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

form. Joan felt her flesh draw in upon itself with instinctive recoil, and it seemed that in her heart she could feel a black and icy tide that flowed from the thing, a sense of horror at beholding something so completely divorced from all life as she knew it.
    “What is it?” she whispered.
    “One of the first lords of the galaxies,” Newton answered. “A Linid.”
    Somehow, just to know it had a name made it less shocking. Joan forced herself to look again.
    “We found it,” said Otho slowly, “in one of the dead cities of the old human race, out there.”
    “I found it,” Grag corrected him. “I was the one who broke open that crypt under the Hall of Ninety Suns. And if it hadn’t been for me, you couldn’t have moved it.”
    “Strong back,” said Otho, “weak mind.” But his heart was not in his gibing. The dark sleeper held them all in a mood of awe.
    “And millions of years ago, things like that were the lords of creation?” Ezra said, incredulously.
    Curt nodded broodingly. “Yes. They held the galaxies before man. They warred with man, with the Old Race. Yet it was not man alone who doomed them. A species has its day, and theirs was done.
    “They passed, like many another great species, largely because of a change in natural conditions. We think, from what we learned, that in the Linids’ case the fatal change was that of entropy, the increase of cosmic radiation somehow adversely affecting their alien form of life.”
    “That thing,” Joan breathed, “dead and perfectly preserved for all these ages!”
    Captain Future’s eyes had a queer look.
    “That’s just it, Joan. It isn’t dead.” His words echoed in the rocky vault like the living voice of danger.
    As though by common instinct, they drew away from the door. For a time no one spoke. Then Simon Wright supplied the explanation.
    “The records tell us that the Old Race won the galactic war with the Linids — but that even they could not destroy them. The Linids were a form of life too different for human science to destroy. They could only prison them, using a stasis of force like this one.
    “There were warnings. If the stasis were lifted, the Linid would regain life and consciousness. It would be as though all these eons had not passed. It would regain its full power — and the records caution all who read that the Linid had a terrible power — a power of utter possession, against which only the jewels of force are protection.”
    “If the stasis were lifted —” Joan said. “No! Curt, you’re not going to —”
    Her voice trailed away. Curt’s face was a thing cut from granite.
    “We’re going to lift it — a little. Enough to revive the thing, but still keep it prisoned. We’re sure we can communicate with it telepathically.” He was drawn and sweating with strain, with worry, with a fierce excitement.
    “We know the risk we’re taking. But we’ve got to do it! This survivor of a vanished eon can tell us things about the past that we’d never know.
    “But you shouldn’t take that risk, Joan. You and Ezra must go.”
    They answered as with one voice, “No.” And Ezra added, “From the look of that thing, you may need an extra hand.”
    Curt sighed. “All right. We’re not going into this completely without defense. There were jewels of force also in the Hall of the Ninety Suns. The Old Race must have used it as some sort of meeting ground with the Linids, where they parleyed for the rule of Andromeda. We brought them back, too.”
    He produced them, from a guarded locker. They were like no normal jewel. They were round and large, and black with the utter depthless blackness of the Linid itself. Each jewel formed the center cross of a light metal headband.
    In a vast and crushing silence, the six armed themselves, donning the headbands. The Brain made his secure by binding it around his case.
    “We don’t know how these jewels work,” muttered Otho. “It’s to be presumed that they’re