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

else has been moved or taken?”
    The metal giant started stalking through the rooms. Curt remained silent and thoughtful, the frown on his tanned face deepening.
    Grag came back. “No. Nothing else has been tampered with.”
    “Yet it was,” Curt said slowly. He looked again at Simon. “I’ve been thinking. An expert in sub-electronics... Do you remember the nuclear physics man down at New York Tech whom we met at Government Center a few months ago?”
    “Garris? Garrand — some name like that? I remember. A nice little man.”
    “Yes, I thought so too — very eager about his work. But I remember now he asked me a question —”
     
    CURT broke off suddenly. He went rapidly across the big room, unlocked the vault door and inside the silent lunar cavern he went straight to the files.
    Simon had followed him. And when Simon saw the spool that Curt drew from the file his lens-eyes turned to Curt’s face with a startled swiftness.
    “Curtis, no! You don’t think —”
    “It was what he asked me about,” Curt said. “The Birthplace.”
    The word went echoing solemnly back and forth around the cold rock walls. And Curt stared at Simon, not really seeing him, seeing uncanny awesome things that lived in memory, and a strange look came into his face — a strange look indeed for the man Curt Newton. A look of fear.
    Simon said, “How could he know of the Birthplace?”
    That word had never been spoken to anyone. They hardly spoke it even among themselves. Such a secret was not for the knowledge nor the use of men and they had guarded it more carefully than the sum total of all other knowledge they possessed. Now the very sound of that name brought Grag and Otho to the door and wrought a sudden tension that filled the cavern with a waiting stillness.
    Curt said heavily, “He connected the theoretical possibility with the work we did on Mercury. He’s a brilliant man, Simon — too brilliant.”
    “Perhaps,” said Grag, “he only looked for the secret and couldn’t find it. After all, our filing system...”
    Curt shook his head. “If he could get in here he could find what he wanted.” He examined the spool. “He could make a copy of this and there would be no way of telling that it had been done.”
    He stood motionless for a moment longer and no one spoke. Otho studied his face and shot one quick bright glance at Simon. Simon moved uneasily on his gliding force-beams.
    Curt replaced the spool and turned. “We’ve got to find out about this man. We’ll go to New York, at once.”
    Very soon thereafter the Comet rose from the dark gap of the hangar-mouth and shot away toward the great green globe of Earth.
    Not much later, at headquarters of the Planet Police in New York, old marshal Ezra Gurney stared at Curt Newton in blank amazement.
    “Garrand?” he said. “But he’s a reputable man, a scientist!”
    “Nevertheless,” said Curt grimly, “I want all the information you can get and fast.”
    Simon spoke. “This is urgent, Ezra. We cannot afford delay.”
    The grizzled old spaceman glanced from one to the other, and then to Otho. “Something really bad, eh? All right, I’ll do what I can.”
    He went out of the office. Otho leaned against the wall and remained motionless, watching Curt. Simon hovered near the desk. Neither one of them was afflicted with nerves. Curt moved restlessly about, brooding, his hands touching things and putting them down again in wire-taut gestures. The intricate multichron on the wall whirred softly and the minutes slid away, on Earth, on Mars, on the far-flung worlds of the System. No one spoke and Ezra did not come back.
    Simon said at last, “It would take time, even for Ezra.”
    “Time!” said Curt. “If Garrand has the secret we have no time.”
    He paced the small neat room, a man oppressed with heavy thoughts. The sound of the door opening brought him whirling around to face Ezra almost as though he were facing his executioner.
    “Well?”
    “Garrand took