Captain Future 21 - The Return of Captain Future (January 1950) Read Free

light from the ceiling dome, his face showed lined and tired. It had hardened somehow, and changed. It was the face of a man driven by some iron purpose, and the eyes had a shadow in them something dark and strange.
    Ezra Gurney looked at him intently. “You must have had a reason. A good reason.” Being older, he was willing to reserve his hurt and anger. His voice shook with eagerness as he went on.
    “Did you reach Andromeda galaxy, Curt?”
    Captain Future said briefly, “We reached it.”
    Even Joan forgot her emotions in the sweeping wonder of those three words.
    “You reached it,” she whispered. Then she sat quite still in awe. Andromeda galaxy. An alien continent of suns, washed by the farthest tides of space. An incredible, magnificent journey. Curt Newton had dreamed his dream, and made it come true.
    “Did you find what you were looking for?” Ezra demanded. “The secret of the human race’s origin?”
    Curt shook his head. He said indirectly, “A lot happened. Trouble, near-wreck, the usual hazards. We were lucky to get back.”
    He smiled abruptly, a smile that pretended to be easy and was not.
    “Will you two trust me? There’s something I have to do, and I want you both to go back to Earth now. I’ll be along, and then I’ll tell you all you want to know.”
    Joan got up. She took hold of Curt and looked into his eyes.
    “You’re afraid,” she said. “Afraid for me, for us, if we stay here. Why?”
    “Nonsense.” His scoffing retort had an unconvincing heartiness. “Go along now, Joan.” He looked at Ezra over her shoulder, a glance full of hard meaning. “Take her back, will you, Ezra?”
     
    THE BRAIN spoke, in his dry, mechanical voice. “Curt is right, Joan. We have much to do, with the specimens we brought back with us. You’d only be in the way.”
    “Sure,” boomed Grag loudly to her. “No fun for you, looking at a lot of old rocks and things.”
    “Stop lying to me, all of you!” cried Joan angrily. She looked around at them, Captain Future and the incredible trio of his comrades. She saw that even in Otho’s bright mocking eyes, the dark shadow lurked.
    “You are afraid. Every one of you. You’re afraid for Ezra and me, or you wouldn’t want us to go. You brought something back with you, that’s it! You brought something back, and you’re afraid of it. So afraid that you didn’t dare let anyone know you had returned.”
    No one answered her. And in the brooding silence of the laboratory under Tycho, a breath of fear touched Joan and Ezra Gurney — a black and freezing breath of terror from beyond the intergalactic abysses.
    Ezra spoke, asking of them all, “What did you find out there?”
    Curt Newton answered slowly. “Some of the history of the Old Race, the ancient humans. We hoped to find them, but didn’t. They’d gone on long ago, to some farther part of the universe. The Old Empire, ebbing back toward its unknown center, as Rome ebbed back when it fell.
    “But we did find worlds where they had lived. Worlds of deserted, silent cities, worlds of death, worlds of mystery.”
    The Brain said in his precise, emotionless way, “We found many records and inscriptions, in the language of the Old Empire — the so-called Denebian tongue we could already read. They were half-ruined, half-effaced, by time. But even those broken records told a strange, grand story.”
    Like a man haunted by a dream far greater than himself, Curt Newton began to tell that story. Red head bent forward, eyes seeming to look beyond time and space, he spoke.
    “Some of this you know already. You helped us track down the mystery of mankind across the star-worlds of our own galaxy, until we found that the answer lay still farther on, beyond the gulfs of outer space. Well, we know now that answer lies even beyond Andromeda. But we have learned a great deal.
    “We know how the human race, the Old Race, came from some unknown birthplace and spread out across the universe. The Old