Captain Future 27 - Birthplace of Creation (May 1951) Read Online Free PDF Page A

make worlds?” Ezra felt shaken and sick inside. “Curt, no — this thing —”
    “One who can harness the Birthplace can create at will!” Curt exclaimed. “And the instruments of the Watchers do harness it!”
    A kind of madness had come over him. Under his hands the Comet leaped forward at terrible speed. Ezra heard him talking, whether to the others or himself he never knew.
    “There is a balance of forces — always a balance! It cannot be tampered with too much. The Watchers left a warning, a plain and dreadful warning.”
    The ship rushed forward toward the distant small blue world, careening wildly through the unholy stars and worlds and comets whose creation had blasphemed against the natural universe.
     

     
    Chapter 4: Power of the Watchers
     
    THE blue world shimmered in the light of the monstrous aurora, a perfect jewel, with no height of mountain nor roughness of natural growth to mar its symmetry. Its surface showed a gloss that made Ezra think of porcelain or the deep gleam of polished lapis.
    “The Watchers made it long ago,” said Curt. “They made it out of the forces of the Birthplace and it was their outpost in this universe, where they studied the secrets of creation. There exists a city...”
    The Comet sped low across the curving plain. For a time there was nothing but the blank expanse of blue — what was it, glass or rock or jewel-stone or some substance new in the universe? Above them the little suns with their planets wheeled and shone, laced about with the fire of comets, and above those again was the golden sky of the Birthplace. Curt’s face, bent forward toward the blue horizon, was intense and pale and somehow alien.
    “There it is!” cried Otho, and Curt nodded. Ahead there were the tips of slender spires flashing in the light and a gleam and glow of faceted surfaces that made a web of radiance like the aura sometimes seen in dreams. The spires lifted into graceful height, shaped themselves into the form of a city.
    Walls of the same translucent blue enclosed the towers and in the center, rising high above them all, there was a citadel, a cathedral-form as massive and as delicate as the castles that sometimes stand upon the tops of clouds on Earth. And it was dead, the blue and graceful city. The walls, the streets, the flying arches that spanned the upper levels of the towers, all were silent and deserted.
    “Garrand’s ship,” said Curt and Ezra saw it on the plain before the city, an ugly dark intruder on this world that had not been made for men.
    Curt set the Comet down beside it. There was air on this planet, for the Watchers had been oxygen-breathers even though they were not human. The lock of Garrand’s ship stood open but there was no life nor movement that Curt could see.
    “It seems deserted,” he said, “but we’d better make sure.”
    Ezra roused himself. He went out with the others and somehow the mere act of moving and the possibility of facing a human and comprehensible danger was a relief, almost a pleasure. He walked beside Curt with Otho beyond him. Their boots slipped and rang on the glassy surface. Apart from that there was no sound. The city brooded and was still.
    They went through the open airlock into the other ship. There did not seem to be anything to fear, but they moved with the caution of long habit. Ezra found that he was waiting, hoping for action, for attack. He needed some escape valve for the terrors that had grown within him during this flight into the heart of the universe. But the narrow corridors were empty and nothing stirred behind the bulkhead doors.
    Then, in the main cabin, they found a man.
    He was sitting on the padded bench formed by the tops of the lockers along one wall. He did not move when they came in except to lift his head and look at them. He was a big man, of a breed that Ezra Gurney knew very well, having fought them all his life across the Solar System. But the hardness had gone out of him now. The strong