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

lines of his face had sagged and softened and his eyes held only hopelessness and fear. He had been drinking but he was not drunk.
    “You’re too late,” he said. “Way too late.”
    Curt went and stood before him. “You’re Herrick,” he said. “Are you alone?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Herrick. “I’m alone. There were Sperry and Forbin but they’re dead now.” Herrick had not shaved for some time. The black stubble on his jaw was flecked with white. He ran his hand across it and his fingers trembled. “I wouldn’t be here now,” he said, “but I couldn’t run the whirls alone. I couldn’t take this ship clear back to Earth alone. I couldn’t do anything but sit and wait.”
    Curt said, “Where’s Garrand?”
    Herrick laughed. It was not pleasant laughter. “ You know where he is. Go in and get him. Make him come out. That’s how Sperry and Forbin died, trying to make him. I don’t know why I’m alive myself. I don’t know if I want to be alive after what I’ve seen.”
     
    HE GOT up. It was hard for him to rise, hard to stand. It was as though fear had eaten the bones away inside him, dissolved the strength from his muscles, leaving him only a hulk, a receptacle for terror. His eyes burned at them.
    “You know me,” he said. “You know my kind. You can guess why I came with Garrand to get the secret of the Birthplace, what I was going to do with it afterward. I didn’t figure Garrand would get in my way. I needed his brains, all right, but there would come a time when I wouldn’t need them anymore.” He made a gesture, as of brushing away an insect with his hand. “As easy as that.” He began to laugh again and it was more weeping than laughter.
    “Stop it!” said Curt and Herrick stopped quite obediently. He looked at Curt as though a thought had just come to him, creeping through the fear-webs that shrouded his brain.
    “You can get me out of here,” he said. There was no threat in his voice, only pleading, the voice of a man caught in quicksand and crying for release. “It’s no use going after Garrand. He’ll die in there anyway. He won’t eat or sleep, he’s gone beyond those things, but whatever he thinks he is, he’s human and he’ll die. Just go! Take me aboard your ship and go!”
    “No,” said Curt.
    Herrick sat down again on the bench. “No,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t. You’re as mad as he is.”
    Simon said, “Curtis...”
    He had remained in the shadowy background, listening, but now he came forward and spoke and Curt turned on him.
    “No!” he said again. “I can’t go away and leave a madman there to play with the forces of the Birthplace till he dies!”
    Simon was silent for a time and then he said slowly, “There is truth in what you say but only part of it. And I am sorry, Curtis — for I am no more proof against this madness than you. Even less, perhaps, than you.
    “I shall stay out here with Grag to guard the ships and Herrick.” His lens-like eyes turned upon Ezra Gurney. “I think that you, of all of us, will resist the lure most strongly. You are like Herrick, a man of your hands — and Herrick, who came to steal the secret, felt only terror when he found it.”
    He said no more but Ezra knew what he meant. Simon was giving Curt Newton into his hands to save him from some destruction which Ezra did not understand. There was a coldness around Ezra’s heart and a sickness in his belly and in his mind a great wish that he had never left Earth.
    Curt said to Herrick, “Go to my ship and wait. When we leave you’ll go with us.”
    Herrick shook his head. His eyes lifted slowly to Curt Newton’s and dropped again. He said, “You’ll never leave.”
    Ezra left the ship with Curt and Otho and he was sorry that Herrick had said those last three words.
    They walked again across the ringing glassy plain, this time toward the city wall and the tall gateway that was in it. The leaves of the portal stood open and there was a look about them