And when the time arrives you will go...”
    He could not see very clearly nor could he understand. He had only an infant’s eyes and an infant’s mind.
    It was the big main room of the Moon-laboratory. A man and woman lay sprawled on the floor and other men with weapons stood over them.
    Simon Wright, his lens-eyes facing those men, was saying tonelessly, “You will pay for this very quickly. Death is coming now.”
    There