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

as though they had not been touched or closed for more ages than Ezra could think about. He and Otho passed through them, following Curt. Beyond, at a little distance, were two dark statues facing each other across the way. Ezra looked at them and caught his breath in sharply.
    “The Watchers?” he whispered. “Where they like that? But what were they then?”
    Otho said, “They came from another universe. Simon thought they must have been liquescent from the formless structure of their bodies.”
    Out of each amorphous figure stared two round yellow eyes, full of light from the glowing sky and uncannily lifelike. Ezra shuddered and hurried by, glancing as he did so at the strangely inscribed letters upon the bases of the statues. He assumed that that was the warning Curt had referred to and he did not want to enquire too closely into it.
    “Go quietly,” Curt said. “Two men have already died here. We want to get as close to Garrand as we can before he knows we’re here.”
    “Where is he?” demanded Ezra for the city was utterly dead and still. Curt pointed to the citadel.
    “In there.”
    They made their way as silently as they could along the blue translucent street. High above them the slender spires made soft bell-notes where the wind touched them and the crystal spans thrummed like muted harps. And the shimmering castle loomed close before them and the strange stars sparkled in the golden sky. Ezra Gurney was afraid.
    There was a portal, tall and simply made, with an unknown symbol cut above it. They passed it, treading softly, and stood within a vast cathedral vault that soared upward until the tops of the walls were lost in a golden haze and Ezra realized that it was open to the sky.
    The floor was of the same blue substance as the city and in the center of it, under the open vault, was a massive oblong block almost like a gigantic altar except that its top was set with hundreds of little, shining keys. Beside this block stood Garrand. He was not looking at it nor at the two men and the android who had entered. He was looking upward into that distant sky and through the opening Ezra could see the glittering of stars. Garrand was smiling.
    Curt Newton walked out across the floor.
    “Don’t came any closer,” said Garrand mildly. “Just where you are — that’s close enough.”
    Curt stopped. Otho had begun to edge away along the curve of the wall very slowly, like a drifting shadow. Ezra stood a little behind Curt and to one side.
     
    GARRAND turned toward them and for the first time Ezra saw his face quite clearly. Unshaven and deathly white, its cheeks and temples sunken with hunger and exhaustion, its eyes dark and burning, there was a beauty about it that had never been there before, something sublime and glorious and calm, as a sea is calm or a frozen river, with the potentials of destruction sleeping in it. And Ezra understood the danger that Simon had spoken of in regard to Curt. He understood now what the power that was here could do to a man.
    “So, after all, you followed me,” Garrand said. “Well, it doesn’t matter now.” He stepped behind the block that was like an altar, so that it was between him and Curt.
    Curt said quietly, “You must leave here, Garrand. You’ll have to leave some time, you know. You’re only human.”
    “Am I?” Garrand laughed. His hand lightly caressed the bank of little shining keys. “ Am I? I was once. I was a little physicist who thought adding to scientific knowledge supremely important and I stole and risked my life to come here for more knowledge.” His eyes lit up. “I came searching for a scientific secret and I found the source of godhead!”
    “So now, because you’ve tampered with the Watcher’s powers and tapped the Birthplace, you’re a god?” Curt’s tone was ironic but Ezra could see the sweat standing out on his forehead.
    Garrand took no offense. He was armored by an egocentric emotion so great that he merely smiled wearily